James Madison

Chapter 9

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But the administration did not rely upon legislation alone in this emergency. The President followed up the act prohibiting the introduction of British goods by sending William Pinkney to England in the spring of 1806 to join Monroe, the resident minister, in an attempt at negotiation. These commissioners soon wrote that there was good reason for hoping that a treaty would be concluded, and thereupon the non-importation act was for a time suspended. In December came the news that a treaty was agreed upon, and soon after it was received by the President. The most serious difficulty in the way of negotiation had been the question of impressment. The British government claimed the right to arrest deserters from its service anywhere outside the jurisdiction of other nations, and that jurisdiction, it was maintained, could not extend beyond the coast limit over the open sea, the highway of all nations. There was an evident disposition, however, to come to some compromise. The English commissioners proposed that their government should prohibit, under penalty, the seizure of American citizens anywhere, and that the United States should forbid, on her part, the granting of certificates of citizenship to British subjects, of which deserters took advantage. But as this would be an acknowledgment virtually of the right of search on board American ships, and the denial of citizenship in the United States to foreigners, the American commissioners could not entertain that proposition. They were willing, however, if the a.s.sumed right to board American ships were given up, to agree, on behalf of their government, to aid in the arrest and return of British deserters when seeking a refuge in the United States. But to this the British commissioners would not accede.

Monroe and Pinkney were enjoined, in the instructions written by the secretary of state, to make the abandonment of impressment the first condition of a treaty. A treaty, nevertheless, was agreed upon, without this provision. But when it was sent to the President, the ministers explained:--

"That, although this government [the British] did not feel at liberty to relinquish, formally, by treaty, its claim to search our merchant vessels for British seamen, its practice would nevertheless be essentially, if not completely, abandoned. That opinion has since been confirmed by frequent conferences on the subject with the British commissioners, who have repeatedly a.s.sured us that, in their judgment, we were made as sure against the exercise of their pretension by the policy which their government had adopted in regard to that very delicate and important question, as we could have been made by treaty."

These a.s.surances did not satisfy the President. Without consulting the Senate, though Congress was in session when the treaty was received, and although the Senate had been previously informed that one had been agreed upon, the President rejected it. On several other points it was not acceptable; but, as Mr. Madison wrote to a friend, "the case of impressments particularly having been brought to a formal issue, and having been the primary object of an extraordinary mission, a treaty could not be closed which was silent on that subject." The commissioners, therefore, were ordered to renew negotiations. This they faithfully tried to do for a year, but were finally told by the British minister that a treaty once concluded and signed, but afterward rejected in part by one of the contracting powers, could not again be taken up for consideration. The opponents of the administration made the most of this action of Mr. Jefferson. The country was not permitted to forget, even were forgetfulness possible, that thousands of seamen had been taken from American vessels, and that the larger proportion of these were native-born citizens of the United States. Not that these opponents wanted war; that, they believed, would be ruinous without a navy, and therefore some reasonable compromise was all that could be hoped for.

But what was to be thought of an administration that would not go to war because it was not prepared; would not prepare in the hope that some future conjunction of circ.u.mstances would stave off that last resort; and, meanwhile, would accept no terms which might at least mitigate the injuries visited upon the sea-faring people of the United States, and possibly relieve the nation from an insolent exercise of power which it was not strong enough to resent?

As England"s need of seamen increased, the captains of her cruisers, encouraged by the failure of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling American ships and taking out as many men as they believed, or pretended to believe, were deserters. In the summer of 1807 an outrage was perpetrated on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize the contempt with which a nation must be looked upon which only screamed like a woman at wrongs which it wanted the courage and strength to resent, or the wisdom to compound for. The Chesapeake was followed out of the harbor of Norfolk by the British man-of-war Leopard, and when a few miles at sea, the Chesapeake being brought to under the pretense that the English captain wished to put some dispatches on board for Europe, a demand was made for certain deserters supposed to be on the American frigate.

Commodore Barron replied that he knew of no deserters on his ship, and that he could permit no search to be made, even if there were. After some further altercation the Englishman fired a broadside, killing and wounding a number of the Chesapeake"s crew. Commodore Barron could do nothing else but surrender, for he had only a single gun in readiness for use, and that was fired only once and then with a coal from the cook"s galley. The ship was then boarded, the crew mustered, and four men arrested as deserters. Three of them were negroes,--two natives of the United States, the other of South America. The fourth man, probably, was an Englishman. They were all deserters from English men-of-war lying off Norfolk; but the three negroes declared that they had been kidnaped, and their right to escape could not be justly questioned; indeed, the English afterward took this view of it apparently, for the men were released on the arrival of the Leopard at Halifax. But the fourth man was hanged.

For this direct national insult, explanation, apology, and reparation were demanded, and at the same time the President put forth a proclamation forbidding all British ships of war to remain in American waters. Of how much use the latter was we learn from a letter of Madison to Monroe: "They continue to defy it," he wrote, "not only by remaining within our waters, but by chasing merchant vessels arriving and departing." Some preparation was made for war, but it was only to call upon the militia to be in readiness, and to order Mr. Jefferson"s gunboats to the most exposed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed. The captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed from his command, as having exceeded his duty; but a proclamation on that side was also issued, requiring all ships of war to seize British seamen on board foreign merchantmen, to demand them from foreign ships of war, and if the demand was refused to report the fact to the admiral of the fleet. It was not till after four years of irritating controversy that any settlement was reached in regard to the affair of the Chesapeake.

