When the Federalists in Congress, into which body the choice for President had been thrown, took up Burr, as a less objectionable alternative than Jefferson, Morris, much to his credit, openly and heartily disapproved of the movement, and was sincerely glad that it failed. For he thought Burr far the more dangerous man of the two, and, moreover, did not believe that the evident intention of the people should be thwarted. Both he and Hamilton, on this occasion, acted more wisely and more honestly than did most of their heated fellow-partisans.
Writing to the latter, the former remarked: "It is dangerous to be impartial in politics; you, who are temperate in drinking, have never perhaps noticed the awkward situation of a man who continues sober after the company are drunk."
Morris joined the Senate at Philadelphia in May, 1800, but it almost immediately adjourned, to meet at Washington in November, when he was again present. Washington, as it then was, was a place whose straggling squalor has often been described. Morris wrote to the Princess de la Tour et Taxis, that it needed nothing "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of the kind to make the city perfect;" that it was "the very best city in the world for a future residence," but that as he was "not one of those good people whom we call posterity," he would meanwhile like to live somewhere else.
During his three years" term in the Senate he was one of the strong pillars of the Federalist party; but he was both too independent and too erratic to act always within strict party lines, and while he was an ultra-Federalist on some points, he openly abandoned his fellows on others. He despised Jefferson as a tricky and incapable theorist, skillful in getting votes, but in nothing else; a man who believed "in the wisdom of mobs, and the moderation of Jacobins," and who found himself "in the wretched plight of being forced to turn out good officers to make room for the unworthy."
After the election that turned them out of power, but just before their opponents took office, the Federalists in the Senate and House pa.s.sed the famous judiciary bill, and Adams signed it. It provided for a number of new federal judges to act throughout the states, while the supreme court was retained as the ultimate court of decision. It was an excellent measure, inasmuch as it simplified the work of the judiciary, saved the highest branch from useless traveling, prevented the calendars from being choked with work, and supplied an upright federal judiciary to certain districts where the local judges could not be depended upon to act honestly. On the other hand, the Federalists employed it as a means to keep themselves partly in power, after the nation had decided that they should be turned out. Although the Democrats had bitterly opposed it, yet if, as was only right, the offices created by it had been left vacant until Jefferson came in, it would probably have been allowed to stand. But Adams, most improperly, spent the last hours of his administration in putting in the new judges.
Morris, who heartily championed the measure, wrote his reasons for so doing to Livingstone; giving, with his usual frankness, those that were political and improper, as well as those based on some public policy, but apparently not appreciating the gravity of the charges he so lightly admitted. He said: "The new judiciary bill may have, and doubtless has, many little faults, but it answers the double purpose of bringing justice near to men"s doors, and of giving additional fibre to the root of government. You must not, my friend, judge of other states by your own. Depend on it, that in some parts of this Union, justice cannot be readily obtained in the state courts." So far, he was all right, and the truth of his statements, and the soundness of his reasons, could not be challenged as to the propriety of the law itself; but he was much less happy in giving his views of the way in which it would be carried out: "That the leaders of the federal party may use this opportunity to provide for friends and adherents is, I think, probable; and if they were my enemies, I should blame them for it. Whether I should do the same thing myself is another question.... They are about to experience a heavy gale of adverse wind; can they be blamed for casting many anchors to hold their ship through the storm?" Most certainly they should be blamed for casting this particular kind of anchor; it was a very gross outrage for them to "provide for friends and adherents" in such a manner.
The folly of their action was seen at once; for they had so maddened the Democrats that the latter repealed the act as soon as they came into power. This also was of course all wrong, and was a simple sacrifice of a measure of good government to partisan rage. Morris led the fight against it, deeming the repeal not only in the highest degree unwise but also unconst.i.tutional. After the repeal was accomplished, the knowledge that their greed to grasp office under the act was probably the cause of the loss of an excellent law, must have been rather a bitter cud for the Federalists to chew. Morris always took an exaggerated view of the repeal, regarding it as a death-blow to the const.i.tution. It was certainly a most unfortunate affair throughout; and much of the blame attaches to the Federalists, although still more to their antagonists.
