THE elections for the Twelfth Congress, as far as they took
place in 1810, showed a change in public opinion, and not only reduced
the Federalists to their old rank of a faction rather than a party,
but also weakened the conservative Republicans of Jefferson’s school;
while the losses of both strengthened a new party, which called itself
Republican, but favored energy in government. Henry Clay and William
Lowndes, John C. Calhoun and Felix Grundy, Langdon Cheves and Peter B.
Porter, whatever they might at times say, cared little for Jeffersonian
or Madisonian dogmas. The election which decided the character of
the Twelfth Congress, by choosing men of this character to lead it,
decided also the popular judgment on the Eleventh Congress, which had
as yet run only half its course. Rarely in American history has any
particular Congress been held in high popular esteem, but seldom if
ever was a Congress overwhelmed by contempt so deep and general as that
which withered the Eleventh in the midst of its career. Not only did
Republicans and Federalists think alike for once, but even among the
members themselves no one of weight had a good word to say of the body
to which he belonged.
Quick to feel a popular rebuke, Congressmen submitted to punishment,
and obeyed the orders they would rather have resisted; but their work
in such a temper was sure to be done without good-will or good faith,
for a body which had lost its own respect could hardly respect its
successor. The American system of prolonging the existence of one
Legislature after electing another, never worked worse in practice
than when it allowed this rump Congress of 1809, the mere scourings
of the embargo, to assume the task of preparing for the War of 1812,
to which it was altogether opposed and in which it could not believe.
No Congress had been confronted by greater perplexities. President
Madison submitted to it a number of Executive acts more than doubtful
in legality, which must all be approved; and these measures, when
approved, led to a policy of war with England and Spain, which required
great increase of Executive strength, careful reorganization of the
Executive machinery, especially great care of the national credit and
of its chief financial agents,--political duties of extreme difficulty
and delicacy.
President Madison’s Annual Message, December 5, called attention to
such business as he wished to present. Naturally, the revocation of
the French Decrees took the first place. The President assumed that
the revocation was complete, and that his proclamation was issued
in regular course, “as prescribed by law,” the President having
no discretion; but he admitted disappointment that the sequestered
property had not been restored. “It was particularly anticipated that,
as a further evidence of just disposition toward them, restoration
would have been immediately made of the property of our citizens,
seized under a misapplication of the principle of reprisals, combined
with a misconstruction of a law of the United States. This expectation
has not been fulfilled.” England had not yet relinquished her
illegitimate blockades, and she avowed that the blockade of May, 1806,
was comprehended in the subsequent Orders in Council; the withdrawal of
that blockade had therefore been required by the President as one of
the conditions of renewing intercourse with Great Britain. The state of
the Spanish monarchy had produced a change in West Florida, a district
“which though of right appertaining to the United States had remained
in the possession of Spain, awaiting the result of negotiations for its
actual delivery to them.” The Spanish authority being subverted, the
President did not delay taking possession; “the legality and necessity
of the course pursued assure me of the favorable light in which it will
present itself to the Legislature.”
If this sketch of foreign affairs lacked perfect candor, the view
of domestic concerns gave matter for other doubts. “With the Indian
tribes,” said the Message, “the peace and friendship of the United
States are found to be so eligible that the general disposition to
preserve both continues to gain strength.” The story of Tippecanoe and
Tecumthe soon threw new light on this assertion. To Indian friendship
domestic prosperity succeeded, and the Message praised the economy
and policy of manufactures. “How far it may be expedient to guard the
infancy of this improvement in the distribution of labor by regulations
of the commercial tariff, is a subject which cannot fail to suggest
itself to your patriotic reflections.” A navigation law was also
required to place American shipping on a level of competition with
foreign vessels. A national university “would contribute not less to
strengthen the foundations than to adorn the structure of our free
and happy system of government.” Further means for repressing the
slave-trade were required. Fortifications, arms, and organization of
the militia were to be provided. The Military School at West Point
needed enlargement.
Congress found more satisfaction in Gallatin’s Annual Report, sent to
Congress a week afterward, than they could draw from Madison’s Message,
for Gallatin told them that he had succeeded in bringing the current
expenses within the annual income; and only in case they should decide
to prohibit the importation of British goods after Feb. 2, 1811, should
he need further legislation both to make good the revenue and to
enforce the prohibition.