New perils all the while were besetting American commerce. In November, 1806, Napoleon"s Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the introduction into France of the products of Great Britain and her colonies, whether in her own ships or those of other nations. This was in violation of the convention between France and the United States, if it was meant that American vessels should come under the prohibition; but for a time there was some hope that they might be excepted. In the course of the year, however, it was officially declared in Paris that the treaty would not be allowed to weaken the force of a war measure aimed at Great Britain. Under this decision, cargoes already seized were confiscated and the trade of the United States faced a new calamity. The decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation of a British order in council of six months before, which had established a partial blockade of a portion of the French coast. In the kidnaping business, France could not, of course, compete with England; for there were few of her citizens to be found on board of American vessels, and to seize a Yankee sailor, under the pretense that he was a Frenchman, was an absurdity never thought of. But hundreds of Americans, the crews of ships seized for violation of the terms of the Berlin decree, were thrown into French prisons. So far, therefore, as the United States had good ground of complaint on any score against either power, there was little to choose between them. Mr. Jefferson"s repugnance to war was sufficient to hold him back from one with England, though he might have had France for an ally; still more unwilling was he, by a war with France, to make a friend of England, whom he still looked upon as the natural enemy of the United States; for, notwithstanding all that had come and gone, he still regarded France with something of the old affection. In the autumn of 1807 he called a special session of Congress in consideration of the increasing aggressions of Great Britain, especially in the attack upon the Chesapeake, and the injury done by the interdiction of neutral trade with any country with which that power was at war. But he had no recommendations to offer of resistance nor even of defense, except that some additions be made to the gunboats, and that sailors on sh.o.r.e be enrolled as a sort of gunboat militia. The probable real purpose of calling the extra session, however, appeared in about two weeks, when he sent a special message to the Senate recommending an embargo.

An act was almost immediately pa.s.sed which, if anything more was needed to complete the ruin of American commerce, supplied that deficiency. A month before this time the English ministry had issued a new order in council--the news of which reached Jefferson as he was about to send in his message--proclaiming a blockade of pretty much all Europe, and forbidding any trade in neutral vessels unless they had first gone into some British port and paid duties on their cargoes; and within twenty-four hours of the President"s message recommending the embargo, Napoleon proclaimed a new decree from Milan, by which it was declared that any ship was lawful prize that had anything whatever to do with Great Britain,--that should pay it tribute, that should carry its merchandise, that should be bound either to or from any of its ports.

All that these powers could do to shut every trading vessel out of all European ports was now done; and at this opportune moment Mr. Jefferson came to their aid by compelling all American vessels to stay at home. It is not easy in our time to conceive of a President proposing, or of a party accepting, or of the people submitting to, such a measure as this.

But Mr. Jefferson"s followers were very obedient, and there was, undoubtedly, a very general belief that trade with the United States was so important to the nations at war that for the sake of its renewal the obnoxious decrees and orders in council would soon be repealed. But, except upon certain manufacturers in England, little influence was visible. General Armstrong, the American minister in France, wrote: "Here it is not felt; and in England, amid the more recent and interesting events of the day, it is forgotten." When, however, the effect was evident at home of a law forbidding any American vessels from going to sea, even to catch fish, and prohibiting the export of any of the products of the United States, either in their own ships or those of any other country, then there arose a popular clamor for the abandonment of a policy so ruinous. Within four months of its enactment, Josiah Quincy of Ma.s.sachusetts declared, in a debate in Congress, that "an experiment such as is now making was never before--I will not say tried--it never before entered into the human imagination. There is nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of fiction.

All the habits of a mighty nation are at once counteracted. All their property depreciated. All their external connections violated. Five millions of people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the limits of that once free country; now they are not even permitted to thrust their own property through the grates." While American ships at home were kept there, those which had remained abroad to escape the embargo were met by a new peril. Some of them were in French ports awaiting a turn in affairs; others ventured to load with English goods in English ports, to be landed in France under the pretense, supported by fraudulent papers, that they were direct from the United States or other neutral country.

The fraud was too transparent to escape detection long, and Napoleon thereupon issued, in the spring of 1808, the Bayonne decree authorizing the seizure and confiscation of all American vessels. They were either English or American, he said; if the former, they were enemy"s ships and liable to capture; but if the latter, they should be at home, and he was only enforcing the embargo law of the United States, which she ought to thank him for.

The prosperity and tranquillity which marked the earlier years of Jefferson"s administration disappeared in its last year. Congress, both in its spring and winter sessions, could talk of little else but the disastrous embargo; proposing, on the one hand, to make it the more stringent by an enforcement act, and, on the other, to subst.i.tute for it non-intercourse with England and France, restoring trade with the rest of the world, and leaving the question of decrees and orders in council open for future consideration. The President no longer held his party under perfect control. The mischievous results of the embargo policy were evident enough to a sufficient number of Republicans to secure in February, 1809, the repeal of that measure, to take effect the next month as to all countries except England and France, and, with regard to them, at the adjournment of the next Congress. But the prohibition of importation from both these latter countries was continued till the obnoxious orders in council and the decrees should be repealed.

CHAPTER XVIII

MADISON AS PRESIDENT

Mr. Jefferson named his own successor. Of the three Democratic candidates, Madison, Monroe, and George Clinton, he preferred Madison now, and urged Monroe to wait patiently as next in succession. Beyond two lives he did not, perhaps, think proper to dictate; and, besides, Clinton was not a Virginian. What little opposition there was to Madison in his own party came from those who feared that he was too thoroughly identified with Jefferson"s policy to untie the knot in which the foreign relations of the country had become entangled. Of the 175 electoral votes, however, he received 122; but that was fewer by 39 than had been cast for Jefferson four years before. Of the New England States, Vermont alone gave him its votes, changing places with Rhode Island, which had wheeled into line again with the Federalists.