The absolute terror with which even moderate Federalists had viewed the victory of the Democrats was in a certain sense justifiable; for the leaders who led the Democrats to triumph were the very men who had fought tooth and nail against every measure necessary to make us a free, orderly, and powerful nation. But the safety of the nation really lay in the very fact that the policy hitherto advocated by the now victorious party had embodied principles so wholly absurd in practice that it was out of the question to apply them at all to the actual running of the government. Jefferson could write or speak--and could feel too--the most high-sounding sentiments; but once it came to actions he was absolutely at sea, and on almost every matter--especially where he did well--he had to fall back on the Federalist theories. Almost the only important point on which he allowed himself free scope was that of the national defenses; and here, particularly as regards the navy, he worked very serious harm to the country. Otherwise he generally adopted and acted on the views of his predecessors; as Morris said, the Democrats "did more to strengthen the executive than Federalists dared think of, even in Washington"s day." As a consequence, though the nation would certainly have been better off if men like Adams or Pinckney had been retained at the head of affairs, yet the change resulted in far less harm than it bade fair to.
On the other hand the Federalists cut a very sorry figure in opposition.
We have never had another party so little able to stand adversity. They lost their temper first and they lost their principles next, and actually began to take up the heresies discarded by their adversaries.
Morris himself, untrue to all his previous record, advanced various states-rights doctrines; and the Federalists, the men who had created the Union, ended their days under the grave suspicion of having desired to break it up. Morris even opposed, and on a close vote temporarily defeated, the perfectly un.o.bjectionable proposition to change the electoral system by designating the candidates for President and Vice-President; the reason he gave was that he believed parties should be forced to nominate both of their best men, and that he regarded the Jefferson-Burr tie as a beautiful object-lesson for teaching this point!
On one most important question, however, he cut loose from his party, who were entirely in the wrong, and acted with the administration, who were behaving in strict accordance with Federalist precepts. This was in reference to the treaty by which we acquired Louisiana.
While in opposition, one of the most discreditable features of the Republican-Democratic party had been its servile truckling to France, which at times drove it into open disloyalty to America. Indeed this subservience to foreigners was a feature of our early party history; and the most confirmed pessimist must admit that, as regards patriotism and indignant intolerance of foreign control, the party organizations of to-day are immeasurably superior to those of eighty or ninety years back. But it was only while in opposition that either party was ready to throw itself into the arms of outsiders. Once the Democrats took the reins they immediately changed their att.i.tude. The West demanded New Orleans and the valley of the Mississippi; and what it demanded it was determined to get. When we only had the decaying weakness of Spain to deal with, there was no cause for hurry; but when Louisiana was ceded to France, at the time when the empire of Napoleon was a match for all the rest of the world put together, the country was up in arms at once.
The Administration promptly began to negotiate for the purchase of Louisiana. Morris backed them up heartily, thus splitting off from the bulk of the Federalists, and earnestly advocated far stronger measures than had been taken. He believed that so soon as the French should establish themselves in New Orleans, we should have a war with them; he knew it would be impossible for the haughty chiefs of a military despotism long to avoid collisions with the reckless and warlike backwoodsmen of the border. Nor would he have been sorry had such a war taken place. He said that it was a necessity to us, for we were dwindling into a race of mere speculators and driveling philosophers, whereas ten years of warfare would bring forth a crop of heroes and statesmen, fit timber out of which to hew an empire.
Almost his last act in the United States Senate was to make a most powerful and telling speech in favor of at once occupying the territory in dispute, and bidding defiance to Napoleon. He showed that we could not submit to having so dangerous a neighbor as France, an ambitious and conquering nation, at whose head was the greatest warrior of the age.
With ringing emphasis he claimed the western regions as peculiarly our heritage, as the property of the fathers of America which they held in trust for their children. It was true that France was then enjoying the peace which she had wrung from the gathered armies of all Europe; yet he advised us to fling down the gauntlet fearlessly, not hampering ourselves by an attempt at alliance with Great Britain or any other power, but resting confident that, if America was heartily in earnest, she would be able to hold her own in any struggle. The cost of the conquest he brushed contemptuously aside; he considered "that counting-house policy, which sees nothing but money, a poor, short-sighted, half-witted, mean, and miserable thing, as far removed from wisdom as is a monkey from a man." He wished for peace; but he did not believe the Emperor would yield us the territory, and he knew that his fellow-representatives, and practically all the American people, were determined to fight for it if they could get it in no other way; therefore he advised them to begin at once, and gain forthwith what they wanted, and perhaps their example would inspirit Europe to rise against the tyrant.
