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Title: History of the United States of America, Volume 5 (of 9)
During the first administration of James Madison

Author: Henry Adams

Release date: January 9, 2024 [eBook #72668]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VOLUME 5 (OF 9) ***

THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1809–1813

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY

HENRY ADAMS.
Vols. I. and II.—The First Administration of Jefferson. 1801–1805.
Vols. III. and IV.—The Second Administration of Jefferson. 1805–1809.
Vols. V. and VI.—The First Administration of Madison. 1809–1813.
Vols. VII., VIII., and IX.—The Second Administration of Madison. 1813–1817.
With an Index to the Entire Work. (In Press.)

H I S TO RY

OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF

JAMES MADISON

By HENRY ADAMS

Vol. V.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1890

Copyright, 1890
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

CONTENTS OF VOL. V.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Subsidence of Faction 1
II. Alienation from France 22
III. Canning’s Concessions 42
IV. Erskine’s Arrangement 66
V. Disavowal of Erskine 87
VI. Francis James Jackson 109
VII. Napoleon’s Triumph 133
VIII. Executive Weakness 154
IX. Legislative Impotence 176
X. Incapacity of Government 199
XI. The Decree of Rambouillet 220
XII. Cadore’s Letter of August 5 241
XIII. The Marquess Wellesley 262
XIV. Government by Proclamation 289
XV. The Floridas and the Bank 316
XVI. Contract with France 338
XVII. Dismissal of Robert Smith 359
XVIII. Napoleon’s Delays 380
XIX. Russia and Sweden 404

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.
The “National Intelligencer,” which called public attention only to such
points of interest as the Government wished to accent, noticed that
President Madison was “dressed in a full suit of cloth of American
manufacture” when he appeared at noon, March 4, 1809, under escort of the
“troops of cavalry of the city and Georgetown,” amid a crowd of ten
thousand people, to take the oath of office at the Capitol. The suit of
American clothes told more of Madison’s tendencies than was to be learned
from the language of the Inaugural Address, which he delivered in a tone of
voice so low as not to be heard by the large audience gathered in the new
and imposing Representatives’ Hall.[1] Indeed, the Address suggested a
doubt whether the new President wished to be understood. The
conventionality of his thought nowhere betrayed itself more plainly than in
this speech on the greatest occasion of Madison’s life, when he was
required to explain the means by which he should retrieve the failures of
Jefferson.
“It is a precious reflection,” said Madison to his anxious audience, “that the
transition from this prosperous condition of our country to the scene which has for
some time been distressing us, is not chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor as I
trust on any voluntary errors, in the public councils. Indulging no passions which
trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it has been the true glory of the
United States to cultivate peace by observing justice, and to entitle themselves to the
respect of the nations at war by fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most
scrupulous impartiality. If there be candor in the world, the truth of these assertions
will not be questioned; posterity at least will do justice to them.”

Since none of Madison’s enemies, either abroad or at home, intended to
show him candor, his only hope was in posterity; yet the judgment of
posterity depended chiefly on the course which the new President might
take to remedy the misfortunes of his predecessor. The nation expected
from him some impulse toward the end he had in mind; foreign nations
were also waiting to learn whether they should have to reckon with a new
force in politics; but Madison seemed to show his contentment with the
policy hitherto pursued, rather than his wish to change it.
“This unexceptionable course,” he continued, “could not avail against the injustice
and violence of the belligerent Powers. In their rage against each other, or impelled by
more direct motives, principles of retaliation have been introduced equally contrary to

universal reason and acknowledged law. How long their arbitrary edicts will be
continued, in spite of the demonstrations that not even a pretext for them has been
given by the United States, and of the fair and liberal attempt to induce a revocation
of them, cannot be anticipated. Assuring myself that under every vicissitude the
determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and
essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me, with no other discouragement than
what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties.”

Neither the actual world nor posterity could find much in these
expressions on which to approve or condemn the policy of Madison, for no
policy could be deduced from them. The same iteration of commonplaces
marked the list of general principles which filled the next paragraph of the
Address. Balancing every suggestion of energy by a corresponding
limitation of scope, Madison showed only a wish to remain within the limits
defined by his predecessor. “To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with
all nations having corresponding dispositions” seemed to imply possible
recourse to war with other nations; but “to prefer in all cases amicable
discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of
them by an appeal to arms” seemed to exclude the use of force. “To
promote by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to
manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce” was a phrase
so cautiously framed that no one could attack it. “To support the
Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as
in its authorities,” seemed a duty so guarded as to need no further antithesis;
yet Madison did not omit the usual obligation “to respect the rights and
authorities reserved to the States and to the people, as equally incorporated
with, and essential to, the success of the general system.” No one could
object to the phrases with which the Address defined Executive duties; but
no one could point out a syllable implying that Madison would bend his
energies with sterner purpose to maintain the nation’s rights.
At the close of the speech Chief-Justice Marshall administered the oath;
the new President then passed the militia in review, and in the evening
Madison and Jefferson attended an inauguration ball, where “the crowd was
excessive, the heat oppressive, and the entertainment bad.”[2] With this
complaint, so familiar on the occasion, the day ended, and President
Madison’s troubles began.
About March 1, Wilson Cary Nicholas had called on the President elect
to warn him that he must look for serious opposition to the expected

appointment of Gallatin as Secretary of State. Nicholas had the best reason
to know that Giles, Samuel Smith, and Leib were bent on defeating
Gallatin.
“I believed from what I heard he would be rejected,” wrote Nicholas two years
afterward;[3] “and that at all events, if he was not, his confirmation would be by a
bare majority. During my public service but one event had ever occurred that gave me
as much uneasiness: I mean the degradation of the country at that very moment by the
abandonment of [the embargo].”

The two events were in fact somewhat alike in character. That Gallatin
should become Secretary of State seemed a point of little consequence,
even though it were the only remaining chance for honorable peace; but that
another secretary should be forced on the President by a faction in the
Senate, for the selfish objects of men like Samuel Smith and Giles,
foreboded revolution in the form of government. Nicholas saw chiefly the
danger which threatened his friends; but the remoter peril to Executive
independence promised worse evils than could be caused even by the
overthrow of the party in power at a moment of foreign aggression.
The effort of Giles and Smith to control Madison had no excuse.
Gallatin’s foreign birth, the only objection urged against him, warranted
doubt, not indeed of his fitness, but of difficulty in obliging European
powers to deal with a native of Geneva, who was in their eyes either a
subject of their own or an enemy at war; but neither Napoleon nor King
George in the year 1809 showed so much regard to American feelings that
the United States needed to affect delicacy in respect to theirs; and
Gallatin’s foreign birth became a signal advantage if it should force
England to accept the fact, even though she refused to admit the law, of
American naturalization. Gallatin’s fitness was undisputed, and the last men
who could question it were Giles and Samuel Smith, who had been his
friends for twenty years, had trusted their greatest party interests in his
hands, had helped to put the Treasury under his control, and were at the
moment keeping him at its head when they might remove him to the less
responsible post of minister for foreign affairs. Any question of Gallatin’s
patriotism suggested ideas even more delicate than those raised by doubts
of his fitness. A party which had once trusted Burr and which still trusted
Wilkinson, not to mention Giles himself, had little right to discuss
Gallatin’s patriotism, or the honesty of foreign-born citizens. Even the mild-
spoken Wilson Cary Nicholas almost lost his temper at this point. “I

honestly believe,” he wrote in 1811, “if all our native citizens had as well
discharged their duty to their country, that we should by our energy have
extorted from both England and France a respect for our rights, and that
before this day we should have extricated ourselves from all our
embarrassments instead of having increased them.” The men who doubted
Gallatin’s patriotism were for the most part themselves habitually factious,
or actually dallying with ideas of treason.
Had any competent native American been pressed for the Department of
State, the Senate might still have had some pretext for excluding Gallatin;
but no such candidate could be suggested. Giles was alone in thinking
himself the proper secretary; Samuel Smith probably stood in the same
position; Monroe still sulked in opposition and discredit; Armstrong, never
quite trusted, was in Paris; William Pinkney and J. Q. Adams were converts
too recent for such lofty promotion; G. W. Campbell and W. H. Crawford
had neither experience nor natural fitness for the post. The appointment of
Gallatin not only seemed to be, but actually was, necessary to Madison’s
Administration.
No argument affected the resistance of Giles and Samuel Smith, and
during the early days of March Madison could see no means of avoiding a
party schism. From that evil, at such a stage, he shrank. While the subject
still stood unsettled, some unknown person suggested a new idea. If Robert
Smith could be put in the Treasury, his brother Samuel would vote to
confirm Gallatin as Secretary of State. The character of such a transaction
needed no epithet; but Madison went to Robert Smith and offered him the
Treasury.[4] He knew Smith to be incompetent, but he thought that with
Gallatin’s aid even an incompetent person might manage the finances; and
perhaps his astuteness went so far as to foresee what was to happen,—that
he should deal with the Smiths on some better occasion in a more summary
manner. Madison’s resemblance to a cardinal was not wholly imaginary.[5]
While Robert Smith went to inquire into the details of Treasury business
before accepting the offered post, the President consulted with Gallatin,
who rejected the scheme at once. He could not, he said, undertake the
charge of both departments; the President would do better to appoint Robert
Smith Secretary of State, and leave the Treasury as it was. Madison seized
this outlet of escape. He returned to Robert Smith with the offer of the State
Department, which Smith accepted. In making this arrangement Madison

knew that he must himself supply Smith’s deficiencies; but stronger wills
than that of Madison had yielded to party discontent, and he gained much if
he gained only time.
The true victim of the bargain was Gallatin, who might wisely have
chosen the moment for retiring from the Cabinet; but after declining an
arrangement in his favor, he could not fairly desert the President, who had
offered to sacrifice much for him, and he was too proud to avow a personal
slight as the motive of his public action. Weakened already by the
unexpected decline of his influence in the Senate, his usefulness was sure to
be still further lessened by the charge of clinging to office; but after
weighing the arguments for retirement he decided to remain,[6] although he
could not, even if he would, forget that the quarrel which had been forced
upon him must be met as vigorously as it was made.
The War and Navy Departments remained to be filled. Dearborn, who
had continued in the War Department chiefly to oblige President Jefferson,
retired in the month of February to become Collector of the port of Boston.
As his successor, Madison selected William Eustis, of Boston, who had
served in Congress during Jefferson’s first Administration. Eustis was about
fifty-six years old; in the Revolutionary War he had filled the post of
hospital surgeon, and since the peace he had practised his profession in
Boston. Little could be said of the appointment, except that no other
candidate was suggested who seemed better qualified for the place.[7]
To succeed Robert Smith at the Navy Department, Madison selected
Paul Hamilton, of South Carolina. Nothing was known of Hamilton, except
that he had been governor of his State some ten years before. No one
seemed aware why he had attracted the President’s attention, or what
qualities fitted him for the charge of naval affairs; but he appeared in due
time at Washington,—a South Carolinian gentleman, little known in society
or even to his colleagues in the government, and little felt as an active force
in the struggle of parties and opinions.
From the outset Madison’s Cabinet was the least satisfactory that any
President had known. More than once the Federalist cabinets had been
convulsed by disagreements, but the Administration of Madison had hardly
strength to support two sides of a dispute. Gallatin alone gave it character,
but was himself in a sort of disgrace. The Secretary of State, the Secretary

of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, overshadowed in the Cabinet by
Gallatin, stood in a position of inevitable hostility to his influence, although
they represented neither ideas nor constituents. While Gallatin exacted
economy, the army and navy required expenditures, and the two secretaries
necessarily looked to Robert Smith as their friend. Toward Robert Smith
Gallatin could feel only antipathy, which was certainly shared by Madison.
“We had all been astonished at his appointment,” said Joel Barlow two
years afterward;[8] “we all learned the history of that miserable intrigue by
which it was effected.” Looking upon Robert Smith’s position as the result
of a “miserable intrigue,” Gallatin could make no secret of his contempt.
The social relations between them, which had once been intimate, wholly
ceased.
To embroil matters further, the defalcation of a navy agent at Leghorn
revealed business relations between the Navy Department and Senator
Samuel Smith’s mercantile firm which scandalized Gallatin and drew from
him a sharp criticism. He told Samuel Smith that the transactions of the
firm of Smith and Buchanan were the most extraordinary that had fallen
within his knowledge since he had been in the Treasury, and had left very
unfavorable impressions on his mind.[9] Smith was then struggling for a re-
election to the Senate, and felt the hand of Gallatin as a chief obstacle in his
way. The feud became almost mortal under these reciprocal injuries; but
Samuel Smith gained all his objects, and for the time held Gallatin and
Madison at his mercy. Had he been able to separate them, his influence
would have had no bounds, except his want of ability.
Yet Madison was always a dangerous enemy, gifted with a quality of
persistence singularly sure in its results. An example of this persistence
occurred at the moment of yielding to the Smiths’ intrigues, when, perhaps
partly in the hope of profiting by his sacrifice, he approached the Senate
once more on the subject of the mission to Russia. February 27, the
nomination of William Short to St. Petersburg had been unanimously
rejected. March 6, with the nominations of Robert Smith and William Eustis
to the Cabinet, Madison sent the names of J. Q. Adams as minister at St.
Petersburg, and of Thomas Sumter as minister to Brazil. He asked the
Senate to establish two new missions at once. March 7 the Senate
confirmed all the other nominations, but by a vote of seventeen to fifteen,
adhered to the opinion that a mission to Russia was inexpedient. Both Giles

and Samuel Smith supported the Government; but the two senators from
Pennsylvania, the two from Kentucky, together with Anderson of Tennessee
and William H. Crawford, persisted in aiding the Federalists to defeat the
President’s wish. Yet the majority was so small as to prove that Madison
would carry his point in the end. Senators who rejected the services of
Gallatin and John Quincy Adams in order to employ those of Robert Smith,
Dr. Eustis, and Governor Hamilton could not but suffer discredit. Faction
which had no capacity of its own, and which showed only dislike of ability
in others, could never rule a government in times of danger or distress.
After thus embarrassing the President in organizing his service the
Senate rose, leaving Madison in peace until May 22, when the Eleventh
Congress was to meet in special session. The outlook was more
discouraging than at the beginning of any previous Administration.
President Jefferson had strained his authority to breaking, and the sudden
reaction threw society as well as government into disorder. The factiousness
at Washington reflected only in a mild form the worse factiousness
elsewhere. The Legislature of Massachusetts, having issued its Address to
the People, adjourned; and a few days afterward the people, by an election
which called out more than ninety thousand votes, dismissed their
Republican governor, and by a majority of two or three thousand chose
Christopher Gore in his place. The new Legislature was more decidedly
Federalist than the old one. New Hampshire effected the same revolution.
Rhode Island followed. In New York the Federalists carried the Legislature,
as they did also in Maryland.
Even in Pennsylvania, although nothing shook the fixed political
character of the State, the epidemic of faction broke out. While the
legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut declared Acts of Congress
unconstitutional, and refused aid to execute them, the legislature of
Pennsylvania authorized Governor Snyder to resist by armed force a
mandate of the Supreme Court; and when the United States marshal
attempted to serve process on the person of certain respondents at the suit of
Gideon Olmstead, he found himself stopped by State militia acting under
orders.
In a country where popular temper had easier means of concentrating its
violence, government might have been paralyzed by these proofs of low
esteem; but America had not by far reached such a stage, and dark as the

prospect was both within and without, Madison could safely disregard
dangers on which most rulers had habitually to count. His difficulties were
only an inheritance from the old Administration, and began to disappear as
quickly as they had risen. At a word from the President the State of
Pennsylvania recovered its natural common-sense, and with some little
sacrifice of dignity gave way. The popular successes won by the Federalists
were hardly more serious than the momentary folly of Pennsylvania. As yet,
the Union stood in no danger. The Federalists gained many votes; but these
were the votes of moderate men who would desert their new companions on
the first sign of a treasonable act, and their presence tended to make the
party cautious rather than rash. John Henry, the secret agent of Sir James
Craig, reported with truth to the governor-general that the Federalist leaders
at Boston found disunion a very delicate topic, and that “an unpopular war
... can alone produce a sudden separation of any section of this country
from the common head.”[10] In public, the most violent Federalists curbed
their tongues whenever the Union was discussed, and instead of threatening
to dissolve it, contented themselves by charging the blame on the Southern
States in case it should fall to pieces. Success sobered them; the repeal of
the embargo seemed so great a triumph that they were almost tempted into
good humor.
On the people of New England other motives more directly selfish
began to have effect. The chief sources of their wealth were shipping and
manufactures. The embargo destroyed the value of the shipping after it had
been diminished by the belligerent edicts; the repeal of the embargo
restored the value. The Federalist newspapers tried to prove that this was
not the case, and that the Non-intercourse Act, which prohibited commerce
with England, France, or their dependencies, was as ruinous as embargo
itself; but the shipping soon showed that Gottenburg, Riga, Lisbon, and the
Spanish ports in America were markets almost as convenient as London or
Havre for the sale of American produce. The Yankee ship-owner received
freights to Europe by circuitous routes, on the accumulations of two years
in grain, cotton, tobacco, and timber, of the whole United States, besides the
freights of an extended coast-trade. Massachusetts owned more than a third
of the American registered tonnage, and the returns for 1809 and 1810
proved that her profits were great. The registered tonnage of Massachusetts
employed in foreign trade was 213,000 tons in 1800, and rose to 310,000
tons in 1807 before the embargo; in 1809 it rose again to 324,000; in 1810 it

made another leap to 352,000 tons. The coasting trade employed in 1807
about 90,000 tons of Massachusetts shipping which was much increased by
the embargo, and again reduced by its repeal; but in 1809 and 1810 this
enrolled shipping still stood far above the prosperous level of 1807, and
averaged 110,000 tons for the two years.[11]
Such rapid and general improvement in shipping proved that New
England had better employment than political factiousness to occupy the
thoughts of her citizens; but large as the profits on freights might be, they
hardly equalled the profits on manufactures. In truth, the manufactories of
New England were created by the embargo, which obliged the whole nation
to consume their products or to go without. The first American cotton mills,
begun as early as 1787, met with so little success that when the embargo
was imposed in 1807, only fifteen mills with about eight thousand spindles
were in operation, producing some three hundred thousand pounds of yarn a
year. These eight thousand spindles, representing a capital of half a million
dollars, were chiefly in or near Rhode Island.
The embargo and non-importation Acts went into effect in the last days
of 1807. Within less than two years the number of spindles was increased,
or arrangements were made for increasing it, from eight thousand to eighty
thousand.[12] Nearly four million dollars of capital were invested in mills,
and four thousand persons were in their employ, or expected soon to be
employed in them. The cotton cost about twenty cents a pound; the yarn
sold on an average at about $1.12½ a pound. Besides these mills, which
were worked mostly by water but partly by horsepower, the domestic
manufacture of cotton and linen supplied a much larger part of the market.
Two thirds of the clothing and house-linen used in the United States outside
of the cities was made in farm-houses, and nearly every farmer in New
England sold some portion of the stock woven every year by the women of
his household. Much of this coarse but strong flaxen material, sold at about
fifteen or twenty cents a yard by the spinner, was sent to the Southern
States.[13]
While the cotton and linen industries of the North became profitable,
the manufactures of wool lagged little behind. William Whittemore, who
owned the patent for a machine which manufactured wool and cotton cards,
reported from Cambridge in Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1809, that only the

want of card-wire prevented him from using all his machines to the full
extent of their power.[14] “Since the obstructions to our foreign trade, the
manufactures of our country have increased astonishingly,” he wrote. “The
demand for wool and cotton cards the present season has been twice as
great as it has been any year preceding.” Scarcity of good wool checked the
growth of this industry, and the demand soon roused a mania among
farmers for improving the breed of sheep. Between one hundred and three
hundred per cent of profit attended all these industries, and little or no
capital was required.
All the Northern and Eastern States shared in the advantages of this
production, for which Virginia with the Western and Southern States paid;
but in the whole Union New England fared best. Already the development
of small industries had taken place, which, by making a varied aggregate,
became the foundation and the security of Yankee wealth. Massachusetts
taxed her neighbors on many small articles of daily use. She employed in
the single manufacture of hats four thousand persons,—more than were yet
engaged in the cotton mills. More than a million and a half of hats were
annually made, and three fourths of these were sold beyond the State;
between three and four million dollars a year flowed into Massachusetts in
exchange for hats alone.[15] At Lynn, in Massachusetts, were made one
hundred thousand pairs of women’s shoes every year. The town of Roxbury
made eight hundred thousand pounds of soap. Massachusetts supplied the
country with cut-iron nails to the value of twelve hundred thousand dollars
a year. Connecticut supplied the whole country with tin-ware.
New industries sprang up rapidly on a soil and in a climate where the
struggle of life was more severe than elsewhere in the Union, and where
already capital existed in quantities that made production easy. One industry
stimulated another. Women had much to do with the work, and their
quickness and patience of details added largely to the income of New
England at the cost of less active communities. Their hands wove most of
the cotton and woollen cloths sent in large quantities to the West and South;
but they were inventors as well as workmen. In 1801, when English straw-
bonnets were in fashion, a girl of Wrentham, not far from Boston, found
that she could make for herself a straw-hat as good as the imported one. In a
few months every girl in the county of Norfolk made her own straw-bonnet;

and soon the South and West paid two hundred thousand dollars a year to
the county of Norfolk for straw hats and bonnets.[16]
At no time could such industries have been established without the
stimulus of a handsome profit; but when Virginia compelled Massachusetts
and the Northern States to accept a monopoly of the American market, the
Yankee manufacturer must have expected to get, and actually got, great
profits for his cottons and woollens, his hats, shoes, soap, and nails. As
though this were not more than enough, Virginia gave the Northern
shipowners the whole freight on Southern produce, two thirds of which in
one form or another went into the hands of New England shipbuilders,
shippers, and merchants. Slowly the specie capital of the Union drifted
towards the Banks of Boston and New Haven, until, as the story will show,
the steady drain of specie eastward bankrupted the other States and the
national government. Never, before or since, was the country so racked to
create and support monopolies as in 1808, 1809, and 1810, under Southern
rule, and under the system of the President who began his career by
declaring that if he could prevent the government from wasting the labors
of the people under the pretence of protecting them, they must become
happy.[17] The navy and army of the United States were employed, and
were paid millions of dollars, during these years in order to shut out foreign
competition, and compel New England at the cannon’s mouth to accept
these enormous bribes.
The Yankee, however ill-tempered he might be, was shrewd enough to
see where his profit lay. The Federalist leaders and newspapers grumbled
without intermission that their life-blood was drained to support a negro-
slave aristocracy, “baser than its own slaves,” as their phrase went; but they
took the profits thrust upon them; and what they could not clutch was taken
by New York and Pennsylvania, while Virginia slowly sank into ruin.
Virginia paid the price to gratify her passion for political power; and at the
time, she paid it knowingly and willingly. John Randolph protested almost
alone. American manufactures owed more to Jefferson and Virginians, who
disliked them, than to Northern statesmen, who merely encouraged them
after they were established.
These movements and tendencies were rather felt than understood amid
the uproar of personal and local interests; but the repeal of the embargo had
the effect intended by the Virginians,—it paralyzed Pickering and the party

of forcible resistance. New England quickly turned from revolutionary
thoughts while she engaged in money-making; and as though the tide of
fortune had at last set in Madison’s favor, a stroke of his diplomacy raised
the tottering Administration to a sudden height of popularity such as
Jefferson himself had never reached.

CHAPTER II.
When Napoleon, Aug. 3, 1808, heard at Bordeaux that the Spaniards
had captured Dupont’s army at Baylen and Rosily’s ships at Cadiz, and had
thrown eighty thousand French troops back upon the Pyrenees, his anger
was great; but his perplexity was much greater. In a character so interesting
as that of Napoleon, the moments of perplexity were best worth study; and
in his career no single moment occurred when he had more reason to call
upon his genius for a resource than when he faced at Bordeaux the failure
of his greatest scheme. From St. Petersburg to Gibraltar every shopkeeper
knew that England had escaped, and all believed that no combination either
of force or fraud could again be made with reasonable hope of driving her
commerce from its channels. On this belief every merchant, as well as
every government in the world, was actually shaping calculations.
Napoleon also must shape his calculations on theirs, since he had failed to
force theirs into the path of his own. The escape of England made useless
the machinery he had created for her ruin. Spain, Russia, and Austria had
little value for his immediate object, except as their control was necessary
for the subjection of England; and the military occupation of Spain beyond
the Ebro became worse than a blunder from the moment when Cadiz and
Lisbon, Cuba and Mexico, Brazil and Peru threw themselves into England’s
arms.[18]
More than once this history has shown that Napoleon never hesitated to
throw aside a plan which had miscarried. If he did not in the autumn of
1808 throw aside his Spanish schemes, the reason could only be that he saw
no other resource, and that in his belief his power would suffer too much
from the shock of admitting failure. He showed unusual signs of vacillation,
and of a desire to escape the position into which his miscalculations had led
him. Instead of going at once to Spain and restoring order to his armies, he
left his brother helpless at Vittoria while he passed three months in
negotiations looking toward peace with England. In September he went to
Germany, where he met the Czar of Russia at Erfurt, and induced
Alexander, or consented to his inducement, to join in an autograph letter to
the King of England, marked by the usual Napoleonic character, and
offering the principle of uti possidetis as the preliminary to a general peace.

England regarded this advance as deceptive, and George Canning was never
more successful than in the gesture of self-restrained contempt with which
he tossed back the letter that Napoleon and Alexander had presumed to
address to a constitutional King of England; but even Canning could hardly
suppose that Napoleon would invite an insult without a motive. From
whatever side Napoleon approached the situation he could invent no line of
conduct which did not imply the triumph of England. Study the problem as
he might, he could not escape from the political and military disadvantages
he incurred from the Spanish uprising. Without the consent of England he
could neither free his civil government from the system of commercial
restriction, nor free his military strength from partial paralysis in Spain; and
England refused to help him, or even to hear reason from Alexander.
Thenceforward a want of distinct purpose showed itself in Napoleon’s
acts. Unable either to enforce or to abandon his Continental system, he
began to use it for momentary objects,—sometimes to weaken England,
sometimes to obtain money, or as the pretext for conquests. Unable to hold
the Peninsula or to withdraw from it, he seemed at one time resolved on
conquest, at another disposed toward retreat. In the autumn of 1808 both
paths ran together, for his credit required him to conquer before he could
honorably establish any dynasty on the throne; and during the months of
September and October he marched new French armies across the Pyrenees
and massed an irresistible force behind the Ebro. A year before, he had
thought one hundred thousand men enough to occupy all Spain and
Portugal; but in October, 1808, he held not less than two hundred and fifty
thousand men beyond the Pyrenees, ready to move at the moment of his
arrival.
October 25, after his return from Germany, the Emperor pronounced a
speech at the opening of his legislative chambers; and the embarrassment of
his true position was evident under the words in which he covered it.
“Russia and Denmark,” he said, “have united with me against England. The
United States have preferred to renounce commerce and the sea rather than recognize
their slavery. A part of my army marches against those that England has formed or
disembarked in Spain. It is a special benefit of that Providence which has constantly
protected our arms, that passion has so blinded English councils as to make them
renounce the protection of the sea and at last present their armies on the Continent. I
depart in a few days to place myself at the head of my army, and with God’s aid to
crown the King of Spain in Madrid, and plant my eagles on the forts of Lisbon.”