During the winter of 1808-9, after Madison"s election but before his inauguration, he had quietly conferred with Erskine, the British minister at Washington, upon the condition of affairs. Much was hoped from these conferences; but the end which they helped to bring about was the reverse of what was hoped for. Could Madison have had his way, he would probably have preferred that Congress should have left untouched at that session the questions of embargo and non-intercourse; for the tone of the debates and the tendency of legislation naturally led the English ministry to doubt the a.s.surances which Erskine gave that these proceedings did not truly represent the friendly disposition of the incoming President. In answer to those representations, however, there came in April from Canning, the foreign secretary, certain propositions which were so presented by Erskine, and so received by the administration, as to promise a settlement of all differences between the two governments. Erskine was a young man, anxious very likely for distinction; but a laudable ambition to be of service in a good cause made him over-zealous. He exceeded the letter of his instructions, while keeping, as he thought, to their spirit. Probably he mistook their spirit in a.s.suming that his government cared more to secure a settlement of existing difficulties than for the precise terms and minor details by which it should be reached. At any rate, he agreed that Great Britain would withdraw her orders in council provided the United States would maintain the non-intercourse acts against France so long as the Berlin and Milan decrees remained in force. This being secured, he did not insist upon two other conditions--partly because it was represented to him that they would need some action by Congress, and partly because he believed that the essential point was gained by an agreement on the part of the United States to enforce non-intercourse against France while her decrees were unrepealed. These other conditions were, first, that the United States should cease to insist upon the right to carry on in time of war the colonial trade of a belligerent which had not been open in time of peace to neutrals; and, second, the acknowledgment that British men-of-war might rightfully seize American merchant vessels when transgressing the non-intercourse laws against France. He also proposed a settlement of the Chesapeake question, but omitted to say, as Canning had instructed him to say, that some provision would be made, as an act of generosity and not of right, for the wives and children of the men who were killed on board that ship. But when that settlement was accepted by the administration, he failed to resent some reflections from Robert Smith, the secretary of state, on the conduct of Great Britain in that affair, which Canning, when he heard of them, thought should have been resented and their recall demanded, or the negotiation stopped.

On the terms, however, as Erskine chose to present them, an agreement was reached, and the President issued a proclamation repealing the acts of embargo and non-intercourse as against Great Britain and her colonies after June 10. On that day more than a thousand ships, loaded and riding at anchor in all the princ.i.p.al ports in anxious readiness for the signal for flight, spread their wings, like a flock of long-imprisoned birds, and flew out to sea. There was an almost universal shout of grat.i.tude to the new President, who, in the first three months of his administration, had banished the fear of war abroad, and at home was sweeping away involuntary idleness, want, and ominous discontent. Madison had known something of popularity during his long career; but never before had he felt the exultation of riding upon the very crest of a mighty wave of popular applause. But it was one of those waves that collapse suddenly into a surprising flatness. Canning repudiated all that Erskine had done and immediately recalled him. The ships that had gone to sea, under the sanction of the President"s proclamation, were permitted by an order in council to complete their voyages unmolested; but otherwise all commerce was once more brought to a standstill. It would have been easier to bear some fresh misfortune than to be compelled to struggle again with calamities so well understood and which it was hoped had been left behind forever. Gallatin had been retained in the Treasury Department and was the President"s chief adviser, and the two were now accused of having been either imbecile or treacherous. It was openly said that they had led the young minister to agree to an arrangement which they knew his government would not sanction. But they could hardly have been so foolish as to make a bargain with the certainty that it would stand only so long as a ship could go and come across the Atlantic. n.o.body understood better than Madison how grateful a reconciliation with England would be to a large proportion of the people, and n.o.body was more disappointed that the negotiations came to worse than nothing, inasmuch as their failure led to new embarra.s.sments.

He said with some bitterness, in a letter to Jefferson, early in August: "You will see by the instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, that the latter was as much determined that there should be no adjustment as the former was that there should be one." He was unjust to Canning; the real fault was with Erskine, and with him only because his zeal outran his judgment. In another letter to Jefferson, the President says: "Erskine is in a ticklish situation with his government. I suspect he will not be able to defend himself against the charges of exceeding his instructions, notwithstanding the appeal he makes to sundry others not published. But he will make out a strong case against Canning, and be able to avail himself much of the absurdity and evident inadmissibility of the articles disregarded by him." Possibly Mr.

Erskine considered that his government would approve of his not urging these points too earnestly, inasmuch as the other side refrained from insisting upon the abandonment of impressment of seamen on board American ships. But Mr. Madison"s indignation must have covered up a good deal of mortification. He could hardly have been without the sensation of one hoisted by his own petard. It was only two years since Mr. Jefferson, with his approval, had rejected the Monroe-Pinkney treaty because instructions had not been literally complied with. Mr. Canning, in following that example, could have pleaded, had he chosen, much the stronger justification, under the circ.u.mstances of the two cases; and Mr. Madison could not fail to remember, without being reminded of it, when this agreement was thrown back in his face, that he had been willing to accept it without any protection of the rights of American seamen, the want of which was the ostensible reason for rejecting the Monroe-Pinkney treaty.

However, the administration was now compelled to meet anew the old difficulties which the Erskine agreement had failed to dispose of. The President"s first duty was to issue a second proclamation, recalling the previous one which had sent to sea every American ship in port. They could all come back, if they would, to be made fast again at their wharves, till the recurrent tides at last should ripple in and out of their open seams, and their yards and masts drop piecemeal upon the rotting decks. But many never came back, preferring rather the risk of being sunk or burned at sea, which happened to not a few, or of capture and confiscation by the belligerents whose laws they defied. Erskine was followed by a new amba.s.sador from England, Mr. Jackson. His mission, however, had no other result than to widen the breach between the two nations. A controversy almost immediately arose between the minister and Mr. Smith, the secretary of state,--or rather Mr. Madison himself, who, as he complained at a later period, did most of Smith"s work as well as his own,--touching the arrangement with Erskine. Jackson intimated, or was understood as intimating, that the administration must have known the precise terms on which Erskine was empowered to treat with the government of the United States; and when a denial was made with a good deal of emphasis on the part of the administration, the insinuation was repeated almost as a direct charge. Of course there could be but one conclusion to correspondence of this sort; further communication with Jackson was declined and his recall asked for.

