JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, A CHRONICLE OF THE VIRGINIA DYNASTY

By Allen Johnson

CONTENTS

 I. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT

 II. PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLICAN TACK

 III. THE CORSAIRS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

 IV. THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL

 V. IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS

 VI. AN AMERICAN CATILINE

 VII. AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY

 VIII. THE PACIFISTS OF 1807

 IX. THE LAST PHASE OF PEACEABLE COERCION

 X. THE WAR-HAWKS

 XI. PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE

 XII. THE PEACEMAKERS

 XIII. SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW WORLD

 XIV. FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY

 XV. THE END OF AN ERA

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES

CHAPTER I. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT

The rumble of President John Adams's coach had hardly died away inthe distance on the morning of March 4, 1801, when Mr. Thomas Jeffersonentered the breakfast room of Conrad's boarding house on CapitolHill, where he had been living in bachelor's quarters during hisVice-Presidency. He took his usual seat at the lower end of the tableamong the other boarders, declining with a smile to accept the chairof the impulsive Mrs. Brown, who felt, in spite of her democraticprinciples, that on this day of all days Mr. Jefferson should have theplace which he had obstinately refused to occupy at the head of thetable and near the fireplace. There were others besides the wife of theSenator from Kentucky who felt that Mr. Jefferson was carryingequality too far. But Mr. Jefferson would not take precedence over theCongressmen who were his fellow boarders. 

Conrad's was conveniently near the Capitol, on the south side of thehill, and commanded an extensive view. The slope of the hill, whichwas a wild tangle of verdure in summer, debouched into a wide plainextending to the Potomac. Through this lowland wandered a little stream, once known as Goose Creek but now dignified by the name of Tiber. Thebanks of the stream as well as of the Potomac were fringed with nativeflowering shrubs and graceful trees, in which Mr. Jefferson took greatdelight. The prospect from his drawing-room windows, indeed, quite asmuch as anything else, attached him to Conrad's. 

As was his wont, Mr. Jefferson withdrew to his study after breakfast anddoubtless ran over the pages of a manuscript which he had been preparingwith some care for this Fourth of March. It may be guessed, too, thathere, as at Monticello, he made his usual observations-noting in hisdiary the temperature, jotting down in the garden-book which he keptfor thirty years an item or two about the planting of vegetables, andrecording, as he continued to do for eight years, the earliest andlatest appearance of each comestible in the Washington market. Perhapshe made a few notes about the "seeds of the cymbling (cucurbitavermeosa) and squash (cucurbita melopipo)" which he purposed to send tohis friend Philip Mazzei, with directions for planting; or even wrote aletter full of reflections upon bigotry in politics and religion toDr. Joseph Priestley, whom he hoped soon to have as his guest in thePresident's House. 

Toward noon Mr. Jefferson stepped out of the house and walked over tothe Capitol--a tall, rather loose-jointed figure, with swinging stride, symbolizing, one is tempted to think, the angularity of the Americancharacter. "A tall, large-boned farmer, " an unfriendly English observercalled him. His complexion was that of a man constantly exposed to thesun--sandy or freckled, contemporaries called it--but his features wereclean-cut and strong and his expression was always kindly and benignant. 

Aside from salvos of artillery at the hour of twelve, the inaugurationof Mr. Jefferson as President of the United States was marked by extremesimplicity. In the Senate chamber of the unfinished Capitol, he was metby Aaron Burr, who had already been installed as presiding officer, andconducted to the Vice-President's chair, while that debonair man of theworld took a seat on his right with easy grace. On Mr. Jefferson's leftsat Chief Justice John Marshall, a "tall, lax, lounging Virginian, " withblack eyes peering out from his swarthy countenance. There is a dramaticquality in this scene of the President-to-be seated between two men whoare to cause him more vexation of spirit than any others in publiclife. Burr, brilliant, gifted, ambitious, and profligate; Marshall, temperamentally and by conviction opposed to the principles which seemedto have triumphed in the election of this radical Virginian, to whomindeed he had a deep-seated aversion. After a short pause, Mr. Jeffersonrose and read his Inaugural Address in a tone so low that it could beheard by only a few in the crowded chamber. 

Those who expected to hear revolutionary doctrines must have beensurprised by the studied moderation of this address. There was nota Federalist within hearing of Jefferson's voice who could not havesubscribed to all the articles in this profession of political faith. "Equal and exact justice to all men"--"a jealous care of the right ofelection by the people"--"absolute acquiescence in the decisions ofthe majority"--"the supremacy of the civil over the militaryauthority"--"the honest payments of our debts"--"freedom ofreligion"--"freedom of the press"-"freedom of person under theprotection of the habeas corpus"--what were these principles but thebright constellation, as Jefferson said, "which has guided our stepsthrough an age of revolution and reformation?" John Adams himself mighthave enunciated all these principles, though he would have distributedthe emphasis somewhat differently. 

But what did Jefferson mean when he said, "We have called by differentnames brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans--we are allFederalists. " If this was true, what, pray, became of the revolutionof 1800, which Jefferson had declared "as real a revolution in theprinciples of our government as that of 1776 was in its form?" EvenJefferson's own followers shook their heads dubiously over this passageas they read and reread it in the news-sheets. It sounded a false notewhile the echoes of the campaign of 1800 were still reverberating. IfHamilton and his followers were monarchists at heart in 1800, bentupon overthrowing the Government, how could they and the triumphantRepublicans be brethren of the same principle in 1801? The truth ofthe matter is that Jefferson was holding out an olive branch to hispolitical opponents. He believed, as he remarked in a private letter, that many Federalists were sound Republicans at heart who had beenstampeded into the ranks of his opponents during the recent troubleswith France. These lost political sheep Jefferson was bent uponrestoring to the Republican fold by avoiding utterances and actswhich would offend them. "I always exclude the leaders from theseconsiderations, " he added confidentially. In short, this InauguralAddress was less a great state paper, marking a broad path for theGovernment to follow under stalwart leadership, than an astute effort toconsolidate the victory of the Republican party. 

Disappointing the address must have been to those who had expected adeclaration of specific policy. Yet the historian, wiser by the march ofevents, may read between the lines. When Jefferson said that he desireda wise and frugal government--a government "which should restrain menfrom injuring one another but otherwise leave them free to regulatetheir own pursuits--" and when he announced his purpose "to support thestate governments in all their rights" and to cultivate "peace with allnations--entangling alliances with none, " he was in effect formulating apolicy. But all this was in the womb of the future. 

It was many weeks before Jefferson took up his abode in the President'sHouse. In the interval he remained in his old quarters, except for avisit to Monticello to arrange for his removal, which indeed he was inno haste to make, for "The Palace, " as the President's House was dubbedsatirically, was not yet finished; its walls were not fully plastered, and it still lacked the main staircase-which, it must be admitted, was aserious defect if the new President meant to hold court. Besides, itwas inconveniently situated at the other end of the, straggling, unkemptvillage. At Conrad's Jefferson could still keep in touch with thosemembers of Congress and those friends upon whose advice he relied inputting "our Argosie on her Republican tack, " as he was wont tosay. Here, in his drawing-room, he could talk freely with practicalpoliticians such as Charles Pinckney, who had carried the ticketto success in South Carolina and who might reasonably expect to beconsulted in organizing the new Administration. 

The chief posts in the President's official household, save one, were readily filled. There were only five heads of departments to beappointed, and of these the Attorney-General might be described as ahead without a department, since the duties of his office were few andrequired only his occasional attention. As it fell out, however, the Attorney-General whom Jefferson appointed, Levi Lincoln ofMassachusetts, practically carried on the work of all the ExecutiveDepartments until his colleagues were duly appointed and commissioned. For Secretary of War Jefferson chose another reliable New Englander, Henry Dearborn of Maine. The naval portfolio went begging, perhapsbecause the navy was not an imposing branch of the service, or becausethe new President had announced his desire to lay up all seven frigatesin the eastern branch of the Potomac, where "they would be underthe immediate eye of the department and would require but one set ofplunderers to look after them. " One conspicuous Republican after anotherdeclined this dubious honor, and in the end Jefferson was obliged toappoint as Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith, whose chief qualificationwas his kinship to General Samuel Smith, an influential politician ofMaryland. 

The appointment by Jefferson of James Madison as Secretary of Stateoccasioned no surprise, for the intimate friendship of the twoVirginians and their long and close association in politics ledeveryone to expect that he would occupy an important post in the newAdministration, though in truth that friendship was based on somethingdeeper and finer than mere agreement in politics. "I do believe, "exclaimed a lady who often saw both men in private life, "father neverloved son more than Mr. Jefferson loves Mr. Madison. " The difference inage, however, was not great, for Jefferson was in his fifty-eighthyear and Madison in his fiftieth. It was rather mien and character thatsuggested the filial relationship. Jefferson was, or could be if hechose, an imposing figure; his stature was six feet two and one-halfinches. Madison had the ways and habits of a little man, for he was onlyfive feet six. Madison was naturally timid and retiring in the presenceof other men, but he was at his best in the company of his friendJefferson, who valued his attainments. Indeed, the two men supplementedeach other. If Jefferson was prone to theorize, Madison was disposedto find historical evidence to support a political doctrine. WhileJefferson generalized boldly, even rashly, Madison hesitated, temporized, weighed the pros and cons, and came with difficulty toa conclusion. Unhappily neither was a good judge of men. When pittedagainst a Bonaparte, a Talleyrand, or a Canning, they appearedprovincial in their ways and limited in their sympathetic understandingof statesmen of the Old World. 

Next to that of Madison, Jefferson valued the friendship of AlbertGallatin, whom he made Secretary of the Treasury by a recessappointment, since there was some reason to fear that the FederalistSenate would not confirm the nomination. The Federalists could neverforget that Gallatin was a Swiss by birth--an alien of supposedlyradical tendencies. The partisan press never exhibited its crassprovincialism more shamefully than when it made fun of Gallatin'simperfect pronunciation of English. He had come to America, indeed, toolate to acquire a perfect control of a new tongue, but not too late tobecome a loyal son of his adopted country. He brought to Jefferson'sgroup of advisers not only a thorough knowledge of public finance buta sound judgment and a statesmanlike vision, which were often needed torectify the political vagaries of his chief. 

The last of his Cabinet appointments made, Jefferson returned tohis country seat at Monticello for August and September, for he wasdetermined not to pass those two "bilious months" in Washington. "I havenot done it these forty years, " he wrote to Gallatin. "Grumble who will, I will never pass those two months on tidewater. " To Monticello, indeed, Jefferson turned whenever his duties permitted and not merely in thesickly months of summer, for when the roads were good the journey wasrapidly and easily made by stage or chaise. There, in his gardenand farm, he found relief from the distractions of public life. "Nooccupation is so delightful to me, " he confessed, "as the culture of theearth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. " At Monticello, too, he could gratify his delight in the natural sciences, for he was atrue child of the eighteenth century in his insatiable curiosity aboutthe physical universe and in his desire to reduce that universe to anintelligible mechanism. He was by instinct a rationalist and a foeto superstition in any form, whether in science or religion. Hisindefatigable pen was as ready to discuss vaccination and yellow feverwith Dr. Benjamin Rush as it was to exchange views with Dr. Priestley onthe ethics of Jesus. 

The diversity of Jefferson's interests is truly remarkable. Monticellois a monument to his almost Yankee-like ingenuity. He writes to hisfriend Thomas Paine to assure him that the semi-cylindrical form of roofafter the De Lorme pattern, which he proposes for his house, is entirelypracticable, for he himself had "used it at home for a dome, being 120degrees of an oblong octagon. " He was characteristically American inhis receptivity to new ideas from any source. A chance item about EliWhitney of New Haven arrests his attention and forthwith he writes toMadison recommending a "Mr. Whitney at Connecticut, a mechanic of thefirst order of ingenuity, who invented the cotton gin, " and who hasrecently invented "molds and machines for making all the pieces of his[musket] locks so exactly equal that take one hundred locks to piecesand mingle their parts and the hundred locks may be put together as wellby taking the first pieces which come to hand. " To Robert Fulton, then laboring to perfect his torpedoes and submarine, Jefferson wroteencouragingly: "I have ever looked to the submarine boat as most to bedepended on for attaching them [i. E. , torpedoes]. . . . I am in hopes itis not to be abandoned as impracticable. "

It was not wholly affectation, therefore, when Jefferson wrote, "Natureintended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them mysupreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myselfon the boisterous ocean of political passions. " One can readily picturethis Virginia farmer-philosopher ruefully closing his study door, takinga last look over the gardens and fields of Monticello, in the goldendays of October, and mounting Wildair, his handsome thoroughbred, setting out on the dusty road for that little political world atWashington, where rumor so often got the better of reason and wheregossip was so likely to destroy philosophic serenity. 

Jefferson had been a widower for many years; and so, since his daughterswere married and had households of their own, he was forced to presideover his menage at Washington without the feminine touch and tactso much needed at this American court. Perhaps it was this unhappycircumstance quite as much as his dislike for ceremonies and formalitiesthat made Jefferson do away with the weekly levees of his predecessorsand appoint only two days, the First of January and the Fourth of July, for public receptions. On such occasions he begged Mrs. Dolly Madisonto act as hostess; and a charming and gracious figure she was, castinga certain extenuating veil over the President's gaucheries. Jeffersonheld, with his many political heresies, certain theories of socialintercourse which ran rudely counter to the prevailing etiquette offoreign courts. Among the rules which he devised for his republicancourt, the precedence due to rank was conspicuously absent, because heheld that "all persons when brought together in society are perfectlyequal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out ofoffice. " One of these rules to which the Cabinet gravely subscribed readas follows:

"To maintain the principles of equality, or of pele mele, and preventthe growth of precedence out of courtesy, the members of the Executivewill practise at their own houses, and recommend an adherence to theancient usage of the country, of gentlemen in mass giving precedenceto the ladies in mass, in passing from one apartment where they areassembled into another. "

The application of this rule on one occasion gave rise to an incidentwhich convulsed Washington society. President Jefferson had invited todinner the new British Minister Merry and his wife, the Spanish MinisterYrujo and his wife, the French Minister Pichon and his wife, and Mr. AndMrs. Madison. When dinner was announced, Mr. Jefferson gave his hand toMrs. Madison and seated her on his right, leaving the rest to stragglein as they pleased. Merry, fresh from the Court of St. James, was aghastand affronted; and when a few days later, at a dinner given by theSecretary of State, he saw Mrs. Merry left without an escort, while Mr. Madison took Mrs. Gallatin to the table, he believed that a deliberateinsult was intended. To appease this indignant Briton the President wasobliged to explain officially his rule of "pole mele"; but Mrs. Merrywas not appeased and positively refused to appear at the President's NewYear's Day reception. "Since then, " wrote the amused Pichon, "Washingtonsociety is turned upside down; all the women are to the last degreeexasperated against Mrs. Merry; the Federalist newspapers have takenup the matter, and increased the irritations by sarcasms on theadministration and by making a burlesque of the facts. " Then Merryrefused an invitation to dine again at the President's, saying that heawaited instructions from his Government; and the Marquis Yrujo, who hadreasons of his own for fomenting trouble, struck an alliance with theMerrys and also declined the President's invitation. Jefferson wasincensed at their conduct, but put the blame upon Mrs. Merry, whomhe characterized privately as a "virago who has already disturbed ourharmony extremely. "

A brilliant English essayist has observed that a government to secureobedience must first excite reverence. Some such perception, coincidingwith native taste, had moved George Washington to assume the trappingsof royalty, in order to surround the new presidential office withimpressive dignity. Posterity has, accordingly, visualized the firstPresident and Father of his Country as a statuesque figure, posing atformal levees with a long sword in a scabbard of white polished leather, and clothed in black velvet knee-breeches, with yellow gloves and acocked hat. The third President of the United States harbored no suchillusions and affected no such poses. Governments were made by rationalbeings--"by the consent of the governed, " he had written in a memorabledocument--and rested on no emotional basis. Thomas Jefferson remainedThomas Jefferson after his election to the chief magistracy; and socontemporaries saw him in the President's House, an unimpressive figureclad in "a blue coat, a thick gray-colored hairy waistcoat, with a redunderwaist lapped over it, green velveteen breeches, with pearl buttons, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels. " Anyone might have foundhim, as Senator Maclay did, sitting "in a lounging manner, on one hipcommonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other, "a loose, shackling figure with no pretense at dignity. 

In his dislike for all artificial distinctions between man and man, Jefferson determined from the outset to dispense a true Southernhospitality at the President's House and to welcome any one at anyhour on any day. There was therefore some point to John Quincy Adams'switticism that Jefferson's "whole eight years was a levee. " No one coulddeny that he entertained handsomely. Even his political opponents rosefrom his table with a comfortable feeling of satiety which made themmore kindly in their attitude toward their host. "We sat down at thetable at four, " wrote Senator Plumer of New Hampshire, "rose at six, and walked immediately into another room and drank coffee. We had a verygood dinner, with a profusion of fruits and sweetmeats. The wine wasthe best I ever drank, particularly the champagne, which was indeeddelicious. "

It was in the circle of his intimates that Jefferson appeared at hisbest, and of all his intimate friends Madison knew best how to evoke thetrue Jefferson. To outsiders Madison appeared rather taciturn, but amonghis friends he was genial and even lively, amusing all by his readyhumor and flashes of wit. To his changes of mood Jefferson alwaysresponded. Once started Jefferson would talk on and on, in a looseand rambling fashion, with a great deal of exaggeration and with manyvagaries, yet always scattering much information on a great variety oftopics. Here we may leave him for the moment, in the exhilaratinghours following his inauguration, discoursing with Pinckney, Gallatin, Madison, Burr, Randolph, Giles, Macon, and many another good Republican, and evolving the policies of his Administration. 

CHAPTER II. PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLICAN TACK

President Jefferson took office in a spirit of exultation which he madeno effort to disguise in his private letters. "The tough sides of ourArgosie, " he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been thoroughly tried. Herstrength has stood the waves into which she was steered with a view tosink her. We shall put her on her Republican tack, and she will now showby the beauty of her motion the skill of her builders. " In him as inhis two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of thatphilosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of theFrench Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of manand the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from manthe shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a freegovernment, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republicangovernment was the strongest government on earth, because it was foundedon free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate desires ofmen. Only one thing was wanting to make the American people happy andprosperous, said the President in his Inaugural Address "a wise andfrugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits ofindustry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor thebread it has earned. " This, he believed, was the sum of good government;and this was the government which he was determined to establish. Whether government thus reduced to lowest terms would prove adequate ina world rent by war, only the future could disclose. 

It was only in intimate letters and in converse with Gallatin andMadison that Jefferson revealed his real purposes. So completely didJefferson take these two advisers into his confidence, and so loyalwas their cooperation, that the Government for eight years has beendescribed as a triumvirate almost as clearly defined as any triumvirateof Rome. Three more congenial souls certainly have never ruled a nation, for they were drawn together not merely by agreement on a common policybut by sympathetic understanding of the fundamental principles ofgovernment. Gallatin and Madison often frequented the President's House, and there one may see them in imagination and perhaps catch now and thena fragment of their conversation:

Gallatin: We owe much to geographical position; we have been fortunatein escaping foreign wars. If we can maintain peaceful relations withother nations, we can keep down the cost of administration and avoid allthe ills which follow too much government. 

The President: After all, we are chiefly an agricultural people and ifwe shape our policy accordingly we shall be much more likely to multiplyand be happy than as if we mimicked an Amsterdam, a Hamburg, or a citylike London. 

Madison (quietly): I quite agree with you. We must keep the governmentsimple and republican, avoiding the corruption which inevitably prevailsin crowded cities. 

Gallatin (pursuing his thought): The moment you allow the national debtto mount, you entail burdens on posterity and augment the operations ofgovernment. 

The President (bitterly): The principle of spending money to be paidby posterity is but swindling futurity on a large scale. That was whatHamilton--

Gallatin: Just so; and if this administration does not reduce taxes, they will never be reduced. We must strike at the root of the evil andavert the danger of multiplying the functions of government. Iwould repeal all internal taxes. These pretended tax-preparations, treasure-preparations, and army-preparations against contingent warstend only to encourage wars. 

The President (nodding his head in agreement): The discharge of the debtis vital to the destinies of our government, and for the present wemust make all objects subordinate to this. We must confine our generalgovernment to foreign concerns only and let our affairs be disentangledfrom those of all other nations, except as to commerce. And our commerceis so valuable to other nations that they will be glad to purchase it, when they know that all we ask is justice. Why, then, should we notreduce our general government to a very simple organization and a veryunexpensive one--a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants?

It was precisely the matter of selecting these few servants whichworried the President during his first months in office, for the federaloffices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped that he wouldhave to make only a few removals any other course would expose him tothe charge of inconsistency after his complacent statement that therewas no fundamental difference between Republicans and Federalists. Buthis followers thought otherwise; they wanted the spoils of victory andthey meant to have them. Slowly and reluctantly Jefferson yielded topressure, justifying himself as he did so by the reflection that a dueparticipation in office was a matter of right. And how, pray, coulddue participation be obtained, if there were no removals? Deathswere regrettably few; and resignations could hardly be expected. Onceremovals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, he wrote hopefully about establishing anequilibrium and then returning "with joy to that state of things whenthe only questions concerning a candidate shall be: Is he honest? Is hecapable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?" That blessed expectationwas never realized. By the end of his second term, a Federalist inoffice was as rare as a Republican under Adams. 

The removal of the Collector of the Port at New Haven and theappointment of an octogenarian whose chief qualification was hisRepublicanism brought to a head all the bitter animosity of FederalistNew England. The hostility to Jefferson in this region was no ordinarypolitical opposition, as he knew full well, for it was compounded ofmany ingredients. In New England there was a greater social solidaritythan existed anywhere else in the Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious and political traditions, and boundtogether by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, the people ofthis section had, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride. "Here all the forces of education, property, religion, and respectabilitywere united in the maintenance of the established order against theassaults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a bodyof political doctrine as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forcesliberated by the French Revolution was the dominating emotion. To theFederalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce infidelity, looseness of morals, and political chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher Ames, "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell. " So thinking and feeling, they had witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine alarm, forJefferson they held to be no better than a Jacobin, bent upon subvertingthe social order and saturated with all the heterodox notions ofVoltaire and Thomas Paine. 

The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as Collector of New Haven wasevidence enough to the Federalist mind, which fed upon suspicion, thatJefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham Bishop, for politicalservices. The younger Bishop was a stench in their nostrils, for at arecent celebration of the Republican victory he had shocked the goodpeople of Connecticut by characterizing Jefferson as "the illustriouschief who, once insulted, now presides over the Union, " and comparinghim with the Saviour of the world, "who, once insulted, now presidesover the universe. " And this had not been his first transgression: hewas known as an active and intemperate rebel against the standing order. No wonder that Theodore Dwight voiced the alarm of all New EnglandFederalists in an oration at New Haven, in which he declared thataccording to the doctrines of Jacobinism "the greatest villain in thecommunity is the fittest person to make and execute the laws. " "We havenow, " said he, "reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves. " Here was anopposition which, if persisted in, might menace the integrity of theUnion. 

Scarcely less vexatious was the business of appointments in New Yorkwhere three factions in the Republican party struggled for the controlof the patronage. Which should the President support? Gallatin, whosefather-in-law was prominent in the politics of the State, was inclinedto favor Burr and his followers; but the President already felt a deepdistrust of Burr and finally surrendered to the importunities of DeWittClinton, who had formed an alliance with the Livingston interests todrive Burr from the party. Despite the pettiness of the game, whichdisgusted both Gallatin and Jefferson, the decision was fateful. It wasno light matter, even for the chief magistrate, to offend Aaron Burr. 

From these worrisome details of administration, the President turnedwith relief to the preparation of his first address to Congress. Thekeynote was to be economy. But just how economies were actually to beeffected was not so clear. For months Gallatin had been toiling overmasses of statistics, trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to satisfy the demands of the party, with the discharge of the publicdebt. By laborious calculation he found that if $7, 300, 000 were setaside each year, the debt--principal and interest--could be dischargedwithin sixteen years. But if the unpopular excise were abandoned, wherewas the needed revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be thought of. The alternative, then, was to reduce expenditures. But how and where?

Under these circumstances the President and his Cabinet adopted thecourse which in the light of subsequent events seems to have beenwoefully ill-timed and hazardous in the extreme. They determined tosacrifice the army and navy. In extenuation of this decision, it maybe said that the danger of war with France, which had forced the AdamsAdministration to double expenditures, had passed; and that Europe wasat this moment at peace, though only the most sanguine and shortsightedcould believe that continued peace was possible in Europe with the FirstConsul in the saddle. It was agreed, then, that the expenditures forthe military and naval establishments should be kept at about$2, 500, 000--somewhat below the normal appropriation before the recentwar-flurry; and that wherever possible expenses should be reduced bycareful pruning of the list of employees at the navy yards. Such wasthe programme of humdrum economy which President Jefferson laid beforeCongress. After the exciting campaign of 1800, when the public wasassured that the forces of Darkness and Light were locked in deadlycombat for the soul of the nation, this tame programme seemed like ananticlimax. But those who knew Thomas Jefferson learned to discount thevagaries to which he gave expression in conversation. As John QuincyAdams once remarked after listening to Jefferson's brilliant tabletalk, "Mr. Jefferson loves to excite wonder. " Yet Thomas Jefferson, philosopher, was a very different person from Thomas Jefferson, practical politician. Paradoxical as it may seem, the new President, of all men of his day, was the least likely to undertake revolutionarypolicies; and it was just this acquaintance with Jefferson's mentalhabits which led his inveterate enemy, Alexander Hamilton, to advise hisparty associates to elect Jefferson rather than Burr. 

The President broke with precedent, however, in one small particular. Hewas resolved not to follow the practice of his Federalist predecessorsand address Congress in person. The President's speech to the two housesin joint session savored too much of a speech from the throne; it was asymptom of the Federalist leaning to monarchical forms and practices. Hesent his address, therefore, in writing, accompanied with letters tothe presiding officers of the two chambers, in which he justified thisdeparture from custom on the ground of convenience and economy of time. "I have had principal regard, " he wrote, "to the convenience of theLegislature, to the economy of their time, to the relief from theembarrassment of immediate answers on subjects not yet fully beforethem, and to the benefits thence resulting to the public affairs. " Thisexplanation deceived no one, unless it was the writer himself. It wasthoroughly characteristic of Thomas Jefferson that he often explainedhis conduct by reasons which were obvious afterthoughts--an unfortunatehabit which has led his contemporaries and his unfriendly biographers tocharge him with hypocrisy. And it must be admitted that his preferencefor indirect methods of achieving a purpose exposed him justly to thereproaches of those who liked frankness and plain dealing. It is notunfair, then, to wonder whether the President was not thinking ratherof his own convenience when he elected to address Congress by writtenmessage, for he was not a ready nor an impressive speaker. At allevents, he established a precedent which remained unbroken until anotherDemocratic President, one hundred and twelve years later, returned tothe practice of Washington and Adams. 

If the Federalists of New England are to be believed, hypocrisy markedthe presidential message from the very beginning to the end. It beganwith a pious expression of thanks "to the beneficent Being" who hadbeen pleased to breathe into the warring peoples of Europe a spirit offorgiveness and conciliation. But even the most bigoted Federalist whocould not tolerate religious views differing from his own must havebeen impressed with the devout and sincere desire of the President topreserve peace. Peace! peace! It was a sentiment which ran through themessage like the watermark in the very paper on which he wrote; it wasthe condition, the absolutely indispensable condition, of every chastereformation which he advocated. Every reduction of public expenditurewas predicated on the supposition that the danger of war was remotebecause other nations would desire to treat the United States justly. "Salutary reductions in habitual expenditures" were urged in everybranch of the public service from the diplomatic and revenue servicesto the judiciary and the naval yards. War might come, indeed, but"sound principles would not justify our taxing the industry of ourfellow-citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know notwhen, and which might not, perhaps, happen but from the temptationsoffered by that treasure. "

On all concrete matters the President's message cut close to theline which Gallatin had marked out. The internal taxes should now bedispensed with and corresponding reductions be made in "our habitualexpenditures. " There had been unwise multiplication of federal offices, many of which added nothing to the efficiency of the Government but onlyto the cost. These useless offices should be lopped off, for "when weconsider that this Government is charged with the external and mutualrelations only of these States, . . . We may well doubt whether ourorganization is not too complicated, too expensive. " In this connectionCongress might well consider the Federal Judiciary, particularly thecourts newly erected, and "judge of the proportion which the institutionbears to the business it has to perform. " * And finally, Congress shouldconsider whether the law relating to naturalization should not berevised. "A denial of citizenship under a residence of fourteen yearsis a denial to a great proportion of those who ask it"; and "shall werefuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality whichsavages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in thisland?"

 * The studied moderation of the message gave no hint of Jefferson's resolute purpose to procure the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801. The history of this act and its repeal, as well as of the attack upon the judiciary, is recounted by Edward S. Corwin in "John Marshall and the Constitution" in "The Chronicles of America. "

The most inveterate foe could not characterize this message asrevolutionary, however much he might dissent from the policiesadvocated. It was not Jefferson's way, indeed, to announce hisintentions boldly and hew his way relentlessly to his objective. Hewas far too astute as a party leader to attempt to force his will uponRepublicans in Congress. He would suggest; he would advise; he wouldcautiously express an opinion; but he would never dictate. Yet fewPresidents have exercised a stronger directive influence upon Congressthan Thomas Jefferson during the greater part of his Administration. Solong as he was en rapport with Nathaniel Macon, Speaker of the House, and with John Randolph, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, he could direct the policies of his party as effectively as the mostautocratic dictator. When he had made up his mind that Justice SamuelChase of the Supreme Court should be impeached, he simply penned a noteto Joseph Nicholson, who was then managing the impeachment of JudgePickering, raising the question whether Chase's attack on the principlesof the Constitution should go unpunished. "I ask these questions foryour consideration, " said the President deferentially; "for myself, it is better that I should not interfere. " And eventually impeachmentproceedings were instituted. 

In this memorable first message, the President alluded to a littleincident which had occurred in the Mediterranean, "the only exception tothis state of general peace with which we have been blessed. " Tripoli, one of the Barbary States, had begun depredations upon American commerceand the President had sent a small squadron for protection. A ship ofthis squadron, the schooner Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitanman-of-war and after a fight lasting three hours had forced the corsairto strike her colors. But since war had not been declared and thePresident's orders were to act only on the defensive, the crew ofthe Enterprise dismantled the captured vessel and let her go. WouldCongress, asked the President, take under consideration the advisabilityof placing our forces on an equality with those of our adversaries?Neither the President nor his Secretary of the Treasury seems to havebeen aware that this single cloud on the horizon portended a storm oflong duration. Yet within a year it became necessary to delay furtherreductions in the naval establishment and to impose new taxes to meetthe very contingency which the peace-loving President declared mostremote. Moreover, the very frigates which he had proposed to lay upin the eastern branch of the Potomac were manned and dispatched to theMediterranean to bring the Corsairs to terms. 

CHAPTER III. THE CORSAIRS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

Shortly after Jefferson's inauguration a visitor presented himself atthe Executive Mansion with disquieting news from the Mediterranean. Captain William Bainbridge of the frigate George Washington had justreturned from a disagreeable mission. He had been commissioned to carryto the Dey of Algiers the annual tribute which the United States hadcontracted to pay. It appeared that while the frigate lay at anchorunder the shore batteries off Algiers, the Dey attempted torequisition her to carry his ambassador and some Turkish passengers toConstantinople. Bainbridge, who felt justly humiliated by hismission, wrathfully refused. An American frigate do errands for thisinsignificant pirate? He thought not! The Dey pointed to his batteries, however, and remarked, "You pay me tribute, by which you become myslaves; I have, therefore, a right to order you as I may think proper. "The logic of the situation was undeniably on the side of the master ofthe shore batteries. Rather than have his ship blown to bits, Bainbridgeswallowed his wrath and submitted. On the eve of departure, he hadto submit to another indignity. The colors of Algiers must fly atthe masthead. Again Bainbridge remonstrated and again the Dey lookedcasually at his guns trained on the frigate. So off the frigate sailedwith the Dey's flag fluttering from her masthead, and her captaincursing lustily. 

The voyage of fifty-nine days to Constantinople, as Bainbridge recountedit to the President, was not without its amusing incidents. Bainbridgeregaled the President with accounts of his Mohammedan passengers, whofound much difficulty in keeping their faces to the east while thefrigate went about on a new tack. One of the faithful was delegatedfinally to watch the compass so that the rest might continue theirprayers undisturbed. And at Constantinople Bainbridge had curiousexperiences with the Moslems. He announced his arrival as from theUnited States of America he had hauled down the Dey's flag as soon ashe was out of reach of the batteries. The port officials were greatlypuzzled. What, pray, were the United States? Bainbridge explained thatthey were part of the New World which Columbus had discovered. The GrandSeigneur then showed great interest in the stars of the American flag, remarking that, as his own was decorated with one of the heavenlybodies, the coincidence must be a good omen of the future friendlyintercourse of the two nations. Bainbridge did his best to turn hisunpalatable mission to good account, but he returned home in bitterhumiliation. He begged that he might never again be sent to Algiers withtribute unless he was authorized to deliver it from the cannon's mouth. 

The President listened sympathetically to Bainbridge's story, for hewas not unfamiliar with the ways of the Barbary Corsairs and he had longbeen of the opinion that tribute only made these pirates bolder and moreinsufferable. The Congress of the Confederation, however, had followedthe policy of the European powers and had paid tribute to secureimmunity from attack, and the new Government had simply continued thepolicy of the old. In spite of his abhorrence of war, Jefferson heldthat coercion in this instance was on the whole cheaper and moreefficacious. Not long after this interview with Bainbridge, PresidentJefferson was warned that the Pasha of Tripoli was worrying the AmericanConsul with importunate demands for more tribute. This African potentatehad discovered that his brother, the Dey of Algiers, had made a betterbargain with the United States. He announced, therefore, that he musthave a new treaty with more tribute or he would declare war. Fearingtrouble from this quarter, the President dispatched a squadron of fourvessels under Commodore Richard Dale to cruise in the Mediterranean, with orders to protect American commerce. It was the schooner Enterpriseof this squadron which overpowered the Tripolitan cruiser, as Jeffersonrecounted in his message to Congress. 

The former Pasha of Tripoli had been blessed with three sons, Hasan, Hamet, and Yusuf. Between these royal brothers, however, there seemsto have been some incompatibility of temperament, for when their fatherdied (Blessed be Allah!) Yusuf, the youngest, had killed Hasan and hadspared Hamet only because he could not lay hands upon him. Yusuf thenproclaimed himself Pasha. It was Yusuf, the Pasha with this bloodyrecord, who declared war on the United States, May 10, 1801, by cuttingdown the flagstaff of the American consulate. 

To apply the term war to the naval operations which followed is, however, to lend specious importance to very trivial events. CommodoreDale made the most of his little squadron, it is true, convoyingmerchantmen through the straits and along the Barbary coast, holdingTripolitan vessels laden with grain in hopeless inactivity offGibraltar, and blockading the port of Tripoli, now with one frigate andnow with another. When the terms of enlistment of Dale's crews expired, another squadron was gradually assembled in the Mediterranean, under thecommand of Captain Richard V. Morris, for Congress had now authorizedthe use of the navy for offensive operations, and the Secretary ofthe Treasury, with many misgivings, had begun to accumulate hisMediterranean Fund to meet contingent expenses. 

The blockade of Tripoli seems to have been carelessly conductedby Morris and was finally abandoned. There were undeniably greatdifficulties in the way of an effective blockade. The coast afforded fewgood harbors; the heavy northerly winds made navigation both difficultand hazardous; the Tripolitan galleys and gunboats with their shallowdraft could stand close in shore and elude the American frigates; andthe ordnance on the American craft was not heavy enough to inflict anyserious damage on the fortifications guarding the harbor. Probably thesedifficulties were not appreciated by the authorities at Washington; atall events, in the spring of 1803 Morris was suspended from his commandand subsequently lost his commission. 

In the squadron of which Commodore Preble now took command was thePhiladelphia, a frigate of thirty-six guns, to which Captain Bainbridge, eager to square accounts with the Corsairs, had been assigned. Late inOctober Bainbridge sighted a Tripolitan vessel standing in shore. Hegave chase at once with perhaps more zeal than discretion, following hisquarry well in shore in the hope of disabling her before she could makethe harbor. Failing to intercept the corsair, he went about and washeading out to sea when the frigate ran on an uncharted reef and stuckfast. A worse predicament could scarcely be imagined. Every device knownto Yankee seamen was employed to free the unlucky vessel. "The sailswere promptly laid a-back, " Bainbridge reported, "and the forward gunsrun aft, in hopes of backing her off, which not producing the desiredeffect, orders were given to stave the water in her hold and pump itout, throw overboard the lumber and heavy articles of every kind, cutaway the anchors. . . And throw over all the guns, except a few for ourdefence. . . . As a last resource the foremast and main-topgallant mastwere cut away, but without any beneficial effect, and the ship remaineda perfect wreck, exposed to the constant fire of the gunboats, whichcould not be returned. "

The officers advised Bainbridge that the situation was becomingintolerable and justified desperate measures. They had been raked bya galling fire for more than four hours; they had tried every means offloating the ship; humiliating as the alternative was, they saw noother course than to strike the colors. All agreed, therefore, thatthey should flood the magazine, scuttle the ship, and surrender to theTripolitan small craft which hovered around the doomed frigate like somany vultures. 

For the second time off this accursed coast Bainbridge hauled down hiscolors. The crews of the Tripolitan gunboats swarmed aboard and setabout plundering right and left. Swords, epaulets, watches, money, and clothing were stripped from the officers; and if the crew in theforecastle suffered less it was because they had less to lose. Officersand men were then tumbled into boats and taken ashore, half-naked andhumiliated beyond words. Escorted by the exultant rabble, these threehundred luckless Americans were marched to the castle, where thePasha sat in state. His Highness was in excellent humor. Three hundredAmericans! He counted them, each worth hundreds of dollars. Allah wasgood!

A long, weary bondage awaited the captives. The common seamenwere treated like galley slaves, but the officers were given someconsideration through the intercession of the Danish consul. Bainbridgewas even allowed to correspond with Commodore Preble, and by means ofinvisible ink he transmitted many important messages which escaped thewatchful eyes of his captors. Depressed by his misfortune--for no onethen or afterwards held him responsible for the disaster--Bainbridge hadonly one thought, and that was revenge. Day and night he brooded overplans of escape and retribution. 