He left Paris October 29, and ten days later, November 9, began the
campaign which still attracts the admiration of military critics, but which
did not result in planting his eagles on the forts of Lisbon. “To my great
astonishment,” he afterward said,[19] “I had to fight the battles of Tudela,
Espinosa, Burgos, and Somo Sierra, to gain Madrid, which, in spite of my
victories, refused me admission during two days.” After disposing in rapid
succession of all the Spanish armies, he occupied Madrid December 4, and
found himself at the end of his campaign. The conquest of Lisbon and
Cadiz required more time, and led to less military result than suited his
objects. At that moment he learned that an English army under Sir John
Moore had ventured to march from Portugal into the north of Spain, and
had already advanced so far toward Burgos as to make their capture
possible. The destruction of an English army, however small, offered
Napoleon the triumph he wanted. Rapidly collecting his forces, he hurried
across the Guadarrama Mountains to cut off Moore’s retreat; but for once he
was out-generalled. Sir John Moore not only saved his own army, but also
led the French a long and exhausting chase to the extreme northwestern
shore of Spain, where the British fleet carried Moore’s army out of their
reach.
Napoleon would not have been the genius he was had he wasted his
energies in following Moore to Corunna, or in trying to plant his eagles on
the forts of Lisbon or Cadiz. A year earlier, Lisbon and Cadiz had been
central points of his scheme; but in December, 1808, they were worth to
him little more than any other seaports without fleets or colonies. For Spain
and Portugal Napoleon showed that he had no further use. The moment he
saw that Moore had escaped, which became clear when the Emperor
reached Astorga, Jan. 2, 1809, throwing upon Soult the task of marching
one hundred and fifty miles to Corunna after Moore and the British army,
Napoleon stopped short, turned about, and with rapidity unusual even for
him, quitted Spain forever. “The affairs of Spain are finished,” he wrote
January 16;[20] although Joseph had the best reason to know and much
cause to tell how his brother left nothing finished in Spain. “The
circumstances of Europe oblige me to go for three weeks to Paris,” he wrote
to Joseph early in the morning of January 15; “if nothing prevents, I shall be
back again before the end of February.”[21] With characteristic mixture of
harshness and tenderness toward his elder brother, he wrote at noon the

same day another account, equally deceptive, of his motives and intentions:
—
“You must say everywhere, and make the army believe, that I shall return in three
or four weeks. In fact, my mere presence at Paris will make Austria shrink back to her
nullity; and then, before the end of October, I will be back here. I shall be in Paris in
five days. I shall go at full speed, day and night, as far as Bordeaux. Meanwhile
everything will go on quieting itself in Spain.”[22]

Giving out that the conduct of Austria required his presence at Paris, he
succeeded in imposing this fiction upon Europe by the empire of his will.
Europe accepted the fable, which became history; but although the Emperor
soon disposed of Austria, and although Spain was a more difficult problem
than Austria ever was, Napoleon never kept his word to Joseph, and never
again ventured within sight of the mistakes he could no longer correct.
Meanwhile Armstrong, disgusted with the disappointments and
annoyances of his residence at Paris, had become anxious to escape without
further loss of credit. His letters to Madison, published by Congress,
returned to terrify his French acquaintance, and to close his sources of
information. He could see no hope of further usefulness. As early as Oct.
25, 1808, when the Emperor was addressing his legislative chambers before
setting out for Spain, Armstrong wrote to Madison that no good could come
from keeping an American minister at Paris.[23] Yet in the enforced idleness
of the month when Napoleon was in Spain, Armstrong found one ally
whose aid was well worth seeking. After the Czar Alexander accepted, at
Tilsit, the ascendency of Napoleon, he appointed as his minister of foreign
relations the Count Nicholas Roumanzoff. The Czar was still a young man
in his thirty-first year, while Roumanzoff, fifty-four years old, had the full
powers of maturity. Together they shaped a Russian policy, in the traditional
direction of Russian interests, founded upon jealousy of British maritime
tyranny. Lord Howick’s and Spencer Perceval’s Orders in Council served to
sharpen Russian as well as American antipathies, and brought the two
distant nations into a sympathy which was certainly not deep, but which
England had reason to fear. In the autumn of 1808 Count Roumanzoff came
to Paris to arrange with Champagny the details of their joint diplomacy; and
at the same time, in the month of November, William Short arrived in Paris
secretly accredited as minister plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg, but waiting
confirmation by the Senate before going to his post. When Armstrong told
Roumanzoff that an American minister would soon be on his way to St.

Petersburg, the count was highly pleased, and promised at once to send a
full minister to replace André Daschkoff, the chargé at Washington. “Ever
since I came into office,” he said to Armstrong,[24] “I have been desirous of
producing this effect; for in dissolving our commercial connections with
Great Britain it became necessary to seek some other power in whom we
might find a substitute; and on looking round I could see none but the
United States who were at all competent to this object.” So far as concerned
England, the alliance promised great advantages; but Armstrong’s chief
anxiety affected France, and when he attempted to enlist Roumanzoff in
resistance to Napoleon’s robberies, he found no encouragement.
Roumanzoff had already tried his influence with Napoleon on behalf of the
Danes, who wanted compensation for their plundered commerce. “Give
them a civil answer,” replied Napoleon,[25] “but of course one never pays
for this sort of thing,—On ne paye jamais ces choses-là, n’est-ce pas?”
From Roumanzoff’s refusal, Armstrong inferred that no change need be
hoped in Napoleon’s conduct.
“On the contrary,” he wrote to Madison, the day when Napoleon abandoned the
pursuit of Sir John Moore,[26] “their anti-neutral system is more rigidly observed; the
embargo on ships of the United States found here before the imperial decrees were
issued is continued; every ship of ours coming into a port of France or of her allies is
immediately seized and sequestered; cargoes regularly admitted to entry by the
custom-houses are withheld from their owners; ships most obviously exceptions to the
operation of the Decrees have been recently condemned; and—what in my view of
the subject does not admit of aggravation—the burning of the ship ‘Brutus’ on the
high seas, so far from being disavowed, is substantially justified.”

Had this been all, perhaps President Madison and Congress might have
waited with courtesy, if not with hope, for Napoleon’s pleasure; but
grievances equally serious ran back to the year 1803, and not one of them
had been redressed by France.
“It is now three years since one of her admirals, on the principle of self-
preservation, burnt four of our ships at sea, and the Emperor immediately
acknowledged the debt and repeatedly promised to discharge it; but not a shilling has
yet been paid, nor is it probable that a shilling ever will be paid. Besides this breach of
justice in the first instance and of promise in the last, we have to complain that bills of
exchange drawn to the order of citizens of the United States by the public
functionaries of France, to the amount of many millions of dollars, and for articles of
the first necessity, and drawn many years ago, are not only not paid, but are officially
denounced as not payable.”

Armstrong’s temper, bad in the winter, became worse in the spring, until
his letters to the Department of State seemed to leave no remedy but war for

the grievances he described. The angry tone of his despatches was not
counteracted by fair words in the instructions sent by Champagny to
Turreau, which were calculated to irritate President Madison beyond
patience.
“You cannot too much call attention to the grievances of the Americans against
England in order to make them more sensibly felt,” wrote Champagny to Turreau,
after the Emperor went to Spain.[27] “The Americans would like France to grant them
commercial privileges which no nation at present enjoys.... But ... hitherto it has not
seemed proper, in the execution of general measures, to introduce exceptions which
would have really destroyed their effect. If the rules adopted against English
commerce had not been made common, that commerce would continue through every
opening left to it; England would preserve the same resources as before for supporting
the war. A system of exception for one people would turn the rule into an injustice
toward all others; all would have right to complain of a privilege granted to the
Federal government which themselves would not enjoy.”

Unanswerable as this reasoning was from the Napoleonic standpoint, it
was open to the objection of placing Madison among the belligerents at war
with England, and of obliging him not only to accept the rules imposed by
Napoleon on the allies of France, but also to admit the corresponding right
of British retaliation, even to the point of war. Until President Madison
made up his mind to war with England, he could hardly be induced by
Napoleon’s diplomacy to overlook his causes of war with France.
Had Napoleon acted according to rules of ordinary civilization, he
would at least have softened the harshness of his commercial policy toward
America by opening to the American President some vista of compensation
elsewhere. Florida seemed peculiarly suited for this object, and no one so
well as Napoleon knew the anxiety of the late Administration to obtain that
territory, which, for any legitimate purpose, was useless and worthless to
France. In December, 1808, Napoleon could have retained little or no hope
of controlling the Spanish colonies by force; yet he ordered the American
government to leave them alone, as he ordered it to adopt the French system
of commercial restraint. “I venture to presume,” continued Champagny to
Turreau, “that if his Majesty has no reason to complain of the disposition
shown by the United States toward him, he will show himself more and
more inclined to treat them favorably. What will most influence his course
will be the conduct pursued by the United States toward the Spanish
colonies, and the care that shall be taken to do nothing in regard to them
which can contravene the rights of the mother-country.”

Thus from Turreau’s attitude as well as from Armstrong’s letters, the
government at Washington was advised that neither favor nor justice need
be expected from Napoleon. This impression, strengthened by all the
private advices which arrived from France during the winter of 1808–1809,
even though partly balanced by the bulletins of the Emperor’s splendid
Spanish campaign, had much to do with the refusal of Congress to declare a
double war, which, however general in terms, must in effect be waged
against England alone. Anger with France affected Republicans almost as
strongly as fear of Napoleon excited Federalists. When the final struggle
took place in Congress over the embargo, no small share of the weakness
shown by the Administration and its followers was due to their
consciousness that the repeal of the embargo would relieve them from
appearing to obey an imperial mandate.
Turreau understood the repeal in no other light, and was extremely
irritated to see the decline of his influence. Men who had given him pledge
upon pledge that the embargo should be withdrawn only when war against
England should be declared, could plead no better excuse for failing to keep
their promise than that Napoleon had forfeited his claim to their support.
March 19, two weeks after Congress rose, Turreau wrote from Baltimore to
Champagny,[28]—
“You will have judged from my last despatches that the Embargo Law would be
repealed. It has been so, in fact, despite my efforts to maintain it, and notwithstanding
the promise of quite a large number of influential Representatives, especially among
the senators, who had guaranteed to me its continuance till the next Congress, and
who have voted against their political conscience. I had informed your Excellency of
the disunion projects shown by some of the Northern States. Their avowed opposition
to the continuance of the embargo, and their threats to resist its execution, terrified
Congress to such a degree that the dominant party became divided, and the feebleness
(faiblesse) of Mr. Jefferson sanctioned the last and the most shameful act of his
Administration.... I say it with regret,—and perhaps I have said it too late,—I am
convinced there is nothing to hope from these people.”

Erskine, whose persistent efforts to conciliate had also something to do
with the action of Congress, made Turreau’s anger the subject of a despatch,
doubtless hoping it might guide Canning’s thoughts toward the wisdom of
conciliation.[29] “The French minister it seems is so much offended at the
Non-intercourse Law which has been lately passed, and is so little pleased
with the general disposition, as he conceives it, of the new Administration
of the United States toward France, that he has quitted this city, having

previously given up his house and removed all his furniture, without calling
either upon the new President or any of the members of the Administration,
as was his uniform custom in former years, and as is always done by
foreign ministers.” Robert Smith informed Erskine that the Government
would consider it to be their duty, which he was sure they would feel no
disposition to shrink from, to recommend to the new Congress to enter upon
immediate measures of hostility against France in the event of Great Britain
giving way as to her Orders so far as to afford an opportunity to the United
States to assert their rights against France.
During the month of March, Turreau watched the workings of the Non-
intercourse Act, but found little encouragement. “Generally the ventures
have not been so numerous as was to be expected from the well-known
avidity of American merchants, and the privations they have suffered from
the embargo.”[30] Most of the outgoing vessels had cleared for the West
Indies or the Azores, “but the French government may rest assured that
among a hundred ships leaving the ports of the Union for the high seas,
ninety of them will have the real object of satisfying the wants and demands
of England.” Such a commerce was in his opinion fair prey. England had
gained the upper-hand in America; English superiority could no longer be
contested; and to France remained only the desperate chances of the
political gambler.
“To-day not only is the separation of New England openly talked about, but the
people of those five States wish for this separation, pronounce it, openly prepare it,
will carry it out under British protection, and probably will meet with no resistance on
the part of the other States. Yet this project, which is known and avowed; the last
proceedings of Congress, which are blamed; the progress of the Federalists; the
alarms of commerce; the feebleness of the highest authorities (des premiers pouvoirs),
and the doubts regarding the capacity and the party views of the new President,—
cause a ferment of public opinion; and perhaps the moment has come for forming a
party in favor of France in the Central and Southern States, whenever those of the
North, having given themselves a separate government under the support of Great
Britain, may threaten the independence of the rest.”[31]

Turreau’s speculations might show no great sagacity, but they opened a
glimpse into his mind, and they were the chief information possessed by
Napoleon to form his estimate of American character. Nothing could more
irritate the Emperor than these laments from his minister at Washington
over the victory of English interests in the United States. The effect of such
reports on Napoleon was likely to be the more decided because Turreau saw

everything in darker colors than the facts warranted. Deceived and defeated
in the case of the embargo, he imagined himself also in danger on the other
main point of his diplomacy,—the Spanish colonies. The old Spanish
agents, consular and diplomatic, mostly patriots, were still officially
recognized or privately received at Washington. Rumor said that troops
were collecting at New Orleans to support a movement of independence in
Florida; that General Wilkinson, on his way to take command in Louisiana,
had stopped at Havana and Pensacola; that President Jefferson, on the eve
of quitting the Presidency, had been heard to say, “We must have the
Floridas and Cuba.” Anonymous letters, believed by Turreau to be written
by one of the clerks in the State Department, warned him against the
intrigues of the Federal government in the Spanish colonies. So much was
he troubled by these alarms, that April 15 he addressed an unofficial note on
the subject to Robert Smith.[32]
The President, having no wish to quarrel with the French minister, and
probably aware of his irritation, asked Gallatin, on his way northwards, to
call on Turreau at Baltimore and make to him such soothing explanations as
the case seemed to require. The interview took place during the last week of
April, and Turreau’s report threw another ray of light into the recesses of
Jefferson’s councils.[33]
“‘I am specially charged,’ said Gallatin, ‘to assure you that whatever proceedings
of General Wilkinson may seem to warrant your suspicions must not be attributed to
the Executive, but solely to the vanity, the indiscretion, and the ordinary
inconsistencies of that General, whom you know perhaps as well as we.... We are and
we wish to be strangers to all that passes in the Floridas, in Mexico, and also in Cuba.
You would be mistaken if you supposed that Mr. Madison wishes the possession of
the Floridas. That was Mr. Jefferson’s hobby (marotte),—it has never been the wish of
his Cabinet; and Mr. Madison values to-day the possession of the Floridas only so far
as they may be thought indispensable to prevent every kind of misunderstanding with
Spain, and to secure an outlet for the produce of our Southern States. We have had no
part in the meetings which have taken place in the Floridas, and we could not know
that General Wilkinson has been ill received there.’ (This is true.) ‘As for the
possession of Cuba, this was also a new idea of Mr. Jefferson which has not been
approved by the Executive council; and I am authorized to protest to you that even if
Cuba were offered us as a gift, we would not accept it. We are also opposed to every
step which would tend, under the pretext of commerce, to involve us in the politics of
France and Spain, and we shall see to it that any persons undertaking such enterprises
are properly dealt with. I flatter myself therefore that you will believe the Cabinet to
be firmly resolved carefully to avoid every disturbance of the good understanding
between the United States and France.’”

Gallatin was a persistent enemy of the Florida intrigue, and doubtless
believed that Madison held opinions like his own; but Madison’s opinions
on this subject, as on some others, were elusive,—perhaps no clearer to
himself than to readers of his writings; and Gallatin had yet to learn that the
instinct which coveted Florida could not be controlled by a decision of the
Cabinet. Yet he said only what he seemed authorized to say; and his
reference to the marotte of President Jefferson was significant. For the
moment the weakness seemed cured. Gallatin gave Turreau to understand
that President Madison would not intrigue in Florida or Cuba, and to that
extent he was doubtless expressly authorized by the President. Perhaps only
on his own authority he went a step further, by hinting that Napoleon need
no longer dangle Florida before Madison’s eyes.
A rupture with France seemed certain. Turreau expected it and hoped
only to delay it. In his eyes the Emperor had suffered an indignity that could
not be overlooked, although he asked that retaliation should be delayed till
autumn. “However dissatisfied the French government may be by the last
measures adopted by Congress, I believe it would be well to await the result
of the next session two months hence before taking a severer course against
the Americans. This opinion, which I express only with doubt, is yet
warranted by advices which I have received within a few days, and which
have been given me by men who know the Executive intentions, and who at
least till now have not deceived me.” Turreau believed that when the
Emperor learned what the late Congress had done, he would strike the
United States with the thunderbolt of his power. Doubtless the same
impression was general. Even after Napoleon’s character has been the
favorite study of biographers and historians for nearly a hundred years, the
shrewdest criticism might fail in the effort to conjecture what shape the
Emperor’s resentment took. This story has shown many of his processes
from the time when he met the resistance of the Haytian negroes in 1803 to
the time when he met the uprising of the Spanish patriots in 1809; but even
with the advantage of his own writings as a guide, neither friend nor enemy
could test theories of his character better than by attempting to divine the
conduct he was to pursue toward the United States after their defiance of his
wishes in the repeal of the embargo.
As though to remove the last doubt of rupture with Napoleon, the
President startled the country by suddenly announcing a settlement of his

disputes with England. April 7 Erskine received new instructions from
London, and during the next two weeks he was closeted with the President
and the Cabinet. April 21 the “National Intelligencer” announced the result
of their labors.

CHAPTER III.
In Canning’s note to Pinkney of Sept. 23, 1808,—the same paper which
expressed his Majesty’s regret for the embargo “as a measure of
inconvenient restriction upon the American people,”—a paragraph easily
overlooked had been inserted to provide for future chances of fortune:—
“It is not improbable, indeed, that some alterations may be made in the Orders of
Council as they are at present framed,—alterations calculated, not to abate their spirit
or impair their principle, but to adapt them more exactly to the different state of things
which has fortunately grown up in Europe, and to combine all practicable relief to
neutrals with a more severe pressure upon the enemy. But of alterations to be made
with this view only it would be uncandid to take any advantage in the present
discussion, however it might be hoped that in their practical effect they might prove
beneficial to America, provided the operation of the embargo were not to prevent her
from reaping that benefit.”

This intended change in the orders depended on the political change
which converted Spain from an enemy into an ally. Spencer Perceval did
not care to press the cause of British commerce so far as to tax American
wheat and salt-fish on their way to Spain and Portugal, where he must
himself provide money to pay for them after they were bought by the army
commissaries. Accordingly, in December, 1808, a new Order in Council
appeared, doing away with the export duties lately imposed by Parliament
on foreign articles passing through England. Thenceforward American
wheat might be shipped at Liverpool for the Spanish peninsula without
paying ten shillings a quarter to the British Treasury,[34] if only the embargo
did not prevent American wheat from entering Liverpool at all.
In a short note, dated December 24, Canning enclosed to Pinkney a
copy of the new order; and while taking care to explain that this measure
conceded nothing in principle, he offered it as a step toward removing the
most offensive, if not the most oppressive, restraint imposed on American
commerce by the Orders of 1807:—
“As I have more than once understood from you that the part of the Orders in
Council which this order goes to mitigate is that which was felt most sorely by the
United States, I have great pleasure in being authorized to communicate it to you.”

Pinkney was in no humor to bear more of what he considered Canning’s
bad taste, and he could have but one opinion of the measure which Canning

announced. “This order is a shadow,” he wrote to Madison,[35] “and if
meant to conciliate us, ridiculous.” His reply to Canning verged for the first
time on abruptness, as though the moment were near when he meant to
speak another language.
“It is perfectly true,” began Pinkney’s acknowledgment of Dec. 28, 1808,[36] “as
the concluding paragraph of your letter supposes me to believe, that the United States
have viewed with great sensibility the pretension of this Government (which, as a
pretension, the present order reasserts without much if at all modifying its practical
effect) to levy imposts upon their commerce, outward and inward, which the Orders
in Council of the last year were to constrain to pass through British ports. But it is
equally true that my Government has constantly protested against the entire system
with which that pretension was connected, and has in consequence required the
repeal, not the modification, of the British Orders in Council.”

This reception roused the temper of Canning, who could not understand,
if Pinkney honestly wished harmony, why he should repel what might be
taken as a kindness; yet the same reasons which induced him to make the
advance impelled him to bear with the American minister’s roughness. The
moment was ill adapted for more quarrels. Napoleon had occupied Madrid
three weeks before, and was driving Sir John Moore’s army in headlong
flight back to England; the dreams of midsummer had vanished; the
overthrow of France was no nearer than before the Spanish uprising; the
United States were seriously discussing war, and however loudly a few
interested Englishmen might at times talk, the people of England never
wanted war with the United States. Canning found himself obliged to
suppress his irritation, and so far from checking the spirit of concession to
America, was drawn into new and more decided advances. Spencer
Perceval felt the same impulse, and of his own accord proposed other steps
to his colleague, after Pinkney’s letter of December 28 had been read and
considered by the Cabinet. With the impression of that letter fresh in the
minds of both, Canning wrote to Perceval on the last day of the year:[37]—
“We have given quite proof enough of our determination to maintain our principle
to enable us to relax, if in other respects advisable, without danger of being suspected
of giving way. The paragraph in my letter to Pinkney, of September 23, prepares the
world for any relaxations that we may think fit to make, provided they are coupled
with increased severity against France; and though this last consideration is something
impaired by my last communication to Pinkney, yet the manner in which he has
received that communication (with respect to which reception I partake of the fury
which you describe as having been kindled in Hammond) leaves us quite at liberty to
take any new steps without explanation, and exempts us from any hazard of seeing
them too well received.”

The year 1809 began with this new spirit of accommodation in British
councils. The causes which produced it were notorious. From the moment
Europe closed her ports, in the autumn of 1807, articles commonly supplied
from the Continent rose to speculative prices, and after the American
embargo the same effect followed with American produce. Flax, linseed,
tallow, timber, Spanish wool, silk, hemp, American cotton doubled or
trebled in price in the English markets during the years 1807 and 1808.[38]
Colonial produce declined in the same proportion. Quantities of sugar and
coffee overfilled the warehouses of London, while the same articles could
not be bought at Amsterdam and Antwerp at prices three, four, and five
times those asked on the Royal Exchange. Under the Orders in Council, the
whole produce of the West Indies, shut from Europe by Napoleon and from
the United States by the embargo, was brought to England, until mere
plethora stopped accumulation.
Debarred from their natural outlets, English merchandise and
manufactures were forced into every other market which seemed to offer a
hope of sale or barter. When Portugal fell into Napoleon’s hands, and the
royal family took refuge in Brazil under British protection, English
merchants glutted Brazil with their goods, until the beach at Rio Janeiro
was covered with property, which perished for want of buyers and
warehouses. The Spanish trade, thrown open soon afterward, resulted in
similar losses. In the effort to relieve the plethora at home, England gorged
the few small channels of commerce that remained in her control.
These efforts coincided with a drain of specie on government account to
support the Spanish patriots. The British armies sent to Spain required large
sums in coin for their supplies, and the Spaniards required every kind of
assistance. The process of paying money on every hand and receiving
nothing but worthless produce could not long continue without turning the
exchanges against London; yet a sudden call for specie threatened to shake
the foundations of society. Never was credit so rotten. Speculation was
rampant, and inflation accompanied it. None of the familiar signs of
financial disaster were absent. Visionary joint-stock enterprises flourished.
Discounts at long date, or without regard to proper security, could be
obtained with ease from the private banks and bankers who were competing
for business; and although the Bank of England followed its usual course,
neither contracting nor expanding its loans and issues, suddenly, at the close

of 1808, gold coin rose at a leap from a nominal rate of 103 to the alarming
premium of 113. The exchanges had turned, and the inevitable crash was
near.
The political outlook took the same sombre tone as the finances. The
failure of the Spaniards and the evacuation of Spain by the British army
after the loss of Sir John Moore at Corunna, January 16, destroyed
confidence in all political hopes. Lord Castlereagh, as war-secretary, was
most exposed to attack. Instead of defending him, Canning set the example
of weakening his influence. Aware that the Administration had not the
capacity to hold its own, Canning undertook to reform it. As early as
October, 1808, he talked freely of Castlereagh’s incompetence, and made no
secret of his opinion that the Secretary for War must go out.[39] Whether his
judgment of Castlereagh’s abilities were right or wrong was a matter for
English history to decide; but Americans might at least wonder that the
Convention of Cintra and the campaign of Sir John Moore were not held to
be achievements as respectable as the American diplomacy of Canning or
the commercial experiments of Spencer Perceval. Canning himself agreed
that Perceval was little, if at all, superior to Castlereagh, and he saw hope
for England chiefly in his own elevation to the post of the Duke of Portland.
Although no one fully understood all that had been done by the Portland
ministry, enough was known to render their fall certain; and Canning saw
himself sinking with the rest. He made active efforts to secure his own
safety and to rise above the misfortunes which threatened to overwhelm his
colleagues. Among other annoyances, he felt the recoil of his American
policy. The tone taken by Pinkney coincided with the warlike threats
reported by Erskine, and with the language of Campbell’s Report to the
House of Representatives. Erskine’s despatch of November 26, in which
Campbell’s Report was enclosed, and his alarming despatches of December
3 and 4 were received by Canning about the middle of January,[40] at a time
when the Ministry was sustained only by royal favor. The language and the
threats of these advices were such as Canning could not with dignity
overlook or with safety resent; but he overlooked them. January 18, at a
diplomatic dinner given by him on the Queen’s birthday, he took Pinkney
aside to tell him that the Ministry were willing to consider the Resolutions
proposed in Campbell’s Report as putting an end to the difficulties which
prevented a satisfactory arrangement.[41] Pinkney, surprised by Canning’s

“more than usual kindness and respect,” suggested deferring the subject to a
better occasion; and Canning readily acquiesced, appointing January 22 as
the day for an interview.
The next morning, January 19, Parliament met, and American affairs
were instantly made the subject of attack on ministers. In the Lords,
Grenville declared that “the insulting and sophistical answer” returned by
Canning to the American offer, persuaded him “that the intention of the
King’s government is to drive things to extremity with America.” Lord
Hawkesbury the Home Secretary, who had succeeded his father as Earl of
Liverpool, replied in the old tone that ministers felt no disposition to irritate
America, but that national dignity and importance were not to be sacrificed
“at the very moment when America seemed so blind to her own interest,
and betrayed so decided a partiality in favor of France.”[42] In the
Commons, Whitbread and the other leaders of opposition echoed the attack,
but Canning did not echo the reply.
“The same infatuation,” said Whitbread,[43] “seems now to prevail that
existed in the time of the late American war. There were the same taunts,
the same sarcasms, and the same assertions that America cannot do without
us.” Only a few weeks earlier or later, Canning would have met such
criticisms in his loftiest tone, and with more reason than in 1807 or in 1808.
In his desk were Erskine’s latest despatches, announcing impending war in
every accent of defiance and in many varieties of italics and capital letters;
fresh in his memory was his own official pledge that “no step which could
even mistakenly be construed into concession should be taken” while a
doubt existed whether America had wholly abandoned her attempt at
commercial restriction. Yet instead of maintaining England’s authority at
the moment when for the first time it was threatened by the United States,
Canning became apologetic and yielding. Repeating the commonplaces of
the newspapers that America had sided with France, and even going so far
as to assert, what he best knew to be an error, that the Orders in Council had
not been the cause of the embargo, and “it was now a notorious fact that no
such ground had been laid for the embargo;” after declaring the exclusion of
British war-vessels from American harbors to have been the chief obstacle
to the compromise offered by America,—treading, with what seemed a very
uncertain foot, among these slippery and ill-balanced stepping-stones, he
reached the point where he meant to rest. The “Chesapeake” Proclamation,

which excluded British war-ships from American harbors, being his chief
grievance, any settlement which removed that grievance would be so far
satisfactory; and for this reason the measures proposed in Campbell’s
Report, though clothed in hostile language, might, if made known to the
British government in amicable terms, have led to the acceptance of the
compromise proposed, since they excluded French as well as English ships
of war from American ports.
Canning next turned to Pinkney to ascertain how much concession
would be safe. The interview took place January 22; but Pinkney’s powers
had been withdrawn, and he neither could nor would furnish Canning with
any assurance on which a concession could be offered with the certainty
either that it would be accepted, or that it would be refused. Canning
seemed particularly anxious to know how the embargo could be effectually
enforced against commerce with France, after being removed in regard to
England.[44] He “presumed that the government of the United States would
not complain if the naval force of this country should assist in preventing
such a commerce.”[45] Pinkney felt many doubts of Canning’s good faith,
[46]
and had every reason for avoiding committal of himself or of his
Government. According to his own account, he declined to enter into the
discussion of details, and confined himself to general encouragement of
Canning’s good disposition.[47]
After experimenting upon Pinkney, much as he had sounded Parliament,
Canning lost not an hour in composing the new instructions to Erskine.
Four in number, all bearing the same date of January 23, they dealt
successively with each of the disputed points; but in order to understand the
embroilment they caused, readers must carry in mind, even at some effort of
memory, precisely what Canning ordered Erskine to do, and precisely what
Erskine did.
The first instruction dealt with the “Chesapeake” affair, and the
Proclamation occasioned by it. Accepting Gallatin’s idea that the
Proclamation being merged in the general non-intercourse would cease to
exist as a special and separate provision of law, Canning instructed Erskine
that if French ships of war should be excluded from American ports, and if
the Proclamation should be tacitly withdrawn, he need no longer insist upon
the formal recall. Further, Gallatin had suggested that Congress was about

to exclude foreign seamen by law from national ships; and Canning
admitted also this evasion of his demand that the United States should
engage not to countenance desertions. Finally, he withdrew the demand for
disavowals which had wrecked Rose’s mission.
Evidently the British government wished to settle the “Chesapeake”
affair. Had Canning in like manner swept away his old conditions precedent
to withdrawal of the Orders in Council, his good faith would have been
above suspicion; but he approached that subject in a different spirit, and
imposed one condition after another while he adopted the unusual course of
putting each new condition into the mouth of some American official. He
drew from Erskine’s despatches the inference that Madison, Smith, and
Gallatin were willing to recognize in express terms the validity of the
British “Rule of 1756.”[48] For this misunderstanding Erskine was to blame,
[49]
but Canning was alone responsible for the next remark, that “Mr.
Pinkney has recently, but for the first time, expressed to me his opinion that
there will be no indisposition on the part of his Government to the
enforcement, by the naval power of Great Britain,” of the Act of Congress
declaring non-intercourse with France. On the strength of these supposed
expressions of William Pinkney, Madison, Smith, and Gallatin, none of
which was official or in writing, Canning concluded:—
“I flatter myself that there will be no difficulty in obtaining a distinct and official
recognition of these conditions from the American government. For this purpose you
are at liberty to communicate this despatch in extenso to the American government.”