It was plain enough in the latter months of Jefferson"s administration, to himself as well as to everybody else, that the embargo had not only failed to bring the belligerents to terms abroad, but that it had added greatly to the distress at home. That the measure was a failure, Madison himself acknowledged in one of his retrospective letters written in the retirement of Montpellier, sixteen years afterward. It was meant, he said in that letter, as an experimental measure, preferable to naked submission or to war at a time when war was inexpedient. It failed, he added, "because the government did not sufficiently distrust those in a certain quarter whose successful violation of the law led to the general discontent, which called for its repeal." That is to say, the government relied too confidently upon the submission of New England; was too ready to believe that her merchants would not let their ships slip quietly out to sea whenever they could evade the officers of the customs, nor slip in to land a cargo at some unfrequented place where there was no custom-house. "The patriotic fishermen of Marblehead," he says, "at one time offered their services;" and he regrets they were not sent out as privateers to seize these contraband ships as prizes, and to "carry them into ports where the tribunals would enforce the law." Apparently there was not a reasonable doubt in his mind whether such tribunals could be found in any port along the coast of New England. It is also rather more than doubtful--even a.s.suming that there was much of the kind of patriotism which he says existed in Marblehead--how long, had the government offered commissions to private citizens to prey upon their neighbors, the embargo would have been respected at all east of Long Island Sound. But this was the afterthought of 1826. Madison"s policy in 1809-10 was rather to conciliate than provoke "those in a certain quarter." He could not command entire unanimity even in his own party.

Congress pa.s.sed the winter in vain efforts to find some common ground, not merely for Democrats and Federalists, but for the Democrats alone.

Various measures were proposed to meet the critical condition of the country. Some were too radical; some not radical enough; and none were so acceptable that it was not easy to form combinations for their defeat. All were agreed that the non-importation act must be got rid of; but the difficulty was to find a way to be rid of it so that the nation should at once maintain its dignity, a.s.sert its rights, and escape a war. The President would have preferred that all British and French ships be excluded from American ports, and that importations from both countries should be prohibited except in American vessels; and a bill to this effect was one of several that was defeated in the course of the session. But at last, in May (1810), an act was pa.s.sed excluding only the men-of-war of both nations, but suspending the non-importation act for three months after the adjournment of Congress. The President was then authorized, when the three months were pa.s.sed, to declare the act again in force against either Great Britain or France, should the commercial orders or decrees of either nation be continued in force while those of the other were repealed.

If the aim of the dominant party had been to devise a scheme sure to lead to fresh complications more difficult to manage than any that had gone before, it could not have hit upon a better one than this.

Hitherto, in all the perplexities and anxieties of the situation, the government had, at least, kept its relations to other powers in its own hands, to conduct them, whether wisely or unwisely, in its own way. It could resent or submit to encroachments upon the commerce of the country, as seemed most prudent; it could close or open the ports, as seemed most judicious; or it could join forces with that one of its two enemies whose alliance promised to secure respect on the one hand, and compel it on the other. But now it had tied itself up in a knot of provisos. It would do something if England would do something else, or if France would do something else. If the proposition was accepted by England and was not accepted by France, then the United States would remain in friendly relations with England, and a.s.sume by comparison an unfriendly att.i.tude toward France; and if France accepted the condition and England declined it, then the situation would be reversed. Nothing would be gained in either case that might not have been gained by direct negotiation, and, no doubt, on better terms. But if the proposition now offered should be disregarded by both powers, the situation would be worse than before. This evidently was Madison"s view of the question. He wrote to Pinkney, the minister at the Court of St. James, a month after the act was pa.s.sed: "At the next meeting of Congress, it will be found, according to present appearances, that instead of an adjustment with either of the belligerents, there is an increasing obstinacy in both; and that the inconveniences of embargo and non-intercourse have been exchanged for the greater sacrifices, as well as disgrace, resulting from a submission to the predatory system in force." Not that he wanted war; his faith in pa.s.sive resistance was still unshaken; embargo and non-intercourse he was still confident would, if persisted in long enough, surely bring the belligerents to terms. But as to this act, he weighs the chances as in a balance. In England some impression may be made by the prices of cotton and tobacco,--"cotton down at ten or eleven cents in Georgia; and the great ma.s.s of tobacco in the same situation."

He has, however, no "very favorable expectations." But as to France, he evidently is not without hope that she will be wise enough to see that "she ought at once to embrace the arrangement held out by Congress, the renewal of a non-intercourse with Great Britain being the very species of resistance most a.n.a.logous to her professed views." But he was clearly not sanguine.

If that was his wish, however, it was gratified. Napoleon did take advantage of the act, but in such a way as to reverse the relative positions of the two nations by seizing for France and taking from the United States the power or the will to dictate terms. The French minister, Champagny, announced in a letter merely, in August, the revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees from the 1st of the following November; and, a day or two after, such new restrictions were imposed upon American trade, by prohibitory duties and a navigation act, as pretty much to ruin what little there was left of it. The revocation of the edicts, moreover, was coupled with the conditions that Great Britain should not only recall her order in council, but renounce her "new principles of blockade," or that the United States should "cause their rights to be respected by the English." Napoleon had in this three ends to gain, and he gained them all: First, to secure France against a renewal of the non-importation act of the United States, if the President should accept this conditional recall of the decrees as satisfactory; second, to leave those decrees virtually unrepealed, by making their recall depend upon the action of England, who, he well knew, would not listen to the proposed conditions; and, third, to involve the United States and England in new disputes, which might lead to war. Everything turned out as the emperor wished. The President accepted the conditional withdrawal of the French decrees, as in accordance with the act of Congress; England refused to recognize a contingent withdrawal as a withdrawal at all; and the result at length was war between England and the United States.

The acquiescence of the President in the decision of Napoleon was the more significant inasmuch as Mr. Smith, the secretary of state, had a.s.sured the French government, when a copy of the act of May was sent to it, that there could be no negotiation under the act until another matter was disposed of. A decree, issued at Rambouillet in March, 1810, and enforced in May, ordered the confiscation of all American ships then detained in the ports of France, and in Spanish, Dutch, and Neapolitan ports under the control of France. The loss to American merchants, including ships and cargoes, was estimated to be about forty million dollars. This decree was ostensibly in retaliation of that act of non-intercourse pa.s.sed by Congress more than a year before, and was, therefore, a retrospective law. The non-intercourse act, moreover, had expired by its own limitation months before many of these ships were seized; but all, nevertheless, were confiscated, though some of them had entered the ports merely for shelter. By order of the President, Smith wrote to Armstrong, the American minister at Paris, that "a satisfactory provision for restoring the property lately surprised and seized, by the order or at the instance of the French government, must be combined with a repeal of the French edicts, with a view to a non-intercourse with Great Britain; such a provision being an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France toward the United States." The injunction was repeated a few weeks later; but when the emperor"s decision upon the decrees was announced, in August, the "indispensable" was dispensed with, and a few months later an absolute refusal of any compensation for the spoliation under the Rambouillet decree was quietly submitted to.