Congress lost no time. West Florida called first for attention; and
Senator Giles, December 18, reported a bill extending the territory
of Orleans to the river Perdido, in accordance with the President’s
measures. In the debate which followed, Federalist senators attacked
the President for exceeding the law and violating the Constitution.
Their argument was founded on the facts already told, and required
nothing more to support it; but the defence had greater interest, for
no one could foretell with certainty by what expedient senators would
cover an Executive act which, like the purchase of Louisiana itself,
had best be accepted in silence as plainly beyond the Constitution.
Henry Clay acted as the President’s champion, and explained on his
behalf that the Act of Oct. 31, 1803, authorizing the President to
occupy the ceded territory of Louisiana, was still in force, although
regular possession to the Iberville had been taken, Dec. 20, 1803, in
pursuance of that Act, without further demand on the part of the United
States, and although the Act of March 20, 1804, providing for the
temporary government of the territory, declared that “the Act passed
the 31st day of October ... shall continue in force until the 1st day
of October, 1804.” In face of this double difficulty,--the exhaustion
of the power and its express limitation,--Clay asserted that the power
had not been exhausted, and that the limitation, though apparently
general, was intended only for the provisional government established
by another portion of the Act of 1803. He produced in his support the
Act of Feb. 24, 1804, empowering the President, to erect West Florida
into a collection district whenever he deemed it expedient. “These
laws,” continued Clay, “furnish a legislative construction of the
treaty correspondent with that given by the Executive, and they vest in
this branch of the government indisputably a power to take possession
of the country whenever it might be proper in his discretion.”
Congress approved this opinion, which was in truth neither weaker nor
stronger than the arguments by which the Louisiana purchase itself had
been sustained. Fate willed that every measure connected with that
territory should be imbued with the same spirit of force or fraud which
tainted its title. The Southern States needed the Floridas, and cared
little what law might be cited to warrant seizing them; yet a Virginia
Republican should have been startled at learning that after October,
1803, every President, past or to come, had the right to march the
army or send the navy of the United States at any time to occupy not
only West Florida, but also Texas and Oregon, as far as the North Pole
itself, since they claimed it all, except the Russian possessions, as a
part of the Louisiana purchase, with more reason than they claimed West
Florida.
As usual, the most pungent critic of Republican doctrines was
Senator Pickering, who if he could not convince, could always annoy
the majority. He replied to Clay, and in the course of his speech
read Talleyrand’s letter of Dec. 21, 1804, which put an end to
Monroe’s attempt to include West Florida in the Louisiana purchase.
Nothing could be more apt; but nothing could be more annoying to
the Administration, for Talleyrand’s letter was still secret.
Confidentially communicated with other papers to Congress by Jefferson,
Dec. 6, 1805, the injunction of secrecy had never been removed, and the
publication tended to throw contempt on Madison not only for his past
but particularly for his present dalliance with Napoleon. Pickering
could charge, with more than usual appearance of probability, that West
Florida was to be Madison’s reward for accepting the plainly deceptive
pledge of Cadore’s letter of August 5. The Senate, with some doubts,
resented Pickering’s conduct to a moderate extent. Samuel Smith moved
it to be “a palpable violation of the rules;” and with the omission
of “palpable,” the resolution was adopted. The deference to Executive
authority which allowed so important a paper to be suppressed for five
years showed more political sagacity than was proved in censuring
Pickering by a party vote, which he would regard as a compliment,
because he read a document that the Administration should have been
ashamed not to publish and resent.
The interlude helped only to embarrass the true question,--what should
be done with West Florida. President Madison’s doctrine, embodied
in Giles’s bill, carried out the Livingston-Monroe theory that West
Florida belonged to Louisiana. In theory, this arrangement might answer
the purpose for which it was invented; but in fact West Florida did not
belong to Louisiana, either as a Spanish or as an American province,
and could not be treated as though it did. If Mobile Bay and the Gulf
coast as far as the Perdido belonged to Louisiana, the territory
afterward divided into the States of Alabama and Mississippi had no
outlet to the gulf. Georgia would never consent to such treatment,
merely to support President Madison in alleging that West Florida was
occupied by him as a part of the Orleans territory. Senator Giles’s
bill was silently dropped.