The chief interest of these instructions lay in the question whether
Canning meant in good faith to offer on any conditions a withdrawal of the
Orders in Council. The course of his own acts and of Perceval’s measures,
suggested that he did not intend to offer any terms which the United States
could accept. His remark to Perceval three weeks before, that they were
quite at liberty to take new steps without “any hazard of seeing them too
well received,” pointed in the same direction. Yet motives were enigmas too
obscure for search, and the motives of Canning in this instance were more
perplexing than usual. If he was serious in hoping an agreement, how could
he insist on requiring official recognition of the right of Great Britain to
enforce the municipal laws of the United States when he afterward admitted
that such a claim “could not well find its way into a stipulation; that he had
nevertheless believed it proper to propose the condition to the United

States; that he should have been satisfied with the rejection of it; and that
the consequence would have been that they should have intercepted the
commerce to which it referred, if any such commerce should be
attempted”?[50] In the instructions to Erskine he imposed the condition as
essential to the agreement,—the same condition which he thought “could
not well find its way into a stipulation,” and which “he should have been
satisfied” to see rejected.
For two years Canning had lost no opportunity of charging the
American government with subservience to Napoleon; even in these
instructions he alleged Jefferson’s “manifest partiality” to France as a
reason why England could entertain no propositions coming from him. He
had in his hands Madison’s emphatic threats of war; how then could he
conceive of obtaining from Madison an express recognition of the British
Rule of 1756, which Madison had most deeply pledged himself to resist?
On the other hand, Canning showed forbearance and a wish for peace,
by leaving Erskine minister at Washington as well as by passing unnoticed
Madison’s threats of war; and he betrayed a singular incapacity to
understand the bearing of his own demands when he directed Erskine to
communicate his instructions in extenso to the American government. Had
he intelligently acted in bad faith, he would not have given the President,
whose attachment to France he suspected, the advantage of seeing these
instructions, which required that America should become a subject State of
England.
Perhaps a partial clew to these seeming contradictions might be found in
the peculiar traits of Canning’s character. He belonged to a class of men
denied the faculty of realizing the sensibilities of others. At the moment
when he took this tone of authority toward America, he gave mortal offence
to his own colleague Lord Castlereagh, by assuming a like attitude toward
him. He could not understand, and he could never train himself to regard,
the rule that such an attitude between States as between gentlemen was not
admitted among equals.
Whatever was the reason of Canning’s conduct, its effect was that of
creating the impression of bad faith by offering terms intended to be
refused. The effect of bad faith was the more certain because the
instructions closed by giving Erskine some latitude, not as to the conditions

which were to be distinctly and officially recognized, but as to the form in
which the recognition might be required:—
“Upon the receipt here of an official note containing an engagement for the
adoption of the three conditions above specified, his Majesty will be prepared on the
faith of such engagement,—either immediately, if the repeal shall have been
immediate in America or on any day specified by the American government for that
repeal,—reciprocally to recall the Orders in Council.”

The form of the required engagement was left to Erskine’s discretion;
and in case Erskine failed, Canning would be still at liberty to claim, as he
afterward did, that his conditions were not so rigorously meant as Erskine
should have supposed them to be.
Meanwhile the Government of England was falling to pieces. Day by
day the situation became more alarming. For months after these despatches
were sent, the Commons passed their time in taking testimony and listening
to speeches intended to prove or disprove that the Duke of York,
commander-in-chief of the army, was in the habit of selling officers’
commissions through the agency of his mistress, a certain Mrs. Clarke; and
although the Duke protested his innocence, the scandal drove him from his
office. The old King, blind and infirm, was quite unfit to bear the shame of
his son’s disgrace; while the Prince of Wales stood no better than the Duke
of York either in his father’s esteem or in public opinion. The Ministry was
rent by faction; Perceval, Castlereagh, and Canning were at cross purposes,
while the Whigs were so weak that they rather feared than hoped their
rivals’ fall. Whatever might be the factiousness of Congress or the weakness
of government at Washington, the confusion in Parliament was worse, and
threatened worse dangers.
“All power and influence of Perceval in the House is quite gone by,” wrote a
Whig member, February 16.[51] “He speaks without authority and without attention
paid to him; and Canning has made two or three such rash declarations that he is little
attended to. You may judge the situation of the House, when I tell you we were last
night nearly three quarters of an hour debating about the evidence of a drunken
footman by Perceval suggesting modes of ascertaining how to convict him of his
drunkenness,—Charles Long [one of the Administration], near whom I was sitting
telling me at the time what a lamentable proof it was of the want of some man of
sense and judgment to lead the House. There is no government in the House of
Commons,—you may be assured the thing does not exist; and whether they can ever
recover their tone of power remains to be proved. At present Mr. Croker, Mr. D.
Brown, and Mr. Beresford are the leaders.... The Cintra Convention, or the general
campaign, or the American question, are minor considerations, and indeed do not
enter into the consideration of any one.”

The House of Lords maintained more appearance of dignity; and there,
February 17, four-and-twenty hours after Colonel Fremantle wrote this
letter, Lord Grenville began a debate on American affairs. As a test of Tory
sincerity in view of what Erskine was soon to do at Washington, the debate
—as well as all else that was said of American affairs during the session—
deserved more than ordinary notice, if only in justice to the British ministry,
whose language was to receive a commentary they did not expect.[52]
The most significant speech came from Lord Sidmouth. The
conservatism of this peer stood above reproach, and compared closely with
that of Spencer Perceval. Rather than abandon the “established principle” of
the Rule of 1756, he far preferred an American war. He proved his stubborn
Tory consistency too clearly, both before and after 1809, to warrant a
suspicion of leanings toward liberal or American sympathies; but his speech
of February 17 supporting Grenville, and charging ministers with bad faith,
was long and earnest. He called attention to the scandal that while the
Government professed in the speech from the Throne a persuasion “that in
the result the enemy will be convinced of the impolicy of persevering in a
system which retorts upon himself, in so much greater proportion, those
evils which he endeavors to inflict,” yet instead of retorting those evils,
Perceval licensed the export and import both with France and Holland of
the very articles which those countries wished to sell and buy, while
Canning at the same moment rejected the American offers of trade because
he thought it “important in the highest degree that the disappointment of the
hopes of the enemy should not have been purchased by any concession.”
Ministers might disregard Grenville’s furious denunciation of the orders
as an act of the most egregious folly and the most unexampled ignorance
that ever disgraced the councils of a State; they might even close their ears
to Sidmouth’s charge that the folly and ignorance of the orders were
surpassed by their dishonesty,—but not even Spencer Perceval could deny
or forget that while a year before, Feb. 15, 1808, forty-eight peers voted
against him, on Feb. 17, 1809, seventy lords, in person or by proxy,
supported Grenville. While the opposition gained twenty-two votes, the
government gained only nine.
The impression of weakness in the ministry was increased by the energy
with which the authors of the orders stood at bay in their defence. When
Whitbread in the House of Commons renewed the attack, and the House,

March 6, entered on the debate, James Stephen came forward as the
champion of his own cause. Stephen’s speech,[53] published afterward as a
pamphlet, was intended to be an official as well as a final answer to attacks
against the orders, and was conclusive in regard to the scope and motives of
Perceval’s scheme. Neither Canning nor Liverpool spoke with personal
knowledge to be compared with that of Stephen. Canning in particular had
nothing to do with the orders except as a subject of diplomatic evasion.
Stephen, Perceval, and George Rose were the parents of commercial
restriction, and knew best their own objects. With frankness creditable to
him, but contrasting with the double-toned language of Perceval and
Canning, Stephen always placed in the foreground the commercial objects
he wanted and expected to attain. His speech of March 6, 1809, once more
asserted, in language as positive as possible, that the orders had no other
purpose than to stop the American trade with France because it threatened
to supplant British trade. The doctrine of retaliation, or the object of
retorting evils on France, had nothing to do with Stephen’s scheme. His
words were clear, for like a true enthusiast he was wholly intent on the idea
in which he thought safety depended.
Canning also planted himself on advanced ground. The question, he
said, was between England and France; not between England and America.
On the principles of international law he had no defence to offer for the
Orders in Council as between England and America. “He was willing to
admit that it was not upon the poor pretence of the existing law of nations,
but upon the extension of that law (an extension just and necessary), that his
Majesty’s ministers were to rely, in the present instance, for justification.”
This extension rested on the excuse that France had first discarded the law
of nations; and America, in attempting to give to Great Britain the priority
in wrong, had incurred this censure,—“that she had brought a false charge,
and persisted in it.” In his opinion, the American offer to withdraw the
embargo in favor of England and to enforce it against France, “was illusory;
he might add, in the language of Mr. Madison, ‘it was insulting.’” Those
who accused ministers of a disinclination to adopt pacific measures
respecting America had lost sight of the facts. “We had rather gone too far
than done too little. We twice offered to negotiate; yet the Non-importation
Act was not revoked.”

If this was Canning’s true state of mind, his instructions to Erskine less
than a month before, offering to abandon the Orders in Council, seemed to
admit no defence. Still less could be explained how President Madison,
after reading these speeches, should have expected from Canning the
approval of any possible arrangement. Yet the irritation of Canning’s tone
showed him to be ill at ease,—he felt the ground slipping under his feet.
The public had become weary of him and his colleagues. The commercial
system they had invented seemed to create the evils it was made to
counteract. The press began to complain. As early as January 13 the
“Times” showed signs of deserting the orders, which it declared to be no
“acts of retaliation,” but “measures of counteraction,” complicated by
transit duties doubtful either in expediency or justice. “If America will
withdraw her Embargo and Non-importation Acts as far as they relate to
England, provided we rescind the Orders in Council, we cannot consider
this as a disgraceful concession on our part.” After the debate of March 6,
the “Times” renewed its complaints. Every day increased the difficulties of
ministers, until mere change became relief.
At length, April 26, the reality of the weakness of Perceval and Canning
became clear. On that day a new Order in Council[54] appeared, which
roused great interest because it seemed to abandon the whole ground taken
in the Orders of November, 1807, and to return within the admitted
principles of international law. The machinery of the old orders was
apparently discarded; the machinery of blockade was restored in its place.
The Order of April 26, 1809, declared that the old orders were revoked and
annulled except so far as their objects were to be attained by a general
blockade of all ports and places under the government of France. The
blockade thus declared was to extend northward as far as Ems, and was to
include on the south the ports of northern Italy. Of course the new blockade
was not even claimed to be effective. No squadrons were to enforce its
provisions by their actual presence before the blockaded ports. In that
respect the Order of April 26, 1809, was as illegal as that of Nov. 11, 1807;
but the new arrangement opened to neutral commerce all ports not actually
ports of France, even though the British flag should be excluded from them,
—retaliating upon France only the injury which the French decrees
attempted to inflict on England.

Pinkney was greatly pleased, and wrote to Madison in excellent
spirits[55] that the change gave all the immediate benefits which could have
arisen from the arrangement proposed by him in the previous August,
except the right to demand from France the recall of her edicts. “Our
triumph is already considered as a signal one by everybody. The pretexts
with which ministers would conceal their motives for a relinquishment of
all which they prized in their system are seen through, and it is universally
viewed as a concession to America. Our honor is now safe; and by
management we may probably gain everything we have in view.” Canning
said to Pinkney: “If these alterations did not do all that was expected, they
at least narrowed extremely the field of discussion, and gave great facilities
and encouragement to reviving cordiality.”[56] Government took pains to
impress the idea that it had done much, and wished to do more for
conciliation; yet the doubt remained whether Government was acting in
good faith. Pinkney overestimated its concessions. If the British navy was
to blockade Holland, France, and northern Italy only in order that British
commerce might be forced, through the blockade and license system, into
the place of neutral commerce, the new system was only the old one in
disguise. Under a blockade, in good faith, licenses seemed to have no place.
In that case, the Order in Council of April 26 might lead to a real
settlement; but how was it possible that Perceval, George Rose, and James
Stephen should have given up what they believed to be the only hope for
England’s safety?
If one frank and straightforward man could be found among the
ministerial ranks, James Stephen had a right to that distinction, and to his
language one might hope to look with confidence for the truth; yet Stephen
seemed for once not to understand himself. In publishing his speech of
March 6, he added an appendix on the new order, and closed his remarks by
a prayer that seemed meant to open the way for the full admission of
American offers:—
“It is not strange that a measure so indulgent [as the new Order] should be
generally approved by the American merchants and agents resident in England. The
most eminent of the gentlemen of that description who opposed the Orders of
November have openly professed their satisfaction at this important change. May the
same sentiment prevail on notice of it beyond the Atlantic! Or, what would be still
better, may an amicable arrangement there have already terminated all the differences
between us and our American brethren on terms that will involve a complete
revocation of our retaliatory orders, and impose on America herself, by her own

consent, the duty of vindicating effectually the rights of neutrality against the
aggressions of France!”

CHAPTER IV.
Early in February, when Congress refused to support Madison’s war-
policy,—the mere shadow of which brought Perceval and Canning almost
to their senses,—Canning’s instructions were despatched from the Foreign
Office. April 7, more than a month after the Tenth Congress had expired,
amidst political conditions altogether different from those imagined by
Canning, the instructions reached Washington; and Erskine found himself
required to carry them into effect.
A cautious diplomatist would have declined to act upon them. Under
pretext of the change which had altered the situation he would have asked
for new instructions, while pointing out the mischievous nature of the old.
The instructions were evidently impossible to execute; the situation was
less critical than ever before, and Great Britain was master of the field.
On the other hand, the instructions offered some appearance of an
advance toward friendship. They proved Canning’s ignorance, but not his
bad faith; and if Canning in good faith wanted a settlement, Erskine saw
every reason for gratifying him. The arrogance of Canning’s demands did
not necessarily exclude further concession. The great governments of
Europe from time immemorial had used a tone of authority insufferable to
weaker Powers, and not agreeable to one another; yet their tone did not
always imply the wish to quarrel, and England herself seldom resented
manners as unpleasant as her own. Used to the rough exchange of blows,
and hardened by centuries of toil and fighting, England was not sensitive
when her interests were at stake. Her surliness was a trick rather than a
design. Her diplomatic agents expected to enjoy reasonable liberty in
softening the harshness and in supplying the ignorance of their chiefs of the
Foreign Office; and if such latitude was ever allowed to a diplomatist,
Erskine had the best right to use it in the case of instructions the motives of
which he could not comprehend.
Finally, Erskine was the son of Lord Erskine, and owed his appointment
to Charles James Fox. He was half Republican by education, half American
by marriage; and probably, like all British liberals, he felt in secret an entire

want of confidence in Canning and a positive antipathy to the Tory
commercial system.
Going at once to Secretary Robert Smith, Erskine began on the
“Chesapeake” affair, and quickly disposed of it. The President abandoned
the American demand for a court-martial on Admiral Berkeley, finding that
it would not be entertained.[57] Erskine then wrote a letter offering the
stipulated redress for the “Chesapeake” outrage, and Madison wrote a letter
accepting it, which Robert Smith signed, and dated April 17.
Two points in Madison’s “Chesapeake” letter attracted notice. Erskine
began his official note[58] by alluding to the Non-intercourse Act of March
1, as having placed Great Britain on an equal footing with the other
belligerents, and warranting acknowledgment on that account. The idea was
far-fetched, and Madison’s reply was ambiguous:—
“As it appears at the same time, that in making this offer his Britannic Majesty
derives a motive from the equality now existing in the relations of the United States
with the two belligerent Powers, the President owes it to the occasion and to himself
to let it be understood that this equality is a result incident to a state of things growing
out of distinct considerations.”

If Madison knew precisely what “distinct considerations” had led
Congress and the country to that state of things to which the Non-
intercourse Act was incident, he knew more than was known to Congress;
but even though he owed this statement to himself, so important an official
note might have expressed his ideas more exactly. “A result incident to a
state of things growing out of distinct considerations” was something
unusual, and to say the least wanting in clearness, but seemed not intended
to gratify Canning.
The second point challenged sharper criticism.
“With this explanation, as requisite as it is frank,” Smith’s note continued, “I am
authorized to inform you that the President accepts the note delivered by you in the
name and by the order of his Britannic Majesty, and will consider the same with the
engagement therein, when fulfilled, as a satisfaction for the insult and injury of which
he has complained. But I have it in express charge from the President to state that
while he forbears to insist on the further punishment of the offending officer, he is not
the less sensible of the justice and utility of such an example, nor the less persuaded
that it would best comport with what is due from his Britannic Majesty to his own
honor.”

According to Robert Smith’s subsequent account, the last sentence was
added by Madison in opposition to his secretary’s wishes.[59] One of
Madison’s peculiarities showed itself in these words, which endangered the
success of all his efforts. If he wished a reconciliation, they were worse than
useless; but if he wished a quarrel, he chose the right means. The President
of the United States was charged with the duty of asserting in its full extent
what was due to his own honor as representative of the Union; but he was
not required, either by the laws of his country or by the custom of nations,
to define the conduct which in his opinion best comported with what was
due from his Britannic Majesty to the honor of England. That Erskine
should have consented to receive such a note was matter for wonder,
knowing as he did that Kings of England had never smiled on servants who
allowed their sovereign’s honor to be questioned; and the public surprise
was not lessened by his excuse.
“It appeared to me,” he said,[60] “that if any indecorum could justly be attributed
to the expressions in the official notes of this Government, the censure due would fall
upon them; and that the public opinion would condemn their bad taste or want of
propriety in coldly and ungraciously giving up what they considered as a right, but
which they were not in a condition to enforce.”

Under the impression that no “intention whatever existed in the mind of
the President of the United States to convey a disrespectful meaning toward
his Majesty by these expressions,” Erskine accepted them in silence, and
Madison himself never understood that he had given cause of offence.
Having thus disposed of the “Chesapeake” grievance, Erskine took up
the Orders in Council.[61] His instructions were emphatic, and he was in
effect ordered to communicate these instructions in extenso to the President,
for in such cases permission was equivalent to order. He disobeyed; in
official sense he did not communicate his instructions at all. “I considered
that it would be in vain,” he afterward said. This was his first exercise of
discretion; and his second was more serious. After reading Canning’s
repeated and positive orders to require from the American government “a
distinct and official recognition” of three conditions, he decided to treat
these orders as irrelevant. He knew that the President had no Constitutional
power to bind Congress, even if Madison himself would patiently bear a
single reading of three such impossible requirements, and that under these
circumstances the negotiation had better never begin than end abruptly in
anger. Erskine would have done better not to begin it; but he thought

otherwise. Under more favorable circumstances, Monroe and Pinkney had
made the same experiment in 1806.
Canning offered to withdraw the Orders in Council, on three conditions
precedent:—
(1) That all interdicts on commerce should be revoked by the United
States so far as they affected England, while they were still to be enforced
against France. When Erskine submitted this condition to Robert Smith, he
was assured that the President would comply with it, and that Congress
would certainly assert the national rights against France, but that the
President had no power to pledge the government by a formal act. Erskine
decided to consider Canning’s condition fulfilled if the President, under the
eleventh section of the Non-intercourse Act, should issue a proclamation
renewing trade with Great Britain, while retaining the prohibition against
France. This settlement had the disadvantage of giving no guarantee to
England, while it left open the trade with Holland, which was certainly a
dependency of France.
(2) Canning further required that the United States should formally
renounce the pretension to a colonial trade in war which was not permitted
in time of peace. To this condition, which Erskine seems to have stated as
applying only to the direct carrying-trade to Europe, Robert Smith replied
that it could not be recognized except in a formal treaty; but that it was
practically unimportant, because this commerce, as well as every other with
France or her dependencies, was prohibited by Act of Congress. Erskine
accepted this reasoning, and left the abstract right untouched.
(3) Canning lastly demanded that the United States should recognize the
right of Great Britain to capture such American vessels as should be found
attempting to trade with any of the Powers acting under the French Decrees.
To this suggestion Secretary Smith replied that the President could not so
far degrade the national authority as to authorize Great Britain to execute
American laws; but that the point seemed to him immaterial, since no
citizen could present to the United States government a claim founded on a
violation of its own laws. Erskine once more acquiesced, although the trade
with Holland was not a violation of law, and would probably give rise to the
very claims which Canning meant to preclude.

Having thus disposed of the three conditions which were to be distinctly
and officially recognized, Erskine exchanged notes with Robert Smith,
bearing date April 18 and 19, 1809, chiefly admirable for their brevity, since
they touched no principle. In his note of April 18, Erskine said that the
favorable change produced by anticipation of the Non-intercourse Act had
encouraged his Government to send out a new envoy with full powers; and
that meanwhile his Majesty would recall his Orders in Council if the
President would issue a Proclamation renewing intercourse with Great
Britain. Secretary Smith replied on the same day that the President would
not fail in doing so. April 19, Erskine in a few lines announced himself
“authorized to declare that his Majesty’s Orders in Council of January and
November, 1807, will have been withdrawn as respects the United States on
the 10th of June next.” Secretary Smith answered that the President would
immediately issue his Proclamation. Two days afterward the four notes and
the Proclamation itself were published in the “National Intelligencer.”
The United States heard with delight that friendship with England had
been restored. Amid an outburst of joy commerce resumed its old paths, and
without waiting for June 10 hurried ships and merchandise to British ports.
No complaints were heard; not a voice was raised about impressments; no
regret was expressed that war with France must follow reconciliation with
England; no one found fault with Madison for following in 1809 the policy
which had raised almost a resolution against President Washington only
fourteen years before. Yet Madison strained the law, besides showing
headlong haste, in acting upon Erskine’s promises without waiting for their
ratification, and without even asking to see the British negotiator’s special
powers or instructions. The haste was no accident or oversight. When
Turreau remonstrated with Gallatin against such precipitate conduct
contrary to diplomatic usage, Gallatin answered,—
“The offers could not be refused.”
“But you have only promises,” urged Turreau; “and already twelve hundred
vessels, twelve thousand sailors, and two hundred million [francs] of property have
left your ports. May not the English take all this to serve as a guarantee for other
conditions which their interest might care to impose?”
“We would like it!” replied the Secretary of the Treasury. “Perhaps our people
may need such a lesson to cure them of British influence and the mania of British
commerce.”[62]

Impatient at the conduct of Congress and the people, Madison was glad
to create a new situation, and preferred even hostilities to the Orders in
Council. Erskine’s conduct was unusual, yet Great Britain had shown no
such regard for Madison’s feelings that Madison should hesitate before the
eccentricities of British diplomacy. Perplexed to account for Canning’s
sudden change, the President and his friends quieted their uneasiness by
attributing their triumph to their own statesmanship. The Republican
newspapers, the “National Intelligencer” at their head, announced that
England had been conquered by the embargo, and taunted not only the
Federalists but also the Northern Republicans with the triumph. While
nothing could be more positive than the language thus encouraged by the
Government, the error was partly redeemed by the tenderness with which it
was used to soothe the wounded feelings of Jefferson.
“The bright day of judgment and retribution has at length arrived,” said the
“National Intelligencer” of April 26, “when a virtuous nation will not withhold the
tribute of its warmest thanks from an Administration whose sole ambition has ever
been to advance the happiness of its constituents, even at the sacrifice of its present
popularity. Thanks to the sage who now so gloriously reposes in the shades of
Monticello, and to those who shared his confidence!... It may be boldly alleged that
the revocation of the British Orders is attributable to the embargo.”

President Madison wrote to Jefferson somewhat more cautiously:[63]
“The British Cabinet must have changed its course under a full conviction
that an adjustment with this country had become essential.” Accepting
quietly a turn of fortune that would have bewildered the most astute
diplomatist, Madison made ready to meet the special session of Congress.
The Eleventh Congress differed little in character from its predecessor,
but that little difference was not to its advantage. G. W. Campbell of
Tennessee, David R. Williams of South Carolina, Joseph Clay of
Pennsylvania, Joseph Story of Massachusetts, and Wilson Cary Nicholas of
Virginia disappeared from the House, and no one of equal influence stepped
into their places. The mediocrity of the Tenth Congress continued to mark
the character of the Eleventh. John W. Eppes became chairman of the
Committee of Ways and Means. Varnum was again chosen Speaker, while
Vice-President George Clinton still presided over the deliberations of thirty-
four men whose abilities were certainly not greater than those of any
previous Senate.

May 23 President Madison’s first Annual Message was read. No
objection could be made to its brief recital of the steps which led to the
arrangement with Erskine; but the next paragraph not only provoked attack,
it threatened the country also with commercial wars to the end of time:—
“Whilst I take pleasure in doing justice to the councils of his Britannic Majesty
which, no longer adhering to the policy which made an abandonment by France of her
Decrees a prerequisite to the revocation of the British Orders, have substituted the
amicable course which has issued thus happily, I cannot do less than refer to the
proposal heretofore made on the part of the United States, embracing a like restoration
of the suspended commerce, as a proof of the spirit of accommodation which has at
no time been intermitted, and to the result which now calls for our congratulations as
corroborating the principles by which the public councils have been guided during a
period of the most trying embarrassments.”