But meanwhile the President, in November, issued a proclamation announcing that France had complied with the act of the previous May and revoked the decrees, while the English orders in council remained unrepealed. But England still had three months, according to the act, in which to make her choice between a recall of her orders in council or the alternative of seeing the American non-intercourse act revived against her. But, it is to be observed, the French minister"s announcement of the acceptance of the act of May was not made till August, and then the revocation of the decrees was not to take effect till November. November came bringing with it the President"s proclamation, when it soon appeared that there was still to be "tarrying in the eating of the cake." The decrees were to remain in force at least three months longer, till it should be known whether Great Britain would comply with those terms which France--not the United States--made the condition of revoking the orders in council; and if Great Britain did not comply, then the French decrees were not revoked. The legality of the President"s proclamation, of course, was questioned. There was, as Josiah Quincy said in debate in the House, the following February (1811), "a continued seizure of all the vessels which came within the grasp of the French custom-house, from the 1st of November down to the date of our last accounts." Other members, not more earnest, were less temperate in the expression of their indignation at what, one of them said, would be called swindling in the conduct of private affairs; while another declared that the President was throwing the people "into the embrace of that monster at whose perfidy Lucifer blushed and h.e.l.l stands astonished." France knew all this while what England"s decision would be. She was ready to rescind the orders in council when the French edicts were revoked, but she did not recognize a mere letter from the French minister, Champagny, to the American amba.s.sador as such revocation. The second French condition, that England should abandon her "new principles of blockade" and accept in their place a new French principle, was peremptorily rejected by the English ministry. That proposition opened a question not properly belonging to an agreement touching the decrees and orders,--a question of what was a blockade, and what could properly be subject to it. Napoleon"s doctrine was, not only that a paper blockade was not permissible by the law of nations, but that there could be no right of blockade "to ports not fortified, to harbors and mouths of rivers, which, according to reason and the usage of civilized nations, is applicable only to strong or fortified places."

Mr. Emott, a member of the House from New York, said in debate that the United States might well be grateful to both England and France, if they would agree upon this doctrine as good international law; since in that case, as there were no fortified places in the United States, she would never be in peril of a blockade. But it was precisely what England would not admit nor even discuss as relevant to an agreement to revoke the orders and decrees.

To "this curious gallamatry," as Quincy called it, "of time present and time future, of doing and refraining to do, of declaration and understanding of English duties and American duties," was added another ingredient of Madison"s own devising. The American ministers in England and France were instructed that Great Britain would be expected to include in the revocation of her orders in council the blockade of a portion of the coast of France, declared in May, 1806; and the President offered, unasked, a pledge to the French emperor, that this should be insisted upon. Whether he meant to make it easier for Napoleon and harder for Great Britain to respond to the act of May is a question impossible to answer; but the opponents of the policy he was pursuing were careful to point out that the act of May said nothing whatever, either of this or any other blockade; that when, the year before, the agreement was made with Erskine, the President did not pretend that the orders in council included blockades; and that it was remarkable that he should forget his own declaration regarding the monstrous spoliation of a few months before by the French, under the Rambouillet decree, and yet remember this British order of blockade of four years before, which everybody else had forgotten. Indeed, so completely had it pa.s.sed out of mind, that the American minister in London, Mr. Pinkney, was obliged to ask the British foreign secretary whether that order had been revoked or was still considered as in force. It had never been formally withdrawn, was the answer, though it had been comprehended in the subsequent order in council of January, 1807. England refused, however, to recall specifically this blockade of 1806, for that would have been construed as a recognition of Napoleon"s right to demand an abandonment of her "new principles of blockade;" but in fact--as the British minister in Washington afterward acknowledged--the recall of the order in council of 1807 would have annulled the order of blockade of 1806, which it had absorbed.

The truth is, the whole negotiation was a trial of skill at diplomatic fence, in which England would not yield an inch to the United States or to France. Madison and his party were more than willing to aid Napoleon; and Napoleon hoped to defeat both his antagonists by turning their swords against each other. A quite different result would have followed had France been as willing as England apparently was that the commercial edicts should be considered without regard to other questions; or if the American Executive had insisted that it would accept their unconditional revocation, pure and simple and not otherwise, from either power, as was contemplated in the act of May, 1810. But instead, when Congress rose in March, 1811, it left behind it an act renewing non-intercourse with England, in accordance with Napoleon"s demand that the United States should "cause their rights to be respected by the English." This meant war.

CHAPTER XIX

WAR WITH ENGLAND

In May, 1811, there occurred one of those accidents which happen on purpose, and often serve as a relief when the public temper is in an exasperated and almost dangerous condition. This was the fight between the American frigate President, of forty-four guns, and the English sloop-of-war Little Belt, of eighteen guns. This vessel belonged to the British squadron which was ordered to the American coast to break up the trade from the United States to France; and the President was one of the few ships the government had for the protection of its commerce. The ships met a few miles south of Sandy Hook, chased each other in turn, then fired into each other without any reasonable pretext for the first shot, which each accused the other of having fired. The loss on board the English ship, in an encounter which lasted only a few minutes, was over thirty in killed and wounded, while only a single man was slightly wounded on board the President. It was, as Mr. Madison said, an "occurrence not unlikely to bring on repet.i.tions," and that these would "probably end in an open rupture or a better understanding, as the calculations of the British government may prompt or dissuade from war."