It was bold advice, and if need had arisen it would have been followed; for we were bound to have Louisiana, if not by bargain and sale then by fair shock of arms. But Napoleon yielded, and gave us the land for fifteen millions, of which, said Morris, "I am content to pay my share to deprive foreigners of all pretext for entering our interior country; if nothing else were gained by the treaty, that alone would satisfy me."
Morris"s term as senator expired on March 4th, 1803, and he was not reelected; for New York State had pa.s.sed into the hands of the Democrats. But he still continued to play a prominent part in public affairs, for he was the leader in starting the project of the Erie ca.n.a.l. It was to him that we owe the original idea of this great water-way, for he thought of it and planned it out long before any one else. He had publicly proposed it during the revolutionary period; in 1803 he began the agitation in its favor that culminated in its realization, and he was chairman of the Ca.n.a.l Commissioners from the time of their appointment, in 1810, until within a few months of his death. The three first reports of the Commission were all from his pen.
As Stephen Van Rensselaer, himself one of the commissioners from the beginning, said, "Gouverneur Morris was the father of our great ca.n.a.l."
He hoped ultimately to make it a ship ca.n.a.l. While a member of the commission, he not only discharged his duties as such with characteristic energy and painstaking, but he also did most effective outside work in advancing the enterprise, while he mastered the subject more thoroughly in all its details than did any other man.
He spent most of his time at Morrisania, but traveled for two or three months every summer, sometimes going out to the then "far West," along the sh.o.r.es of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and once descending the St.
Lawrence. At home he spent his time tilling his farm, reading, receiving visits from his friends, and carrying on a wide correspondence on business and politics. Jay"s home was within driving distance, and the two fine old fellows saw much of each other. On the 25th of December, 1809, Morris, then fifty-six years old, married Miss Anne Cary Randolph, a member of the famous Virginia family; he was very happy with her, and by her he had one son. Three weeks after the marriage he wrote Jay a pressing request to visit him: "I pray you will, with your daughters, embark immediately in your sleigh, after a very early breakfast, and push on so as to reach this house in the evening. My wife sends her love, and says she longs to receive her husband"s friend; that his sickness must be no excuse, for she will nurse him. Come, then, and see your old friend perform his part in an old-fashioned scene of domestic enjoyment." Jay was very simple in his way of living; but Morris was rather formal. When he visited his friend he always came with his valet, was shown straight to his room without seeing any one, dressed himself with scrupulous nicety,--being very particular about his powdered hair,--and then came down to see his host.
Although his letters generally dealt with public matters, he sometimes went into home details. He thus wrote an amusing letter to a good friend of his, a lady, who was desirous, following the custom of the day, to send her boy to what was called a "college" at an absurdly early age; he closed by warning her that "these children of eleven, after a four years" course, in which they may learn to smatter a little of everything, become bachelors of arts before they know how to b.u.t.ton their clothes, and are the most troublesome and useless, sometimes the most pernicious, little animals that ever infested a commonwealth."
At one time he received as his guest Moreau, the exiled French general, then seeking service in the United States. Writing in his diary an account of the visit, he says: "In the course of our conversation, touching very gently the idea of his serving (in case of necessity) against France, he declares frankly that, when the occasion arrives, he shall feel no reluctance; that France having cast him out, he is a citizen of the country where he lives, and has the same right to follow his trade here as any other man."
He took the keenest pleasure in his life, and always insisted that America was the pleasantest of all places in which to live. Writing to a friend abroad, and mentioning that he respected the people of Britain, but did not find them congenial, he added: "But were the manners of those countries as pleasant as the people are respectable, I should never be reconciled to their summers. Compare the uninterrupted warmth and splendor of America, from the first of May to the last of September, and her autumn, truly celestial, with your shivering June, your July and August sometimes warm but often wet, your uncertain September, your gloomy October, and your dismal November. Compare these things, and then say how a man who prizes the charm of Nature can think of making the exchange. If you were to pa.s.s one autumn with us, you would not give it for the best six months to be found in any other country.... There is a brilliance in our atmosphere of which you can have no idea."
