Early in January the intended policy of Madison became known. As
the story has already told, Madison and Gallatin decided to retain
the embargo until June, but to call the new Congress together May
22, and then to declare war, unless Erskine could make concessions.
President Jefferson was chiefly interested in maintaining the embargo
until after March 4, and the despotism he had so long maintained over
Congress seemed still to exasperate his enemies. By common consent,
attack upon the embargo was regarded as attack upon the President: and
the Northern Democrats had so far lost respect for their old leader as
to betray almost a passion for telling him unpleasant truths.
Joseph Story, who took the lead in this party rebellion, came to
Congress determined to overthrow the embargo, and found Ezekiel
Bacon--another Massachusetts member--equally determined with himself.
In after years Justice Story told the tale as he remembered it:[367]--
“The whole influence of the Administration was directly brought
to bear upon Mr. Ezekiel Bacon and myself to seduce us from what
we considered a great duty to our country, and especially to New
England. We were scolded, privately consulted, and argued with by
the Administration and its friends on that occasion. I knew at the
time that Mr. Jefferson had no ulterior measure in view, and was
determined on protracting the embargo for an indefinite period,
even for years. I was well satisfied that such a course would not
and could not be borne by New England, and would bring on a direct
rebellion. It would be ruin to the whole country. Yet Mr. Jefferson,
with his usual visionary obstinacy, was determined to maintain it;
and the New England Republicans were to be made the instruments. Mr.
Bacon and myself resisted; and measures were concerted by us, with
the aid of Pennsylvania, to compel him to abandon his mad scheme. For
this he never forgave me.”
Joseph Story, with very high and amiable qualities, was quick in
temper; and in regard to Jefferson he let his temper master his memory.
“One thing I did learn while I was a member of Congress,” he
continued, “and that was that New England was expected, so far
as the Republicans were concerned, to do everything and to have
nothing. They were to obey, but not to be trusted. This, in my humble
judgment, was the steady policy of Mr. Jefferson at all times. We
were to be kept divided, and thus used to neutralize each other.”
In this spirit toward his own President Story came to Washington, and
joined hands with Timothy Pickering, John Randolph, and George Canning
in the attempt “to lower and degrade” Jefferson in the eyes of his
own people. Jefferson asked only to be spared the indignity of signing
with his own hand the unconditional repeal of the embargo; while the
single point on which Story, Bacon, Pickering, and Canning were agreed
was that the repeal should be the act of the man who made the law. On
one side Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, and their friends entreated
Congress to stand firm; to maintain the ground already solemnly taken;
to leave the embargo until June, and then to declare war if they
pleased. On the other hand, Pickering, Bacon, Story, the Clintons, and
the Pennsylvanians demanded immediate repeal,--partly to pacify New
England, but quite as much for the reason, which Pickering urged, that
immediate repeal would prevent war. That it would in fact prevent war
was obvious. Repeal was submission.
Story took no part in the public struggle, for he left Washington
about January 20, and the great debate began ten days afterward; but
although he held his peace in public, and his friends made no open
display of their anger, the temper in which they acted was notorious,
and the breach between them and Jefferson was never healed. They could
not forgive him: that Jefferson should ever forget the wound they
inflicted, required magnanimity beyond that of any philosopher known
in politics.
As soon as the naval and military bills and the extra session for May
22 were at last fairly determined and every detail decided, Wilson
Cary Nicholas took the lead of the House, and January 30 called up a
Resolution intended to settle the policy of embargo and war. The words
of this Resolve were too serious not to have received very careful
attention:
“_Resolved_, As the opinion of this House, that the United States
ought not to delay beyond the ---- day of ---- to resume, maintain,
and defend the navigation of the high seas; and that provision ought
to be made by law for repealing on the ---- day of ---- the several
embargo laws, and for authorizing at the same time letters of marque
and reprisal against Great Britain and France, provided on that day
their Orders or Edicts violating the lawful commerce and neutral
rights of the United States shall be in force; or against either of
those nations having in force such Orders or Edicts.”
Nicholas agreed to divide the Resolution so that a test vote might
first be taken on the repeal of the embargo; and he then moved to fill
the blank with the words, “the first day of June.” The House was thus
asked to pledge itself that on June 1 the embargo should cease. On
this question the debate began.