As though to make the captive Americans drink the dregs of humiliation, the Philadelphia was floated off the reef in a heavy sea and towedsafely into the harbor. The scuttling of the vessel had been hastilycontrived, and the jubilant Tripolitans succeeded in stopping her seamsbefore she could fill. A frigate like the Philadelphia was a prize thelike of which had never been seen in the Pasha's reign. He rubbed hishands in glee and taunted her crew. 

The sight of the frigate riding peacefully at anchor in the harbor wastorture to poor Bainbridge. In feverish letters he implored Preble tobombard the town, to sink the gunboats in the harbor, to recapturethe frigate or to burn her at her moorings--anything to take away thebitterness of humiliation. The latter alternative, indeed, Preble hadbeen revolving in his own mind. 

Toward midnight of February 16, 1804, Bainbridge and his companions werearoused by the guns of the fort. They sprang to the window and witnessedthe spectacle for which the unhappy captain had prayed long anddevoutly. The Philadelphia was in flames--red, devouring flames, pouringout of her hold, climbing the rigging, licking her topmasts, formingfantastic columns--devastating, unconquerable flames--the frigate wasdoomed, doomed! And every now and then one of her guns would explode asthough booming out her requiem. Bainbridge was avenged. 

How had it all happened? The inception of this daring feat must becredited to Commodore Preble; the execution fell to young StephenDecatur, lieutenant in command of the sloop Enterprise. The planwas this: to use the Intrepid, a captured Tripolitan ketch, asthe instrument of destruction, equipping her with combustibles andammunition, and if possible to burn the Philadelphia and other shipsin the harbor while raking the Pasha's castle with the frigate'seighteen-pounders. When Decatur mustered his crew on the deck of theEnterprise and called for volunteers for this exploit, every man jackstepped forward. Not a man but was spoiling for excitement after monthsof tedious inactivity; not an American who did not covet a chance toavenge the loss of the Philadelphia. But all could not be used, andDecatur finally selected five officers and sixty-two men. On the nightof the 3rd of February, the Intrepid set sail from Syracuse, accompaniedby the brig Siren, which was to support the boarding party with herboats and cover their retreat. 

Two weeks later, the Intrepid, barely distinguishable in the light ofa new moon, drifted into the harbor of Tripoli. In the distance lay theunfortunate Philadelphia. The little ketch was now within range of thebatteries, but she drifted on unmolested until within a hundred yardsof the frigate. Then a hail came across the quiet bay. The pilot repliedthat he had lost his anchors and asked permission to make fast to thefrigate for the night. The Tripolitan lookout grumbled assent. Ropeswere then thrown out and the vessels were drawing together, when the cry"Americanas!" went up from the deck of the frigate. In a trice Decaturand his men had scrambled aboard and overpowered the crew. 

It was a crucial moment. If Decatur's instructions had not beenimperative, he would have thrown prudence to the winds and have tried tocut out the frigate and make off in her. There were those, indeed, whobelieved that he might have succeeded. But the Commodore's orders wereto destroy the frigate. There was no alternative. Combustibles werebrought on board, the match applied, and in a few moments the frigatewas ablaze. Decatur and his men had barely time to regain the Intrepidand to cut her fasts. The whole affair had not taken more than twentyminutes, and no one was killed or even seriously wounded. 

Pulling lustily at their sweeps, the crew of the Intrepid moved herslowly out of the harbor, in the light of the burning vessel. The gunsof the fort were manned at last and were raining shot and shell wildlyover the harbor. The jack-tars on the Intrepid seemed oblivious todanger, "commenting upon the beauty of the spray thrown up by the shotbetween us and the brilliant light of the ship, rather than calculatingany danger, " wrote Midshipman Morris. Then the starboard guns of thePhiladelphia, as though instinct with purpose, began to send hot shotinto the town. The crew yelled with delight and gave three cheers forthe redoubtable old frigate. It was her last action, God bless her! Hercables soon burned, however, and she drifted ashore, there to blow up inone last supreme effort to avenge herself. At the entrance of the harborthe Intrepid found the boats of the Siren, and three days later bothrejoined the squadron. 

Thrilling as Decatur's feat was, it brought peace no nearer. The Pasha, infuriated by the loss of the Philadelphia, was more exorbitantthan ever in his demands. There was nothing for it but to scour theMediterranean for Tripolitan ships, maintain the blockade so far asweather permitted, and await the opportunity to reduce the city ofTripoli by bombardment. But Tripoli was a hard nut to crack. On theocean side it was protected by forts and batteries and the harbor wasguarded by a long line of reefs. Through the openings in this naturalbreakwater, the light-draft native craft could pass in and out to harassthe blockading fleet. 

It was Commodore Preble's plan to make a carefully concerted attack uponthis stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted. For thispurpose he had strengthened his squadron at Syracuse by purchasing anumber of flat-bottomed gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemyin the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger vessels shelled thetown and batteries. He arrived off the African coast about the middle ofJuly but encountered adverse weather, so that for several weeks he couldaccomplish nothing of consequence. Finally, on the 3rd of August, amemorable date in the annals of the American navy, he gave the signalfor action. 

The new gunboats were deployed in two divisions, one commanded byDecatur, and fully met expectations by capturing two enemy ships in mostsanguinary, hand-to-hand fighting. Meantime the main squadron drew closein shore, so close, it is said, that the gunners of shore batteriescould not depress their pieces sufficiently to score hits. All thesepreliminaries were watched with bated breath by the officers of the oldPhiladelphia from behind their prison bars. 

The Pasha had viewed the approach of the American fleet with utterdisdain. He promised the spectators who lined the terraces that theywould witness some rare sport; they should see his gunboats put theenemy to flight. But as the American gunners began to get the range andpour shot into the town, and the Constitution with her heavy ordnancepassed and repassed, delivering broadsides within three cables'length of the batteries, the Pasha's nerves were shattered and he fledprecipitately to his bomb-proof shelter. No doubt the damage inflictedby this bombardment was very considerable, but Tripoli still defiedthe enemy. Four times within the next four weeks Preble repeated theseassaults, pausing after each bombardment to ascertain what terms thePasha had to offer; but the wily Yusuf was obdurate, knowing well enoughthat, if he waited, the gods of wind and storm would come to his aid anddisperse the enemy's fleet. 

It was after the fifth ineffectual assault that Preble determined on adesperate stroke. He resolved to fit out a fireship and to send her intothe very jaws of death, hoping to destroy the Tripolitan gunboats andat the same time to damage the castle and the town. He chose for thisperilous enterprise the old Intrepid which had served her captors sowell, and out of many volunteers he gave the command to Captain RichardSomers and Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth. The little ketch was loaded witha hundred barrels of gunpowder and a large quantity of combustibles andmade ready for a quick run by the batteries into the harbor. Certaindeath it seemed to sail this engine of destruction past the outlyingreefs into the midst of the Tripolitan gunboats; but every precautionwas taken to provide for the escape of the crew. Two rowboats were takenalong and in these frail craft, they believed, they could embark, whenonce the torch had been applied, and in the ensuing confusion return tothe squadron. 

Somers selected his crew of ten men with care, and at the last momentconsented to let Lieutenant Joseph Israel join the perilous expedition. On the night of the 4th of September, the Intrepid sailed off in thedarkness toward the mouth of the harbor. Anxious eyes followed thelittle vessel, trying to pierce the blackness that soon enveloped her. As she neared the harbor the shore batteries opened fire; and suddenlya blinding flash and a terrific explosion told the fate which overtookher. Fragments of wreckage rose high in the air, the fearful concussionwas felt by every boat in the squadron, and then darkness and awfulsilence enfolded the dead and the dying. Two days later the bodies ofthe heroic thirteen, mangled beyond recognition, were cast up by thesea. Even Captain Bainbridge, gazing sorrowfully upon his dead comradescould not recognize their features. Just what caused the explosion willnever be known. Preble always believed that Tripolitans had attemptedto board the Intrepid and that Somers had deliberately fired the powdermagazine rather than surrender. Be that as it may, no one doubts thatthe crew were prepared to follow their commander to self-destruction ifnecessary. In deep gloom, the squadron returned to Syracuse, leavinga few vessels to maintain a fitful blockade off the hated and menacingcoast. 

Far away from the sound of Commodore Preble's guns a strange, almostfarcical, intervention in the Tripolitan War was preparing. The sceneshifts to the desert on the east, where William Eaton, consul at Tunis, becomes the center of interest. Since the very beginning of the war, this energetic and enterprising Connecticut Yankee had taken a livelyinterest in the fortunes of Hamet Karamanli, the legitimate heir to thethrone, who had been driven into exile by Yusuf the pretender. Eatonloved intrigue as Preble gloried in war. Why not assist Hamet to recoverhis throne? Why not, in frontier parlance, start a back-fire that wouldmake Tripoli too hot for Yusuf? He laid his plans before his superiorsat Washington, who, while not altogether convinced of his competence toplay the king-maker, were persuaded to make him navy agent, subjectto the orders of the commander of the American squadron in theMediterranean. Commodore Samuel Barron, who succeeded Preble, wasinstructed to avail himself of the cooperation of the ex-Pasha ofTripoli if he deemed it prudent. In the fall of 1804 Barron dispatchedEaton in the Argus, Captain Isaac Hull commander, to Alexandria to findHamet and to assure him of the cooperation of the American squadron inthe reconquest of his kingdom. Eaton entered thus upon the coveted role:twenty centuries looked down upon him as they had upon Napoleon. 

A mere outline of what followed reads like the scenario of an operabouffe. Eaton ransacked Alexandria in search, of Hamet the unfortunatebut failed to find the truant. Then acting on a rumor that Hamet haddeparted up the Nile to join the Mamelukes, who were enjoying one oftheir seasonal rebellions against constituted authority, Eaton plungedinto the desert and finally brought back the astonished and somewhatreluctant heir to the throne. With prodigious energy Eaton thenorganized an expedition which was to march overland toward Derne, meetthe squadron at the Bay of Bomba, and descend vi et armis upon theunsuspecting pretender at Tripoli. He even made a covenant with Hametpromising with altogether unwarranted explicitness that the UnitedStates would use "their utmost exertions" to reestablish him in hissovereignty. Eaton was to be "general and commander-in-chief of the landforces. " This aggressive Yankee alarmed Hamet, who clearly did not wanthis sovereignty badly enough to fight for it. 

The international army which the American generalissimo mustered wasa motley array: twenty-five cannoneers of uncertain nationality, thirty-eight Greeks, Hamet and his ninety followers, and a party ofArabian horsemen and camel-drivers--all told about four hundred men. Thestory of their march across the desert is a modern Anabasis. When theArabs were not quarreling among themselves and plundering the rest ofthe caravan, they were demanding more pay. Rebuffed they would disappearwith their camels into the fastnesses of the desert, only to reappearunexpectedly with new importunities. Between Hamet, who was in constantterror of his life and quite ready to abandon the expedition, and thesemutinous Arabs, Eaton was in a position to appreciate the vicissitudesof Xenophon and his Ten Thousand. No ordinary person, indeed, could havesurmounted all obstacles and brought his balky forces within sight ofDerne. 

Supported by the American fleet which had rendezvoused as agreed in theBay of Bomba, the four hundred advanced upon the city. Again the Arabcontingent would have made off into the desert but for the promise ofmore money. Hamet was torn by conflicting emotions, in which a desireto retreat was uppermost. Eaton was, as ever, indefatigable andindomitable. When his forces were faltering at the crucial moment, heboldly ordered an assault and carried the defenses of the city. The gunsof the ships in the harbor completed the discomfiture of the enemy, and the international army took possession of the citadel. Derne won, however, had to be resolutely defended. Twice within the next fourweeks, Tripolitan forces were beaten back only with the greatestdifficulty. The day after the second assault (June 10th) the frigateConstellation arrived off Derne with orders which rang down the curtainon this interlude in the Tripolitan War. Derne was to be evacuated!Peace had been concluded!

Just what considerations moved the Administration to conclude peace ata moment when the largest and most powerful American fleet ever placedunder a single command was assembling in the Mediterranean and when theland expedition was approaching its objective, has never been adequatelyexplained. Had the President's belligerent spirit oozed away as thepunitive expeditions against Tripoli lost their merely defensivecharacter and took on the proportions of offensive naval operations? Hadthe Administration become alarmed at the drain upon the treasury? Ordid the President wish to have his hands free to deal with thosedepredations upon American commerce committed by British and Frenchcruisers which were becoming far more frequent and serious than everthe attacks of the Corsairs of the Mediterranean had been? Certain it isthat overtures of peace from the Pasha were welcomed by the very navalcommanders who had been most eager to wrest a victory from the Corsairs. Perhaps they, too, were wearied by prolonged war with an elusive foe offa treacherous coast. 

How little prepared the Administration was to sustain a prolongedexpedition by land against Tripoli to put Hamet on his throne, appearsin the instructions which Commodore Barron carried to the Mediterranean. If he could use Eaton and Hamet to make a diversion, well and good;but he was at the same time to assist Colonel Tobias Lear, AmericanConsul-General at Algiers, in negotiating terms of peace, if the Pashashowed a conciliatory spirit. The Secretary of State calculated thatthe moment had arrived when peace could probably be secured "without anyprice and pecuniary compensation whatever. "

Such expectations proved quite unwarranted. The Pasha was ready forpeace, but he still had his price. Poor Bainbridge, writing fromcaptivity, assured Barron that the Pasha would never let his prisonersgo without a ransom. Nevertheless, Commodore Barron determined to meetthe overtures which the Pasha had made through the Danish consul atTripoli. On the 24th of May he put the frigate Essex at the disposal ofLear, who crossed to Tripoli and opened direct negotiations. 

The treaty which Lear concluded on June 4, 1805, was an ingloriousdocument. It purchased peace, it is true, and the release of some threehundred sad and woe-begone American sailors. But because the Pasha heldthree hundred prisoners, and the United States only a paltry hundred, the Pasha was to receive sixty thousand dollars. Derne was to beevacuated and no further aid was to be given to rebellious subjects. The United States was to endeavor to persuade Hamet to withdraw from thesoil of Tripoli--no very difficult matter--while the Pasha on his partwas to restore Hamet's family to him--at some future time. Nothing wassaid about tribute; but it was understood that according to ancientcustom each newly appointed consul should carry to the Pasha a presentnot exceeding six thousand dollars. 

The Tripolitan War did not end in a blaze of glory for the UnitedStates. It had been waged in the spirit of "not a cent for tribute"; itwas concluded with a thinly veiled payment for peace; and, worst of all, it did not prevent further trouble with the Barbary States. The war hadbeen prosecuted with vigor under Preble; it had languished under Barron;and it ended just when the naval forces were adequate to the task. Yet, from another point of view, Preble, Decatur, Somers, and their comradeshad not fought in vain. They had created imperishable traditions for theAmerican navy; they had established a morale in the service; and theyhad trained a group of young officers who were to give a good account ofthemselves when their foes should be not shifty Tripolitans but sturdyBritons. 

CHAPTER IV. THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL

Bainbridge in forlorn captivity at Tripoli, Preble and Barron keepinganxious watch off the stormy coast of Africa, Eaton marching through thewindswept desert, are picturesque figures that arrest the attention ofthe historian; but they seemed like shadowy actors in a remote drama tothe American at home, absorbed in the humdrum activities of trade andcommerce. Through all these dreary years of intermittent war, othermatters engrossed the President and Congress and caught the attention ofthe public. Not the rapacious Pasha of Tripoli but the First Consul ofFrance held the center of the stage. At the same time that news arrivedof the encounter of the Enterprise with the Corsairs came also theconfirmation of rumors current all winter in Europe. Bonaparte hadsecured from Spain the retrocession of the province of Louisiana. Fromevery point of view, as the President remarked, the transfer of thisvast province to a new master was "an inauspicious circumstance. " Theshadow of the Corsican, already a menace to the peace of Europe, fellacross the seas. 

A strange chain of circumstances linked Bonaparte with the New World. When he became master of France by the coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire(November 9, 1799), he fell heir to many policies which the republic hadinherited from the old regime. Frenchmen had never ceased to lament theloss of colonial possessions in North America. From time to time thehope of reviving the colonial empire sprang up in the hearts of therulers of France. It was this hope that had inspired Genet's mission tothe United States and more than one intrigue among the pioneers ofthe Mississippi Valley, during Washington's second Administration. Theconnecting link between the old regime and the new was the statesmanTalleyrand. He had gone into exile in America when the French Revolutionentered upon its last frantic phase and had brought back to France theplan and purpose which gave consistency to his diplomacy in the officeof Minister of Foreign Affairs, first under the Directory, then underthe First Consul. Had Talleyrand alone nursed this plan, it would havehad little significance in history; but it was eagerly taken up by agroup of Frenchmen who believed that France, having set her housein order and secured peace in Europe, should now strive for orderlycommercial development. The road to prosperity, they believed, laythrough the acquisition of colonial possessions. The recovery of theprovince of Louisiana was an integral part of their programme. 

While the Directory was still in power and Bonaparte was pursuing hisill-fated expedition in Egypt, Talleyrand had tried to persuade theSpanish Court to cede Louisiana and the Floridas. The only way forSpain to put a limit to the ambitions of the Americans, he had arguedspeciously, was to shut them up within their natural limits. Only socould Spain preserve the rest of her immense domain. But since Spainwas confessedly unequal to the task, why not let France shoulder theresponsibility? "The French Republic, mistress of these two provinces, will be a wall of brass forever impenetrable to the combined effortsof England and America, " he assured the Spaniards. But the time was notripe. 

Such, then, was the policy which Bonaparte inherited when he becameFirst Consul and master of the destinies of his adopted country. Adazzling future opened before him. Within a year he had pacified Europe, crushing the armies of Austria by a succession of brilliant victories, and laying prostrate the petty states of the Italian peninsula. Peacewith England was also in sight. Six weeks after his victory at Marengo, Bonaparte sent a special courier to Spain to demand--the word is hardlytoo strong--the retrocession of Louisiana. 

It was an odd whim of Fate that left the destiny of half the Americancontinent to Don Carlos IV, whom Henry Adams calls "a kind of SpanishGeorge III "--virtuous, to be sure, but heavy, obtuse, inconsequential, and incompetent. With incredible fatuousness the King gave his consentto a bargain by which he was to yield Louisiana in return for Tuscanyor other Italian provinces which Bonaparte had just overrun with hisarmies. "Congratulate me, " cried Don Carlos to his Prime Minister, hiseyes sparkling, "on this brilliant beginning of Bonaparte's relationswith Spain. The Prince-presumptive of Parma, my son-in-law and nephew, a Bourbon, is invited by France to reign, on the delightful banks ofthe Arno, over a people who once spread their commerce through the knownworld, and who were the controlling power of Italy, --a people mild, civilized, full of humanity; the classical land of science and art. " Afew war-ridden Italian provinces for an imperial domain that stretchedfrom the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Superior and that extended westward noone knew how far!

The bargain was closed by a preliminary treaty signed at San Ildefonsoon October 1, 1800. Just one year later to a day, the preliminaries ofthe Peace of Amiens were signed, removing the menace of England on theseas. The First Consul was now free to pursue his colonial policy, andthe destiny of the Mississippi Valley hung in the balance. Between theFirst Consul and his goal, however, loomed up the gigantic figure ofToussaint L'Ouverture, a full-blooded negro, who had made himself masterof Santo Domingo and had thus planted himself squarely in the searoadto Louisiana. The story of this "gilded African, " as Bonapartecontemptuously dubbed him, cannot be told in these pages, because itinvolves no less a theme than the history of the French Revolution inthis island, once the most thriving among the colonial possessions ofFrance in the West Indies. The great plantations of French Santo Domingo(the western part of the island) had supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee, and cotton; three-fourths of the imports from French-Americancolonies were shipped from Santo Domingo. As the result of classstruggles between whites and mulattoes for political power, the mostterrific slave insurrection in the Western Hemisphere had delugedthe island in blood. Political convulsions followed which wrecked theprosperity of the island. Out of this chaos emerged the one man whoseemed able to restore a semblance of order--the Napoleon of SantoDomingo, whose character, thinks Henry Adams, had a curious resemblanceto that of the Corsican. The negro was, however, a ferocious brutewithout the redeeming qualities of the Corsican, though, as a leaderof his race, his intelligence cannot be denied. Though professingallegiance to the French Republic, Toussaint was driven by circumstancestoward independence. While his Corsican counterpart was executing hiscoup d'etat and pacifying Europe, he threw off the mask, imprisoned theagent of the French Directory, seized the Spanish part of the island, and proclaimed a new constitution for Santo Domingo, assuming all powerfor himself for life and the right of naming his successor. The negrodefied the Corsican. 

The First Consul was now prepared to accept the challenge. Santo Domingomust be recovered and restored to its former prosperity--even if slaveryhad to be reestablished--before Louisiana could be made the center ofcolonial empire in the West. He summoned Leclerc, a general of excellentreputation and husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, and gave tohim the command of an immense expedition which was already preparingat Brest. In the latter part of November, Leclerc set sail with a largefleet bearing an army of ten thousand men and on January 29, 1802, arrived off the eastern cape of Santo Domingo. A legend says thatToussaint looking down on the huge armada exclaimed, "We must perish. All France is coming to Santo Domingo. It has been deceived; it comesto take vengeance and enslave the blacks. " The negro leader made aformidable resistance, nevertheless, annihilating one French armyand seriously endangering the expedition. But he was betrayed by hisgenerals, lured within the French lines, made prisoner, and finallysent to France. He was incarcerated in a French fortress in the JuraMountains and there perished miserably in 1803. 

The significance of these events in the French West Indies was not lostupon President Jefferson. The conquest of Santo Domingo was the preludeto the occupation of Louisiana. It would be only a change of Europeanproprietors, of absentee landlords, to be sure; but there was a worldof difference between France, bent upon acquiring a colonial empire andquiescent Spain, resting on her past achievements. The difference waspersonified by Bonaparte and Don Carlos. The sovereignty of the lowerMississippi country could never be a matter of indifference to thosesettlers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio who in the year 1799 sent downthe Mississippi in barges, keel-boats, and flatboats one hundred andtwenty thousand pounds of tobacco, ten thousand barrels of flour, twenty-two thousand pounds of hemp, five hundred barrels of cider, andas many more of whiskey, for transshipment and export. The right ofnavigation of the Mississippi was a diplomatic problem bequeathed bythe Confederation. The treaty with Spain in 1795 had not solved thequestion, though it had established a modus vivendi. Spain had concededto Americans the so-called right of deposit for three years--that is, the right to deposit goods at New Orleans free of duty and to transshipthem to ocean-going vessels; and the concession, though never definitelyrenewed, was tacitly continued. No; the people of the trans-Alleghanycountry could not remain silent and unprotesting witnesses to theretrocession of Louisiana. 

Nor was Jefferson's interest in the Mississippi problem of recentorigin. Ten years earlier as Secretary of State, while England andSpain seemed about to come to blows over the Nootka Sound affair, he hadapproached both France and Spain to see whether the United States mightnot acquire the island of New Orleans or at least a port near the mouthof the river "with a circum-adjacent territory, sufficient for itssupport, well-defined, and extraterritorial to Spain. " In case of war, England would in all probability conquer Spanish Louisiana. Howmuch better for Spain to cede territory on the eastern side of theMississippi to a safe neighbor like the United States and thereby makesure of her possessions on the western waters of that river. It was "notour interest, " wrote Mr. Jefferson, "to cross the Mississippi for ages!"

It was, then, a revival of an earlier idea when President Jefferson, officially through Robert R. Livingston, Minister to France, andunofficially through a French gentleman, Dupont de Nemours, sought toimpress upon the First Consul the unwisdom of his taking possession ofLouisiana, without ceding to the United States at least New Orleans andthe Floridas as a "palliation. " Even so, France would become an objectof suspicion, a neighbor with whom Americans were bound to quarrel. 

Undeterred by this naive threat, doubtless considering its source, theFirst Consul pressed Don Carlos for the delivery of Louisiana. The Kingprocrastinated but at length gave his promise on condition that Franceshould pledge herself not to alienate the province. Of course, repliedthe obliging Talleyrand. The King's wishes were identical with theintentions of the French government. France would never alienateLouisiana. The First Consul pledged his word. On October 15, 1802, DonCarlos signed the order that delivered Louisiana to France. 

While the President was anxiously awaiting the results of his diplomacy, news came from Santo Domingo that Leclerc and his army had triumphedover Toussaint and his faithless generals, only to succumb to a far moreinsidious foe. Yellow fever had appeared in the summer of 1802 and hadswept away the second army dispatched by Bonaparte to take the placeof the first which had been consumed in the conquest of the island. Twenty-four thousand men had been sacrificed at the very threshold ofcolonial empire, and the skies of Europe were not so clear as they hadbeen. And then came the news of Leclerc's death (November 2, 1802). Exhausted by incessant worry, he too had succumbed to the pestilence;and with him, as events proved, passed Bonaparte's dream of colonialempire in the New World. 

Almost at the same time with these tidings a report reached the settlersof Kentucky and Tennessee that the Spanish intendant at New Orleans hadsuspended the right of deposit. The Mississippi was therefore closed towestern commerce. Here was the hand of the Corsican. * Now they knew whatthey had to expect from France. Why not seize the opportunity and strikebefore the French legions occupied the country? The Spanish garrisonswere weak; a few hundred resolute frontiersmen would speedily overpowerthem. 

 * It is now clear enough that Bonaparte was not directly responsible for this act of the Spanish intendant. See Channing, "History of the United States, " vol. IV, p. 312, and Note, 326-327. 

Convinced that he must resort to stiffer measures if he would not behurried into hostilities, President Jefferson appointed James Monroe asMinister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to France and Spain. He was to act with Robert Livingston at Paris and with Charles Pinckney, Minister to Spain, "in enlarging and more effectually securing ourrights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the territorieseastward thereof"--whatever these vague terms might mean. The Presidentevidently read much into them, for he assured Monroe that on the eventof his mission depended the future destinies of the Republic. 

Two months passed before Monroe sailed with his instructions. He hadample time to study them, for he was thirty days in reaching the coastof France. The first aim of the envoys was to procure New Orleans andthe Floridas, bidding as high as ten million dollars if necessary. Failing in this object, they were then to secure the right of depositand such other desirable concessions as they could. To secure NewOrleans, they might even offer to guarantee the integrity of Spanishpossessions on the west bank of the Mississippi. Throughout theinstructions ran the assumption that the Floridas had either passed withLouisiana into the hands of France or had since been acquired. 

While the packet bearing Monroe was buffeting stormy seas, the policy ofBonaparte underwent a transformation--an abrupt transformation it seemedto Livingston. On the 12th of March the American Minister witnessed anextraordinary scene in Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room. Bonaparte andLord Whitworth, the British Ambassador, were in conversation, when theFirst Consul remarked, "I find, my Lord, your nation want war again. ""No, Sir, " replied the Ambassador, "we are very desirous of peace. " "Imust either have Malta or war, " snapped Bonaparte. The amazed onlookerssoon spread the rumor that Europe was again to be plunged into war; but, viewed in the light of subsequent events, this incident had even greatersignificance; it marked the end of Bonaparte's colonial scheme. Though the motives for this change of front will always be a matterof conjecture, they are somewhat clarified by the failure of the SantoDomingo expedition. Leclerc was dead; the negroes were again incontrol; the industries of the island were ruined; Rochambeau, Leclerc'ssuccessor, was clamoring for thirty-five thousand more men to reconquerthe island; the expense was alarming--and how meager the returns forthis colonial venture! Without Santo Domingo, Louisiana would be oflittle use; and to restore prosperity to the West India island--evengranting that its immediate conquest were possible--would demand manyyears and large disbursements. The path to glory did not lie in thisdirection. In Europe, as Henry Adams observes, "war could be made tosupport war; in Santo Domingo peace alone could but slowly repair somepart of this frightful waste. "

There may well have been other reasons for Bonaparte's change of front. If he read between the lines of a memoir which Pontalba, a wealthy andwell-informed resident of Louisiana, sent to him, he must have realizedthat this province, too, while it might become an inexhaustible sourceof wealth for France, might not be easy to hold. There was here, it istrue, no Toussaint L'Ouverture to lead the blacks in insurrection; butthere was a white menace from the north which was far more serious. These Kentuckians, said Pontalba trenchantly, must be watched, cajoled, and brought constantly under French influence through agents. There weremen among them who thought of Louisiana "as the highroad to the conquestof Mexico. " Twenty or thirty thousand of these westerners on flatboatscould come down the river and sweep everything before them. To be sure, they were an undisciplined horde with slender Military equipment--astriking contrast to the French legions; but, added the Frenchman, "agreat deal of skill in shooting, the habit of being in the woods and ofenduring fatigue--this is what makes up for every deficiency. "

And if Bonaparte had ever read a remarkable report of the SpanishGovernor Carondelet, he must have divined that there was somethingelemental and irresistible in this down-the-river-pressure of the peopleof the West. "A carbine and a little maize in a sack are enough for anAmerican to wander about in the forests alone for a whole month. Withhis carbine, he kills the wild cattle and deer for food and defendshimself from the savages. The maize dampened serves him in lieu ofbread . . . . The cold does not affright him. When a family tires of onelocation, it moves to another, and there it settles with the same ease. Thus in about eight years the settlement of Cumberland has been formed, which is now about to be created into a state. "

On Easter Sunday, 1803, Bonaparte revealed his purpose, which haddoubtless been slowly maturing, to two of his ministers, one of whom, Barbs Marbois, was attached to the United States through residence, hisdevotion to republican principles, and marriage to an American wife. The First Consul proposed to cede Louisiana to the United States: heconsidered the colony as entirely lost. What did they think of theproposal? Marbois, with an eye to the needs of the Treasury of whichhe was the head, favored the sale of the province; and next day hewas directed to interview Livingston at once. Before he could do so, Talleyrand, perhaps surmising in his crafty way the drift of the FirstConsul's thoughts, startled Livingston by asking what the United Stateswould give for the whole of Louisiana. Livingston, who was in truthhard of hearing, could not believe his ears. For months he had talked, written, and argued in vain for a bit of territory near the mouth of theMississippi, and here was an imperial domain tossed into his lap, asit were. Livingston recovered from his surprise sufficiently to namea trifling sum which Talleyrand declared too low. Would Mr. Livingstonthink it over? He, Talleyrand, really did not speak from authority. Theidea had struck him, that was all. 

Some days later in a chance conversation with Marbois, Livingston spokeof his extraordinary interview with Talleyrand. Marbois intimated thathe was not ignorant of the affair and invited Livingston to a furtherconversation. Although Monroe had already arrived in Paris and was nowapprised of this sudden turn of affairs, Livingston went alone to theTreasury Office and there in conversation, which was prolonged untilmidnight, he fenced with Marbois over a fair price for Louisiana. The First Consul, said Marbois, demanded one hundred million francs. Livingston demurred at this huge sum. The United States did not wantLouisiana but was willing to give ten million dollars for New Orleansand the Floridas. What would the United States give then? asked Marbois. Livingston replied that he would have to confer with Monroe. FinallyMarbois suggested that if they would name sixty million francs, (lessthan $12, 000, 000) and assume claims which Americans had against theFrench Treasury for twenty million more, he would take the offer underadvisement. Livingston would not commit himself, again insisting that hemust consult Monroe. 

So important did this interview seem to Livingston that he returnedto his apartment and wrote a long report to Madison without waitingto confer with Monroe. It was three o'clock in the morning when he wasdone. "We shall do all we can to cheapen the purchase, " he wrote, "butmy present sentiment is that we shall buy. "

History does not record what Monroe said when his colleague revealedthese midnight secrets. But in the prolonged negotiations which followedMonroe, though ill, took his part, and in the end, on April 30, 1803, set his hand to the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United States onthe terms set by Marbois. In two conventions bearing the same date, thecommissioners bound the United States to pay directly to France the sumof sixty million francs ($11, 250, 000) and to assume debts owed by Franceto American citizens, estimated at not more than twenty million francs($3, 750, 000). Tradition says that after Marbois, Monroe, and Livingstonhad signed their names, Livingston remarked: "We have lived long, butthis is the noblest work of our lives. . . . From this day the UnitedStates take their place among the powers of the first rank. "

CHAPTER V. IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS

The purchase of Louisiana was a diplomatic triumph of the firstmagnitude. No American negotiators have ever acquired so much forso little; yet, oddly enough, neither Livingston nor Monroe had theslightest notion of the vast extent of the domain which they hadpurchased. They had bought Louisiana "with the same extent that it isnow in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered intobetween Spain and other States, " but what its actual boundaries werethey did not know. Considerably disturbed that the treaty containedno definition of boundaries, Livingston sought information from theenigmatical Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?"he asked. "I do not know, " replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as wereceived it. " "But what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston somewhatnaively. "I do not know, " was the answer. "Then you mean that we shallconstrue it in our own way?" "I can give you no direction, " said theastute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and Isuppose you will make the most of it. " And with these vague assurancesLivingston had to be satisfied. 

The first impressions of Jefferson were not much more definite, for, while he believed that the acquired territory more than doubled the areaof the United States, he could only describe it as including all thewaters of the Missouri and the Mississippi. He started at once, however, to collect information about Louisiana. He prepared a list of querieswhich he sent to reputable persons living in or near New Orleans. The task was one in which he delighted: to accumulate and diffuseinformation--a truly democratic mission gave him more real pleasure thanto reign in the Executive Mansion. His interest in the trans-Mississippicountry, indeed, was not of recent birth; he had nursed for years aninsatiable curiosity about the source and course of the Missouri; and inthis very year he had commissioned his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to explore the great river and its tributaries, to ascertain if theyafforded a direct and practicable water communication across thecontinent. 

The outcome of the President's questionnaire was a report submittedto Congress in the fall of 1803, which contained much interestinginformation and some entertaining misinformation. The statistical matterwe may put to one side, as contemporary readers doubtless did; certainimpressions are worth recording. New Orleans, the first and immediateobject of negotiations, contained, it would appear, only a small part ofthe population of the province, which numbered some twenty or morerural districts. On the river above the city were the plantations of theso-called Upper Coast, inhabited mostly by slaves whose Creole masterslived in town; then, as one journeyed upstream appeared the first andsecond German Coasts, where dwelt the descendants of those Germans whohad been brought to the province by John Law's Mississippi Bubble, anindustrious folk making their livelihood as purveyors to the city. EveryFriday night they loaded their small craft with produce and held marketnext day on the river front at New Orleans, adding another touch to thepicturesque groups which frequented the levees. Above the German Coastswere the first and second Acadian Coasts, populated by the numerousprogeny of those unhappy refugees who were expelled from Nova Scotia in1755. Acadian settlements were scattered also along the backwaters westof the great river: Bayou Lafourche was lined with farms which werealready producing cotton; near Bayou Teche and Bayou Vermilion--theAttakapas country--were cattle ranges; and to the north was the richergrazing country known as Opelousas. 

Passing beyond the Iberville River, which was indeed no river at all butonly an overflow of the Mississippi, the traveler up-stream saw onhis right hand "the government of Baton Rouge" with its scatteredsettlements and mixed population of French, Spanish, andAnglo-Americans; and still farther on, the Spanish parish of WestFeliciana, accounted a part of West Florida and described by PresidentJefferson as the garden of the cotton-growing region. Beyond this pointthe President's description of Louisiana became less confident, asreliable sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, ledhim to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of hispolitical opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of thisphilosopher-president. "One extraordinary fact relative to salt mustnot be omitted, " he wrote in all seriousness. "There exists, about onethousand miles up the Missouri, and not far from that river, a saltmountain! The existence of such a mountain might well be questioned, were it not for the testimony of several respectable and enterprisingtraders who have visited it, and who have exhibited several bushels ofthe salt to the curiosity of the people of St. Louis, where some of itstill remains. A specimen of the salt has been sent to Marietta. Thismountain is said to be 180 miles long and 45 in width, composed of solidrock salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it. " One Federalist witinsisted that this salt mountain must be Lot's wife; another sent anepigram to the United States Gazette which ran as follows:

Herostratus of old, to eternalize his name Sat the temple of Diana allin a flame; But Jefferson lately of Bonaparte bought, To pickle hisfame, a mountain of salt. 

Jefferson was too much of a philosopher to be disturbed by such gibes;but he did have certain constitutional doubts concerning the treaty. How, as a strict constructionist, was he to defend the purchase ofterritory outside the limits of the United States, when the Constitutiondid not specifically grant such power to the Federal Government? He hadfought the good fight of the year 1800 to oust Federalist administratorswho by a liberal interpretation were making waste paper of theConstitution. Consistency demanded either that he should abandon thetreaty or that he should ask for the powers which had been denied tothe Federal Government. He chose the latter course and submitted to hisCabinet and to his followers in Congress a draft of an amendment to theConstitution conferring the desired powers. To his dismay they treatedhis proposal with indifference, not to say coldness. He pressed hispoint, redrafted his amendment, and urged its consideration once again. Meantime letters from Livingston and Monroe warned him that delay washazardous; the First Consul might change his mind, as he was wont to doon slight provocation. Privately Jefferson was deeply chagrined, but hedared not risk the loss of Louisiana. With what grace he could summon, he acquiesced in the advice of his Virginia friends who urged him to letevents take their course and to drop the amendment, but he continued tobelieve that such a course if persisted in would make blank paper ofthe Constitution. He could only trust, as he said in a letter, "that thegood sense of the country will correct the evil of construction when itshall produce its ill effects. "

The debates on the treaty in, Congress make interesting reading forthose who delight in legal subtleties, for many nice questions ofconstitutional law were involved. Even granting that territory could beacquired, there was the further question whether the treaty-making powerwas competent irrespective of the House of Representatives. And what, pray, was meant by incorporating this new province in the Union? WasLouisiana to be admitted into the Union as a State by President andSenate? Or was it to be governed as a dependency? And how could thespecial privileges given to Spanish and French ships in the port of NewOrleans be reconciled with that provision of the Constitution which, expressly forbade any preference to be given, by any regulation ofcommerce or revenue, to the ports of one State over those of another?The exigencies of politics played havoc with consistency, so thatRepublicans supported the ratification of the treaty with erstwhileFederalist arguments, while Federalists used the old arguments of theRepublicans. Yet the Senate advised the ratification by a decisive voteand with surprising promptness; and Congress passed a provisional actauthorizing the President to take over and govern the territory ofLouisiana. 