This certainly was obvious enough; though it would be a great deal easier for England to bring on a war than to avert it, in the angry mood in which the majority of the Democratic party then was. But Mr. Madison preserved his equanimity. Considering his old proclivity for France, and his old dislike of England, his impartiality between them is rather remarkable. But his aim was still to keep the peace while he abated nothing of the well-founded complaints he had against both powers. When a new Congress a.s.sembled in the autumn he was careful to point out in his message the delinquencies of France as well as the offenses of England. He insisted that while England should have acknowledged the Berlin and Milan decrees to be revoked and have acted accordingly, France showed no disposition to repair the many wrongs she had inflicted upon American merchants, and had lately imposed such "rigorous and unexpected restrictions" upon commerce that it would be necessary, unless they were speedily discontinued, to meet them by "corresponding restrictions on importations from France."

This tone is even more p.r.o.nounced in his letters for some following months. If anything, it is France rather than England that seems to be looked upon as the chief offender, with whom there was the greater danger of armed collision. A fortnight after Congress had a.s.sembled he wrote to Barlow, the new minister to France, that though justified in a.s.suming the French decrees to be so far withdrawn that a withdrawal of the British orders might be looked for, "yet the manner in which the French government has managed the repeal of the decrees, and evaded a correction of other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory tendency of the repeal as much of irritation and disgust as possible." "In fact,"

he adds, "without a systematic change from an appearance of crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an open, manly, and upright dealing with a nation whose example demands it, it is impossible that good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which her policy aims at directing against her enemy should not, by her folly and iniquity, be drawn off against herself." French depredations upon American commerce in the Baltic were "kindling a fresh flame here," and, if they were not stopped, "hostile collisions will as readily take place with one nation as the other;" nor would there be any hesitation in sending American frigates to that sea, "with orders to suppress by force the French and Danish depredations," were it not for the "danger of rencounters with British ships of superior force in that quarter."

By this time, however, Congress, under the lead of younger, vigorous men--chief among them Clay and Calhoun--panting for leadership and distinction, was beginning its clamor for war with England. How much respect had Madison for this movement, and how much faith in it? A letter to Jefferson of February 7 answers both questions. Were he not evidently amused, he would seem to be contemptuous. "To enable the Executive to step at once into Canada," he says, "they have provided, after two months" delay, for a regular force requiring twelve to raise it, and after three months for a volunteer force, on terms not likely to raise it at all for that object. The mixture of good and bad, avowed and disguised motives, accounting for these things, is curious enough, but not to be explained in the compa.s.s of a letter." This is not the tone of either hope or fear. If war was in his mind at that time, it was not war with England. Three weeks later he writes to Barlow at Paris. On various points of negotiation between that minister and the French government, he observes much that "suggests distrust rather than expectation." He complains of delay, of vagueness, of neglect, of discourtesy, of a disregard of past obligations as to the liberation of ships and cargoes seized, and of late condemnations of ships captured in the Baltic; and concerning all these and other grievances he says: "We find so little of explicit dealing or substantial redress mingled with the compliments and encouragements, which cost nothing because they mean nothing, that suspicions are unavoidable; and if they be erroneous, the fault does not lie with those who entertain them." He believed that France, in asking for a new treaty, which he thinks unnecessary, is only seeking to gain time in order to take advantage of future events. The commercial relations between the two countries are so intolerable that trade "will be prohibited if no essential change take place." Unless there be indemnity for the great wrongs committed under the Rambouillet decree, and for other spoliations, he declares that "there can be neither cordiality nor confidence here; nor any restraint from self-redress in any justifiable mode of effecting it." The letter concludes with the emphatic a.s.sertion that, if dispatches soon looked for "do not exhibit the French government in better colors than it has yet a.s.sumed, there will be but one sentiment in this country; and I need not say what that will be."

Congress all this while was lashing itself into fury against England.

The ambitious young leaders of the Democratic party in the House were, so to speak, "spoiling for a fight," and they chose to have it out with England rather than with France. Not that there was not quite as much reason for resentment against France as against England. Some, indeed, of the more hot-headed were anxious for war with both; but these were of the more impulsive kind, like Henry Clay, who laughed in scorn at the doubt that he could not at a blow subdue the Canadas with a few regiments of Kentucky militia. But war with England was determined upon, partly because the old enmity toward her made that intolerable which to the old affection for France was a burden lightly borne; and partly because the instinctive jealousy of the commercial interest, on the part of the planter-interest, preferred that policy which would do the most harm to the North. On April 1, 1812, just five weeks after the writing of this letter to Barlow, Mr. Madison sent to Congress a message of five lines recommending the immediate pa.s.sage of an act to impose "a general embargo on all vessels now in port or hereafter arriving for the period of sixty days." It was meant to be a secret measure; but the intention leaked out in two or three places, and the news was hurried North by several of the Federalist members in time to enable some of their const.i.tuents to send their ships to sea before the act was pa.s.sed. Nor, probably, was it a surprise to anybody; for war with England had been the topic of debate in one aspect or another all winter, and the purpose of the party in power was plain to everybody. That the embargo was intended as a preparation for war was frankly acknowledged. An act was speedily pa.s.sed, though the period was extended from sixty to ninety days. Within less than sixty days, however, another message from the President recommended a declaration of war. On June 3 the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which Calhoun was chairman, reported in favor of "an immediate appeal to arms," and the next day a declaratory act was pa.s.sed. Of the seventy-nine affirmative votes in the House, forty-eight were from the South and West, and of the other thirty-one votes from the Northern States, fourteen were from Pennsylvania alone. Of the forty-nine votes against it, thirty-four were from the Northern States, including two from Pennsylvania. On the 17th, a fortnight later, the bill was got through the Senate by a majority of six.