David R. Williams was a typical Carolinian. With something of
the overbearing temper which marked his class, he had also the
independence and the honesty which went far to redeem their failings.
He had stood for years, with his friend Macon, proof against the
influence of patronage and power; he supported the embargo, and was
not ashamed to avow his dread of war; but since his favorite measure
was to be thrown aside, he stood by his character, and made an appeal
to the House, giving at once to the debate an air of dignity which it
never wholly lost:--
“Will you drive us to a repeal of the embargo, and make no
resistance? Are you ready to lie down quietly under the impositions
laid upon you? You have driven us from the embargo. The excitements
in the East render it necessary that we should enforce the embargo
with the bayonet or repeal it. I will repeal it,--and I could weep
over it more than over a lost child. If you do not resist, you are no
longer a nation; you dare not call yourself so; you are the merest
vassals conceivable.... I appeal to the minority, who hold the
destinies of the nation in their grasp,--for they can enforce embargo
without the bayonet,--I beg them, if they will not declare war, that
they will do the best they can for their country.”
No one then wondered to see South Carolina almost on her knees before
Massachusetts, beseeching her, on her own terms, for her own honor,
to do the best she could for the common country; but Massachusetts
had no voice to respond. Dryly, in the caustic tone of Connecticut
austerity, Samuel Dana replied that the days of ancient chivalry had
not yet returned. When Massachusetts at last found a spokesman, she
gave her answer through the mouth of Ezekiel Bacon,--a man second
to none in respectability, but not one whom, in a moment of supreme
crisis, the State would naturally have chosen among all her citizens
to pronounce her will. Bacon had carefully collected advice from the
men in his State who were most competent to give counsel;[368] but in
Massachusetts affairs at Washington were little understood. Bent only
on saving the Union by forcing a repeal of the embargo, and hampered
by alliance with Federalists and Pennsylvanians, Bacon could not
afford to show a sense of national self-respect.
He began by admitting that the discontents in New England made
immediate repeal necessary:--
“It surely could not be sound policy, by adhering to this system
beyond the measure of absolute necessity, to risk in the hands of any
faction which might be disposed to wield it an instrument by which
they may endanger the union of our country, and raise themselves to
power on the ruins of liberty and the Constitution.”
Such a beginning, offering a reward for threats of disunion, and
conceding to traitors what would have been refused to good citizens,
was an evil augury; and the rest of Bacon’s speech carried out the
promise. As he refused to prolong the embargo, so he refused to vote
for war. “In every point of view, the policy of declaring offensive
war against any nation four months in advance is to me wholly
objectionable.” The conclusion was as feeble as was required by the
premises; but only some demon of bad taste could have inspired an
orator at such a moment to use the language of Falstaff;--
“We choose not to take measures any more than to give reasons ‘upon
compulsion,’ and we will not so take them. We will, however, I trust,
defend ourselves against the depredations of both [belligerents]; and
if they both or either choose to persevere in the execution of their
lawless aggressions, we shall, it is hoped, become more united in our
determination and our efforts to vindicate our rights, if they shall
continue to be assailed. At any rate, I am for leaving it to the
wisdom of the ensuing Congress, which is to meet at an early day, to
determine upon that position which the nation shall take in relation
to such a state of things as may grow out of the course which I
propose.”
Between the Federalists and the Republicans of Massachusetts Congress
was left under no illusions. Bacon expressed in these vacillating
phrases the true sense of the country. On the evening of February
2, after four days of debate, the committee, by seventy-three votes
against forty, rejected Wilson Cary Nicholas’s motion to fix June 1 as
the date for removing the embargo; and the next day, by an affirmative
vote of seventy, with no negatives, March 4 was fixed as the term.
Immediately after this decisive division John Randolph took the floor.
Discord had become his single object in public life. The Federalists
at least had a purpose in their seditiousness, and were honest in
preferring the British government to their own; the Republicans of
all shades, however weak in will or poor in motive, were earnest in
their love of country; but Randolph was neither honest nor earnest,
neither American nor English nor truly Virginian. Disappointed
ambition had turned him into a mere egoist; his habits had already
become intemperate, and his health was broken; but he could still
charge upon Jefferson all the disasters of the country, and could
delight in the overwhelming ruin which had fallen upon his former
chief. Randolph’s speech of February 3 was stale and tedious. Except
on the single point of raising the embargo he was spiritless; and his
only positive idea, borrowed from the Federalists, consisted in a
motion that, instead of issuing letters of marque, Government should
authorize merchant-vessels to arm and defend themselves from seizure.
