IN the tempest of war that raged over land and ocean during
the months of August and September, 1814, bystanders could not trust
their own judgment of the future; yet shrewd observers, little affected
either by emotion or by interest, inclined to the belief that the
United States government was near exhaustion. The immediate military
danger on Lake Champlain was escaped, and Baltimore was saved; but
the symptoms of approaching failure in government were not to be
mistaken, and the capture of Washington, which was intended to hurry
the collapse, produced its intended effect.
From the first day of the war the two instruments necessary for
military success were wanting to Madison,--money and men. After three
campaigns, the time came when both these wants must be supplied,
or the national government must devolve its duties on the States.
When the President, preparing his Annual Message, asked his Cabinet
officers what were the prospects of supplying money and men for another
campaign, he received answers discouraging in the extreme.
First, in regard to money. In July, Secretary Campbell advertised a
second loan, of only six million dollars. He obtained but two and a
half millions at eighty. His acceptance of this trifling sum obliged
him to give the same terms to the contractors who had taken the nine
millions subscribed in the spring at eighty-eight. Barker found
difficulty in making his payments, and from both loans the Treasury
could expect to obtain only $10,400,000, owing to the contractors’
failures.[314] The authorized loan was twenty-five millions. The
secretary could suggest no expedient, except Treasury notes, for
filling the deficit.
Bad as this failure was,--though it showed Secretary Campbell’s
incapacity so clearly as to compel his retirement, and obliged the
President to call a special session of Congress,--the Treasury might
regard it as the least of its embarrassments. Commonly governments
had begun their most desperate efforts only after ordinary resources
failed; but the United States government in 1814 had so inextricably
involved its finances that without dictatorial powers of seizing
property its functions could not much longer be continued. The general
bankruptcy, long foreseen, at length occurred.
The panic caused by the capture of Washington, August 24, obliged
the tottering banks of Philadelphia and Baltimore to suspend specie
payments. The banks of Philadelphia formally announced their
suspension, August 31, by a circular explaining the causes and
necessity of their decision.[315] The banks of New York immediately
followed, September 1; and thenceforward no bank between New Orleans
and Albany paid its obligations except in notes. Only the banks of
New England maintained specie payments, with the exception of those
in least credit, which took the opportunity to pay or not pay as
they pleased. The suspension was admitted to be permanent. Until the
blockade should be raised and domestic produce could find a foreign
market, the course of exchange was fixed, and specie payments could
not be resumed. The British navy and the Boston Federalists held the
country firmly bound, and peace alone could bring relief.
Suspension mattered little, and had the National Bank been in existence
the failure might have been an advantage to the government; but without
a central authority the currency instantly fell into confusion. No
medium of exchange existed outside of New England. Boston gave the
specie standard, and soon the exchanges showed wide differences.
New York money stood at twenty per cent discount, Philadelphia at
twenty-four per cent, Baltimore at thirty per cent. Treasury notes
were sold in Boston at twenty-five per cent discount, and United
States six-per-cents stood at sixty in coin.[316] The Treasury had no
means of transferring its bank deposits from one part of the country
to another. Unless it paid its debts in Treasury notes, it was unable
to pay them at all. No other money than the notes of suspended banks
came into the Treasury. Even in New England, taxes, customs-duties,
and loans were paid in Treasury notes, and rarely in local currency.
Thus, while the government collected in the Middle and Southern States
millions in bank-notes, it was obliged to leave them in deposit at the
local banks where the collection was made, while its debts in Boston
and New York remained unpaid. The source of revenue was destroyed. The
whole South and West, and the Middle States as far north as New York,
could contribute in no considerable degree to the support of government.
The situation was unusual. The government might possess immense
resources in one State and be totally bankrupt in another; it might
levy taxes to the amount of the whole circulating medium, and yet
have only its own notes available for payment of debt; it might
borrow hundreds of millions and be none the better for the loan. All
the private bank-notes of Pennsylvania and the Southern country were
useless in New York and New England where they must chiefly be used. An
attempt to transfer such deposits in any quantity would have made them
quite worthless. The Treasury already admitted bankruptcy. The interest
on the national obligations could not be paid.