The Senate reached this point December 31, but meanwhile the House
reached the same standstill from another side. December 17 the Speaker
appointed a committee, with Macon at its head, to report on the
admission of Orleans territory as a State. The admission of the State
of Louisiana into the Union was for many reasons a serious moment in
American history; but one of its lesser incidents was the doubt which
so much perplexed the Senate, whether Louisiana included West Florida.
If this was the case, then by the third article of the treaty of
purchase the inhabitants of Mobile and the district between Mobile and
Baton Rouge, without division, should be “incorporated in the Union of
the United States, and admitted as soon as possible” to the Union as
part of the territory of Orleans. This was the opinion of Macon and
his committee, as it had been that of Giles and his committee, and
of the President and his Cabinet. December 27 Macon reported a bill
admitting Louisiana, with West Florida to the Perdido, as a State;
but no sooner did the debates begin, than the Georgians for the first
time showed delicacy in regard to the rights of Spain. Troup could not
consent to include in any State this territory “yet in dispute and
subject to negotiation.” Bibb held the same misgivings: “The President
by his proclamation, although he had required its occupation, had
declared that the right should be subject to negotiation; now, if it
became a State, would not all right of negotiation be taken from the
President?” To prevent this danger, Bibb moved that West Florida, from
the Iberville to the Perdido, should be annexed to the Mississippi
Territory or made a separate government.
On the other hand, Rhea of Tennessee held that no other course was open
to Congress than to admit the Orleans territory in its full extent as
ceded by France, according to the President’s assertion. The treaty
was peremptory, and Congress was bound by it to annex no part of the
Orleans purchase to a pre-existing territory. West Florida belonged to
Louisiana, and could not lawfully be given to Mississippi.
The House tried as usual to defer or compromise its difficulty. January
9, Macon’s bill was so amended as to withdraw West Florida from its
operation; but when on the following day two members in succession
asked the House to provide a government for West Florida, the House
referred the motions back to the committee, and there the matter
rested. No man knew whether West Florida belonged to Louisiana or not.
If the President was right, Mobile and all the Gulf shore to a point
within ten miles of Pensacola, although still held by the Spaniards,
made part of the State of Louisiana, and even an Act of Congress
could not affect it; while if this was not the case, the President in
ordering the seizure of West Florida had violated the Constitution and
made war on Spain.
Hardly had the House admitted its helplessness in the face of this
difficulty, when it was obliged to meet the larger issue involved in
the Louisiana affair; for Jan. 14, 1811, Josiah Quincy, with extreme
deliberation, uttered and committed to writing a sentence which
remained long famous:--
“If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is
virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the
States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right
of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare
for a separation,--amicably if they can, violently if they must.”
The Speaker decided this language to be disorderly; but the House, by
a vote of fifty-six to fifty-three, reversed the ruling, and Quincy
went on arguing, as Jefferson had argued eight years before, that the
introduction of new States, outside the original Union, was no part of
the compact, and must end in overwhelming the original partners.
Quincy’s protest wanted only one quality to give it force. He spoke
in the name of no party to the original compact. His own State of
Massachusetts assented to the admission of Louisiana, and neither the
governor nor the legislature countenanced the doctrine of Quincy and
Pickering. If the partners themselves made no protest, the act had all
the legality it needed, in the absence of appeal to higher authority;
but it consummated a change in the nature of the United States
government, and its results, however slow, could not fail to create
what was in effect a new Constitution.
The House, without further delay, passed the bill by a vote of
seventy-seven to thirty-six. After some amendment by the Senate, and
dispute between the Houses, the bill was sent to the President, and
Feb. 20, 1811, received his signature. The Act fixed the Iberville
and the Sabine for the eastern and western boundaries of the new
State. Meanwhile West Florida remained, till further legislation, a
part of Orleans Territory for all purposes except those of admission
into the Union; and, according to the view implied by the action of
Executive and Legislature, the President retained power to order the
military occupation of Texas under the Act of Oct. 31, 1803, subject to
government afterward, like West Florida, by the proconsular authority
of the Executive.
