During the winter the Republican legislature of New York chose Rufus
King, the chief Federalist in the country, to succeed John Smith as
United States senator. Some Republicans charged that this election
was the price paid by De Witt Clinton for Federalist votes in the
Presidential contest; but Clinton’s friends declared it to be the price
paid by the Administration Republicans for Federalist aid in granting
a corrupt bank charter. That the choice was due to a bargain of some
kind no one denied, and possibly both stories were true. Rufus King
himself stood above suspicion, and had been considered an opponent of
the Federalist alliance with Clinton; but he was a powerful recruit
to the opposition in the Senate, which numbered thenceforward nine
votes, or precisely one fourth of the body. The annoyance to the
Administration was the greater because King’s Republican colleague,
Obadiah German, belonged to the Clintonian opposition, and voted with
the Federalists. At the same time Charles Cutts of New Hampshire was
succeeded by Jeremiah Mason, a very able and extreme Federalist.
Three more senators--Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael Leib--could
be counted as personally hostile to the President. Jesse Franklin of
North Carolina was succeeded by David Stone, an independent, opposed
to the war. Already the opposition threatened to outweigh the votes
on which the President could depend. As though legislation had become
a matter of inferior importance, William H. Crawford of Georgia, the
only vigorous Republican leader in the Senate, resigned his seat, and
followed Gallatin to Europe. He was sent to take the place of Joel
Barlow at Paris, and hurried to his post. In this condition of party
weakness, the election of Rufus King and Jeremiah Mason to the Senate
was a disaster to the Administration; and all the more anxiously the
President feared lest the popular election in May should convert New
York altogether into a Federalist State, and give Massachusetts the
necessary strength to stop the war.
This election, on which the fate of the war was believed to turn,
took place as usual, May 1, and began by a Federalist success in
the city of New York, followed by another in Kings, Queens, and
Westchester counties. These counties before the century ended had a
voting population of near half a million, but in 1813 they cast in
State elections about eight thousand votes, and gave a majority of
eight hundred for the Federalist candidate Stephen Van Rensselaer,
the unfortunate general of the Niagara campaign. Throughout the
eastern and central counties the election was disputed; three of the
four districts into which the State was divided left the result so
close--within about three hundred votes--that only the western counties
of Cayuga, Seneca, and Genesee turned the scale. Governor Tompkins was
re-elected by the moderate majority of three thousand in a total vote
of eighty-three thousand; but the Federalists obtained a majority of
ten in the Assembly, and gained confidence with their strength. In this
election, for the first time, the issue was distinct between those who
supported and those who opposed the war. The chief towns, New York,
Hudson, and Albany, were strong in opposition; the country districts
tended to support.
In Massachusetts the Federalist governor Caleb Strong, who had made
himself peculiarly obnoxious by refusing to call out the State’s quota
of militia, received nearly fifty-seven thousand votes, while Senator
Varnum, the Republican candidate, received forty-three thousand.
Considering that the population of Massachusetts was about one fourth
smaller than that of New York, the vote of one hundred thousand persons
in the smaller State, and only eighty-three thousand in the larger,
seemed a proof of popular indifference; but in truth the vote of New
York was larger than usual, and only one thousand less than at the next
election of governor, in 1816. The difference was due to the unequal
suffrage, which in New York State elections was restricted to one
hundred pound free-holds, while in Massachusetts all citizens worth
sixty pounds were entitled to vote.