He thoroughly appreciated the marvelous future that lay before the race on this continent. Writing in 1801, he says: "As yet we only crawl along the outer sh.e.l.l of our country. The interior excels the part we inhabit in soil, in climate, in everything. The proudest empire in Europe is but a bauble compared to what America _will_ be, _must_ be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps of one!" And again, "With respect to this country, calculation outruns fancy, and fact outruns calculation."
Until his hasty, impulsive temper became so soured by partisanship as to warp his judgment, Morris remained as well satisfied with the people and the system of government as with the land itself. In one of his first letters after his return to America he wrote: "There is a fund of good sense and calmness of character here, which will, I think, avoid all dangerous excesses. We are free: we know it: and we know how to continue free." On another occasion, about the same time, he said: "_Nil desperandum de republica_ is a sound principle." Again, in the middle of Jefferson"s first term: "We have indeed a set of madmen in the administration, and they will do many foolish things; but there is a vigorous vegetative principle at the root which will make our tree flourish, let the winds blow as they may."
He at first took an equally just view of our political system, saying that in adopting a republican form of government he "not only took it, as a man does his wife, for better or worse, but, what few men do with their wives, knowing all its bad qualities." He observed that there was always a counter current in human affairs, which opposed alike good and evil. "Thus the good we hope is seldom attained, and the evil we fear is rarely realized. The leaders of faction must for their own sakes avoid errors of enormous magnitude; so that, while the republican form lasts, we shall be fairly well governed." He thought this form the one best suited for us, and remarked that "every kind of government was liable to evil; that the best was that which had fewest faults; that the excellence even of that best depended more on its fitness for the nation where it was established than on intrinsic perfection." He denounced, with a fierce scorn that they richly merit, the despicable demagogues and witless fools who teach that in all cases the voice of the majority must be implicitly obeyed, and that public men have only to carry out its will, and thus "acknowledge themselves the willing instruments of folly and vice. They declare that in order to please the people they will, regardless alike of what conscience may dictate or reason approve, make the profligate sacrifice of public right on the altar of private interest. What more can be asked by the sternest tyrant of the most despicable slave? Creatures of this sort are the tools which usurpers employ in building despotism."
Sounder and truer maxims never were uttered; but unfortunately the indignation naturally excited by the utter weakness and folly of Jefferson"s second term, and the pitiable incompetence shown both by him, by his successor, and by their party a.s.sociates in dealing with affairs, so inflamed and exasperated Morris as to make him completely lose his head, and hurried him into an opposition so violent that his follies surpa.s.sed the worst of the follies he condemned. He gradually lost faith in our republican system, and in the Union itself. His old jealousy of the West revived more strongly than ever; he actually proposed that our enormous ma.s.ses of new territory, destined one day to hold the bulk of our population, "should be governed as provinces, and allowed no voice in our councils." So hopelessly futile a scheme is beneath comment; and it cannot possibly be reconciled with his previous utterances when he descanted on our future greatness as a people, and claimed the West as the heritage of our children. His conduct can only be unqualifiedly condemned; and he has but the poor palliation that, in our early history, many of the leading men in New York, and an even larger proportion in New England, felt the same narrow, illiberal jealousy of the West which had formerly been felt by the English statesmen for America as a whole.
It is well indeed for our land that we of this generation have at last learned to think nationally, and, no matter in what state we live, to view our whole country with the pride of personal possession.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE NORTHERN DISUNION MOVEMENT AMONG THE FEDERALISTS.
It is a painful thing to have to record that the closing act in a great statesman"s career not only compares ill with what went before, but is actually to the last degree a discreditable and unworthy performance.
Morris"s bitterness and anger against the government grew apace; and finally his hatred for the administration became such, that, to hurt it, he was willing also to do irreparable harm to the nation itself. He violently opposed the various embargo acts, and all the other governmental measures of the decade before the war; and worked himself up to such a pitch, when hostilities began, that, though one of the founders of the Const.i.tution, though formerly one of the chief exponents of the national idea, and though once a main upholder of the Union, he abandoned every patriotic principle and became an ardent advocate of Northern secession.