As though the Florida affair needed still further complication,
the President, January 3, sent to Congress a secret message asking
authority to seize East Florida:--
“I recommend ... the expediency of authorizing the Executive
to take temporary possession of any part or parts of the said
territory, in pursuance of arrangements which may be desired by
the Spanish authorities.... The wisdom of Congress will at the
same time determine how far it may be expedient to provide for
the event of a subversion of the Spanish authorities within the
territory in question, and an apprehended occupancy thereof by
any other foreign Power.”
In secret session Congress debated and passed an Act, approved Jan.
15, 1811, authorizing the President to take possession of East
Florida, in case the local authority should consent or a foreign Power
should attempt to occupy it. The President immediately appointed two
commissioners to carry the law into effect. The orders he gave them,
the meaning they put on these orders, the action they took, and the
President’s further measures were to form another remarkable episode in
the complicated history of Florida.
Congress next turned to the charter of the United States Bank; but
if it succumbed before West Florida, it was helpless in dealing with
finance. Long hesitation had ended by creating difficulties. Local
interests hostile to the Bank sprang into existence. In many States
private banks were applying for charters, and preparing to issue notes
in the hope of seizing their share of the profits of the United States
Bank. The influence of these new corporations was great. They induced
one State legislature after another to instruct their senators on the
subject. That Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland should wish to
appropriate the profits of the National Bank was not surprising, but
that Virginia and Kentucky should make themselves instruments of the
capitalist States showed little knowledge of their true interests. As
the crisis came near, the struggle became hotter, until it rivalled the
embargo excitement, and every hour of delay increased the vehemence of
opposition to the charter.
The Bank was vulnerable on more than one side. Largely owned in
England, it roused jealousy as a foreign influence. Congress could
hardly blame this ownership, since Congress itself, in 1802, aided
President Jefferson in selling to the Barings, at a premium of
forty-five per cent, the two thousand two hundred and twenty Bank
shares still belonging to the government. The operation brought to
the Treasury not only a profit of four hundred thousand dollars in
premiums, but also about thirteen hundred thousand dollars of British
capital to be used for American purposes. Fully two thirds of the
Bank stock, amounting to ten million dollars, were owned in England;
all the five thousand shares originally subscribed by the United
States government had been sold to England; and as the Bank was a
mere creature of the United States government, these seven millions
of British capital were equivalent to a score of British frigates or
regiments lent to the United States to use against England in war. By
returning them, the United States seriously weakened themselves and
strengthened their enemy.
Unfortunately this interest was national. Local interests felt that
Englishmen received profits which should belong to Americans; and
capitalists in general were not inclined to lower their profits
by inviting foreign capital into the country unless they shared
its returns. The second misfortune of the Bank was that of being a
Federalist creation, chiefly used for the benefit of Federalists, who
owned most of the active capital in the country. The third objection
went deeper. The Bank was the last vestige of strong government created
by the Federalists,--a possible engine of despotism; and no one could
deny that if decentralization was wise, the Bank should be suppressed.
Finally, the Bank was a bulwark to Gallatin; its destruction would
weaken Madison and drive Gallatin from office.
Doubtless the objections to the Bank were so strong as some day to
become fatal. In a society and government so little developed as those
of America, a National Bank was out of keeping with other institutions.
Even in England and France these banks exercised more influence over
the Treasury than was proper; and in America, if once the Bank should
unite in political sympathy with the Government, it might do no little
harm. The necessity for such an institution was merely one of the
moment, but in the period of national history between 1790 and 1860,
the year 1811 was perhaps the only moment when destruction of the Bank
threatened national ruin. A financial cataclysm had prostrated credit
from St. Petersburg to New Orleans. Prices were nominal. England owed
America large sums of money, but instead of discharging the debt, she
was trying to escape payment and withdraw specie. Already the supply of
specie in the United States was insufficient to sustain the bank-note
circulation. In New York city the State banks were supposed to hold not
more than half a million dollars, and in Pennsylvania not much more
than a million; while the Bank of the United States had lost three and
a half millions in eleven months, and had but five and a half millions
left.[268]
Meanwhile the State banks not only expanded their issues, but also
rapidly increased in number. Suppression of the National Bank could not
fail to stimulate this movement. “The banks established by the State
legislatures will scramble for the privilege of filling the chasm to
be made by the destruction of the Bank of the United States. Already
are they preparing for the patriotic endeavor. Our State legislatures
are to be importuned to become bank jobbers and joint undertakers and
copartners in the enterprise.”[269] Nothing could prevent expansion of
credit, drain of specie, bankruptcy and confusion of the currency; and
this was to be done at the time the country entered into a war with
the only Power whose influence could shake the Union to its foundation.