The vast province which Napoleon had tossed so carelessly into the lapof the young Western Republic was, strangely enough, not yet formally inhis possession. The expeditionary force under General Victor whichwas to have occupied Louisiana had never left port. M. Pierre ClementLaussat, however, who was to have accompanied the expedition to assumethe duties of prefect in the province, had sailed alone in January, 1803, to receive the province from the Spanish authorities. If thislonely Frenchman on mission possessed the imagination of his race, he must have had some emotional thrills as he reflected that he wasfollowing the sea trail of La Salle and Iberville through the warmwaters of the Gulf of Mexico. He could not have entered the Great Riverand breasted its yellow current for a hundred miles, without seeing inhis mind's eye those phantom figures of French and Spanish adventurerswho had voyaged up and down its turbid waters in quest of gold or ofdistant Cathay. As his vessel dropped anchor opposite the town whichBienville had founded, Laussat must have felt that in some degree he was"heir of all the ages"; yet he was in fact face to face with conditionswhich, whatever their historic antecedents, were neither French norSpanish. On the water front of New Orleans, he counted "forty-fiveAnglo-American ships to ten French. " Subsequent experiences deepenedthis first impression: it was not Spanish nor French influence which hadmade this port important but those "three hundred thousand planters whoin twenty years have swarmed over the eastern plains of the Mississippiand have cultivated them, and who have no other outlet than this riverand no other port than New Orleans. "

The outward aspect of the city, however, was certainly not American. From the masthead of his vessel Laussat might have seen over a thousanddwellings of varied architecture: houses of adobe, houses of brick, houses of stucco; some with bright colors, others with the harmonioushalf tones produced by sun and rain. No American artisans constructedthe picturesque balconies, the verandas, and belvederes which suggestedthe semitropical existence that Nature forced upon these city dwellersfor more than half the year. No American craftsmen wrought the artisticironwork of balconies, gateways, and window gratings. Here was anatmosphere which suggested the Old World rather than the New. Thestreets which ran at right angles were reminiscent of the old regime:Conde, Conti, Dauphine, St. Louis, Chartres, Bourbon, Orleans--allthese names were to be found within the earthen rampart which formed thedefense of the city. 

The inhabitants were a strange mixture: Spanish, French, American, black, quadroon, and Creole. No adequate definition has ever beenformulated for "Creole, " but no one familiar with the type could failto distinguish this caste from those descended from the first Frenchsettlers or from the Acadians. A keen observer like Laussat discernedspeedily that the Creole had little place in the commercial life ofthe city. He was your landed proprietor, who owned some of the choicestparts of the city and its growing suburbs, and whose plantations linedboth banks of the Mississippi within easy reach from the city. At theopposite end of the social scale were the quadroons--the demimonde ofthis little capital--and the negro slaves. Between these extremes werethe French and, in ever-growing numbers, the Americans who pliedevery trade, while the Spaniards constituted the governing class. Deliberately, in the course of time, as befitted a Spanish gentleman andofficer, the Marquis de Casa Calvo, resplendent with regalia, arrivedfrom Havana to act with Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo intransferring the province. A season of gayety followed in which theSpaniards did their best to conceal any chagrin they may have felt atthe relinquishment--happily, it might not be termed the surrender--ofLouisiana. And finally on the 30th of November, Governor Salcedodelivered the keys of the city to Laussat, in the hall of the Cabildo, while Marquis de Casa Calvo from the balcony absolved the people inPlace d'Armes below from their allegiance to his master, the King ofSpain. 

For the brief term of twenty days Louisiana was again a province ofFrance. Within that time Laussat bestirred himself to gallicizethe colony, so far as forms could do so. He replaced the cabildo orhereditary council by a municipal council; he restored the civil code;he appointed French officers to civil and military posts. And allthis he did in the full consciousness that American commissioners werealready on their way to receive from him in turn the province which hiswayward master had sold. On December 20, 1803, young William Claiborne, Governor of the Mississippi Territory, and General James Wilkinson, witha few companies of soldiers, entered and received from Laussat the keysof the city and the formal surrender of Lower Louisiana. On the Placed'Armes, promptly at noon, the tricolor was hauled down and the AmericanStars and Stripes took its place. Louisiana had been transferred for thesixth and last time. But what were the metes and bounds of thisprovince which had been so often bought and sold? What had Laussat beeninstructed to take and give? What, in short, was Louisiana?

The elation which Livingston and Monroe felt at acquiring unexpectedlya vast territory beyond the Mississippi soon gave way to a disquietingreflection. They had been instructed to offer ten million dollars forNew Orleans and the Floridas: they had pledged fifteen millions forLouisiana without the Floridas. And they knew that it was precisely WestFlorida, with the eastern bank of the Mississippi and the Gulf littoral, that was most ardently desired by their countrymen of the West. Butmight not Louisiana include West Florida? Had Talleyrand not professedignorance of the eastern boundary? And had he not intimated thatthe Americans would make the most of their bargain? Within a monthLivingston had convinced himself that the United States could rightfullyclaim West Florida to the Perdido River, and he soon won over Monroe tohis way of thinking. They then reported to Madison that "on a thoroughexamination of the subject" they were persuaded that they had purchasedWest Florida as a part of Louisiana. 

By what process of reasoning had Livingston and Monroe reached thissatisfying conclusion? Their argument proceeded from carefully chosenpremises. France, it was said, had once held Louisiana and the Floridastogether as part of her colonial empire in America; in 1763 she hadceded New Orleans and the territory west of the Mississippi to Spain, and at the same time she had transferred the Floridas to Great Britain;in 1783 Great Britain had returned the Floridas to Spain which were thenreunited to Louisiana as under French rule. Ergo, when Louisiana wasretro-ceded "with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, " it must have included WestFlorida. 

That Livingston was able to convince himself by this logic, does notspeak well for his candor or intelligence. He was well aware thatBonaparte had failed to persuade Don Carlos to include the Floridasin the retrocession; he had tried to insert in the treaty an articlepledging the First Consul to use his good offices to obtain the Floridasfor the United States; and in his midnight dispatch to Madison, withthe prospect of acquiring Louisiana before him, he had urged theadvisability of exchanging this province for the more desirableFloridas. Livingston therefore could not, and did not, say that Spainintended to cede the Floridas as a part of Louisiana, but that shehad inadvertently done so and that Bonaparte might have claimed WestFlorida, if he had been shrewd enough to see his opportunity. The UnitedStates was in no way prevented from pressing this claim because theFirst Consul had not done so. The fact that France had in 1763 actuallydismembered her colonial empire and that Louisiana as ceded to Spainextended only to the Iberville, was given no weight in Livingston'sdeductions. 

Having the will to believe, Jefferson and Madison became convertsto Livingston's faith. Madison wrote at once that in view of thesedevelopments no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the Floridas shouldbe entertained; the President declared himself satisfied that "our rightto the Perdido is substantial and can be opposed by a quibble on formonly"; and John Randolph, duly coached by the Administration, flatlydeclared in the House of Representatives that "We have not only obtainedthe command of the mouth of the Mississippi, but of the Mobile, with itswidely extended branches; and there is not now a single stream of noterising within the United States and falling into the Gulf of Mexicowhich is not entirely our own, the Appalachicola excepted. " From thismoment to the end of his administration, the acquisition of West Floridabecame a sort of obsession with Jefferson. His pursuit of this phantomclaim involved American diplomats in strange adventures and at timesdeflected the whole course of domestic politics. 

The first luckless minister to engage in this baffling quest was JamesMonroe, who had just been appointed Minister to the Court of St. James. He was instructed to take up the threads of diplomacy at Madrid wherethey were getting badly tangled in the hands of Charles Pinckney, whowas a better politician than a diplomat. "Your inquiries may also bedirected, " wrote Madison, "to the question whether any, and how much, ofwhat passes for West Florida be fairly included in the territory cededto us by France. " Before leaving Paris on this mission, Monroe madean effort to secure the good offices of the Emperor, but he foundTalleyrand cold and cynical as ever. He was given to understand that itwas all a question of money; if the United States were willing to paythe price, the Emperor could doubtless have the negotiations transferredto Paris and put the deal through. A loan of seventy million livres toSpain, which would be passed over at once to France, would probably putthe United States into possession of the coveted territory. As an honestman Monroe shrank from this sort of jobbery; besides, he could hardlyoffer to buy a territory which his Government asserted it had alreadybought with Louisiana. With the knowledge that he was defying Napoleon, or at least his ministers, he started for Madrid to play a lone hand inwhat he must have known was a desperate game. 

The conduct of the Administration during the next few months was hardlycalculated to smooth Monroe's path. In the following February (1804)President Jefferson put his signature to an act which was designedto give effect to the laws of the United States in the newly acquiredterritory. The fourth section of this so-called Mobile Act includedexplicitly within the revenue district of Mississippi all the navigablewaters lying within the United States and emptying into the Gulf eastof the Mississippi--an extraordinary provision indeed, since unless theFloridas were a part of the United States there were no rivers withinthe limits of the United States emptying into the Gulf east of theMississippi. The eleventh section was even more remarkable since it gavethe President authority to erect Mobile Bay and River into a separaterevenue district and to designate a port of entry. 

This cool appropriation of Spanish territory was too much for theexcitable Spanish Minister, Don Carlos Martinez Yrujo, who burst intoMadison's office one morning with a copy of the act in his hand and withangry protests on his lips. He had been on excellent terms with Madisonand had enjoyed Jefferson's friendship and hospitality at Monticello;but he was the accredited representative of His Catholic Majesty andbound to defend his sovereignty. He fairly overwhelmed the timid Madisonwith reproaches that could never be forgiven or forgotten; and from thismoment he was persona non grata in the Department of State. 

Madison doubtless took Yrujo's reproaches more to heart just becausehe felt himself in a false position. The Administration had allowed thetransfer of Louisiana to be made in the full knowledge that Laussat hadbeen instructed to claim Louisiana as far as the Rio Bravo on thewest but only as far as the Iberville on the east. Laussat had finallyadmitted as much confidentially to the American commissioners. Yetthe Administration had not protested. And now it was acting on theassumption that it might dispose of the Gulf littoral, the West Floridacoast, as it pleased. Madison was bound to admit in his heart of heartsthat Yrujo had reason to be angry. A few weeks later the Presidentrelieved the tense situation, though at the price of an obvious evasion, by issuing a proclamation which declared all the shores and waters"lying _Within the Boundaries of The United States_" * to be a revenuedistrict with Fort Stoddert as the port of entry. But the mischief hadbeen done and no constructive interpretation of the act by the Presidentcould efface the impression first made upon the mind of Yrujo. Congresshad meant to appropriate West Florida and the President had suffered thebill to become law. 

 * The italics are President Jefferson's. 

Nor was Pinckney's conduct at Madrid likely to make Monroe's missioneasier. Two years before, in 1802, he had negotiated a convention bywhich Spain agreed to pay indemnity for depredations committed by hercruisers in the late war between France and the United States. Thisconvention had been ratified somewhat tardily by the Senate andnow waited on the pleasure of the Spanish Government. Pinckney wasinstructed to press for the ratification by Spain, which was taken forgranted; but he was explicitly warned to leave the matter of the Floridaclaims to Monroe. When he presented the demands of his Government toCevallos, the Foreign Minister, he was met in turn with a demand forexplanations. What, pray, did his Government mean by this act? ToPinckney's astonishment, he was confronted with a copy of the MobileAct, which Yrujo had forwarded. The South Carolinian replied, in a tonethat was not calculated to soothe ruffled feelings, that he had alreadybeen advised that West Florida was included in the Louisiana purchaseand had so reported to Cevallos. He urged that the two subjects be keptseparate and begged His Excellency to have confidence in the honor andjustice of the United States. Delays followed until Cevallos finally, declared sharply that the treaty would be ratified only on severalconditions, one of which was that the Mobile Act should be revoked. Pinckney then threw discretion to the winds and announced that he wouldask for his passports; but his bluster did not change Spanish policy, and he dared not carry out his threat. 

It was under these circumstances that Monroe arrived in Madrid on hisdifficult mission. He was charged with the delicate task of persuadinga Government whose pride had been touched to the quick to ratify theclaims convention, to agree to a commission to adjudicate other claimswhich it had refused to recognize, to yield West Florida as a part ofthe Louisiana purchase, and to accept two million dollars for the restof Florida east of the Perdido River. In preparing these extraordinaryinstructions, the Secretary of State labored under the hallucinationthat Spain, on the verge of war with England, would pay handsomely forthe friendship of the United States, quite forgetting that the realmaster of Spain was at Paris. 

The story of Monroe's five weary months in Spain may be briefly told. Hewas in the unstrategic position of one who asks for everything and canconcede nothing. Only one consideration could probably have forced theSpanish Government to yield, and that was fear. Spain had now declaredwar upon England and might reasonably be supposed to prefer a solidaccommodation with the United States, as Madison intimated, rather thanadd to the number of her foes. But Cevallos exhibited no signs of fear;on the contrary he professed an amiable willingness to discuss everypoint at great length. Every effort on the part of the American to reacha conclusion was adroitly eluded. It was a game in which the Spaniardhad no equal. At last, when indubitable assurances came to Monroefrom Paris that Napoleon would not suffer Spain to make the slightestconcession either in the matter of spoliation claims or any otherclaims, and that, in the event of a break between the United States andSpain, he would surely take the part of Spain, Monroe abandoned the gameand asked for his passports. Late in May he returned to Paris, where hejoined with General Armstrong, who had succeeded Livingston, in urgingupon the Administration the advisability of seizing Texas, leaving WestFlorida alone for the present. 

Months of vacillation followed the failure of Monroe's mission. ThePresident could not shake off his obsession, and yet he lacked theresolution to employ force to take either Texas, which he did not wantbut was entitled to, or West Florida which he ardently desired but whosetitle was in dispute. It was not until November of the following year(1805) that the Administration determined on a definite policy. In ameeting of the Cabinet "I proposed, " Jefferson recorded in a memorandum, "we should address ourselves to France, informing her it was a lasteffort at amicable settlement with Spain and offer to her, or throughher, " a sum not to exceed five million dollars for the Floridas. Thechief obstacle in the way of this programme was the uncertain mood ofCongress, for a vote of credit was necessary and Congress might not takekindly to Napoleon as intermediary. Jefferson then set to work to drafta message which would "alarm the fears of Spain by a vigorous language, in order to induce her to join us in appealing to the interference ofthe Emperor. "

The message sent to Congress alluded briefly to the negotiations withSpain and pointed out the unsatisfactory relations which still obtained. Spain had shown herself unwilling to adjust claims or the boundariesof Louisiana; her depredations on American commerce had been renewed;arbitrary duties and vexatious searches continued to obstruct Americanshipping on the Mobile; inroads had been made on American territory;Spanish officers and soldiers had seized the property of Americancitizens. It was hoped that Spain would view these injuries intheir proper light; if not, then the United States "must join in theunprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other the mostharm. Some of these injuries may perhaps admit a peaceable remedy. Wherethat is competent, it is always the most desirable. But some of them areof a nature to be met by force only, and all of them may lead to it. "

Coming from the pen of a President who had declared that peace was hispassion, these belligerent words caused some bewilderment but, on thewhole, very considerable satisfaction in Republican circles, where thepossibility of rupture had been freely discussed. The people of theSouthwest took the President at his word and looked forward withenthusiasm to a war which would surely overthrow Spanish rule in theFloridas and yield the coveted lands along the Gulf of Mexico. Thecountry awaited with eagerness those further details which the Presidenthad promised to set forth in another message. These were felt to behistoric moments full of dramatic possibilities. 

Three days later, behind closed doors, Congress listened to the specialmessage which was to put the nation to the supreme test. Alas for thosewho had expected a trumpet call to battle. Never was a state paperbetter calculated to wither martial spirit. In dull fashion it recountedthe events of Monroe's unlucky mission and announced the advance ofSpanish forces in the Southwest, which, however, the President had notrepelled, conceiving that "Congress alone is constitutionally investedwith the power of changing our condition from peace to war. " He had"barely instructed" our forces "to patrol the borders actually deliveredto us. " It soon dawned upon the dullest intelligence that the Presidenthad not the slightest intention to recommend a declaration of war. Onthe contrary, he was at pains to point out the path to peace. Therewas reason to believe that France was now disposed to lend her aid ineffecting a settlement with Spain, and "not a moment should be lostin availing ourselves of it. " "Formal war is not necessary, it is notprobable it will follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spiritand honor of our country, require that force should be interposed toa certain degree. It will probably contribute to advance the object ofpeace. "

After the warlike tone of the first message, this sounded like aretreat. It outraged the feelings of the war party. It was, to theirminds, an anticlimax, a pusillanimous surrender. None was angrier thanJohn Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader of the forces of theAdministration in the House. He did not hesitate to express his disgustwith "this double set of opinions and principles"; and his anger mountedwhen he learned that as Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Meanshe was expected to propose and carry through an appropriation of twomillion dollars for the purchase of Florida. Further interviews with thePresident and the Secretary of State did not mollify him, for, accordingto his version of these conversations, he was informed that France wouldnot permit Spain to adjust her differences with the United States, whichhad, therefore, the alternative of paying France handsomely or of facinga war with both France and Spain. Then Randolph broke loose fromall restraint and swore by all his gods that he would not assumeresponsibility for "delivering the public purse to the first cut-throatthat demanded it. "

Randolph's opposition to the Florida programme was more than anunpleasant episode in Jefferson's administration; it proved to be thebeginning of a revolt which was fatal to the President's diplomacy, forRandolph passed rapidly from passive to active opposition and foughtthe two-million dollar bill to the bitter end. When the House finallyoutvoted him and his faction, soon to be known as the "Quids, " and theSenate had concurred, precious weeks had been lost. Yet Madison mustbear some share of blame for the delay since, for some reason, neveradequately explained, he did not send instructions to Armstrong untilfour weeks after the action of Congress. It was then too late tobait the master of Europe. Just what had happened Armstrong could notascertain; but when Napoleon set out in October, 1806, on that fatefulcampaign which crushed Prussia at Jena and Auerstadt, the chance ofacquiring Florida had passed. 

CHAPTER VI. AN AMERICAN CATILINE

With the transfer of Louisiana, the United States entered upon its firstexperience in governing an alien civilized people. At first view thereis something incongruous in the attempt of the young Republic, foundedupon the consent of the governed, to rule over a people whose land hadbeen annexed without their consent and whose preferences in the matterof government had never been consulted. The incongruity appears themore striking when it is recalled that the author of the Declaration ofIndependence was now charged with the duty of appointing all officers, civil and military, in the new territory. King George III had neverruled more autocratically over any of his North American colonies thanPresident Jefferson over Louisiana through Governor William Claiborneand General James Wilkinson. 

The leaders among the Creoles and better class of Americans counted ona speedy escape from this autocratic government, which was confessedlytemporary. The terms of the treaty, indeed, encouraged the hope thatLouisiana would be admitted at once as a State. The inhabitants of theceded territory were to be "incorporated into the Union. " But Congressgave a different interpretation to these words and dashed all hopes bythe act of 1804, which, while it conceded a legislative council, madeits members and all officers appointive, and divided the province. A delegation of Creoles went to Washington to protest against thisinconsiderate treatment. They bore a petition which contained manystiletto-like thrusts at the President. What about those elementalrights of representation and election which had figured in the gloriouscontest for freedom? "Do political axioms on the Atlantic becomeproblems when transferred to the shores of the Mississippi?" To sucharguments Congress could not remain wholly indifferent. The outcomewas a third act (March 2, 1805) which established the usual form ofterritorial government, an elective legislature, a delegate in Congress, and a Governor appointed by the President. To a people who had countedon statehood these concessions were small pinchbeck. Their irritationwas not allayed, and it continued to focus upon Governor Claiborne, thedistrusted agent of a government which they neither liked nor respected. 

Strange currents and counter-currents ran through the life of thisdistant province. Casa Calvo and Morales, the former Spanish officials, continued to reside in the city, like spiders at the center of a web ofSpanish intrigue; and the threads of their web extended to West Florida, where Governor Folch watched every movement of Americans up and downthe Mississippi, and to Texas, where Salcedo, Captain-General ofthe Internal Provinces of Mexico, waited for overt aggressions fromland-hungry American frontiersmen. All these Spanish agents knew thatMonroe had left Madrid empty-handed yet still asserting claims that wereill-disguised threats; but none of them knew whether the impending blowwould fall upon West Florida or Texas. Then, too, right under their eyeswas the Mexican Association, formed for the avowed purpose of collectinginformation about Mexico which would be useful if the United Statesshould become involved in war with Spain. In the city, also, wereadventurous individuals ready for any daring move upon Mexico, where, according to credible reports, a revolution was imminent. The conquestof Mexico was the day-dream of many an adventurer. In his memoiradvising Bonaparte to take and hold Louisiana as an impenetrable barrierto Mexico, Pontalba had said with strong conviction: "It is thesurest means of destroying forever the bold schemes with which severalindividuals in the United States never cease filling the newspapers, bydesignating Louisiana as the highroad to the conquest of Mexico. "

Into this web of intrigue walked the late Vice-President of the UnitedStates, leisurely journeying through the Southwest in the summer of1805. 

Aaron Burr is one of the enigmas of American politics. Something ofthe mystery and romance that shroud the evil-doings of certain Italiandespots of the age of the Renaissance envelops him. Despite theresearches of historians, the tangled web of Burr's conspiracy has neverbeen unraveled. It remains the most fascinating though, perhaps, theleast important episode in Jefferson's administration. Yet Burr himselfrepays study, for his activities touch many sides of contemporarysociety and illuminate many dark corners in American politics. 

According to the principles of eugenics, Burr was well-born, and byall the laws of this pseudo-science should have left an honorable namebehind him. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman, sound in the faith, who presided over the infancy of the College of New Jersey; his maternalgrandfather was that massive divine, Jonathan Edwards. After graduatingat Princeton, Burr began to study law but threw aside his law books onhearing the news of Lexington. He served with distinction under Arnoldbefore Quebec, under Washington in the battle of Long Island, and laterat Monmouth, and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1779. Before the close of the Revolution he had begun the practice of law inNew York, and had married the widow of a British army officer;entering politics, he became in turn a member of the State Assembly, Attorney-General, and United States Senator. But a mere enumerationof such details does not tell the story of Burr's life and character. Interwoven with the strands of his public career is a bewilderingsuccession of intrigues and adventures in which women have a conspicuouspart, for Burr was a fascinating man and disarmed distrust by avoidingany false assumption of virtue. His marriage, however, proved happy. Headored his wife and fairly worshiped his strikingly beautiful daughterTheodosia. 

Burr throve in the atmosphere of intrigue. New York politics affordedhis proper milieu. How he ingratiated himself with politicians of highand low degree; how he unlocked the doors to political preferment;how he became one of the first bosses of the city of New York; how hecombined public service with private interest; how he organized thevoters--no documents disclose. Only now and then the enveloping foglifts, as, for example, during the memorable election of 1800, when theignorant voters of the seventh ward, duly drilled and marshaled, carriedthe city for the Republicans, and not even Colonel Hamilton, riding onhis white horse from precinct to precinct, could stay the rout. Thatelection carried New York for Jefferson and made Burr the logicalcandidate of the party for Vice-President. 

These political strokes betoken a brilliant if not always a steadyand reliable mind. Burr, it must be said, was not trusted even by hispolitical associates. It is significant that Washington, a keen judgeof men, refused to appoint Burr as Minister to France to succeed Morrisbecause he was not convinced of his integrity. And Jefferson sharedthese misgivings, though the exigencies of politics made him dissemblehis feelings. It is significant, also, that Burr was always surroundedby men of more than doubtful intentions--place-hunters and self-seekingpoliticians, who had the gambler's instinct. 

As Vice-President, Burr could not hope to exert much influence upon theAdministration, since the office in itself conferred little power anddid not even, according to custom, make him a member of the Cabinet;but as Republican boss of New York who had done more than any one manto secure the election of the ticket in 1800, he might reasonably expectJefferson and his Virginia associates to treat him with consideration inthe distribution of patronage. To his intense chagrin, he was ignored;not only ignored but discredited, for Jefferson deliberately alliedhimself with the Clintons and the Livingstons, the rival factions in NewYork which were bent upon driving Burr from the party. This treatmentfilled Burr's heart with malice; but he nursed his wounds in secret andbided his time. 

Realizing that he was politically bankrupt, Burr made a hazard of newfortunes in 1804 by offering himself as candidate for Governor of NewYork, an office then held by George Clinton. Early in the year he had aremarkable interview with Jefferson in which he observed that it wasfor the interest of the party for him to retire, but that his retirementunder existing circumstances would be thought discreditable. He asked"some mark of favor from me, " Jefferson wrote in his journal, "whichwould declare to the world that he retired with my confidence"--anexecutive appointment, in short. This was tantamount to an offer ofpeace or war. Jefferson declined to gratify him, and Burr then began anintrigue with the Federalist leaders of New England. 

The rise of a Republican party of challenging strength in New Englandcast Federalist leaders into the deepest gloom. Already troubled by theannexation of Louisiana, which seemed to them to imperil the ascendancyof New England in the Union, they now saw their own ascendancy in NewEngland imperiled. Under the depression of impending disaster, menlike Senator Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts and Roger Griswold ofConnecticut broached to their New England friends the possibility of awithdrawal from the Union and the formation of a Northern Confederacy. As the confederacy shaped itself in Pickering's imagination, it wouldof necessity include New York; and the chaotic conditions in New Yorkpolitics at this time invited intrigue. When, therefore, a group ofBurr's friends in the Legislature named him as their candidate forGovernor, Pickering and Griswold seized the moment to approach him withtheir treasonable plans. They gave him to understand that as Governor ofNew York he would naturally hold a strategic position and could, if hewould, take the lead in the secession of the Northern States. Federalistsupport could be given to him in the approaching election. They wouldbe glad to know his views. But the shifty Burr would not commit himselffurther than to promise a satisfactory administration. Though theFederalist intriguers would have been glad of more explicit assurancesthey counted on his vengeful temper and hatred of the Virginiadomination at Washington to make him a pliable tool. They were willingto commit the party openly to Burr and trust to events to bind him totheir cause. 

Against this mad intrigue one clear-headed individual resolutely sethimself--not wholly from disinterested motives. Alexander Hamilton hadgood reason to know Burr. He declared in private conversation, and theremark speedily became public property, that he looked upon Burr as adangerous man who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government. He pleaded with New York Federalists not to commit the fatal blunder ofendorsing Burr in caucus, and he finally won his point; but he could notprevent his partisans from supporting Burr at the polls. 

The defeat of Burr dashed the hopes of the Federalists of New England;the bubble of a Northern Confederacy vanished. It dashed also Burr'spersonal ambitions: he could no longer hope for political rehabilitationin New York. And the man who a second time had crossed his path andthwarted his purposes was his old rival, Alexander Hamilton. It is saidthat Burr was not naturally vindictive: perhaps no man is naturallyvindictive. Certain it is that bitter disappointment had now made Burrwhat Hamilton had called him--"a dangerous man. " He took the commoncourse of men of honor at this time; he demanded prompt and unqualifiedacknowledgment or denial of the expression. Well aware of what laybehind this demand, Hamilton replied deliberately with half-conciliatorywords, but he ended with the usual words of those prepared to accepta challenge, "I can only regret the circumstance, and must abide theconsequences. " A challenge followed. We are told that Hamilton acceptedto save his political leadership and influence--strange illusion in oneso gifted! Yet public opinion had not yet condemned dueling, and menmust be judged against the background of their times. 

On a summer morning (July 11, 1804) Burr and Hamilton crossed the Hudsonto Weehawken and there faced each other for the last time. Hamiltonwithheld his fire; Burr aimed with murderous intent, and Hamilton fellmortally wounded. The shot from Burr's pistol long reverberated. It wokepublic conscience to the horror and uselessness of dueling, and leftBurr an outlaw from respectable society, stunned by the recoil, andunder indictment for murder. Only in the South and West did men treatthe incident lightly as an affair of honor. 

The political career of Burr was now closed. When he again met theSenate face to face, he had been dropped by his own party in favor ofGeorge Clinton, to whom he surrendered the Vice-Presidency on March 5, 1805. His farewell address is described as one of the most affectingever spoken in the Senate. Describing the scene to his daughter, Burrsaid that tears flowed abundantly, but Burr must have described what hewished to see. American politicians are not Homeric heroes, who weepon slight provocation; and any inclination to pity Burr must have beeninhibited by the knowledge that he had made himself the rallying-pointof every dubious intrigue at the capital. 

The list of Burr's intimates included Jonathan Dayton, whose term asSenator had just ended, and who, like Burr, sought means of promotinghis fortunes, John Smith, Senator from Ohio, the notorious Swartwoutsof New York who were attached to Burr as gangsters to their chief, andGeneral James Wilkinson, governor of the northern territory carved outof Louisiana and commander of the western army with headquarters at St. Louis. 

Wilkinson had a long record of duplicity, which was suspected but neverproved by his contemporaries. There was hardly a dubious episode fromthe Revolution to this date with which he had not been connected. He wasimplicated in the Conway cabal against Washington; he was active in theseparatist movement in Kentucky during the Confederation; he enteredinto an irregular commercial agreement with the Spanish authoritiesat New Orleans; he was suspected--and rightly, as documents recentlyunearthed in Spain prove--of having taken an oath of allegiance to Spainand of being in the pay of Spain; he was also suspected--and justly--ofusing his influence to bring about a separation of the Western Statesfrom the Union; yet in 1791 he was given a lieutenant-colonel'scommission in the regular army and served under St. Clair in theNorthwest, and again as a brigadier-general under Wayne. Even here theatmosphere of intrigue enveloped him, and he was accused of incitingdiscontent among the Kentucky troops and of trying to supplantWayne. When commissioners were trying to run the Southern boundaryin accordance with the treaty of 1795 with Spain, Wilkinson--still apensioner of Spain, as documents prove--attempted to delay the survey. In the light of these revelations, Wilkinson appears as an unscrupulousadventurer whose thirst for lucre made him willing to betray eithermaster--the Spaniard who pensioned him or the American who gave him hiscommand. 

In the spring of 1805 Burr made a leisurely journey across themountains, by way of Pittsburgh, to New Orleans, where he had friendsand personal followers. The secretary of the territory was one of hishenchmen; a justice of the superior court was his stepson; the Creolepetitionists who had come to Washington to secure self-government hadbeen cordially received by Burr and had a lively sense of gratitude. Onhis way down the Ohio, Burr landed at Blennerhassett's Island, where aneccentric Irishman of that name owned an estate. Harman Blennerhassettwas to rue the day that he entertained this fascinating guest. AtCincinnati he was the guest of Senator Smith, and there he also metDayton. At Nashville he visited General Andrew Jackson, who was thrilledwith the prospect of war with Spain; at Fort Massac he spent fourdays in close conference with General Wilkinson; and at New Orleans heconsorted with Daniel Clark, a rich merchant and the most uncompromisingopponent of Governor Claiborne, and with members of the MexicanAssociation and every would-be adventurer and filibuster. In November, Burr was again in Washington. What was the purpose of this journey andwhat did it accomplish?

It is far easier to tell what Burr did after this mysterious westernexpedition than what he planned to do. There is danger of reading toogreat consistency into his designs. At one moment, if we may believeAnthony Merry, the British Minister, who lent an ear to Burr'sproposals, he was plotting a revolution which should separate theWestern States from the Union. To accomplish this design he neededBritish funds and a British naval force. Jonathan Dayton revealed toYrujo much the same plot--which he thought was worth thirty or fortythousand dollars to the Spanish Government. To such urgent necessity forfunds were the conspirators driven. But Dayton added further detailsto the story which may have been intended only to intimidate Yrujo. Therevolution effected by British aid, said Dayton gravely, an expeditionwould be undertaken against Mexico. Subsequently Dayton unfolded a stillmore remarkable tale. Burr had been disappointed in the expectation ofBritish aid, and he was now bent upon "an almost insane plan, " which wasnothing less than the seizure of the Government at Washington. With thegovernment funds thus obtained, and with the necessary frigates, theconspirators would sail for New Orleans and proclaim the independence ofLouisiana and the Western States. 

The kernel of truth in these accounts is not easily separated from thechaff. The supposition that Burr seriously contemplated a separation ofthe Western States from the Union may be dismissed from consideration. The loyalty of the Mississippi Valley at this time is beyond question;and Burr was too keen an observer not to recognize the temper of thepeople with whom he sojourned. But there is reason to believe that heand his confederates may have planned an enterprise against Mexico, forsuch a project was quite to the taste of Westerners who hated Spain asardently as they loved the Union. Circumstances favored a filibusteringexpedition. The President's bellicose message of December had preparedthe people of the Mississippi Valley for war; the Spanish plotters hadbeen expelled from Louisiana; Spanish forces had crossed the Sabine;American troops had been sent to repel them if need be; the SouthAmerican revolutionist Miranda had sailed, with vessels fitted outin New York, to start a revolt against Spanish rule in Caracas; everyrevolutionist in New Orleans was on the qui vive. What better time couldthere be to launch a filibustering expedition against Mexico? If itsucceeded and a republic were established, the American Government mightbe expected to recognize a fait accompli. 

The success of Burr's plans, whatever they may have been, depended onhis procuring funds; and it was doubtless the hope of extracting aidfrom Blennerhassett that drew him to the island in midsummer of 1806. Burr was accompanied by his daughter Theodosia and her husband, JosephAlston, a wealthy South Carolina planter, who was either the dupe or theaccomplice of Burr. Together they persuaded the credulous Irishman topurchase a tract of land on the Washita River in the heart of Louisiana, which would ultimately net him a profit of a million dollars whenLouisiana became an independent state with Burr as ruler and Englandas protector. They even assured Blennerhassett that he should go asminister to England. He was so dazzled at the prospect that he not onlymade the initial payment for the lands, but advanced all his propertyfor Burr's use on receiving a guaranty from Alston. Having landed hisfish, Burr set off down the river to visit General Jackson at Nashvilleand to procure boats and supplies for his expedition. 

Meanwhile, Theodosia--the brilliant, fascinating Theodosia--and herhusband played the game at Blennerhassett's Island. Blennerhassett'shead was completely turned. He babbled most indiscreetly about theapproaching coup d'etat. Colonel Burr would be king of Mexico, he toldhis gardener, and Mrs. Alston would be queen when Colonel Burr died. Whocould resist the charms of this young princess? Blennerhassett and hiswife were impatient to exchange their little isle for marble halls infar away Mexico. 

But all was not going well with the future Emperor of Mexico. Uglyrumors were afloat. The active preparations at Blennerhassett's Island, the building of boats at various points along the river, the enlistmentof recruits, coupled with hints of secession, disturbed such loyalcitizens as the District-Attorney at Frankfort, Kentucky. He took itupon himself to warn the President, and then, in open court, chargedBurr with violating the laws of the United States by setting on foota military expedition against Mexico and with inciting citizens torebellion in the Western States. But at the meeting of the grand juryBurr appeared surrounded by his friends and with young Henry Clay forcounsel. The grand jury refused to indict him and he left the court intriumph. Some weeks later the District-Attorney renewed his motion;but again Burr was discharged by the grand jury, amid popular applause. Enthusiastic admirers in Frankfort even gave a ball in his honor. 

Notwithstanding these warnings of conspiracy, President Jeffersonexhibited a singular indifference and composure. To all alarmists hemade the same reply. The people of the West were loyal and could betrusted. It was not until disquieting and ambiguous messages fromWilkinson reached Washington-disquieting because ambiguous--that thePresident was persuaded to act. On the 27th of November, he issueda proclamation warning all good citizens that sundry persons wereconspiring against Spain and enjoining all Federal officers to apprehendthose engaged in the unlawful enterprise. The appearance of thisproclamation at Nashville should have led to Burr's arrest, for he wasstill detained there; but mysterious influences seemed to paralyze thearm of the Government. On the 22d of December, Burr set off, with twoboats which Jackson had built and some supplies, down the Cumberland. At the mouth of the river, he joined forces with Blennerhassett, who hadleft his island in haste just as the Ohio militia was about to descendupon him. The combined strength of the flotilla was nine bateauxcarrying less than sixty men. There was still time to intercept theexpedition at Fort Massac, but again delays that have never beenexplained prevented the President's proclamation from arriving in time;and Burr's little fleet floated peacefully by down stream. 

The scene now shifts to the lower Mississippi, and the heavy villainof the melodrama appears on the stage in the uniform of a United Statesmilitary officer--General James Wilkinson. He had been under orderssince May 6, 1806, to repair to the Territory of Orleans with as littledelay as possible and to repel any invasion east of the River Sabine;but it was now September and he had only just reached Natchitoches, where the American volunteers and militiamen from Louisiana andMississippi were concentrating. Much water had flowed under the bridgesince Aaron Burr visited New Orleans. 

After President Jefferson's bellicose message of the previous December, war with Spain seemed inevitable. And when Spanish troops crossedthe Sabine in July and took up their post only seventeen milesfrom Natchitoches, Western Americans awaited only the word to beginhostilities. The Orleans Gazette declared that the time to repel Spanishaggression had come. The enemy must be driven beyond the Sabine. "Theroute from Natchitoches to Mexico is clear, plain, and open. " Theoccasion was at hand "for conferring on our oppressed Spanish brethrenin Mexico those inestimable blessings of freedom which we ourselvesenjoy. " "Gallant Louisianians! Now is the time to distinguish yourselves. . . . Should the generous efforts of our Government to establish a free, independent Republican Empire in Mexico be successful, how fortunate, how enviable would be the situation in New Orleans!" The editor whosounded this clarion call was a coadjutor of Burr. On the flood tideof a popular war against Spain, they proposed to float their ownexpedition. Much depended on General Wilkinson; but he had alreadywritten privately of subverting the Spanish Government in Mexico, andcarrying "our conquests to California and the Isthmus of Darien. "

With much swagger and braggadocio, Wilkinson advanced to the center ofthe stage. He would drive the Spaniards over the Sabine, though theyoutnumbered him three to one. "I believe, my friend, " he wrote, "I shallbe obliged to fight and to flog them. " Magnificent stage thunder. Butto Wilkinson's chagrin the Spaniards withdrew of their own accord. Nota Spaniard remained to contest his advance to the border. Yet, oddlyenough, he remained idle in camp. Why?