When Madison spoke of the “principles by which the public councils
have been guided,” he meant to place at their head the principles of
embargo and non-intercourse,—a result of Erskine’s arrangement hardly
more agreeable to commercial America than to despotic England; but
however England might resent what Canning would certainly think an
offence, Americans were in no humor for fault-finding, and they received
Madison’s allusions with little protest. The remainder of the Message
contained nothing that called for dispute.
The Federalist minority—strong in numbers, flushed by victory over
Jefferson, and full of contempt for the abilities of their opponents—found
themselves suddenly deprived by Erskine and Madison of every grievance
to stand upon. For once, no one charged that Madison’s act was dictated
from the Tuileries. The Federalist newspapers, like their Republican rivals,
advanced the idea that their success was the natural result of their own
statesmanship. Their efforts against the embargo had opened the path for
Canning’s good-will to show itself, and the removal of Jefferson’s sinister
influence accounted for the brilliancy of Madison’s success. The attempt to
approve Erskine’s arrangement without approving Jefferson’s system,
required ingenuity as great as was shown in the similar attempt of Madison
to weigh down Erskine’s arrangement by coupling it with the embargo.
These party tactics would hardly deserve notice had not John Randolph, in
drawing a sharp line between Jefferson and Madison, enlivened the
monotony of debate by comments not without interest.
“Without the slightest disposition to create unpleasant sensations,” said he, “to go
back upon the footsteps of the last four years, I do unequivocally say that I believe the

country will never see such another Administration as the last. It had my hearty
approbation for one half of its career; as for my opinion of the remainder of it, it has
been no secret. The lean kine of Pharaoh devoured the fat kine; the last four years,
with the embargo in their train, ate up the rich harvest of the first four; and if we had
not had some Joseph to have stepped in and changed the state of things, what would
have been now the condition of the country? I repeat it,—never has there been any
Administration which went out of office and left the country in a state so deplorable
and calamitous as the last.”

Not satisfied with criticising Jefferson, Randolph committed himself to
the opinion that Canning had been influenced by the same antipathy, and
had been withheld from earlier concessions only by Jefferson’s conduct:—
“Mr. Canning obtained as good a bargain from us as he could have expected to
obtain; and those gentlemen who speak of his having heretofore had it in his power to
have done the same, did not take into calculation the material difference between the
situation in which we now stand and the situation in which we before stood.”

In the virulence of temper with which Randolph blackened the
Administration of Jefferson, he could not help committing himself to
unqualified support of Madison; and even Barent Gardenier, whose temper
was at least as indiscreet as Randolph’s, seemed to revel in the pleasure of
depressing the departed President in order to elevate the actual Executive,
whose eight years of coming power were more dangerous to the opposition
than the eight years of Jefferson had ever been.
“I am pretty well satisfied,” said Barent Gardenier,[64] “that when the secret
history of the two last years is divulged, it will be found that while the former
President was endeavoring to fan the flames of war, the Secretary of State ... was
smoothing the way for the happy discharge of his Presidential duties when he should
come to the chair. I think it did him honor.... It is for the promptitude and frankness
with which the President met the late overture that I thank him most cordially for my
country. I approve it most heartily.... And it is now in proof before us, as I have said
and contended, that nothing was wanting but a proper spirit of conciliation, and fair
and honorable dealing on the part of this country, to bring to a happy issue all the
fictitious differences between this country and Great Britain.”

Political indiscretion could go no further. The rule that in public life one
could never safely speak well of an opponent, was illustrated by the mistake
of the Federalists in praising Madison merely to gratify their antipathy to
Jefferson. Had they been silent; or had they shown suspicion, they would
have been safe; but all admitted that French influence and hostility to
England had vanished with Jefferson; all were positive that England had
gained what she had sought, and that Canning had every reason to be
satisfied. For the moment Madison was the most popular President that ever

had met Congress. At no session since 1789 had such harmony prevailed as
during the five weeks of this political paradise, although not one element
had changed its character or position, and the harmony, like the discord,
was a play of imagination. Congress passed its bills with unanimity
altogether new. That which restored relations of commerce with England
passed without discussion, except on the point whether French ships of war
should be admitted to American ports. Somewhat to the alarm of the
Eastern men, Congress decided not to exclude French national vessels,—a
decision which threw some doubt on Madison’s wish to push matters to a
head with Napoleon. Yet care was taken to avoid offence to Great Britain.
Little was said and nothing was done about impressments. An attempt to
increase the protective duties was defeated. Not a voice was raised on
behalf of France; not a fear of Napoleon’s revenge found tongue.
Although no one ventured to avow suspicion that Canning would refuse
to ratify Erskine’s act, news continued to arrive from England which
seemed hard to reconcile with any immediate thought, in the British
ministry, of giving up their restrictive system. June 10, the day when amid
universal delight the new arrangement went into effect, the public pleasure
was not a little disturbed by the arrival of news that on April 26 the British
government had issued a very important Order in Council, revoking the
order of Nov. 11, 1807, and establishing in its place a general blockade of
Holland, France, and Italy. This step, though evidently a considerable
concession,—which would have produced its intended effect in checking
hostile feeling if Erskine had not intervened,—roused anxiety because of its
remote resemblance to Erskine’s arrangement, which it seemed to adopt by
means that the United States could not admit as legal or consistent with the
terms of Erskine’s letters.
“The new Orders,” wrote Madison to Jefferson,[65] ... “present a curious feature
in the conduct of the British Cabinet. It is explained by some at the expense of its
sincerity. It is more probably ascribed, I think, to an awkwardness in getting out of an
awkward situation, and to the policy of withholding as long as possible from France
the motive of its example to have advances on her part toward adjustment with us.
The crooked proceeding seems to be operating as a check to the extravagance of
credit given to Great Britain for the late arrangement with us, and so far may be
salutary.”

Such reasoning was soon felt to be insufficient. The more the new order
was studied, the less its motive was understood. How could Canning in
January have authorized Erskine to withdraw the orders of 1807 without

reserve, when in April, without waiting to hear from Erskine, he himself
withdrew those orders only to impose another that had every mark of
permanence? How could Erskine, April 18, have been authorized to throw
open the ports of Holland, when his Government, April 26, was engaged in
imposing a new blockade upon them? So rapidly did the uneasiness of
Congress increase that Erskine was obliged to interpose. June 15 he wrote
an official note to the Secretary of State, which the President sent the same
day to Congress.[66]
“I have the honor,” said Erskine, “to enclose a copy of an Order of his Majesty in
Council issued on the 26th of April last. In consequence of official communications
sent to me from his Majesty’s government since the adoption of that measure, I am
enabled to assure you that it has no connection whatever with the overtures which I
have been authorized to make to the government of the United States; and that I am
persuaded that the terms of the agreement so happily concluded by the recent
negotiation will be strictly fulfilled on the part of his Majesty.”

The expressions of this letter, if carefully read, still left cause for doubt;
and Madison saw it, although he clung to what he thought he had gained.
June 20 he wrote again to Jefferson:[67]—
“The ‘Gazette’ of yesterday contains the mode pursued for reanimating confidence
in the pledge of the British government given by Mr. Erskine in his arrangement with
this government. The puzzle created by the Order of April struck every one. Erskine
assures us that his Government was under such impressions as to the views of this,
that not the slightest expectation existed of our fairly meeting its overtures, and that
the last order was considered as a seasonable mitigation of the tendency of a failure of
the experiment. This explanation seems as extraordinary as the alternative it shows.
The fresh declarations of Mr. Erskine seem to have quieted the distrust which was
becoming very strong, but has not destroyed the effect of the ill grace stamped on the
British retreat, and of the commercial rigor evinced by the new and insidious duties
stated in the newspapers. It may be expected, I think, that the British government will
fulfil what its minister has stipulated; and that if it means to be trickish, it will
frustrate the proposed negotiation, and then say their orders were not permanently
repealed but only withdrawn in the mean time.”

Madison had chosen to precipitate a decision, with a view to profiting in
either case, whether England consented or refused to have her hands thus
forced. Indeed, if he had not himself been old in the ways of diplomacy,
Turreau was on the spot to warn him, and lost no chance of lecturing the
Administration on the folly of trusting Erskine’s word.
Meanwhile Turreau so far lost his temper as to address to Secretary
Smith a long letter complaining of the persistently unfriendly attitude of the
United States government toward France. So strong was the language of the

letter that Turreau was obliged to withdraw it.[68] Robert Smith attempted to
pacify him by assurances that the new Administration would respect the
Spanish possessions more strictly than the old one had done.
“The Secretary of State did not deny that there might have been some attempt in
that direction,” reported Turreau, June 14,[69] “but at the same time, while himself
alluding to the affair of Miranda, he attributed these events to causes independent of
the actual Administration and anterior to its existence, and especially to the weakness
and the indiscretions of Mr. Jefferson; that he [Smith] was then in the Cabinet, and
knew better than any one how much the want of vigor (mollesse), the uncertainty, and
absence of plan in the Executive head had contributed to the false steps of the Federal
government.”

The new Administration meant to show vigor. Every act and expression
implied that its path was to be direct to its ends. The President and Congress
waited with composure for the outcome of Erskine’s strange conduct.
No new measure was suggested, after June 10, to provide for the chance
that Erskine’s arrangement might fail, and that the Order in Council of April
26, 1809, might prove to be a permanent system. Congress seemed disposed
to indulge the merchants to the utmost in their eagerness for trade. The
nearest approach to suspicion was shown in the House by appropriating
$750,000 for fortifications. Randolph, Macon, Eppes, and Richard M.
Johnson tried to reduce the amount to $150,000. The larger appropriation
was understood to mean an intention of preparing for attack, and eighty-
four members sustained the policy against a minority of forty-seven; but
notwithstanding this vote and the anxiety caused by the new Order in
Council, Congress decided to stop enlistments for the army; and by an Act
approved June 28 the President was authorized, “in the event of a favorable
change in our foreign relations,” to reduce the naval force, although the
words of the Act implied doubt whether the favorable change would take
place.
Nothing could be happier for Madison than this situation, where all
parties were held in check not only by his success but by his danger. So
completely was discipline restored, that June 27 he ventured to send the
name of J. Q. Adams a second time to the Senate as minister to Russia; and
nineteen Republicans confirmed the nomination, while but one adhered to
the opinion that the mission was unnecessary. The power of England over
America was never more strikingly shown than by the sudden calm which
fell on the country, in full prospect of war with France, at a word from a

British minister. As Canning frowned or smiled, faction rose to frenzy or
lay down to slumber throughout the United States. No sooner did the news
of Erskine’s arrangement reach Quebec May 1, than Sir James Craig
recalled his secret agent, John Henry, from Boston, where he still lingered.
“I am cruelly out of spirits,” wrote Secretary Ryland to Henry,[70] “at the
idea of Old England truckling to such a debased and accursed government
as that of the United States;” but since this was the case, Henry’s services
could no longer be useful. He returned to Montreal early in June.
June 28 Congress adjourned, leaving the Executive, for the first time in
many years, almost without care, until the fourth Monday in November.

CHAPTER V.
Erskine’s despatches were received by Canning May 22, and the
“Morning Post” of the next day printed the news with approval: “Upon this
pleasing event we sincerely congratulate the public.” The “Times” of May
24 accepted the arrangement: “We shall not urge anything against the
concessions.” May 25, with “considerable pain though but little surprise,”
the same newspaper announced that Erskine was disavowed by the
Government.
Canning’s abrupt rejection of Erskine’s arrangement without
explanation must have seemed even to himself a high-handed course, at
variance with some of his late professions, certain to injure or even to
destroy British influence in America, and likely to end in war. To the
settlement as a practical measure no objection could be alleged. No charge
of bad faith could be supported. No shadow of law or reason could be
devised for enforcing against America rights derived from retaliation upon
France, when America enforced stronger measures of retaliation upon
France than those imposed by the Orders in Council. Neither the Non-
importation Act of 1806, nor the “Chesapeake” proclamation of 1807, nor
the embargo, nor the Non-intercourse Act of March, 1809, could be used to
justify the rejection of an arrangement which evaded or removed every
British grievance. Even the subject of impressments had been suppressed by
the American government. Madison flung himself into Canning’s arms, and
to fling him back was an effort of sheer violence.
Perhaps the effort gave to Canning’s conduct an air that he would not
naturally have cared to betray; for his manner was that of a man irritated by
finding himself obliged to be brutal. In the want of a reason for rejecting the
American arrangement, he was reduced to rejecting it without giving a
reason. The process of disciplining Erskine was simple, for Erskine had
disregarded instructions to an extent that no government could afford to
overlook; but President Madison was not in the employ of the British king,
and had a right to such consideration at least as one gentleman commonly
owes to another.

Canning addressed himself first to the simpler task. May 22, a few
hours after receiving the despatches from Washington, he wrote a despatch
to Erskine in regard to the “Chesapeake” arrangement.[71] He reminded
Erskine that his instructions had required the formal exclusion of French
war-vessels and the formal withdrawal of the “Chesapeake” proclamation
before any arrangement should be concluded. Not only had these conditions
been neglected, but two other less serious errors had been made.
Variations from the rigor of instructions might be ground for reproving
Erskine, but could hardly excuse a disavowal of the compact; yet the
compact was disavowed. An impression was general that the Ministry were
disposed to ratify it, but were withheld by the paragraph in Robert Smith’s
letter defining what was due from his Britannic Majesty to his own honor.
Milder Foreign Secretaries than George Canning would have found
themselves obliged to take notice of such a reflection, and Canning
appeared at his best when his adversaries gave him an excuse for the lofty
tone he liked to assume.
“It remains for me,” he continued, “to notice the expressions, so full of disrespect
to his Majesty, with which that note concludes; and I am to signify to you the
displeasure which his Majesty feels that any minister of his Majesty should have
shown himself so far insensible of what is due to the dignity of his sovereign as to
have consented to receive and transmit a note in which such expressions were
contained.”

Canning was hardly the proper person to criticise Robert Smith’s
disrespectful expressions, which, whatever their intention, failed to be
nearly as offensive as many of his own; but this was a matter between
himself and Erskine. Even after granting the propriety of his comment,
diplomatic usage seemed to require that some demand of explanation or
apology from the American government should precede the rejection of an
engagement otherwise satisfactory; but no such step was in this case taken
through Erskine. His settlement of the “Chesapeake” outrage was
repudiated without more words, and the next day Canning repudiated the
rest of the arrangement.
Nothing could be easier than to show that Erskine had violated his
instructions more plainly in regard to the Orders in Council than in regard
to the “Chesapeake” affair. Of the three conditions imposed by Canning, not
one had been fulfilled. The first required the repeal of all Non-intercourse

Acts against England, “leaving them in force with respect to France;” but
Erskine had doubly failed to secure it:[72]—
“As the matter at present stands before the world in your official correspondence
with Mr. Smith, the American government would be at liberty to-morrow to repeal the
Non-intercourse Act altogether, without infringing the agreement which you have
thought proper to enter into on behalf of his Majesty; and if such a clause was thought
necessary to this condition at the time when my instructions were written, it was
obviously become much more so when the Non-intercourse Act was passed for a
limited time. You must also have been aware at the time of making the agreement that
the American government had in fact formally exempted Holland, a Power which has
unquestionably ‘adopted and acted under the Decrees of France,’ from the operation
of the Non-intercourse Act,—an exemption in direct contravention of the condition
prescribed to you, and which of itself ought to have prevented you from coming to
any agreement whatever.”

Here, again, sufficient reasons were given for punishing Erskine; but
these reasons were not equally good for repudiating the compact with the
United States. No American vessels could enter a Dutch port so long as the
British blockade lasted; therefore the exemption of Holland from the non-
intercourse affected England only by giving to her navy another chance for
booty, and to the Americans one more empty claim. Canning himself
explained to Pinkney[73] “that the exemption of Holland from the effect of
our embargo and non-intercourse would not have been much objected to by
the British government” if the President had been willing to pledge himself
to enforce the non-intercourse against France; but for aught that appeared to
the contrary, “the embargo and non-intercourse laws might be suffered
without any breach of faith to expire, or might even be repealed
immediately, notwithstanding the perseverance of France in her Berlin and
other edicts; and that Mr. Erskine had in truth secured nothing more, as the
consideration of the recall of the Orders in Council, than the renewal of
American intercourse with Great Britain.”
Thus Canning justified the repudiation of Erskine’s arrangement by the
single reason that the United States government could not be trusted long
enough to prove its good faith. The explanation was difficult to express in
courteous or diplomatic forms; but perhaps its most striking quality, next to
its want of courtesy, was its evident want of candor. Had the American
government evaded its obligation, the British government held the power of
redress in its own hands. Clearly the true explanation was to be sought
elsewhere, in some object which Canning could not put in diplomatic
words, but which lay in the nature of Perceval’s system. Even during the

three days while the decision was supposed to be in doubt, alarmed
merchants threw themselves in crowds on the Board of Trade, protesting
that if American vessels with their cheaper sugar, cotton, and coffee were
allowed to enter Amsterdam and Antwerp, British trade was at an end.[74]
The mere expectation of their arrival would create such a fall in prices as to
make worthless the accumulated mass of such merchandise with which the
warehouses were filled, not only in London, but also in the little island of
Heligoland at the mouth of the Elbe, where a system of licensed and
unlicensed smuggling had been established under the patronage of the
Board of Trade. Deputations of these merchants waited on Earl Bathurst to
represent the danger of allowing even those American ships to enter
Holland which might have already sailed from the United States on the faith
of Erskine’s arrangement. Somewhat unexpectedly ministers refused to
gratify this prayer. An Order in Council of May 24, while announcing the
Royal repudiation of Erskine’s arrangement, declared that American vessels
which should have cleared for Holland between April 19 and July 20 would
not be molested in their voyage.
The chief objection to Erskine’s arrangement, apart from its effect on
British merchants, consisted in the danger that by its means America might
compel France to withdraw her decrees affecting neutrals. The chance that
Erskine’s arrangement might involve America in war with Napoleon was
not worth the equal chance of its producing in the end an amicable
arrangement with Napoleon which would sacrifice the last defence of
British commerce and manufactures. Had the British government given
way, Napoleon, to whom the most solemn pledges cost nothing, would
certainly persuade President Madison to lean once more toward France. The
habit of balancing the belligerents—the first rule of American diplomacy—
required the incessant see-saw of interest. So many unsettled questions
remained open that British ministers could not flatter themselves with
winning permanent American favor by partial concession.
To Canning’s despatch repudiating the commercial arrangement,
Erskine made a reply showing more keenness and skill than was to be found
in Canning’s criticism.
“It appears from the general tenor of your despatches,” wrote Erskine[75] on
receiving these letters of May 22 and 23, “that his Majesty’s government were not
willing to trust to assurances from the American government, but that official pledges

were to have been required which could not be given for want of power, some of them
also being of a nature which would prevent a formal recognition. Had I believed that
his Majesty’s government were determined to insist upon these conditions being
complied with in one particular manner only, I should have adhered implicitly to my
instructions; but as I collected from them that his Majesty was desirous of
accomplishing his retaliatory system by such means as were most compatible with a
good understanding with friendly and neutral Powers, I felt confident that his Majesty
would approve of the arrangement I had concluded as one likely to lead to a cordial
and complete understanding and co-operation on the part of the United States, which
co-operation never could be obtained by previous stipulations either from the
government of the United States, who have no power to accede to them, or from
Congress, which would never acknowledge them as recognitions to guide their
conduct.”

This reply, respectful in form, placed Secretary Canning in the dilemma
between the guilt of ignorance or that of bad faith; but the rejoinder of a
dismissed diplomatist weighed little except in history, and long before it
was made public Erskine and his arrangement had ceased to interest the
world. Canning disposed of both forever by a third despatch, dated May 30,
enclosing to Erskine an Order in Council disavowing his arrangement and
ordering him back to England.
When the official disavowal appeared in the newspapers of May 25,
Canning had an interview with Pinkney.[76] At great length and with much
detail he read the instructions he had given to Erskine, and commented on
the points in which Erskine had violated them. He complained of unfriendly
expressions in the American notes; but he did not say why the arrangement
failed to satisfy all the legitimate objects of England, nor did he suggest any
improvement or change which would make the arrangement, as it existed,
agreeable to him. On the other hand, he announced that though Erskine
would have to be recalled, his successor was already appointed and would
sail for America within a few days.
If Canning showed, by his indulgence to American vessels and his haste
to send out a new minister, the wish to avoid a rupture with the United
States, his selection of an agent for that purpose was so singular as to
suggest that he relied on terror rather than on conciliation. In case Erskine
had obeyed his instructions, which ordered him merely to prepare the way
for negotiation, Canning had fixed upon George Henry Rose as the
negotiator.[77] Considering the impression left in America by Rose on his
previous mission, his appointment seemed almost the worst that could have
been made; but bad as the effect of such a selection would have been, one

man, and perhaps only one, in England was certain to make a worse; and
him Canning chose. The new minister was Francis James Jackson.
Whatever good qualities Jackson possessed were overshadowed by the
reputation he had made for himself at Copenhagen. His name was a threat
of violence; his temper and manners were notorious; and nothing but his
rank in the service marked him as suitable for the post. Pinkney, whose self-
control and tact in these difficult circumstances could hardly be too much
admired, listened in silence to Canning’s announcement, and rather than
risk making the situation worse, reported that Jackson was, he believed, “a
worthy man, and although completely attached to all those British
principles and doctrines which sometimes give us trouble will, I should
hope, give satisfaction.” The English press was not so forbearing. The
“Morning Chronicle” of May 29 said that the appointment had excited
general surprise, owing to “the character of the individual;” and Pinkney
himself, in a later despatch, warned his Government that “it is rather a
prevailing notion here that this gentleman’s conduct will not and cannot be
what we all wish, and that a better choice might have been made.”[78]
Jackson himself sought the position, knowing its difficulties. May 23,
the day of his appointment, he wrote privately to his brother in Spain: “I am
about to enter upon a most delicate—I hope not desperate—enterprise.”[79]
At a later time, embittered by want of support from home, he complained
that Canning had sent him on an errand which he knew to be impossible to
perform.[80] So well understood between Canning and Jackson was the
nature of the service, that Jackson asked and received as a condition of his
acceptance the promise that his employment should last not less than twelve
months.[81] The delicate enterprise of which he spoke could have been
nothing more than that of preventing a rupture between England and
America; but until he studied his instructions, he could hardly have known
in its full extent how desperate this undertaking would be.
Canning made no haste. Nearly two months elapsed before Jackson
sailed. After correcting Erskine’s mistake and replacing the United States in
their position under the Orders in Council of April 26, Canning, June 13,
made a statement to the House of Commons. Declining to touch questions
of general policy for the reason that negotiations were pending, he
contented himself with satisfying the House that Erskine had acted contrary
to instructions and deserved recall. James Stephen showed more clearly the

spirit of Government by avowing the opinion “that America in all her
proceedings had no wish to promote an impartial course with respect to
France and this country.” The Whigs knew little or nothing of the true facts;
Erskine’s conduct could not be defended; no one cared to point out that
Canning left to America no dignified course but war, and public interest was
once more concentrated with painful anxiety on the continent of Europe.
America dropped from sight, and Canning’s last and worst acts toward the
United States escaped notice or knowledge.
The session of Parliament ended June 21, a week before the special
session of Congress came to an end; and while England waited impatiently
for news from Vienna, where Napoleon was making ready for the battle of
Wagram, Canning drew up the instructions to Jackson,—the last of the
series of papers by which, through the peculiar qualities of his style even
more than by the violence of his acts, he embittered to a point that seemed
altogether contrary to their nature a whole nation of Americans against the
nation that gave them birth. If the famous phrase of Canning was ever in
any sense true,—that he called a new world into existence to redress the
balance of the old,—it was most nearly true in the sense that his instructions
and letters forced the United States into a nationality of character which the
war of the Revolution itself had failed to give them.
The instructions to Jackson[82]—five in number—were dated July 1, and
require careful attention if the train of events which brought the United
States to the level of war with England is to be understood.
The first instruction began by complaint of Erskine’s conduct, passing
quickly to a charge of bad faith against the American government, founded
on “the publicity so unwarrantably given” to Erskine’s arrangement:—
“The premature publication of the correspondence by the American government
so effectually precluded any middle course of explanation and accommodation that it
is hardly possible to suppose that it must not have been resorted to in a great measure
with that view.
“The American government cannot have believed that such an arrangement as Mr.
Erskine consented to accept was conformable to his instructions. If Mr. Erskine
availed himself of the liberty allowed to him of communicating those instructions on
the affair of the Orders in Council, they must have known that it was not so; but even
without such communication they cannot by possibility have believed that without
any new motive, and without any apparent change in the dispositions of the enemy,
the British government could have been disposed at once and unconditionally to give
up the system on which they have been acting, and which they had so recently refused

to relinquish, even in return for considerations which though far from being
satisfactory were yet infinitely more so than anything which can be supposed to have
been gained by Mr. Erskine’s arrangement.”

Canning attributed this conduct to a hope held by President Madison
that the British government would feel itself compelled, however
reluctantly, to sanction an agreement which it had not authorized. In this
case the American government had only itself to blame for the
consequences:—
“So far, therefore, from the American government having any reason to complain
of the non-ratification of Mr. Erskine’s unauthorized agreement, his Majesty has on
his part just ground of complaint for that share of the inconvenience from the
publication which may have fallen upon his Majesty’s subjects, so far as their interests
may have been involved in the renewed speculations of their American
correspondents; and his Majesty cannot but think any complaint, if any should be
made on this occasion in America, the more unreasonable, as the government of the
United States is that government which perhaps of all others has most freely exercised
the right of withholding its ratification from even the authorized acts of its own
diplomatic agents.”

In this spirit Jackson was to meet any “preliminary discussion” which
might arise before he could proceed to negotiation. Canning did not touch
on the probability that if Jackson met preliminary discussion in such a spirit
as this, he would run something more than a risk of never reaching
negotiation at all; or if Canning considered this point, he treated it orally.
The other written instructions given to Jackson dealt at once with
negotiation.
The “Chesapeake” affair came first in order, and was quickly dismissed.
Jackson was to require from the President a written acknowledgment that
the interdict on British ships was annulled before any settlement could be
made. The Orders in Council came next, and were the subject of a long
instruction, full of interest and marked by many of Canning’s peculiarities.
Once more he explained that Erskine had inverted the relation of things by
appearing to recall the orders as an inducement to the renewal of trade,
—“as if in any arrangement, whether commercial or political, his Majesty
could condescend to barter objects of national policy and dignity for
permission to trade with another country. The character even more than the
stipulations of such a compact must under any circumstances have put out
of question the possibility of his Majesty’s consenting to confirm it.” He
related the history of the orders, which he called “defensive retaliation,” and

explained why Erskine’s arrangement failed to effect the object of that
system:—
“In the arrangement agreed to by Mr. Erskine the incidental consequence is
mistaken for the object of the negotiation. His Majesty is made by his minister to
concede the whole point in dispute by the total and unconditional recall of the Orders
in Council; and nothing is done by the United States in return except to permit their
citizens to renew their commercial intercourse with Great Britain. Whereas, before his
Majesty’s consent to withdraw or even to modify the Orders in Council was declared,
the United States should have taken upon themselves to execute in substance the
objects of the Orders in Council by effectually prohibiting all trade between their
citizens and France, or the Powers acting under her decrees, and by engaging for the
continuance of that prohibition so long as those decrees should continue unrepealed.”

