[Sidenote: The Period of Political Settlement.]
The period between the inauguration of Washington and the declaration
of war against Great Britain in 1812 may be regarded as the era of
formation and political settlement in the history of the republic.
It must not be forgotten that, at first, many of the wisest American
statesmen looked upon Republicanism as an experiment, and did not
place implicit faith in its success. The accession of Jefferson to the
presidency, however, and the events of his administration, gave the
Republican idea full scope and trial. The most philosophical and
studious of the statesmen of that day, Jefferson had the courage to
test the theories for which he had contended against the Federalism of
Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, by a vigorous practical policy.
[Sidenote: Jefferson's Ideas.]
Jefferson was heartily supported in this by the great mass of the
nation; and it was he who, thus sustained, established those general
principles of policy and government which became final, and have
prevailed ever since. That suffrage is a right and not a privilege,
that we should make large annexations of territory, and become the
controlling power of the continent; and that a rigid economy should
be practised, leaving the States the largest scope of local
self-government: these were cardinal articles in the Jeffersonian creed.
For twenty-four years Jefferson himself, and Madison and Monroe, his
fellow-Virginians and his earnest political disciples, presided without
interruption over the destinies of the country.
[Sidenote: Condition of the Union in 1812.]
The condition of the United States in the year 1812 presented a
striking and most favorable contrast to that which they had exhibited at
Washington's accession. The population had increased from four to about
seven and a half millions. The sixteen States over which Washington
presided had swelled to eighteen. Ohio and Louisiana had been admitted
to the circle. But this was by no means the limit to territorial
acquisition. It was President Jefferson who added to the domain of the
Union that vast and fertile tract which is even now in rapid process of
settlement, and which was known as the Louisiana purchase. This tract
reached from the banks of the Mississippi to the base of the Rocky
Mountains. It embraced nearly a million square miles, or more than the
whole of the area of the Union as it then was; and fifteen millions of
dollars were paid to France in exchange for it. A great invention had
been put into practical operation during Jefferson's term. This was the
steamboat. Robert Fulton put the _Clermont_ upon the Hudson in 1807; and
thenceforth navigation by steam was to play a great part in the commerce
and economical progress of the land.
[Sidenote: Inventions.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the War.]
President Madison, who assumed the executive chair in 1809, inherited a
quarrel with Great Britain from his predecessor, which soon ripened
into war. The great contest which raged between France and Great Britain
early in the century could not but affect the rest of the civilized
world. American commerce had already grown into importance, and was now
seriously crippled by the arbitrary course respecting trade adopted by
both of the belligerents. Each power forbade neutral nations to trade
with its foe. But while Napoleon followed the example of Pitt in making
a decree to this effect, the bearing of Great Britain towards this
country, in respect to the prohibition of trade, was far more arrogant
and vexatious than that of France. American ships were captured on
the high seas by British men-of-war, carried into port, adjudged, and
confiscated.
[Sidenote: The Right of Search.]
A still more serious assault upon our national honor was made by the
British government. It claimed the right to search American vessels for
British seamen, and proceeded to execute it. Thus sailors were taken
from our ships by the hundred; and, on one occasion, an American ship,
the _Chesapeake_, was fired upon and forcibly boarded by a British
man-of-war, within sight of the Virginia coast. For a while retaliation
was attempted in the shape of an embargo upon American vessels; but this
was soon found to tend to the utter extitinction of our commerce, and
the embargo was abandoned. Remonstrance with Great Britain proved to be
of no avail. The English ministry at that time was a strict Tory one,
and far from friendly in disposition toward the United States. Despite
the protests of our envoy, the practice of search was vigorously
pursued.
[Sidenote: War Declared.]
This was the state of affairs when James Madison became President.
The party represented by him was now clamorous for war, while the old
Federalists, especially those of New England, as earnestly deprecated
it. At last it became apparent that war was the only remedy for the
outrages committed almost without cessation on our commerce. The
President sent a message to Congress expressing this opinion; and on
the 18th of June, 1812, war was formally declared against Great Britain.