To any reasoning student of American history it goes without saying that there was very good cause for his anger with the administration. From the time the House of Virginia came into power, until the beginning of Monroe"s administration, there was a distinctly anti-New England feeling at Washington, and much of the legislation bore especially heavily on the Northeast. Excepting Jefferson, we have never produced an executive more helpless than Madison, when it came to grappling with real dangers and difficulties. Like his predecessor, he was only fit to be President in a time of profound peace; he was utterly out of place the instant matters grew turbulent, or difficult problems arose to be solved, and he was a ridiculously incompetent leader for a war with Great Britain. He was entirely too timid to have embarked on such a venture of his own accord, and was simply forced into it by the threat of losing his second term. The fiery young Democrats of the South and West, and their brothers of the Middle States, were the authors of the war; they themselves, for all their bl.u.s.ter, were but one shade less incompetent than their nominal chief, when it came to actual work, and were shamefully unable to make their words good by deeds.
The administration thus drifted into a war which it had neither the wisdom to avoid, nor the forethought to prepare for. In view of the fact that the war was their own, it is impossible to condemn sufficiently strongly the incredible folly of the Democrats in having all along refused to build a navy or provide any other adequate means of defense.
In accordance with their curiously foolish theories, they persisted in relying on that weakest of all weak reeds, the militia, who promptly ran away every time they faced a foe in the open. This applied to all, whether eastern, western, or southern; the men of the northern states in 1812 and 1813 did as badly as, and no worse than, the Virginians in 1814. Indeed, one of the good results of the war was that it did away forever with all reliance on the old-time militia, the most expensive and inefficient species of soldiery that could be invented. During the first year the monotonous record of humiliations and defeats was only relieved by the splendid victories of the navy which the Federalists had created twelve years previously, and which had been hurt rather than benefited in the intervening time. Gradually, however, the people themselves began to bring out leaders: two, Jackson and Scott, were really good generals, under whom our soldiers became able to face even the English regulars, then the most formidable fighting troops in the world; and it must be remembered that Jackson won his fights absolutely unhelped by the administration. In fact, the government at Washington does not deserve one shred of credit for any of the victories we won, although to it we directly owe the greater number of our defeats.
Granting, however, all that can be said as to the hopeless inefficiency of the administration, both in making ready for and in waging the war, it yet remains true that the war itself was eminently justifiable, and was of the greatest service to the nation. We had been bullied by England and France until we had to fight to preserve our national self-respect; and we very properly singled out our chief aggressor, though it would perhaps have been better still to have acted on the proposition advanced in Congress, and to have declared war on both.
Although nominally the peace left things as they had been, practically we gained our point; and we certainly came out of the contest with a greatly increased reputation abroad. In spite of the ludicrous series of failures which began with our first attempt to invade Canada, and culminated at Bladensburg, yet in a succession of contests on the ocean and the lakes, we shattered the charmed shield of British naval invincibility; while on the northern frontier we developed under Scott and Brown an infantry which, unlike any of the armies of continental Europe, was able to meet on equal terms the British infantry in pitched battle in the open; and at New Orleans we did what the best of Napoleon"s marshals, backed by the flower of the French soldiers, had been unable to accomplish during five years of warfare in Spain, and inflicted a defeat such as no English army had suffered during a quarter of a century of unbroken warfare. Above all, the contest gave an immense impetus to our national feeling, and freed our politics forever from any dependence on those of a foreign power.
The war was distinctly worth fighting, and resulted in good to the country. The blame that attaches to Madison and the elder democratic-republican leaders, as well as to their younger a.s.sociates, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest, who fairly flogged them into action, relates to their utter failure to make any preparations for the contest, to their helpless inability to carry it on, and to the extraordinary weakness and indecision of their policy throughout; and on all these points it is hardly possible to visit them with too unsparing censure.
Yet, grave though these faults were, they were mild compared to those committed by Morris and the other ultra-Federalists of New York and New England. Morris"s opposition to the war led him to the most extravagant lengths. In his hatred of the opposite party he lost all loyalty to the nation. He championed the British view of their right to impress seamen from our ships; he approved of peace on the terms they offered, which included a curtailment of our western frontier, and the erection along it of independent Indian sovereignties under British protection. He found s.p.a.ce in his letters to exult over the defeats of Bonaparte, but could spare no word of praise for our own victories.