At the same time John Randolph met with defeat, for the only time in
his life. John W. Eppes, one of Jefferson’s sons-in-law, took residence
within Randolph’s district for the purpose of contesting it; and after
a struggle succeeded in winning the seat, on the war-issue, by a vote
of eleven hundred and twelve to nine hundred and forty-three.[33] This
change of membership tended, like the New York election, to show that
the people were yielding to the necessity of supporting the war. Yet
the process was alarmingly slow. In the second year of hostilities, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey
were Federal in all branches of their State governments; New York,
Delaware, and Maryland were partly Republican and partly Federalist;
of the eighteen States only ten were wholly Republican, and seven of
these were Southern. In the United States Senate the Administration
could count upon twenty-two votes, with reasonable certainty; the other
fourteen senators were more or less lukewarm or hostile. In the House,
one hundred and fourteen members supported the Administration, and
sixty-eight opposed it. As far as concerned numbers, the Administration
was strong enough in Congress; but the universal want of faith in its
capacity to conduct a war of such consequence gave the Federalists
an advantage beyond proportion to their numerical strength. The task
of opposition was easy, and its force irresistible when the ablest
and oldest Republican in office--the Secretary of the Treasury--felt
himself helpless in face of the Government’s inaptitude for war,
and wrote to his closest intimates that no one could “expect much
improvement in the manner of making it more efficient. I think that
there exists real incapacity in that respect,--an incapacity which must
necessarily exhaust our resources within a very short time.”[34]
Fortunately for the Government the same slowness of movement which
counteracted its undertakings, affected equally its internal enemies
in their hostility. The New England extremists wished and expected
to act energetically against the war. Chief-Justice Parsons quieted
Pickering in the autumn of 1812 by assuring him that the Massachusetts
House of Representatives would act at its winter session;[35] yet the
legislature met and adjourned without action. The party waited for
the spring election of 1813, which was to give them control of New
York. Their disappointment at the re-election of Governor Tompkins
was extreme, and the temptation to wait until the national government
should become bankrupt and disgraced became irresistible. Another
campaign was likely to answer their purpose. While England grew
stronger every day, America grew weaker; the struggle became more
and more unequal, the result more and more certain; and the hope of
peaceably restoring the Federalist party to power diminished the
temptation to adopt measures of force.
Thus when the Thirteenth Congress met for its extra session, May 24,
the Government felt stronger than on March 5, when the old Congress
expired. The elections were safely passed; the peace negotiations might
be considered as begun; taxation was no longer a matter of taste. The
majority liked taxation as little in 1813 as they had liked it in
1812 or in 1801; but they could no longer dispute or even discuss it.
Gallatin had gone, leaving the bills for them to pass; and Congress,
which at any other time would have rebelled, had no choice but to pass
them.
Once more Henry Clay was chosen Speaker, and setting Cheves aside he
placed John W. Eppes at the head of the Ways and Means Committee. The
House missed John Randolph, but gained John Forsyth of Georgia, and
Daniel Webster,--a new member from New Hampshire, of the same age as
Calhoun and Lowndes, but five years younger than Clay. Otherwise the
members varied little from the usual type, and showed more than their
usual faculty for discussing topics no longer worth discussion.
President Madison’s Message of May 25 challenged no angry comment. Its
allusion to the Russian mediation and the terms of peace had an accent
of self-excuse, as though he were anxious to convince England of her
true interests; its allusion to France contained the usual complaint of
delays “so unreasonably spun out;” and its reference to the war and
the finances was rather cheerful than cheering. Daring as Madison’s
policy had been, he commonly spoke in tones hardly to be called bold;
and this Message had the disadvantage, which under the circumstances
could not be called a fault, of addressing itself rather to Europe and
to enemies, than to a spirited and united nation. It had also the merit
of directing Congress strictly to necessary business; and Congress
acted on the direction.
Nothing less than necessity could at that moment of early summer have
induced the members of Congress to remain in session at all. Stout
as the majority might be in support of the war, the stoutest were
depressed and despondent. They saw themselves disappointed in every
hope and calculation on which they had counted a year before. Even
their unexpected naval glory was lost for the moment by the victory
of Broke’s frigate the “Shannon” over the “Chesapeake,” June 1, as
Congress began its work. Disaster after disaster, disgrace upon
disgrace, had come and were every moment multiplying. Suffocated with
heat, members were forced to sit day by day in the half-finished
Capitol, with a Southern village about them, their nearest neighbor a
British fleet. “Defeated and disgraced everywhere,” said one of the
stanchest war members describing the scene, “Congress was to impose the
burden of taxes on a divided people, who had been taught by leaders
of the war party to look upon a tax-gatherer as a thief, if not to
shoot him as a burglar.”[36] According to the same authority, “the
country was at the lowest point of depression, where fear is too apt to
introduce despair.” In this condition of spirits, Gallatin’s tax-bills
were reported to the House June 10,--measures such as the Republican
party had, till very lately, not conceived as within the range of its
possible legislation. They included a direct tax of three million
dollars; taxes on salt, licenses, spirits, carriages, auctions, sugar
refineries; a stamp tax, and a complete machinery for the assessment
and collection of these odious and oppressive imposts.