Madison stood aloof, and left on Gallatin the burden of the struggle;
but Gallatin’s energies and influence could do little with the Eleventh
Congress. He was strongest in the House; but there the debate, after
many speeches, ended, January 24, by a vote of sixty-five to sixty-four
in favor of indefinite postponement, and by common consent all parties
waited for the Senate to decide. The omen was not happy for the
Treasury.
Gallatin had at last found a capable senator to support him. The
political fortunes of William Henry Crawford, which ended only at the
threshold of the White House, drew no small part of their growth from
his courageous defence of the Treasury during these chaotic years.
Crawford showed the faults of a strong nature,--he was overbearing,
high-tempered, and his ambition did not spurn what his enemies called
intrigue; but he possessed the courage of Henry Clay, with more than
Clay’s intelligence, though far less than his charm. Crawford was never
weak, rarely oratorical; and if he was ever emotional he reserved his
emotion for other places than the Senate. “One man at last appeared
who filled my expectations,” wrote Gallatin many years afterward
to an old and intimate friend.[270] “This was Mr. Crawford, who
united to a powerful mind a most correct judgment and an inflexible
integrity,--which last quality, not sufficiently tempered by indulgence
and civility, has prevented his acquiring general popularity.” February
5 he introduced into the Senate a bill continuing the old Bank charter
for twenty years on certain conditions; and February 11 he supported
the bill in a speech remarkable for the severity of its truths. He
began by challenging the Constitution itself:--
“Upon the most thorough examination [of the Constitution] I
am induced to believe that many of the various constructions
given to it are the result of a belief that it is absolutely
perfect. It has become so extremely fashionable to eulogize
this Constitution, whether the object of the eulogist is the
extension or contraction of the powers of the government, that
whenever its eulogium is pronounced I feel an involuntary
apprehension of mischief.”
Upon the party theory that Congress could exercise no implied
power, and therefore could not charter a corporation, Crawford fell
energetically, until he came in contact with the instructions of State
legislatures, which he swept out of his path with actual contempt:--
“What is the inducement with these great States to put down
the Bank of the United States? Their avarice combined with
their love of domination!... The great commercial States are to
monopolize the benefits which are to arise from the deposits of
your public money. The suppression of this Bank will benefit
none of the interior or smaller States in which there is little
or no revenue collected. As the whole benefit is to be engrossed
by three or four of the great Atlantic States, so the whole of
the power which the dissolution of this Bank will take from the
national government will be exclusively monopolized by the same
States.”
Under Gallatin’s teaching, Crawford bade fair to make himself, what
the South so greatly needed, a statesman who understood its interests;
but he was far in advance of his people. The society from which he
sprang was more correctly represented by Giles, who answered him in
the manner for which the Virginia senator had acquired unpleasant
notoriety. February 14 John Randolph, who with all his faults was not
so factious as to join in the scheme of the State banks, wrote to his
friend Nicholson:[271] “Giles made this morning the most unintelligible
speech on the Bank of the United States that I ever heard.” Never had
Giles taken more trouble to be judicial, candid, and temperate; no one
could have admitted with more impartiality the force of his opponent’s
arguments; but his instincts, stronger than his logic, compelled him to
vote against the Bank. The conclusion was as certain as the process was
vague.