If the scheme had a meaning, it meant submission to the British
Orders, and was suggested by the Federalists for no other object; but
in Randolph’s mind such a plan carried no definite consequence.
On Randolph’s motion the debate continued until February 7. The
Republicans, disconcerted and disheartened by the conduct of their
friends from New England and New York, made little show of energy, and
left to David R. Williams the task of expressing the whole ignominy of
their defeat. Williams struggled manfully. Randolph’s fears for the
Constitution were answered by the South Carolinian in a few words,
which condensed into a single paragraph the results of his party
theories:--
“If the Constitution is made of such brittle stuff as not to stand
a single war; if it is only to be preserved by submission to
foreign taxation,--I shall very soon lose all solicitude for its
preservation.”
With more than Federalist bitterness he taunted the hesitation of the
Democrats,--“contemptible cowardice,” he called it. “It is time we
should _assume_, if it is not in our natures, nerve enough to decide
whether we will go to war or submit.” The House replied by striking
out the recommendation of reprisals, by a vote of fifty-seven to
thirty-nine.
These two votes rendered the Administration for the moment powerless
to make head against the sweeping Federalist victory. Josiah Quincy,
who watched every symptom of democratic disaster, wrote as early as
February 2, before the first defeat of the Administration:[369] “There
is dreadful distraction in the enemy’s camp on the subject of removing
the embargo. Jefferson and his friends are obstinate. Bacon and the
Northern Democrats are equally determined that it shall be raised in
March.” The next day Quincy added: “Jefferson is a host; and if the
wand of that magician is not broken, he will yet defeat the attempt.”
The contest had become personal; to break the “wand of the magician”
was as much the object of Democrats as of Federalists, and neither
Madison nor Gallatin could restore discipline. February 4 the
Secretary of the Treasury wrote:[370] “As far as my information goes,
everything grows more quiet in Massachusetts and Maine. All would be
well if our friends remained firm here.”
The attempt to hold the friends of the Administration firm brought
only greater disaster. The vote in committee refusing to recommend
reprisals took place February 7; and the next day Quincy wrote again:
“Great caucusing is the order of the day and the night here. The
Administration is determined to rally its friends, and postpone the
removal of the embargo till May. But I think they cannot succeed.
Bacon, I am told, stands firm and obstinate against all their
solicitations and even almost denunciations. However, they had another
caucus last night. The event is unknown. Jefferson has prevailed.”
February 9 the result of the caucus was shown by a vote of the House
discharging the Committee of the Whole, and referring the subject
to the Committee of Foreign Relations, whose chairman was G. W.
Campbell,--which amounted to a public admission that Madison’s plan
had failed, and that some new expedient for uniting the party must be
invented. Ezekiel Bacon refused to obey the caucus, and voted with the
Federalists against the reference.
President Jefferson, though his name was still a terror to his
enemies, accepted whatever decision his Cabinet advised. Till the
day of his death he never forgot the violence of these last weeks
of his administration, or the outcry of the New England towns. “How
powerfully did we feel the energy of this organization in the case of
the embargo,” he wrote long afterward.[371] “I felt the foundations
of the government shaken under my feet by the New England townships.”
He showed the same lack of interest in February which had marked his
conduct in November; not even the certainty of his own overthrow
called out the familiar phrases of vexation. February 7 he wrote to
his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph,[372]--
“I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing
their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable
revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the
New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted
the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority
as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or
non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that
the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing
the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The
majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the
embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great
Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The
further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly
certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March.”
As the President became more subdued, Senator Pickering became
more vehement; his hatred for Jefferson resembled the hatred of
Cotton Mather for a witch. February 4 he wrote to his nephew in
Boston:[373]--
“I entertain no doubt that Jefferson stands pledged to Bonaparte to
maintain the embargo until a non-intercourse or war shall succeed;
and he dreads the explosion justly to be apprehended by him from
the disappointment and passion of Bonaparte, should the embargo be
removed without a substitute as well or better comporting with his
views. Upon this aspect of things it behooves our State legislature
to advance with a firm step in defence of the rights of our citizens
and of the Constitution. The palatines tremble at their posts. The
least relaxation or wavering in the councils of New England would
give them fresh courage, and hazard the most disastrous consequences.”