This was evidently in accordance with the will of the nation: but we
did not enter upon the conflict without the bitter opposition of the
Federalists. A convention of the leading members of that party met at
Hartford, held secret sessions, and issued an energetic protest against
the war. This aroused a deep sense of hostility in the breasts of the
war party; and, ever since, the Hartford Convention has been regarded
as at least an injudicious demonstration at a period when war already
existed, and when the government needed the support of every patriot to
bring it to a successful end.
[Sidenote: Beginning of Hostilities.]
[Sidenote: Naval Victories.]
The Americans began hostilities by making an ineffectual attempt to
conquer Canada. Meanwhile the English promptly took up the challenge,
sent ships of war loaded with excellent soldiers, many of them veterans
of the Napoleonic wars, across the Atlantic, and engaged Tecumseh,
and other Indian chiefs inimical to the intruders upon their former
hunting-grounds, to aid them in the contest. While Tecumseh, however,
was defeated and killed, the successes of the American army were few
compared with the brilliant exploits of our naval forces. The War of
1812 proved that the Americans had studied well the British example and
system in naval warfare. It was emphatically a naval war, simply because
Great Britain could only approach us from the sea. The victories of Hull
and Perry showed the greatest maritime power on earth that, though our
navy might be inferior to hers in distant waters, it was more than a
match for hers on the Lakes and the American coast. If the _Shannon_
captured the _Chesapeake_, and if gallant David Porter had at last
to desert the burning _Essex_, on the other hand the capture of the
_Guerrière_ and the surrender of the British squadron on Lake Erie to
Perry, more than compensated for our disasters.
[Sidenote: The British take Washington.]
It was the the last year of the war, which continued nearly three years,
that the British landed on our southern coast, and, making havoc of
villages and plantations as they went, took Washington, and burned the
Capitol and the President's house, from which Mr. Madison and his family
had happily escaped into Virginia. But the enemy found it impossible to
pursue their temporary success to a decisive issue. Both countries were
weary of the war, and overtures of peace having been made, four American
commissioners--John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, and
Jonathan Russell--were sent to Ghent, in Belgium, to meet British
commissioners and conclude a treaty. The treaty of Ghent was signed on
the 24th of December, 1814; and, singularly enough, while such subjects
as the boundary line and the fisheries were discussed, that treaty
contained no stipulation in regard to the British claim to the right of
search.
[Sidenote: Battle of New Orleans.]
In those days, when there were neither railways, steamships, nor
telegraphs, news was long in travelling from one continent to the other.
The tidings of the treaty did not reach New Orleans in time to prevent
General Andrew Jackson from winning glory by defending that city from
behind his cotton-bales. This was one of the most brilliant land-battles
of the war, and was fought on the 8th of January, just a fortnight after
peace had been formally concluded at Ghent.
[Sidenote: Results of the War.]
The War of 1812, while it left many questions unsettled between the
mother and the daughter country, practically put an end to the vexatious
disturbance of our commerce by Great Britain. It also tended to give a
longer lease of political power to what was then called the Republican
party, and prepared the way for the "era of good feeling," over which
the amiable though not conspicuously able President Monroe presided. The
war also brought certain men prominently before the public eye. Hull,
Bainbridge, Porter, Decatur, Rodgers, and Perry, were enshrined among
the country's naval heroes. General Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe,
and General Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, later reaped the reward
of the Presidency, the indirect result of their military exploits. The
gallant Richard M. Johnson afterwards became Vice-President; and it was
in the War of 1812 that General Winfield Scott won his first laurels,
and that General Zachary Taylor, long afterwards President, gave promise
of the military genius which later so much aided in bringing the Mexican
War to a speedy and victorious end.
[Sidenote: Growth of the Union.]
The period of the war and of the years immediately succeeding witnessed
a very rapid growth of population, and a notable swelling of the tide of
emigration westward. In 1816 Indiana came within the circle of States;
followed alternately by slave and free states--Mississippi, 1817;
Illinois, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Maine, 1820. and Missouri, 1821. The
great highway built between Cumberland and Wheeling was all alive in
those days with the wagons and groups of new settlers. A long era of
peace was to follow, and to give the country opportunity to increase, to
develop its resources, and to make rapid progress in its prosperity and
the development of its institutions.