As in the “Chesapeake” affair, so in regard to the orders,—Canning’s
objection to Erskine’s arrangement was stated as one of form. That the
“Chesapeake” proclamation was no longer in force; that Congress had
effectually prohibited trade with France; and that the President had engaged
as far as he could to continue that prohibition till the French Decrees were
repealed,—these were matters of notoriety. England took the ground that
the United States were liable to the operation of the British retaliatory
orders against France, even though Congress should have declared war
upon France, unless the declaration of war was regularly made known to the
British minister at Washington, and unless “the United States should have
taken upon themselves,” by treaty with England, to continue the war till
France repealed her decrees.
Canning was happy in the phrase he employed in Parliament, March 6,
to justify the course of ministers toward America. “Extension of the law of
nations” described well the Orders in Council themselves; but the
instruction to Jackson was remarkable as a prodigious extension of the
extended orders. The last legal plea was abandoned by these instructions,
and the subject would have been the clearer for that abandonment were it
not that owing to the rapidity of events the new extravagance was never
known; with Canning himself the subject slipped from public view, and
only the mystery remained of Canning’s objects and expectations.
Another man would have temporized, and would have offered some
suggestion toward breaking the force of such a blow at a friendly people.
Not only did Canning make no new suggestion, but he even withdrew that
which he had made in February. He told Jackson to propose nothing
whatever:—

“You are to inform the American Secretary of State that in the event of the
government of the United States being desirous now to adopt this proposal, you are
authorized to renew the negotiation and to conclude it on the terms of my instructions
to Mr. Erskine; but that you are not instructed to press upon the acceptance of the
American government an arrangement which they have so recently declined,
especially as the arrangement itself is become less important, and the terms of it less
applicable to the state of things now existing.”

The remainder of this despatch was devoted to proving that, the late
order of April 26 had so modified that of November, 1807, as to remove the
most serious American objections; and although the blockade was more
restrictive than the old orders as concerned French and Dutch colonies, yet
the recent surrender of Martinique had reduced the practical hardship of this
restriction so considerably that it was fairly offset by the opening of the
Baltic. America had the less inducement to a further arrangement which
could little increase the extent of her commerce, while England was
indifferent provided she obtained her indispensable objects:—
“I am therefore not to direct you to propose to the American government any
formal agreement to be substituted for that which his Majesty has been under the
necessity of disavowing. You are, however, at liberty to receive for reference home
any proposal which the American government may tender to you; but it is only in the
case of that proposal comprehending all the three conditions which Mr. Erskine was
instructed to require.”

The fourth instruction prescribed the forms in which such an
arrangement, if made, must be framed. The fifth dealt with another branch
of the subject,—the Rule of 1756. Canning declined to accept a mere
understanding in regard to this rule. Great Britain would insist on her right
to prohibit neutral trade with enemies’ colonies, “of which she has
permitted the exercise only by indulgence; ... but the indulgence which was
granted for peculiar and temporary reasons being now withdrawn, the
question is merely whether the rule from which such an indulgence was a
deviation shall be established by the admission of America or enforced as
heretofore by the naval power of Great Britain.” As a matter of courtesy the
British government had no objection to allowing the United States to
sanction by treaty the British right, so that legal condemnations should be
made under the authority of the treaty instead of an Order in Council; “but
either authority is sufficient. No offence is taken at the refusal of the United
States to make this matter subject of compact. The result is that it must be
the subject of an Order in Council.”

The result was that it became the subject of a much higher tribunal than
his Majesty’s Council, and that the British people, and Canning himself,
took great offence at the refusal of the United States to make it a subject of
one-sided compact; but with this concluding touch Canning’s official irony
toward America ended, and he laid down his pen. About the middle of June,
Jackson with three well-defined casus belli in his portfolio, and another—
that of impressments—awaiting his arrival, set sail for America on the
errand which he strangely hoped might not be desperate. With his departure
Canning’s control of American relations ceased. At the moment when he
challenged for the last time an instant declaration of war from a people who
had no warmer wish than to be permitted to remain his friends, the career of
the Administration to which he belonged came to an end in scandalous
disaster.
Hardly had the Duke of York stopped one source of libel, by resigning
May 16 his office of commanderin-chief, when fresh troubles from many
directions assailed ministers. As early as April 4, Canning had satisfied the
Duke of Portland that he must dismiss Castlereagh for incompetence, and
every Cabinet minister except Castlereagh himself was acquainted with this
decision; but contrary to Canning’s wishes no action was taken, and the
conduct of the war was left at a critical moment in the hands of a man
whose removal for incompetence had been decreed by his own colleagues.
The summer campaign was then fought. April 9 Austria had begun another
war with Napoleon. At Essling, May 21, she nearly won a great victory; at
Wagram, July 6, she lost a battle, and soon afterward entered on
negotiations which ended, October 20, in the treaty of Vienna. While this
great campaign went on, Sir Arthur Wellesley drove Soult out of Portugal
much as Napoleon had driven Sir John Moore out of Spain; and then
marching up the valley of the Tagus scared Joseph a second time from
Madrid, and fought, July 28, the desperate battle of Talavera. In any case
the result of the Austrian war would have obliged him to retreat; but the
concentration of the French forces in his front quickly drove the British
army back toward Lisbon, and ended all hope of immediate success in the
Peninsula. A third great effort against Napoleon was directed from London
toward the Scheldt and Meuse. The Cabinet, June 14, decided that
Castlereagh should attempt this experiment; for raids of the kind had
charms for a naval power, and although success could affect the war but
little, it might assist smuggling and destroy a naval depot of Napoleon.

Castlereagh sent to the Scheldt forty thousand soldiers who were grievously
wanted on the Tagus. July 28, while Wellington fought the battle of
Talavera, Lord Chatham’s expedition started from the Downs, and reaching
the mouth of the Scheldt occupied itself until August 15 with the capture of
Flushing. In gaining this success the army was worn out; nearly half its
number were suffering from typhoid, and September 2 the Cabinet
unanimously voted to recall the expedition.
Talavera and Flushing closed Castlereagh’s career in the War Office, as
Jackson’s mission closed that of Canning in American diplomacy. Defeat
abroad, ruin at home, disgrace and disaster everywhere were the results of
two years of Tory administration. August 11 the Duke of Portland was
struck by paralysis; and deprived of its chief, the Cabinet went to pieces.
September 7 Castlereagh was gently forced to resign. Canning, refusing to
serve under Perceval or under any one whom Perceval suggested, tendered
his own resignation. In the course of the complicated negotiations that
followed, Perceval showed to Castlereagh letters in which for a year past
Canning had pressed Castlereagh’s removal from office. Then at last
Castlereagh discovered, as he conceived, that Canning was not a gentleman
or a man of honor, and having called him out, September 21, in a duel on
Putney Heath shot him through the thigh.
Such an outcome was a natural result of such an Administration; but as
concerned the United States Canning had already done all the harm
possible, and more than three generations could wholly repair.

CHAPTER VI.
The news of Erskine’s disavowal reached America so slowly that
merchants enjoyed three months of unrestricted trade, and shipped to
England or elsewhere the accumulations of nearly two years’ produce. From
April 21 till July 21 this process of depletion continued without an anxiety;
and when July 21 news arrived that the arrangement had been repudiated,
merchants still had time to hurry their last cargoes to sea before the
government could again interpose.
The first effect of Canning’s disavowal seemed bewilderment. No one
in the United States, whether enemy or friend of England, could for a time
understand why Canning had taken so perplexing a course. Very few of
England’s friends could believe that her conduct rested on the motives she
avowed; they sought for some noble, or at least some respectable, object
behind her acts. For several months the Federalist newspapers were at a loss
for words, and groped in the dark for an English hand to help them; while
the Republican press broke into anger, which expressed the common
popular feeling. “The late conduct of the British ministry,” said the
“National Intelligencer” of July 26, “has capped the climax of atrocity
toward this country.” Every hope of reconciliation or even of peace with
England seemed almost extinguished; yet the country was still far from a
rupture. Not until popular feeling could express itself in a new election
would the national will be felt; and the next election was still more than a
year away, while the Congress to be then chosen would meet only in
December, 1811. Until then war was improbable, perhaps impossible,
except by the act of England.
When the news arrived, President Madison was at his Virginia
plantation. During his absence Gallatin was in charge of matters at
Washington, and on the instant wrote that he thought the President should
return. In a letter of July 27, three days after the news reached Washington,
Gallatin gave his own view of the situation:[83]—
“I will not waste time in conjectures respecting the true cause of the conduct of
the British government, nor can we, until we are better informed, lay any permanent
plan of conduct for ourselves. I will only observe that we are not so well prepared for
resistance as we were one year ago. Then all or almost all our mercantile wealth was
safe at home, our resources entire, and our finances sufficient to carry us through

during the first year of the contest. Our property is now all afloat; England relieved by
our relaxations might stand two years of privations with ease. We have wasted our
resources without any national utility; and our treasury being exhausted, we must
begin our plan of resistance with considerable and therefore unpopular loans.”

The immediate crisis called first for attention. Gallatin held that the
Non-intercourse Act necessarily revived from the moment the supposed fact
on which alone its suspension rested was shown not to have taken place.
The remoter problem of Jackson’s mission seemed to the secretary simpler
than the question of law:[84]—
“If we are too weak or too prudent to resist England in the direct and proper
manner, I hope at least that we shall not make a single voluntary concession
inconsistent with our rights and interest. If Mr. Jackson has any compromise to offer
which would not be burdened with such, I shall be very agreeably disappointed. But
judging by what is said to have been the substance of Mr. Erskine’s instructions, what
can we expect but dishonorable and inadmissible proposals? He is probably sent out
like Mr. Rose to amuse and to divide; and we shall, I trust, by coming at once to the
point, bring his negotiation to an immediate close.”

The President heard the news with as much perplexity as anger, and
even tried to persuade himself that Canning would be less severe than he
threatened. Madison still clung to hope when he first replied to Gallatin’s
summons:[85]—
“The conduct of the British government in protesting the arrangement of its
minister surprises one in spite of all their examples of folly. If it be not their plan, now
that they have filled their magazines with our supplies and ascertained our want of
firmness in withholding them, to adopt openly a system of monopoly and piracy, it
may be hoped that they will not persist in the scandalous course in which they have
set out. Supposing Erskine to have misunderstood or overstrained his instructions, can
the difference between our trading directly and indirectly with Holland account for the
violent remedy applied to the case? Is it not more probable that they have yielded to
the clamors of the London smugglers in sugar and coffee, whose numbers and
impudence are displayed in the scandalous and successful demand from their
government that it should strangle the lawful trade of a friendly nation lest it should
interfere with their avowed purpose of carrying on a smuggling trade with their
enemies? Such an outrage on all decency was never before heard of even on the
shores of Africa.”

Madison exaggerated. The outrage on decency committed by the British
government in May, 1809, was on the whole not so great as that of Sir
William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” in July, 1805; or that of
the blockade of New York and the killing of Pierce in April, 1806; or that of
Lord Howick’s Order in Council of January, 1807, when the signatures to
Monroe’s treaty were hardly dry; or that of Spencer Perceval’s Orders in

November, 1807, and the speeches made in their defence; or the mission of
George Henry Rose in the winter of 1807–1808; or Erskine’s letter of
February 23, or Canning’s letters of September 23, 1808,—for all these left
the United States in a worse position than that created by the disavowal of
Erskine. Indeed, except for the disgrace of submitting to acts of illegal
force, the United States stood in a comparatively easy attitude after the
orders of April 26, 1809, so long as Napoleon himself enforced within his
empire a more rigid exclusion of neutral commerce than any that could be
effected by a British blockade.
“Still, I cannot but hope,” continued Madison, “on the supposition that there be no
predetermined hostility against our commerce and navigation, that things may take
another turn under the influence of the obvious and striking considerations which
advise it.”

The hope vanished when Erskine’s instructions became known, and was
succeeded by consternation when the public read the reports made by
Erskine and Canning of the language used by Madison, Gallatin, and
Pinkney. For the first time in this contest, Englishmen and Americans could
no longer understand each other’s meaning. Erskine had so confused every
detail with his own ideas, and Canning’s course on one side the Atlantic
seemed so little to accord with his tactics on the other, that neither party
could longer believe in the other’s good faith. Americans were convinced
that Canning had offered terms which he intended them to refuse.
Englishmen were sure that Madison had precipitated a settlement which he
knew could not be carried out. Madison credited Canning with fraud as
freely as Canning charged Madison with connivance.
“I find myself under the mortifying necessity of setting out to-morrow morning
for Washington,” wrote Madison to Jefferson, August 3.[86] “The intricate state of our
affairs with England produced by the mixture of fraud and folly in her late conduct,
and the important questions to be decided as to the legal effect of the failure of the
arrangement of April on our commercial relations with her are thought by the heads of
departments to require that I should join them.... You will see by the instructions to
Erskine, as published by Canning, that the latter was as much determined that there
should be no adjustment as the former was that there should be one.”

The President remained three days in Washington in order to sign,
August 9, a Proclamation reviving the Non-intercourse Act against Great
Britain. On the same day the Secretary of the Treasury enclosed this
Proclamation to the Collectors of Customs in a circular, with instructions
not to enforce the penalties of the law against vessels entering American

ports on the faith of Erskine’s arrangement. This done, Madison returned to
Montpelier, August 10, leaving Erskine to exchange apologetic but very
unsatisfactory explanations with Robert Smith and Gallatin.
The Proclamation of August 9 was sharply criticised, and with reason;
for Congress had given the President no express authority to revive the
Non-intercourse Act, and he had clearly exceeded his powers, if not in the
Proclamation which revived the Act, then certainly in the original
Proclamation of April 19, which set it aside. Even this stretch of authority
hardly equalled Gallatin’s assumption of the power to admit what vessels he
pleased without regard to the Non-intercourse Act. Yet right or wrong the
President had no choice but to use all the powers he needed. Evidently his
original mistake in opening intercourse was a greater stretch of authority
than any subsequent act could be, except that of leaving it open after the
mistake was admitted. Sullenly and awkwardly the Government restored
some degree of order to its system, and then President and Cabinet scattered
once more, leaving the village of Washington to the solitude of August and
September.
A month passed without further change, until September 5 Jackson
landed at Annapolis, whence he reached Washington September 8. He came
with his wife—a fashionable Prussian baroness with a toilette—and young
children, for whose health a Washington September was ill suited; he came
too with a carriage and liveries, coachmen and servants, and the outfit of a
long residence, as though neither he nor Canning doubted his welcome.
Francis James Jackson had many good qualities, and was on the whole
the only English minister of his time so severely treated by the American
government as to warrant almost a feeling of sympathy. He was probably
suffering from some organic disease which made his temper irritable, while
his instructions were such as to leave him no room to show his best
capacities in his profession. In ordinary times a man of his experience,
intelligence, and marked character might have succeeded in winning at
Washington a name for ability and straightforwardness; but he was ill fitted
for the special task he had undertaken, and had no clear idea of the dangers
to which he was exposed. Gallatin expressed the feeling of the
Administration when he advised coming at once to the point with Jackson,
and bringing his negotiation to an immediate close. Madison could not have
wished to repeat his experience with Rose, or to allow a British minister to

reside at Washington for the sole purpose of dividing American counsels
and intriguing with Senator Pickering. Had Jackson been quick in his
perceptions, he would have seen early that nothing but mortification could
be in store for him; but he had the dogged courage and self-confidence of
his time, and undertook to deal single-handed with a government and
people he did not trouble himself to understand.
The President was not in Washington when the British minister drove
into that “famous city,” as he called it, which “resembles more nearly
Hampstead Heath than any other place I ever saw.”[87] Robert Smith
apologized for the incivility of leaving him without the usual public
recognition, and explained that the risk of fever and the fatigue of four
days’ journey made the President extremely unwilling to return before
October 1, the day fixed for Jackson’s reception. Indirectly Smith suggested
that Jackson might visit the President at Montpelier, or even begin
negotiation before being officially received; but the minister replied that he
would cheerfully wait. Gallatin wrote to the President, September 11,—
“I do not think that there is any necessity to hurry yourself beyond your
convenience in returning here. It will be as well the 10th as the 1st of October, for I
am sure, although I have not seen Mr. Jackson and can judge only from what has
passed between him and Mr. Smith, that he has nothing to say of importance, or
pleasant.”[88]

Madison replied, proposing to set out for Washington about the 29th,
but agreeing with Gallatin that in view of “Jackson’s apparent patience and
reserve,” his disclosures “would not be either operative or agreeable.”[89]
Whether Jackson showed patience or activity, he could not avoid giving
offence; and perhaps he did wisely to gain all the time he could, even if he
gained nothing else. Unlike some of his predecessors, he understood how to
make the best of his situation. He found amusement for a month of idleness,
even though the month was September and the place was Washington. He
took the house which Merry and Erskine had occupied,—a house that stood
amid fields looking over Rock Creek to Georgetown:
“Erskine had let it go to such a state of ruin and dirt that it will be several weeks
before we can attempt to move into it. A Scotchman with an American wife who
would be a fine lady, are not the best people to succeed on such an occasion.
“It is but justice to say that I have met with nothing but the utmost civility, and
with none of those hardships and difficulties of which the Merrys so bitterly
complained. The travelling is not worse than much that I have met with before in my

life, and the accommodations are better than many I have thought supportable. The
expense is about the same as in England, and must be considered most exorbitant
when the inferiority of their arrangements to ours and the greater cheapness of
provisions are taken into account.”[90]

As the season advanced, Jackson began to enjoy his autumn picnic on
the heath of Washington. He had an eye for the details which gave interest
to travel. “I put up a covey of partridge,” he wrote October 7, “about three
hundred yards from the House of Congress, yclept the Capitol.” He had the
merit of being first to discover what few men of his time had the taste to
feel,—that Washington was beautiful:—
“I have procured two very good saddle-horses, and Elizabeth and I have been
riding in all directions round this place whenever the weather has been cool enough.
The country has a beautifully picturesque appearance, and I have nowhere seen finer
scenery than is composed by the Potomac and the woods and hills about it; yet it has a
wild and desolate air from being so scantily and rudely cultivated, and from the want
of population.... So you see we are not fallen into a wilderness,—so far from it that I
am surprised no one should before have mentioned the great beauty of the
neighborhood. The natives trouble themselves but little about it; their thoughts are
chiefly of tobacco, flour, shingles, and the news of the day. The Merrys, I suppose,
never got a mile out of Washington, except on their way to Philadelphia.”

Part of Jackson’s leisure was employed in reading Erskine’s
correspondence, although he would have done better had he neglected this
customary duty, and had he brought to his diplomacy no more prejudices
than such as belonged to his nature and training. His disgust with Erskine
only added to his antipathy for Erskine’s objects, methods, and friends.
“My visitors,” he wrote, “are a different set from Erskine’s, I perceive; many of
them he says he never saw. Per contra, many of the Democrats who were his intimates
never come to me, and I am well pleased and somewhat flattered by the distinction....
Erskine is really a greater fool than I could have thought it possible to be, and it is
charity to give him that name.... Now that I have gone through all his correspondence,
more than ever am I at a loss to comprehend how he could have been allowed to
remain here for the last two years.... To be obliged to wade through such a mass of
folly and stupidity, and to observe how our country has been made, through Erskine’s
means, the instrument of these people’s cunning, is not the least part of my
annoyance. Between them our cause is vilified indeed. The tone which Erskine had
accustomed them to use with him, and to use without any notion whatever being taken
of it, is another great difficulty I have had to overcome. Every third word was a
declaration of war.”

The month passed only too soon for Jackson’s comfort, and October 1,
punctual to his word, the President arrived. The next day Erskine had his
farewell audience, and October 3 Jackson was officially received. Merry’s
experience had not been without advantage to both sides; and Jackson, who

seemed to feel more contempt for his own predecessors—Merry and
Erskine—than for his American antagonists, accepted everything in good
part.
“Madison, the President, is a plain and rather mean-looking little man, of great
simplicity of manners, and an inveterate enemy to form and ceremony; so much so
that I was officially informed that my introduction to him was to be considered as
nothing more than the reception of one gentleman by another, and that no particular
dress was to be worn on the occasion,—all which I was very willing to acquiesce in.
Accordingly I went in an afternoon frock, and found the President in similar attire.
Smith, the Secretary of State, who had walked from his office to join me, had on a
pair of dusty boots, and his round hat in his hand. When he had introduced us he
retired, and the President then asked me to take a chair. While we were talking, a
negro servant brought in some glasses of punch and a seed-cake. The former, as I had
been in conference the whole morning, served very agreeably to wet, or whet, my
whistle, and still more strongly to contrast this audience with others I had had with
most of the sovereigns of Europe.”

Perhaps this passing allusion to previous acquaintance with “most of the
sovereigns of Europe” threw a light, somewhat too searching, into the
recesses of Jackson’s character. The weakness was pardonable, and not
specially unsuited to success in his career, but showed itself in private as a
form of self-deception which promised ill for his coming struggle.
Madison’s civility quite misled him.
“I do not know,” he wrote October 24, “that I had ever more civility and attention
shown me than at a dinner at the President’s yesterday, where I was treated with a
distinction not lately accorded to a British minister in this country. A foolish question
of precedence, which ever since Merry’s time has been unsettled, and has occasioned
some heart-burnings among the ladies, was also decided then by the President
departing from his customary indifference to ceremony and etiquette, and taking
Elizabeth in to dinner, while I conducted Mrs. Madison.”

Evidently this deference pleased the British minister, who saw nothing
behind it but a social triumph for himself and his wife; yet he had already
been forced to protest against the ceremonial forms with which Madison
studiously surrounded him, and had he read Shakspeare rather than
Erskine’s writings, he might have learned from Julius Cæsar the general
diplomatic law that “when love begins to sicken and decay, it useth ever an
enforced ceremony.” A man of tact would have seen that from the moment
Madison became formal he was dangerous. The dinner of October 23 at the
White House came at a moment when Jackson had been so carefully
handled and so effectually disarmed as to stand at Madison’s mercy; and
although he was allowed to please himself by taking Mrs. Madison to
dinner, the “mean-looking little man” at the head of the table, was engaged

only in thinking by what stroke the British minister’s official life should be
most quickly and quietly ended.
Jackson’s interviews with Robert Smith began immediately after the
President’s arrival in Washington. The first conversation was reported by
the British minister to his Government in language so lifelike, but showing
such astonishment on both sides at the attitude of each, as to give it place
among the most natural sketches in American diplomatic history. After
some fencing on the subject of Erskine’s responsibility, Jackson passed to
the subject of his own instructions, and remarked that he was ordered to
wait for propositions from the President.
“Here the American minister,” reported Jackson,[91] “exhibited signs of the
utmost surprise and disappointment. He seemed to be so little prepared for this close
of my conversation that he was some time before he could recollect himself
sufficiently to give me any answer at all. Expecting to meet suggestions of a totally
different nature, and finding that what he had ready to say to them did not suit the
occasion, he seemed to require some time and reflection to new arrange his thoughts.
Accordingly a considerable pause in our conversation took place, which at length he
broke in upon by saying: ‘Then, sir, you have no proposal to make to us,—no
explanation to give? How shall we be able to get rid of the Non-intercourse Act?’”

Robert Smith was a wearisome burden to Madison, and his
incompetence made no agreeable object of study; but his apparent
bewilderment at Jackson’s audacity was almost as instructive as the sincere
astonishment of the Englishman at the effect of his own words. The game of
cross-purposes could not be more naturally played. Robert Smith had been
requested by Madison to ascertain precisely what Jackson’s instructions
were; and both at the first and at a second interview he pressed this point,
always trying to discover what Jackson had to offer, while the Englishman
always declined to offer anything whatever. Two conversations satisfied the
President that Jackson’s hands were fast tied, and that he could open no
door of escape. Then Madison gently set the Secretary of State aside, and,
as openly as the office of Chief Magistrate permitted, undertook to deal
with the British minister.
October 9 the Secretary of State sent to the British Legation a formal
letter, written, like all Robert Smith’s important papers, by the President.[92]
After recapitulating the negative results reached in the two interviews,
Jackson was asked whether he had been rightly understood; and the letter
ended by saying, that, “to avoid the misconceptions incident to oral

proceeding, I have also the honor to intimate that it is thought expedient
that our further discussions on the present occasion be in the written
form.”[93]
Jackson saw a challenge in this change of attitude, and undertook to
meet it by vigorous resistance. He had no mind to be thrown on the
defensive; as he wrote to Canning, he wished to teach the American
government not to presume on his patience.
“On connecting all these circumstances,” he reported,[94]—“the manner in which
Mr. Smith had conducted our conferences; the abruptness, especially, with which he
had put an end to them; and the style in which he announces to me, without leaving
any choice or alternative, but as the absolute decision of his Government, ‘that it is
thought expedient that our future discussions on the present occasion’ (i. e., the only
occasion of doing away existing differences) ‘should be in the written form,’—it
occurred to me to be necessary to put the matter on such a footing as to preclude, in
limine, the idea that every species of indirect obloquy was to be patiently submitted to
by his Majesty’s minister in this country.”

In this temper Jackson wrote a long letter, dated October 11, for the
purpose, as he reported to Canning,[95] of checking “that spirit which can
never lead to conciliation, by which America thinks herself entitled to make
her will and her view of things the criterion by which they are to be
generally approved or condemned.” Beginning with the assertion that “there
does not exist in the annals of diplomacy a precedent” for stopping verbal
communication within so few days after the delivery of credentials, he
rehearsed the story of Erskine’s arrangement, and justified his refusal of
apology or explanation. In doing so, he allowed himself to insinuate what
Canning expressly asserted in his instructions, that Robert Smith had
connived at Erskine’s misconduct:—
“It was not known when I left England whether Mr. Erskine had, according to the
liberty allowed him, communicated to you in extenso his original instructions. It now
appears that he did not. But ... I find ... that he has submitted to your consideration the
three conditions specified in those instructions as the ground-work of an
arrangement.... Mr. Erskine reports, verbatim et seriatim, your observations upon each
of the three conditions, and the reasons which induced you to think that others might
be substituted in lieu of them. It may have been concluded between you that these
latter were an equivalent for the original conditions; but the very act of substitution
evidently shows that those original conditions were in fact very explicitly
communicated to you, and by you, of course, laid before the President for his
consideration.”

After justifying the disavowal of Erskine on the admitted ground that he
had disobeyed instructions, Jackson came to the point of his own powers.

“His Majesty has authorized me,” he said, “notwithstanding the ungracious
manner in which his former offer of satisfaction for the affair of the
‘Chesapeake’ was received, to renew that which Mr. Erskine was instructed
to make.” As for the Orders in Council, these had been so far modified by
the blockade of April 26 as to make any formal agreement on that subject
seem unnecessary, and he reserved his proposals until he should hear those
of the President.
Two days after this letter was despatched, Robert Smith sent a civil
message that there had been no intention to stop personal intercourse; “he
should be most happy to see me whenever I would call upon him; we might
converse upon indifferent subjects; but that his memory was so incorrect
that it was on his account necessary that in making his reports to the
President he should have some written document to assist him.”[96] With
this excuse for the secretary’s sudden withdrawal from the field the British
minister contented himself until October 19, when he received an official
letter, signed as usual by Robert Smith, but written with ability such as that
good-natured but illiterate Secretary of State never imagined himself to
possess.
The American note of October 19, far too long to quote or even to
abridge, was perhaps the best and keenest paper Madison ever wrote. His
faults of style and vagueness of thought almost wholly disappeared in the
heat of controversy; his defence was cool, his attack keen, as though his
sixty years weighed lightly the day when he first got his young antagonist at
his mercy. He dealt Jackson a fatal blow at the outset, by reminding him
that in July, 1808, only the previous year, Canning had put an end to oral
communication after two interviews with Pinkney on the subjects under
negotiation. He then made three points, well stated and easily remembered:
(1) That when a government refuses to fulfil a pledge, it owes a formal and
frank disclosure of its reasons. (2) That, in the actual situation, Mr.
Erskine’s successor was the proper channel for that disclosure. (3) That
since Mr. Jackson disclaimed authority to make either explanations or
proposals, the President could do no more than express his willingness to
favor any honorable mode of settling the matters in dispute.
In enlarging on the subjects touched by Jackson’s letter, the President
made more than one remark of the kind that most exasperated the British
minister. Since no settlement of the dispute was possible or even desired by

Jackson, such flashes of Madison’s temper were neither harmful nor
inappropriate, yet they were certainly on the verge of insult. He told
Jackson plainly that Great Britain, by retaining her so-called retaliation after
admitting that it no longer retaliated, was guilty of deception:—
“You cannot but be sensible that a perseverance under such circumstances in a
system which cannot longer be explained by its avowed object would force an
explanation by some object not avowed. What object might be considered as best
explaining it is an inquiry into which I do not permit myself to enter, further than to
remark that in relation to the United States it must be an illegitimate object.”