Another observer wrote comments, serious in a different sense. Erskine
watched with extreme interest every detail of this complicated
struggle, and reported to Canning both facts and speculations which
could not fail to affect the British government. Aware that Canning
had won a brilliant success, Erskine labored to profit by his
triumph, and to turn it in the interests of peace. A vast majority of
Americans, he said,[374] wanted only some plausible excuse to justify
them in resenting Napoleon’s conduct; but “they naturally wish to be
saved the complete humiliation of being obliged avowedly to recant all
their violent declarations of their determination never to submit to
the Orders in Council of Great Britain.” He speculated “how far it
might be possible still further to bend the spirit of that part of the
people of the United States until they should be forced to single out
France to be resisted as the original aggressors while his Majesty’s
Orders in Council continued to be enforced.” After the repeal of the
embargo and the refusal to make war, but one remnant of American
protest against British aggressions remained. The Republican caucus,
February 7, decided in favor of returning to Jefferson’s pacific
non-intercourse,--the system which had been, by common consent, thrown
aside as insufficient even before the embargo. February 10 Erskine
gave an account of the new measure, and of its probable effect on
American politics:--
“It is true that a non-intercourse law may be considered by the
Eastern States very objectionable; but as it would be rather a
nominal prohibition than a rigorous enforcement, a resistance to
it would be less likely to be made, and of less importance if it
should take place. The ultimate consequences of such differences and
jealousies arising between the Southern and Eastern States would
inevitably tend to a dissolution of the Union, which has been for
some time talked of, and has of late, as I have heard, been seriously
contemplated by many of the leading people in the Eastern division.”
The Non-intercourse Bill, which Erskine described February 10 as
likely to be no more than a nominal prohibition of commerce, was
reported February 11 to the House from the Committee of Foreign
Relations The bill excluded all public and private vessels of
France and England from American waters; forbade under severe
penalties the importation of British or French goods; repealed the
embargo laws, “except so far as they relate to Great Britain or
France or their colonies or dependencies, or places in the actual
possession of either;” and gave the President authority to reopen by
proclamation the trade with France or England in case either of these
countries should cease to violate neutral rights. That the proposed
non-intercourse was in truth submission to the Orders in Council, no
one denied.
“I conceive that great advantages may be reaped from it by England,”
wrote Erskine,[375] “as she has the command of the seas, and can
procure through neutrals any of the produce of this country, besides
the immense quantity which will be brought direct to Great Britain
under various pretences; whereas France will obtain but little, at a
great expense and risk.”
Such a non-intercourse merely sanctioned smuggling, and was intended
for no other purpose. Gallatin in his disgust flung open the doors
to illicit commerce. When Erskine went to him to ask what was meant
by “France, England, and their dependencies,” Gallatin replied that
only places in actual possession of England and France were intended;
that it was impossible to say what nations had decrees in force
infringing neutral rights, but that even Holland would be considered
an independent country.[376]
“The intention of this indefinite description,” continued Erskine,
“is undoubtedly to leave open as many places for their commerce as
they can, consistently with keeping up an appearance of resistance to
the belligerent restrictions; but it is thoroughly understood that
the whole measure is a mere subterfuge to extricate themselves from
the embarrassments of the embargo system, and is never intended to be
enforced.”
When this bill came before the House, another long debate arose.
Hardly a trace of national pride remained. No one approved the bill,
but no one struggled longer against submission. Josiah Quincy and
many of the Federalists held that the surrender was not yet complete
enough, and that total submission to Great Britain must precede the
return of Massachusetts to harmony with the Union, or to a share in
measures of government. His words were worth noting:--
“He wished peace if possible; if war, union in that war. For this
reason he wished a negotiation to be opened, unshackled with those
impediments to it which now existed. As long as they remained, the
people in the portion of country whence he came would not deem an
unsuccessful attempt at negotiation to be cause for war. If they were
removed, and an earnest attempt at negotiation was made, unimpeded
with these restrictions, and should not meet with success, they would
join heartily in a war.”
