THE SECOND PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1805-1812
In the year 1805, the happy era of Republican prosperity and complacency
came suddenly and violently to an end, for by this time forces were in
operation which drew the United States, in utter disregard of Jefferson's
theories, into the sweep of the tremendous political cyclone raging in
Europe. In 1803, Napoleon forced England into renewed war, and for two
years endeavoured by elaborate naval manoeuvres to secure control of the
Channel for a sufficient time to permit him to transport his "Grand Army"
to the British shore. In 1805, however, these plans broke down; and the
crushing defeat of the allied French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar
marked the end of any attempt to challenge British maritime supremacy.
The great military machine of the French army was then turned eastward
against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was
forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat
down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in
1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a
severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807.
Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge at Tilsit, July
7, divided Europe between them by agreeing upon a policy of spheres of
interest, which left Turkey and the Orient for Russian expansion and all
the beaten western monarchies for French domination. The Corsican
captain, trampling on the ruins both of the French monarchy and the
French Republic, stood as the most terrible and astounding figure in the
world, invincible by land, the master of Europe.
But the withdrawal of the French from any attempt to contest the sea left
England the equally undisputed master of all oceans, and rendered the
French wholly dependent upon neutral nations for commerce. As French
conquests led to annexations of territory in Italy and in Germany, these
regions also found themselves unable to import with their own vessels,
and so neutral commerce found ever-increasing markets dependent upon its
activity. Now the most energetic maritime neutral power was the United
States, whose merchantmen hastened to occupy the field left vacant by the
practical extinction of the French carrying trade. Until 1807 they
shared this with the Scandinavian countries; but after that year
Napoleon, by threats and the terror {191} of his name, forced an
unwelcome alliance upon all the States of Europe, and the United States
became the sole important neutral.
In these circumstances, the merchant shipping of the United States
flourished enormously, the more especially since, by importing and
immediately re-exporting West India products from the French islands,
Yankee skippers were able to avoid the dangerous "Rule of 1756," and to
send sugar and cocoa from French colonies to Europe and England under the
guise of American produce. By 1805, the whole supply of European sugar
was carried in American bottoms, to the enormous profit of the United
States. American ships also shared largely in the coasting trade of
Europe, carrying goods between ports where British ships were naturally
excluded. In fact, the great prosperity and high customs receipts to
which the financial success of the Jeffersonians was due depended to a
great extent on the fortunate neutral situation of the United States.
By 1805, the British shipowners felt that flesh and blood could not
endure the situation. Here were France and her allies easily escaping
the hardships of British naval pressure by employing neutrals to carry on
their trade. Worse still, the Americans, by the device of entering and
clearing {192} French sugar at an American port, were now able calmly to
take it to England and undersell the West Indian planters in their own
home markets. Pamphleteers began to criticize the government for
permitting such unfair competition, Lord Sheffield, as in 1783, leading
the way. In October, 1805, James Stephen, a far abler writer, summed up
the anger of the British ship-owners and naval officers in a pamphlet
entitled, "War in disguise, or the Frauds of the Neutral Trade." He
asserted that the whole American neutral commerce was nothing more or
less than an evasion of the Rule of 1756 for the joint benefit of France
and the United States, and he called upon the government to put a stop to
this practical alliance of America with Napoleon. This utterance seems
to have made a profound impression; for a time Stephen's views became the
fixed beliefs of influential public men as well as of the naval and
shipowning interests.
The first steps indicating British restlessness were taken by the Pitt
Ministry, which began, in 1804, a policy of rigid naval search for
contraband cargoes, largely carried on off American ports. Whatever
friendly views Pitt may once have entertained toward the Americans, his
Ministry now had for its sole object the contest with {193} France and
the protection of British interests. In July, 1805, a severe blow was
suddenly struck by Sir William Scott, who as chief Admiralty judge
rendered a decision to the effect that French sugar, entered at an
American custom-house and re-exported with a rebate of the duty, was good
prize under the Rule of 1756. This placed all American re-exportation of
French West Indian produce at the mercy of British cruisers; and the
summer of 1805 saw a sudden descent of naval officers upon their prey,
causing an outcry of anger from every seaport between Maine and Maryland.