He actually advocated repudiating our war debt,[3] on the ground that it was void, being founded on a moral wrong; and he wished the Federalists to make public profession of their purpose, so that when they should come back to power, the holders might have no reason to complain that there had been no warning of their intention. To Josiah Quincy, on May 15th, he wrote: "Should it be objected, as it probably will to favor lenders and their a.s.sociates, that public faith is pledged, it may be replied that a pledge wickedly given is not to be redeemed." He thus advanced the theory that in a government ruled by parties, which come into power alternately, any debt could be repudiated, at any time, if the party in power happened to disapprove of its originally being incurred. No greenback demagogue of the lowest type ever advocated a proposition more dishonest or more contemptible.
[3] As, for instance, in a letter to David R. Ogden, April 5, 1813.
He wrote that he agreed with Pickering that it was impious to raise taxes for so unjust a war. He endeavored, fortunately in vain, to induce Rufus King in the Senate to advocate the refusal of supplies of every sort, whether of men or money, for carrying on the war; but King was far too honorable to turn traitor. Singularly forgetful of his speeches in the Senate ten years before, he declared that he wished that a foreign power might occupy and people the West, so as, by outside pressure, to stifle our feuds. He sneered at the words union and const.i.tution, as being meaningless. He railed bitterly at the honest and loyal majority of his fellow-Federalists in New York, who had professed their devotion to the Union; and in a letter of April 29th, to Harrison Gray Otis,--who was almost as bad as himself,--he strongly advocated secession, writing among other things that he wished the New York Federalists to declare publicly that "the Union, being the means of freedom, should be prized as such, but that the end should not be sacrificed to the means." By comparing this with Calhoun"s famous toast at the Jefferson birthday dinner in 1880, "The Union; next to our liberty the most dear; may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the benefit and the burden of the Union," it can be seen how completely Morris"s utterances went on all fours with those of the great nullifier.
To Pickering he wrote, on October 17th, 1814: "I hear every day professions of attachment to the Union, and declarations as to its importance. I should be glad to meet with some one who could tell me what has become of the Union, in what it consists, and to what useful purpose it endures." He regarded the dissolution of the Union to be so nearly an accomplished fact that the only question was whether the boundary should be "the Delaware, the Susquehanna, or the Potomac"; for he thought that New York would have to go with New England. He nourished great hopes of the Hartford convention, which he expected would formally come out for secession; he wrote Otis that the convention should declare that the Union was already broken, and that all that remained to do was to take action for the preservation of the interests of the Northeast.
He was much chagrined when the convention fell under the control of Cabot and the moderates. As late as January 10, 1815, he wrote that the only proceeding from which the people of his section would gain practical benefit would be a "severance of the Union."
In fact, throughout the war of 1812 he appeared as the open champion of treason to the nation, of dishonesty to the nation"s creditors, and of cringing subserviency to a foreign power. It is as impossible to reconcile his course with his previous career and teachings as it is to try to make it square with the rules of statesmanship and morality. His own conduct affords a conclusive condemnation of his theories as to the great inferiority of a government conducted by the mult.i.tude, to a government conducted by the few who should have riches and education.
Undoubtedly he was one of these few; he was an exceptionally able man, and a wealthy one; but he went farther wrong at this period than the majority of our people--the "mob" as he would have contemptuously called them--have ever gone at any time; for though every state in turn, and almost every statesman, has been wrong upon some issue or another, yet in the long run the bulk of the people have always. .h.i.therto shown themselves true to the cause of right. Morris strenuously insisted upon the need of property being defended from the ma.s.ses; yet he advocated repudiation of the national debt, which he should have known to be quite as dishonest as the repudiation of his individual liabilities, and he was certainly aware that the step is a short one between refusing to pay a man what _ought_ to be his and taking away from him what actually _is_ his.