Mr. Madison for years had opposed a war with England as unwise and useless,--unwise, because the United States was not in a condition to go to war with the greatest naval power in the world; and useless, because the end to be reached by war could be gained more certainly, and at infinitely less cost, by peaceful measures. The situation had not changed. Indeed, up to within a month of the message recommending an embargo as a precursor of war, his letters show that, if he thought war was inevitable, it must be with France, not England. But the faction determined upon war must have at their command an administration to carry out that policy. Their choice was not limited to Madison for an available candidate. Whoever was nominated by the Democrats was sure to be chosen, and Madison had two formidable rivals in James Monroe, secretary of state, and De Witt Clinton, mayor of New York, both eager for war. The choice depended on that question and between the embargo message of April 1 and the war message of June 1, the nomination was given to Madison by the congressional caucus. It was understood, and openly a.s.serted at the time by the opponents of the administration, that the nomination was the price of a change of policy. At the next session of Congress, before a year had pa.s.sed away, Mr. Quincy said in the House: "The great mistake of all those who reasoned concerning the war and the invasion of Canada, and concluded that it was impossible that either should be seriously intended, resulted from this, that they never took into consideration the connection of both those events with the great election for the chief magistracy which was then pending. It was never sufficiently considered by them that plunging into a war with Great Britain was among the conditions on which the support for the presidency was made dependent." The a.s.sertion, so plainly aimed at Madison, pa.s.sed unchallenged, though the charge of any distinct bargain was vehemently denied.

If Mr. Madison"s conscience was not always vigorous enough to enable him to resist temptation, it was so sensitive as to prompt him to look for excuses for yielding. In a sense this was to his credit as one of the better sort of politicians, without a.s.suming it to be akin to that hypocrisy which is the homage vice pays to virtue. Perhaps it was this sentiment which led him to accept so readily the pretended disclosures of John Henry, and to make the use of them he did. These were contained in twenty-four letters, for which the President, apparently without hesitation, paid fifty thousand dollars. On March 9 he sent them to Congress with a message, and on the same day, in a letter to Jefferson, alludes to them as "this discovery, or rather formal proof of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British cabinet." In the message he intimates that this secret agent was sent directly by the British government to Ma.s.sachusetts to foment disaffection, to intrigue "with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union" and reannexing the Eastern States to England. In the war message of June 1 these charges are repeated as among the reasons for an appeal to arms. Mr. Calhoun"s committee followed this lead and improved upon it in the report recommending an immediate declaration of war. The Henry affair was declared an "act of still greater malignity" than any of the other outrages against the United States of which Great Britain had been guilty, and that which "excited the greatest horror." The incident was seized upon, apparently, to answer a temporary purpose, and then, so far as Mr. Madison was concerned, was permitted to sink into oblivion. In the hundreds of pages of his published letters, written in later life, in which he reviews and explains so many of the events of his public career, there is no allusion whatever to the Henry disclosures, which in 1812 were held, with the ruin of American commerce and the impressment of thousands of American citizens, as an equally just cause for war. In truth there was nothing whatever in these disclosures, for which was paid an amount equal to the salary of half a presidential term, to warrant the a.s.sumptions of either Mr. Madison"s messages or Mr. Calhoun"s report. The man had been sent, at his own suggestion, early in 1809, by the governor of Canada to Ma.s.sachusetts to learn the state of affairs there and observe the drift of public opinion. His national proclivity--he was an Irishman--to conspiracy and revolution had led him to see in the dissatisfaction with the embargo a determination in the New England people to destroy the Union, reannex themselves to England, and return to the flesh-pots of the colonial period. To learn how far gone they were in these designs, to put himself in intimate relations with the leading conspirators and to bring them into communication with Sir James Craig, the governor-general of Canada, that sufficient aid should come through him at the proper moment from the British government, was Henry"s mission. Of this truly Irish plot Henry was the villain and Craig the fool; but it is hardly possible that three years afterward Madison and his friends, with all the letters spread before them, could really have been the dupes.

Henry went to Boston and remained there about three months, living at a tavern. He found out nothing because there was nothing to be found out.

He knew n.o.body, and n.o.body of any note knew him, and all the information he sent to Craig might have been, and doubtless was, picked up in the ordinary political gossip of the tavern barroom, or culled from the columns of the newspapers of both parties. He compromised n.o.body, for--as Mr. Monroe, as secretary of state, testified in a report to the Senate--he named no person or persons in the United States who had, "in any way or manner whatever, entered into or countenanced the project or views" of himself and Craig; and all he had to say was pointless and unimportant, except so far as his opinions might have some interest as those of a shrewd observer of public events. Indeed, his own conclusion was that there was no conspiracy in the Eastern States; that the Federal party was strong enough to keep the peace with England; and that there was no talk of disunion, nor any likelihood of it unless it should be brought about by war. The correspondence itself showed, in a letter from Robert Peel, then secretary to Lord Liverpool, that the letters of Henry were found, as a matter of course, among Canadian official papers, as they related to public affairs; but they had either never attracted any attention or had been entirely forgotten, and Lord Liverpool was quite ignorant of any "arrangement or agreement" that had been made between the governor of Canada and his emissary to New England. It was only because of his failure to get any reward from the British government or from Craig"s successor in Canada, for what he was pleased to call his services, that the adventurer came to Washington in search of a market for himself and his papers. He came at an opportune moment.

Notwithstanding the secretary of state frankly declared, that neither by writing nor by word of mouth did the man implicate by name anybody in the United States; notwithstanding one of the letters was evidence, the more conclusive because incidental, that the British secretary of state had known nothing of this mission contrived between Henry and Craig,--yet Mr. Madison p.r.o.nounced the letters to be the "formal proof of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British cabinet."

The charge was monstrous, for this pretended proof had no existence. If the President, however, could persuade himself that the story was true, it would help him to justify himself to himself for a change of policy, the result of which would be the coveted renomination for the presidency.