The day of reckoning had come, and Jefferson and Madison, his Secretary
of State, were compelled to meet the crisis. Fortunately, as it
appeared, for the United States, the Pitt Ministry ended with the death
of its leader on January 23, 1806, and was succeeded by a coalition in
which Lord Grenville, author of the Jay treaty, was prime Minister, and
Fox, an avowed friend of America, was Foreign Secretary. While it was
not reasonably to be expected that any British Ministry would throw over
the traditional naval policy of impressments or venture to run directly
counter to shipping interests, it was open to anticipation that some such
compromise as the Jay treaty might be agreed upon, which would relieve
the United {194} States from arbitrary exactions during the European war.
The Grenville Ministry showed its good intentions by abandoning the
policy of captures authorized by Scott, and substituting, on May 16,
1806, a blockade of the French coast from Ostend to the Seine. This
answered the purpose of hindering trade with France without raising
troublesome questions, and actually allowed American vessels to take
sugar to Northern Europe.
Between 1804 and 1806, Jefferson had brought the United States to the
verge of war with Spain through insisting that Napoleon's cession of
Louisiana had included West Florida. At the moment when British seizures
began, he was attempting at once to frighten Spain by warlike words and,
by a payment of two million dollars, to induce France to compel Spain to
acknowledge the American title to the disputed territory. For a number
of years, therefore, and until the scheme fell through, Jefferson
cultivated especially friendly relations with the government of Napoleon,
not from any of the former Republican enthusiasm, but solely on
diplomatic grounds. Hence, although nominally neutral in the great war,
he bore the appearance of a French partisan.
Jefferson felt that he had in his possession a thoroughly adequate means
to secure {195} favourable treatment from England, by simply threatening
commercial retaliation. The American trade, he believed, was so
necessary to the prosperity of England that for the sake of retaining it
that country would make any reasonable concession. That there was a
basis of truth in this belief it would be impossible to deny; for England
consumed American cotton and exported largely to American markets. With
this trade cut off, manufacturers and exporters would suffer, as they had
suffered in the revolutionary period. But Jefferson ignored what every
American merchant knew, that military and naval considerations weighed
fully as heavily with England as mercantile needs, and that a country
which had neither a ship-of-the-line, nor a single army corps in
existence, commanded, in an age of world warfare, very slight respect.
Jefferson's prejudice against professional armed forces and his ideal of
war as a purely voluntary matter, carried on as in colonial times, was
sufficiently proclaimed by him to be well understood across the Atlantic.
Openly disbelieving in war, avowedly determined not to fight, he
approached a nation struggling for life with the greatest military power
on earth, and called upon it to come to terms for business reasons.
His first effort was made by causing {196} Congress to pass a
Non-importation Act, excluding certain British goods, which was not to go
into effect until the end of 1806. With this as his sole weapon, he sent
Monroe to make a new treaty, demanding free commerce and the cessation of
the impressment of seamen from American vessels in return for the
continued non-enforcement of the Non-importation Act. Such a task was
more difficult than that laid upon Jay twelve years before; and Monroe,
in spite of the fact that he was dealing with the same Minister, failed
to accomplish even so much as his predecessor. From August to December
he negotiated, first with Lord Holland, then, after Fox's death, with
Lord Howick; but the treaty which he signed on December 1, 1806,
contained not one of the points named in his instructions. Monroe found
the British willing to make only an agreement like the Jay treaty which,
while containing special provisions to render the situation tolerable,
should refuse to yield any British contentions. That was the Whig policy
as much in 1806 as it had been in 1766. The concessions were slight; and
the chief one, regarding the re-exportation of French West Indian
produce, permitted it only on condition that the goods were bona fide of
American ownership, and had paid in the United States a duty of at least
two per cent. Jefferson {197} did not even submit the treaty to the
Senate.