At the same moment, Daniel Webster began his career in Congress by
moving Resolutions which caused a long and unprofitable debate on the
conduct of France and the character of the French repealing Decree of
April 28, 1811,--a debate that could have no other result or object
than to mortify and annoy the President, who had been, like so many
other rulers, the victim of Napoleon’s audacity. Pending this debate,
June 13, the President took to his bed with a remittent fever, and for
five weeks his recovery was doubtful. Madison was still confined to
his bed, when, July 15, messengers from the lower Potomac brought news
that the British fleet, consisting of eight or ten ships-of-the-line
and frigates, was in the river, sixty miles below, making its way up
the difficult channel to Washington. A reasonable and well-grounded
fear took possession of the city. July 21, Serurier wrote to his
Government:[37]--
“Every one is making ready to move. I know that they are secretly
packing up at the Departments. I have as yet sent nothing away,
in order not to show distrust of the Government’s power; but I
have got ready my most valuable papers, and from the moment the
President shall quit his residence, I shall follow where he goes,
with my principal portfolios in one of my carriages.”
The British ships were approaching the city; the sound of their guns
was believed to be heard; and the Government had little means of
stopping them. Every man prepared for volunteer duty; other work was
suspended. About three thousand militia and volunteers, among whom
were all the Cabinet and many members of Congress, were mustered, and
marched to Fort Washington, which was occupied by some six hundred
regular troops, with the Secretary of War at their head; while the
Secretary of the Navy took his post on the 28-gun frigate “Adams” in
the river beneath, and the Secretary of State rode down the river shore
with a cavalry scouting party to reconnoitre the British ships.[38]
July 15 and 16 the House of Representatives ordered a Fast, and went
into secret session to consider modes of defence.
Unfortunately the motion for inquiry was made by a Federalist. The
majority, determined to make no admissions, referred the subject
to the Military Committee, which reported the next day through its
chairman, Troup of Georgia, that the preparation was “in every respect
adequate to the emergence.” When a majority could benefit only its
enemies by telling the truth, history showed that honorable men often
preferred to tell what was untrue. In this case the British ships
made their soundings, and obtained whatever knowledge they sought;
then left the river to visit other parts of the Bay, but never were
so far distant that they might not, with energy and a fair wind,
within four-and-twenty hours, have raided the defenceless village.
They had but to choose their own time and path. Not a defensible fort
or a picket-fence stood within ten miles of Washington, nor could a
sufficient garrison be summoned in time for defence. Armstrong, Jones,
and Monroe doubtless assured Congress that their means of defence were
“in every respect adequate,” but Congress took the responsibility on
its own shoulders when it accepted their assurance.
Perhaps of all the incompetence shown in the war this example most
exasperated patriotic citizens, because it was shared by every branch
of the government. For six months the Administration and its friends
had denounced Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth for betraying the
government, while the Clintonians and peace Democrats had denounced
the President for imbecility; but in regard to the city of Washington
the generals were not in question, for no generals were there, while
the President was dangerously ill in bed. The Legislature and Cabinet
were chiefly responsible for whatever should happen,--the more because
their warning was ample, even if under such circumstances warning was
needed. If Jefferson assumed as a matter of course that William Hull
was to be shot and Stephen Van Rensselaer broken for their mistakes,
Republicans might properly ask what punishment should be reserved for
Armstrong, Jones, and Monroe of the Cabinet, Troup of Georgia, Sevier
of Tennessee, Wright of Maryland, and other members of the Military
Committees of the House and Senate for their neglect of the national
capital.
The debate on Webster’s Resolutions, and the report made in consequence
by Monroe, July 12, tended to throw additional discredit on the
Government. In no respect did Madison’s Administration make an
appearance less creditable than in its attitude toward Napoleon’s
Decrees, again and again solemnly asserted by it to have been repealed,
in the face of proof that the assertion was unfounded. No Federalist
rhetoric was necessary to make this mortification felt. Madison seldom
expressed himself with more bitterness of temper than in regard to the
Emperor’s conduct, and with Monroe the subject drew forth recurrent
outbursts of anger and disgust. His report tacitly admitted everything
that the Federalists charged, except that the Administration had a
secret engagement with France: it had deceived itself, but it had not
wilfully deceived the public.
While the House was busied with these unpleasant subjects, the Senate
took up the President’s recent nominations. May 29, four names were
sent to it for diplomatic appointments,--those of Albert Gallatin,
J. Q. Adams, and James A. Bayard, to negotiate treaties of peace and
commerce with Great Britain, and a treaty of commerce with Russia;
that of Jonathan Russell to be Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden.