On the other hand, Madison seemed not to resent, as warmly as he
might have done, the intimation that he had induced Erskine to violate
instructions. The President either affected not to see, or failed fully to grasp
at first, the serious scope of this charge:
“The stress you have laid on what you have been pleased to state as the
substitution of the terms finally agreed on for the terms first proposed, has excited no
small degree of surprise. Certain it is that your predecessor did present for my
consideration the three conditions which now appear on the printed document; that he
was disposed to urge them more than the nature of two of them (both palpably
inadmissible, and one more than merely inadmissible) could permit; and that on
finding his first proposals unsuccessful, the more reasonable terms ... were adopted.
And what, sir, is there in this to countenance the conclusion you have drawn in favor
of the right of his Britannic Majesty to disavow the proceeding? Is anything more
common in public negotiations than to begin with a higher demand, and that failing,
to descend to a lower?”

Contenting himself with the remark that he had for the first time
learned, from Jackson’s note, the restrictions on Erskine’s authority, the
President passed to other points as though unaware that his good faith was
in question.
The letter of October 19 forced Jackson one step backward, and drove
him nearly to the wall. Obliged to choose between the avowal that he had
no proposal to make, or the assertion that he had both explanations and
proposals, he yielded, somewhat surlily, to the weakness of offering
explanations, such as they were, and of inviting proposals eventually to be
embodied in a convention. In a note dated October 23 he answered the
American note of October 19.[97] If Madison had doubted his own
advantage, his doubts must have vanished in reading Jackson’s second note,
which shuffled and evaded the issues in a manner peculiar to disconcerted
men; but the most convincing proof of Jackson’s weakness appeared in the
want of judgment he showed in exposing himself to attack at the moment

when he was seeking safety. He committed the blunder of repeating the
charge that Madison was responsible for Erskine’s violation of instructions:
—
“These instructions ... were at the time, in substance, made known to you.... So far
from the terms which he was actually induced to accept having been contemplated in
that instruction, he himself states that they were substituted by you in lieu of those
originally proposed.”

Jackson’s folly in thus tempting his fate was the more flagrant because
his private letters proved that he knew something of his true position.
“Madison is now as obstinate as a mule,” he wrote October 26.[98] “Until he
gets [the absolute surrender of the Orders in Council] he will not even
accept any satisfaction for the affair of the ‘Chesapeake,’ which has been
now for the third time offered to him in vain;” and he added: “There is
already a great and growing fermentation in the United States, which shows
itself in a manner highly prejudicial to the amity and good understanding
which doubtless our ministers wish to see established between the two
countries.”
A few days after writing this evidence of his own uneasiness, the British
minister received from the Department of State a third note, dated
November 1, which left no doubt that the President meant to push his
antagonist to extremes. After accepting the explanations at last made in
regard to the Orders in Council, and pointing out that they did not apply to
the case of the “Chesapeake,” Madison requested Jackson to show his full
powers, as an “indispensable preliminary to further negotiation.” The letter
was short, and ended with a stern warning:—
“I abstain, sir, from making any particular animadversions on several irrelevant
and improper allusions in your letter, not at all comporting with the professed
disposition to adjust, in an amicable manner, the differences unhappily subsisting
between the two countries; but it would be improper to conclude the few observations
to which I purposely limit myself, without adverting to your repetition of a language
implying a knowledge on the part of this Government that the instructions of your
predecessor did not authorize the arrangement formed by him. After the explicit and
peremptory asseveration that this Government had no such knowledge, and that with
such a knowledge no such arrangement would have been entered into, the view which
you have again presented of the subject makes it my duty to apprise you that such
insinuations are inadmissible in the intercourse of a foreign minister with a
Government that understands what it owes to itself.”

This letter placed Jackson in a position which he could not defend, and
from which he thought, perhaps with reason, that he could not without

disgrace retreat. The insinuations he had made were but a cautious
expression of the views he was expressly ordered to take. November 4 he
replied, with more ability than he had hitherto shown, to the letter of
November 1; but he gave himself, for a mere point of temper, into
Madison’s hands.
“I am concerned, sir, to be obliged, a second time, to appeal to those principles of
public law, under the sanction and protection of which I was sent to this country....
You will find that in my correspondence with you I have carefully avoided drawing
conclusions that did not necessarily follow from the premises advanced by me, and
least of all should I think of uttering an insinuation where I was unable to substantiate
a fact. To facts, such as I have become acquainted with them, I have scrupulously
adhered; and in so doing I must continue, whenever the good faith of his Majesty’s
government is called in question, to vindicate its honor and dignity in the manner that
appears to me best calculated for that purpose.”

When Jackson was sent to Copenhagen with a message whose general
tenor resembled that which he brought to the United States, he was
fortunate enough to be accompanied by twenty ships of the line, forty
frigates, and thirty thousand regular troops. Even with this support, if court
gossip could be believed, King George expressed to him surprise that he
had escaped being kicked downstairs. At Washington he had no other force
on his side than such as his footman or his groom could render, and the
destiny that King George predicted for him could not, by any diplomatic
weapons, be longer escaped. November 8, Secretary Smith sent to the
Legation one more note, which closed Jackson’s diplomatic career:—
“Sir,—... Finding that in your reply of the 4th instant you have used a language
which cannot be understood but as reiterating and even aggravating the same gross
insinuation, it only remains, in order to preclude opportunities which are thus abused,
to inform you that no further communications will be received from you....”

CHAPTER VII.
The effect of American conciliation upon Canning was immediate and
simple; but the effect of American defiance upon Napoleon will be
understood only by those who forget the fatigue of details in their interest
for Napoleon’s character. The Emperor’s steps in 1809 are not easily
followed. He was overburdened with labor; his motives and policy shifted
as circumstances changed; and among second-rate interests he lost more
habitually than ever the thread of his own labyrinth.
Travelling day and night from Spain in January, 1809, with the same
haste and with something of the same motive as when four years afterward
he posted back to Paris from his Russian disaster, Napoleon appeared
unexpectedly at his capital January 24. The moment was one of crisis, but a
crisis of his own making. He had suffered a political check in Spain, which
he had but partially disguised by a useless campaign. The same spirit of
universal dominion which grasped at Spain and required the conquest of
England, roused resistance elsewhere almost as desperate as that of the
Spaniards and English. Even the American Congress repealed its embargo
and poured its commerce through so-called neutral ports into the lap of
England, while at the same moment Austria, driven to desperation, prepared
to fight for a fourth time. Napoleon had strong reasons for choosing that
moment to force Austria wholly into his system. Germany stood at his
control. Russia alone could have made the result doubtful; but the Czar was
wholly French. “M. Romanzoff,” wrote Armstrong to the State Department,
[99]
“with the fatalism of the Turk, shakes his head at Austria, and asks what
has hitherto been got by opposition; calls to mind the fate of Prussia, and
closes by a pious admonition not to resist the will of God.”
Toward Austria the Emperor directed all his attention, and rapidly drove
her government into an attitude of resistance the most spirited and the most
desperate taken by any people of Europe except Spain. Although Austria
never wearied of fighting Napoleon, and rarely fought without credit, her
effort to face, in 1809, a Power controlling the military resources of France,
Italy, and Germany, with the moral support of Russia behind them, had an
heroic quality higher than was shown at any time by any other government
in Europe. April 9 the Austrian army crossed the Inn, and began the war.

April 13 Napoleon left Paris for the Danube, and during the next three
months his hands were full. Austria fought with an energy which put
Germany and Russia to shame.
Such a moment was ill suited for inviting negotiation on American
affairs; but Armstrong received instructions a few days after Napoleon left
Paris, and with these instructions came a copy of the Non-intercourse Act of
March 1, which, while apparently forbidding intercourse with England and
France, notified Napoleon that the United States would no longer obey his
wishes, or keep their industries from seeking a British market through
indirect channels. Armstrong communicated this Act to the French
government in the terms of his instructions:[100]—
“The undersigned is instructed to add that any interpretation of the Imperial
Decrees of Nov. 21, 1806, and Dec. 17, 1807, which shall have the effect of leaving
unimpaired the maritime rights of the Union, will be instantaneously followed by a
revocation of the present Act [as regards France] and a re-establishment of the
ordinary commercial intercourse between the two countries.”

May 17 Champagny, then at Munich, having received Armstrong’s letter
of April 29, notified the Minister of Marine,[101]—
“The news of this measure having received an official character by the
communication made to me by the United States minister on the part of his
Government, I think it my duty to transmit to your Excellency a copy of the law
which he has addressed to me.”

Armstrong informed Secretary Robert Smith[102] that nothing need be
expected from this step, unless it were perhaps his own summary expulsion
from France as a result of offence given either by the Non-intercourse Act
or by the language of Armstrong’s despatches surreptitiously published.
Bitterly as Armstrong detested Napoleon, he understood but little the mind
and methods of that unusual character. Never in his career had the Emperor
been busier than when Armstrong wrote this note to Champagny, but it
caught his attention at once. He had fought one battle after another, and in
five days had captured forty thousand men and a hundred pieces of cannon;
he had entered Vienna May 10, and had taken his quarters at Schönbrunn,
the favorite palace of the Austrian emperor. There he was in a position of no
little difficulty, in spite of his military successes, when his courier brought
him despatches from Paris containing news that the United States, March 1,
had repealed the embargo, and that the British government, April 26, had
withdrawn the Orders in Council of November, 1807, and had substituted a

mere blockade of Holland, France, and Italy. The effect of these two events
was greatly increased by their coming together.
At first Napoleon seemed to feel no occasion for altering his course.
After reading Armstrong’s letter, he dictated May 18 a reply which was to
serve as the legal argument to justify his refusal of concessions. His decrees
were founded on eternal principles, and could not be revoked:—
“The seas belong to all nations. Every vessel sailing under the flag of any nation
whatever, recognized and avowed by it, ought to be on the ocean as if it were in its
own ports. The flag flying from the mast of a merchantman ought to be respected as
though it were on the top of a village steeple.... To insult a merchant-vessel carrying
the flag of any Power is to make an incursion into a village or a colony belonging to
that Power. His Majesty declares that he considers the vessels of all nations as floating
colonies belonging to the said nations. In result of this principle, the sovereignty and
independence of one nation are a property of its neighbors.”[103]

The conclusion that the sovereignty and independence of every nation
were the property of France, and that a floating colony denationalized by
the visit of a foreign officer became the property of Napoleon, involved
results too extreme for general acceptance. Arbitrary as the Emperor was,
he could act only through agents, and could not broach such doctrines
without meeting remonstrance. His dissertation on the principles of the jus
gentium was sent May 18 to Champagny. Four days afterward, May 22,
Napoleon fought the battle of Essling, in which he lost fifteen or twenty
thousand men and suffered a serious repulse. Even this absorbing labor, and
the critical situation that followed, did not long interrupt his attention to
American business. May 26, Champagny made to the Emperor a report[104]
on American affairs, taking ground altogether different from that chosen by
Napoleon. After narrating the story of the various orders, decrees,
blockades, embargoes, and non-intercourse measures, Champagny
discussed them in their practical effect on the interests and industries of
France:—
“The fact cannot be disguised; the interruption of neutral commerce which has
done much harm to England has been also a cause of loss to France. The staple
products of our territory have ceased to be sold. Those that were formerly exported
are lost, or are stored away, leaving impoverished both the owner who produced them
and the dealer who put them on the market. One of our chief sources of prosperity is
dried up. Our interest therefore leads us toward America, whose commerce would still
furnish an ample outlet for several of our products, and would bring us either
materials of prime necessity for our manufactures, or produce the use of which has
become almost a necessity, and which we would rather not owe to our enemies.”

For these reasons Champagny urged the Emperor not to persist in
punishing America, but to charge M. d’Hauterive, the acting Minister of
Foreign Relations at Paris, with the duty of discussing with General
Armstrong the details of an arrangement. Champagny supported his advice
by urging that England had made advances to America, had revoked her
orders of November, 1807, and seemed about to turn the French Decrees
against France. “It will always be in your Majesty’s power to evade this
result. A great step to this end will be taken when Mr. Armstrong is made
aware that your Majesty is disposed to interpret your commercial decrees
favorably for the Americans, provided measures be taken that no tribute
shall be paid to England, and that their efficacy shall be assured. Such will
be the object of M. d’Hauterive’s mission.”
Napoleon, impressed by Champagny’s reasoning, fortified by the news
that Erskine had settled the commercial disputes between England and
America, sent to Champagny the draft of a new decree,[105] which declared
that inasmuch as the United States by their firm resistance to the arbitrary
measures of England had obtained the revocation of the British Orders of
November, 1807, and were no longer obliged to pay imposts to the British
government, therefore the Milan Decree of Dec. 17, 1807, should be
withdrawn, and neutral commerce should be replaced where it stood under
the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806.
This curious paper was sent June 10 to Paris for a report from the
Treasury as to its probable effects. June 13 Champagny sent instructions to
Hauterive[106] directing him to begin negotiation with Armstrong. Far from
overlooking either the intention or the effect of the Non-intercourse Act,
Champagny complained that it was unfair to France and “almost an act of
violence;” but he did not resent it. “The Emperor is not checked by this
consideration; he feels neither prejudice nor resentment against the
Americans, but he remains firm in his projects of resisting British
pretensions. The measures taken by England will chiefly decide his
measures.” Champagny explained that the Emperor hesitated to issue the
new decree already forwarded for the inspection of the customs authorities,
not because any change had taken place in the reasons given for its policy,
but because the arrangement of Erskine was said to be disavowed.
“What has prevented the Emperor till now from coming to a decision in this
respect is the news contained in the English journals of an arrangement between

England and America, and announced by a Proclamation of the President of the
United States, April 19, 1806. If from this act should result the certainty that the
English renounce their principle of blockade, then the Emperor would revoke the
whole of his measures relative to neutral commerce. But the ‘Gazette de France’ of
June 5, for I have no other authority, pretends that the British ministry refuse to
sanction the arrangement concluded in America; and the result of all this is an extreme
uncertainty, which prevents a decision as to the course proper to be taken.”

This was the situation of the American dispute June 13, 1809, at Vienna,
at the moment Canning’s disavowal of Erskine became certain. Thus far
Napoleon’s mind had passed through two changes,—the first, in
consequence of the British Order in Council of April 26, which led him to
decide on withdrawing the Milan Decree; the second, in consequence of
Erskine’s arrangement, which led him to promise America everything she
asked. The news of Canning’s refusal to carry out the arrangement stopped
Napoleon short in his career of concession; he left the American affair
untouched until after the battle of Wagram, July 6, which was followed by
the submission of Austria, July 12. The battle of Wagram placed him in a
position to defy resistance. Immediately afterward he sent orders to Paris to
stop Hauterive’s negotiation. About the middle of July Hauterive told the
American minister “that a change had taken place in the views of the
Emperor; and in particular that a decree prepared by his orders as a
substitute for those of November, 1806, and December, 1807, and which
would have been a very material step toward accommodation, had been laid
aside.”[107]
In the heat and fury of the battle of Wagram this order must have been
given, for it was known at Paris only one week afterward, and Armstrong
reported the message, July 24, as a notice that unless America resisted the
British doctrines of search and blockade she need expect no relaxation on
the part of Napoleon; while this notice was supported by a menace that until
the Emperor knew the President’s decision he would take no step to make
matters worse than they already were.[108]
If Armstrong put trust in this last promise or menace, he showed once
more his want of sympathy with the Emperor’s character. Quick to yield
before an evident disaster, Napoleon was equally quick to exhaust the fruits
of an evident victory; and the advantage he had obtained over the United
States was as decided, if not as extensive, as that which he had gained over

Austria. In one way or another America must pay for rebellion, and she
could be made to pay only by the usual process of seizing her commerce.
June 7, while the Emperor was still hesitating or leaning to concession,
Decrès, his Minister of Marine, wrote to him that an American schooner
with a cargo of colonial produce had arrived at San Sebastian May 20, and
that more such vessels must be expected to arrive, since the Non-
intercourse Act had opened the trade to Spanish ports. What should be done
with them? The French Decrees denationalized every vessel which went to
England, or wished to go there, or had been visited by an English cruiser, or
had violated the laws of the United States, or had incurred suspicion of
fraud; but the schooner in question was under no suspicion of fraud,—she
had not been to England, nor had she ever thought of going there; she had
not been stopped by any cruiser; she was in a Spanish port, nominally
outside of French jurisdiction, and she was authorized in going there by the
law of the United States. Here was an unforeseen case, and Decrès properly
referred it to the Emperor.[109]
Decrès’ letter reached Vienna about June 13, the day when Champagny
described the Emperor as vexed by an extreme uncertainty on American
affairs. The subject was referred to the Minister of Finance. No decision
seems to have been reached until August. Then Maret, the Secretary of State
in personal attendance on the Emperor, created Duc de Bassano a few days
later, enclosed to Champagny, August 4, the draft of a new decree,[110]
which was never published, but furnished the clew to most of the intricate
movements of Napoleon for the following year:—
“Napoleon, etc.,—considering that the American Congress by its Act of March 1,
1809, has forbidden the entrance of its ports to all French vessels under penalty of
confiscation of ships and cargo,—on the report of our Minister of Finance have
decreed and decree what follows:—
“Art. 1. The American schooner loaded with colonial produce and entered at San
Sebastian the 20th May, 1809, will be seized and confiscated.
“Art. 2. The merchandise composing the cargo of the vessel will be conveyed to
Bayonne, there to be sold, and the produce of the sale paid into the caisse de
l’amortissement (sinking-fund).
“Art. 3. Every American ship which shall enter the ports of France, Spain, or Italy
will be equally seized and confiscated, as long as the same measure shall continue to
be executed in regard to French vessels in the harbors of the United States.”

Probably the ministers united in objecting to a general confiscation
founded on the phrase of a penalty which the customs laws of every country
necessarily contained. Whatever the reason, this draft rested in the files of
the office over which Champagny presided, and the Emperor seemed to
forget it; but its advantages from his standpoint were too great to be lost,
and its principle was thenceforward his guide.
Not even Armstrong, suspicious as he was of Napoleon’s intentions,
penetrated the projected policy; yet Armstrong was by no means an
ordinary minister, and his information was usually good. At the moment
when he received what he supposed to be the promise that Napoleon would
not make matters worse until he heard what the President had to say,
Armstrong warned his Government that this assurance was intended as a
menace rather than as a pledge:[111]—
“What will satisfy him on even these points, particularly the former, is not
distinctly explained. Our creed on this subject is one thing; that of the British
government another; and the French doctrine of visit, a third. When we speak of
illegal search, we mean that which claims the right of impressment also; but according
to the imperial decrees and their commentators, the offence is equally great whatever
may be the object of the visit,—whether it be to demand half your crew, or to
ascertain only the port from which you sailed, the nature of your cargo, or the
character of your flag. This is pushing things to a point whither we cannot follow
them, and which, if I do not mistake, is selected because it is a point of that
description.”

Before the month of August, Napoleon reverted more energetically than
ever to his old practice and policy. Within Armstrong’s reach remained only
one influence strong enough to offer a momentary resistance to imperial
orders, and thither he turned. The kingdom of Holland was still nominally
independent, and its trade an object of interest. While England shaped her
policy to favor the licensed or smuggling trade with Dutch ports, the United
States risked their relations with England and France by treating Holland as
an independent neutral. Yet the nominal independence of Holland was due
only to the accident that had made Louis its king, as it had made his brother
Joseph king of Spain,—not wholly with a view to please them, but also to
secure obedience to Napoleon’s orders and energy to his system. No one
would willingly deprive any member of Napoleon’s family of virtues which
the world allowed them; yet none but a Bonaparte thoroughly understood a
Bonaparte, and Napoleon’s opinion of his brothers, as their opinions of him,
stand highest in authority. Napoleon was often generous and sometimes

forbearing with his brothers, and left them no small freedom to seek
popularity at his expense; but they were nothing except as they represented
him, and their ideas of independence or of philanthropy showed entire
misunderstanding of their situation. Of all Napoleon’s brothers, Louis was
the one with whom he was most reasonably offended. Lucien at least did
not wait to be made a king before he rebelled; but Louis accepted the
throne, and then intrigued persistently against the Emperor’s orders. From
the moment he went to Holland he assumed to be an independent monarch,
devoted to winning popularity. He would not execute the Berlin Decree
until Napoleon threatened to march an army upon him; he connived at its
evasion; he issued licenses and admitted cargoes as he pleased; and he did
this with such systematic disregard of remonstrance that Napoleon became
at last angry.
July 17, some days after the battle of Wagram, the Emperor wrote from
Vienna to Louis,[112]—
“You complain of a newspaper article; it is France that has a right to complain of
the bad spirit which reigns with you.... It may not be your fault, but it is none the less
true that Holland is an English province.”

At the same time he ordered Champagny to notify the Dutch
government officially that if it did not of its own accord place itself on the
same footing with France, it would be in danger of war.[113]
While this correspondence was still going on, Armstrong imagined that
he might obtain some advantage by visiting Holland. He amused himself
during the idle August by a journey to Amsterdam, where he obtained,
August 19, a private interview with King Louis. Three days before,
Flushing had capitulated to the English expedition which was supposed to
be threatening Antwerp. At Vienna Napoleon was negotiating for peace, and
between the obstinacy of Austria and the British attacks on Madrid and
Antwerp he found himself ill at ease. President Madison had just issued his
Proclamation of August 9 reviving the Non-intercourse Act, which kept
open the American trade with Holland. Everywhere the situation was
confused, irritable, and hard to understand. A general system of cross-
purposes seemed to govern the political movements of the world.
King Louis told Armstrong that he was quarrelling seriously with the
Emperor on account of the American trade, but was bent on protecting it at

all hazards. This declaration to a foreign minister accredited not to himself
but to his brother, showed Louis attempting with the aid of foreign nations a
systematic opposition to Napoleon’s will. He denounced his brother’s
system as “the triumph of immorality over justice.... The system is bad,—so
bad that it cannot last; but in the mean time we are the sufferers.” Even the
British expedition to Walcheren troubled Louis chiefly because it forced
him under his brother’s despotism. “It is an erring policy, and will have no
solid or lasting effect but that of drawing upon us a French army which will
extinguish all that is left of ancient Holland. Can it be wisdom in England to
see this country a province of France?”
With such comfort as Armstrong could draw from the knowledge that
Napoleon’s brothers were as hostile as President Madison to the imperial
system, he returned to Paris, September 6, to wait the further development
of the Emperor’s plans. He found on his arrival two notes from Champagny
at Vienna. One of these despatches expressed a civil hope, hardly felt by the
Emperor,[114] that Armstrong would not for the present carry out his project
of returning to America. The other, dated August 22, was nothing less than a
revised and permanent form of the Emperor’s essay on the jus gentium,
which Champagny since May 18 had kept in his portfolio.[115]
In Champagny’s hands Napoleon’s views lost freshness without gaining
legality. The “village steeple” disappeared, but with some modification the
“floating colony” remained, and the principle of free seas was carried to its
extreme results:—
“A merchant-vessel sailing with all the necessary papers (avec les expéditions)
from its government is a floating colony. To do violence to such a vessel by visits, by
searches, and by other acts of an arbitrary authority is to violate the territory of a
colony; this is to infringe on the independence of its government.... The right, or
rather the pretension, of blockading by a proclamation rivers and coasts, is as
monstrous (révoltante) as it is absurd. A right cannot be derived from the will or the
caprice of one of the interested parties, but ought to be derived from the nature of
things themselves. A place is not truly blockaded until it is invested by land and sea.”

Every one could understand that to assert such principles was an
impossibility for neutrals, and was so meant by Napoleon. He had no
thought of making demands which England could accept. The destruction
of her naval power was his favorite object after the year 1805. The battle of
Wagram confirmed him in his plan, and Louis’ opposition counted for even
less than Armstrong’s diplomacy in checking the energy of his will. As he

ordered Louis, so he ordered Madison, to obey; and thanks to the obstinacy
of Spencer Perceval, both had no choice but to assist his scheme. As an
answer to the American offer expressed in the Non-intercourse Act,
Champagny’s despatch of August 22 was final; but to preclude a doubt, it
closed by saying that the ports of Holland, of the Elbe and the Weser, of
Italy and of Spain, would not be allowed to enjoy privileges of which
French ports were deprived, and that whenever England should revoke her
blockades and Orders in Council, France would revoke her retaliatory
decrees.
Without suicide, England could hardly accept the principles required by
this note; nor had she reason to suppose that her acceptance would satisfy
Napoleon’s demands. As though to encourage her in obstinacy, the note was
printed in the “Moniteur” of October 6, by the Emperor’s order, before it
could have reached America. This unusual step served no purpose except to
give public notice that France would support England in restricting
American rights; it strengthened the hands of Spencer Perceval and took
away the last chance of American diplomacy, if a chance still existed. Yet
neither this stroke nor the severity foreshadowed by the secret Decree of
Vienna was the only punishment inflicted by Napoleon on the United States
for the Non-intercourse Act and Erskine’s arrangement.
The principle of the Vienna Decree required confiscation of American
commerce in retaliation for penalties imposed on French ships that should
knowingly violate the Non-intercourse Act. Although this rule and the
Bayonne Decree seemed to cover all ordinary objects of confiscation, the
Emperor adopted the supplementary rule that American merchandise was
English property in disguise. In the month of November a cotton-spinner
near Paris, the head of a very large establishment, petitioned for leave to
import about six hundred bales of American cotton. His petition was
returned to him with the indorsement: “Rejected, as the cotton belongs to
American commerce.” The severity of the refusal surprised every one the
more because the alternative was to use Portuguese—that is to say English
—cotton, or to encourage the consumption of fabrics made wholly in
England, of English materials.[116] Having decided to seize all American
merchandise that should arrive in France on private account, and having
taken into his own hands the business of selling this property as well as of
admitting other merchandise by license, Napoleon protected what became

henceforward his personal interests, by shutting the door to competition.
[117]
Armstrong caught glimpses of this stratagem even before it had taken
its finished shape.
“I am privately informed,” wrote Armstrong December 10, “that General Loison
has left Paris charged to take hold of all British property, or property suspected of
being such in the ports of Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pasages, etc. The latter part of the
rule is no doubt expressly intended to reach American property. With the General goes
a mercantile man who will be known in the market as his friend and protégé, and who
of course will be the exclusive purchaser of the merchandise which shall be seized
and sold as British. This is a specimen at once of the violence and corruption which
enter into the present system; and of a piece with this is the whole business of
licenses, to which, I am sorry to add, our countrymen lend themselves with great
facility.”

Under such conditions commerce between the United States and France
seemed impossible. One prohibition crowded upon another. First came the
Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, which turned away or confiscated every
American vessel voluntarily entering a British port after that date. Second,
followed the Milan Decree of Nov. 11, 1807, which denationalized and
converted into English property every American ship visited by a British
cruiser or sent into a British port, or which had paid any tax to the British
government. Third, the Bayonne Decree of April 5, 1808, sequestered all
American vessels arriving in France subsequent to the embargo, as being
presumably British property. Fourth, the American Non-intercourse Act of
March 1, 1809, prohibited all commerce with France or her dependencies.
Fifth, the British Orders in Council of April 26, 1809, established a
blockade of the whole coast of France. Sixth, the secret Decree of Vienna,
of August, 1809, enforced in principle, sequestered every American vessel
arriving within the Emperor’s military control, in reprisal for the Non-
intercourse Act which threatened French ships with confiscation. Yet with
all this, and greatly to General Armstrong’s displeasure, American ships in
considerable numbers entered the ports of France, and, what was still more
incomprehensible, were even allowed to leave them.