After this failure, the situation grew graver. Napoleon, in December,
1806, issued from Berlin a decree declaring that, in retaliation for the
aggressions of England upon neutral commerce, the British Isles were in
blockade and all trade with them was forbidden. British goods were to be
absolutely excluded from the continent. The reply of the Grenville
Ministry to this was an Order in Council, January, 1807, prohibiting
neutral vessels from trading between the ports of France or her allies;
but this was denounced as utterly weak by Perceval and Canning in
opposition. In April, 1807, the Grenville Ministry, turned out of office
by the half insane George III, was replaced by a thoroughly Tory cabinet,
under the Duke of Portland, whose chief members in the Commons were
George Canning and Spencer Perceval, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of
the Exchequer respectively. The United States was now to undergo
treatment of a new kind at the hands of Tories who despised its
institutions, felt only contempt for the courage of its government, and
were guided as regards American commerce by the doctrines of Lord
Sheffield and James Stephen.
An Order in Council of November 11, {198} 1807, drafted by Perceval and
endorsed by all the rest of the Cabinet, declared that no commerce with
France or her allies was henceforward to be permitted unless it had
passed through English ports. To this Napoleon retorted by the Milan
Decree of December, 1807, proclaiming that all vessels which had been
searched by British, or which came by way of England, were good prize.
Henceforth, then, neutral commerce was positively prohibited. The
merchantmen of the United States could continue to trade at all only by
definitely siding with one power or the other. The object of the British
order was declared to be retaliation on Napoleon. Its actual effect was
to place American trade once more under the rule of the Navigation Acts.
As in the days before 1776, American vessels must make England their
"staple" or "entrepôt," and could go only where permitted to by British
orders under penalty of forfeiture. This measure was sharply attacked in
Parliament by the Whigs, especially by Grenville and Howick, of the late
Ministry, but was triumphantly sustained by the Tories.
At this time the chronic grievance of the impressment of seamen from
American vessels grew suddenly acute. In the years of the great war, the
American merchant marine, {199} with its safe voyages and good pay,
offered a highly attractive prospect for English sailors, who dreaded the
danger, the monotony, and the severe discipline of British men-of-war.
They swarmed by thousands into American service, securing as rapidly as
possible, not infrequently by fraudulent means, the naturalization papers
by which they hoped to escape the press-gang. Ever since 1793 British
naval officers, recognizing no right of expatriation, had systematically
impressed British seamen found on American ships and, owing to the
difficulty in distinguishing the two peoples, numerous natives of New
England and the middle States found themselves imprisoned on the
"floating hell" of a British ship-of-the-line in an epoch when brutality
characterized naval discipline. In August, 1807, the United States was
stirred to fury over the forcible seizure by the British _Leopard_ of
three Englishmen from the U.S.S. _Chesapeake_, which, unprepared for
defence, had to suffer unresisting. So hot was the general anger that
Jefferson could easily have led Congress into hostile measures, if not an
actual declaration of war, over the multiplied seizures and this last
insult.
But Jefferson clung to peace, and satisfied himself by ordering British
men-of-war out of American ports and sending a {200} demand for
reparation, with which he linked a renunciation of the right of
impressment. When Congress met in December, he induced it to pass a
general embargo, positively prohibiting the departure of American vessels
to foreign ports. Since at the same time the Non-importation Act came
into effect, all imports and exports were practically suspended. His
idea was that the total cessation of American commerce would inflict such
discomfort upon British and French consumers that each country would be
forced to abandon its oppressive measures.