Rufus King immediately began opposition by moving three Resolutions
of inquiry in regard to the nature of the Russian appointments and
the authority under which the Treasury was to be administered in the
Secretary’s absence. The President replied, June 3, that the duties of
the Secretary of the Treasury were discharged by the Secretary of the
Navy under the provisions of the Act of 1792. The Senate, by a vote
of twenty to fourteen, referred the matter to a committee consisting
of Anderson of Tennessee, Rufus King, Brown of Louisiana, and Bledsoe
of Kentucky. Anderson, the chairman, wrote to the President and went
to see him on behalf of the committee, but received only the answer
that the President declined to discuss the matter with them in their
official character. The Senate then adopted a Resolution that the
functions of Secretary of the Treasury and Envoy Extraordinary were
incompatible. The Federalists obtained on this vote the support of
Giles, Leib, and Samuel Smith, German of New York, and Gilman of New
Hampshire, all of whom were disaffected Republicans; but even with
this aid they would have failed without the votes of Anderson, Bledsoe,
and the two Louisiana senators, who joined the malcontents.
Madison was then slowly recovering strength, and greatly harassed by
anxieties. He would not sacrifice Gallatin to the Senate; he hoped that
firmness would carry the point,[39] and at worst he could throw upon
senators the charge of factious opposition. This he succeeded in doing.
July 16 the Senate committee, naturally expecting Madison to suggest
some arrangement, once more sought and obtained a conference,--“when
the President was pleased to observe,” said their report,[40] “that he
was sorry that the Senate had not taken the same view of the subject
which he had done; and that he regretted that the measure had been
taken under circumstances which deprived him of the aid or advice of
the Senate. After the committee had remained a reasonable time for the
President to make any other observations if he thought proper to do so,
and observing no disposition manifested by him to enter into further
remarks, the committee retired without making any observations on the
matter of the Resolutions, or in reply to those made by the President.”
Finding itself thus defied, the Senate, without more discussion,
rejected Gallatin’s nomination by eighteen votes to seventeen, Anderson
and the two Louisiana senators still adhering to the hostile interest.
Adams and Bayard were then confirmed with little opposition.
After the passage of many years, the propriety of the decision may
still be left open to debate. As far as the Federalists were concerned,
their votes contradicted their own precedents; and if they conceded,
as their precedents required, that the question was not one of law but
of expediency, they assumed responsibility in acting as final judges.
The incompatibility asserted by them was a matter of dispute. Two
successive chief-justices had been sent as envoys abroad. No one could
doubt that the Secretary of the Treasury, or any other member of the
Executive or Judicial departments, might be appointed to negotiate
a treaty in Washington. Temporary absence from Washington had never
implied incompatibility. Everyone knew that the Secretary of War meant
in person to conduct the war on the frontier. No one could question
the President’s right to appoint acting secretaries. If convenience
alone was the point at issue, surely the President knew best the
demands of his own Executive departments, and might be trusted with the
responsibility which belonged to him. That he should fail to see, as
soon as the Senate could discover, an incompatibility that would work
only against himself, need not be taken for granted by his own party,
whatever might be the case with the opposition.
On the other hand every one might admit that as the country grew,
Secretaries of the Treasury were likely to find work in their own
Department that would effectually limit their capacity for foreign
travel; and if the Senate thought that stage to be already reached,
senators were right in insisting upon the appointment of a new
secretary in Gallatin’s place. Unfortunately for their argument,
their power did not extend so far. Gallatin remained Secretary of the
Treasury, and continued to negotiate as such, without paying attention
to the Senate or its theories.
The Senate further weakened its position in acting on the nomination
of Jonathan Russell as Minister to Sweden. The subject was referred,
June 2, to a committee consisting of Senator Goldsborough of Maryland,
together with Anderson and Rufus King. Jonathan Russell had made
himself obnoxious to the peace party by eagerness shown, while he
was in charge at London, to bring on the war. The committee not
only entered on an investigation of his doings at Paris, but also
introduced a Resolution declaring that any mission to Sweden at that
time was inexpedient, and by order of the Senate asked a conference
with the President. Monroe, angry at this conduct, declared privately
that a faction in the Senate, counting on the death not only of
President Madison but of Vice-President Gerry, and the election of
Giles as President of the Senate, were scheming to usurp the Executive
power.[41]
In order to counteract their manœuvre, and also to relieve the
President, who was then dangerously ill, Monroe took the ground that
the Executive would not confer with a co-ordinate branch of government
except through an agent, because his dignity would not allow him
to meet a committee except by a committee of his own. Monroe thus
expressed this somewhat unrepublican doctrine: “A committee of the
Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a
head of a Department, and not with the Chief Magistrate; for in the
latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.”[42]
As a necessary conclusion, Monroe’s argument seemed to the Senate not
beyond dispute; but they answered it, three days afterward, still less
logically, by passing Goldsborough’s Resolution that it was inexpedient
at that time to send a Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden.