The President’s second inquiry regarded men. The new Secretary of War,
Monroe, gave him such information as the Department possessed on the
numbers of the army. A comparative account showed that in June, 1813,
the regular troops numbered 27,609; in December, 34,325. In January,
1814, the number was nominally 33,822;[317] in July the aggregate was
31,503, the effectives being 27,010.[318] Since July the recruits had
declined in numbers. The three months of March, April, and May produced
6,996 recruits; the three months of July, August, and September were
reported as furnishing 4,477.[319] The general return of September 30
reported the strength of the army at 34,029 men.[320] The government
was not able to provide the money necessary to pay bounties due for
the last three months’ recruiting.[321] The Secretary of War admitted
the failure of the recruiting service, and attributed it to the high
bounties given for substitutes in the militia detached for United
States service.[322]
The smallness of the armies in the field showed worse results than
were indicated by the returns. Macomb at Plattsburg claimed to have
only fifteen hundred effectives. Izard carried with him to Buffalo
only four thousand men. Brown’s effectives at Fort Erie numbered two
thousand. Apparently these three corps included the entire force in the
field on the Canada frontier, and their combined effective strength did
not exceed eight thousand men. The year before, Wilkinson and Hampton
commanded fully eleven thousand effectives in their movements against
Montreal. Nothing showed that the victories at Niagara and Plattsburg
had stimulated enlistments, or that the army could be raised above
thirty thousand effectives even if the finances were in a condition to
meet the expense.
Much was said of the zeal shown by the State militia in hastening to
the defence of their soil, and the New England Federalists were as
loud as the Kentucky and Tennessee Democrats in praise of the energy
with which the militia rose to resist invasion; but in reality this
symptom was the most alarming of the time. Both in the military and in
the political point of view, the persistence in depending on militia
threatened to ruin the national government.
The military experience of 1814 satisfied the stanchest war Democrats
that the militia must not be their dependence. In Maine the militia
allowed themselves with hardly a show of resistance to be made
subjects of Great Britain. At Plattsburg volunteers collected in
considerable numbers, but the victory was won by the sailors and the
engineers. At Niagara, Brown never could induce more than a thousand
volunteers to support him in his utmost straits. Porter’s efforts
failed to create a brigade respectable in numbers, and at Chippawa
his Indians outnumbered his whites. Four days after the repulse
of Drummond’s assault on Fort Erie, at the most anxious moment
of the Niagara campaign, Major-General Brown wrote to Secretary
Armstrong,[323]--
“I very much doubt if a parallel can be found for the state
of things existing on this frontier. A gallant little army
struggling with the enemies of their country, and devoting their
lives for its honor and its safety, left by that country to
struggle alone, and that within sight and within hearing.”
A month afterward Brown succeeded in obtaining a thousand volunteers,
and by some quality of his own made them assault and carry works that
old soldiers feared to touch. The feat was the most extraordinary that
was performed on either side in the remarkably varied experience of the
war; but it proved Brown’s personal energy rather than the merits of a
militia system. At Washington the militia were thoroughly tested; their
rout proved chiefly the incompetence of their general, but the system
was shown, before the battle, to be more defective than the army it
produced. At Baltimore the militia were again routed, and the town was
saved chiefly by the engineers and sailors. In Virginia, where more
than forty thousand militia were in the field, they protected nothing,
and their service was more fatal to themselves than though they had
fought severe battles. Nearly all the Virginia militia summoned for
the defence of Norfolk suffered from sickness, and the mortality
when compared with that of the regular service was enormous; five
militia-men sickened and died where one regular soldier suffered.[324]
In Tennessee and Georgia the experience was equally unfortunate; the
Georgia militia could do nothing with the Creeks, and Andrew Jackson
himself was helpless until he obtained one small regiment of regulars.