Rarely has a country, at the instance of one man, inflicted a severer
strain upon its citizens. The ravages of French and English together,
since the outbreak of war in 1793, did not do so much damage as the
embargo did in one year, for it threatened ruin to every shipowner,
importer, and exporter in the United States. Undoubtedly Jefferson and
his party had in mind the success of the non-importation agreements
against the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties, but what was then the
voluntary action of a great majority was now a burden imposed by one part
of the country upon another. The people of New York and New England
simply would not obey the Act. To enforce it against Canada became an
impossibility, and to prevent vessels from escaping a {201} matter of
great difficulty. Jefferson persisted doggedly, and induced Congress to
pass laws giving revenue collectors extraordinary powers of search and
seizure, but without results.
Under this intolerable grievance, the people of the oppressed regions
rapidly lost their enthusiasm for the Democratic administration. Turning
once more to the Federalist party, which had seemed practically extinct,
they threw State after State into its hands, and actually threatened the
Republican control in the Presidential election of 1808. Had a coalition
been arranged between the disgusted Republican factions of New York and
Pennsylvania and the Federalists of New England, Delaware, and Maryland,
James Madison might well have been beaten for successor to Jefferson.
But worse remained behind. The outraged New Englanders, led by Timothy
Pickering and others, began to use again, in town-meetings and
legislatures, the old-time language of 1774, once employed against the
Five Intolerable Acts, and to threaten secession. As Jefferson said
later, "I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by
the New England townships."
By this time, it was definitely proved that as a means of coercion the
embargo was worthless. English manufacturers and their {202} workmen
complained, but English ship-owners profited, and crowds of British
seamen returned perforce to their home, even at times into the royal
navy. Canning, for the Portland Ministry, sarcastically declined to be
moved, observing that the embargo, whatever its motives, was practically
the same as Napoleon's system, and England could not submit to being
driven to surrender to France even to regain the American market or
relieve the Americans from their self-inflicted sufferings. Napoleon now
gave an interesting taste of his peculiar methods, for on April 17, 1808,
he issued the Bayonne Decree, ordering the confiscation of all American
vessels found in French ports, on the ground that, since the embargo
prohibited the exit of American ships, these must, in reality, be
English! Thus he gathered in about eight million dollars' worth. The
policy had to be abandoned, and in the utmost ill-humour Congress
repealed the embargo, on March 1, 1809, substituting non-intercourse with
England and France. Thus Jefferson left office under the shadow of a
monumental failure. His theory of commercial coercion had completely
broken down; and he had damaged his own and his party's prestige to such
an extent that the moribund Federalist organization had sprung to life
and threatened the existence of the Union.
{203}
From this time onward, the New Englanders assumed the character of
ultra-admirers of Great Britain. True, their vessels suffered from
British seizures; but no British confiscations had done them such harm as
the embargo, or taken such discreditable advantage of a transparent
pretext as the Bayonne Decree. Belonging to the wealthy classes, they
admired and respected England as defender of the world's civilization
against Napoleon, and they detested Jefferson and Madison as tools of the
enemy of mankind. They justified impressments, spoke respectfully of the
British doctrines of trade, and corresponded freely with British public
men. They stood, in short, exactly where the Republicans had stood in
1793, supporters of a foreign power with which the Federal administration
was in controversy. In Congress and outside, they made steady, bitter
menacing attacks on the integrity and honesty of the Republicans.
Under Jefferson's successor, the policy of commercial pressure was
carried to its impotent conclusion. At first the action of the British
government seemed to crown Madison with triumph. In the winter of 1809,
the majority in Congress had talked freely of substituting war for the
embargo; and at the same time the Whigs in Parliament, led by Grenville,
had attacked Canning for his {204} insolence toward the United States as
likely to cause war. Whitbread called attention to the similarity
between the conditions in 1809 and 1774, when "the same infatuation
seemed to prevail," the same certainty existed that the Americans would
not fight, and the same confident assertions were made that they could
not do without England. The comparison possessed much truth, for the
Tories of 1809 were as indifferent to American feelings as those of 1774,
and pushed their commercial policy just as North had done his political
system, in the same contemptuous certainty that the Americans would never
fight. Yet Canning showed sufficient deference to his assailants to
instruct Erskine, British Minister at Washington, to notify Madison that
the Orders would be withdrawn in case the United States kept its
non-intercourse with France, recognized the Rule of 1756, and authorized
British men-of-war to enforce the Non-intercourse Act.