Some two weeks later, an emissary appeared at Natchitoches with a letterfrom Burr dated the 29th of July, in cipher. What this letter may haveoriginally contained will probably never be known, for only Wilkinson'sversion survives, and that underwent frequent revision. * It is quiteas remarkable for its omissions as for anything that it contains. Init there is no mention of a western uprising nor of a revolution inNew Orleans; but only the intimation that an attack is to be made uponSpanish possessions, presumably Mexico, with possibly Baton Rouge as theimmediate objective. Whether or no this letter changed Wilkinson's plan, we can only conjecture. Certain it is, however, that about this timeWilkinson determined to denounce Burr and his associates and to play adouble game, posing on the one hand as the savior of his country and onthe other as a secret friend to Spain. After some hesitation he wroteto President Jefferson warning him in general terms of an expeditionpreparing against Vera Cruz but omitting all mention of Burr. Subsequently he wrote a confidential letter about this "deep, dark, andwidespread conspiracy" which enmeshed all classes and conditions in NewOrleans and might bring seven thousand men from the Ohio. The contentsof Burr's mysterious letter were to be communicated orally to thePresident by the messenger who bore this precious warning. It was onthe strength of these communications that the President issued hisproclamation of the 27th of November. 

 * What is usually accepted as the correct version is printed by McCaleb in his "Aaron Burr Conspiracy, " pp. 74 and 75, and by Henry Adams in his "History of the United States, " vol. III, pp. 253-4. 

While Wilkinson was inditing these misleading missives to the President, he was preparing the way for his entry at New Orleans. To the perplexedand alarmed Governor he wrote: "You are surrounded by dangers ofwhich you dream not, and the destruction of the American Government isseriously menaced. The storm will probably burst in New Orleans, whereI shall meet it, and triumph or perish!" Just five days later he wrotea letter to the Viceroy of Mexico which proves him beyond doubt themost contemptible rascal who ever wore an American uniform. "A storm, arevolutionary tempest, an infernal plot threatens the destruction of theempire, " he wrote; the first object of attack would be New Orleans, then Vera Cruz, then Mexico City; scenes of violence and pillagewould follow; let His Excellency be on his guard. To ward off thesecalamities, "I will hurl myself like a Leonidas into the breach. " Butlet His Excellency remember what risks the writer of this letter incurs, "by offering without orders this communication to a foreign power, " andlet him reimburse the bearer of this letter to the amount of 121, 000pesos which will be spent to shatter the plans of these bandits from theOhio. 

The arrival of Wilkinson in New Orleans was awaited by friends and foes, with bated breath. The conspirators had as yet no intimation of hisintentions: Governor Claiborne was torn by suspicion of this would-besavior, for at the very time he was reading Wilkinson's gasconadehe received a cryptic letter from Andrew Jackson which ran, "keep awatchful eye on our General and beware of an attack as well from yourown country as Spain!" If Claiborne could not trust "our General, " whomcould he trust!

The stage was now set for the last act in the drama. Wilkinson arrivedin the city, deliberately set Claiborne aside, and established a speciesof martial law, not without opposition. To justify his course Wilkinsonswore to an affidavit based on Burr's letter of the 29th of July andproceeded with his arbitrary arrests. One by one Burr's confederateswere taken into custody. The city was kept in a state of alarm; Burr'sarmed thousands were said to be on the way; the negroes were to beincited to revolt. Only the actual appearance of Burr's expedition orsome extraordinary happening could maintain this high pitch of popularexcitement and save Wilkinson from becoming the ridiculous victim of hisown folly. 

On the 10th of January (1807), after an uneventful voyage down theMississippi, Burr's flotilla reached the mouth of Bayou Pierre, somethirty miles above Natchez. Here at length was the huge armada which wasto shatter the Union--nine boats and sixty men! Tension began to giveway. People began to recover their sense of humor. Wilkinson was neverin greater danger in his life, for he was about to appear ridiculous. It was at Bayou Pierre that Burr going ashore learned that Wilkinson hadbetrayed him. His first instinct was to flee, for if he should proceedto New Orleans he would fall into Wilkinson's hands and doubtless becourt-martialed and shot; but if he tarried, he would be arrestedand sent to Washington. Indecision and despair seized him; and whileBlennerhassett and other devoted followers waited for their emperor todeclare his intention, he found himself facing the acting-governor ofthe Mississippi Territory with a warrant for his arrest. To thechagrin of his fellow conspirators, Burr surrendered tamely, evenpusillanimously. 

The end of the drama was near at hand. Burr was brought before a grandjury, and though he once more escaped indictment, he was put underbonds, quite illegally he thought, to appear when summoned. On the 1stof February he abandoned his followers to the tender mercies of the lawand fled in disguise into the wilderness. A month later he was arrestednear the Spanish border above Mobile by Lieutenant Gaines, in commandat Fort Stoddert, and taken to Richmond. The trial that followed did notprove Burr's guilt, but it did prove Thomas Jefferson's credulity andcast grave doubts on James Wilkinson's loyalty. * Burr was acquittedof the charge of treason in court, but he remained under popularindictment, and his memory has never been wholly cleared of thesuspicion of treason. 

 * An account of the trial of Burr will be found in "John Marshall and the Constitution" by Edward S. Corwin, in "The Chronicles of America". 

CHAPTER VII. AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY

While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart out in the Pasha's prisonat Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost frigate, hereminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to correspond, that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects notnaturalized in America. " This incidental remark comes with all theforce of a revelation to those who have fondly imagined that the sturdyjack-tars who manned the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs. Still more disconcerting is the information contained in a letter fromthe Secretary of the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later, to the effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate ofseventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen requiredto man this growing mercantile marine, fully one-half were Britishsubjects, presumably deserters. How are these uncomfortable facts tobe explained? Let a third piece of information be added. In a report ofAdmiral Nelson, dated 1803, in which he broaches a plan for manningthe British navy, it is soberly stated that forty-two thousand Britishseamen deserted "in the late war. " Whenever a large convoy assembled atPortsmouth, added the Admiral, not less than a thousand seamen usuallydeserted from the navy. 

The slightest acquaintance with the British navy when Nelson was winningimmortal glory by his victory at Trafalgar must convince the mostsceptical that his seamen for the most part were little better thangalley slaves. Life on board these frigates was well-nigh unbearable. The average life of a seaman, Nelson reckoned, was forty-five years. Inthis age before processes of refrigeration had been invented, food couldnot be kept edible on long voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worsewas the fare on men-of-war. The health of a crew was left to Providence. Little or no forethought was exercised to prevent disease; the commonestmatters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when disease camethe remedies applied were scarcely to be preferred to the disease. Discipline, always brutal, was symbolized by the cat-o'-nine-tails. Small wonder that the navy was avoided like the plague by every man andseaman. 

Yet a navy had to be maintained: it was the cornerstone of the Empire. And in all the history of that Empire the need of a navy was neverstronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth century. Thepractice of impressing able men for the royal navy was as old as thereign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an odious institution oflong standing--a terror not only to rogue and vagabond but to everyable-bodied seafaring man and waterman on rivers, who was not exemptedby some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and carried to the navynot only its victims but the germs of fever which infested public placesof detention. But the press gang harvested its greatest crop of seamenon the seas. Merchantmen were stopped at sea, robbed of their ablesailors, and left to limp short-handed into port. A British EastIndiaman homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of so many of her crew inthe Bay of Biscay that she was unable to offer resistance to a Frenchprivateer and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. Thenecessity of the royal navy knew no law and often defeated its ownpurpose. 

Death or desertion offered the only way of escape to the victim of thepress gang. And the commander of a British frigate dreaded making portalmost as much as an epidemic of typhus. The deserter always foundAmerican merchantmen ready to harbor him. Fair wages, relativelycomfortable quarters, and decent treatment made him quite ready to takeany measures to forswear his allegiance to Britannia. Naturalizationpapers were easily procured by a few months' residence in any Stateof the Union; and in default of legitimate papers, certificates ofcitizenship could be bought for a song in any American seaport, whereshysters drove a thrifty traffic in bogus documents. Provided theEnglish navy took the precaution to have the description in hiscertificate tally with his personal appearance, and did not let histongue betray him, he was reasonably safe from capture. 

Facing the palpable fact that British seamen were deserting just whenthey were most needed and were making American merchantmen and frigatestheir asylum, the British naval commanders, with no very nice regard forlegal distinctions, extended their search for deserters to the decks ofAmerican vessels, whether in British waters or on the high seas. If intime of war, they reasoned, they could stop a neutral ship on the highseas, search her for contraband of war, and condemn ship and cargo in aprize court if carrying contraband, why might they not by the same tokensearch a vessel for British deserters and impress them into serviceagain? Two considerations seem to justify this reasoning: the trickinessof the smart Yankees who forged citizenship papers, and the indeliblecharacter of British allegiance. Once an Englishman always anEnglishman, by Jove! Your hound of a sea-dog might try to talk throughhis nose like a Yankee, you know, and he might shove a dirty bit ofpaper at you, but he couldn't shake off his British citizenship if hewanted to! This was good English law, and if it wasn't recognized byother nations so much the worse for them. As one of these redoubtableBritish captains put it, years later: "'Might makes right' is theguiding, practical maxim among nations and ever will be, so long aspowder and shot exist, with money to back them, and energy to wieldthem. " Of course, there were hair-splitting fellows, plenty of them, inEngland and the States, who told you that it was one thing to seize avessel carrying contraband and have her condemned by judicial process ina court of admiralty, and quite another thing to carry British subjectsoff the decks of a merchantman flying a neutral flag; but if you knewthe blasted rascals were deserters what difference did it make? Besides, what would become of the British navy, if you listened to all thefine-spun arguments of landsmen? And if these stalwart blue-waterBritishers could have read what Thomas Jefferson was writing at thisvery time, they would have classed him with the armchair critics whohad no proper conception of a sailor's duty. "I hold the right ofexpatriation, " wrote the President, "to be inherent in every man by thelaws of nature, and incapable of being rightfully taken away from himeven by the united will of every other person in the nation. "

In the year 1805, while President Jefferson was still the victim ofhis overmastering passion, and disposed to cultivate the good will ofEngland, if thereby he might obtain the Floridas, unforeseen commercialcomplications arose which not only blocked the way to a betterunderstanding in Spanish affairs but strained diplomatic relationsto the breaking point. News reached Atlantic seaports that Americanmerchantmen, which had hitherto engaged with impunity in the carryingtrade between Europe and the West Indies, had been seized and condemnedin British admiralty courts. Every American shipmaster and owner at oncelifted up his voice in indignant protest; and all the latent hostilityto their old enemy revived. Here were new orders-in-council, said they:the leopard cannot change his spots. England is still England--theimplacable enemy of neutral shipping. "Never will neutrals be perfectlysafe till free goods make free ships or till England loses two or threegreat naval battles, " declared the Salem Register. 

The recent seizures were not made by orders-in-council, however, but inaccordance with a decision recently handed down by the court of appealsin the case of the ship Essex. Following a practice which had becomecommon in recent years, the Essex had sailed with a cargo from Barcelonato Salem and thence to Havana. On the high seas she had been captured, and then taken to a British port, where ship and cargo were condemnedbecause the voyage from Spain to her colony had been virtuallycontinuous, and by the so-called Rule of 1756, direct trade between aEuropean state and its colony was forbidden to neutrals in time of warwhen such trade had not been permitted in time of peace. Hitherto, theBritish courts had inclined to the view that when goods had been landedin a neutral country and duties paid, the voyage had been broken. Tacitly a trade that was virtually direct had been countenanced, becausethe payment of duties seemed evidence enough that the cargo became apart of the stock of the neutral country and, if reshipped, was then abona fide neutral cargo. Suddenly English merchants and shippers woketo the fact that they were often victims of deception. Cargoes wouldbe landed in the United States, duties ostensibly paid, and the goodsostensibly imported, only to be reshipped in the same bottoms, with theconnivance of port officials, either without paying any real dutiesor with drawbacks. In the case of the Essex the court of appeals cutdirectly athwart these practices by going behind the prima facie paymentand inquiring into the intent of the voyage. The mere touching at aport without actually importing the cargo into the common stock of thecountry did not alter the nature of the voyage. The crucial pointwas the intent, which the court was now and hereafter determined toascertain by examination of facts. The court reached the indubitableconclusion that the cargo of the Essex had never been intended forAmerican markets. The open-minded historian must admit that this wasa fair application of the Rule of 1756, but he may still challenge thevalidity of the rule, as all neutral countries did, and the wisdom ofthe monopolistic impulse which moved the commercial classes and thecourts of England to this decision. *

 * Professor William E. Lingelbach in a notable article on "England and Neutral Trade" in "The Military Historian and Economist" (April, 1917) has pointed out the error committed by almost every historian from Henry Adams down, that the Essex decision reversed previous rulings of the court and was not in accord with British law. 

Had the impressment of seamen and the spoliation of neutral commerceoccurred only on the high seas, public resentment would have mounted toa high pitch in the United States; but when British cruisers ran intoAmerican waters to capture or burn French vessels, and when Britishmen-of-war blockaded ports, detaining and searching--and at timescapturing--American vessels, indignation rose to fever heat. Theblockade of New York Harbor by two British frigates, the Cambrian andthe Leander, exasperated merchants beyond measure. On board the Leanderwas a young midshipman, Basil Hall, who in after years described theactivities of this execrated frigate. 

"Every morning at daybreak, we set about arresting the progress of allthe vessels we saw, firing of guns to the right and left to make everyship that was running in heave to, or wait until we had leisure to senda boat on board 'to see, ¹ in our lingo, 'what she was made of. ' I havefrequently known a dozen, and sometimes a couple of dozen, ships lyinga league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, andworse than all their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our search was completed. "*

 * "Fragments of Voyages and Travels, " quoted by Henry Adams, in "History of the United States", vol. III, p. 92. 

One day in April, 1806, the Leander, trying to halt a merchantman thatshe meant to search, fired a shot which killed the helmsman of a passingsloop. The boat sailed on to New York with the mangled body; and thecaptain, brother of the murdered man, lashed the populace into a rageby his mad words. Supplies for the frigates were intercepted, personalviolence was threatened to any British officers caught on shore, thecaptain of the Leander was indicted for murder, and the funeral of themurdered sailor was turned into a public demonstration. Yet nothing cameof this incident, beyond a proclamation by the President closing theports of the United States to the offending frigates and ordering thearrest of the captain of the Leander wherever found. After all, thedeath of a common seaman did not fire the hearts of farmers peacefullytilling their fields far beyond hearing of the Leander's guns. 

A year full of troublesome happenings passed; scores of American vesselswere condemned in British admiralty courts, and American seamen wereimpressed with increasing frequency, until in the early summer of 1807these manifold grievances culminated in an outrage that shook evenJefferson out of his composure and evoked a passionate outcry for warfrom all parts of the country. 

While a number of British war vessels were lying in Hampton Roadswatching for certain French frigates which had taken refuge upChesapeake Bay, they lost a number of seamen by desertion underpeculiarly annoying circumstances. In one instance a whole boat's crewmade off under cover of night to Norfolk and there publicly defiedtheir commander. Three deserters from the British frigate Melampus hadenlisted on the American frigate Chesapeake, which had just been fittedout for service in the Mediterranean; but on inquiry these three wereproven to be native Americans who had been impressed into Britishservice. Unfortunately inquiry did disclose one British deserter whohad enlisted on the Chesapeake, a loud-mouthed tar by the name of JenkinRatford. These irritating facts stirred Admiral Berkeley at Halifaxto highhanded measures. Without waiting for instructions, he issued anorder to all commanders in the North Atlantic Squadron to search theChesapeake for deserters, if she should be encountered on the high seas. This order of the 1st of June should be shown to the captain of theChesapeake as sufficient authority for searching her. 

On June 22, 1807, the Chesapeake passed unsuspecting between the capeson her way to the Mediterranean. She was a stanch frigate carryingforty guns and a crew of 375 men and boys; but she was at this time ina distressing state of unreadiness, owing to the dilatoriness andincompetence of the naval authorities at Washington. The gundeck waslittered with lumber and odds and ends of rigging; the guns, thoughloaded, were not all fitted to their carriages; and the crew wasuntrained. As the guns had to be fired by slow matches or by loggerheadsheated red-hot, and the ammunition was stored in the magazine, thefrigate was totally unprepared for action. Commodore Barron, whocommanded the Chesapeake, counted on putting her into fighting trim onthe long voyage across the Atlantic. 

Just ahead of the Chesapeake as she passed out to sea, was the Leopard, a British frigate of fifty-two guns, which was apparently on the lookoutfor suspicious merchantmen. It was not until both vessels were eightmiles or more southeast of Cape Henry that the movements of the Leopardbegan to attract attention. At about half-past three in the afternoonshe came within hailing distance and hove to, announcing that she haddispatches for the commander. The Chesapeake also hove to and answeredthe hail, a risky move considering that she was unprepared for actionand that the Leopard lay to the windward. But why should the commanderof the American frigate have entertained suspicions?

A boat put out from the Leopard, bearing a petty officer, who delivereda note enclosing Admiral Berkeley's order and expressing the hope that"every circumstance. . . May be adjusted in a manner that the harmonysubsisting between the two countries may remain undisturbed. " CommodoreBarron replied that he knew of no British deserters on his vessel anddeclined in courteous terms to permit his crew to be mustered by anyother officers but their own. The messenger departed, and then, for thefirst time entertaining serious misgivings, Commodore Barron ordered hisdecks cleared for action. But before the crew could bestir themselves, the Leopard drew near, her men at quarters. The British commandershouted a warning, but Barron, now thoroughly alarmed, replied, "I don'thear what you say. " The warning was repeated, but again Barron to gaintime shouted that he could not hear. The Leopard then fired two shotsacross the bow of the Chesapeake, and almost immediately withoutparleying further--she was now within two hundred feet of hervictim--poured a broadside into the American vessel. 

Confusion reigned on the Chesapeake. The crew for the most part showedcourage, but they were helpless, for they could not fire a gun forwant of slow matches or loggerheads. They crowded about the magazineclamoring in vain for a chance to defend the vessel; they yelled withrage at their predicament. Only one gun was discharged and that was bymeans of a live coal brought up from the galley after the Chesapeake hadreceived a third broadside and Commodore Barron had ordered the flag tobe hauled down to spare further slaughter. Three of his crew had alreadybeen killed and eighteen wounded, himself among the number. The wholeaction lasted only fifteen minutes. 

Boarding crews now approached and several British officers climbedto the deck of the Chesapeake and mustered her crew. Among the ship'scompany they found the alleged deserters and, hiding in the coal-hole, the notorious Jenkin Ratford. These four men they took with them, and the Leopard, having fulfilled her instructions, now suffered theChesapeake to limp back to Hampton Roads. "For the first time in theirhistory, " writes Henry Adams, * "the people of the United States learned, in June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion. Hitherto everypublic passion had been more or less partial and one-sided;. . . But theoutrage committed on the Chesapeake stung through hidebound prejudices, and made democrat and aristocrat writhe alike. "

 * History of the United States, vol. IV, p. 27. 

Had President Jefferson chosen to go to war at this moment, he wouldhave had a united people behind him, and he was well aware that hepossessed the power of choice. "The affair of the Chesapeake put warinto my hand, " he wrote some years later. "I had only to open it andlet havoc loose. " But Thomas Jefferson was not a martial character. TheState Governors, to be sure, were requested to have their militiain readiness, and the Governor of Virginia was desired to call suchcompanies into service as were needed for the defense of Norfolk. The President referred in indignant terms to the abuse of the laws ofhospitality and the "outrage" committed by the British commander; buthis proclamation only ordered all British armed vessels out of Americanwaters and forbade all intercourse with them if they remained. Thetone of the proclamation was so moderate as to seem pusillanimous. JohnRandolph called it an apology. Thomas Jefferson did not mean to havewar. With that extraordinary confidence in his own powers, which insmaller men would be called smug conceit, he believed that he couldsecure disavowal and honorable reparation for the wrong committed; buthe chose a frail intermediary when he committed this delicate mission toJames Monroe. 

CHAPTER VIII. THE PACIFISTS OF 1807

It is one of the strange paradoxes of our time that the author of theDeclaration of Independence, to whose principle of self-determinationthe world seems again to be turning, should now be regarded as aself-confessed pacifist, with all the derogatory implications that lurkin that epithet. The circumstances which made him a revolutionistin 1776 and a passionate advocate of peace in 1807 deserve someconsideration. The charge made by contemporaries of Jefferson that hisaversion to war sprang from personal cowardice may be dismissed at once, as it was by him, with contempt. Nor was his hatred of war merely aninstinctive abhorrence of bloodshed. He had not hesitated to wage navalwar on the Barbary Corsairs. It is true that he was temperamentallyaverse to the use of force under ordinary circumstances. He did notbelong to that type of full-blooded men who find self-expression inadventurous activity. Mere physical effort without conscious purposenever appealed to him. He was at the opposite pole of life from a manlike Aaron Burr. He never, so far as history records, had an affairof honor; he never fought a duel; he never performed active militaryservice; he never took human life. Yet he was not a non-resistant. "Myhope of preserving peace for our country, " he wrote on one occasion, "isnot founded in the Quaker principle of nonresistance under every wrong. "

The true sources of Jefferson's pacifism must be sought in hisrationalistic philosophy, which accorded the widest scope to theprinciple of self-direction and self determination, whether on the partof the individual or of groups of individuals. To impose one's will uponanother was to enslave, according to his notion; to coerce by war wasto enslave a community; and to enslave a community was to provokerevolution. Jefferson's thought gravitated inevitably to the center ofhis rational universe--to the principle of enlightened self-interest. Men and women are not to be permanently moved by force but by appealsto their interests. He completed his thought as follows in the letteralready quoted: "But [my hope of preserving peace is founded] in thebelief that a just and friendly conduct on our part will procurejustice and friendship from others. In the existing contest, each of thecombatants will find an interest in our friendship. "

It was a chaotic world in which this philosopher-statesman was calledupon to act--a world in which international law and neutral rights hadbeen well-nigh submerged in twelve years of almost continuous war. Yetwith amazing self-assurance President Jefferson believed that he held inhis hand a master-key which would unlock all doors that had been shutto the commerce of neutrals. He called this master-key "peaceablecoercion, " and he explained its magic potency in this wise:

"Our commerce is so valuable to them [the European belligerents] thatthey will be glad to purchase it when the only price we ask is to dous justice. I believe that we have in our hands the means of peaceablecoercion; and that the moment they see our government so united as thatthey can make use of it, they will for their own interest be disposed todo us justice. "

The idea of using commercial restrictions as a weapon to securerecognition of rights was of course not original with Jefferson, butit was now to be given a trial without parallel in the history ofthe nation. Non-importation agreements had proved efficacious inthe struggle of the colonies with the mother country; it seemed notunreasonable to suppose that a well-sustained refusal to traffic inEnglish goods would meet the emergency of 1807, when the ruling ofBritish admiralty courts threatened to cut off the lucrative commercebetween Europe and the West Indies. With this theory in view, thePresident and his Secretary of State advocated the NonImportation Billof April 18, 1806, which forbade the entry of certain specified goods ofBritish manufacture. The opposition found a leader in Randolph, who nowbroke once and for all with the Administration. "Never in the course ofmy life, " he exclaimed, "have I witnessed such a scene of indignity andinefficiency as this measure holds forth to the world. What is it? Amilk-and-water bill! A dose of chicken-broth to be taken nine monthshence!. . . It is too contemptible to be the object of consideration, or to excite the feelings of the pettiest state in Europe. " TheAdministration carried the bill through Congress, but Randolph hadthe satisfaction of seeing his characterisation of the measure amplyjustified by the course of events. 

With the Non-Importation Act as a weapon, the President was confidentthat Monroe, who had once more returned to his post in London, couldforce a settlement of all outstanding differences with Great Britain. Tohis annoyance, and to Monroe's chagrin, however, he was obliged to senda special envoy to act with Monroe. Factious opposition in the Senateforced the President to placate the Federalists by appointing WilliamPinkney of Maryland. The American commissioners were instructedto insist upon three concessions in the treaty which they were tonegotiate: restoration of trade with enemies' colonies, indemnity forcaptures made since the Essex decision, and express repudiation of theright of impressment. In return for these concessions, they might holdout the possible repeal of the Non-Importation Act! Only confirmedoptimists could believe that the mistress of the seas, flushed with thevictory of Trafalgar, would consent to yield these points for so slighta compensation. The mission was, indeed, doomed from the outset, andnothing more need be said of it than that in the end, to secure anytreaty at all, Monroe and Pinkney broke their instructions and set asidethe three ultimata. What they obtained in return seemed so insignificantand doubtful, and what they paid for even these slender compensationsseemed so exorbitant, that the President would not even submit thetreaty to the Senate. The first application of the theory of peaceablecoercion thus ended in humiliating failure. Jefferson thought it best"to let the negotiation take a friendly nap"; but Madison, who feltthat his political future depended on a diplomatic triumph over England, drafted new instructions for the two commissioners, hoping that thetreaty might yet be put into acceptable form. It was while these newinstructions were crossing the ocean that the Chesapeake struck hercolors. 

James Monroe is one of the most unlucky diplomats in American history. From those early days when he had received the fraternal embraces of theJacobins in Paris and had been recalled by President Washington, to theill-fated Spanish mission, circumstances seem to have conspired againsthim. The honor of negotiating the purchase of Louisiana should have beenhis alone, but he arrived just a day too late and was obliged todivide the glory with Livingston. On this mission to England he was notpermitted to conduct negotiations alone but was associated with WilliamPinkney, a Federalist. No wonder he suspected Madison, or at leastMadison's friends, of wishing to discredit him. And now anotherimpossible task was laid upon him. He was instructed to demand notonly disavowal and reparation for the attack on the Chesapeake and therestoration of the American seamen, but also as "an indispensable partof the satisfaction" "an entire abolition of impressments. " If theSecretary of State had deliberately contrived to deliver Monroe intothe hands of George Canning, he could not have been more successful, forMonroe had already protested against the Chesapeake outrage as an act ofaggression which should be promptly disavowed without reference to thelarger question of impressment. He was now obliged to eat his ownwords and inject into the discussion, as Canning put it, the irrelevantmatters which they had agreed to separate from the present controversy. Canning was quick to see his opportunity. Mr. Monroe must be aware, saidhe, that on several recent occasions His Majesty had firmly declined towaive "the ancient and prescriptive usages of Great Britain, founded onthe soundest principles of natural law, " simply because they might comein contact with the interests or the feelings of the American people. IfMr. Monroe's instructions left him powerless to adjust this regrettableincident of the Leopard and the Chesapeake, without raising the otherquestion of the right of search and impressment, then His Majestycould only send a special envoy to the United States to terminate thecontroversy in a manner satisfactory to both countries. "But, " addedCanning with sarcasm which was not lost on Monroe, "in order to avoidthe inconvenience which has arisen from the mixed nature of yourinstructions, that minister will not be empowered to entertain. . . Anyproposition respecting the search of merchant vessels. "

One more humiliating experience was reserved for Monroe before hisdiplomatic career closed. Following Madison's new set of instructions, he and Pinkney attempted to reopen negotiations for the revision of thediscredited treaty of the preceding year. But Canning had reasons of hisown for wishing to be rid of a treaty which had been drawn by the lateWhig Ministry. He informed the American commissioners arrogantly that"the proposal of the President of the United States for proceeding tonegotiate anew upon the basis of a treaty already solemnly concluded andsigned, is a proposal wholly inadmissible. " His Majesty could thereforeonly acquiesce in the refusal of the President to ratify the treaty. Oneweek later, James Monroe departed from London, never again to set footon British soil, leaving Pinkney to assume the duties of Minister atthe Court of St. James. For the second time Monroe returned to his owncountry discredited by the President who had appointed him. In bothinstances he felt himself the victim of injustice. In spite of hisfriendship for Jefferson, he was embittered against the Administrationand in this mood lent himself all too readily to the schemes of JohnRandolph, who had already picked him as the one candidate who could beatMadison in the next presidential election. 

From the point of view of George Canning and the Tory squirearchy whosemouthpiece he was, the Chesapeake affair was but an incident--an unhappyincident, to be sure, but still only an incident--in the world-widestruggle with Napoleon. What was at stake was nothing less thanthe commercial supremacy of Great Britain. The astounding growth ofNapoleon's empire was a standing menace to British trade. The overthrowof Prussia in the fall of 1806 left the Corsican in control of CentralEurope and in a position to deal his long premeditated blow. A fortnightafter the battle of Jena, he entered Berlin and there issued the famousdecree which was his answer to the British blockade of the Frenchchannel ports. Since England does not recognize the system ofinternational law universally observed by all civilized nations--so thepreamble read--but by a monstrous abuse of the right of blockade hasdetermined to destroy neutral trade and to raise her commerce andindustry upon the ruins of that of the continent, and since "whoeverdeals on the continent in English goods thereby favors and rendershimself an accomplice of her designs, " therefore the British Isles aredeclared to be in a state of blockade. Henceforth all English goods wereto be lawful prize in any territory held by the troops of France orher allies; and all vessels which had come from English ports or fromEnglish colonies were to be confiscated, together with their cargoes. This challenge was too much for the moral equilibrium of the squires, the shipowners, and the merchants who dominated Parliament. It dulledtheir sense of justice and made them impatient under the pinpricks whichcame from the United States. "A few short months of war, " declared theMorning Post truculently, "would convince these desperate [American]politicians of the folly of measuring the strength of a rising, butstill infant and puny, nation with the colossal power of the BritishEmpire. " "Right, " said the Times, another organ of the Tory Government, "is power sanctioned by usage. " Concession to Americans at this crisiswas not to be entertained for a moment, for after all, said the Times, they "possess all the vices of their Indian neighbors without theirvirtues. "

In this temper the British Government was prepared to ignore the UnitedStates and deal Napoleon blow for blow. An order-in-council of January7, 1807, asserted the right of retaliation and declared that "no vesselshall be permitted to trade from one port to another, both which portsshall belong to, or be in possession of France or her allies. " Thepeculiar hardship of this order for American shipowners is revealedby the papers of Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose shrewdness andenterprise were making him one of the merchant princes of his time. Oneof his ships, the Liberty, of some 250 tons, was sent to Lisbon with acargo of 2052 barrels and 220 half-barrels of flour which cost theowner $10. 68 a barrel. Her captain, on entering port, learned that flourcommanded a better price at Cadiz. To Cadiz, accordingly, he set sailand sold his cargo for $22. 50 a barrel, winning for the owner a goodlyprofit of $25, 000, less commission. It was such trading ventures as thisthat the British order-in-council doomed. 

What American shipmasters had now to fear from both belligerents wasmade startlingly clear by the fate of the ship Horizon, which had sailedfrom Charleston, South Carolina, with a cargo for Zanzibar. On the wayshe touched at various South American ports and disposed of most ofher cargo. Then changing her destination, and taking on a cargo for theEnglish market, she set sail for London. On the way she was forced toput in at Lisbon to refit. As she left to resume her voyage shewas seized by an English frigate and brought in as a fair prize, since--according to the Rule of 1756--she had been apprehended in anillegal traffic between an enemy country and its colony. The Britishprize court condemned the cargo but released the ship. The unluckyHorizon then loaded with an English cargo and sailed again to Lisbon, but misfortune overtook her and she was wrecked off the French coast. Her cargo was salvaged, however, and what was not of English origin wasrestored to her owners by decree of a French prize court; the rest ofher cargo was confiscated under the terms of the Berlin decree. When theAmerican Minister protested at this decision, he was told that "sinceAmerica suffers her ships to be searched, she adopts the principlethat the flag does not cover the goods. Since she recognizes the absurdblockades laid by England, consents to having her vessels incessantlystopped, sent to England, and so turned aside from their course, whyshould the Americans not suffer the blockade laid by France? CertainlyFrance recognizes that these measures are unjust, illegal, andsubversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of nations toresort to force, and to declare themselves against things which dishonorthem and disgrace their independence. " * But an invitation to enter theEuropean maelstrom and battle for neutral rights made no impression uponthe mild-tempered President. 

 * Henry Adams, History of the United States, IV, p. 110. 

It is as clear as day that the British Government was now determined, under pretense of retaliating upon France, to promote British trade withthe continent by every means and at the expense of neutrals. Anotherorder-in-council, November 17, 1807, closed to neutrals all Europeanports under French control, "as if the same were actually blockaded, "but permitted vessels which first entered a British port and obtained aBritish license to sail to any continental port. It was an order which, as Henry Adams has said, could have but one purpose--to make Americancommerce English. This was precisely the contemporary opinion of thehistorian's grandfather, who declared that the "orders-in-council, ifsubmitted to, would have degraded us to the condition of colonists. "

Only one more blow was needed, it would seem, to complete the ruin ofAmerican commerce. It fell a month later, when Napoleon, having overrunthe Spanish peninsula and occupied Portugal, issued his Milan decree ofDecember 17, 1807. Henceforth any vessel which submitted to searchby English cruisers, or paid any tonnage duty or tax to the EnglishGovernment, or sailed to or from any English port, would be captured andcondemned as lawful prize. Such was to be the maritime code of France"until England should return to the principles of international lawwhich are also those of justice and honor. "

Never was a commercial nation less prepared to defend itself againstdepredations than the United States of America in this year 1807. Forthis unpreparedness many must bear the blame, but President Jeffersonhas become the scapegoat. This Virginia farmer and landsman was notonly ignorant and distrustful of all the implements of war, but utterlyunfamiliar with the ways of the sea and with the first principles ofsea-power. The Tripolitan War seems to have inspired him with a singlefixed idea--that for defensive purposes gunboats were superior tofrigates and less costly. He set forth this idea in a special messageto Congress (February 10, 1807), claiming to have the support of"professional men, " among whom he mentioned Generals Wilkinson andGates! He proposed the construction of two hundred of these gunboats, which would be distributed among the various exposed harbors, wherein time of peace they would be hauled up on shore under sheds, forprotection against sun and storm. As emergency arose these floatingbatteries were to be manned by the seamen and militia of the port. What appealed particularly to the President in this programme was theimmunity it offered from "an excitement to engage in offensive maritimewar. " Gallatin would have modified even this plan for economy's sake. He would have constructed only one-half of the proposed fleet since thelarge seaports could probably build thirty gunboats in as many days, ifan emergency arose. In extenuation of Gallatin's shortsightedness, itshould be remembered that he was a native of Switzerland, whose navyhas never ploughed many seas. It is less easy to excuse the rest of thePresident's advisers and the Congress which was beguiled into acceptingthis naive project. Nor did the Chesapeake outrage teach either Congressor the Administration a salutary lesson. On the contrary, when inOctober the news of the bombardment of Copenhagen had shattered thenerves of statesmen in all neutral countries, and while the differenceswith England were still unsettled, Jefferson and his colleagues decidedto hold four of the best frigates in port and use them "as receptaclesfor enlisting seamen to fill the gunboats occasionally. " Whom the godswould punish they first make mad!

The 17th of December was a memorable day in the annals of thisAdministration. Favorable tradewinds had brought into American ports anumber of packets with news from Europe. The Revenge had arrived inNew York with Armstrong's dispatches announcing Napoleon's purpose toenforce the Berlin decree; the Edward had reached Boston with Britishnewspapers forecasting the order-in-council of the 11th of November. This news burst like a bomb in Washington where the genial Presidentwas observing with scientific detachment the operation of his policy ofcommercial coercion. The Non-Importation Act had just gone into effect. Jefferson immediately called his Cabinet together. All were of one mind. The impending order-in-council, it was agreed, left but one alternative. Commerce must be totally suspended until the full scope of these newaggressions could be ascertained. The President took a loose sheet ofpaper and drafted hastily a message to Congress, recommending an embargoin anticipation of the offensive British order. But the prudent Madisonurged that it was better not to refer explicitly to the order andproposed a substitute which simply recommended "an immediate inhibitionof the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United States, "on the ground that shipping was likely to be exposed to greater dangers. Only Gallatin demurred: he would have preferred an embargo for alimited time. "I prefer war to a permanent embargo, " he wrote nextday. "Government prohibitions, " he added significantly, "do always moremischief than had been calculated. " But Gallatin was overruled and themessage, in Madison's form, was sent to Congress on the following day. The Senate immediately passed the desired bill through three readingsin a single day; the House confirmed this action after only two daysof debate; and on the 22d of December, the President signed the EmbargoAct. 

What was this measure which was passed by Congress almost withoutdiscussion? Ostensibly it was an act for the protection of Americanships, merchandise, and seamen. It forbade the departure of all shipsfor foreign ports, except vessels under the immediate direction of thePresident and vessels in ballast or already loaded with goods. Foreignarmed vessels were exempted also as a matter of course. Coasting shipswere to give bonds double the value of vessel and cargo to reland theirfreight in some port of the United States. Historians have discovereda degree of duplicity in the alleged motives for this act. How, it isasked, could protection of ships and seamen be the motive when all ofJefferson's private letters disclose his determination to put his theoryof peaceable coercion to a practical test by this measure? The criticismis not altogether fair, for, as Jefferson would himself havereplied, peaceable coercion was designed to force the withdrawal oforders-in-council and decrees that menaced the safety of ships andcargoes. The policy might entail some incidental hardships, to be sure, but the end in view was protection of American lives and property. Madison was not quite candid, nevertheless, when he assured the BritishMinister that the embargo was a precautionary measure only and notconceived with hostile intent. 

Chimerical this policy seemed to many contemporaries; chimerical it hasseemed to historians, and to us who have passed through the WorldWar. Yet in the World War it was the possession of food stuffs and rawmaterials by the United States which gave her a dominating position inthe councils of the Allies. Had her commerce in 1807 been as necessaryto England and France as it was "at the very peak" of the World War, Thomas Jefferson might have proved that peaceable coercion is aneffective alternative to war; but he overestimated the magnitude andimportance of the carrying trade of the United States, and erred stillmore grievously in assuming that a public conscience existed which wouldprove superior to the temptation to evade the law. Jefferson dreaded warquite as much because of its concomitants as because of its inevitablebrutality, quite as much because it tended to exalt government and toproduce corruption as because it maimed bodies and sacrificed humanlives. Yet he never took fully into account the possible accompanimentsof his alternative to war. That the embargo would debauch public moralsand make government arbitrary, he was to learn only by bitter experienceand personal humiliation. 