Besides its military disadvantages the militia service was tainted with
fraud. Habitually and notoriously in New England and New York, the
militia-men when called out attended muster, served a few days in order
to get their names on the pay-roll, and then went home. The United
States government wasted millions of dollars in pay and pensions for
such men. Another source of waste was in the time required to place
them in the field. The government struggled to avoid a call of militia,
even though risking great disasters by the neglect.
The worst of all evils lay still further in the background. The militia
began by rendering a proper army impossible, and ended by making
government a form. The object of Massachusetts in praising the conduct
of militia, and in maintaining its own at a high state of efficiency,
was notorious. The Federalists knew that the national government must
sooner or later abandon the attempt to support an army. When that
time should come, the only resource of the government would lie in
State armies, and Massachusetts was the best equipped State for that
object. Her militia, seventy thousand strong, well-armed, well-drilled,
and as yet untouched by war, could dictate to the Union. Whenever
Massachusetts should say the word, the war must stop; and Massachusetts
meant to say the word when the government fairly ceased to possess
either money or arms.
That moment, in the belief of the Massachusetts Federalists, had come.
Their course in the summer and autumn of 1814 left no doubt of their
intentions. No act of open rebellion could be more significant than
their conduct when Sherbrooke’s expedition occupied Castine. Then
at last Governor Strong consented to call out the militia, which he
refused to do two years before, because, he asserted, Castine and the
other coast towns were sufficiently defended;[325] but the governor was
careful to avoid the suspicion that these troops were in the national
service. He acted independently of the national government in the
terms of his general order of September, 1814,[326] placing his militia
under the command of a major-general of their own, and making only
a bare inquiry of the Secretary of War whether their expenses would
be reimbursed,[327]--an inquiry which Monroe at once answered in the
negative.[328] The force was a State army, and could not fail to cause
the President more anxiety than it was likely ever to cause the Prince
Regent.
At the same time the governor of Connecticut withdrew from the command
of Brigadier-General Cushing the brigade of State militia then in the
national service, and placed it under a major-general of State militia,
with injunctions to obey no orders except such as were issued by State
authority.[329] The evil of these measures was greatly aggravated
by coinciding with the crisis which stopped the course of national
government. Connecticut withdrew her militia, August 24; Washington was
captured the same day; the Philadelphia banks suspended payment August
29; Castine was taken August 31; and Governor Strong called out the
Massachusetts militia September 6. The government was prostrate, and
New England was practically independent when Sir George Prevost crossed
the frontier, September 3. So complete was the paralysis that Governor
Chittenden of Vermont, on receiving official notice[330] that the
British army and navy were advancing on Lake Champlain, refused to call
out the militia, because neither the Constitution nor the laws gave him
authority to order the militia out of the State.[331] He could only
recommend that individuals should volunteer to assist in the defence of
Plattsburg. Chittenden’s conduct was the more suggestive because of his
undoubted honesty and the absence of factious motive for his refusal.
The full meaning of Governor Strong’s course was avowed a few days
afterward. Having called a special meeting of the State legislature
for October 5, he addressed to it a message narrating the steps he had
taken, and the refusal of the President to assume the expenses of the
militia called into service for the defence of the State.
“The situation of this State is peculiarly dangerous and
perplexing,” said Governor Strong;[332] “we have been led by the
terms of the Constitution to rely on the government of the Union
to provide for our defence. We have resigned to that government
the revenues of the State with the expectation that this object
would not be neglected.... Let us then, relying on the support
and direction of Providence, unite in such measures for our
safety as the times demand and the principles of justice and the
law of self-preservation will justify.”
The sense which this invitation was intended to bear could be best
understood by appreciating the temper of the body thus addressed and
the time when the appeal was made. The national government had for
practical purposes ceased. The Boston “Centinel,” a newspaper of large
circulation, said to reach six thousand copies, announced September 10,
1814, that the Union was already practically dissolved, and that the
people must rise in their majesty, protect themselves, and compel their
unworthy servants to obey their will. Governor Strong knew that the
legislature was controlled by extreme partisans of the Pickering type,
who wished, to use his phrase, to “let the ship run aground.” Even
Josiah Quincy, one of the most vehement Federalists, was aware that the
members of the General Court stood in danger of doing too much rather
than too little.[333]
Strong’s message of October 5 was echoed by Pickering from Washington,
October 12, in a letter which closed with the exhortation to seize the
national revenues:--
“As, abandoned by the general government except for taxing us,
we must defend ourselves, so we ought to secure and hold fast
the revenues indispensable to maintain the force necessary for
our protection against the foreign enemy and the still greater
evil in prospect,--domestic tyranny.”[334]
The Massachusetts legislature could not fail to understand Governor
Strong’s message as an invitation to resume the powers with which the
State had parted in adopting the Constitution.