The immediate result was surprising, for Erskine, eager to restore
harmony, did not disclose or carry out his instructions, but accepted the
continuance by the United States of non-intercourse against France as a
sufficient concession. He announced that the Orders in Council would be
withdrawn on June 10; Madison in turn promptly issued a proclamation
reopening trade, and {205} swarms of American vessels rushed across the
Atlantic. But Canning, in harsh language, repudiated the arrangement of
his over-sanguine agent, and Madison was forced to the mortifying step of
reimposing non-intercourse by a second proclamation. Still worse
remained, for when F. J. Jackson, the next British Minister, arrived, the
President had to undergo the insult of being told that he had connived
with Erskine in violating his instructions. The refusal to hold further
relations with the blunt emissary was a poor satisfaction. All this
time, moreover, reparation for the _Chesapeake_ affair was blocked, since
it had been coupled with a demand for the renunciation of impressments,
something that no British Ministry would have dared to yield.
On the part of Napoleon, the Non-intercourse Act offered another
opportunity for plunder. When he first heard of Erskine's concessions,
he was on the point of meeting them, but on learning of their failure he
changed about, commanded the sequestration of all American vessels
entering European ports, and in May, 1810, by the Rambouillet Decree, he
ordered their confiscation and sale. The ground assigned was that the
Non-intercourse Act forbade any French or English vessel to enter
American ports under penalty of confiscation. {206} None had been
confiscated, but they might be. Hence he acted. Incidentally he helped
to fill his treasury, and seized about ten millions of American property.
By this time it was clear to most Americans that, however unfriendly the
British policy, it was honesty itself compared to that of the Emperor,
whose sole aim seemed to be to ensnare American vessels for the purpose
of seizing them. The Federalists in Congress expatiated on his perfidy
and bare-faced plunder, but nothing could shake the intention of Madison
to stick to commercial bargaining. Congress now passed another Act,
destined to be the last effort at peaceful coercion. Trade was opened,
but the President was authorized to reimpose non-intercourse with either
nation if the other would withdraw its decrees. This Act, known always
as the Macon Bill No. 2, became law in May, 1810, and Napoleon
immediately seized the occasion for further sharp practice. He caused an
unofficial, unsigned letter to be shown to the American Minister at Paris
stating that the French decrees would be withdrawn on November 2, 1810,
"it being understood that the English should withdraw theirs by that time
or the United States should cause its rights to be respected by England."
Madison accordingly reimposed non-intercourse with {207} England on the
date named, and considered the French decrees withdrawn. The situation
was regarded by him as though he had entered into a contract with
Napoleon, which compelled him to assert that the decrees were at an end,
although he had no other evidence than the existence of the situation
arising from the Macon Bill.
There followed a period during which the American Minister at London,
William Pinkney, endeavoured without success to convince the British
government that the decrees actually were withdrawn. The Portland
Ministry had fallen in 1809, and the sharp-tongued Canning was replaced
in the Foreign Office by the courteous Marquess Wellesley; but Spencer
Perceval, author of the Orders in Council, was Prime Minister and stiffly
determined to adhere to his policy. James Stephen and George Rose, in
Parliament, stood ready to defend them, and the Tory party as a whole
accepted their necessity. When, therefore, Pinkney presented his request
to Wellesley, the latter naturally demanded something official from
Napoleon, which neither Pinkney nor Madison could supply. Finally, in
February, 1811, Pinkney broke off diplomatic relations and returned home,
having played his difficult part with dignity. To aggravate the
situation Napoleon's cruisers continued, {208} whenever they had a
chance, to seize and burn American vessels bound for England, and his
port authorities to sequester vessels arriving from England. The decrees
were not in fact repealed.