Doubtless Quincy believed the truth of what he said; but as though to
prove him mistaken in claiming even the modest amount of patriotism
which he asserted for his party, Barent Gardenier immediately followed
with a declaration that Great Britain was wholly in the right, and
that America should not only submit to the Orders in Council, but
should take pride in submission:--
“I do not say that the orders were lawful, or that they were not
infringements of our rights as a neutral nation,--as it might offend
the prejudices of the House. But I may be permitted to say that if
they were unlawful, I have proved that they are not hurtful; that the
British Orders in Council only supplied to that which our sense of
honor would lead us to do, their sanction.”[377]
Gardenier’s views roused no longer much outward irritation. The war
Republicans liked honest avowals better than sham patriotism; but John
Randolph, unwilling to be embarrassed with allies so candid, rated
Gardenier sharply:--
“I looked at the gentleman from New York at that moment with the sort
of sensation which we feel in beholding a sprightly child meddling
with edged tools,--every moment expecting, what actually happened,
that he will cut his fingers.... The gentleman’s friends, if any
he have,--and I have no right to presume that he has none, but the
contrary,--will do well to keep such dangerous implements out of his
way for the future.”
Randolph himself persisted in the scheme of withdrawing all
restrictions on commerce, and allowing merchant-vessels to arm,--a
measure which had the advantage of being warlike or pacific, according
as he should prefer in the future to represent it. David R. Williams
hit upon an idea more sensible, and likely to prove more effective.
“If the embargo is to be taken off, and war not to be substituted,--if
the nation is to submit,--I wish to do it profitably.” He proposed
to shut out the shipping of England and France, but to admit their
manufactures, under a duty of fifty per cent when imported in American
vessels. A number of Southern Republicans approved this plan.
Much the strongest speech against the bill was that of George W.
Campbell, who made no attempt to hide his mortification at seeing the
House desert him, its leader, and turn its back upon the pledge it had
solemnly given in accepting his Report only two months before:--
“At the very time when your own people are rallying round the
standard of their government; when they are about to shake off that
timidity, that alarm, that restless disposition, which the first
pressure occasioned by the suspension of commerce naturally produced;
when they are, in almost every quarter of the Union, declaring their
determination and solemnly pledging themselves to support your
measures, to maintain the embargo, or go to war if necessary,--to do
anything but submit: at that very moment, instead of being invited
by a similar patriotic enthusiasm to throw yourselves in front, and
to lead them on to the honorable contest, you abandon the ground you
have already occupied, you check their generous enthusiasm, and
leave them the mortification of seeing their country disgraced by
a timid, temporizing policy that must, if persevered in, ruin the
nation.”
Although events had already proved that no appeal to self-respect
called out a response from this Congress, Campbell might reasonably
suppose that arguments of self-interest would be heard; and he
pressed one objection to the bill which, in theory, should have been
decisive:--
“The non-intercourse would press most severely on the Southern and
Western States, who depend chiefly on the immediate exchange of their
productions for foreign goods, and would throw almost the whole
commerce of the nation into the hands of the Eastern States, without
competition, and also add a premium on their manufactures at the
expense of the agricultural interest to the South and West. Foreign
goods being excluded, the manufacturing States would furnish the rest
of the Union with their manufactured goods at their own prices.”
A moment’s reflection must have satisfied the Republicans that this
argument against the bill was fatal. Non-intercourse must ruin
the South, in order to offer an immense bribe to the shipping and
manufactures of New England as an inducement for New England to
remain in the Union. The manufacturing interests never ventured to
ask such extravagant protection as was thrust upon them in 1809 by
the fears of the agricultural States; the greed of corporate capital
never suggested the monopoly created for Eastern ships and factories
by a measure which shut from America all ships and manufactures but
theirs. Even if but partially enforced, such legislation was ruinous
to agriculture.
Entreaty and argument were thrown away. The House lost discipline,
self-respect, and party character. No one felt responsible for any
result, no majority approved any suggestion. As the last days of
the session drew near, the machinery of legislation broke down, and
Congress became helpless. So strange and humiliating a spectacle had
not before been seen. The nation seemed sinking into the weakness of
dissolution.
The paralysis came in a form that could not be disguised. While the
House disputed over one Non-intercourse Bill, the Senate passed
another; and February 22 the House laid aside its own measure in
order to take up that of the Senate, which contained the disputed
clause authorizing letters of marque and reprisal against nations that
should continue their unlawful edicts after repeal of the embargo. In
pursuance of its vote of February 7, the House in committee promptly
struck out the reprisal clause. Next it rejected David R. Williams’s
motion for discriminating duties. Ezekiel Bacon, perhaps somewhat
scandalized at the legislation he had chiefly caused, suggested the
Federalist plan of authorizing merchant-vessels to resist seizure;
and February 25 a struggle occurred on the question of permitting
forcible resistance by merchant-vessels. The minority was deeply
agitated as the act of complete submission became imminent. David R.