Whatever might have been the case with Gallatin’s rejection, no one
could doubt that the vote on Russell’s appointment was factious. When
twenty-two senators, including Jeremiah Mason, Christopher Gore, Samuel
Dana, Rufus King, and William B. Giles, declared that a minister
resident in Sweden was inexpedient in the summer of 1813, they declared
what every other well-informed man knew to be an error. If any American
envoy was ever expedient, it was an envoy to Sweden in 1813; for in
Sweden at that moment all that was left of American commerce centred
after being driven from England, and the political interests of Sweden
were greatly involved with those of the United States. The error was
the less to be denied, because, only six months afterward, the Senate
admitted itself in the wrong, and approved the appointment of Russell.
These votes of the Senate made a deep impression. In time of peace and
safety the Senate might show factiousness without necessarily exciting
public anger, although at no time was the experiment quite safe; but at
a moment like July, 1813, when public opinion tended toward a serious
temper, factiousness was out of place, and was the more dangerous
because President Madison, though never showing great power as a
popular leader, had still a clear perception of the moment when to
strike an enemy. He rarely failed to destroy when he struck. The time
had come when the Republican party, with one voice, would be obliged
to insist that party discipline must be restored; and this result
was precipitated by the Senate’s conduct in regard to the diplomatic
nominations.
An illustration of the dangers into which the spirit of faction at
that excited moment led the factious, was furnished by the legislature
of Massachusetts, which met, May 26, and after listening to a long
speech from Governor Strong arraigning the national government for its
injustice to England and partiality to France, referred the subject
to committees which lost no time in reporting. One of these reports,
presented June 4 by Josiah Quincy of the State Senate, closed with a
Resolution that the Act admitting Louisiana into the Union violated the
Constitution, and that the Massachusetts senators in Congress should
use their utmost endeavors to obtain its repeal. Another report, by a
joint committee, contained a remonstrance addressed to Congress against
the war, couched in terms of strong sectional hostility to the Southern
States, and marked throughout by a covert argument for disunion. A
third report, also by Josiah Quincy, on a naval victory lately won by
Captain James Lawrence of the “Hornet,” contained a phrase even longer
remembered than Quincy’s assertion that the Government could not be
kicked into a war. The Government had in fact been kicked into the
war, but Quincy was not the better pleased. He reported that in order
not to give offence to many of the good people of the Commonwealth by
appearing to encourage the continuance of an unjust, unnecessary, and
iniquitous war, the Massachusetts senate while admiring Lawrence’s
virtues refrained from approving his acts,--
“And to the end that all misrepresentations on this subject may be
obviated,--
_Resolved_, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that
in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and
prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and ambition
are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious
people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits
which are not immediately connected with the defence of our
sea-coast and soil.”
Such tactics, whether in or out of Congress, were more dangerous to
their authors than any blunders of the Administration could ever be
to the party in power. If the nation should be successful in the war,
it might perhaps in good nature leave unpunished the conduct of its
malcontents; but if by their means the nation should be conquered or
forced into a humiliating peace, the people would never forget, and
never forego revenge. Mere opposition to foreign war rarely injured
public men, except while the war-fever lasted. Many distinguished
statesmen of Europe and America had been, at one time or another, in
opposition to some special war,--as was the case with Talleyrand,
Charles James Fox, Lord Grey, Jefferson, and Madison; but opposition
became unpardonable when it took a form which could have no apparent
object except national ruin. The Federalists who held the ideas
expressed by the legislature of Massachusetts could explain or defend
their future course only by the conviction that the inevitable
and long-expected “crisis” was at hand, which must end either in
disunion or in reconstruction of the Union on new ground. As “a moral
and religious people,” they separated from the common stock, and
thenceforward, if the Union lasted, could expect no pardon.