Madison had committed himself, however, to upholding the honour of
Napoleon--a task from which any other man would have recoiled--and the
United States continued to insist on a fiction. Madison's conduct in
this affair was that of a shrewd lawyer-like man who tried to carry on
diplomacy between two nations fighting to the death as though it were a
matter of contracts, words and phrases of legal meaning. To Napoleon,
legality was an incomprehensible idea. To the Tory ministries,
struggling to maintain their country against severe economic pressure,
facts, not words, counted, and facts based on naval force. Upon the
Jeffersonian and Madisonian attempts at peaceful coercion they looked
with mingled annoyance and contempt, believing, as they did, that the
whole American policy was that of a weak and cowardly nation trying by
pettifogging means to secure favourable trade conditions. The situation
had reached a point where the United States had nothing to hope from
either contestant, by continuing this policy.
At this juncture a new political force {209} appeared. By 1811 the
old-time Republican leaders, trained in the school of Jeffersonian
ideals, were practically bankrupt. Faction paralyzed government, and
Congress seemed, by its timid attitude, to justify the taunt of Quincy of
Massachusetts that the Republican party could not be kicked into a war.
But there appeared on the stage a new sort of Republican. In the western
counties of the older States and in the new territories beyond the
mountains, the frontier element, once of small account in the country and
wholly disregarded under the Federalists, was multiplying, forming
communities and governments, where the pioneer habits had created a
democracy that was distinctly pugnacious. Years of danger from Indians,
of rivalry with white neighbours over land titles, of struggle with the
wilderness, had produced a half-lawless and wholly self-assertive type of
man, as democratic as Jefferson himself, but with a perfect willingness
to fight and with a great respect for fighters. To these men, the
tameness with which the United States had submitted to insults and
plundering was growing to be unendurable. Plain masculine anger began to
obscure other considerations.
These Western men, moreover, had a special cause for indignation with
England, {210} which was ignored by the sea-coast communities, in the
close connection which they firmly believed to exist between the British
administration of upper Canada and the north-western Indians. In the
years after 1809, the Indian question again began to assume a dangerous
form. Settlers were coming close to the treaty lines, and, to satisfy
their demands for the bottom lands along the Wabash River, Governor
Harrison of Indiana Territory made an extensive series of land purchases
from the small tribes on the coveted territory.
But there now appeared two remarkable Indians, Tecumseh and his brother,
the Prophet, of the Shawnee tribe, who saw in the occupation of the red
men's hunting lands and the inroads of frontier corn whiskey the death of
all their race. These leaders began to hold their own tribe together
against the purchase of whiskey or the sale of lands; then, with wider
vision, they tried to organize an alliance of all the north-western
Indians to prevent further white advance. They even went so far as to
visit the south-western Indians, Creeks and Cherokees, to induce them to
join in the grand league. The very statesmanship involved in this vast
scheme rendered it dangerous in the eyes of all Westerners, who were
firmly convinced that the backing of {211} this plan came from the
British posts in Canada. There was, in reality, a good understanding
between the Canadian officers and the Shawnee chiefs. In 1811
hostilities broke out at Tippecanoe, where Governor Harrison had a sharp
battle with the Shawnees; but Tecumseh exerted himself to restore
peaceful relations, although the frontier was in great excitement.
From the States of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, and from the inner
counties of the southern States there came to the first session of the
Eleventh Congress, in December, 1811, a group of young politicians--Henry
Clay, John Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, Felix Grundy--who felt that the time
for talk was at an end. Unless England immediately revoked its decrees,
ceased impressing seamen, and refrained from instigating Indian plots
there must be war. Assuming control of the House, with Clay in the
Speaker's chair, they transformed the Republican party and the policy of
the country. They pushed through measures for raising troops, arming
ships, and borrowing money. Congress rang with fiery speeches, as month
after month went by and the Perceval Ministry obstinately refused to stir
from its commercial policy.