The legislature referred the message to a committee, which reported
only three days afterward through its chairman, Harrison Gray
Otis:[335]--
“The state of the national Treasury as exhibited by the proper
officer requires an augmentation of existing taxes; and if in
addition to these the people of Massachusetts, deprived of their
commerce and harassed by a formidable enemy, are compelled to
provide for the indispensable duty of self-defence, it must soon
become impossible for them to sustain this burden. There remains
to them therefore no alternative but submission to the enemy, or
the control of their own resources to repel his aggressions. It
is impossible to hesitate in making the election. This people
are not ready for conquest or submission; but being ready and
determined to defend themselves, they have the greatest need of
those resources derivable from themselves which the national
government has hitherto thought proper to employ elsewhere.”
The report further showed that the United States Constitution had
failed to secure to New England the rights and benefits expected from
it, and required immediate change. The prescribed mode of amendment was
insufficient:--
“When this deficiency becomes apparent, no reason can preclude
the right of the whole people who were parties to it to adopt
another.... But as a proposition for such a convention from a
single State would probably be unsuccessful, and our danger
admits not of delay, it is recommended by the committee that in
the first instance a conference should be invited between those
States the affinity of whose interests is closest.”
Thus, after ten years’ delay, the project of a New England Convention
was brought forward by State authority, through the process of war with
England, which George Cabot from the first declared to be the only
means of producing it.[336] As Otis’s committee presented the subject,
the conference was in the first place to devise some mode of common
defence; and, in the second, “to lay the foundation for a radical
reform in the national compact by inviting to a future convention a
deputation from all the States in the Union.” The report closed by
offering seven Resolutions, recommending the enlistment of a State
army of ten thousand men, a loan of a million dollars at six per cent,
and the appointment of delegates “to meet and confer with delegates
from the States of New England or any of them” on the defence of those
States and the redress of their grievances.
The Senate committee also made a strenuous argument against the
President’s decision that State militia were in State service
unless called for by a United States officer and placed under his
direction,[337] and recommended that the subject should be referred
to the next session. To the proposition for a conference of the
New England States, and to Otis’s other Resolutions, the Senate
and House assented, October 13, by large majorities, varying in
numbers, but amounting to two hundred and sixty against ninety in
the case of the proposed convention. The minority in both Houses
presented protests, charging the majority with intending more than
was avowed. “The reasoning of the report,” said the Protest signed by
seventy-six members of the House,[338] “is supported by the alarming
assumption that the Constitution has failed in its objects, and the
people of Massachusetts are absolved from their allegiance, and at
liberty to adopt another. In debate it has been reiterated that the
Constitution is no longer to be respected, and that revolution is
not to be deprecated.” The House refused to receive the Protest, as
disrespectful. The minority withdrew from further share in these
proceedings; and the majority then, October 19, chose twelve delegates
“to meet and confer on the 15th December next with such as may be
chosen by any or all of the other New England States upon our public
grievances and concerns.” The choice was marked by a conservative
spirit not altogether pleasing to Timothy Pickering. George Cabot and
Harrison Gray Otis stood at the head of the delegation.
The remonstrances and threats of the minority made the majority
cautious, but did not check them. The legislature of Connecticut
immediately appointed seven delegates to meet those of Massachusetts at
Hartford, December 15, for the purpose of recommending “such measures
for the safety and welfare of these States as may consist with our
obligations as members of the national Union.”[339] In this clause the
legislature intended to draw a distinction between obligations to the
Union and obligations to the Constitution. To the former the people
avowed no hostility; to the latter they thought the war had put an end.