CHAPTER VIII.
Under these circumstances President Madison was to meet Congress;
but bad as his situation was in foreign affairs, his real troubles lay not
abroad but at home. France never counted with him as more than an
instrument to act on England. Erskine and Canning, by their united efforts,
had so mismanaged English affairs that Madison derived from their
mismanagement all the strength he possessed. The mission of Jackson to
Washington retrieved a situation that offered no other advantage.
Jackson lost no occasion to give the President popularity.
Comprehending at last that his high tone had only helped his opponent to
carry out a predetermined course, Jackson lost self-confidence without
gaining tact. At first he sustained himself by faith in Canning; but within a
short time he heard with alarm the news from England that Canning was no
longer in office or in credit. For a few days after the rupture he had a right
to hope that the quarrel would not be pressed to a scandal; but November
13, the “National Intelligencer” published an official statement which
embarrassed Jackson to the last point of endurance.
“I came prepared to treat with a regular government,” he wrote to his brother,[118]
“and have had to do with a mob, and mob leaders. That I did not show an equal
facility with Erskine to be duped by them has been my great crime.”

That Jackson should be angry was natural, and if he was abusive, he
received an ample equivalent in abuse; but his merits as a diplomatist were
supposed to be his courage and his truth, and these he could not afford to
compromise. He had neither said nor done more than stood in his express
orders. Canning’s instructions charged Madison with fraud:
“The American government cannot have believed that such an arrangement as Mr.
Erskine consented to accept was conformable to his instructions.... They cannot by
possibility have believed that without any new motive, and without any apparent
change in the dispositions of the enemy, the British government could have been
disposed at once and unconditionally to give up the system on which they had been
acting.”

This ground Jackson had been ordered to take in any “preliminary
discussion” which might “in all probability” arise before he could enter on
the details of his negotiation. In obedience to these instructions, and well
within their limits, Jackson had gone as near as he dared to telling the

President that he alone was to blame for the disavowal of Erskine, because
Erskine’s instructions “were at the time in substance made known” to him.
In subsequently affirming that he made no insinuation which he could not
substantiate, Jackson still kept to what he believed the truth; and he
reiterated in private what he insinuated officially, that Erskine had been
“duped” by the American government. November 16 he wrote officially to
the Foreign Office that without the slightest doubt the President had full and
entire knowledge of Erskine’s instruction No. 2.[119] These views were
consistent and not unreasonable, but no man could suppose them to be
complimentary to President Madison; yet November 13 Jackson caused his
secretary, Oakeley, to send in his name an official note to the Secretary of
State, complaining of the rupture and rehearsing the charges, with the
conclusion that “in stating these facts, and in adhering to them, as his duty
imperiously enjoined him to do, Mr. Jackson could not imagine that offence
would be taken at it by the American government, as most certainly none
could be intended on his part.”[120] He then addressed the same counter-
statement as a circular to the various British consuls in the United States,
and caused it to be printed in the newspapers,[121]—thus making an appeal
to the people against their own Government, not unlike the more famous
appeal which the French Minister Genet made in 1793 against President
Washington.
In extremely bad temper Jackson quitted the capital. His wife wrote to
her friends in joy at the prospect of shortening her stay in a country which
could offer her only the tribute of ignorant admiration; but even she showed
a degree of bitterness in her pleasure, and her comments on American
society had more value than many official documents in explaining the
attitude of England toward the United States:—
“Francis, being accustomed to treat with the civilized courts and governments of
Europe, and not with savage Democrats, half of them sold to France, has not
succeeded in his negotiation.”[122]

At Washington she had seen few ladies besides Mrs. Madison, “une
bonne, grosse femme, de la classe bourgeoise, ... sans distinction,” and also,
to do her justice, “sans prétensions;” who did the British minister’s wife the
honor to copy her toilettes. Immediately after the rupture Mrs. Jackson went
to Baltimore, where she was received with enthusiasm by society; but
Baltimore satisfied her little better than Washington: “Between ourselves

their cuisine is detestable; coarse table-linen, no claret, champagne and
madeira indifferent.” Only as the relative refinement of New York and
Boston was reached, with the flattery lavished upon the British minister by
the Federalist society of the commercial cities, did Mrs. Jackson and her
husband in some degree recover their composure and their sense of
admitted superiority.
Incredible as the folly of a political party was apt to be, the folly of the
Federalists in taking up Jackson’s quarrel passed the limits of
understanding. After waiting to receive their tone from England, the
Federalist newspapers turned on their own path and raised the cry that
Madison had deceived Erskine, and had knowingly entered into an
arrangement which England could not carry out. The same newspapers
which in April agreed with John Randolph that Canning had obtained
through Erskine all he had ever asked or had a right to expect, averred in
October that Erskine surrendered everything and got nothing in return. No
political majority, still less a minority, could survive a somersault so violent
as this; and the Federalists found that all their late recruits, and many
friends hitherto stanch, deserted them in the autumn elections. Throughout
the country the Administration was encouraged by great changes in the
popular vote, even before the rupture with Jackson. With confidence,
Madison might expect the more important spring elections to sweep
opposition from his path. Although a whole year, and in some cases
eighteen months, must pass before a new Congress could be chosen, the
people were already near the war point.
Vermont chose a Republican governor and a legislature Republican in
both branches. In Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey the
Administration recovered more than the ground lost by the embargo. In
Maryland the feud between Samuel Smith and his opponents was ended by
a Republican majority so large that nothing could prevent Smith’s return to
the Senate, although every one knew that he would carry on a system of
personal opposition, if he dared, and that a moderate Federalist would be
less dangerous to the Administration. In the general return of deserters to
the ranks, the party would not be too strict in its punishments; and the
President set the example by clemency to the worst offender, except John
Randolph, of all the trusted lieutenants in the party service. He held out a
hand to Monroe.

Madison’s reasons for winning Monroe were strong. The more he had to
do with Robert Smith, the more intolerable became the incubus of Smith’s
incompetence. He had been obliged to take the negotiations with Erskine
and Jackson wholly on his own shoulders. The papers drafted by Smith
were, as Madison declared,[123] brought from the Department of State in a
condition “almost always so crude and inadequate that I was, in the more
important cases, generally obliged to write them anew myself, under the
disadvantage sometimes of retaining through delicacy some mixture of his
draft.” Smith had not even the virtue of dullness. He could not be silent, but
talked openly, and criticised freely the measures of Government, especially
those of commercial restriction.
Complicated with this incessant annoyance was Gallatin’s feud. The
combination of the Smiths with Giles, Leib, and Duane’s “Aurora” against
Gallatin had its counterpart in the Clintonian faction which made Madison
its target; and whenever these two forces acted together, they made, with
the Federalists, a majority of the Senate. Gallatin saw the necessity of
breaking down this combination of intrigue which had already done
incalculable harm by forcing Robert Smith into the State Department. He
foresaw the effects of its influence in weakening the Treasury in order to
expel himself. On a visit to Monticello in August he spoke plainly to
Jefferson and Madison, and pointed out the probability that he should be
forced to resign. Jefferson reflected six weeks on this communication, and
then wrote entreating him to stand firm.[124] November 8, the day of the
rupture with Jackson, Gallatin answered Jefferson’s appeal in a long and
outspoken letter evidently meant for communication to Madison:—
“It has seemed to me from various circumstances that those who thought they had
injured were disposed to destroy, and that they were sufficiently skillful and
formidable to effect their object. As I may not, however, perhaps, see their actions
with an unprejudiced eye, nothing but irresistible evidence both of the intention and
success will make me yield to that consideration.... I do not ask that in the present
situation of our foreign relations the debt be reduced, but only that it shall not be
increased so long as we are not at war. I do not pretend to step out of my own sphere
and to control the internal management of other departments; but it seems to me that
as Secretary of the Treasury I may ask, that, while peace continues, the aggregate of
the expenditure of those departments be kept within bounds such as will preserve the
equilibrium between the national revenue and expenditure without recurrence to
loans. I cannot consent to act the part of a mere financier, to become a contriver of
taxes, a dealer of loans, a seeker of resources for the purpose of supporting useless
baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of the community,

of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of introducing in all its ramifications
that system of patronage, corruption, and rottenness which you so justly execrate.”

From this avowal Madison’s difficulties could be understood and his
course foreseen. Very slow to move, he was certain at last to quarrel with
the senatorial faction that annoyed him. He could not but protect Gallatin,
and dismiss Smith. At the end of the vista, however far the distance, stood
the inevitable figure of Monroe. Scarcely another man in public life could
fill precisely the gap, and none except Armstrong could give strength to the
President by joining him. Perhaps Littleton Tazewell, another distinguished
Virginian of the same school, would have answered the President’s purpose
as well as Monroe; but probably Tazewell would have declined to accept a
seat in the Cabinet of a President whose election he had opposed.[125]
Madison decided to take the first step. He had reason to think that Monroe
repeated his course, at least to the extent of wishing reconciliation. He
authorized Jefferson to act as mediator; and the Ex-President, who spared
no effort for harmony, hastened to tell Monroe that the government of
Louisiana was still at his disposal.[126] Monroe declined the office as being
beneath his previous positions, but said that he would have accepted the
first place in Madison’s Cabinet, and was sincere in his desire for the
success of the Administration; he even pledged his support, and intimated
that he had lost favor with John Randolph owing to, his exertions for
Madison. When Jefferson reported the result of this interview, the President
replied:[127] “The state of Colonel Monroe’s mind is very nearly what I had
supposed; his willingness to have taken a seat in the Cabinet is what I had
not supposed.” Considering the state of Monroe’s mind in 1808, Madison
might be excused for failing to see that Monroe would accept the State
Department in February, 1809. Indeed, the suddenness of the change would
have startled Monroe’s best friends; and even in December, 1809, he would
have fared ill had his remarks to Jefferson been brought to John Randolph’s
ears.
Monroe’s adhesion having been thus attested, Madison made no
immediate use of the recruit, but held him in reserve until events should
make action necessary. Perhaps this delay was one of Madison’s
constitutional mistakes, and possibly a prompt removal of Robert Smith
might have saved some of the worst disasters that befell the Government;
but in truth Madison’s embarrassments rose from causes that only time

could cure, and were inherent in American society itself. A less competent
administrative system seldom drifted, by reason of its incompetence, into
war with a superior enemy. No department of the government was fit for its
necessary work.
Of the State Department, its chief, and its long series of mortifying
disasters, enough has been said. In November, 1809, it stood helpless in the
face of intolerable insults from all the European belligerents. Neither the
diplomatic nor the consular system was better than a makeshift, and
precisely where the Government felt most need of ministers,—at
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, and St. Petersburg,—it had no diplomatic
and but few consular agents, even these often of foreign allegiance.
The Treasury, hitherto the only successful Executive department,
showed signs of impending collapse, not to be avoided without sacrifices
and efforts which no one was willing to make. The accounts for the year
ending September 30 showed that while the receipts had amounted to
$9,300,000, the actual expenses had exceeded $10,600,000. The deficit of
$1,300,000, as well as reimbursements of debt to the amount of $6,730,000,
had been made good from the balance in the Treasury. The new fiscal year
began with a balance of only $5,000,000; so that without a considerable
curtailment of expenses, a loan or increased taxation, or both, could not be
avoided. Increased taxation was the terror of parties. Curtailment of
expense could be effected only on the principle that as the government did
nothing well, it might as well do nothing. Any intelligent expenditure, no
matter how large or how small, would have returned a thousand-fold
interest to the country, whatever had been the financial cost; but the waste
of money on gunboats and useless cruisers, or upon an army so badly
organized and commanded as to be a hindrance in war, was an expense that
might perhaps be curtailed, though only by admitting political incapacity.
Naturally Gallatin threatened to resign. Even by submitting to the
Smiths, Duanes, Gileses, and Leibs, and allowing them to cut off the
sources or waste the supplies of public revenue until the government
became an habitual beggar, he could promise himself no advantage. Never
had the chance of finding an end to the public embarrassments seemed so
remote. The position in which the government stood could not be
maintained, but could be abandoned only by creating still greater
difficulties. Intended merely as a makeshift, the Non-intercourse Act of

March 1, 1809, had already proved more mischievous to America than to
the countries it purported to punish. While the three great commercial
nations—France, England, and the United States—were forcing trade into
strange channels or trying to dam its course, trade took care of itself in
defiance of war and prohibitions. As one coast after another was closed or
opened to commerce, countries whose names could hardly be found on the
map—Papenburg, Kniphausen, Tönningen—became famous as neutrals,
and their flags covered the sea, because England and France found them
convenient for purposes of illegitimate trade. The United States had also
their Papenburg. Amelia Island and the St. Mary’s River, which divided
Florida from Georgia, half Spanish and half American waters, became the
scene of a trade that New York envied. While the shore was strewn with
American cotton and other produce waiting shipment in foreign vessels,
scores of British ships were discharging merchandise to be smuggled into
the United States, or were taking on board heavy freights of cotton or naval
stores on American account. To the United States this manner of trading
caused twofold loss. Not only were the goods charged with a double voyage
and all the costly incidents of a smuggling business, and not only did the
American ship-owner lose the freight on this American merchandise, both
outward and inward, but the United States government collected no duties
on the British goods smuggled from Amelia Island, Bermuda, and Halifax.
The Non-intercourse Act prohibited French and British merchandise; but in
disregard of the prohibition such goods were freely sold in every shop.
Erskine’s arrangement, short as it was, brought in a fresh and large supply;
custom-house oaths were cheap; custom-house officials did not inquire
closely whether cloth was made in England, France, Holland, or Germany,
or whether rum, sugar, and coffee came from St. Kitt’s or St. Bart’s. Some
sorts of English goods, such as low-priced woollens, were necessities; and
the most patriotic citizen could hardly pay so much respect to the laws of
his country as to dispense with their use by his family, whatever he did on
his own account. Finally, a law which in the eyes of a community was not
respectable was not respected. The community had no other defence against
bad legislation; and in a democracy the spirit of personal freedom deserved
cultivation to the full as much as that of respect for bad law. The Non-
intercourse Act was not only a bad law,—the result of admitted legislative
imbecility,—but it had few or no defenders even among those who obeyed
it.

Ingenuity could hardly have invented a system less advantageous for the
government and people who maintained it. The government lost its revenue,
the shipping lost much of its freight, the people paid double prices on
imports and received half-prices for their produce; industry was checked,
speculation and fraud were stimulated, while certain portions of the country
were grievously wronged. Especially in the Southern States all articles
produced for exchange were depressed to the lowest possible value, while
all articles imported for consumption were raised to extravagant rates.
Elisha Potter, a Congressman from Rhode Island, complained with reason
that the system made the rich more rich and the poor more poor.[128] In a
crowded or in a highly organized society such a system would probably
have created a revolution; but America had not yet reached such a stage of
growth or decay, and the worst effect of her legislation was to impoverish
the government which adopted and the class of planters who chiefly
sustained it.
Gallatin best knew how much the Non-intercourse Act or any other
system of commercial restriction weakened the Treasury. He knew that
neither the President nor Congress offered the germ of a better plan. He
faced an indefinite future of weakness and waste, with a prospect of war at
the end; but this was not the worst. His enemies who were disposed to
destroy, were skilful enough to invent the means of destruction. They might
deprive him of the United States Bank, his only efficient ally; they might
reject every plan, and let the Treasury slowly sink into ruin; they might
force the country into a war for no other object than to gratify their personal
jealousies. Gallatin believed them capable of all this, and Madison seemed
to share the belief. The Treasury which had till that time sustained the
Republican party through all its troubles, stood on the verge of disaster.
From the military and naval departments nothing had ever been
expected; but their condition was worse than their own chiefs understood.
The machinery of both broke down as Madison took control. The navy
consisted of a few cruisers and a large force of gunboats. Neither were of
immediate use; but a considerable proportion of both were in active service,
if service could be called active which chiefly consisted in lying in harbor
or fitting for harbor defence when no enemy was expected. No sooner had
Paul Hamilton succeeded Robert Smith at the navy department than the new
secretary became aware that his predecessor had wasted a very large sum of

money.[129] Hamilton made no concealment of his opinion that gunboats
were expensive beyond relation to their value.[130] He intimated that the life
of gunboats hardly exceeded one year, and that their value depended on the
correct answer to the inquiry whether war was a defensive or aggressive
operation. This hint that gunboats could do no harm to their enemies
seemed to gain force from the suggestion that they had yet to prove their
uses for their friends; but if Jefferson’s gunboat system should prove to be a
failure, nothing would be left of the navy except a few frigates and sloops
which could hardly keep the sea in the event of war with England. The navy
was a sink of money.
The army was something worse. At least the navy contained as good
officers and seamen as the world could show, and no cruisers of their class
were likely to be more efficient than the frigates commanded by Rodgers,
Bainbridge, and Decatur, provided they could escape a more numerous
enemy; but the army was worthless throughout, and its deficiency in
equipment was a trifling evil compared with the effects of political
influence on its organization. The first attempt to raise the army to
efficiency ended in scandalous failure within a few months. Among a
thousand obstacles to any satisfactory reform in the military service, the
most conspicuous if not the most fatal was General Wilkinson, whom
President Jefferson could not and would not sacrifice, but whose character
and temper divided the army into two hostile camps. Wade Hampton, the
next general officer in rank, regarded Wilkinson with extreme contempt,
and most of the younger officers who were not partisans of Jefferson shared
Hampton’s prejudice; but July 4, 1808, a military court of inquiry formally
acquitted Wilkinson of being a Spanish pensioner. President Jefferson had
already saved him from court-martial on account of his relations with Burr,
and Secretary Dearborn restored him to command over an army whose
interests required an officer of other qualities.
When Madison and Gallatin in December, 1808, looked to a declaration
of war, their first anxiety concerned New Orleans and West Florida.
December 2, 1808, Secretary Dearborn gave Wilkinson, then at
Washington, orders to direct the new levies of troops toward New Orleans,
and to be ready to take command there in person as soon as practicable. In
pursuance of these orders, two thousand raw soldiers were directed upon
New Orleans from different quarters, and in the midst of war preparations,

Jan. 24, 1809, Wilkinson himself embarked from Baltimore.[131] Stopping at
Annapolis, Norfolk, and Charleston, he passed six weeks on the Atlantic
coast. After the overthrow of the war policy and the close of the session he
sailed March 12 from Charleston, and in his mysterious way stopped at
Havana and then at Pensacola, “under a special mission from the Executive
of the United States.” April 19 he re-entered New Orleans, the scene of his
exploits three years before; and he returned as a victor, triumphant over
Daniel Clark and the Burr conspirators, as well as over Governor Claiborne,
Wade Hampton, and all ill-wishers in the subordinate ranks of the army, of
whom Captain Winfield Scott was one.
Wilkinson found at New Orleans, in his own words,[132]—
“A body of two thousand undisciplined recruits, men and officers with a few
exceptions sunk in indolence and dissipation; without subordination, discipline, or
police, and nearly one third of them sick; ... without land or water transport for a
single company; medical assistance for two thousand men dependent on two surgeons
and two mates, one of the former confined to his bed; a majority of the corps without
paymasters; the men deserting by squads; the military agent representing the
quartermaster’s department without a cent in his chest, his bills protested, and he on
the eve of shutting up his office; a great deficiency of camp equipage; not a haversack
in store; the medicine and hospital stores scarcely sufficient for a private practitioner.”

The General decided that, first of all, the troops must be removed from
the city and sent into camp; but rains made encampment impossible until
the river should fall, and May 12 nothing had been done excepting to notify
the Secretary of War that in the course of the following week the General
meant to select an encampment which would be so placed as to meet an
attack from every hostile quarter.[133] His decision was made known to the
Secretary of War in a letter dated May 29:—
“With the general voice of American and Creole in favor of it, I have selected a
piece of ground on the left bank of the Mississippi, below this city about four leagues,
which I find perfectly dry at this moment, although the surface of the river, restrained
by its dykes, is in general three feet above the level of the country. You will put your
finger on the spot, at the head of the English turn, just where the road to the
settlements on the Terre aux Boeufs leaves the river.”[134]

June 10 the main body of troops moved down the river to the new camp.
More than five hundred sick were transported with the rest, suffering
chiefly from chronic diarrhœa, bilious or intermittent fevers, and scurvy.
Secretary Eustis, who in March succeeded Dearborn at the War
Department, being an army-surgeon by profession, noticed, before

Wilkinson’s arrival at New Orleans, the excessive proportion of troops on
the sick-list. Quickly taking alarm, he wrote April 30 directing Wilkinson to
disregard Dearborn’s previous instructions, and after leaving a garrison of
old troops at New Orleans, to transport the rest up the river to the high
ground in the rear of Fort Adams, or Natchez. The orders were peremptory
and pressing.[135]
This letter, dated April 30, should have gone, and was believed to have
gone, by the post which left Washington May 6, and reached New Orleans
May 25; another post followed a week later, and still another arrived June 8,
two days before the troops moved to Terre aux Boeufs. According to
Wilkinson the letter did not arrive by any of these mails, but came only by
the fourth post, which reached New Orleans June 14, after he and his troops
were fixed in camp. The cost of a bad character was felt at such moments.
No one believed Wilkinson; his reputation for falsehood warranted
suspicion that he had suppressed the orders in the belief that he knew best
what the troops required. Such insubordination was no new thing on his
part. Instead of expressing regret, he wrote to Eustis that even had he
received the orders of April 30 in time, he should still “have not sought the
position you recommended,” because the labor of ascending the river would
have diseased nine tenths of the men, the expense would have exceeded
twelve thousand dollars, and the position of Fort Adams was ill-suited for
the protection of New Orleans.[136]
On the troops the first effect of their encampment was good; but after
the middle of June rains began, generally several showers on the same day,
and the camp was deep in mud. The number of sick made proper sanitary
care impossible. The police officer’s report of July 12[137] gave a revolting
picture of the sanitary conditions: “The whole camp abounds with filth and
nastiness of almost every kind.” The sick-list rose to six hundred and sixty
in a force of sixteen hundred and eighty-nine non-commissioned officers
and men; in August it rose to nine hundred and sixty-three in a total force of
fifteen hundred and seventy-four. The camp was a fever hospital, the
suffering beyond experience. Food, medicine, shelter, clothing, and care
were all wanting either to the sick or to the well:[138]—
“The sick and the well lived in the same tents; they generally subsisted on the
same provisions, were equally exposed to the constant and incessant torrents of rain,
to the scorching heat of the sun, and during the night to the attacks of numberless

mosquitoes. They manifested the pains and sufferings they experienced by shrieks and
groans which during the silence of the night were distinctly to be heard from one end
of the line to the other. It is my candid belief the mosquitoes produced more mischief
than any other cause. In the night the air was filled with them, and not a man was
provided with anything like a bar or net. Thus situated, the sufferings of the
unfortunate sick can perhaps better be imagined than described.”

Before the army had been a month in camp, the officers petitioned the
General for removal. He could not but refuse. He had no means of escape,
and to do him justice, he bore with courage the consequences of his own
mistake. He did whatever occurred to him to protect his men. Secretary
Eustis took the matter less calmly. No sooner did the secretary learn,
through Wilkinson’s letters written in May, that he seriously meant to
encamp the troops at Terre aux Boeufs, than official orders, admitting no
discretion, were despatched as early as June 22 from the Department,
directing that the whole force should be instantly embarked for Natchez and
Fort Adams.
The letter arrived July 19. Wilkinson dared not again disobey, although
he might be right in thinking that the risks of removal were greater than
those of remaining. Every resource of the army and navy was put at
Wilkinson’s command, and every man at Terre aux Boeufs was eager to
escape; yet week after week passed without movement. The orders which
arrived July 19 were not made public till the end of August, and only
September 14 was the camp evacuated. The effective force was then about
six hundred men in charge of nine hundred invalids. The strength of all had
been reduced, until they were unequal to the fatigues of travel. Only one
hundred and twenty-seven men died at Terre aux Boeufs between June 10
and September 14; but two hundred and fifty died on their way up the river,
before October 31, and altogether seven hundred and sixty-four, out of two
thousand soldiers sent to New Orleans, died within their first year of
service. The total loss by death and desertion was nine hundred and thirty-
one.
Wilkinson himself was attacked by fever in passing New Orleans,
September 19, and on proceeding to Natchez soon received a summons to
Washington to answer for his conduct. Brigadier-General Wade Hampton
succeeded him in command of what troops were still alive at New Orleans.
The misfortune was compensated only by the advantage of affording one

more chance to relieve the army and the government of a general who
brought nothing but disaster.
With the four departments of Executive government in this state of
helplessness, President Madison met Congress, the least efficient body of
all.

CHAPTER IX.
The President’s Annual Message, read November 29 before Congress,
threw no light on the situation. If Madison’s fame as a statesman rested on
what he wrote as President, he would be thought not only among the
weakest of Executives, but also among the dullest of men, whose liveliest
sally of feeling exhausted itself in an epithet, and whose keenest sympathy
centred in the tobacco crop; but no statesman suffered more than Madison
from the constraints of official dress. The Message of 1809 hinted that
England had no right to disavow her minister’s engagement, and that
Jackson’s instructions as well as his conduct betrayed a settled intent to
prevent an understanding; but these complaints led to no corrective
measures. The President professed himself still willing to listen with ready
attention to communications from the British government through any new
channel, and he seemed to fall back on Jefferson’s “painful alternatives” of
the year before, rather than on any settled plan of his own:—
“In the state which has been presented of our affairs with the parties to a
disastrous and protracted war, carried on in a mode equally injurious and unjust to the
United States as a neutral nation, the wisdom of the national Legislature will be again
summoned to the important decision on the alternatives before them. That these will
be met in a spirit worthy of the councils of a nation conscious both of its rectitude and
of its rights, and careful as well of its honor as of its peace, I have an entire
confidence. And that the result will be stamped by a unanimity becoming the
occasion, and be supported by every portion of our citizens with a patriotism
enlightened and invigorated by experience, ought as little to be doubted.”

Such political formulas, conventional as a Chinese compliment,
probably had value, since they were current in every government known to
man; but that President Madison felt entire confidence in the spirit of the
Eleventh Congress could not be wholly believed. John Randolph best
described Madison’s paper in a letter to Judge Nicholson, a few days
afterward:[139]
“I have glanced over the President’s Message, and to say the truth it is more to my
taste than Jefferson’s productions on the same occasions. There is some cant to be
sure; but politicians, priests, and even judges, saving your honor’s presence, must
cant, ‘more or less.’”