Just after the passage of this momentous act, Canning's special envoy, George Rose, arrived in the United States. A British diplomat of thebetter sort, with much dignity of manner and suave courtesy, he wasreceived with more than ordinary consideration by the Administration. He was commissioned, every one supposed, to offer reparation forthe Chesapeake affair. Even after he had notified Madison that hisinstructions bade him insist, as an indispensable preliminary, on therecall of the President's Chesapeake proclamation, he was treated withdeference and assured that the President was prepared to comply, if hecould do so without incurring the charge of inconsistency and disregardof national honor. Madison proposed to put a proclamation of recall inRose's hands, duly signed by the President and dated so as to correspondwith the day on which all differences should be adjusted. Rose consentedto this course and the proclamation was delivered into his hands. Hethen divulged little by little his further instructions, which were suchas no self-respecting administration could listen to with composure. Canning demanded a formal disavowal of Commodore Barron's conduct inencouraging deserters from His Majesty's service and harboring them onboard his ship. "You will state, " read Rose's instructions, "thatsuch disavowals, solemnly expressed, would afford to His Majesty asatisfactory pledge on the part of the American Government that therecurrence of similar causes will not on any occasion impose on HisMajesty the necessity of authorizing those means of force to whichAdmiral Berkeley has resorted without authority, but which the continuedrepetition of such provocations as unfortunately led to the attack uponthe Chesapeake might render necessary, as a just reprisal on the partof His Majesty. " No doubt Rose did his best to soften the tone of theseinstructions, but he could not fail to make them clear; and Madison, whohad conducted these informal interviews, slowly awoke to the real natureof what he was asked to do. He closed further negotiations with thecomment that the United States could not be expected "to make, as itwere, an expiatory sacrifice to obtain redress, or beg for reparation. "The Administration determined to let the disavowal of Berkeley sufficefor the present and to allow the matter of reparation to await furtherdevelopments. The coercive policy on which the Administration hadnow launched would, it was confidently believed, bring His Majesty'sGovernment to terms. 

The very suggestion of an embargo had an unexpected effect upon Americanshipmasters. To avoid being shut up in port, fleets of ships put out tosea half-manned, half-laden, and often without clearance papers. Withfreight rates soaring to unheard-of altitudes, ship-owners were willingto assume all the risks of the sea--British frigates included. So littledid they appreciate the protection offered by a benevolent governmentthat they assumed an attitude of hostility to authority and evaded theexactions of the law in every conceivable way. Under guise of engagingin the coasting trade, many a ship landed her cargo in a foreign port;a brisk traffic also sprang up across the Canadian border; and AmeliaIsland in St. Mary's River, Florida, became a notorious mart for illicitcommerce. Almost at once Congress was forced to pass supplementary acts, conferring upon collectors of ports powers of inspection and regulationwhich Gallatin unhesitatingly pronounced both odious and dangerous. ThePresident affixed his signature ruefully to acts which increasedthe army, multiplied the number of gunboats under construction, andappropriated a million and a quarter dollars to the construction ofcoast defenses and the equipment of militia. "This embargo act, " heconfessed, "is certainly the most embarrassing we ever had to execute. I did not expect a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud and openopposition by force could have grown up in the United States. "

The worst feature of the experiment was its ineffectiveness. Theinhibition of commerce had so slight an effect upon England that whenPinkney approached Canning with the proposal of a quid pro quo--theUnited States to rescind the embargo, England to revoke herorders-in-council--he was told with biting sarcasm that "if it werepossible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the embargo withoutappearing to deprecate it as a measure of hostility, he would gladlyhave facilitated its removal AS A MEASURE OF INCONVENIENT RESTRICTIONUPON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. " By licensing American vessels, indeed, which had either slipped out of port before the embargo or evaded thecollectors, the British Government was even profiting by this measure ofrestriction. It was these vagrant vessels which gave Napoleon his excusefor the Bayonne decree of April 17, 1808, when with a stroke of the penhe ordered the seizure of all American ships in French ports andswept property to the value of ten million dollars into the imperialexchequer. Since these vessels were abroad in violation of the embargo, he argued, they could not be American craft but must be British ships indisguise. General Armstrong, writing from Paris, warned the Secretary ofState not to expect that the embargo would do more than keep the UnitedStates at peace with the belligerents. As a coercive measure, its effectwas nil. "Here it is not felt, and in England. . . It is forgotten. "

Before the end of the year the failure of the embargo was patent toevery fair-minded observer. Men might differ ever so much as to the harmwrought by the embargo abroad; but all agreed that it was not bringingeither France or England to terms, and that it was working real hardshipat home. Federalists in New England, where nearly one-third of the shipsin the carrying trade were owned, pointed to the schooners "rottingat their wharves, " to the empty shipyards and warehouses, to the idlesailors wandering in the streets of port towns, and asked passionatelyhow long they must be sacrificed to the theories of this charlatan inthe White House. Even Southern Republicans were asking uneasily when thePresident would realize that the embargo was ruining planters who couldnot market their cotton and tobacco. And Republicans whose pockets werenot touched were soberly questioning whether a policy that reduced theannual value of exports from $108, 000, 000 to $22, 000, 000, and cut thenational revenue in half, had not been tested long enough. 

Indications multiplied that "the dictatorship of Mr. Jefferson" wasdrawing to a close. In 1808, after the election of Madison as hissuccessor, he practically abdicated as leader of his party, partly outof an honest conviction that he ought not to commit the President-electby any positive course of action, and partly no doubt out of a lesspraiseworthy desire not to admit the defeat of his cherished principle. His abdication left the party without resolute leadership at a criticalmoment. Madison and Gallatin tried to persuade their party associatesto continue the embargo until June, and then, if concessions werenot forthcoming, to declare war; but they were powerless to hold theRepublican majority together on this programme. Setting aside theembargo and returning to the earlier policy of non-intercourse, Congressadopted a measure which excluded all English and French vessels andimports, but which authorized the President to renew trade witheither country if it should mend its ways. On March 1, 1809, with muchbitterness of spirit, Thomas Jefferson signed the bill which ended hisgreat experiment. Martha Jefferson once said of her father that henever gave up a friend or an opinion. A few months before his death, healluded to the embargo, with the pathetic insistence of old age, as "ameasure, which, persevered in a little longer. . . Would have effected itsobject completely. "

CHAPTER IX. THE LAST PHASE OF PEACEABLE COERCION

Three days after Jefferson gave his consent to the repeal of theembargo, the Presidency passed in succession to the second of theVirginia Dynasty. It was not an impressive figure that stood besideJefferson and faced the great crowd gathered in the new Hall ofRepresentatives at the Capitol. James Madison was a pale, extremelynervous, and obviously unhappy person on this occasion. For a masterfulcharacter this would have been the day of days; for Madison it was afearful ordeal which sapped every ounce of energy. He trembled violentlyas he began to speak and his voice was almost inaudible. Those who couldnot hear him but who afterward read the Inaugural Address doubtlesscomforted themselves with the reflection that they had not missed much. The new President, indeed, had nothing new to say--no new policy toadvocate. He could only repeat the old platitudes about preferring"amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to adecision of them by an appeal to arms. " Evidently, no strong assertionof national rights was to be expected from this plain, homespunPresident. 

At the Inaugural Ball, however, people forgot their President inadmiration of the President's wife, Dolly Madison. "She looked a queen, "wrote Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith. "She had on a pale buff-coloredvelvet, made plain, with a very long train, but not the least trimming, and beautiful pearl necklace, earrings, and bracelets. Her head dresswas a turban of the same colored velvet and white satin (from Paris)with two superb plumes, the bird of paradise feathers. It would beABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for any one to behave with more perfect proprietythan she did. Unassuming dignity, sweetness, grace. Mr. Madison, on thecontrary, " continued this same warm-hearted observer, "seemed spiritlessand exhausted. While he was standing by me, I said, 'I wish with all myheart I had a little bit of seat to offer you. ' 'I wish so too, ' saidhe, with a most woebegone face, and looking as if he could hardly stand. The managers came up to ask him to stay to supper, he assented, andturning to me, 'but I would much rather be in bed, ' he said. " Quitedifferent was Mr. Jefferson on this occasion. He seemed to be in highspirits and "his countenance beamed with a benevolent joy. " It seemed tothis ardent admirer that "every demonstration of respect to Mr. M. Gave Mr. J. More pleasure than if paid to himself. " No wonder thatMr. Jefferson was in good spirits. Was he not now free from all theanxieties and worries of politics? Already he was counting on retiring"to the elysium of domestic affections and the irresponsible direction"of his own affairs. A week later he set out for Monticello on horseback, never again to set foot in the city which had witnessed his triumph andhis humiliation. 

The election of Madison had disclosed wide rifts in his party. Monroehad lent himself to the designs of John Randolph and had entered thelist of candidates for the Presidency; and Vice-President Clinton hadalso been put forward by other malcontents. It was this division in theranks of the opposition which in the end had insured Madison's election;but factional differences pursued Madison into the White House. Evenin the choice of his official family he was forced to consider thepreferences of politicians whom he despised, for when he would haveappointed Gallatin Secretary of State, he found Giles of Virginia andSamuel Smith of Maryland bent upon defeating the nomination. The Smithfaction was, indeed, too influential to be ignored; with a wry faceMadison stooped to a bargain which left Gallatin at the head of theTreasury but which saddled his Administration with Robert Smith, whoproved to be quite unequal to the exacting duties of the Department ofState. 

The Administration began with what appeared to be a great diplomatictriumph. In April the President issued a proclamation announcing thatthe British orders-in-council would be withdrawn on the 10th of June, after which date commerce with Great Britain might be renewed. In thenewspapers appeared, with this welcome proclamation, a note draftedby the British Minister Erskine expressing the confident hope that alldifferences between the two countries would be adjusted by a specialenvoy whom His Majesty had determined to send to the United States. The Republican press was jubilant. At last the sage of Monticello wasvindicated. "It may be boldly alleged, " said the National Intelligencer, "that the revocation of the British orders is attributable to theembargo. "

Forgotten now were all the grievances against Great Britain. Everyshipping port awoke to new life. Merchants hastened to consign themerchandise long stored in their warehouses; shipmasters sent outrunners for crews; and ships were soon winging their way out intothe open sea. For three months American vessels crossed the oceanunmolested, and then came the bitter, the incomprehensible news thatErskine's arrangement had been repudiated and the over-zealous diplomatrecalled. The one brief moment of triumph in Madison's administrationhad passed. 

Slowly and painfully the public learned the truth. Erskine had exceededhis instructions. Canning had not been averse to concessions, it istrue, but he had named as an indispensable condition of any concessionthat the United States should bind itself to exclude French ships of warfrom its ports. Instead of holding to the letter of his instructions, Erskine had allowed himself to be governed by the spirit of concessionand had ignored the essential prerequisite. Nothing remained but torenew the NonIntercourse Act against Great Britain. This the Presidentdid by proclamation on August 9, 1809, and the country settled backsullenly into commercial inactivity. 

Another scarcely less futile chapter in diplomacy began with the arrivalof Francis James Jackson as British Minister in September. Those whoknew this Briton were justified in concluding that conciliation had noimportant place in the programme of the Foreign Office, for it was hewho, two years before, had conducted those negotiations with Denmarkwhich culminated in the bombardment and destruction of Copenhagen. "Itis rather a prevailing notion here, " wrote Pinkney from London, "thatthis gentleman's conduct will not and cannot be what we all wish. " Andthis impression was so fully shared by Madison that he would not hastenhis departure from Montpelier but left Jackson to his own devices at thecapital for a full month. 

This interval of enforced inactivity had one unhappy consequence. Notfinding employment for all his idle hours, Jackson set himself toread the correspondence of his predecessor, and from it he drew theconclusion that Erskine was a greater fool than he had thought possible, and that the American Government had been allowed to use language ofwhich "every third word was a declaration of war. " The further he readthe greater his ire, so that when the President arrived in Washington(October 1), Jackson was fully resolved to let the American Governmentknow what was due to a British Minister who had had audiences "with mostof the sovereigns of Europe. "

Though neither the President nor Gallatin, to whose mature judgment heconstantly turned, believed that Jackson had any proposals to make, theywere willing to let Robert Smith carry on informal conversations withhim. It speedily appeared that so far from making overtures, Jackson wasdisposed to await proposals. The President then instructed the Secretaryof State to announce that further discussions would be "in the writtenform" and henceforth himself took direct charge of negotiations. Theexchange of letters which followed reveals Madison at his best. Hisrapier-like thrusts soon pierced even the thick hide of this conceitedEnglishman. The stupid Smith who signed these letters appeared to be nomean adversary after all. 

In one of his rejoinders the British Minister yielded to a flash oftemper and insinuated (as Canning in his instructions had done) that theAmerican Government had known Erskine's instructions and had encouragedhim to set them aside--had connived in short at his wrongdoing. "Suchinsinuations, " replied Madison sharply, "are inadmissible in theintercourse of a foreign minister with a government that understandswhat it owes itself. " "You will find that in my correspondencewith you, " wrote Jackson angrily, "I have carefully avoided drawingconclusions that did not necessarily follow from the premises advancedby me, and least of all should I think of uttering an insinuation whereI was unable to substantiate a fact. " A fatal outburst of temper whichdelivered the writer into the hands of his adversary. "Sir, " wrote thePresident, still using the pen of his docile secretary, "finding thatyou have used a language which cannot be understood but as reiteratingand even aggravating the same gross insinuation, it only remains, inorder to preclude opportunities which are thus abused, to inform youthat no further communications will be received from you. " Therewithterminated the American Mission of Francis James Jackson. 

Following this diplomatic episode, Congress Wain sought a way of escapefrom the consequences of total nonintercourse. It finally enacted abill known as Macon's Bill No. 2, which in a sense reversed the formerpolicy, since it left commerce everywhere free, and authorized thePresident, "in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shallcease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, " to cut offtrade with the nation which continued to offend. The act thus gave thePresident an immense discretionary power which might bring the countryface to face with war. It was the last act in that extraordinary seriesof restrictive measures which began with the Non-Intercourse Act of1806. The policy of peaceful coercion entered on its last phase. 

And now, once again, the shadow of the Corsican fell across the seas. With the unerring shrewdness of an intellect never vexed by ethicalconsiderations, Napoleon announced that he would meet the desires of theAmerican Government. "I am authorized to declare to you, Sir, " wrotethe Duc de Cadore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Armstrong, "that theDecrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after November 1 theywill cease to have effect--it being understood that in consequence ofthis declaration the English are to revoke their Orders-in-Council, and renounce the new principles of blockade which they have wished toestablish; or that the United States, conformably to the Act you havejust communicated [the Macon Act], cause their rights to be respected bythe English. "

It might be supposed that President Madison, knowing with whom he had todeal, would have hesitated to accept Napoleon's asseverations at theirface value. He had, indeed, no assurances beyond Cadore's letter thatthe French decrees had been repealed. But he could not let slip thisopportunity to force Great Britain's hand. It seemed to be a last chanceto test the effectiveness of peaceable coercion. On November 2, 1810, he issued the momentous proclamation which eventually made Great Britainrather than France the object of attack. "It has been officially madeknown to this government, " said the President, "that the said edicts ofFrance have been so revoked as that they ceased, on the first day of thepresent month, to violate the neutral commerce of the United States. "Thereupon the Secretary of the Treasury instructed collectors of customsthat commercial intercourse with Great Britain would be suspended afterthe 2d of February of the following year. 

The next three months were full of painful experiences for PresidentMadison. He waited, and waited in vain, for authentic news of the formalrepeal of the French decrees; and while he waited, he was distressed andamazed to learn that American vessels were still being confiscated inFrench ports. In the midst of these uncertainties occurred the biennialcongressional elections, the outcome of which only deepened hisperplexities. Nearly one-half of those who sat in the existing Congressfailed of reelection, yet, by a vicious custom, the new House, whichpresumably reflected the popular mood in 1810, would not meet forthirteen months, while the old discredited Congress wearily dragged outits existence in a last session. Vigorous presidential leadership, itis true, might have saved the expiring Congress from the reproachof incapacity, but such leadership was not to be expected from JamesMadison. 

So it was that the President's message to this moribund Congress wassimply a counsel of prudence and patience. It pointed out, to be sure, the uncertainties of the situation, but it did not summon Congresssternly to face the alternatives. It alluded mildly to the need ofa continuance of our defensive and precautionary arrangements, and suggested further organization and training of the militia; itcontemplated with satisfaction the improvement of the quantity andquality of the output of cannon and small arms; it set the seal of thePresident's approval upon the new military academy; but nowhere did itsound a trumpet-call to real preparedness. 

Even to these mild suggestions Congress responded indifferently. Itslightly increased the naval appropriations, but it actually reduced theappropriations for the army; and it adjourned without acting on the billauthorizing the President to enroll fifty thousand volunteers. Personalanimosity and prejudice combined to defeat the proposals of theSecretary of the Treasury. A bill to recharter the national bank, whichGallatin regarded as an indispensable fiscal agent, was defeated; and abill providing for a general increase of duties on imports to meet thedeficit was laid aside. Congress would authorize a loan of five milliondollars but no new taxes. Only one bill was enacted which could be saidto sustain the President's policy--that reviving certain parts ofthe Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 against Great Britain. With this lasthelpless gasp the Eleventh Congress expired. 

The defeat of measures which the Administration had made its ownamounted to a vote of no confidence. Under similar circumstances anEnglish Ministry would have either resigned or tested the sentiment ofthe country by a general election; but the American Executive possessesno such means of appealing immediately and directly to the electorate. President and Congress must live out their allotted terms of office, even though their antagonism paralyzes the operation of government. What, then, could be done to restore confidence in the Administration ofPresident Madison and to establish a modus vivendi between Executive andLegislative?

It seemed to the Secretary of Treasury, smarting under the defeat ofhis bank bill, that he had become a burden to the Administration, anobstacle in the way of cordial cooperation between the branches of theFederal Government. The factions which had defeated his appointmentto the Department of State seemed bent upon discrediting him and hispolicies. "I clearly perceive, " he wrote to the President, "that mycontinuing a member of the present Administration is no longer of anypublic utility, invigorates the opposition against yourself, and mustnecessarily be attended with an increased loss of reputation by myself. Under those impressions, not without reluctance, and after perhapshesitating too long in the hopes of a favorable change, I beg leave totender you my resignation. "

This timely letter probably saved the Administration. Not for an instantcould the President consider sacrificing the man who for ten yearshad been the mainstay of Republican power. Madison acted with unwontedpromptitude. He refused to accept Gallatin's resignation, and determinedto break once and for all with the faction which had hounded Gallatinfrom the day of his appointment and which had foisted upon the Presidentan unwelcome Secretary of State. Not Gallatin but Robert Smith shouldgo. Still more surprising was Madison's quick decision to name Monroeas Smith's successor, if he could be prevailed upon to accept. BothVirginians understood the deeper personal and political significance ofthis appointment. Madison sought an alliance with a faction which hadchallenged his administrative policy; Monroe inferred that no oppositionwould be interposed to his eventual elevation to the Presidency whenMadison should retire. What neither for the moment understood was theeffect which the appointment would have upon the foreign policy of theAdministration. Monroe hesitated, for he and his friends had been opencritics of the President's pro-French policy. Was the new Secretaryof State to be bound by this policy, or was the President prepared toreverse his course and effect a reconciliation with England?

These very natural misgivings the President brushed aside by assuringMonroe's friends that he was very hopeful of settling all differenceswith both France and England. Certainly he had in no wise committedhimself to a course which would prevent a renewal of negotiationswith England; he had always desired "a cordial accommodation. " Thusreassured, Monroe accepted the invitation, never once doubting that hewould reverse the policy of the Administration, achieve a diplomatictriumph, and so appear as the logical successor to President Madison. 

Had the new Secretary of State known the instructions which the BritishForeign Office was drafting at this moment for Mr. Augustus J. Foster, Jackson's successor, he would have been less sanguine. This "verygentlemanlike young man, " as Jackson called him, was told to make someslight concessions to American sentiment--he might make proper amendsfor the Chesapeake affair but on the crucial matter of the Frenchdecrees he was bidden to hold rigidly to the uncompromising positiontaken by the Foreign Office from the beginning--that the President wasmistaken in thinking that they had been repealed. The British Governmentcould not modify its orders-in-council on unsubstantiated rumors thatthe offensive French decrees had been revoked. Secretly Foster wasinformed that the Ministry was prepared to retaliate if the AmericanGovernment persisted in shutting out British importations. No one inthe ministry, or for that matter in the British Isles, seems to haveunderstood that the moment had come for concession and not retaliation, if peaceful relations were to continue. 

It was most unfortunate that while Foster was on his way to the UnitedStates, British cruisers would have renewed the blockade of New York. Two frigates, the Melampus and the Guerriere, lay off Sandy Hook andresumed the old irritating practice of holding up American vessels andsearching them for deserters. In the existing state of American feeling, with the Chesapeake outrage still unredressed, the behavior of theBritish commanders was as perilous as walking through a powdermagazine with a live coal. The American navy had suffered severelyfrom Jefferson's "chaste reformation" but it had not lost its fightingspirit. Officers who had served in the war with Tripoli prayed for afair chance to avenge the Chesapeake; and the Secretary of the Navy hadabetted this spirit in his orders to Commodore John Rodgers, who waspatrolling the coast with a squadron of frigates and sloops. "What hasbeen perpetrated, " Rodgers was warned, "may be again attempted. It istherefore our duty to be prepared and determined at every hazard tovindicate the injured honor of our navy, and revive the drooping spiritof the nation. "

Under the circumstances it would have been little short of a miracle ifan explosion had not occurred; yet for a year Rodgers sailed up and downthe coast without encountering the British frigates. On May 16, 1811, however, Rodgers in his frigate, the President, sighted a suspiciousvessel some fifty miles off Cape Henry. From her general appearance hejudged her to be a man-of-war and probably the Guerriere. He decided toapproach her, he relates, in order to ascertain whether a certain seamanalleged to have been impressed was aboard; but the vessel made off andhe gave chase. By dusk the two ships were abreast. Exactly what thenhappened will probably never be known, but all accounts agree that ashot was fired and that a general engagement followed. Within fifteenminutes the strange vessel was disabled and lay helpless under the gunsof the President, with nine of her crew dead and twenty-three wounded. Then, to his intense disappointment, Rodgers learned that his adversarywas not the Guerriere but the British sloop of war Little Belt, a craftgreatly inferior to his own. 

However little this one-sided sea fight may have salved the pride ofthe American navy, it gave huge satisfaction to the general public. TheChesapeake was avenged. When Foster disembarked he found little interestin the reparations which he was charged to offer. He had been preparedto settle a grievance in a good-natured way; he now felt himself obligedto demand explanations. The boot was on the other leg; and the Americanpublic lost none of the humor of the situation. Eventually he offeredto disavow Admiral Berkeley's act, to restore the seamen taken from theChesapeake, and to compensate them and their families. In the courseof time the two unfortunates who had survived were brought from theirprison at Halifax and restored to the decks of the Chesapeake in BostonHarbor. But as for the Little Belt, Foster had to rest content with thefindings of an American court of inquiry which held that the Britishsloop had fired the first shot. As yet there were no visible signsthat Monroe had effected a change in the foreign policy of theAdministration, though he had given the President a momentary advantageover the opposition. Another crisis was fast approaching. When Congressmet a month earlier than usual, pursuant to the call of the President, the leadership passed from the Administration to a group of men who hadlost all faith in commercial restrictions as a weapon of defense againstforeign aggression. 

CHAPTER X. THE WAR-HAWKS

Among the many unsolved problems which Jefferson bequeathed to hissuccessor in office was that of the southern frontier. Running like ashuttle through the warp of his foreign policy had been his persistentdesire to acquire possession of the Spanish Floridas. This dominantdesire, amounting almost to a passion, had mastered even his betterjudgment and had created dilemmas from which he did not escape withoutthe imputation of duplicity. On his retirement he announced that he wasleaving all these concerns "to be settled by my friend, Mr. Madison, "yet he could not resist the desire to direct the course of hissuccessor. Scarcely a month after he left office he wrote, "I supposethe conquest of Spain will soon force a delicate question on you as tothe Floridas and Cuba, which will offer themselves to you. Napoleonwill certainly give his consent without difficulty to our receiving theFloridas, and with some difficulty possibly Cuba. "

In one respect Jefferson's intuition was correct. The attempt ofNapoleon to subdue Spain and to seat his brother Joseph once again onthe throne of Ferdinand VII was a turning point in the history ofthe Spanish colonies in America. One by one they rose in revolt andestablished revolutionary juntas either in the name of their deposedKing or in professed cooperation with the insurrectionary governmentwhich was resisting the invader. Events proved that independence was theinevitable issue of all these uprisings from the Rio de la Plata to theRio Grande. 

In common with other Spanish provinces, West Florida felt the impact ofthis revolutionary spirit, but it lacked natural unity and a dominantSpanish population. The province was in fact merely a strip of coastextending from the Perdido River to the Mississippi, indented with baysinto which great rivers from the north discharged their turgid waters. Along these bays and rivers were scattered the inhabitants, numberingless than one hundred thousand, of whom a considerable portion hadcome from the States. There, as always on the frontier, land had beena lodestone attracting both the speculator and the homeseeker. In theparishes of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the alluvial bottomsof the Mississippi, and in the settlements around Mobile Bay, Americansettlers predominated, submitting with ill grace to the exactionsof Spanish officials who were believed to be as corrupt as they wereinefficient. 

If events had been allowed to take their natural course, West Floridawould in all probability have fallen into the arms of the United Statesas Texas did three decades later. But the Virginia Presidents weretoo ardent suitors to await the slow progress of events; they meant toassist destiny. To this end President Jefferson had employed GeneralWilkinson, with indifferent success. President Madison found moretrustworthy agents in Governor Claiborne of New Orleans and GovernorHolmes of Mississippi, whose letters reveal the extent to which Madisonwas willing to meddle with destiny. "Nature had decreed the union ofFlorida with the United States, " Claiborne affirmed; but he was notso sure that nature could be left to execute her own decrees, for hestrained every nerve to prepare the way for American intervention whenthe people of West Florida should declare themselves free from Spain. Holmes also was instructed to prepare for this eventuality and tocooperate with Claiborne in West Florida "in diffusing the impressionswe wish to be made there. "

The anticipated insurrection came off just when and where naturehad decreed. In the summer of 1810 a so-called "movement forself-government" started at Bayou Sara and at Baton Rouge, wherenine-tenths of the inhabitants were Americans. The leaders took painsto assure the Spanish Commandant that their motives were unimpeachable:nothing should be done which would in any wise conflict with theauthority of their "loved and worthy sovereign, Don Ferdinand VII. "They wished to relieve the people of the abuses under which theywere suffering, but all should be done in the name of the King. TheCommandant, De Lassus, was not without his suspicions of these patrioticgentlemen but he allowed himself to be swept along in the current. Theseveral movements finally coalesced on the 25th of July in a conventionnear Baton Rouge, which declared itself "legally constituted to act inall cases of national concern. . . With the consent of the governor" andprofessed a desire "to promote the safety, honor, and happiness of ourbeloved king" as well as to rectify abuses in the province. It adjournedwith the familiar Spanish salutation which must have sounded ironicalto the helpless De Lassus, "May God preserve you many years!" Were thesepious professions farcical? Or were they the sincere utterances of menwho, like the patriots of 1776, were driven by the march of events outof an attitude of traditional loyalty to the King into open defence ofhis authority?

The Commandant was thus thrust into a position where his every movementwould be watched with distrust. The pretext for further action wassoon given. An intercepted letter revealed that DeLassus had written toGovernor Folch for an armed force. That "act of perfidy" was enough todissolve the bond between the convention and the Commandant. On the 23dof September, under cover of night, an armed force shouting "Hurrah!Washington!" overpowered the garrison of the fort at Baton Rouge, and three days later the convention declared the independence of WestFlorida, "appealing to the Supreme Ruler of the World" for the rectitudeof their intentions. What their intentions were is clear enough. Beforethe ink was dry on their declaration of independence, they wrote to theAdministration at Washington, asking for the immediate incorporation ofWest Florida into the Union. Here was the blessed consummation of yearsof diplomacy near at hand. President Madison had only to reach out hishand and pluck the ripe fruit; yet he hesitated from constitutionalscruples. Where was the authority which warranted the use of the armyand navy to hold territory beyond the bounds of the United States?Would not intervention, indeed, be equivalent to an unprovoked attackon Spain, a declaration of war? He set forth his doubts in a letter toJefferson and hinted at the danger which in the end was to resolve allhis doubts. Was there not grave danger that West Florida would pass intothe hands of a third and dangerous party? The conduct of Great Britainshowed a propensity to fish in troubled waters. 

On the 27th of October, President Madison issued a proclamationauthorizing Governor Claiborne to take possession of West Florida andto govern it as part of the Orleans Territory. He justified his action, which had no precedent in American diplomacy, by reasoning which wasvalid only if his fundamental premise was accepted. West Florida, herepeated, as a part of the Louisiana purchase belonged to the UnitedStates; but without abandoning its claim, the United States hadhitherto suffered Spain to continue in possession, looking forward to asatisfactory adjustment by friendly negotiation. A crisis had arrived, however, which had subverted Spanish authority; and the failure of theUnited States to take the territory would threaten the interests ofall parties and seriously disturb the tranquillity of the adjoiningterritories. In the hands of the United States, West Florida would "notcease to be a subject of fair and friendly negotiation. " In his annualmessage President Madison spoke of the people of West Florida as havingbeen "brought into the bosom of the American family, " and two days laterGovernor Claiborne formally took possession of the country to the PearlRiver. How territory which had thus been incorporated could still remaina subject of fair negotiation does not clearly appear, except on thesupposition that Spain would go through the forms of a negotiation whichcould have but one outcome. 

The enemies of the Administration seized eagerly upon the flaws inthe President's logic, and pressed his defenders sorely in the closingsession of the Eleventh Congress. Conspicuous among the champions ofthe Administration was young Henry Clay, then serving out the term ofSenator Thurston of Kentucky who had resigned his office. This eloquentyoung lawyer, now in his thirty-third year, had been born and bred inthe Old Dominion--a typical instance of the American boy who had nothingbut his own head and hands wherewith to make his way in the world. Hehad a slender schooling, a much-abbreviated law education in a lawyer'soffice, and little enough of that intellectual discipline needed forleadership at the bar; yet he had a clever wit, an engaging personality, and a rare facility in speaking, and he capitalized these assets. Hewas practising law in Lexington, Kentucky, when he was appointed to theSenate. 

What this persuasive Westerner had to say on the American title to WestFlorida was neither new nor convincing; but what he advocated as anAmerican policy was both bold and challenging. "The eternal principlesof self preservation" justified in his mind the occupation of WestFlorida, irrespective of any title. With Cuba and Florida in thepossession of a foreign maritime power, the immense extent of countrywatered by streams entering the Gulf would be placed at the mercy ofthat power. Neglect the proffered boon and some nation profiting by thiserror would seize this southern frontier. It had been intimated thatGreat Britain might take sides with Spain to resist the occupation ofFlorida. To this covert threat Clay replied, "Sir, is the time never to arrive, when we may manage our own affairswithout the fear of insulting his Britannic Majesty? Is the rod ofBritish power to be forever suspended over our heads? Does the Presidentrefuse to continue a correspondence with a minister, who violatesthe decorum belonging to his diplomatic character, by giving anddeliberately repeating an affront to the whole nation? We are instantlymenaced with the chastisement which English pride will not failto inflict. Whether we assert our rights by sea, or attempt theirmaintenance by land--whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantomincessantly pursues us. Already has it had too much influence onthe councils of the nation. It contributed to the repeal of theembargo--that dishonorable repeal, which has so much tarnished thecharacter of our government. Mr. President, I have before said on thisfloor, and now take occasion to remark, that I most sincerely desirepeace and amity with England; that I even prefer an adjustment of alldifferences with her, before one with any other nation. But if shepersists in a denial of justice to us, or if she avails herself of theoccupation of West Florida, to commence war upon us, I trust and hopethat all hearts will unite, in a bold and vigorous vindication of ourrights. 

"I am not, sir, in favour of cherishing the passion of conquest. ButI must be permitted, in conclusion, to indulge the hope of seeing, ere long, the NEW United States (if you will allow me the expression)embracing, not only the old thirteen States, but the entire country eastof the Mississippi, including East Florida, and some of the territoriesof the north of us also. "

Conquest was not a familiar word in the vocabulary of James Madison, andhe may well have prayed to be delivered from the hands of his friends, if this was to be the keynote of their defense of his policy in WestFlorida. Nevertheless, he was impelled in spite of himself in thedirection of Clay's vision. If West Florida in the hands of anunfriendly power was a menace to the southern frontier, East Floridafrom the Perdido to the ocean was not less so. By the 3d of January, 1811, he was prepared to recommend secretly to Congress that he shouldbe authorized to take temporary possession of East Florida, in case thelocal authorities should consent or a foreign power should attemptto occupy it. And Congress came promptly to his aid with the desiredauthorization. 

Twelve months had now passed since the people of the several Stateshad expressed a judgment at the polls by electing a new Congress. TheTwelfth Congress was indeed new in more senses than one. Some seventyrepresentatives took their seats for the first time, and fully half ofthe familiar faces were missing. Its first and most significant act, betraying a new spirit, was the choice as Speaker of Henry Clay, whohad exchanged his seat in the Senate for the more stirring arena of theHouse. In all the history of the House there is only one other instanceof the choice of a new member as Speaker. It was not merely a personaltribute to Clay but an endorsement of the forward-looking policy whichhe had so vigorously championed in the Senate. The temper of the Housewas bold and aggressive, and it saw its mood reflected in the mobileface of the young Kentuckian. 

The Speaker of the House had hitherto followed English traditions, choosing rather to stand as an impartial moderator than to act as alegislative leader. For British traditions of any sort Clay had littlerespect. He was resolved to be the leader of the House, and if necessaryto join his privileges as Speaker to his rights as a member, in order toshape the policies of Congress. Almost his first act as Speaker was toappoint to important committees those who shared his impatience withcommercial restrictions as a means of coercing Great Britain. On theCommittee on Foreign Relations--second to none in importance at thismoment--he placed Peter B. Porter of New York, young John C. Calhoun ofSouth Carolina, and Felix Grundy of Tennessee; the chairmanship of theCommittee on Naval Affairs he gave to Langdon Cheves of South Carolina;and the chairmanship of the Committee on Military Affairs, to anotherSouth Carolinian, David Williams. There was nothing fortuitous in thisselection of representatives from the South and Southwest for importantcommittee posts. Like Clay himself, these young intrepid spirits weresolicitous about the southern frontier--about the ultimate disposal ofthe Floridas; like Clay, they had lost faith in temporizing policies;like Clay, they were prepared for battle with the old adversary ifnecessary. 

In the President's message of November 5, 1811, there was just onepassage which suited the mood of this group of younger Republicans. After a recital of injuries at the hands of the British ministry, Madison wrote with unwonted vigor: "With this evidence of hostileinflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation canrelinquish Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States intoan armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis; and corresponding withthe national spirit and expectations. " It was this part of the messagewhich the Committee on Foreign Relations took for the text of itsreport. The time had arrived, in the opinion of the committee, whenforbearance ceased to be a virtue and when Congress must as a sacredduty "call forth the patriotism and resources of the country. " Nor didthe committee hesitate to point out the immediate steps to be taken ifthe country were to be put into a state of preparedness. Let the ranksof the regular army be filled and ten regiments added; let the Presidentcall for fifty thousand volunteers; let all available war-vessels be putin commission; and let merchant vessels arm in their own defense. 

If these recommendations were translated into acts, they would carry thecountry appreciably nearer war; but the members of the committee werenot inclined to shrink from the consequences. To a man they agreed thatwar was preferable to inglorious submission to continued outrages, andthat the outcome of war would be positively advantageous. Porter, whorepresented the westernmost district of a State profoundly interested inthe northern frontier, doubted not that Great Britain could be despoiledof her extensive provinces along the borders to the North. Grundy, speaking for the Southwest, contemplated with satisfaction the time whenthe British would be driven from the continent. "I feel anxious, " heconcluded, "not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadasto the North of this Empire. " Others, like Calhoun, who now madehis entrance as a debater, refused to entertain these mercenarycalculations. "Sir, " exclaimed Calhoun, his deep-set eyes flashing, "Ionly know of one principle to make a nation great, to produce in thiscountry not the form but the real spirit of union, and that is, to protect every citizen in the lawful pursuit of his business. . . Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. "

But these young Republicans marched faster than the rank and file. Notso lightly were Jeffersonian traditions to be thrown aside. The oldRepublican prejudice against standing armies and seagoing navies stillsurvived. Four weary months of discussion produced only two measures ofmilitary importance, one of which provided for the addition to the armyof twenty-five thousand men enlisted for five years, and the other forthe calling into service of fifty thousand state militia. The proposalof the naval committee to appropriate seven and a half million dollarsto build a new navy was voted down; Gallatin's urgent appeal fornew taxes fell upon deaf ears; and Congress proposed to meet the newmilitary expenditure by the dubious expedient of a loan of elevenmillion dollars. 

A hesitation which seemed fatal paralyzed all branches of the FederalGovernment in the spring months. Congress was obviously reluctant tofollow the lead of the radicals who clamored for war with Great Britain. The President was unwilling to recommend a declaration of war, thoughall evidence points to the conclusion that he and his advisers believedwar inevitable. The nation was divided in sentiment, the Federalistsinsisting with some plausibility that France was as great an offenderas Great Britain and pointing to the recent captures of Americanmerchantmen by French cruisers as evidence that the decrees had not beenrepealed. Even the President was impressed by these unfriendly acts andsoberly discussed with his mentor at Monticello the possibility of warwith both France and England. There was a moment in March, indeed, whenhe was disposed to listen to moderate Republicans who advised him tosend a special mission to England as a last chance. 

What were the considerations which fixed the mind of the nation andof Congress upon war with Great Britain? Merely to catalogue theaccumulated grievances of a decade does not suffice. Nations do notarrive at decisions by mathematical computation of injuries received, but rather because of a sense of accumulated wrongs which may or may notbe measured by losses in life and property. And this sense of wrongs isthe more acute in proportion to the racial propinquity of the offender. The most bitter of all feuds are those between peoples of the sameblood. It was just because the mother country from which Americans hadwon their independence was now denying the fruits of that independencethat she became the object of attack. In two particulars was GreatBritain offending and France not. The racial differences between Frenchand American seamen were too conspicuous to countenance impressmentinto the navy of Napoleon. No injuries at the hands of France bore anysimilarity to the Chesapeake outrage. Nor did France menace the frontierand the frontier folk of the United States by collusion with theIndians. 