On that point the committee’s report was clear.[340]
Besides Massachusetts and Connecticut the legislature of Rhode Island,
by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty-three, appointed, November 5, four
delegates to confer at Hartford upon the measures which might be in
their power to adopt to restore their rights under the Constitution,
“consistently with their obligations.”[341] These three States alone
chose delegates. The governor and legislature of New Hampshire would
probably have joined them had not the Republican council stood in the
way. The legislature of Vermont, including its Federalist minority,
unanimously declined the invitation.
Immediately after these steps were taken, the autumn elections
occurred. Members of Congress were to be chosen, and the people were
obliged to vote for or against the Hartford Convention as the issue
expressly avowed. President Madison might safely assume that no man
voted for Federalist Congressmen in November, 1814, unless he favored
the project of a New England Convention. The result was emphatic.
Massachusetts chose eighteen Federalists and two Republicans; Vermont,
New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut chose only Federalists.
In all, New England chose thirty-nine Federalist Congressmen and
two Republicans[342] for the Fourteenth Congress. In the Thirteenth
Congress, chosen in 1812, when the feeling against the war was supposed
to be strongest, the Federalist members from New England numbered
thirty, the Republicans eleven.[343]
Beyond New England the autumn elections were less significant, but
were still unsatisfactory to the Administration. New Jersey returned
to her true sympathies, and as far as her Congressmen expressed her
opinions gave unanimous support to the war; but Pennsylvania, owing to
local quarrels, elected five Federalist members; and Maryland elected
five Federalists and four Republicans. In spite of the great loss in
Federalist members which had occurred in the spring elections in New
York, the Federalists numbered sixty-five in the Fourteenth Congress;
in the Thirteenth they numbered sixty-eight. The Administration had
hoped, and freely asserted, that a strong reaction in favor of the war
had followed the burning of Washington and the avowal of England’s
designs against Maine and the Northwestern territory. The elections
showed no such reaction. The war was no more popular than before.
The public apathy was the more alarming because, whatever was the
true object of the Hartford Convention, all Republicans believed it
to be intended as a step to dissolve the Union, and they supported
the Administration chiefly because Madison represented the Union.
Federalists might deceive themselves. Probably the men who voted for
the Hartford Convention saw its necessary consequences less clearly
than they were seen by the men who voted against it. The Republican
vote represented the strength of Union sentiment more closely than
the disunion sentiment was represented by the Federalist vote. Yet
the States from Maryland to Maine chose a majority of Congressmen who
were not Republicans. The New England States, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland returned much more than half
the members of Congress,--one hundred and eight in one hundred and
eighty-two; and of these fifty-seven were Federalists, while only
fifty-one were Republicans. The unpopularity of the Administration was
not easily overestimated when Madison could win no more support than
this, at a time when the public believed a vote for Federalism to be a
vote for disunion.
“I give you the most serious assurance,” wrote Randolph in an
open letter to James Lloyd, of Massachusetts,[344] remonstrating
against the Convention, “that nothing less than the shameful
conduct of the enemy and the complection of certain occurrences
to the eastward could have sustained Mr. Madison after the
disgraceful affair at Washington. The public indignation would
have overwhelmed in one common ruin himself and his hireling
newspapers.”
Randolph’s political judgments were commonly mistaken, but in this
instance he proved himself to be at least partially right; for at the
next election, six months later, when the current had turned decidedly
in Madison’s favor, Randolph after a sharp contest defeated Eppes and
recovered control of his district. Virginia could hardly have chosen a
representative less calculated to please Madison.
The President himself betrayed unusual signs of distress. Nothing in
Madison’s character was more remarkable than the placidity with which
he commonly met anxieties that would have crushed a sensitive man; but
the shock of defeat at Bladensburg, the flight from Washington, and the
anxieties that followed broke him down. William Wirt visited Washington
October 14, before the action of the Massachusetts legislature was yet
completed. After viewing the ruins of the White House, a “mournful
monument of American imbecility and improvidence,” he called upon
the President at Colonel Tayloe’s Octagon House, which Serurier had
occupied, but which Madison took for his residence after his return.