Not that there had never been talk of disunion in New England. There had been in years past, as there was to be in years to come. But talk of that kind did not belong exclusively to that particular period, nor was it confined to that particular region of country. Ever since the adoption of the Const.i.tution the one thing that orators, North and South, inside the halls of Congress and outside them, were agreed upon was, that in all debate there was one argument, equally good on both sides, to which there could be no reply; that in all legislation there was one possible supreme move that would bring all the wheels of government to a dead stop. The solemn warning or the angry threat was always in readiness for instant use, that the bonds of the Union, in one or another contingency, were to be rent asunder. But so frequent had been these warning cries of the coming wolf that they were listened to with indifference, except when some positive act indicated real danger, as in the Jefferson-Madison "resolutions of "98." It was easy, therefore, to alarm the public with confessions of a secret emissary, as he pretended, who had turned traitor to the government which had employed him and to the conspirators to whom he had been sent; and the more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a President of the United States, to make the use that was made of this story, which an impartial examination would have shown was essentially absurd and infamously false. Mr. Madison"s intelligence is not to be impugned. He was too sagacious, as well as too unimpa.s.sioned a man, to be taken in by the ingenious tale of such an adventurer as Henry. In a letter to Colonel David Humphreys, written the next spring, in defense of the policy of commercial restrictions, he says: "I have never allowed myself to believe that the Union was in danger, or that a dissolution of it could be desired, unless by a few individuals, if such there be, in desperate situations or of unbridled pa.s.sions." New England, he continues, "would be the greatest loser by such an event, and not likely therefore deliberately to rush into it." "On what basis," he asks, "could New England and Old England form commercial stipulations?" Their commercial jealousy, he contends, forbade an alliance between them, for that was "the real source of our Revolution." He closes with the significant a.s.sertion that, "if there be links of common interest between the two countries, they would connect the Southern and not the Northern States with that part of Europe." How, then, could he seriously accept Henry"s pretended disclosures as "formal proof," as he wrote to Jefferson at that time, "of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British cabinet"? By the Eastern Junto is meant the Federal party, or at least the influential and able leaders of that party; and he could not consider, nor would he have spoken of them as "a few individuals, if such there be, in desperate situations or of unbridled pa.s.sions." He accepted, then, the Henry story in spite of his deliberate opinions, as a help to involve the country in a party war.

Even at the risk of some prolixity it is needful to follow the course of events that led to this war a little farther; for here was the culmination of Mr. Madison"s career, and from his course in shaping and directing these events we best learn what manner of man he was, and where his true place is among the public men of our earlier history. For a year and a half the United States had acted on the a.s.sumption that France had recalled her decrees, and that England had not revoked her orders. The extracts from Mr. Madison"s letters, given on previous pages, show his conviction that the revocation of either decrees or orders was practically no more true of one power than it was of the other. The government of the United States, nevertheless, submitted to the one, and against the other it first reenacted the non-intercourse act, then proclaimed an embargo preparatory to war, and finally declared war. Yet the whole world knew, and n.o.body so surely as the emperor of France, that the Berlin and Milan decrees had never been formally repealed at all; meanwhile French outrages upon American commerce had continued, and all redress so persistently refused that, so late as the last week in February, 1812, the President intimated that war--war with France, not England--might prove the only remedy. But he suddenly yielded to the clamors of the war party at home, whatever may have been his motive. Then, and not till then, were the decrees actually revoked by Napoleon. In May, 1812, more than a month after the President had recommended an embargo, the hostile purport of which was so well understood, a decree was proclaimed by the emperor which for the first time really revoked those of Berlin and Milan. True, it was dated--"purported to be dated," it was said in an official English doc.u.ment--April, 1811. But that was of no moment; the essential point was, that it had never seen the light; that any hint of its existence had never been given to the American government, or its representatives abroad, till the United States had taken measures to "cause their rights to be respected by the English," which was the original condition of a revocation of the decrees. Its ostensible date was when the news reached France that non-intercourse had been again enforced against England in March, 1811; but its promulgation was to all intents and purposes the real date, when news reached France, in April or May, 1812, that war against England was finally determined upon.

The Duke of Ba.s.sano, the French minister, had not, moreover, brought out this year-old decree without pressure from the American minister, Barlow. The President had written Barlow, in that February letter already quoted, that if his expected dispatches did not "exhibit the conduct of the French government in better colors than it has yet a.s.sumed, there will be but one sentiment in this country, and I need not say what that will be." When the dispatches came, Mr. Madison received no a.s.surances of redress for past wrongs and no promises for the future; but he learned, on the contrary, that Ba.s.sano, in a recent report to the emperor, had referred to the decrees of Berlin and Milan as still in force against all neutral nations which submitted to the seizure of their ships by the British when containing contraband goods or enemy"s property. Naturally the British ministry was not slow in presenting this precious acknowledgment to the United States as a proof that she had all along been in the wrong, and that in common justice to England the non-importation act should now be repealed. The a.s.surance was at the same time repeated, possibly in a tone of considerable satisfaction, that when Napoleon really should revoke his decrees Great Britain was ready, as she always had been, to follow his example with her orders. It was an awkward dilemma for the President and his minister to France. But by this time, the Presidential nomination impending, Mr. Madison had made up his mind what to do. He was not exactly a wolf; neither was Great Britain a lamb; but the argument he used was the argument of the fable. Instead of advising--Ba.s.sano having declared the decrees still in force--a repeal of the non-importation act, as Great Britain claimed was in justice and comity her due, he recommended a war measure. But Barlow evidently felt himself to be under some decent restraint of logic and consistency. He urged upon the French minister the necessity now of a positive and imperial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded the United States, were absolutely revoked; for this recent a.s.sertion of Ba.s.sano, that they were still in force, put the United States in an att.i.tude both towards France and England utterly and absurdly in the wrong. Barlow represented that, should the revocation be extended only to the United States, Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her orders. In that case France would lose nothing of the advantage of her present position, while everything would be lost should the United States be compelled to repeal her non-importation laws against England.

Ba.s.sano was quick to see the necessity of jumping into the bramble-bush and scratching his eyes in again, and he then produced his year-old edict. Being a year old, it of course covered all questions. But was it a year old? Who knew? It had never been published? No, the duke said; but it had been shown to Mr. Jonathan Russell, who at that time was charge d"affaires at Paris. Mr. Russell denied it, though a denial was hardly needed. He would not have ventured to withhold information so important from

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