There were many other Federalist leaders in the same position as himself, especially in the three southern New England states, where the whole Federalist party laid itself open to the gravest charges of disloyalty. Morris was not alone in his creed at this time. On the contrary, his position is interesting because it is typical of that a.s.sumed by a large section of his party throughout the Northeast. In fact, the Federalists in this portion of the Union had split in three, although the lines of cleavage were not always well marked. Many of them remained heartily loyal to the national idea; the bulk hesitated as to whether they should go all lengths or not; while a large and influential minority, headed by Morris, Pickering, Quincy, Lowell and others, were avowed disunionists. Had peace not come when it did, it is probable that the moderates would finally have fallen under the control of these ultras. The party developed an element of bitter unreason in defeat; it was a really sad sight to see a body of able, educated men, interested and skilled in the conduct of public affairs, all going angrily and stupidly wrong on the one question that was of vital concern to the nation.
It is idle to try to justify the proceedings of the Hartford convention, or of the Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut legislatures. The decision to keep the New England troops as an independent command was of itself sufficient ground for condemnation; moreover, it was not warranted by any show of superior prowess on the part of the New Englanders, for a portion of Maine continued in possession of the British till the close of the war. The Hartford resolutions were so framed as to justify seceding or not seceding as events turned out; a man like Morris could extract comfort from them, while it was hoped they would not frighten those who were more loyal. The majority of the people in New England were beyond question loyal, exactly as in 1860 a majority of Southerners were opposed to secession; but the disloyal element was active and resolute, and hoped to force the remainder into its own way of thinking.
It failed signally, and was buried beneath a load of disgrace; and New England was taught thus early and by heart the lesson that wrongs must be righted within, and not without the Union. It would have been well for her sister section of the South, so loyal in 1815, if forty-five years afterwards she had spared herself the necessity of learning the same lesson at an infinitely greater cost.
The truth is that it is nonsense to reproach any one section with being especially disloyal to the Union. At one time or another almost every state has shown strong particularistic leanings; Connecticut and Pennsylvania, for example, quite as much as Virginia or Kentucky.
Fortunately the outbursts were never simultaneous in a majority. It is as impossible to question the fact that at one period or another of the past, many of the states in each section have been very shaky in their allegiance as it is to doubt that they are now all heartily loyal. The secession movement of 1860 was pushed to extremities, instead of being merely planned and threatened, and the revolt was peculiarly abhorrent, because of the intention to make slavery the "corner-stone" of the new nation, and to reintroduce the slave-trade, to the certain ultimate ruin of the Southern whites; but at least it was entirely free from the meanness of being made in the midst of a doubtful struggle with a foreign foe. Indeed, in this respect the ultra-Federalists of New York and New England in 1814 should be compared with the infamous Northern copperheads of the Vallandigham stripe rather than with the gallant confederates who risked and lost all in fighting for the cause of their choice. Half a century before the "stars and bars" waved over Lee"s last intrenchments, perfervid New England patriots were fond of flaunting "the flag with five stripes," and drinking to the health of the--fortunately stillborn--new nation. Later on, the disunion movement among the Northern abolitionists, headed by Garrison, was perhaps the most absolutely senseless of all, for its success meant the immediate abandonment of every hope of abolition.
In each one of these movements men of the highest character and capacity took part. Morris had by previous services rendered the whole nation his debtor; Garrison was one of the little band who, in the midst of general apathy, selfishness, and cowardice, dared to demand the cutting out of the hideous plague spot of our civilization; while Lee and Jackson were as remarkable for stainless purity and high-mindedness as they were for their consummate military skill. But the disunion movements in which they severally took part were wholly wrong. An Englishman of to-day may be equally proud of the valor of Cavalier and Roundhead; but, if competent to judge, he must admit that the Roundhead was right. So it is with us. The man who fought for secession warred for a cause as evil and as capable of working lasting harm as the doctrine of the divine right of kings itself. But we may feel an intense pride in his gallantry; and we may believe in his honesty as heartily as we believe in that of the only less foolish being who wishes to see our government strongly centralized, heedless of the self-evident fact that over such a vast land as ours the nation can exist only as a Federal Union; and that, exactly as the liberty of the individual and the rights of the states can only be preserved by upholding the strength of the nation, so this same localizing of power in all matters not essentially national is vital to the wellbeing and durability of the government.
Besides the honorable men drawn into such movements there have always been plenty who took part in or directed them for their own selfish ends, or whose minds were so warped and their sense of political morality so crooked as to make them originate schemes that would have reduced us to the impotent level of the Spanish-American republics.