“P---- and I called on the President,” wrote Wirt in a private
letter.[345] “He looks miserably shattered and woe-begone. In
short, he looked heart-broken. 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.”
No misconduct of New England alone would have so unmanned a Virginia
President. Madison’s worst troubles lay nearer home; Massachusetts
made only the last straw in his burden. Jefferson, with his usual
kindliness, tried to console and encourage him; but Jefferson’s
consolations proved only the difficulty of finding words or arguments
to warrant satisfaction with the past or hope for the future.
“In the late events at Washington,” wrote Jefferson, September
24,[346] “I have felt so much for you that I cannot withhold
the expression of my sympathies. For although every reasonable
man must ne sensible that all you can do is to order,--that
execution must depend on others, and failures be imputed to them
alone,--yet I know that when such failures happen they affect
even those who have done everything they could to prevent them.
Had General Washington himself been now at the head of our
affairs, the same event would probably have happened.”
Jefferson’s estimate of Washington’s abilities was lower than that
commonly accepted; and his rule that a President’s responsibility
ceased after giving an order, besides ignoring the President’s
responsibility for the selection of agents, seemed to destroy the
foundation of the public service. “I never doubted that the plans
of the President were wise and sufficient,” wrote Jefferson to
Monroe.[347] “Their failure we all impute, (1) to the insubordinate
temper of Armstrong, and (2) to the indecision of Winder.” The rule
that an administrator might select any agent, however incompetent,
without incurring responsibility for the agent’s acts, was one which in
private affairs Jefferson would hardly have accepted.
Yet Jefferson’s opinions probably expressed Republican sentiment in
Virginia, and showed better than any other evidence the course of
thought among Madison’s friends. In that respect his expressions
retained permanent value. The Virginians were willing to throw off
responsibility for public disaster; and they naturally threw it
on New England, since New England challenged it. Writing to his
friend William Short, Jefferson spoke of the threatening attitude of
Massachusetts:[348]--
“Some apprehend danger from the defection of Massachusetts. It
is a disagreeable circumstance, but not a dangerous one. If they
become neutral, we are sufficient for one enemy without them,
and in fact we get no aid from them now.”
Probably most Virginians shared this belief, at least so far as
concerned the aid rendered by Massachusetts to the war. In truth,
Massachusetts gave little aid, and made a profession of her wish to
give none at all; but the difficulty did not end there. Massachusetts
and Virginia were States of the first class. The census of 1810
allotted to Massachusetts, including Maine, a population of about seven
hundred thousand; to Virginia, a white population of five hundred
and fifty-one thousand, and a colored population of four hundred and
twenty-three thousand,--nine hundred and seventy-four thousand in
all. In the ratio of representation Massachusetts counted for twenty,
Virginia for twenty-three. The quota of Massachusetts in the direct tax
was $316,000; that of Virginia was $369,000. On the scale furnished
by these data, Virginia should have contributed in support of the war
about one eighth or one seventh more men and money than were required
from Massachusetts. The actual result was different.
The amount of money contributed by Massachusetts could not be compared
with that contributed by Virginia, partly because of the severe
blockade which closed the Virginian ports. The net revenue from customs
derived from Virginia in 1814 was $4,000; that from Massachusetts was
$1,600,000.[349] Unlike the customs revenue, the receipts from internal
revenue were supposed to be reasonably equalized, so that each State
should contribute in due proportion. According to the official return,
dated Nov. 24, 1815, the total internal duties which had then been paid
to the collectors for the year 1814 in Massachusetts was $198,400; in
Virginia it was $193,500. The total amount then paid to the Treasury
was $178,400 in Massachusetts, and $157,300 in Virginia.[350] The
direct tax was fixed by Congress and was assumed by the State in
Virginia, but regularly assessed in Massachusetts. One paid $316,000;
the other, $369,000. The total revenue derived from Massachusetts was
therefore $2,114,400 in the year 1814; that from Virginia, $566,500. Of
the loans effected in the same year, Massachusetts took a small part
considering her means,--hardly a million dollars. Virginia took still
less,--only two hundred thousand.[351]
In money, Massachusetts contributed four times as much as Virginia to
support the war, and her contributions were paid in Treasury notes or
paper equivalent to coin,--not in the notes of banks worthless beyond
the State. In men, the estimate was affected by the inquiry whether the
militia were to be considered as protecting the national government
or the State. Owing to the presence of the British in the Chesapeake,
Virginia kept a large force of militia on foot, some of which were
in garrison at Norfolk, and a few were on the field of Bladensburg.