Williams cried that if the House could so abandon national rights,
they deserved to be scoffed by all the world; John W. Eppes declared
himself compelled to believe Josiah Quincy’s assertion that the
majority could not be kicked into a war; even the peaceable Macon
moved a warlike amendment. Vote after vote was taken; again and again
the ayes and noes were called on dilatory motions of adjournment; but
every motion looking toward war was steadily voted down, and in the
end, February 27, the Non-intercourse Bill in its most unresisting
shape received the approval of the House. Not a speaker defended it;
at the last moment the charge was freely made that the bill had not
a single friend. The members who voted for it declared in doing so
that the measure was a weak and wretched expedient, that they detested
it, and took it merely as a choice of evils; but eighty-one members
voted in its favor, and only forty in the negative. More extraordinary
still, this non-intercourse, which bound the South to the feet of New
England, was supported by forty-one Southern members, while but twelve
New England representatives recorded their names in its favor.
Three months afterward, at a moment when the danger of war seemed to
have vanished, John Randolph recalled the memory of this confused
struggle, and claimed for President Jefferson and himself the credit
for having prevented a declaration of war. He had voted against the
non-intercourse, he said, because he had believed that he could get
rid of the embargo on still better terms; others had voted against it
because they thought it absolute disgrace:[378]--
“The fact is that nobody would advocate it; that though it was
carried by a majority of two to one, those who finally voted for
it condemned it, and all parties seemed ashamed of it; and that
... all the high-toned men and high-toned presses in this country
denounced the majority of this House for passing that law, as having
utterly disgraced themselves.... If the great leaders could have been
gratified, according to their own showing they would have dragged
this country into a war with Great Britain.... Now to be sure, sir,
those persons who undertook to stop their wild career were composed
of heterogeneous materials; ... there were minority men, caucus men,
protesters,--in fact, sir, all parties, Catholics, Protestants,
Seceders,--and all were united in the effort to prevent the leaders
of both Houses from plunging the nation into a war with one Power
and knuckling to the other; from riveting the chains of French
influence, perhaps of French alliance upon us. Thank God that their
designs were proclaimed to the nation, that the President did not
give his consent, which would have made us kick the beam. Yes, sir!
Federalists, minority men, protesters, and all would have kicked the
beam if it had ever emanated from the Cabinet that the President was
for war.”
If Randolph was right, the “wand of the magician” had not been
broken; and other observers besides Randolph held the same opinion.
“Jefferson has triumphed,” wrote Josiah Quincy, February 27,
immediately after the repeal; “his intrigues have prevailed.”[379]
In a spirit widely different from that of Randolph and Quincy,
Nathaniel Macon, February 28, wrote to his friend Nicholson,--
“Otis, the Secretary of the Senate, has this moment informed
the House of Representatives that the Senate have agreed to the
amendments made by the House to the Bill to repeal the embargo.
“The Lord, the mighty Lord, must come to our assistance, or I fear we
are undone as a nation!”[380]
FOOTNOTES:
[367] Story’s Life of Story, i. 187.
[368] Cf. J. Q. Adams to Ezekiel Bacon, Nov. 17 and Dec. 21, 1808; New
England Federalism, pp. 127, 131.
[369] Quincy’s Life of Quincy, p. 185.
[370] Adams’s Gallatin, p. 386.
[371] Jefferson to J. C. Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816; Works, vi. 540.
[372] Works, v. 424.
[373] Pickering to T. Williams, Feb. 4, 1809; Pickering MSS.
[374] Erskine to Canning, Feb. 9, 1809; MSS. British Archives.
[375] Erskine to Canning, Feb. 10, 1809; MSS. British Archives.
[376] Erskine to Canning, Feb. 13, 1809; MSS. British Archives.
[377] Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, p. 1460.
[378] Annals of Congress, 1809-1810; part i. 149, 150.
[379] Quincy’s Life of Quincy, p. 185.
[380] Macon to Nicholson, Feb. 28, 1809; Nicholson MSS.