Henry Clay, who followed on the same side, ironically complimented
the Virginia senator, who had “certainly demonstrated to the
satisfaction of all who heard him both that it was constitutional and
unconstitutional, highly proper and improper, to prolong the charter
of the Bank;” but Clay’s irony was as unfortunate as Giles’s logic. The
sarcasm thrown at Giles recoiled on Clay himself, for he passed the
rest of his life in contradicting and repenting the speech he made at
this moment, in which he took ground against the power of Congress to
create corporations. “The power to charter companies is not specified
in the grant, and, I contend, is of a nature not transferable by mere
implication. It is one of the most exalted attributes of sovereignty.”
The legislation of twenty years which enforced the opposite opinion
he swept aside in his peculiar manner. “This doctrine of precedents,
applied to the legislature, appears to me to be fraught with the most
mischievous consequences.” With more than his ordinary self-confidence,
he affirmed that the Treasury could be as well conducted without as
with the Bank; and he closed with a burst of rhetoric hardly to be
paralleled in his oratory, by holding the Bank responsible for not
preventing Great Britain from attacking the “Chesapeake,” impressing
American seamen, and issuing the Orders in Council.
Clay’s excuse for extravagances like these was neither his youth nor
his ignorance of affairs nor his obedience to instructions, nor yet a
certain want of tact which made him through life the victim of needless
mistakes, but was rather the simple repentance with which, within five
years, he threw himself on the mercy of the public, admitting that had
he foreseen the effect of his course he would have acted in a very
different way.[272] Even for Giles some apology might be made, for no
one could deny that consistency required him to vote as he did, and he
could appeal to the record in his defence. The worst offender was not
Giles or Clay, but Samuel Smith.
When Crawford flung so freely his charges of avarice and ambition
about the Senate chamber, he had Samuel Smith directly in his eye; for
Smith’s action was avowedly controlled by his interests, and since his
speech on Macon’s bill his attitude toward public measures was better
understood than before. No one could conceive Smith to be influenced by
conscientious scruples about implied powers, but many persons besides
Madison and Gallatin believed him to be selfish and grasping. Baltimore
favored State banks, and Smith lent his reputation as a business man to
the service of local politics and interests, except so far as in doing
this he aimed at the overthrow of Gallatin. He gave what amounted to a
pledge of his character as a merchant to the assertion that the State,
banks were better, safer, and more efficient agencies for the Treasury
than the Bank of the United States could possibly be. In making
the speech which advanced these doctrines, he threw out an express
challenge to Gallatin. “The secretary is considered by his friends a
very great man in fiscal operations; in commercial matters I may be
permitted to have opinions of my own.” As a commercial authority he
asserted that government had much greater control over the State banks
than over the United States Bank; that more confidence could be put
in the security of the State banks than in that of the National Bank;
that they could more easily effect the necessary exchanges; that they
were as prudently conducted; that the National Bank did not act as a
check upon them, but they acted as a check upon it; that the ordinary
and extraordinary business of the Treasury could be as effectually
and securely done by the State banks; and that the liquidation of
the United States Bank would “be remembered nine days and not much
longer.” When five years afterward the fallacy of these opinions became
too notorious for question, Smith did not, like Clay, throw himself
on the justice of his country or admit his errors, but he voted to
re-establish the Bank in a far more extensive form, and took the ground
that it was the only means of repairing mistakes which he had been a
principal agent in making.
The other speeches made in this debate, although quite equal in
ability to these, carried less political weight, for they implied less
factiousness. One remained, which excited no small curiosity and some
amusement.
When the Senate, February 20, divided on the motion to strike out the
enacting clause, seventeen senators voted for the Bank and seventeen
voted against it. Nine Northern senators voted in its favor, including
seven of the ten from New England, and nine on the opposite side.
Eight Southern senators voted one way, and eight the other. Of the
twenty-seven Republican senators, seventeen voted against the Bank, and
ten in its favor; while the three senators who were supposed to be in
personal opposition to the President--Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael
Leib--all voted in opposition. The force of personal feeling was
credited with still another vote; for when the result was announced,
the Vice-President, George Clinton, whose attitude was notorious, made
a short address to the effect that “the power to create corporations is
not expressly granted; it is a high attribute of sovereignty, and in
its nature not accessorial or derivative by implication, but primary
and independent.” On this ground he threw his casting vote against the
bill.
So perished the first Bank of the United States; and with its
destruction the Federalist crisis, so long threatened, began at last to
throw its shadow over the government.