Massachusetts also was obliged to call out a considerable force of
militia to protect or garrison national posts.
The relative numbers of regular troops were also somewhat doubtful;
but the paymaster of the army reported Oct. 26, 1814, that he had
distributed in bounties during the year $237,400 for Massachusetts, and
$160,962 for Virginia.[352] During the year, six regular regiments--the
Ninth, Twenty-first, Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth, Fortieth, and
Forty-fifth--recruited in Massachusetts. Three--the Twelfth, Twentieth,
and Thirty-fifth--recruited in Virginia. Perhaps the military aid
furnished by the different sections of the seaboard could be better
understood by following the familiar divisions. New England furnished
thirteen regiments. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania furnished
fifteen. The Southern States, from Delaware to South Carolina
inclusive, furnished ten. Of all the States in the Union New York alone
supplied more regular soldiers than Massachusetts, and Massachusetts
supplied as many as were furnished by Virginia and the two Carolinas
together.
Judged by these standards, either Massachusetts had done more than
her share, or Virginia had done less than hers. The tests were
material, and took no moral element in account; but in moral support
the relative failure of Massachusetts was not beyond dispute. Public
opinion in New England was almost equally divided, and the pronounced
opposition to the war was much greater in the Eastern States than in
the Southern; but in the serious work of fighting, New England claimed
a share of credit. In the little army at Niagara New York supplied
the Major-General, Virginia and Massachusetts the two brigadiers;
but Winfield Scott’s brigade was chiefly composed of New England
men; and when, nearly half a century afterward, Scott in his old
age was obliged to choose between his allegiance to his State and
allegiance to the Union, the memory of the New England troops who had
won for him his first renown had its influence in raising his mind
above the local sympathies which controlled other Virginia officers.
Without reflecting on Virginia courage or patriotism, the New England
Republicans were warranted in claiming that not the Virginia regiments,
but the Massachusetts Ninth, the Vermont Eleventh, the Massachusetts
Twenty-first, and the Connecticut Twenty-fifth routed the Royal Scots
at Chippawa, and bayoneted the British artillery-men at Lundy’s Lane,
and stormed Drummond’s intrenchments at Fort Erie. They could add that
without their sailors the war might have been less successful than it
was; and they would have been justified had they asked Jefferson to
glance at his latest newspaper as he wrote that Massachusetts gave no
aid to the war, and read the despatch of Johnston Blakeley reporting
that the New England crew of the “Wasp” had sunk the “Avon” in the
middle of a British fleet.[353] Virginians did not take kindly to the
ocean; and on land, owing to the accidents of war, no Virginia regiment
was offered a chance to win distinction.
These comparisons were of little weight to prove that New England was
either better or worse than other parts of the Union, but they showed
that the difficulties that depressed Madison’s mind were not merely
local. He might have disregarded the conduct of the State governments
of Massachusetts and Connecticut had he enjoyed the full support of
his own great Republican States, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North
Carolina. Except New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, and perhaps Ohio, no
State gave to the war the full and earnest co-operation it needed.
Again and again, from the beginning of the troubles with England,
Madison had acted on the conviction that at last the people were
aroused; but in every instance he had been disappointed. After the
burning of Washington, he was more than ever convinced that the moment
had come when the entire people would rally in their self-respect;
but he was met by the Hartford Convention and the November elections.
If the people would not come to the aid of their government at such a
moment, Madison felt that nothing could move them. Peace was his last
hope.