To suppose that the settlers beyond the Alleghanies were eager to fightGreat Britain solely for "free trade and sailors' rights" is to assumea stronger consciousness of national unity than existed anywhere in theUnited States at this time. These western pioneers had stronger andmore immediate motives for a reckoning with the old adversary. Theiroccupation of the Northwest had been hindered at every turn by the redman, who, they believed, had been sustained in his resistance directlyby British traders and indirectly by the British Government. Documentsnow abundantly prove that the suspicion was justified. The key to theearly history of the northwestern frontier is the fur trade. It was forthis lucrative traffic that England retained so long the western postswhich she had agreed to surrender by the Peace of Paris. Out of theregion between the Illinois, the Wabash, the Ohio, and Lake Erie, peltshad been shipped year after year to the value annually of some 100, 000pounds, in return for the products of British looms and forges. It wasthe constant aim of the British trader in the Northwest to secure "theexclusive advantages of a valuable trade during Peace and the zealousassistance of brave and useful auxiliaries in time of War. " Todispossess the redskin of his lands and to wrest the fur trade fromBritish control was the equally constant desire of every full-bloodedWestern American. Henry Clay voiced this desire when he exclaimed in thespeech already quoted, "The conquest of Canada is in your power. . . . Isit nothing to extinguish the torch that lights up savage warfare? Is itnothing to acquire the entire fur-trade connected with that country, andto destroy the temptation and opportunity of violating your revenue andother laws?" *

 * A memorial of the fur traders of Canada to the Secretary of State for War and Colonies (1814), printed as Appendix N to Davidson's "The North West Company, " throws much light on this obscure feature of Western history. See also an article on "The Insurgents of 1811, " in the American Historical Association "Report" (1911) by D. R. Anderson. 

The Twelfth Congress had met under the shadow of an impendingcatastrophe in the Northwest. Reports from all sources pointed to anIndian war of considerable magnitude. Tecumseh and his brother theProphet had formed an Indian confederacy which was believed to embracenot merely the tribes of the Northwest but also the Creeks and Seminolesof the Gulf region. Persistent rumors strengthened long-nourishedsuspicions and connected this Indian unrest with the British agents onthe Canadian border. In the event of war, so it was said, the Britishpaymasters would let the redskins loose to massacre helpless women andchildren. Old men retold the outrages of these savage fiends during theWar of Independence. 

On the 7th of November--three days after the assembling ofCongress--Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territoryencountered the Indians of Tecumseh's confederation at Tippecanoe and bya costly but decisive victory crushed the hopes of their chieftains. Asthe news of these events drifted into Washington, it colored perceptiblythe minds of those who doubted whether Great Britain or France were thegreater offender. Grundy, who had seen three brothers killed by Indiansand his mother reduced from opulence to poverty in a single night, spoke passionately of that power which was taking every "opportunity ofintriguing with our Indian neighbors and setting on the ruthless savagesto tomahawk our women and children. " "War, " he exclaimed, "is not tocommence by sea or land, it is already begun, and some of the richestblood of our country has been shed. "

Still the President hesitated to lead. On the 31st of March, to be sure, he suffered Monroe to tell a committee of the House that he thought warshould be declared before Congress adjourned and that he was willing torecommend an embargo if Congress would agree; but after an embargo forninety days had been declared on the 4th of April, he told the BritishMinister that it was not, could not be considered, a war measure. Hestill waited for Congress to shoulder the responsibility of declaringwar. Why did he hesitate? Was he aware of the woeful state ofunpreparedness everywhere apparent and was he therefore desirous ofdelay? Some color is given to this excuse by his efforts to persuadeCongress to create two assistant secretaryships of war. Or was heconscious of his own inability to play the role of War-President?

The personal question which thrust itself upon Madison at this time was, indeed, whether he would have a second term of office. An old story, often told by his detractors, recounts a dramatic incident which issaid to have occurred, just as the congressional caucus of the partywas about to meet. A committee of Republican Congressmen headed by Mr. Speaker Clay waited upon the President to tell him, that if he wished arenomination, he must agree to recommend a declaration of war. The storyhas never been corroborated; and the dramatic interview probablynever occurred; yet the President knew, as every one knew, that hisrenomination was possible only with the support of the war party. Whenhe accepted the nomination from the Republican caucus on the 18thof May, he tacitly pledged himself to acquiesce in the plans of thewar-hawks. Some days later an authentic interview did take place betweenthe President and a deputation of Congressmen headed by the Speaker, inthe course of which the President was assured of the support of Congressif he would recommend a declaration. Subsequent events point to acomplete understanding. 

Clay now used all the latent powers of his office to aid the war party. Even John Randolph, ever a thorn in the side of the party, was made towince. On the 9th of May, Randolph undertook to address the House on thedeclaration of war which, he had been credibly informed, was imminent. He was called to order by a member because no motion was before theHouse. He protested that his remarks were prefatory to a motion. TheSpeaker ruled that he must first make a motion. "My proposition is, "responded Randolph sullenly, "that it is not expedient at this time toresort to a war against Great Britain. " "Is the motion seconded?"asked the Speaker. Randolph protested that a second was not needed andappealed from the decision of the chair. Then, when the House sustainedthe Speaker, Randolph, having found a seconder, once more began toaddress the House. Again he was called to order; the House must firstvote to consider the motion. Randolph was beside himself with rage. Thelast vestige of liberty of speech was vanishing, he declared. But Claywas imperturbable. The question of consideration was put and lost. Randolph had found his master. 

On the 1st of June the President sent to Congress what is usuallydenominated a war message; yet it contained no positive recommendationof war. "Congress must decide, " said the President, "whether the UnitedStates shall continue passive" or oppose force to force. Prefaced tothis impotent conclusion was a long recital of "progressive usurpations"and "accumulating wrongs"--a recital which had become so familiar instate papers as almost to lose its power to provoke popular resentment. It was significant, however, that the President put in the forefront ofhis catalogue of wrongs the impressment of American sailors on the highseas. No indignity touched national pride so keenly and none so clearlydifferentiated Great Britain from France as the national enemy. Almostequally provocative was the harassing of incoming and outgoing vesselsby British cruisers which hovered off the coasts and even committeddepredations within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Pretended blockades without an adequate force was a third charge againstthe British Government, and closely connected with it that "sweepingsystem of blockades, under the name of orders-in-council, " against whichtwo Republican Administrations had struggled in vain. 

There was in the count not an item, indeed, which could not have beencharged against Great Britain in the fall of 1807, when the publicclamored for war after the Chesapeake outrage. Four long years hadbeen spent in testing the efficacy of commercial restrictions, andthe country was if anything less prepared for the alternative. WhenPresident Madison penned this message he was, in fact, making publicavowal of the breakdown of a great Jeffersonian principle. Peacefulcoercion was proved to be an idle dream. 

So well advised was the Committee on Foreign Relations to which thePresident's message was referred that it could present a long reporttwo days later, again reviewing the case against the adversary in greatdetail. "The contest which is now forced on the United States, "it concluded, "is radically a contest for their sovereignty andindependency. " There was now no other alternative than an immediateappeal to arms. On the same day Calhoun introduced a bill declaring waragainst Great Britain; and on the 4th of June in secret session the warparty mustered by the Speaker bore down all opposition and carried thebill by a vote of 79 to 49. On the 7th of June the Senate followedthe House by the close vote of 19 to 14; and on the following day thePresident promptly signed the bill which marked the end of an epoch. 

It is one of the bitterest ironies in history that just twenty-fourhours before war was declared at Washington, the new Ministry atWestminster announced its intention of immediately suspending theorders-in-council. Had President Madison yielded to those moderates whoadvised him in April to send a minister to England, he might have beenapprized of that gradual change in public opinion which was slowlyundermining the authority of Spencer Perceval's ministry and commercialsystem. He had only to wait a little longer to score the greatestdiplomatic triumph of his generation; but fate willed otherwise. Noocean cable flashed the news of the abrupt change which followed thetragic assassination of Perceval and the formation of a new ministry. When the slow-moving packets brought the tidings, war had begun. 

CHAPTER XI. PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE

The dire calamity which Jefferson and his colleagues had for ten yearsbent all their energies to avert had now befallen the young Republic. War, with all its train of attendant evils, stalked upon the stage, andwas about to test the hearts of pacifist and war-hawk alike. But nothingmarked off the younger Republicans more sharply from the generation towhich Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin belonged than the positive reliefwith which they hailed this break with Jeffersonian tradition. Thisattitude was something quite different from the usual intrepidity ofyouth in the face of danger; it was bottomed upon the conviction whichClay expressed when he answered the question, "What are we to gainby the war?" by saying, "What are we not to lose by peace? Commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor!" Calhoun had reached thesame conclusion. The restrictive system as a means of resistance and ofobtaining redress for wrongs, he declared to be unsuited to the geniusof the American people. It required the most arbitrary laws; itrendered government odious; it bred discontent. War, on the other hand, strengthened the national character, fed the flame of patriotism, andperfected the organization of government. "Sir, " he exclaimed, "I wouldprefer a single Victory over the enemy by sea or land to all the good weshall ever derive from the continuation of the non-importation act!" Theissue was thus squarely faced: the alternative to peaceable coercion wasnow to be given a trial. 

Scarcely less remarkable was the buoyant spirit with which these youngRepublicans faced the exigencies of war. Defeat was not to be found intheir vocabulary. Clay pictured in fervent rhetoric a victorious armydictating the terms of peace at Quebec or at Halifax; Calhoun scoutedthe suggestion of unpreparedness, declaring that in four weeks after thedeclaration of war the whole of Upper and part of Lower Canada would bein our possession; and even soberer patriots believed that the conquestof Canada was only a matter of marching across the frontier to Montrealor Quebec. But for that matter older heads were not much wiser asprophets of military events. Even Jefferson assured the President thathe had never known a war entered into under more favorable auspices, and predicted that Great Britain would surely be stripped of all herpossessions on this continent; while Monroe seems to have anticipateda short decisive war terminating in a satisfactory accommodation withEngland. As for the President, he averred many years later that while heknew the unprepared state of the country, "he esteemed it necessary tothrow forward the flag of the country, sure that the people would pressonward and defend it. "

There is something at once humorous and pathetic in this self-portraitof Madison throwing forward the flag of his country and summoning hislegions to follow on. Never was a man called to lead in war who had solittle of the martial in his character, and yet so earnest a purpose torise to the emergency. An observer describes him, the day after warwas declared, "visiting in person--a thing never known before--all theoffices of the Departments of War and the Navy, stimulating everythingin a manner worthy of a little commander-in-chief, with his little roundhat and huge cockade. " Stimulation was certainly needed in these twodepartments as events proved, but attention to petty details whichshould have been watched by subordinates is not the mark of a greatcommander. Jefferson afterward consoled Madison for the defeat of hisarmies by writing: "All you can do is to order--execution must dependon others and failures be imputed to them alone. " Jefferson failedto perceive what Madison seems always to have forgotten, that acommander-in-chief who appoints and may remove his subordinates cannever escape responsibility for their failures. The President's firstduty was not to stimulate the performance of routine in the departmentsbut to make sure of the competence of the executive heads of thosedepartments. 

William Eustis of Massachusetts, Secretary of War, was not withoutsome little military experience, having served as a surgeon in theRevolutionary army, but he lacked every qualification for the oneroustask before him. Senator Crawford of Georgia wrote to Monroe causticallythat Eustis should have been forming general and comprehensivearrangements for the organization of the troops and for the prosecutionof campaigns, instead of consuming his time reading advertisements ofpetty retailing merchants, to find where he could purchase one hundredshoes or two hundred hats. Of Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of Navy, even less could be expected, for he seems to have had absolutely noexperience to qualify him for the post. Senator Crawford intimatedthat in instructing his naval officers Hamilton impressed upon them thedesirability of keeping their superiors supplied with pineapples andother tropical fruits--an ill-natured comment which, true or not, gives us the measure of the man. Both Monroe and Gallatin shared theprevailing estimate of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy andexpressed themselves without reserve to Jefferson; but the Presidentwith characteristic indecision hesitated to purge his Cabinet of thesetwo incompetents, and for his want of decision he paid dearly. 

The President had just left the Capital for his country place atMontpelier toward the end of August, when the news came that GeneralWilliam Hull, who had been ordered to invade Upper Canada and begin themilitary promenade to Quebec, had surrendered Detroit and hisentire army without firing a gun. It was a crushing disaster and awell-deserved rebuke for the Administration, for whether the fault wasHull's or Eustis's, the President had to shoulder the responsibility. His first thought was to retrieve the defeat by commissioning Monroe tocommand a fresh army for the capture of Detroit; but this proposal whichappealed strongly to Monroe had to be put aside--fortunately for allconcerned, for Monroe's desire for military glory was probably notequalled by his capacity as a commander and the western campaign provedincomparably more difficult than wiseacres at Washington imagined. 

What was needed, indeed, was not merely able commanders in the field, though they were difficult enough to find. There was much truth inJefferson's naive remark to Madison: "The creator has not thoughtproper to mark those on the forehead who are of the stuff to make goodgenerals. We are first, therefore, to seek them, blindfold, and then letthem learn the trade at the expense of great losses. " But neither seemsto have comprehended that their opposition to military preparedness hadcaused this dearth of talent and was now forcing the Administration toselect blindfold. More pressing even than the need of tacticians was theneed of organizers of victory. The utter failure of the Niagara campaignvacated the office of Secretary of War; and with Eustis retired alsothe Secretary of the Navy. Monroe took over the duties of the onetemporarily, and William Jones, a shipowner of Philadelphia, succeededHamilton. 

If the President seriously intended to make Monroe Secretary of Warand the head of the General Staff, he speedily discovered that he waspowerless to do so. The Republican leaders in New York felt too keenlyJosiah Quincy's taunt about a despotic Cabinet "composed, to allefficient purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner" to permit Monroeto absorb two cabinet posts. To appease this jealousy of Virginia, Madison made an appointment which very nearly shipwrecked hisAdministration: he invited General John Armstrong of New York to becomeSecretary of War. Whatever may be said of Armstrong's qualifications forthe post, his presence in the Cabinet was most inadvisable, for he didnot and could not inspire the personal confidence of either Gallatinor Monroe. Once in office, he turned Monroe into a relentless enemy andfairly drove Gallatin out of office in disgust by appointing hisold enemy, William Duane, editor of the Aurora, to the post ofAdjutant-General. "And Armstrong!"--said Dallas who subsequently asSecretary of War knew whereof he spoke--"he was the devil from thebeginning, is now, and ever will be!"

The man of clearest vision in these unhappy months of 1812 wasundoubtedly Albert Gallatin. The defects of Madison as a War-Presidenthe had long foreseen; the need of reorganizing the Executive Departmentshe had pointed out as soon as war became inevitable; and the problem offinancing the war he had attacked farsightedly, fearlessly, andwithout regard to political consistency. No one watched the approach ofhostilities with a bitterer sense of blasted hopes. For ten years he hadlabored to limit expenditures, sacrificing even the military and navalestablishments, that the people might be spared the burden of needlesstaxes;--and within this decade he had also scaled down the national debtone-half, so that posterity might not be saddled with burdens not ofits own choosing. And now war threatened to undo his work. The youngrepublic was after all not to lead its own life, realize a uniquedestiny, but to tread the old well-worn path of war, armaments, andhigh-handed government. Well, he would save what he could, do hisbest to avert "perpetual taxation, military establishments, and othercorrupting or anti-republican habits or institutions. "

If Gallatin at first underrated the probable revenue for war purposes, he speedily confessed his error and set before Congress inexorably thenecessity for new taxes-aye, even for an internal tax, which he had oncedenounced as loudly as any Republican. For more than a year afterthe declaration of war, Congress was deaf to pleas for new sources ofrevenue; and it was not, indeed, until the last year of the war thatit voted the taxes which in the long run could alone support the publiccredit. Meantime, facing a depleted Treasury, Gallatin found himselfreduced to a mere "dealer of loans"--a position utterly abhorrent tohim. Even his efforts to place the loans which Congress authorized musthave failed but for the timely aid of three men whom Quincy wouldhave contemptuously termed foreigners, for all like Gallatin wereforeign-born--Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his thanklessjob, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity afforded by the Russianoffer of mediation to leave the Cabinet and perhaps to end the war bya diplomatic stroke. He asked and received an appointment as one of thethree American commissioners. 

If Madison really believed that the people of the United States wouldunitedly press onward and defend the flag when once he had thrown itforward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the disaffectionin New England. Perhaps, like Jefferson in the days of the embargo, he mistook the spirit of this opposition, thinking that it was largelypartisan clamor which could safely be disregarded. What neither ofthese Virginians appreciated was the peculiar fanatical and sectionalcharacter of this Federalist opposition, and the extremes to whichit would go. Yet abundant evidence lay before their eyes. Thirty-fourFederalist members of the House, nearly all from New England, issued anaddress to their constituents bitterly arraigning the Administrationand deploring the declaration of war; the House of Representativesof Massachusetts, following this example, published another address, denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of the best interests ofthe people and imploring all good citizens to meet in town and countyassemblies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer except for adefensive war; and a meeting of citizens of Rockingham County, NewHampshire, adopted a memorial drafted by young Daniel Webster, whichhinted that the separation of the States--"an event fraught withincalculable evils"--might sometime occur on just such an occasion asthis. Town after town, and county after county, took up the hue and cry, keeping well within the limits of constitutional opposition, it is true, but weakening the arm of the Government just when it should have struckthe enemy effective blows. 

Nor was the President without enemies in his own political household. The Republicans of New York, always lukewarm in their support of theVirginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing his reelection. Theyfound a shrewd and not overscrupulous leader in DeWitt Clinton andan adroit campaign manager in Martin Van Buren. Both belonged to thatschool of New York politicians of which Burr had been master. Anythingto beat Madison was their cry. To this end they were willing to condemnthe war-policy, to promise a vigorous prosecution of the war, and evento negotiate for peace. What made this division in the ranks ofthe Republicans so serious was the willingness of the New EnglandFederalists to make common cause with Clinton. In September a conventionof Federalists endorsed his nomination for the Presidency. 

Under the weight of accumulating disasters, military and political, itseemed as though Madison must go down in defeat. Every New England Statebut Vermont cast its electoral votes for Clinton; all the Middle Statesbut Pennsylvania also supported him; and Maryland divided its vote. Onlythe steadiness of the Southern Republicans and of Pennsylvania savedMadison; a change of twenty electoral votes would have ended theVirginia Dynasty. * Now at least Madison must have realized the poignanttruth which the Federalists were never tired of repeating: he hadentered upon the war as President of a divided people. 

 * In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89. 

Only a few months' experience was needed to convince the militaryauthorities at Washington that the war must be fought mainly byvolunteers. Every military consideration derived from American historywarned against this policy, it is true, but neither Congress nor thepeople would entertain for an instant the thought of conscription. Onlywith great reluctance and under pressure had Congress voted to increasethe regular army and to authorize the President to raise fifty thousandvolunteers. The results of this legislation were disappointing, notto say humiliating. The conditions of enlistment were not such as toencourage recruiting; and even when the pay had been increased and theterm of service shortened, few able-bodied citizens would respond. Ifany such desired to serve their country, they enrolled in the Statemilitia which the President had been authorized to call into activeservice for six months. 

In default of a well-disciplined regular army and an adequate volunteerforce, the Administration was forced more and more to depend upon suchquotas of militia as the States would supply. How precarious was thehold of the national Government upon the State forces, appeared in thefirst months of the war. When called upon to supply troops to relievethe regulars in the coast defenses, the governors of Massachusetts andConnecticut flatly refused, holding that the commanders of the Statemilitia, and not the President, had the power to decide when exigenciesdemanded the use of the militia in the service of the United States. In his annual message Madison termed this "a novel and unfortunateexposition" of the Constitution, and he pointed out--what indeed wassufficiently obvious--that if the authority of the United States couldbe thus frustrated during actual war, "they are not one nation for thepurpose most of all requiring it. " But what was the President to do?Even if he, James Madison, author of the Virginia Resolutions of1798, could so forget his political creed as to conceive of coercinga sovereign state, where was the army which would do his bidding? ThePresident was the victim of his own political theory. 

These bitter revelations of 1812--the disaffection of New England, the incapacity of two of his secretaries, the disasters of hisstaff officers on the frontier, the slow recruiting, the defiance ofMassachusetts and Connecticut--almost crushed the President. Neverphysically robust, he succumbed to an insidious intermittent fever inJune and was confined to his bed for weeks. So serious was his conditionthat Mrs. Madison was in despair and scarcely left his side for fivelong weeks. "Even now, " she wrote to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end ofJuly, "I watch over him as I would an infant, so precarious is hisconvalescence. " The rumor spread that he was not likely to survive, andpoliticians in Washington began to speculate on the succession to thePresidency. 

But now and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading theWhite House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the Constitution overthe Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the sting out of Hull'ssurrender at Detroit, and other victories at sea followed, glorious inthe annals of American naval warfare, though without decisive influenceon the outcome of the war. Of much greater significance was Perry'svictory on Lake Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to theinvasion of Canada. This brilliant combat followed by the Battle of theThames cheered the President in his slow convalescence. Encouraging, too, were the exploits of American privateers in British waters, butnone of these events seemed likely to hasten the end of the war. GreatBritain had already declined the Russian offer of mediation. 

Last day but one of the year 1813 a British schooner, the Bramble, cameinto the port of Annapolis bearing an important official letter fromLord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State. With what eager and anxioushands Monroe broke the seal of this letter may be readily imagined. Itmight contain assurances of a desire for peace; it might indefinitelyprolong the war. In truth the letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh haddeclined to accept the good offices of Russia, but he was prepared tobegin direct negotiations for peace. Meantime the war must go on--withthe chances favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also brought thealarming news of Napoleon's defeat on the plains of Leipzig. Now forthe first time Great Britain could concentrate all her efforts uponthe campaign in North America. No wonder the President acceptedCastlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the three commissioners sent toRussia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeedwhile he nerved himself to meet the crucial year of the war. 

Had the President been fully apprized of the elaborate plans of theBritish War Office, his anxieties would have been multiplied manytimes. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion onthree frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans broughtin insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slackbecause the Government could not compete with the larger bountiesoffered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troopswas only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were asked torepel invasion. The Administration had not yet drunk the bitter dregs ofthe cup of humiliation. 

That some part of the invading British forces might be detailed toattack the Capital was vaguely divined by the President and his Cabinet;but no adequate measures had been taken for the defense of the citywhen, on a fatal August day, the British army marched upon it. Thehumiliating story of the battle of Bladensburg has been told elsewhere. The disorganized mob which had been hastily assembled to check theadvance of the British was utterly routed almost under the eyes of thePresident, who with feelings not easily described found himself obligedto join the troops fleeing through the city. No personal humiliation wasspared the President and his family. Dolly Madison, never once doubtingthat the noise of battle which reached the White House meant an Americanvictory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush of troops warned her ofdanger. She and her friends were then swept along in the general rout. She was forced to leave her personal effects behind, but her presence ofmind saved one treasure in the White House--a large portrait of GeneralWashington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That priceless portrait and theplate were all that survived. The fleeing militiamen had presence ofmind enough to save a large quantity of the wine by drinking it, andwhat was left, together with the dinner on the table, was consumedby Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the White House, the Treasury, and the War Office were in flames, and only a severethunderstorm checked the conflagration. *

 * Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers and men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally indefensible outrages committed by American troops under General Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and other public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and burned. See Kingsford's "History of Canada, " VIII, pp. 259- 61. 

Heartsick and utterly weary, the President crossed the Potomac at aboutsix o'clock in the evening and started westward in a carriage towardMontpelier. He had been in the saddle since early morning and was nearlyspent. To fatigue was added humiliation, for he was forced to travelwith a crowd of embittered fugitives and sleep in a forlorn house by thewayside. Next morning he overtook Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteenmiles from the Capital. Here they passed another day of humiliation, forrefugees who had followed the same line of flight reviled the Presidentfor betraying them and the city. At midnight, alarmed at a report thatthe British were approaching, the President fled to another miserablerefuge deeper in the Virginia woods. This fear of capture was quiteunfounded, however, for the British troops had already evacuated thecity and were marching in the opposite direction. 

Two days later the President returned to the capital to collect hisCabinet and repair his shattered Government. He found public sentimenthot against the Administration for having failed to protect the city. He had even to fear personal violence, but he remained "tranquil asusual. . . Though much distressed by the dreadful event which had takenplace. " He was still more distressed, however, by the insistent popularclamor for a victim for punishment. All fingers pointed at Armstrong asthe man responsible for the capture of the city. Armstrong offeredto resign at once, but the President in distress would not hear ofresignation. He would advise only "a temporary retirement" from the cityto placate the inhabitants. So Armstrong departed, but by the time hereached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of his situation andsent his resignation to the President. The victim had been offeredup. At his own request Monroe was now made Secretary of War, thoughhe continued also to discharge the not very heavy duties of the StateDepartment. 

It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who gathered in September, 1814, in special session at the President's call. Among those who gazedsadly at the charred ruins of the Capitol were Calhoun, Cheves, andGrundy, whose voices had been loud for war and who had pictured theirarmies overrunning the British possessions. Clay was at this momentendeavoring to avert a humiliating surrender of American claims atGhent. To the sting of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. Theonly public building which had escaped the general conflagration was thePost and Patent Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses awaitedthe President's message. 

A visitor from another planet would have been strangely puzzled to makethe President's words tally with the havoc wrought by the enemy on everyside. A series of achievements had given new luster to the Americanarms; "the pride of our naval arms had been amply supported"; theAmerican people had "rushed with enthusiasm to the scenes where dangerand duty call. " Not a syllable about the disaster at Washington! Nota word about the withdrawal of the Connecticut militia from nationalservice, and the refusal of the Governor of Vermont to call out themilitia just at the moment when Sir George Prevost began his invasion ofNew York; not a word about the general suspension of specie payment byall banks outside of New England; not a word about the failure of thelast loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the Government. Only a singlesentence betrayed the anxiety which was gnawing Madison's heart: "Itis not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for itsgreatest efforts. " What the situation demanded, he left his secretariesto say. 

The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one member of theAdministration who was prepared to grapple with reality and who had thecourage of his convictions. While Jefferson was warning him that it wasnonsense to talk about a regular army, Monroe told Congress flatly thatno reliance could be pled in the militia and that a permanent forceof one hundred thousand men must be raised--raised by conscription ifnecessary. Throwing Virginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds, he affirmed the constitutional right of Congress to draft citizens. Theeducational value of war must have been very great to bring Monroeto this conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so far. One by oneMonroe's alternative plans were laid aside; and the country, like arudderless ship, drifted on. 

An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the establishment of anyefficient national army at this time. Every plan encountered ultimatelythe inexorable fact that the Treasury was practically empty and thecredit of the Government gone. Secretary Campbell's report was aconfession of failure to sustain public credit. Some seventy-fourmillions would be needed to carry the existing civil and militaryestablishments for another year, and of this sum, vast indeed in thosedays, only twenty-four millions were in sight. Where the remainingfifty millions were to be found, the Secretary could not say. With thisadmission of incompetence Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th ofNovember his successor, A. J. Dallas, notified holders of governmentsecurities at Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations. 

It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the Government in theface, that the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed delegates toconfer with delegates from other New England legislatures on theircommon grievances and dangers and to devise means of security anddefense. The Legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island respondedpromptly by appointing delegates to meet at Hartford on the 15thof December; and the proposed convention seemed to receive popularindorsement in the congressional elections, for with but two exceptionsall the Congressmen chosen were Federalists. Hot-heads were discussingwithout any attempt at concealment the possibility of reconstructing theFederal Union. A new union of the good old Thirteen States on terms setby New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility. News-sheets referred enthusiastically to the erection of a new Federaledifice which should exclude the Western States. Little wonder that theharassed President in distant Washington was obsessed with the idea thatNew England was on the verge of secession. 

William Wirt who visited Washington at this time has left a vividpicture of ruin and desolation:

"I went to look at the ruins of the President's house. The rooms whichyou saw so richly furnished, exhibited nothing but unroofed naked walls, cracked, defaced, and blackened with fire. I cannot tell you what Ifelt as I walked amongst them. . . . I called on the President. He looksmiserably shattered and wobegone. In short, he looked heartbroken. Hismind is full of the New England sedition. He introduced the subject, andcontinued to press it--painful as it obviously was to him. I denied theprobability, even the possibility that the yeomanry of the Northcould be induced to place themselves under the power and protection ofEngland, and diverted the conversation to another topic; but he took thefirst opportunity to return to it, and convinced me that his heart andmind were painfully full of the subject. "

What added to the President's misgivings was the secrecy in which themembers of the Hartford Convention shrouded their deliberations. Anatmosphere of conspiracy seemed to envelop all their proceedings. Thatthe "deliverance of New England" was at hand was loudly proclaimedby the Federalist press. A reputable Boston news-sheet advised thePresident to procure a faster horse than he had mounted at Bladensburg, if he would escape the swift vengeance of New England. 

The report of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate withthe fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the Federalistpress. It arraigned the Administration in scathing language, to besure, but it did not advise secession. "The multiplied abuses ofbad administrations" did not yet justify a severance of the Union, especially in a time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitutionwere not incurable; yet the infractions of the Constitution by theNational Government had been so deliberate, dangerous, and palpableas to put the liberties of the people in jeopardy and to constrain theseveral States to interpose their authority to protect their citizens. The legislatures of the several States were advised to adopt measures toprotect their citizens against such unconstitutional acts of Congressas conscription and to concert some arrangement with the Government atWashington, whereby they jointly or separately might undertake theirown defense, and retain a reasonable share of the proceeds of Federaltaxation for that purpose. To remedy the defects of the Constitutionseven amendments were proposed, all of which had their origin insectional hostility to the ascendancy of Virginia and to the growingpower of the New West. The last of these proposals was a shot at Madisonand Virginia: "nor shall the President be elected from the same Statetwo terms in succession. " And finally, should these applications of theStates for permission to arm in their own defense be ignored, then andin the event that peace should not be concluded, another conventionshould be summoned "with such powers and instructions as the exigency ofa crisis so momentous may require. "

Massachusetts, under Federalist control, acted promptly upon thesesuggestions. Three commissioners were dispatched to Washington to effectthe desired arrangements for the defense of the State. The progress ofthese "three ambassadors, " as they styled themselves, was followed withcuriosity if not with apprehension. In Federalist circles there was ageneral belief that an explosion was at hand. A disaster at New Orleans, which was now threatened by a British fleet and army, would forceMadison to resign or to conclude peace. But on the road to Washington, the ambassadors learned to their surprise that General Andrew Jacksonhad decisively repulsed the British before New Orleans, on the 8th ofJanuary, and on reaching the Capital they were met by the news thata treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Their cause was not onlydiscredited but made ridiculous. They and their mission were forgottenas the tension of war times relaxed. The Virginia Dynasty was not to endwith James Madison. 

CHAPTER XII. THE PEACEMAKERS

On a May afternoon in the year 1813, a little three-hundred-ton ship, the Neptune, put out from New Castle down Delaware Bay. Before shecould clear the Capes she fell in with a British frigate, one of theblockading squadron which was already drawing its fatal cordon aroundthe seaboard States. The captain of the Neptune boarded the frigateand presented his passport, from which it appeared that he carried twodistinguished passengers, Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, EnvoysExtraordinary to Russia. The passport duly viseed, the Neptune resumedher course out into the open sea, by grace of the British navy. 

One of these envoys watched the coast disappear in the haze of eveningwith mingled feelings of regret and relief. For twelve weary yearsGallatin had labored disinterestedly for the land of his adoption andnow he was recrossing the ocean to the home of his ancestors with thetaunts of his enemies ringing in his ears. Would the Federalists neverforget that he was a "foreigner"? He reflected with a sad, ironicsmile that as a "foreigner with a French accent" he would have distinctadvantages in the world of European diplomacy upon which he wasentering. He counted many distinguished personages among his friends, from Madame de Stael to Alexander Baring of the famous London bankinghouse. Unlike many native Americans he did not need to learn the ways ofEuropean courts, because he was to the manner born: he had no provincialhabits which he must slough off or conceal. Also he knew himself and thehappy qualities with which Nature had endowed him--patience, philosophiccomposure, unfailing good humor. All these qualities were to be laidunder heavy requisition in the work ahead of him. 

James Bayard, Gallatin's fellow passenger, had never been taunted as aforeigner, because several generations had intervened since the first ofhis family had come to New Amsterdam with Peter Stuyvesant. Nothingbut his name could ever suggest that he was not of that stock commonlyreferred to as native American. Bayard had graduated at Princeton, studied law in Philadelphia, and had just opened a law office inWilmington when he was elected to represent Delaware in Congress. As thesole representative of his State in the House of Representatives andas a Federalist, he had exerted a powerful influence in the disputedelection of 1800, and he was credited with having finally made possiblethe election of Jefferson over Burr. Subsequently he was sent to theSenate, where he was serving when he was asked by President Madison toaccompany Gallatin on this mission to the court of the Czar. Grantingthat a Federalist must be selected, Gallatin could not have founda colleague more to his liking, for Bayard was a good companion andperhaps the least partisan of the Federalist leaders. 

It was midsummer when the Neptune dropped anchor in the harbor ofKronstadt. There Gallatin and Bayard were joined by John Quincy Adams, Minister to Russia, who had been appointed the third member of thecommission. Here was a pureblooded American by all the accepted canons. John Quincy Adams was the son of his father and gloried secretly in hislineage: a Puritan of the Puritans in his outlook upon human lifeand destiny. Something of the rigid quality of rock-bound New Englandentered into his composition. He was a foe to all compromise--even withhimself; to him Duty was the stern daughter of the voice of God, whoadmonished him daily and hourly of his obligations. No character inAmerican public life has unbosomed himself so completely as this son ofMassachusetts in the pages of his diary. There are no half tones in thepictures which he has drawn of himself, no winsome graces of mindor heart, only the rigid outlines of a soul buffeted by Destiny. Gallatin--the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin--must have derived muchquiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander whotook himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made theirassociation not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may notcall their intimacy a friendship--Adams had few, if any friendships; butit contained the essential foundation for friendship--complete mutualconfidence. 

Adams brought disheartening news to the travel-weary passengers on theNeptune: England had declined the offer of mediation. Yes; he hadthe information from the lips of Count Roumanzoff, the Chancellor andMinister of Foreign Affairs. Apparently, said Adams with pursed lips, England regarded the differences with America as a sort of familyquarrel in which it would not allow an outside neutral nation tointerfere. Roumanzoff, however, had renewed the offer of mediation. What the motives of the Count were, he would not presume to say: Russiandiplomacy was unfathomable. 

The American commissioners were in a most embarrassing position. Courtesy required that they should make no move until they knew whatresponse the second offer of mediation would evoke. The Czar was theironly friend in all Europe, so far as they knew, and they were none toosure of him. They were condemned to anxious inactivity, while in middleEurope the fortunes of the Czar rose and fell. In August the combinedarmies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia were beaten by the fresh leviesof Napoleon; in September, the fighting favored the allies; in October, Napoleon was brought to bay on the plains of Leipzig. Yet the imminentfall of the Napoleonic Empire only deepened the anxiety of the forlornAmerican envoys, for it was likely to multiply the difficulties ofsecuring reasonable terms from his conqueror. 

At the same time with news of the Battle of Leipzig came letters fromhome which informed Gallatin that his nomination as envoy had beenrejected by the Senate. This was the last straw. To remain inactive asan envoy was bad enough; to stay on unaccredited seemed impossible. Hedetermined to take advantage of a hint dropped by his friend Baring thatthe British Ministry, while declining mediation, was not unwilling totreat directly with the American commissioners. He would go to London inan unofficial capacity and smooth the way to negotiations. But Adams andBayard demurred and persuaded him to defer his departure. A month latercame assurances that Lord Castlereagh had offered to negotiate with theAmericans either at London or at Gothenburg. 

Late in January, 1814, Gallatin and Bayard set off for Amsterdam: theone to bide his chance to visit London, the other to await furtherinstructions. There they learned that in response to Castlereagh'sovertures, the President had appointed a new commission, on whichGallatin's name did not appear. Notwithstanding this disappointment, Gallatin secured the desired permission to visit London throughthe friendly offices of Alexander Baring. Hardly had the Americansestablished themselves in London when word came that the two newcommissioners, Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell, had landed at Gothenburgbearing a commission for Gallatin. It seems that Gallatin was believedto be on his way home and had therefore been left off the commission;on learning of his whereabouts, the President had immediately added hisname. So it happened that Gallatin stood last on the list when everyconsideration dictated his choice as head of the commission. Theincident illustrates the difficulties that beset communication onehundred years ago. Diplomacy was a game of chance in which wind andwaves often turned the score. Here were five American envoys dulyaccredited, one keeping his stern vigil in Russia, two on the coast ofSweden, and two in hostile London. Where would they meet? With whom werethey to negotiate?

After vexatious delays Ghent was fixed upon as the place where peacenegotiations should begin, and there the Americans rendezvoused duringthe first week in July. Further delay followed, for in spite of theassurances of Lord Castlereagh the British representatives did not maketheir appearance for a month. Meantime the American commissioners madethemselves at home among the hospitable Flemish townspeople, with whomthey became prime favorites. In the concert halls they were alwaysgreeted with enthusiasm. The musicians soon discovered that Britishtunes were not in favor and endeavored to learn some American airs. Hadthe Americans no national airs of their own, they asked. "Oh, yes!" theywere assured. "There was Hail Columbia. " Would not one of the gentlemenbe good enough to play or sing it? An embarrassing request, for musicaltalent was not conspicuous in the delegation; but Peter, Gallatin'sblack servant, rose to the occasion. He whistled the air; and thenone of the attaches scraped out the melody on a fiddle, so that thequick-witted orchestra speedily composed l'air national des Americains agrand orchestre, and thereafter always played it as a counterbalance toGod save the King. 

The diversions of Ghent, however, were not numerous, and time hungheavy on the hands of the Americans while they waited for the Britishcommissioners. "We dine together at four, " Adams records, "and situsually at table until six. We then disperse to our several amusementsand avocations. " Clay preferred cards or billiards and the mildexcitement of rather high stakes. Gallatin and his young son Jamespreferred the theater; and all but Adams became intimately acquaintedwith the members of a French troupe of players whom Adams describesas the worst he ever saw. As for Adams himself, his diversion was asolitary walk of two or three hours, and then to bed. 

On the 6th of August the British commissioners arrived in Ghent--AdmiralLord Gambier, Henry Goulburn, Esq. , and Dr. William Adams. They werenot an impressive trio. Gambier was an elderly man whom a writer in theMorning Chronicle described as a man "who slumbered for some time as aJunior Lord of Admiralty; who sung psalms, said prayers, and assisted inthe burning of Copenhagen, for which he was made a lord. " Goulburn wasa young man who had served as an undersecretary of state. Adams was adoctor of laws who was expected perhaps to assist negotiations by hislegal lore. Gallatin described them not unfairly as "men who have notmade any mark, puppets of Lords Castlereagh and Liverpool. " Perhaps, injustification of this choice of representatives, it should be said thatthe best diplomatic talent had been drafted into service at Vienna andthat the British Ministry expected in this smaller conference to keepthe threads of diplomacy in its own hands. 