The extravagance of the Massachusetts Federalists was counterbalanced
by the same national disasters which caused it. Nothing showed that
the war was popular in any of the sea-board States; but the pressure
of circumstances, little by little, obliged lukewarm and even hostile
communities to support it. Virginia and the Southern States were drawn
into relations toward the government which they had never intended to
accept. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee submitted to exactions
that would at any previous stage of their history have produced a
revolution. Perhaps the strongest proof of change in popular prejudices
was furnished by the taxes. Tax-bills which were supposed to have
already overthrown one great political party,--bills which inflicted
the evils so hotly and persistently denounced by Jefferson, Gallatin,
and John Randolph in opposition, and which had been long delayed by
fear of their popular effect,--were passed by Congress quickly, by
decided votes, and with less debate than was given to the discussion
whether the President had or had not told all he knew about Bassano’s
Decree of April 28, 1811. From the time they were approved by the
President, in July and August, 1813, to the time of their repeal,
neither the President nor his party was troubled by popular discontent
on account of the passage of these Acts. They were accepted as a
necessary part of the national system, and of a war-policy.
The most curious symptom, and the one which most perplexed the
Federalists, was that this popular movement of concentration acted
in direct resistance to the movement of events. In every respect as
the Federalists looked back at the past twelve years their prophecies
had come true. The Republican party, they argued, had proved itself
incompetent, and had admitted the failure of its principles; it had
been forced to abandon them in practice, to replace the government
where the Federalists had put it, and to adopt all the Federalists’
methods; and even then the party failed. Equally imbecile in peace
and war, the democratic movement had ended in such disgrace and
helplessness as few governments had ever outlived, and such as no
nation with a near and powerful neighbor could have survived. In 1813
the evidence of downfall had become patent. The government was ruined
in credit and character; bankrupt, broken, and powerless, it continued
to exist merely because of habit, and must succumb to the first shock.
All this the Federalists had long foreseen. Fisher Ames in the press,
scores of clergymen in the pulpit, numberless politicians in Congress,
had made no other use of their leisure than to point out, step by step,
every succeeding stage in the coming decline. The catastrophe was no
longer far away, it was actually about them,--they touched and felt it
at every moment of their lives. Society held itself together merely
because it knew not what else to do.
Under circumstances following each other in necessity so stringent,
no Federalist could doubt that society would pursue the predicted
course; but it did not. Illogical and perverse, society persisted in
extending itself in lines which ran into chaos. The threatened “crisis”
had arrived, wanting no characteristic of those so long foretold;
but society made no effort to save itself. A vaster ruin and still
more terrible retribution lay beyond. The Federalists were greatly
and naturally perplexed at discovering the silent under-current which
tended to grow in strength precisely as it encountered most resistance
from events. They tried to explain the phenomenon in their own
way,--the clergy according to religious conceptions, the politicians
according to their ideas of popular character. The political theory
was the more plausible and less respectable. A. C. Hanson, the extreme
Maryland Federalist, mobbed and nearly killed in Baltimore in June,
1812, only to be elected to Congress in November, thought that the
national movement of 1813 was due to military glory. Hanson wrote to
Pickering on the subject, in the autumn:[43]--
“The war is becoming more popular every day in this State
[Maryland]. Our successes, and the weak manner in which it is
conducted by the enemy make it so.... It would seem that after
a while, unless the British can gather the sense and courage to
strike some severe blows, the war by its own generative powers
will create the means for its support. The vanity of a people
cannot bear these brilliant naval victories, and there is no
passion to which the rulers of a people can address themselves
with greater effect. Even in my district the active opposers of
the war are falling off every day, and unless we shortly meet with
some reverses, the Administration will shortly find more friends
than enemies in this State by a great deal.... The impression is
becoming universal that the enemy cannot harm us if he would. A few
hard blows struck in the right place would be of great service to
the country.”
A people that could feel its vanity flattered by such glories as the
war gave in 1813 must have felt the want of flattery to an unusual
degree. The idea was extravagant. Not so much the glories as the
disgraces of the war roused public sympathy; not so much the love
of victory as the ignominy of defeat, and the grinding necessity of
supporting government at any cost of private judgment. At such a moment
any success was keenly felt, and covered every failure. The slow
conviction that come what would the nation must be preserved, brought
one man after another into support of the war, until the Federalists
found their feet in a quicksand. The “crisis” produced the opposite
effect to that which Burke’s philosophy predicted.
Congress finished its work, and August 2 adjourned. Immediately
afterward the President went to Montpelier to recover his strength in
the air of the Blue Ridge. The session had not been unsatisfactory,
for although the Senate refused to impose an embargo, wanted by the
President in order to cut off illegitimate trade with England’s
dependencies, and although the same body put its negative on the
appointments of Gallatin and Jonathan Russell, yet Congress passed the
tax-bills, authorized another loan of seven and a half millions, and
made the business of trading under a British license a penal offence.
The operations of war alone remained to burden the President’s mind.