Yet the feeling of the English public was already undergoing a change.
By 1812 the {212} pretence that the Orders in Council were maintained for
the purpose of starving out France was growing transparent when thousands
of licences, granted freely to British vessels, permitted a vast fleet to
carry on the supposedly forbidden trade. Although Perceval and Canning
still insisted in Parliament that the Orders were retaliatory, the fact
was patent that their only serious effect was to cause the loss of the
American trade and the American market. At the threat of war, the
exporters of England, suffering severely from glutted markets, began a
vigorous agitation against Perceval's policy and bombarded the Ministry,
through Henry Brougham, with petitions, memorials, and motions which put
the Tories on the defensive. Speakers like Alexander Baring held up the
system of Orders in Council as riddled with corruption, and only the
personal authority of Perceval and Castlereagh kept the majority firm.
At the height of this contest, Perceval was assassinated, on May 11,
1812; and it was not until June 8 that hope of a new coalition was
abandoned, and the Tory Cabinet was definitely reorganized under Lord
Liverpool. Almost the first act of that Ministry was to bow before the
storm of petitions, criticisms, and complaints, and to announce on June
16 that they had decided to suspend the Orders. {213} Thus the very
contingency upon which Jefferson and Madison had counted came to pass.
The British government, at the instance of the importing and
manufacturing classes, yielded to the pressure of American commercial
restrictions. It was true that the danger of war weighed far more,
apparently, than the Non-intercourse Act; but had there been an Atlantic
cable, or even a steam transit, at that time, or had the Liverpool
Ministry been formed a little earlier, the years 1807-1812 might have
passed into history as a triumphant vindication of Jefferson's theories.
But it was too late. Madison, seeing, apparently, that his plans were a
failure, fell in with the new majority, and after deliberate preparation
sent a message to Congress in June, 1812, which was practically an
invitation to declare war. In spite of the bitter opposition of all
Federalists and many eastern Republicans, Congress, by the votes of the
southern and western members, adopted a declaration of war on June 18,
committing the United States to a contest with the greatest naval power
in the world on the grounds of the Orders in Council, the impressment of
seamen, and the intrigues with the north-western Indians. At the moment
when Napoleon, invading Russia, began his last stroke for universal
empire, the United {214} States entered the game as his virtual ally.
This was something the Federalists could not forgive. They returned to
their homes, execrating the war as waged in behalf of the arch-enemy of
God and man, as the result of a pettifogging bit of trickery on the part
of Napoleon. They denounced the ambitions of Clay and the Westerners,
who predicted an easy conquest of Canada, as merely an expression of a
pirate's desire to plunder England of its colonies, and they announced
their purpose to do nothing to assist the unrighteous conflict. In their
anger at Madison, they were even willing to vote for De Witt Clinton of
New York, who ran for President in 1812 as an Independent Republican; and
the coalition carried the electoral vote of every State north of Maryland
except Pennsylvania and Vermont.
When the news of the repeal of the Orders in Council crossed the
Atlantic, some efforts were made by the governor-general of Canada to
arrange an armistice, hoping to prevent hostilities. But Madison does
not seem to have seriously considered abandoning the war, even though the
original cause had been removed. Feeling the irresistible pressure of
the southern and western Democrats behind him, he announced that the
contest must go on until England should {215} abandon the practice of
impressment. So the last hope of peace disappeared.
The war thus begun need never have taken place, had the Tory Ministries
of Portland or Perceval cared to avert it. The United States only lashed
itself into a war-like mood after repeated efforts to secure concessions,
and after years of submission to British rough handling. During all this
time, either Madison or Jefferson would gladly have accepted any sort of
compromise which did not shut American vessels wholly out from some form
of independent trade. But the enmity of the British shipowners and naval
leaders and the traditional British commercial policy joined with
contempt for the spiritless nation to prevent any such action until the
fitting time had gone by.