The first meeting of the negotiators was amicable enough. The Americansfound their opponents courteous and well-bred; and both sides evinced adesire to avoid in word and manner, as Bayard put it, "everything of aninflammable nature. " Throughout this memorable meeting at Ghent, indeed, even when difficult situations arose and nerves became taut, personalrelations continued friendly. "We still keep personally upon eating anddrinking terms with them, " Adams wrote at a tense moment. Speaking forhis superiors and his colleagues, Admiral Gambier assured the Americansof their earnest desire to end hostilities on terms honorable to bothparties. Adams replied that he and his associates reciprocated thissentiment. And then, without further formalities, Goulburn stated inblunt and business-like fashion the matters on which they had beeninstructed: impressment, fisheries, boundaries, the pacification of theIndians, and the demarkation of an Indian territory. The last was to beregarded as a sine qua non for the conclusion of any treaty. Would theAmericans be good enough to state the purport of their instructions?

The American commissioners seem to have been startled out of theircomposure by this sine qua non. They had no instructions on this latterpoint nor on the fisheries; they could only ask for a more specificstatement. What had His Majesty's Government in mind when it referred toan Indian territory? With evident reluctance the British commissionersadmitted that the proposed Indian territory was to serve as a bufferstate between the United States and Canada. Pressed for more details, they intimated that this area thus neutralized might include the entireNorthwest. 

A second conference only served to show the want of any common basis fornegotiation. The Americans had come to Ghent to settle two outstandingproblems--blockades and indemnities for attacks on neutral commerce--andto insist on the abandonment of impressments as a sine qua non. Bothcommissions then agreed to appeal to their respective Governments forfurther instructions. Within a week, Lord Castlereagh sent preciseinstructions which confirmed the worst fears of the Americans. TheIndian boundary line was to follow the line of the Treaty of Greenvilleand beyond it neither nation was to acquire land. The United Stateswas asked, in short, to set apart for the Indians in perpetuity an areawhich comprised the present States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, four-fifths of Indiana, and a third of Ohio. But, remonstrated Gallatin, this area included States and Territories settled by more than a hundredthousand American citizens. What was to be done with them? "They mustlook after themselves, " was the blunt answer. 

In comparison with this astounding proposal, Lord Castlereagh's furthersuggestion of a "rectification" of the frontier by the cession of FortNiagara and Sackett's Harbor and by the exclusion of the Americans fromthe Lakes, seemed of little importance. The purpose of His Majesty'sGovernment, the commissioners hastened to add, was not aggrandizementbut the protection of the North American provinces. In view of theavowed aim of the United States to conquer Canada, the control of theLakes must rest with Great Britain. Indeed, taking the weakness ofCanada into account, His Majesty's Government might have reasonablydemanded the cession of the lands adjacent to the Lakes; and shouldthese moderate terms not be accepted, His Majesty's Government wouldfeel itself at liberty to enlarge its demands, if the war continued tofavor British arms. The American commissioners asked if these proposalsrelating to the control of the Lakes were also a sine qua non. "Wehave given you one sine qua non already, " was the reply, "and we shouldsuppose one sine qua non at a time was enough. "

The Americans returned to their hotel of one mind: they could viewthe proposals just made no other light than as a deliberate attempt todismember the United States. They could differ only as to the form inwhich they should couch their positive rejection. As titular head of thecommission, Adams set promptly to work upon a draft of an answer whichhe soon set before his colleagues. At once all appearance of unanimityvanished. To the enemy they could present a united front; in the privacyof their apartment, they were five headstrong men. They promptly fellupon Adams's draft tooth and nail. Adams described the scene withpardonable resentment. 

"Mr. Gallatin is for striking out any expression that may be offensiveto the feelings of the adverse Party. Mr. Clay is displeased withfigurative language which he thinks improper for a state paper. Mr. Russell, agreeing in the objections of the two other gentlemen, will befurther for amending the construction of every sentence; and Mr. Bayard, even when agreeing to say precisely the same thing, chooses to say itonly in his own language. "

Sharp encounters took place between Adams and Clay. "You dare not, "shouted Clay in a passion on one occasion, "you CANNOT, you SHALL notinsinuate that there has been a cabal of three members against you!""Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Gallatin would expostulate with a twinkle in hiseye, "We must remain united or we will fail. " It was his good temperand tact that saved this and many similar situations. When Bayardhad essayed a draft of his own and had failed to win support, it wasGallatin who took up Adams's draft and put it into acceptable form. Onthe third day, after hours of "sifting, erasing, patching, and amending, until we were all wearied, though none of us satisfied, " Gallatin'srevision was accepted. From this moment, Gallatin's virtual leadershipwas unquestioned. 

The American note of the 24th of August was a vigorous but even-temperedprotest against the British demands as contrary to precedent anddishonorable to the United States. The American States would neverconsent "to abandon territory and a portion of their citizens, to admita foreign interference in their domestic concerns, and to cease toexercise their natural rights on their own shores and in their ownwaters. " "A treaty concluded on such terms would be but an armistice. "But after the note had been prepared and dispatched, profounddiscouragement reigned in the American hotel. Even Gallatin, usuallyhopeful and philosophically serene, grew despondent. "Our negotiationsmay be considered at an end, " he wrote to Monroe; "Great Britain wantswar in order to cripple us. She wants aggrandizement at our expense. . . . I do not expect to be longer than three weeks in Europe. " Thecommissioners notified their landlord that they would give up theirquarters on the 1st of October; yet they lingered on week after week, waiting for the word which would close negotiations and send them home. 

Meantime the British Ministry was quite as little pleased at theprospect. It would not do to let the impression go abroad that GreatBritain was prepared to continue the war for territorial gains. If arupture of the negotiations must come, Lord Castlereagh preferred tolet the Americans shoulder the responsibility. He therefore instructedGambier not to insist on the independent Indian territory and thecontrol of the Lakes. These points were no longer to be "ultimata" butonly matters for discussion. The British commissioners were to insist, however, on articles providing for the pacification of the Indians. 

Should the Americans yield this sine qua non, now that the first hadbeen withdrawn? Adams thought not, decidedly not; he would rather breakoff negotiations than admit the right of Great Britain to interfere withthe Indians dwelling within the limits of the United States. Gallatinremarked that after all it was a very small point to insist on, when aslight concession would win much more important points. "Then, said I[Adams], with a movement of impatience and an angry tone, it is a goodpoint to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of ourIndians? Gallatin's face brightened, and he said in a tone of perfectgood-humor, 'That's a non-sequitur. ' This turned the edge of theargument into jocularity. I laughed, and insisted that it was asequitur, and the conversation easily changed to another point. "Gallatin had his way with the rest of the commission and drafted thenote of the 26th of September, which, while refusing to recognize theIndians as sovereign nations in the treaty, proposed a stipulation thatwould leave them in possession of their former lands and rights. Thissolution of a perplexing problem was finally accepted after anotherexchange of notes and another earnest discussion at the American hotel, where Gallatin again poured oil on the troubled waters. Concession begatconcession. New instructions from President Madison now permitted thecommissioners to drop the demand for the abolition of impressments andblockades; and, with these difficult matters swept away, the path topeace was much easier to travel. 

Such was the outlook for peace when news reached Ghent of thehumiliating rout at Bladensburg. The British newspapers were full ofjubilant comments; the five crestfallen American envoys took what coldcomfort they could out of the very general condemnation of the burningof the Capitol. Then, on the heels of this intelligence, came rumorsthat the British invasion of New York had failed and that Prevost's armywas in full retreat to Canada. The Americans could hardly grasp the fullsignificance of this British reversal: it was too good to be true. Buttrue it was, and their spirits rebounded. 

It was at this juncture that the British commissioners presented a note, on the 21st of October, which for the first time went to the heartof the negotiations. War had been waged; territory had been overrun;conquests had been made--not the anticipated conquests on either side, to be sure, but conquests nevertheless. These were the plain facts. Nowthe practical question was this: Was the treaty to be drafted on thebasis of the existing state of possession or on the basis of the statusbefore the war? The British note stated their case in plain unvarnishedfashion; it insisted on the status uti possidetis--the possession ofterritory won by arms. 

In the minds of the Americans, buoyed up by the victory at Plattsburg, there was not the shadow of doubt as to what their answer should be;they declined for an instant to consider any other basis for peace thanthe restoration of gains on both sides. Their note was prompt, emphatic, even blunt, and it nearly shattered the nerves of the gentlemen inDowning Street. Had these stiffnecked Yankees no sense? Could they notperceive the studied moderation of the terms proposed--an island or twoand a small strip of Maine--when half of Maine and the south bank ofthe St. Lawrence from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor might have beendemanded as the price of peace?

The prospect of another year of war simply to secure a frontierwhich nine out of ten Englishmen could not have identified was mostdisquieting, especially in view of the prodigious cost of militaryoperations in North America. The Ministry was both hot and cold. Atone moment it favored continued war; at another it shrank from theconsequences; and in the end it confessed its own want of decisionby appealing to the Duke of Wellington and trying to shift theresponsibility to his broad shoulders. Would the Duke take command ofthe forces in Canada? He should be invested with full diplomatic andmilitary powers to bring the war to an honorable conclusion. 

The reply of the Iron Duke gave the Ministry another shock. He would goto America, but he did not promise himself much success there, and hewas reluctant to leave Europe at this critical time. To speak frankly, he had no high opinion of the diplomatic game which the Ministry wasplaying at Ghent. "I confess, " said he, "that I think you have no rightfrom the state of the war to demand any concession from America. . . You have not been able to carry it into the enemy's territory, notwithstanding your military success, and now undoubted militarysuperiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the pointof attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claima cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages whichyou have in your power. . . . Then if this reasoning be true, why stipulatefor the uti possidetis? You can get no territory; indeed, the state ofyour military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you todemand any. "

As Lord Liverpool perused this dispatch, the will to conquer oozed away. "I think we have determined, " he wrote a few days later to Castlereagh, "if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continuethe war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition ofterritory. " He set forth his reasons for this decision succinctly:the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, the alarmingcondition of France, the deplorable financial outlook in England. ButLord Liverpool omitted to mention a still more potent factor in hiscalculations--the growing impatience of the country. The Americanwar had ceased to be popular; it had become the graveyard of militaryreputations; it promised no glory to either sailor or soldier. Now thatthe correspondence of the negotiators at Ghent was made public, thereading public might very easily draw the conclusion that the Ministrywas prolonging the war by setting up pretensions which it couldnot sustain. No Ministry could afford to continue a war out of merestubbornness. 

Meantime, wholly in the dark as to the forces which were working intheir favor, the American commissioners set to work upon a draft of atreaty which should be their answer to the British offer of peace on thebasis of uti possidetis. Almost at once dissensions occurred. Protractednegotiations and enforced idleness had set their nerves on edge, andold personal and sectional differences appeared. The two matterswhich caused most trouble were the fisheries and the navigation of theMississippi. Adams could not forget how stubbornly his father had foughtfor that article in the treaty of 1783 which had conceded to New Englandfishermen, as a natural right, freedom to fish in British waters. Toa certain extent this concession had been offset by yielding to theBritish the right of navigation of the Mississippi, but the latter rightseemed unimportant in the days when the Alleghanies marked the limitof western settlement. In the quarter of a century which had elapsed, however, the West had come into its own. It was now a powerful sectionwith an intensely alert consciousness of its rights and wrongs; andamong its rights it counted the exclusive control of the Father ofWaters. Feeling himself as much the champion of Western interests asAdams did of New England fisheries, Clay refused indignantly to consentto a renewal of the treaty provisions of 1783. But when the matter cameto a vote, he found himself with Russell in a minority. Very reluctantlyhe then agreed to Gallatin's proposal, to insert in a note, rather thanin the draft itself, a paragraph to the effect that the commissionerswere not instructed to discuss the rights hitherto enjoyed in thefisheries, since no further stipulation was deemed necessary to entitlethem to rights which were recognized by the treaty of 1783. 

When the British reply to the American project was read, Adams notedwith quiet satisfaction that the reservation as to the fisheries waspassed over in silence--silence, he thought, gave consent--but Clay flewinto a towering passion when he learned that the old right of navigatingthe Mississippi was reasserted. Adams was prepared to accept the Britishproposals; Clay refused point blank; and Gallatin sided this timewith Clay. Could a compromise be effected between these stubbornrepresentatives of East and West? Gallatin tried once more. Why notaccept the British right of navigation--surely an unimportant pointafter all--and ask for an express affirmation of fishery rights?Clay replied hotly that if they were going to sacrifice the West toMassachusetts, he would not sign the treaty. With infinite patienceGallatin continued to play the role of peacemaker and finally broughtboth these self-willed men to agree to offer a renewal of both rights. 

Instead of accepting this eminently fair adjustment, the Britishrepresentatives proposed that the two disputed rights be left to futurenegotiation. The suggestion caused another explosion in the ranks of theAmericans. Adams would not admit even by implication that the rights forwhich his sire fought could be forfeited by war and become the subjectof negotiation. But all save Adams were ready to yield. Again Gallatincame to the rescue. He penned a note rejecting the British offer, because it seemed to imply the abandonment of a right; but in turn heoffered to omit in the treaty all reference to the fisheries and theMississippi or to include a general reference to further negotiationof all matters still in dispute, in such a way as not to relinquish anyrights. To this solution of the difficulty all agreed, though Adams wasstill torn by doubts and Clay believed that the treaty was bound to be"damned bad" anyway. 

An anxious week of waiting followed. On the 22d of December came theBritish reply--a grudging acceptance of Gallatin's first proposal toomit all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi. Two days laterthe treaty was signed in the refectory of the Carthusian monasterywhere the British commissioners were quartered. Let the tiredseventeen-year-old boy who had been his father's scribe through theselong weary months describe the events of Christmas Day, 1814. "TheBritish delegates very civilly asked us to dinner, " wrote James Gallatinin his diary. "The roast beef and plum pudding was from England, andeverybody drank everybody else's health. The band played first God Savethe King, to the toast of the King, and Yankee Doodle, to the toast ofthe President. Congratulations on all sides and a general atmosphere ofserenity; it was a scene to be remembered. God grant there may be alwayspeace between the two nations. I never saw father so cheerful; he was inhigh spirits, and his witty conversation was much appreciated. " *

 * "A Great Peace Maker: The Dairy of James Gallatin" (1914). P. 36. 

Peace! That was the outstanding achievement of the Americancommissioners at Ghent. Measured by the purposes of the war-hawks of1812, measured by the more temperate purposes of President Madison, theTreaty of Ghent was a confession of national weakness and humiliatingfailure. Clay, whose voice had been loudest for war and whose kindlingfancy had pictured American armies dictating terms of surrender atQuebec, set his signature to a document which redressed not a singlegrievance and added not a foot of territory to the United States. Adams, who had denounced Great Britain for the crime of "man-stealing, "accepted a treaty of peace which contained not a syllable aboutimpressment. President Madison, who had reluctantly accepted war as thelast means of escape from the blockade of American ports and the ruinof neutral trade, recommended the ratification of a convention which didnot so much as mention maritime questions and the rights of neutrals. 

Peace--and nothing more? Much more, indeed, than appears in rubrics onparchment. The Treaty of Ghent must be interpreted in the light of morethan a hundred years of peace between the two great branches of theEnglish-speaking race. More conscious of their differences than anythingelse, no doubt, these eight peacemakers at Ghent nevertheless spoke acommon tongue and shared a common English trait: they laid firm hold onrealities. Like practical men they faced the year 1815 and not 1812. Ina pacified Europe rid of the Corsican, questions of maritime practiceseemed dead issues. Let the dead past bury its dead! To remove possiblecauses of future controversy seemed wiser statesmanship than to rakeover the embers of quarrels which might never be rekindled. So itwas that in prosaic articles they provided for three commissions toarbitrate boundary controversies at critical points in the far-flungfrontier between Canada and the United States, and thus laid thefoundations of an international accord which has survived a hundredyears. 

CHAPTER XIII. SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW WORLD

It fell to the last, and perhaps least talented, President of theVirginia Dynasty to consummate the work of Jefferson and Madison by afinal settlement with Spain which left the United States in possessionof the Floridas. In the diplomatic service James Monroe had exhibitednone of those qualities which warranted the expectation that he wouldsucceed where his predecessors had failed. On his missions to Englandand Spain, indeed, he had been singularly inept, but he had learned muchin the rude school of experience, and he now brought to his new dutiesdiscretion, sobriety, and poise. He was what the common people heldhim to be a faithful public servant, deeply and sincerely republican, earnestly desirous to serve the country which he loved. 

The circumstances of Monroe's election pledged him to a truly nationalpolicy. He had received the electoral votes of all but three States. *He was now President of an undivided country, not merely a Virginianfortuitously elevated to the chief magistracy and regarded as alien insympathy to the North and East. Any doubts on this point were dispelledby the popular demonstrations which greeted him on his tour throughFederalist strongholds in the Northeast. "I have seen enough, " he wrotein grateful recollection, "to satisfy me that the great mass of ourfellow-citizens in the Eastern States are as firmly attached to theunion and republican government as I have always believed or coulddesire them to be. " The news-sheets which followed his progress fromday to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling, " which has passedcurrent ever since as a characterization of his administration. 

 * Monroe received 183 electoral votes and Rufus King, 34-- the votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. 

It was in this admirable temper and with this broad national outlookthat Monroe chose his advisers and heads of departments. He waswell aware of the common belief that his predecessors had appointedVirginians to the Secretaryship of State in order to prepare the wayfor their succession to the Presidency. He was determined, therefore, to avert the suspicion of sectional bias by selecting some one from theEastern States, rather than from the South or from the West, hithertoso closely allied to the South. His choice fell upon John Quincy Adams, "who by his age, long experience in our foreign affairs, and adoptioninto the Republican party, " he assured Jefferson, "seems to havesuperior pretentions. " It was an excellent appointment from every pointof view but one. Monroe had overlooked--and the circumstance didhim infinite credit--the exigencies of politics and passed over anindividual whose vaulting ambition had already made him an aspirant tothe Presidency. Henry Clay was grievously disappointed and henceforwardsulked in his tent, refusing the Secretaryship of War which thePresident tendered. Eventually the brilliant young John C. Calhoun tookthis post. This South Carolinian was in the prime of life, full offire and dash, ardently patriotic, and nationally-minded to anunusual degree. Of William H. Crawford of Georgia, who retained theSecretaryship of the Treasury, little need be said except that he alsowas a presidential aspirant who saw things always from the angle ofpolitical expediency. Benjamin W. Crowninshield as Secretary of theNavy and William Wirt as Attorney-General completed the circle of thePresident's intimate advisers. 

The new Secretary of State had not been in office many weeks before hereceived a morning call from Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister, whowas laboring under ill-disguised excitement. It appeared that his housein Washington had been repeatedly "insulted" of late-windows broken, lamps in front of the house smashed, and one night a dead fowl tied tohis bell-rope. This last piece of vandalism had been too much for hisequanimity. He held it a gross insult to his sovereign and the Spanishmonarchy, importing that they were of no more consequence than a deadold hen! Adams, though considerably amused, endeavored to smooth theruffled pride of the chevalier by suggesting that these were probablyonly the tricks of some mischievous boys; but De Onis was not easilyappeased. Indeed, as Adams was himself soon to learn, the Americanpublic did regard the Spanish monarchy as a dead old hen, and took nopains to disguise its contempt. Adams had yet to learn the long trainof circumstances which made Spanish relations the most delicate anddifficult of all the diplomatic problems in his office. 

With his wonted industry, Adams soon made himself master of the factsrelating to Spanish diplomacy. For the moment interest centered onEast Florida. Carefully unraveling the tangled skein of events, Adamsfollowed the thread which led back to President Madison's secret messageto Congress of January 3, 1811, which was indeed one of the landmarks inAmerican policy. Madison had recommended a declaration "that theUnited States could not see without serious inquietude any part ofa neighboring territory [like East Florida] in which they have indifferent respects so deep and so just a concern pass from the hands ofSpain into those of any other foreign power. " To prevent the possiblesubversion of Spanish authority in East Florida and the occupation ofthe province by a foreign power--Great Britain was, of course, the powerthe President had in mind--he had urged Congress to authorize him totake temporary possession "in pursuance of arrangements which maybe desired by the Spanish authorities. " Congress had responded withalacrity and empowered the President to occupy East Florida in case thelocal authorities should consent or a foreign power should attempt tooccupy it. 

With equal dispatch the President had sent two agents, General GeorgeMatthews and Colonel John McKee, on one of the strangest missions in theborder history of the United States. 

East Florida--Adams found, pursuing his inquiries into the archives ofthe department--included the two important ports of entry, Pensacola onthe Gulf and Fernandina on Amelia Island, at the mouth of the St. Mary'sRiver. The island had long been a notorious resort for smugglers. Hitherhad come British and American vessels with cargoes of merchandise andslaves, which found their way in mysterious fashion to consignees withinthe States. A Spanish garrison of ten men was the sole custodian of lawand order on the island. Up and down the river was scattered a lawlesspopulation of freebooters, who were equally ready to raid a borderplantation or to raise the Jolly Roger on some piratical cruise. To thisNo Man's Land--fertile recruiting ground for all manner of filibusteringexpeditions--General Matthews and Colonel McKee had betaken themselvesin the spring of 1811, bearing some explicit instructions from PresidentMadison but also some very pronounced convictions as to what theywere expected to accomplish. Matthews, at least, understood that thePresident wished a revolution after the West Florida model. He assuredthe Administration-Adams read the precious missive in the files of hisoffice-that he could do the trick. Only let the Government consign twohundred stand of arms and fifty horsemen's swords to the commander atSt. Mary's, and he would guarantee to put the revolution through withoutcommitting the United States in any way. 

The melodrama had been staged for the following spring (1812). Some twohundred "patriots" recruited from the border people gathered near St. Mary's with souls yearning for freedom; and while American gunboatstook a menacing position, this force of insurgents had landed on AmeliaIsland and summoned the Spanish commandant to surrender. Not willingto spoil the scene by vulgar resistance, the commandant capitulated andmarched out his garrison, ten strong, with all the honors of war. TheSpanish flag had been hauled down to give place to the flag of theinsurgents, bearing the inspiring motto Salus populi--suprema lex. Then General Matthews with a squad of regular United States troops hadcrossed the river and taken possession. Only the benediction of theGovernment at Washington was lacking to make the success of his missioncomplete; but to the general's consternation no approving messagecame, only a peremptory dispatch disavowing his acts and revoking hiscommission. 

As Adams reviewed these events, he could see no other alternativefor the Government to have pursued at this moment when war with GreatBritain was impending. It would have been the height of folly to breakopenly with Spain. The Administration had indeed instructed its newagent, Governor Mitchell of Georgia, to restore the island to theSpanish commandant and to withdraw his troops, if he could do so withoutsacrificing the insurgents to the vengeance of the Spaniards. But theforces set in motion by Matthews were not so easily controlled fromWashington. Once having resolved to liberate East Florida, the patriotswere not disposed to retire at the nod of the Secretary of State. TheSpanish commandant was equally obdurate. He would make no promise tospare the insurgents. The Legislature of Georgia, too, had a mind of itsown. It resolved that the occupation of East Florida was essentialto the safety of the State, whether Congress approved or no; and theGovernor, swept along in the current of popular feeling, summoned troopsfrom Savannah to hold the province. Just at this moment had comethe news of war with Great Britain; and Governor, State militia, andpatriots had combined in an effort to prevent East Florida from becomingenemy's territory. 

Military considerations had also swept the Administration along the samehazardous course. The occupation of the Floridas seemed imperative. ThePresident sought authorization from Congress to occupy and govern boththe Floridas until the vexed question of title could be settled bynegotiation. Only a part of this programme had carried, for, whileCongress was prepared to approve the military occupation of West Floridato the Perdido River, beyond that it would not go; and so with greatreluctance the President had ordered the troops to withdraw from AmeliaIsland. In the spring of the same year (1813) General Wilkinson hadoccupied West Florida--the only permanent conquest of the war and that, oddly enough, the conquest of a territory owned and held by a power withwhich the United States was not at war. 

Abandoned by the American troops, Amelia Island had become a rendezvousfor outlaws from every part of the Americas. Just about the timethat Adams was crossing the ocean to take up his duties at the StateDepartment, one of these buccaneers by the name of Gregor MacGregordescended upon the island as "Brigadier General of the Armies of theUnited Provinces of New Granada and Venezuela, and General-in-chief ofthat destined to emancipate the provinces of both Floridas, under thecommission of the Supreme Government of Mexico and South America. " Thispirate was soon succeeded by General Aury, who had enjoyed a wild careeramong the buccaneers of Galveston Bay, where he had posed as militarygovernor under the Republic of Mexico. East Florida in the hands of suchdesperadoes was a menace to the American border. Approaching the problemof East Florida without any of the prepossessions of those who had beendealing with Spanish envoys for a score of years, the new Secretary ofState was prepared to move directly to his goal without any too greatconsideration for the feelings of others. His examination of the factsled him to a clean-cut decision: this nest of pirates must be broken upat once. His energy carried President and Cabinet along with him. It wasdecided to send troops and ships to the St. Mary's and if necessary toinvest Fernandina. This demonstration of force sufficed; General Aurydeparted to conquer new worlds, and Amelia Island was occupied for thesecond time without bloodshed. 

But now, having grasped the nettle firmly, what was the Administrationto do with it? De Onis promptly registered his protest; the oppositionin Congress seized upon the incident to worry the President; many ofthe President's friends thought that he had been precipitate. Monroe, indeed, would have been glad to withdraw the troops now that they hadeffected their object, but Adams was for holding the island in order toforce Spain to terms. With a frankness which lacerated the feelings ofDe Onis, Adams insisted that the United States had acted strictly on thedefensive. The occupation of Amelia Island was not an act of aggressionbut a necessary measure for the protection of commerce--Americancommerce, the commerce of other nations, the commerce of Spain itself. Now why not put an end to all friction by ceding the Floridas to theUnited States? What would Spain take for all her possessions east ofthe Mississippi, Adams asked. De Onis declined to say. Well, then, Adamspursued, suppose the United States should withdraw from AmeliaIsland, would Spain guarantee that it should not be occupied again byfree-booters? No: De Onis could give no such guarantee, but he wouldwrite to the Governor of Havana to ascertain if he would send anadequate garrison to Fernandina. Adams reported this significantconversation to the President, who was visibly shaken by the conflict ofopinions within his political household and not a little alarmed at thepossibility of war with Spain. The Secretary of State was coolly takingthe measure of his chief. "There is a slowness, want of decision, and aspirit of procrastination in the President, " he confided to his diary. He did not add, but the thought was in his mind, that he could swaythis President, mold him to his heart's desire. In this first trial ofstrength the hardier personality won: Monroe sent a message to Congress, on January 13, 1818, announcing his intention to hold East Florida forthe present, and the arguments which he used to justify this bold coursewere precisely those of his Secretary of State. 

When Adams suggested that Spain might put an end to all her worries byceding the Floridas, he was only renewing an offer that Monroe had madewhile he was still Secretary of State. De Onis had then declared thatSpain would never cede territory east of the Mississippi unless theUnited States would relinquish its claims west of that river. Now, to the new Secretary, De Onis intimated that he was ready to be lessexacting. He would be willing to run the line farther west and allow theUnited States a large part of what is now the State of Louisiana. Adamsmade no reply to this tentative proposal but bided his time; and timeplayed into his hands in unexpected ways. 

To the Secretary's office, one day in June, 1818, came a letter from DeOnis which was a veritable firebrand. De Onis, who was not unnaturallydisposed to believe the worst of Americans on the border, had heard thatGeneral Andrew Jackson in pursuit of the Seminole Indians had crossedinto Florida and captured Pensacola and St. Mark's. He demanded to beinformed "in a positive, distinct and explicit manner just what hadoccurred"; and then, outraged by confirmatory reports and withoutwaiting for Adams's reply, he wrote another angry letter, insisting uponthe restitution of the captured forts and the punishment of the Americangeneral. Worse tidings followed. Bagot, the British Minister, had heardthat Jackson had seized and executed two British subjects on Spanishsoil. Would the Secretary of State inform him whether General Jacksonhad been authorized to take Pensacola, and would the Secretary furnishhim with copies of the reports of the courts-martial which had condemnedthese two subjects of His Majesty? Adams could only reply that he lackedofficial information. 

By the second week in July, dispatches from General Jackson confirmedthe worst insinuations and accusations of De Onis and Bagot. PresidentMonroe was painfully embarrassed. Prompt disavowal of the general'sconduct seemed the only way to avert war; but to disavow the acts ofthis popular idol, the victor of New Orleans, was no light matter. Hesought the advice of his Cabinet and was hardly less embarrassed tofind all but one convinced that "Old Hickory" had acted contrary toinstructions and had committed acts of hostility against Spain. A weekof anxious Cabinet sessions followed, in which only one voice was raisedin defense of the invasion of Florida. All but Adams feared war, a warwhich the opposition would surely brand as incited by the Presidentwithout the consent of Congress. No administration could carry on a warbegun in violation of the Constitution, said Calhoun. But, argued Adams, the President may authorize defensive acts of hostility. Jackson hadbeen authorized to cross the frontier, if necessary, in pursuit of theIndians, and all the ensuing deplorable incidents had followed as anecessary consequence of Indian warfare. 

The conclusions of the Cabinet were summed up by Adams in a reply toDe Onis, on the 23d of July, which must have greatly astonished thatdiligent defender of Spanish honor. Opening the letter to read, as heconfidently expected, a disavowal and an offer of reparation, he foundthe responsibility for the recent unpleasant incidents fastened upon hisown country. He was reminded that by the treaty of 1795 both Governmentshad contracted to restrain the Indians within their respective borders, so that neither should suffer from hostile raids, and that the Governorof Pensacola, when called upon to break up a stronghold of Indians andfugitive slaves, had acknowledged his obligation but had pleaded hisinability to carry out the covenant. Then, and then only, had GeneralJackson been authorized to cross the border and to put an end tooutrages which the Spanish authorities lacked the power to prevent. General Jackson had taken possession of the Spanish forts on hisown responsibility when he became convinced of the duplicity of thecommandant, who, indeed, had made himself "a partner and accomplice ofthe hostile Indians and of their foreign instigators. " Such conduct onthe part of His Majesty's officer justified the President in callingfor his punishment. But, in the meantime, the President was prepared torestore Pensacola, and also St. Mark's, whenever His Majesty should senda force sufficiently strong to hold the Indians under control. 

Nor did the Secretary of State moderate his tone or abate his demandswhen Pizarro, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, threatenedto suspend negotiations with the United States until it should givesatisfaction for this "shameful invasion of His Majesty's territory" andfor these "acts of barbarity glossed over with the forms of justice. " Ina dispatch to the American Minister at Madrid, Adams vigorously defendedJackson's conduct from beginning to end. The time had come, said he, when "Spain must immediately make her election either to place a forcein Florida adequate at once to the protection of her territory andto the fulfilment of her engagements or cede to the United States aprovince of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession, butwhich is in fact a derelict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States and serving no other earthlypurpose, than as a post of annoyance to them. "

This affront to Spanish pride might have ended abruptly a chapter inSpanish-American diplomacy but for the friendly offices of Hyde deNeuville, the French Minister at Washington, whose Government couldnot view without alarm the possibility of a rupture between the twocountries. It was Neuville who labored through the summer months of thisyear, first with Adams, then with De Onis, tempering the demands of theone and placating the pride of the other, but never allowing intercourseto drop. Adams was right, and both Neuville and De Onis knew it; theonly way to settle outstanding differences was to cede these Spanishderelicts in the New World to the United States. 

To bring and keep together these two antithetical personalities, representatives of two opposing political systems, was no smallachievement. What De Onis thought of his stubborn opponent may besurmised; what the American thought of the Spaniard need not be left toconjecture. In the pages of his diary Adams painted the portrait of hisadversary as he saw him--"cold, calculating, wily, always commandinghis temper, proud because he is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree ofendurance of his opponents, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent towhich it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it isproved to be unfounded. "

The history of the negotiations running through the fall and winter isa succession of propositions and counter-propositions, made formally bythe chief participants or tentatively and informally through Neuville. The western boundary of the Louisiana purchase was the chief obstacle toagreement. Each sparred for an advantage; each made extreme claims; andeach was persuaded to yield a little here and a little there, slowlynarrowing the bounds of the disputed territory. More than once thePresident and the Cabinet believed that the last concession had beenextorted and were prepared to yield on other matters. When the Presidentwas prepared, for example, to accept the hundredth meridian and theforty-third parallel, Adams insisted on demanding the one hundred andsecond and the forty-second; and "after a long and violent struggle, "wrote Adams, "he [De Onis]. . . Agreed to take longitude one hundred fromthe Red River to the Arkansas, and latitude forty-two from the source ofthe Arkansas to the South Sea. " This was a momentous decision, for theUnited States acquired thus whatever claim Spain had to the northwestcoast but sacrificed its claim to Texas for the possession of theFloridas. 

Vexatious questions still remained to be settled. The spoliation claimswhich were to have been adjusted by the convention of 1802 werefinally left to a commission, the United States agreeing to assume allobligations to an amount not exceeding five million dollars. De Onisdemurred at stating this amount in the treaty: he would be blamed forhaving betrayed the honor of Spain by selling the Floridas for a paltryfive millions. To which Adams replied dryly that he ought to boast ofhis bargain instead of being ashamed of it, since it was notoriousthat the Floridas had always been a burden to the Spanish exchequer. Negotiations came to a standstill again when Adams insisted that certainroyal grants of land in the Floridas should be declared null and void. He feared, and not without reason, that these grants would deprive theUnited States of the domain which was to be used to pay the indemnitiesassumed in the treaty. De Onis resented the demand as "offensive tothe dignity and imprescriptible rights of the Crown of Spain"; andonce again Neuville came to the rescue of the treaty and persuaded bothparties to agree to a compromise. On the understanding that the royalgrants in question had been made subsequent to January 24, 1818, Adamsagreed that all grants made since that date (when the first proposal wasmade by His Majesty for the cession of the Floridas) should be declarednull and void; and that all grants made before that date should beconfirmed. 

On the anniversary of Washington's birthday, De Onis and Adams signedthe treaty which carried the United States to its natural limits onthe southeast. The event seemed to Adams to mark "a great epocha in ourhistory. " "It was near one in the morning, " he recorded in his diary, "when I closed the day with ejaculations of fervent gratitude tothe Giver of all good. It was, perhaps, the most important day of mylife. . . . Let no idle and unfounded exultation take possession of mymind, as if I would ascribe to my own foresight or exertions any portionof the event. " But misgivings followed hard on these joyous reflections. The treaty had still to be ratified, and the disposition of the SpanishCortes was uncertain. There was, too, considerable opposition in theSenate. "A watchful eye, a resolute purpose, a calm and patient temper, and a favoring Providence will all be as indispensable for the futureas they have been for the past in the management of this negotiation, "Adams reminded himself. He had need of all these qualities in the tryingmonths that followed. 

CHAPTER XIV. FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY

The decline and fall of the Spanish Empire does not challenge theimagination like the decline and fall of that other Empire with whichalone it can be compared, possibly because no Gibbon has chronicled itsgreatness. Yet its dissolution affected profoundly the history of threecontinents. While the Floridas were slipping from the grasp of Spain, the provinces to the south were wrenching themselves loose, withprotestations which penetrated to European chancelleries as well as toAmerican legislative halls. To Czar Alexander and Prince Metternich, sponsors for the Holy Alliance and preservers of the peace of Europe, these declarations of independence contained the same insidiousphilosophy of revolution which they had pledged themselves everywhereto combat. To simple American minds, the familiar words liberty andindependence in the mouths of South American patriots meant what theyhad to their own grandsires, struggling to throw off the shackles ofBritish imperial control. Neither Europe nor America, however, knew theactual conditions in these newborn republics below the equator; and bothgoverned their conduct by their prepossessions. 

To the typically American mind of Henry Clay, now untrammeled byany sense of responsibility, for he was a free lance in the House ofRepresentatives once more, the emancipation of South America was athrilling and sublime spectacle--"the glorious spectacle of eighteenmillions of people struggling to burst their chains and to be free. "In a memorable speech in 1818 he had expressed the firm conviction thatthere could be but one outcome to this struggle. Independent these SouthAmerican states would be. Equally clear to his mind was their politicaldestiny. Whatever their forms of government, they would be animated byan American feeling and guided by an American policy. "They will obeythe laws of the system of the new world, of which they will compose apart, in contradistinction to that of Europe. " To this struggle and tothis destiny the United States could not remain indifferent. He wouldnot have the Administration depart from its policy of strict andimpartial neutrality but he would urge the expediency--nay, thejustice--of recognizing established governments in Spanish America. Such recognition was not a breach of neutrality, for it did not implymaterial aid in the wars of liberation but only the moral sympathy of agreat free people for their southern brethren. 

Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the attitude of theAdministration, directed by the prudent Secretary of State, seemed cold, calculating, and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams could seelittle resemblance between these revolutions in South America andthat of 1776. Certainly it had never been disgraced by such acts ofbuccaneering and piracy as were of everyday occurrence in South Americanwaters. The United States had contended for civil rights and then forindependence; in South America civil rights had been ignored by allparties. He could discern neither unity of cause nor unity of effortin the confused history of recent struggles in South America; and untilorderly government was achieved, with due regard to fundamental civilrights, he would not have the United States swerve in the slightestdegree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. Clay, he observed inhis diary, had "mounted his South American great horse. . . To control oroverthrow the executive. "

President Monroe, however, was more impressionable, more responsiveto popular opinion, and at this moment (as the presidential yearapproached) more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed withAdams that the moment had not come when the United States alone mightsafely recognize the South American states, but he believed thatconcerted action by the United States and Great Britain might winrecognition without wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time wassurely not far distant when Spain would welcome recognition as a relieffrom an impoverishing and hopeless war. Meanwhile the Presidentcoupled professions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy for therevolutionists in every message to Congress. 

The temporizing policy of the Administration aroused Clay to anotherimpassioned plea for those southern brethren whose hearts--despite allrebuffs from the Department of State--still turned toward the UnitedStates. "We should become the center of a system which would constitutethe rallying point of human freedom against the despotism of the OldWorld. . . . Why not proceed to act on our own responsibility and recognizethese governments as independent, instead of taking the lead of theHoly Alliance in a course which jeopardizes the happiness of unbornmillions?" He deprecated this deference to foreign powers. "If LordCastlereagh says we may recognize, we do; if not, we do not. . . . Ourinstitutions now make us free; but how long shall we continue so, if wemold our opinions on those of Europe? Let us break these commercialand political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any Europeanpolitician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselvesat the head of the American system. "

The question of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground ofdiscussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yetbeen ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in theUnited States to ask for certain explanations. The Administrationhad every reason at this moment to wish to avoid further causes ofirritation to Spanish pride. It is more than probable, indeed, that Claywas not unwilling to embarrass the President and his Secretary of State. He still nursed his personal grudge against the President and he did notdisguise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused his resentment wasthe sacrifice of Texas for Florida. Florida would have fallen to theUnited States eventually like ripened fruit, he believed. Why, then, yield an incomparably richer and greater territory for that which wasbound to become theirs whenever the American people wished to take it?

But what were the explanations which Vives demanded? Weary hours spentin conference with the wily Spaniard convinced Adams that the greatobstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain had been theconviction that the United States was only waiting ratification torecognize the independence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did Adamsregret the advances which he had made to Great Britain, at theinstance of the President, and still more bitterly did he deplore thoseparagraphs in the President's messages which had expressed an all tooready sympathy with the aims of the insurgents. But regrets availednothing and the Secretary of State had to put the best face possible onthe policy of the Administration. He told Vives in unmistakable languagethat the United States could not subscribe to "new engagements as theprice of obtaining the ratification of the old. " Certainly the UnitedStates would not comply with the Spanish demand and pledge itself"to form no relations with the pretended governments of the revoltedprovinces of Spain. " As for the royal grants which De Onis had agreed tocall null and void, if His Majesty insisted upon their validity, perhapsthe United States might acquiesce for an equivalent area west of theSabine River. In some alarm Vives made haste to say that the Kingdid not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. In the end heprofessed himself satisfied with Mr. Adams's explanations; he would senda messenger to report to His Majesty and to secure formal authorizationto exchange ratifications. 

Another long period of suspense followed. The Spanish Cortes did notadvise the King to accept the treaty until October; the Senate did notreaffirm its ratification until the following February; and it was twoyears to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vivesexchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of hisdiary, so that posterity might read, the conviction that the hand of anOverruling Providence was visible in this, the most important event ofhis life. 

If, as many thought, the Administration had delayed recognition of theSouth American republics in order not to offend Spanish feelings whilethe Florida treaty was under consideration, it had now no excuse forfurther hesitation; yet it was not until March 8, 1822, that PresidentMonroe announced to Congress his belief that the time had come whenthose provinces of Spain which had declared their independence and werein the enjoyment of it should be formally recognized. On the 19th ofJune he received the accredited charge d'affaires of the Republic ofColombia. 

The problem of recognition was not the only one which the impendingdissolution of the Spanish colonial empire left to harass the Secretaryof State. Just because Spain had such vast territorial pretensions andheld so little by actual occupation on the North American continent, there was danger that these shadowy claims would pass into the hands ofaggressive powers with the will and resources to aggrandize themselves. One day in January, 1821, while Adams was awaiting the outcome of hisconferences with Vives, Stratford Canning, the British Minister, was announced at his office. Canning came to protest against whathe understood was the decision of the United States to extend itssettlements at the mouth of the Columbia River. Adams replied that heknew of no such determination; but he deemed it very probable that thesettlements on the Pacific coast would be increased. Canning expressedrather ill-matured surprise at this statement, for he conceived thatsuch a policy would be a palpable violation of the Convention of 1818. Without replying, Adams rose from his seat to procure a copy of thetreaty and then read aloud the parts referring to the joint occupationof the Oregon country. A stormy colloquy followed in which bothparticipants seem to have lost their tempers. Next day Canning returnedto the attack, and Adams challenged the British claim to the mouth ofthe Columbia. "Why, " exclaimed Canning, "do you not KNOW that we have aclaim?" "I do not KNOW, " said Adams, "what you claim nor what you do notclaim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you claim--" "Perhaps, " saidCanning, "a piece of the moon. " "No, " replied Adams, "I have not heardthat you claim exclusively any part of the moon; but there is not a spoton THIS habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim; and thereis none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you canhave to Columbia River or its mouth. "

With equal sang-froid, the Secretary of State met threatened aggressionfrom another quarter. In September of this same year, the Czar issueda ukase claiming the Pacific coast as far south as the fifty-firstparallel and declaring Bering Sea closed to the commerce of othernations. Adams promptly refused to recognize these pretensions anddeclared to Baron de Tuyll, the Russian Minister, "that we shouldcontest the right of Russia to ANY territorial establishment on thiscontinent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that theAmerican continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonialestablishments. " *

 * Before Adams retired from office, he had the satisfaction of concluding a treaty (1824) with Russia by which the Czar abandoned his claims to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea and agreed to plant no colonies on the Pacific Coast south of 54 degrees 40 minutes. 

Not long after this interview Adams was notified by Baron Tuyll thatthe Czar, in conformity with the political principles of the allies, haddetermined in no case whatever to receive any agent from the Governmentof the Republic of Colombia or from any other government which owed itsexistence to the recent events in the New World. Adams's first impulsewas to pen a reply that would show the inconsistency between thesepolitical principles and the unctuous professions of Christian dutywhich had resounded in the Holy Alliance; but the note which he draftedwas, perhaps fortunately, not dispatched until it had been revisedby President and Cabinet a month later, under stress of othercircumstances. 

At still another focal point the interests of the United States rancounter to the covetous desires of European powers. Cuba, the choicestof the provinces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal; but, shouldthe hold of Spain upon this Pearl of the Antilles relax, every maritimepower would swoop down upon it. The immediate danger, however, was notthat revolution would here as elsewhere sever the province from Spain, leaving it helpless and incapable of self-support, but that France, after invading Spain and restoring the monarchy, would also intervenein the affairs of her provinces. The transfer of Cuba to France bythe grateful King was a possibility which haunted the dreams of GeorgeCanning at Westminster as well as of John Quincy Adams at Washington. The British Foreign Minister attempted to secure a pledge from Francethat she would not acquire any Spanish-American territory either byconquest or by treaty, while the Secretary of State instructed theAmerican Minister to Spain not to conceal from the Spanish Government"the repugnance of the United States to the transfer of the Island ofCuba by Spain to any other power. " Canning was equally fearful lest theUnited States should occupy Cuba and he would have welcomed assurancesthat it had no designs upon the island. Had he known precisely theattitude of Adams, he would have been still more uneasy, for Adams wasperfectly sure that Cuba belonged "by the laws of political as well asof physical gravitation" to the North American continent, though hewas not for the present ready to assist the operation of political andphysical laws. 

Events were inevitably detaching Great Britain from the concert ofEurope and putting her in opposition to the policy of intervention, bothbecause of what it meant in Spain and what it might mean when appliedto the New World. Knowing that the United States shared these latterapprehensions, George Canning conceived that the two countries mightjoin in a declaration against any project by any European power forsubjugating the colonies of South America either on behalf or in thename of Spain. He ventured to ask Richard Rush, American Minister atLondon, what his government would say to such a proposal. For his parthe was quite willing to state publicly that he believed the recoveryof the colonies by Spain to be hopeless; that recognition of theirindependence was only a question of proper time and circumstance; thatGreat Britain did not aim at the possession of any of them, though shecould not be indifferent to their transfer to any other power. "If, " saidCanning, "these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly believe them tobe, common to your government with ours, why should we hesitate mutuallyto confide them to each other; and to declare them in the face of theworld?"

Why, indeed? To Rush there occurred one good and sufficient answer, which, however, he could not make: he doubted the disinterestedness ofGreat Britain. He could only reply that he would not feel justified inassuming the responsibility for a joint declaration unless Great Britainwould first unequivocally recognize the South American republics; and, when Canning balked at the suggestion, he could only repeat, in asconciliatory manner as possible, his reluctance to enter into anyengagement. Not once only but three times Canning repeated hisovertures, even urging Rush to write home for powers and instructions. 

The dispatches of Rush seemed so important to President Monroe thathe sent copies of them to Jefferson and Madison, with the query--whichrevealed his own attitude--whether the moment had not arrived when theUnited States might safely depart from its traditional policy and meetthe proposal of the British Government. If there was one principle whichran consistently through the devious foreign policy of Jefferson andMadison, it was that of political isolation from Europe. "Our first andfundamental maxim, " Jefferson wrote in reply, harking back to theold formulas, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the broilsof Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle withCis-Atlantic affairs. " He then continued in this wise:

"America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from thoseof Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a systemof her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last islaboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surelybe, to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, andaccompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her fromthe band of despots, bring her mighty weight into the scale of freegovernment and emancipate a continent at one stroke which mightotherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty. . . . I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent, instead of provoking war. WithGreat Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of ourtwo continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war. . . . Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, ofdeclaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rightsof nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs ofanother, so flagitiously begun by Buonaparte, and now continued by theequally lawless alliance, calling itself Holy. "

Madison argued the case with more reserve but arrived at the sameconclusion: "There ought not to be any backwardness therefore, I think, in meeting her [England] in the way she has proposed. " The dispatchesof Rush produced a very different effect, however, upon the Secretary ofState, whose temperament fed upon suspicion and who now found plentyof food for thought both in what Rush said and in what he did not say. Obviously Canning was seeking a definite compact with the United Statesagainst the designs of the allies, not out of any altruistic motive butfor selfish ends. Great Britain, Rush had written bluntly, had as littlesympathy with popular rights as it had on the field of Lexington. Itwas bent on preventing France from making conquests, not on making SouthAmerica free. Just so, Adams reasoned: Canning desires to secure fromthe United States a public pledge "ostensibly against the forcibleinterference of the Holy Alliance between Spain and South America;but really or especially against the acquisition to the United Statesthemselves of any part of the Spanish-American possessions. " Byjoining with Great Britain we would give her a "substantial and perhapsinconvenient pledge against ourselves, and really obtain nothing inreturn. " He believed that it would be more candid and more dignifiedto decline Canning's overtures and to avow our principles explicitly toRussia and France. For his part he did not wish the United States "tocome in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war!"

Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the Cabinet, quite ignorant of thecorrespondence which had passed between the President and his mentors. Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he asked no morecongenial task than to draft replies to Baron Tuyll and to Canning andinstructions to the ministers at London, St. Petersburg, and Paris;but he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of making all thesecommunications "part of a combined system of policy and adapted to eachother. " Not so easily, however, was the President detached from theinfluence of the two Virginia oracles. He took sharp exception to theletter which Adams drafted in reply to Baron Tuyll, saying that hedesired to refrain from any expressions which would irritate the Czar;and thus turned what was to be an emphatic declaration of principlesinto what Adams called "the tamest of state papers. "

The Secretary's draft of instructions to Rush had also to run thegauntlet of amendment by the President and his Cabinet; but it emergedsubstantially unaltered in content and purpose. Adams professed to findcommon ground with Great Britain, while pointing out with much subtletythat if she believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain wasreally hopeless, she was under moral obligation to recognize them asindependent states and to favor only such an adjustment between them andthe mother country as was consistent with the fact of independence. TheUnited States was in perfect accord with the principles laid down by Mr. Canning: it desired none of the Spanish possessions for itself but itcould not see with indifference any portion of them transferred to anyother power. Nor could the United States see with indifference "anyattempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore those new states tothe crown of Spain, or to deprive them, in any manner whatever, ofthe freedom and independence which they have acquired. " But, foraccomplishing the purposes which the two governments had in common--andhere the masterful Secretary of State had his own way--it was advisableTHAT THEY SHOULD ACT SEPARATELY, each making such representations to thecontinental allies as circumstances dictated. 

Further communications from Baron Tuyll gave Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of enunciating the principles underlyingAmerican policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 1823, headverted to the declaration of the allied monarchs that they would nevercompound with revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee thetranquillity of civilized states. In such declarations "the President, "wrote Adams, "wishes to perceive sentiments, the application of which islimited, and intended in their results to be limited to the affairs ofEurope. . . . The United States of America, and their government, could notsee with indifference, the forcible interposition of any European Power, other than Spain, either to restore the dominion of Spain over heremancipated Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical Governmentsin those Countries, or to transfer any of the possessions heretofore oryet subject to Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other EuropeanPower. "

But so little had the President even yet grasped the wide sweep of thepolicy which his Secretary of State was framing that, when he readto the Cabinet a first draft of his annual message, he expressed hispointed disapprobation of the invasion of Spain by France and urged anacknowledgment of Greece as an independent nation. This declaration was, as Adams remarked, a call to arms against all Europe. And once againhe urged the President to refrain from any utterance which might beconstrued as a pretext for retaliation by the allies. If they meant toprovoke a quarrel with the United States, the administration must meetit and not invite it. "If they intend now to interpose by force, weshall have as much as we can do to prevent them, " said he, "withoutgoing to bid them defiance in the heart of Europe. " "The ground I wishto take, " he continued, "is that of earnest remonstrance against theinterference of the European powers by force with South America, but todisclaim all interference on our part with Europe; to make an Americancause and adhere inflexibly to that. " In the end Adams had his way andthe President revised the paragraphs dealing with foreign affairs so asto make them conform to Adams's desires. 

No one who reads the message which President Monroe sent to Congress onDecember 2, 1823, can fail to observe that the paragraphs which have anenduring significance as declarations of policy are anticipated inthe masterly state papers of the Secretary of State. Alluding to thedifferences with Russia in the Pacific Northwest, the President repeatedthe principle which Adams had stated to Baron Tuyll: "The occasion hasbeen judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rightsand interests of the United States are involved, that the Americancontinents, by the free and independent condition which they haveassumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjectsfor future colonization by any European powers. " And the vital principleof abstention from European affairs and of adherence to a distinctlyAmerican system, for which Adams had contended so stubbornly, foundmemorable expression in the following paragraph:

"In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves wehave never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so todo. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that weresent injuries or make preparations for our defense. With the movementsin this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartialobservers. The political system of the allied powers is essentiallydifferent in this respect from that of America. This difference proceedsfrom that which exists in their respective Governments; and to thedefense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so muchblood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightenedcitizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, thiswhole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to theamicable relations existing between the United States and those powersto declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extendtheir system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peaceand safety. With the existing colonies and dependencies of any Europeanpower we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with theGovernments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on justprinciples, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for thepurpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other mannertheir destiny, by any European power in any other light than as themanifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. "

Later generations have read strange meanings into Monroe's message, andhave elevated into a "doctrine" those declarations of policy which hadonly an immediate application. With the interpretations and applicationsof a later day, this book has nothing to do. Suffice it to say thatPresident Monroe and his advisers accomplished their purposes; andthe evidence that they were successful is contained in a letter whichRichard Rush wrote to the Secretary of State, on December 27, 1823:

"But the most decisive blow to all despotick interference with the newStates is that which it has received in the President's Message at theopening of Congress. It was looked for here with extraordinary interestat this juncture, and I have heard that the British packet which leftNew York the beginning of this month was instructed to wait for itand bring it over with all speed. . . . On its publicity in London. . . Thecredit of all the Spanish American securities immediately rose, and thequestion of the final and complete safety of the new States from allEuropean coercion, is now considered as at rest. "

CHAPTER XV. THE END OF AN ERA

It was in the midst of the diplomatic contest for the Floridas thatJames Monroe was for the second time elected to the Presidency, withsingularly little display of partisanship. This time all the electoralvotes but one were cast for him. Of all the Presidents only GeorgeWashington has received a unanimous vote; and to Monroe, therefore, belongs the distinction of standing second to the Father of his Countryin the vote of electors. The single vote which Monroe failed to get fellto his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. It is a circumstance ofsome interest that the father of the Secretary, old John Adams, so farforgot his Federalist antecedents that he served as Republican electorin Massachusetts and cast his vote for James Monroe. Never sinceparties emerged in the second administration of Washington had suchextraordinary unanimity prevailed. 

Across this scene of political harmony, however, the Missouricontroversy cast the specter-like shadow of slavery. For the moment, and often in after years, it seemed inevitable that parties would springinto new vigor following sectional lines. All patriots were genuinelyalarmed. "This momentous question, " wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bellin the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it atonce as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. "

What Jefferson termed a reprieve was the settlement of the Missouriquestion by the compromise of 1820. To the demands of the South thatMissouri should be admitted into the Union as a slave State, with theconstitution of her choice, the North yielded, on condition that therest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36 degrees 30' should be foreverfree. Henceforth slaveholders might enter Missouri and the rest of theold province of Louisiana below her southern boundary line, but beyondthis line, into the greater Northwest, they might not take their humanchattels. To this act of settlement President Monroe gave his assent, for he believed that further controversy would shake the Union to itsvery foundations. With the angry criminations and recriminations ofNorth and South ringing in his ears, Jefferson had little faith inthe permanency of such a settlement. "A geographical line, " said he, "coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceivedand held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated;and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. " And Madison, usually optimistic about the future of his beloved country, indulgedonly the gloomiest forebodings about slavery. Both the ex-Presidentstook what comfort they could in projects of emancipation anddeportation. Jefferson would have had slaveholders yield up slaves bornafter a certain date to the guardianship of the State, which would thenprovide for their removal to Santo Domingo at a proper age. Madison tookheart at the prospect opened up by the Colonization Society which hetrusted would eventually end "this dreadful calamity" of human slavery. Fortunately for their peace of mind, neither lived to see these frailhopes dashed to pieces. 

Signs were not wanting that statesmen of the Virginia school were not tobe leaders in the new era which was dawning. On several occasions bothMadison and Monroe had shown themselves out of touch with the newercurrents of national life. Their point of view was that of the epochwhich began with the French Revolution and ended with the overthrow ofNapoleon and the pacification of Europe. Inevitably foreign affairs hadabsorbed their best thought. To maintain national independence againstforeign aggression had been their constant purpose, whether the menacecame from Napoleon's designs upon Louisiana, or from British disregardof neutral rights, or from Spanish helplessness on the frontiers of herEmpire. But now, with political and commercial independence assured, a new direction was imparted to national endeavor. America made avolte-face and turned to the setting sun. 

During the second quarter of the nineteenth century every ounceof national vitality went into the conquest and settlement of theMississippi Valley. Once more at peace with the world, Americans setthemselves to the solution of the problems which grew out of thisvast migration from the Atlantic seaboard to the interior. These wereproblems of territorial organization, of distribution of public lands, of inland trade, of highways and waterways, of revenue and appropriationproblems that focused in the offices of the Secretaries of the Treasuryand of War. And lurking behind all was the specter of slavery andsectionalism. 

To impatient homeseekers who crossed the Alleghanies, it never occurredto question the competence of the Federal Government to meet all theirwants. That the Government at Washington should construct and maintainhighways, improve and facilitate the navigation of inland waterways, seemed a most reasonable expectation. What else was government for?But these proposed activities did not seem so obviously legitimate toPresidents of the Virginia Dynasty; not so readily could they waiveconstitutional scruples. Madison felt impelled to veto a bill forconstructing roads and canals and improving waterways because he couldfind nowhere in the Constitution any specific authority for the FederalGovernment to embark on a policy of internal improvements. His lastmessage to Congress set forth his objections in detail and was designedto be his farewell address. He would rally his party once more aroundthe good old Jeffersonian doctrines. Monroe felt similar doubts when hewas presented with a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on thenew Cumberland Road. In a veto message of prodigious length he, too, harked back to the original Republican principle of strict constructionof the Constitution. The leadership which the Virginians thus refused totake fell soon to men of more resolute character who would not let thedead hand of legalism stand between them and their hearts' desires. 

It is one of the ironies of American history that the settlement ofthe Mississippi Valley and of the Gulf plains brought acute pecuniarydistress to the three great Virginians who had bent all their energiesto acquire these vast domains. . The lure of virgin soil drew men andwomen in ever increasing numbers from the seaboard States. Farms thathad once sufficed were cast recklessly on the market to bring what theywould, while their owners staked their claims on new soil at a dollarand a quarter an acre. Depreciation of land values necessarily followedin States like Virginia; and the three ex-Presidents soon foundthemselves landpoor. In common with other planters, they had investedtheir surplus capital in land, only to find themselves unable to markettheir crops in the trying days of the Embargo and NonIntercourse Acts. They had suffered heavy losses from the British blockade during the war, and they had not fully recovered from these reverses when the generalfall of prices came in 1819. Believing that they were facing only atemporary condition, they met their difficulties by financial expedientswhich in the end could only add to their burdens. 

A general reluctance to change their manner of life and to practice anintensive agriculture with diversified crops contributed, no doubt, tothe general depression of planters in the Old Dominion. Jefferson atMonticello, Madison at Montpelier, and to a lesser extent Monroe at OakHill, maintained their old establishments and still dispensed a lavishSouthern hospitality, which indeed they could hardly avoid. A formerPresident is forever condemned to be a public character. All kept openhouse for their friends, and none could bring himself to close his doorto strangers, even when curiosity was the sole motive for intrusion. Sorely it must have tried the soul of Mrs. Randolph to findaccommodations at Monticello for fifty uninvited and unexpected guests. Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, who has left lively descriptions of life atMontpelier, was once one of twenty-three guests. When a friend commentedon the circumstance that no less than nine strange horses were feedingin the stables at Montpelier, Madison remarked somewhat grimly that hewas delighted with the society of the owners but could not confess tothe same enthusiasm at the presence of their horses. 

Both Jefferson and Madison were victims of the indiscretion of others. Madison was obliged to pay the debts of a son of Mrs. Madison by herfirst marriage and became so financially embarrassed that he was forcedto ask President Biddle of the Bank of the United States for a long loanof six thousand dollars--only to suffer the humiliation of a refusal. He had then to part with some of his lands at a great sacrifice, buthe retained Montpelier and continued to reside there, though in reducedcircumstances, until his death in 1836. At about the same time Jeffersonreceived what he called his coup de grace. He had endorsed a note oftwenty thousand dollars for Governor Wilson C. Nicholas and upon hisbecoming insolvent was held to the full amount of the note. His onlyassets were his lands which would bring only a fifth of their formerprice. To sell on these ruinous terms was to impoverish himself andhis family. His distress was pathetic. In desperation he applied to theLegislature for permission to sell his property by lottery; but he wasspared this last humiliation by the timely aid of friends, whostarted popular subscriptions to relieve his distress. Monroe was lessfortunate, for he was obliged to sell Oak Hill and to leave Old Virginiaforever. He died in New York City on the Fourth of July, 1831. 

The latter years of Jefferson's life were cheered by the renewal of hisold friendship with John Adams, now in retirement at Quincy. Full ofpleasant reminiscence are the letters which passed between them, andfull too of allusions to the passing show. Neither had lost all interestin politics, but both viewed events with the quiet contemplation ofold men. Jefferson was absorbed to the end in his last great hobby, theuniversity that was slowly taking bodily form four miles away across thevalley from Monticello. When bodily infirmities would not permit him toride so far, he would watch the workmen through a telescope mounted onone of the terraces. "Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow andlaborious, " he wrote to Adams. "But while writing to you, I lose thesense of these things in the recollection of ancient times, when youthand health made happiness out of everything. I forget for a whilethe hoary winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how to keepourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendlyhand of death shall rid us of all at once. Against this tedium vitae, however, I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, indeed, I shouldhave better managed some thirty or forty years ago; but whose easy ambleis still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenaryrider. This is the establishment of a University. " Alluding to certainpublished letters which revived old controversies, he begged his oldfriend not to allow his peace of mind to be shaken. "It would be strangeindeed, if, at our years, we were to go back an age to hunt up imaginaryor forgotten facts, to disturb the repose of affections so sweetening tothe evening of our lives. "

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independenceapproached, Jefferson and Adams were besought to take part in thecelebration which was to be held in Philadelphia. The infirmities of agerested too heavily upon them to permit their journeying so far; but theyconsecrated the day anew with their lives. At noon, on the Fourth ofJuly, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message tothe people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; anda few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his oldfriend upon his lips. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

GENERAL WORKS

Five well-known historians have written comprehensive works on theperiod covered by the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe:John B. McMaster has stressed the social and economic aspects in "AHistory of the People of the United States;" James Schouler has dweltupon the political and constitutional problems in his "History of theUnited States of America under the Constitution;" Woodrow Wilson haswritten a "History of the American People" which indeed is less ahistory than a brilliant essay on history; Hermann von Holst hasconstrued the "Constitutional and Political History of the United States"in terms of the slavery controversy; and Edward Channing has broughtforward his painstaking "History of the United States, " touching manyphases of national life, to the close of the second war with England. Tothese general histories should be added "The American Nation, " edited byAlbert Bushnell Hart, three volumes of which span the administrations ofthe three Virginians: E. Channing's "The Jeffersonian System" (1906); K. C. Babcock's "The Rise of American Nationality" (1906); F. J. Turner's"Rise of the New West" (1906). 

CHAPTER I

No historian can approach this epoch without doing homage to HenryAdams, whose "History of the United States, " 9 vols. (1889-1891), is atonce a literary performance of extraordinary merit and a treasure-houseof information. Skillfully woven into the text is documentary materialfrom foreign archives which Adams, at great expense, had transcribed andtranslated. Intimate accounts of Washington and its society may be foundin the following books: G. Gibbs, "Memoirs of the Administrations ofWashington and John Adams", 2 vols. (1846); Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, "The First Forty Years of Washington Society" (1906); Anne H. Wharton, "Social Life in the Early Republic" (1902). "The Life of ThomasJefferson, " 3 vols. (1858), by Henry S. Randall is rich in authenticinformation about the life of the great Virginia statesman but it ismarred by excessive hero-worship. Interesting side-lights on Jeffersonand his entourage are shed by his granddaughter, Sarah N. Randolph, in avolume called "Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson" (1871). 

CHAPTER II

The problems of patronage that beset President Jefferson are set forthby Gaillard Hunt in "Office-seeking during Jefferson's Administration, "in the "American Historical Review, " vol. III, p. 271, and by Carl R. Fish in "The Civil Service and the Patronage" (1905). There is no betterway to enter sympathetically into Jefferson's mental world than to readhis correspondence. The best edition of his writings is that by PaulLeicester Ford. Henry Adams has collected the "Writings of AlbertGallatin, " 3 vols. (1879), and has written an admirable "Life of AlbertGallatin" (1879). Gaillard Hunt has written a short "Life of JamesMadison" (1902), and has edited his "Writings, " 9 vols. (1900-1910). TheFederalist attitude toward the Administration is reflected in the "Worksof Fisher Ames, " 2 vols. (1857). The intense hostility of New EnglandFederalists appears also in such books as Theodore Dwight's "TheCharacter of Thomas Jefferson, as exhibited in His Own Writings" (1839). Franklin B. Dexter has set forth the facts relating to Abraham Bishop, that arch-rebel against the standing order in Connecticut, in the"Proceedings" of the Massachusetts Historical Society, March, 1906. 

CHAPTER III

The larger histories of the American navy by Maclay, Spears, and Clarkdescribe the war with Tripoli, but by far the best account is G. W. Allen's "Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs" (1905), which may besupplemented by C. O. Paullin's "Commodore John Rodgers" (1910). T. Harris's "Life and Services of Commodore William Bainbridge" (1837)contains much interesting information about service in the Mediterraneanand the career of this gallant commander. C. H. Lincoln has edited "TheHull-Eaton Correspondence during the Expedition against Tripoli 1804-5"for the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. XXI(1911). The treaties and conventions with the Barbary States arecontained in "Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocolsand Agreements between the United States of America and Other Powers, "compiled by W. M. Malloy, 3 vols. (1910-1913). 

CHAPTER IV

Even after the lapse of many years, Henry Adams's account of thepurchase of Louisiana remains the best: Volumes I and II of his "Historyof the United States. " J. A. Robertson in his "Louisiana under the Ruleof Spain, France, and the United States, " 1785-1807, 2 vols. (1911), has brought together a mass of documents relating to the province andterritory. Barbe-Marbois, "Histoire de la Louisiana et de la Cession"(1829), which is now accessible in translation, is the main sourceof information for the French side of the negotiations. Frederick J. Turner, in a series of articles contributed to the "American HistoricalReview" (vols. II, III, VII, VIII, X), has pointed out the significanceof the diplomatic contest for the Mississippi Valley. Louis Pelzer haswritten on the "Economic Factors in the Acquisition of Louisiana" in the"Proceedings" of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, vol. VI(1913). There is no adequate biography of either Monroe or Livingston. T. L. Stoddard has written on "The French Revolution in San Domingo"(1914). 

CHAPTER V

The vexed question of the boundaries of Louisiana is elucidated by HenryAdams in volumes II and III of his "History of the United States. " Amongthe more recent studies should be mentioned the articles contributed byIsaac J. Cox to volumes VI and X of the "Quarterly" of the Texas StateHistorical Association, and an article entitled "Was Texas Included inthe Louisiana Purchase?" by John R. Ficklen in the "Publications" of theSouthern History Association, vol. V. In the first two chapters of his"History of the Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase" (1914), T. M. Marshall has given a resume of the boundary question. Jeffersonbrought together the information which he possessed in "An Examinationinto the boundaries of Louisiana, " which was first published in 1803and which has been reprinted by the American Philosophical Societyin "Documents relating to the Purchase and Exploration of Louisiana"(1904). I. J. Cox has made an important contribution by his book on "TheEarly Exploration of Louisiana" (1906). The constitutional questionsinvolved in the purchase and organization of Louisiana are reviewed atlength by E. S. Brown in "The Constitutional History of the LouisianaPurchase, 1803-1812" (1920). 

CHAPTER VI

The most painstaking account of Burr's expedition is W. F. McCaleb's"The Aaron Burr Conspiracy" (1903) which differs from Henry Adams'sversion in making James Wilkinson rather than Burr the heavy villainin the plot. Wilkinson's own account of the affair, which is thoroughlyuntrustworthy, is contained in his "Memoirs of My Own Times, " 3 vols. (1816). The treasonable intrigues of Wilkinson are proved beyond doubtby the investigations of W. R. Shepherd, "Wilkinson and the Beginningsof the Spanish Conspiracy, " in vol. IX of "The American HistoricalReview, " and of I. J. Cox, "General Wilkinson and His Later Intrigueswith the Spaniards, " in vol. XIX of "The American Historical Review. "James Parton's "Life and Times of Aaron Burr" (1858) is a biography ofsurpassing interest but must be corrected at many points by the worksalready cited. William Coleman's "Collection of the Facts and theDocuments relative to the Death of Major-General Alexander Hamilton"(1804) contains the details of the great tragedy. The Federalistintrigues with Burr are traced by Henry Adams and more recently by S. E. Morison in the "Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, " 2 vols. (1913). W. H. Safford's "Blennerhassett Papers" (1861) and David Robertson's"Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr for Treason, and for aMisdemeanor, " 2 vols. (1808), brought to light many interesting factsrelating to the alleged conspiracy. The "Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816, " 6 vols. (1917), contain material of greatvalue. 

CHAPTER VII

The history of impressment has yet to be written, but J. R. Hutchinson's"The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore" (1913) has shown clearly that thebaleful effects of the British practice were not felt solely by Americanshipmasters. Admiral A. T. Mahan devoted a large part of his firstvolume on "Sea Power in its relations to the War of 1812, " 2 vols. (1905), to the antecedents of the war. W. E. Lingelbach has made anotable contribution to our understanding of the Essex case in hisarticle on "England and Neutral Trade" printed in "The MilitaryHistorian and Economist, " vol. II (1917). Of the contemporary pamphlets, two are particularly illuminating:

James Stephen, "War in Disguise; or, the Frauds of the Neutral Flags"(1805), presenting the English grievances, and "An Examination of theBritish Doctrine, which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade, not openin Time of Peace, " prepared by the Department of State under Madison'sdirection in 1805. Captain Basil Hall's "Voyages and Travels" (1895)gives a vivid picture of life aboard a British frigate in Americanwaters. A graphic account of the Leopard-Chesapeake affair is given byHenry Adams in Chapter I of his fourth volume. 

CHAPTERS VIII AND IX

Besides the histories of Mahan and Adams, the reader will do well toconsult several biographies for information about peaceable coercionin theory and practice. Among these may be mentioned Randall's "Life ofThomas Jefferson, " Adams's "Life of Albert Gallatin" and "John Randolph"in the "American Statesmen Series, " W. E. Dodd's "Life of NathanielMacon" (1903), D. R. Anderson's "William Branch Giles" (1914), and J. B. McMaster's "Life and Times of Stephen Girard, " 2 vols. (1917). Forwant of an adequate biography of Monroe, recourse must be taken tothe "Writings of James Monroe, " 7 vols. (1898-1903), edited by S. M. Hamilton. J. B. Moore's "Digest of International Law", 8 vols. (1906), contains a mass of material bearing on the rights of neutrals andthe problems of neutral trade. The French decrees and the Britishorders-in-council were submitted to Congress with a message by PresidentJefferson on the 23d of December, 1808, and may be found in "AmericanState Papers, Foreign Relations, " vol. III. 

CHAPTER X

The relations of the United States and Spanish Florida are set forth inmany works, of which three only need be mentioned: H. B. Fuller, "ThePurchase of Florida" (1906), has devoted several chapters to the earlyhistory of the Floridas, but so far as West Florida is concernedhis work is superseded by I. J. Cox's "The West Florida Controversy, 1789-1813" (1918). The first volume, "Diplomacy, " of F. E. Chadwick's"Relations of the United States and Spain, " 3 vols. (1909-11), gives anaccount of the several Florida controversies. Several books contributeto an understanding of the temper of the young insurgents in theRepublican Party: Carl Schurz's "Henry Clay, " 2 vols. (1887), W. M. Meigs's "Life of John Caldwell Calhoun, " 2 vols. (1917), M. P. Follett's"The Speaker of the House of Representatives" (1896), and Henry Adams's"John Randolph" (1882). 

CHAPTER XI

The civil history of President Madison's second term of office may befollowed in Adams's "History of the United States, " vols. VII, VIII, and IX; in Hunt's "Life of James Madison;" in Adams's "Life of AlbertGallatin;" and in such fragmentary records of men and events as arefound in the "Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison" (1886) and Mrs. M. B. Smith's "The First Forty Years of Washington Society" (1906). Thehistory of New England Federalism may be traced in H. C. Lodge's "Lifeand Letters of George Cabot" (1878); in Edmund Quincy's "Life of JosiahQuincy of Massachusetts" (1867); in the "Life of Timothy Pickering, " 4vols. (1867-73); and in S. E. Morison's "Life and Letters of HarrisonGray Otis, " 2 vols. (1913). Theodore Dwight published his "Historyof the Hartford Convention" in 1833. Henry Adams has collected the"Documents relating to New England Federalism, " 1800-1815 (1878). TheFederalist opposition to the war is reflected in such books as MathewCarey's "The Olive Branch; or, Faults on Both Sides" (1814) and WilliamSullivan's "Familiar Letters on Public Characters" (1834). 

CHAPTER XII

The history of the negotiations at Ghent has been recounted by Mahan andHenry Adams, and more recently by F. A. Updyke, "The Diplomacy of theWar of 1812" (1915). Aside from the "State Papers, " the chief sourcesof information are Adams's "Life of Gallatin" and "Writings of Gallatin"the "Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, " 12 vols. (1874-1877), and "Writingsof John Quincy Adams" 7 vols. (1913-), edited by W. C. Ford, the "Papersof James A. Bayard, 1796-1815" (1915), edited by Elizabeth Donnan, the"Correspondence, Despatches, and Other Papers, of Viscount Castlereagh, "12 vols. (1851-53), and the "Supplementary Despatches of the Duke ofWellington, " 15 vols. (1858-78). The Proceedings of the MassachusettsHistorical Society, vol. XLVIII (1915), contain the instructions ofthe British commissioners. "A Great Peace Maker, the Diary of JamesGallatin, Secretary to Albert Gallatin" (1914) records many interestingboyish impressions of the commissioners and their labors at Ghent. 

CHAPTER XIII

The want of a good biography of James Monroe is felt increasingly as oneenters upon the history of his administrations. Some personal items maybe gleaned from "A Narrative of a Tour of Observation Made during theSummer of 1817" (1818); and many more may be found in the "Memoirs andWritings" of John Quincy Adams. The works by Fuller and Chadwick alreadycited deal with the negotiations leading to the acquisition of Florida. The "Memoirs et Souvenirs" of Hyde de Neuville, 3 vols. (1893-4), supplement the record which Adams left in his diary. J. S. Bassett's"Life of Andrew Jackson, " 2 vols. (1911), is far less entertaining thanJames Parton's "Life of Andrew Jackson, " 3 vols. (1860), but much morereliable. 

CHAPTER XIV

The problem of the recognition of the South American republics has beenput in its historical setting by F. L. Paxson in "The Independence ofthe South American Republics" (1903). The relations of the United Statesand Spain are described by F. E. Chadwick in the work already citedand by J. H. Latane in "The United States and Latin America" (1920). To these titles may be added J. M. Callahan's "Cuba and InternationalRelations" (1899). The studies of Worthington C. Ford have given JohnQuincy Adams a much larger share in formulating the Monroe Doctrine thanearlier historians have accorded him. The origin of President Monroe'smessage is traced by Mr. Ford in "Some Original Documents on the Genesisof the Monroe Doctrine, " in the "Proceedings" of the MassachusettsHistorical Society, 1902, and the subject is treated at greater lengthby him in "The American Historical Review, " vols. VII and VIII. Thelater evolution and application of the Monroe Doctrine may be followedin Herbert Kraus's "Die Monroedoktrin in ihren Beziehungen zurAmerikanischen Diplomatie and zum Volkerrecht" (1913), a work whichshould be made more accessible to American readers by translation. 

CHAPTER XV

The subjects touched upon in this closing chapter are treated with greatskill by Frederick J. Turner in his "Rise of the New West" (1906). Onthe slavery controversy, an article by J. A. Woodburn, "The HistoricalSignificance of the Missouri Compromise, " in the "Report" of theAmerican Historical Association for 1893, and an article by F. H. Hodder, "Side Lights on the Missouri Compromise, " in the "Report" for1909, may be read with profit. D. R. Dewey's "Financial History of theUnited States" (1903) and F. W. Taussig's "Tariff History of the UnitedStates" (revised edition, 1914) are standard manuals. Edward Stanwood's"History of the Presidency, " 2 vols. (1916), contains the statisticsof presidential elections. T. H. Benton's "Thirty Years' View; or, A History of the Working of American Government, 1820-1850, " 2 vols. (1854-56), becomes an important source of information on congressionalmatters. The latter years of Jefferson's life are described by Randalland the closing years of John Adams's career by Charles Francis Adams.