Probably the colorless character of the Message was intended to disarm
criticism, and to prevent Randolph and the Federalists from rousing again

the passions of 1808; but sooner or later some policy must be adopted, and
although the Message suggested no opinion as to the proper course, it
warned Congress that the crisis was at hand: “The insecurity of our
commerce and the consequent diminution of the public revenue will
probably produce a deficiency in the receipts of the ensuing year.” The
moment when a Republican administration should begin to borrow money
for ordinary expenses in time of peace would mark a revolution in the
public mind.
Upon Gallatin, as usual, the brunt of unpopular responsibility fell. His
annual Report, sent to the House December 8, announced that a loan,
probably of four million dollars, would be required for the service of 1810;
that the Non-intercourse Law, as it stood, was “inefficient and altogether
inapplicable to existing circumstances;” and finally that “either the system
of restriction, partially abandoned, must be reinstated in all its parts, and
with all the provisions necessary for its strict and complete execution, or all
the restrictions, so far at least as they affect the commerce and navigation of
citizens of the United States, ought to be removed.” This subject, said
Gallatin, required immediate attention; but in regard to the wider question
of war or peace he contented himself with a reference to his two preceding
reports.
Congress showed more than usual unwillingness to face its difficulties.
The episodes of Erskine and Jackson supplied excuse for long and
purposeless debates. In the Senate, December 5, Giles reported from a
special committee the draft of a Resolution denouncing Jackson’s conduct
as indecorous, insolent, affronting, insidious, false, outrageous, and
premeditated,—epithets which seemed to make superfluous the approval of
Madison’s course or the pledge of support with which the Resolution ended.
Giles reviewed the conduct of Jackson and Canning, entreating the Senate
to banish irritation and to restore harmony and mutual good-will, “the most
fervent prayer of one who in the present delicate, interesting crisis of the
nation feels a devotion for his country beyond everything else on this side
of heaven.”[140] The experience of many years warranted Giles’s hearers in
suspecting that when he professed a wish for harmony, the hope of harmony
must be desperate, for his genius lay in quite another direction; and when he
laid aside partisanship, his party had reason to look for some motive still

narrower. His course quickly proved the sense in which he understood these
phrases.
January 3, 1810, the President recommended by message the enlistment
for a short period of a volunteer force of twenty thousand men, and a
reorganization of the militia; adding that it would rest with Congress also
“to determine how far further provision may be expedient for putting into
actual service, if necessary, any part of the naval armament not now
employed.” No one knew what this language meant. Crawford of Georgia,
with his usual bluntness, said:[141] “This Message, in point of obscurity,
comes nearer my ideas of a Delphic oracle than any state paper which has
come under my inspection. It is so cautiously expressed that every man puts
what construction on it he pleases.” Giles pleased to put upon it a warlike
construction. January 10 he reported a bill for fitting out the frigates;
January 13 he supported this bill in a speech which surprised Federalists
and Republicans alike, if they could be still surprised at the varieties of
Giles’s political philosophy.
“The visionary theory of energy,” said he, “was the fatal error of the Federal party,
and that error deprived it of the power of the nation. The government being thus
placed in the hands of the Republicans, while heated by the zeal of opposition to the
Federal doctrines and flushed with their recent triumph, it was natural for them, with
the best intentions, to run into the opposite extreme; to go too far in the relaxations of
the powers of the government, and to indulge themselves in the delightful visions of
extending the range of individual liberty.... It was natural that in the vibration of the
political pendulum, it should go from one extreme to another; and that this has been
too much the case with the Republican administration, he regretted to say, he feared
would be demonstrated by a very superficial review of the events of the last two or
three years.”

Energy was a fatal mistake in the Federalists; relaxation was an equally
fatal mistake in the Republicans,—and the remedy was a show of energy
where energy did not exist. Giles won no confidence by thus trimming
between party principles; but when Samuel Smith argued for Giles’s bill on
grounds of economy, friends of the Administration felt little doubt of the
motives that guided both senators. Had they declared for war, or for peace;
had they proposed to build more frigates or ships-of-the-line, or to lay up
those in active service,—had they committed themselves to a decided
policy of any kind, their motives would have offered some explanation
consistent with a public interest; but they proposed merely to fit out the
frigates while giving them nothing to do, and the Republican party, as a
whole, drew the inference that they wished to waste the public money,

either for the personal motive of driving Madison and Gallatin from office,
or for the public advantage of aiding the Federalists to weaken the Treasury
and paralyze the nation.
Crawford replied to Giles with some asperity; but although Crawford
was known to represent the Treasury, so completely had the Senate fallen
under the control of the various cabals represented by Vice-President
Clinton, Giles, Smith, and Michael Leib of Pennsylvania, with their
Federalist associates, that Crawford found himself almost alone. Twenty-
five senators supported the bill; only six voted against it.
Giles impressed the least agreeable qualities of his peculiar character on
this Senate,—a body of men easily impressed by such traits. By a vote of
twenty-four to four, they passed the Resolution in which Giles showed
energy in throwing epithets at the British government, as they passed the
bill for employing frigates to pretend energy that was not in their intentions.
No episode in the national history was less encouraging than the conduct of
Congress in regard to Giles’s Resolution. From December 18 to January 4,
the House wasted its time and strength in proving the helplessness of
Executive, Congress, parties, and people in the grasp of Europe. With
painful iteration every Republican proved that the nation had been insulted
by the British minister; while every Federalist protested his inability to
discern the insult, and his conviction that no insult was intended. Except as
preliminary to measures of force, Giles’s Resolution showed neither dignity
nor object; yet the Republicans embarrassed themselves with denials of the
Federalist charge that such language toward a foreign government must
have a warlike motive, while the Federalists insisted that their interests
required peace.
If the Resolution[142] was correct in affirming as it did that the United
States had suffered “outrageous and premeditated insults” from Jackson,
Congress could not improve the situation by affirming the insult without
showing even the wish to resent it by means that would prevent its
repetition; but the majority saw the matter in another light, and when the
Federalists resorted to technical delays, the Republicans after a session of
nineteen hours passed the Resolution by a vote of seventy-two to forty-one.
Macon, Stanford, and the old Republicans voted with the Federalists in the
minority, while Randolph was ill and absent throughout the debate.

The Resolution marked the highest energy reached by the Eleventh
Congress. Giles’s bill for fitting out the frigates was allowed to slumber in
committee; and a bill for taking forty thousand volunteers for one year into
government service never came to a vote in the Senate. Congress was
influenced by news from England to lay aside measures mischievous except
as a prelude to hostilities. The change of Administration in London opened
the way to new negotiations, and every fresh negotiation consumed a fresh
year.
No course would have pleased Congress so much as to do nothing at all;
but this wish could not be fully gratified. The Non-intercourse Act of March
1, 1809, was to expire by limitation with the actual session. As early as
December 1 the House referred the matter to a committee with Macon for
its head. Macon probably went to the Treasury for instructions. A plan
drawn by Gallatin, and accepted without opposition by the Cabinet, was
reported December 19 to the House in the form of a bill which had less the
character of a Non-intercourse than of a Navigation Act; for while it closed
American ports to every British or French vessel public and private, it
admitted British and French merchandise when imported directly from their
place of origin in vessels wholly American. The measure was as mild a
protest as human skill could devise if compared with the outrages it
retaliated, but it had the merit of striking at the British shipping interest
which was chiefly to blame for the conduct of the British government.
Under the provisions of the bill, American shipping would gain a monopoly
of American trade. Not a British vessel of any kind could enter an American
port.
Macon’s bill came before the House Jan. 8, 1810, for discussion, which
lasted three weeks. The opposition objected to the new policy for the double
reason that it was too strong and too weak. St. Loe Livermore, a
Massachusetts Federalist, began by treating the measure as so extreme that
England and France would resent it by shutting their ports to all American
ships; while Sawyer of North Carolina denounced it as evaporating the
national spirit in mere commercial regulations, when no measure short of
war would meet the evil. According as commerce or passion weighed with
the reasoners, the bill was too violent or disgracefully feeble. Throughout
the winter, these contradictory arguments were pressed in alternation by
speaker after speaker. Macon reflected only the views of Madison and

Gallatin when he replied that if England and France should retaliate by
excluding American shipping from their ports, they would do what America
wanted; for they must then enforce the non-intercourse which the United
States had found impossible to enforce without their aid. He agreed with the
war-members that the bill showed none too much energy, but he argued that
the nation was less prepared for war than in 1808 and 1809; while as for
Jackson’s quarrels, he declined to admit that they changed the affair one
iota.
Although the two extremes still stood so far apart that their arguments
bore no relation to each other, the violence of temper which marked the
embargo dispute, and which was to mark any step toward actual measures
of force, did not appear at this session. Indeed, the Federalists themselves
were not unanimous; some of the most extreme, like Barent Gardenier and
Philip Barton Key, supported Macon’s plan, while some of the extremists
on the other side, like Troup of Georgia, voted against it. January 29, by a
vote of seventy-three to fifty-two, the House passed the bill. The Senate
soon afterward took it up; and then, as was to be expected, the factions
broke loose. February 21, at the motion of Senator Samuel Smith, by a vote
of sixteen to eleven the Senate struck everything from the bill except the
enacting clause and the exclusion of belligerent war-vessels from United
States’ harbors.
An Administration measure could not without rousing angry feelings be
so abruptly mutilated by a knot of Administration senators. Samuel Smith’s
motives, given in his own words, were entitled to proper attention; but
President Madison’s opinion on the subject, whether correct or mistaken,
had even more effect on what was to follow. Madison believed that the
rejection of the bill was an intrigue of the Smiths for selfish or personal
objects. He recorded the language which he felt himself obliged to use on
the subject, twelve months afterward, to Robert Smith’s face:[143]—
“For examples in which he had counteracted what he had not himself disapproved
in the Cabinet, I referred to the bills called Macon’s bills, and the Non-intercourse
Bill, on the consultation on which he appeared to concur in their expediency; that he
well knew the former, in its outline at least, had originated in the difficulty of finding
measures that would prevent what Congress had solemnly protested against,—to wit,
a complete submission to the belligerent edicts; that the measure was considered as
better than nothing, which seemed to be the alternative, and as part only of whatever
else might in the progress of the business be found attainable; and that he neither
objected to what was done in the Cabinet (the time and place for the purpose), nor

offered anything in the place of it, yet it was well understood that his conversations
and conduct out of doors had been entirely of a counteracting nature; that it was
generally believed that he was in an unfriendly disposition personally and officially;
and that although in conversations with different individuals he might not hold the
same unfavorable language, yet with those of a certain temper it was no secret that he
was very free in the use of it, and had gone so far as to avow a disapprobation of the
whole policy of commercial restrictions from the embargo throughout.”

Robert Smith, doubtless believing that all his actions had been above
question or reproach, protested warmly against these charges of
unfriendliness and intrigue; but Madison, with a feminine faculty for
pressing a sensitive point, insinuated that in his opinion both the Smiths
were little better than they should be. “With respect to his motives for
dissatisfaction I acknowledged that I had been, for the reasons given by
him, much puzzled to divine any natural ones without looking deeper into
human nature than I was willing to do.” The meaning of the innuendo was
explained by Joel Barlow the following year in the “National Intelligencer,”
where he acted as Madison’s mouthpiece in defending the Administration
from Robert Smith’s attacks. One of Smith’s complaints rested upon
Macon’s bill. Barlow asked, “What gives Mr. Smith a right at this day to
proclaim himself in opposition to that bill? Was it ever laid before the
Cabinet and opinions taken? Did he there oppose it? Did he not rather
approve it, and give his vote for every article? Did he ever utter a syllable
against it till his more acute brother discovered the commercial bearing that
it would have upon the house [of Smith and Buchanan], and concluded that
their interest required its rejection?”
Perhaps this explanation, however offensive to the Smiths, injured them
less than the other suspicion which had as much vogue as the first,—that
their conduct toward Macon’s bill was a part of their feud against Gallatin,
and proved their determination to oppose everything he suggested. At the
moment when Samuel Smith revolted against Macon’s measure,
Washington was filled with tales of quarrels in the Cabinet. In truth, these
reports were greatly exaggerated. Robert Smith had not the capacity to
develop or to pursue a difficult line of argument even without opposition.
Against Gallatin he could not, and as Madison testified did not, open his
mouth, nor did Gallatin or Madison ever complain except of Smith’s silence
in the Cabinet; but he talked freely in society, and every one heard of battles
supposed to be raging. Walter Jones, one of the most respectable Virginia

members, wrote to Jefferson, February 19, imploring him to intervene:[144]
—
“Before you quitted this place you knew that causes of dissension subsisted in the
Executive departments. So ominous an event has not failed to be an object of my
continued and anxious attention, and I am now fully persuaded that these unfriendly
feelings are fast approaching to a degree of animosity that must end in open rupture,
with its very injurious consequences to the Republican cause.... This break of
harmony in the Executive departments, added to the extreme points of difference in
opinion among the majority in Congress in relation to the great questions of peace and
war, renders the apathy and inaction of the Republicans here extremely mortifying. I
never knew them more disconnected in sentiment and system, as probably may have
been made manifest to you by the desultory and inconclusive work of nearly three
months.... You will recollect that at the close of the last Congress the appearance of
umbrage was confined to Mr. Gallatin and Mr. R. Smith; indeed, excepting
themselves there were no other secretaries effectively in office. It is now supposed,
and I believe with truth, that the former stands alone against the more or less
unfriendly dispositions of all the rest. Their main abettors of last spring have abated
nothing of their strong and indecent zeal.”

Upon feelings so irritable and at a moment when schism was imminent,
as Walter Jones described, the action of Samuel Smith and Michael Leib
with six or eight more Republican senators, in emasculating Macon’s bill,
left small chance of reconciliation. Giles, having declared himself in favor
of energy, did not vote at all. The debate being for the most part not
reported, the arguments of the dissenting senators have been lost. One
speaker alone broke the monotony of the discussion by an address that
marked the beginning of an epoch.
Henry Clay had been barely two weeks a senator, when, February 22, he
rose to move that the bill as amended by Samuel Smith be recommitted; and
this motion he supported by a war speech of no great length, but full of
Western patriotism.
“The conquest of Canada is in your power,” he said. “I trust I shall not be deemed
presumptuous when I state that I verily believe that the militia of Kentucky are alone
competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet.... The withered arm and
wrinkled brow of the illustrious founders of our freedom are melancholy indications
that they will shortly be removed from us. Their deeds of glory and renown will then
be felt only through the cold medium of the historic page; we shall want the presence
and living example of a new race of heroes to supply their places, and to animate us to
preserve inviolate what they achieved.... I call upon the members of this House to
maintain its character for vigor. I beseech them not to forfeit the esteem of the
country. Will you set the base example to the other House of an ignominious
surrender of our rights after they have been reproached for imbecility and you
extolled for your energy! But, sir, if we could be so forgetful of ourselves, I trust we
shall spare you [Vice-President George Clinton] the disgrace of signing, with those

hands so instrumental in the Revolution, a bill abandoning some of the most precious
rights which it then secured.”

Other members both of the House and of the Senate had made war
speeches, and in Clay’s harangue no idea could be called original; yet apart
from the energy and courage which showed a new and needed habit of
command, these sentences of Clay’s maiden speech marked the appearance
of a school which was for fifty years to express the national ideals of
statesmanship, drawing elevation of character from confidence in itself, and
from devotion to ideas of nationality and union, which redeemed every
mistake committed in their names. In Clay’s speech almost for the first time
the two rhetorical marks of his generation made their appearance, and
during the next half century the Union and the Fathers were rarely omitted
from any popular harangue. The ideas became in the end fetiches and
phrases; but they were at least more easily understood than the fetiches and
phrases of Jeffersonian republicanism which preceded them. Federalists
used the name of Washington in the same rhetorical manner, but they used it
for party purposes to rebuke Washington’s successors. The Union and the
Fathers belonged to no party, and might be used with equal advantage by
orators of every section. Clay enjoyed almost alone for years the advantage
of winning popularity by this simple means; but in 1810, at least along the
Atlantic coast, such appeals had little popular success. Least of all had they
weight in the Senate, which listened unmoved to Clay’s oratory, and replied
to it immediately on the same day by passing the “ignominious surrender”
of national rights by a vote of twenty-six to seven. Giles did not vote.
Samuel Smith, Leib, and even Crawford were in the majority.
Macon’s bill came back to the House as a law for the exclusion of
British and French war-vessels from American harbors. The House resented
the treatment, and after another long debate, March 5, refused to concur in
the Senate’s amendments. By a vote of sixty-seven to forty-seven the bill
was sent back to the Senate in its original form. A long wrangle ensued; a
committee of conference failed to agree, and March 16 the Senate was
obliged to decide whether it would yield to the House, or allow the bill to
fail.
On that question Samuel Smith made a speech,[145] which he afterward
printed, and which demanded attention because it forced President Madison
into a course that exposed him to severe and perhaps deserved criticism.

The Senate was equally balanced. Samuel Smith’s voice and vote decided
the result. His reasons were such as no one could misunderstand.
“I found in it,” said he, criticising Macon’s bill, “or believed I did, that which
would be ruinous to the commerce of the United States, and therefore felt myself
bound by the duty I owe to my constituents to remove the veil and leave the measure
open to public view.... Is there no danger, Mr. President, to be apprehended from the
Emperor if the bill should pass with this provision [that any British or French ship
hereafter arriving in an American harbor should with its cargo be seized and
condemned]? His character for decision is well known. Might we not fear that he
would retort our own measure upon us by causing all the property of our merchants
now under sequestration (amounting to at least three millions of dollars) to be
condemned?... But what will England do should this law pass? Will the King and
Council retaliate our measure? I confess, Mr. President, that I think they will.... What
will be the consequence? Ruin to your merchants and destruction to the party which
now governs this country.... But I have been told that if England should retaliate, her
retaliation would operate as a complete non-intercourse between the two countries,
and in a way that would be effectual; and that as I had always approved those
measures, this view of the subject must meet my approbation,—that it would precisely
create that which I have said was a powerful measure against Great Britain: to wit, an
embargo. I never will agree, Mr. President, in this side-way to carry into execution a
great national measure.”

The speech excited surprise that Samuel Smith, a man accounted
shrewd, should suppose such arguments to be decent, much less convincing.
From Federalists, who conscientiously wished submission to British policy,
Smith’s reasoning would have seemed natural; but Smith protested against
submission, and favored arming merchant-ships and providing them with
convoy,—a measure useless except to bring on war in a “side-way.”
Congress preferred to choose its own time for fighting, and declined
listening to Smith’s advice, although the Senate sustained him in rejecting
Macon’s bill. On this occasion Giles appeared, and voted with the
Administration; but sixteen senators followed Smith, while only fifteen
could be found to act in concert with the House and the Executive.
After the Senate had thus put an end to Macon’s bill, the House after
much hesitation, March 31, put an end to Smith’s bill. After five months of
discussion Congress found itself, April 1, where it had been in the previous
November.
Rather than resume friendly relations with both belligerents without
even expressing a wish for the recovery of national self-respect, the House
made one more effort. April 7 Macon reported a new bill, which was
naturally nicknamed Macon’s bill No. 2. This measure also seems to have

had the assent of the Cabinet, but Macon himself neither framed nor
favored it. “I am at a loss to guess what we shall do on the subject of
foreign relations,” he wrote to his friend Judge Nicholson, three days later.
[146]
“The bill in the enclosed paper, called Macon’s No. 2, is not really
Macon’s, though he reports it as chairman. It is in truth Taylor’s. This I only
mention to you, because when it comes to be debated I shall not act the part
of a father, but of a step-father.” The Taylor who took this responsibility
was a member from South Carolina, whose career offered no other great
distinction than the measure which produced a war with England.
Macon’s bill No. 2 was the last of the annual legislative measures taken
by Congress to counteract by commercial interest the encroachments of
France and Great Britain. The first was the Partial Non-intercourse Act of
April, 1806; the second was the Embargo Act with its supplements, dating
from Dec. 22, 1807; the third was the Total Non-intercourse Act of March
1, 1809; and the fourth was Macon’s bill No. 2. Each year produced a new
experiment; but the difference could be easily remembered, for after the
climax of the embargo each successive annual enactment showed
weakening faith in the policy, until Macon’s bill No. 2 marked the last stage
toward the admitted failure of commercial restrictions as a substitute for
war. Abandoning the pretence of direct resistance to France and England,
this measure repealed the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, leaving
commercial relations with all the world as free as ever before, but
authorizing the President “in case either Great Britain or France shall,
before the 3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that they
shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States,” to prohibit
intercourse with the nation which had not revoked its edicts.
The objections to the bill were overpowering, for its effect was
equivalent to alliance with England. Had the United States taken active part
in the war against France, they could have done Napoleon no greater injury
than by the passage of this Act, which invited Great Britain to control
American commerce for her military purposes. On the other hand the bill
conferred on the President a discretion dangerous, unconstitutional, and
unnecessary,—a power once before conferred by the Non-intercourse Act of
March 1, 1809, and then resulting in the mistakes of Erskine’s arrangement,
which seemed warning enough against repeating the same risk.

These objections were well understood and forcibly pointed out, while
the arguments in support of the bill were melancholy in their admissions.
The records of Congress could hardly parallel the disregard of dignity with
which Taylor defended his bill in a tone that could have been endured only
by an assembly lost to the habits of self-respect. His denunciation of war
expressed party doctrine, and he harmed no one by repeating the time-worn
moral drawn from Greece and Rome, the Persian millions, Philip of
Macedon, Syracuse and Carthage,—as though the fate of warlike nations
proved that they should have submitted to foreign outrage, or as though the
world could show either arts or liberty except such as had sprung from the
cradle of war; but feeling perhaps that classical authority proved too little or
too much, he told the House frankly why those members who like himself
opposed war found themselves unable to maintain the pledge of resistance
they had given in imposing the embargo:—
“But concerning the breaking down of the embargo! Let the truth come out!
Neither this plea nor the other miserable one of the fear of insurrections, and what not,
will do.... The embargo repealed itself. The wants created by it to foreigners, and the
accidental failure of crops in England had reduced the thing in one article to plain
calculation. The vote of this House to repeal the law gave from four to five dollars
rise on each barrel of flour. This was the weight that pulled us down.”

The admission could not inspire enthusiasm or raise the moral standard
of Congress; but the House accepted it, and amended the bill only by
adding fifty per cent to the existing duties on all products of Great Britain
and France. The amendment was also a business speculation, for it was
intended to protect and encourage American manufactures; but it did not
come directly from the manufacturers. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky
moved the amendment. “Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the New
England Republicans,” wrote Macon,[147] “are full of manufacturing. To
these may be added some of the Virginia Republicans. This plan is said to
be a Cabinet project; if so, it satisfies me that the Cabinet is hard pushed for
a plan.”
April 19 the bill passed the House by a vote of sixty-one to forty. The
Senate referred it to a select committee with Samuel Smith at its head,—a
committee made for Smith to control. As before, he reported the measure
with its only effective provision—the additional duty—struck out, and with
the addition of a convoy-clause. The Senate, by nineteen votes to eight,
sustained Smith; nor did one New England senator, Federalist or

Republican, vote for the protection offered by Kentucky and Virginia. The
bill went to a third reading by a vote of twenty-one to seven, and April 28,
having passed the Senate as Smith reported it without a division, was sent
back to the House for concurrence.
Irritated though the House was by the Senate’s hostility to every
measure which had support from the Treasury or was calculated to give it
support, the members were for the most part anxious only to see the session
ended. No one cared greatly for Macon’s bill No. 2 in any shape. The House
refused to accept the Senate’s amendments, and found itself May 1 within a
few hours of adjournment, and within the same time of seeing the Non-
intercourse Act expire, without having made provision for the commercial
relations that were to follow. Perhaps Congress might have shown wisdom
by doing nothing; but the instinct to do something was strong, and party
feeling mixed with the sense of responsibility. At five o’clock in the
afternoon committees of conference were appointed, and at the evening
session, Samuel Smith having abandoned his convoy-clause, the House
gave up its extra duties and the bill came to its passage. All the Federalists
voted against it with Macon, Randolph, and Matthew Lyon,—a minority of
twenty-seven. Sixty-four Republicans recorded themselves in its favor, and
made the bill a law.

CHAPTER X.
Randolph, who had been ill at home during the winter of 1809–1810,
appeared in public affairs only after the debates were mostly ended. March
22 he moved a Resolution that the military and naval establishments ought
to be reduced. He wished to bring Madison’s administration back to the
point where Jefferson’s administration eight years before had begun; and in
truth the country could choose only between the practices of 1801 and those
of 1798. Randolph, who shunned no assumption of fact which suited his
object, asked the House whether any one “seriously thought of war, or
believed it a relation in which we could be placed”:—
“With respect to war we have—thank God!—in the Atlantic a fosse wide and deep
enough to keep off any immediate danger to our territory. The belligerents of Europe
know as well as we feel that war is out of the question. No, sir! if our preparation was
for battle, the State physicians have mistaken the state of the patient. We have been
embargoed and non-intercoursed almost into a consumption, and this is not the time
for battle.”

Randolph easily proved the need of retrenchment. His statements were
not to be denied. President Washington, with a gross income of fifty-eight
million dollars in eight years, spent eleven millions and a quarter on the
army and navy. John Adams in four years spent eighteen millions, and was
supposed to have been driven from office for extravagance. President
Jefferson in his first four years cut down these expenses to eight million, six
hundred thousand dollars; in his second term he raised them again to
sixteen millions, or nearly to the point reached by John Adams at a time of
actual hostilities with France,—although President Jefferson relied not on
armaments, but on peaceable coercion, which cost very large sums besides.
At last the country had reached a point where, after refusing either to fight
its enemies or resent its injuries, it had begun to run in debt for armaments
it would not use. This waste needed to be stopped.
Three fourths of the Republican party and all the Federalists were of the
same mind with Randolph,—that an army led by Wilkinson and a navy of
gunboats, when the country refused to fight under any provocation, were
not worth maintaining; and when Eppes of Virginia, April 14, brought
forward the budget for the coming year, he started by assuming that the
military and naval expenditure might be reduced three million dollars,

which would still leave a deficiency of two millions and a half, and would
require an increase of customs-duties. If three millions and a half could be
saved, members wanted to know why the whole military and naval
expenditure, which had required only six millions in 1809, might not be cut
off.
Macon, who supported Randolph with the ardor of 1798, urged nothing
less than this sweeping reform.
“If the army were disbanded and the navy sold,” he argued,[148] “we should not
perhaps want half a million,—not a million and a half, on the outside. That might be
obtained by loans payable at short date.... You must get clear of the navy-yards; if you
do not put them down, unquestionably they will put you down. How is it with the
army? Has it been employed to more advantage? Its situation is too melancholy to be
spoken of; and if anything could disgust the people of the territory we acquired some
years since, it must be the management of that army, for however much they hear of
our good government, after such a specimen they must have a despicable opinion of it
indeed.... I will not raise a tax of a cent to support the present plan. I have no
hesitation in saying that I shall feel bound to vote down the additional force of six
thousand men whenever the subject shall come before us. I voted for it; but found that
then, as now, we talk a great deal about war, and do nothing.”

Not a member supported Eppes’s motion for increased taxes. Democrats
and Federalists, one after another, rose to oppose an increase, and to favor
disbanding the additional army.
“I shall certainly vote to reduce the army of the United States,” said Burwell of
Virginia;[149] “and if the House should decide that it will not employ the navy of the
United States in the protection of commerce, I shall certainly vote also to reduce the
naval establishment. I am perfectly convinced that the circumstances under which I
voted for the increase of the army and navy have passed away; and as our revenue has
diminished, I shall vote for a reduction of our expenses.... So far from considering the
country in a deplorable situation, as my colleague (Mr. Randolph) has represented it, I
think that in many points of view we have every reason to congratulate ourselves. It is
a singular phenomenon to see any nation enjoying peace at this time. This exemption
from the general lot claims the gratitude of every man in the country. So far as I am
concerned in the affairs of the nation, I have but a single object in view,—namely, to
preserve peace; and my votes are predicated on that ground.”

The war men voted with the peace men for reasons given by Troup of
Georgia:[150]—
“I am as well convinced of the fact as that I am now addressing you, that the
people will not consent to pay an additional tax for the support of armies and navies
raised to oppose the injurious acts of the belligerents against our rights, after we have
abandoned those rights and dishonorably withdrawn from the contest.”

After much contradictory talk of this kind, Nelson of Maryland told the
House that they were behaving like schoolboys.
“It is a perfect child’s game,” said he.[151] “At one session we pass a law for
raising an army, and go to expense; in another year, instead of raising money to pay
the expense by the means in our power, we are to disband the army we have been at
so much pains to raise. We shall well deserve the name of children instead of men if
we pursue a policy of this kind.”

The warning had no perceptible weight with the House, where the peace
party were in a majority and the war party were in a passion, not with the
foreign enemy, but with their neighbors and friends. Richard M. Johnson
almost avowed that he should vote for reducing army and navy in order to
punish the men who had made them useless:—
“To our humiliation and everlasting degradation we have refused to use the means
in our power to induce foreign nations to do us justice.... The annals of human nature
have not given to the world the sad example of a nation so powerful, so free, so
intelligent, so jealous of their rights and at the same time so grossly insulted, so
materially injured, under such extraordinary forbearance.... We are afraid to trust
ourselves, and we pretend that we are afraid to trust the people. My hopes have rested
and always will rest upon the people; they constitute my last hope. We may disgrace
ourselves, but the people will rise in the majesty of their strength, and the world will
be interested in the spectacle.”

With the advocates of war in a temper so unmanageable, and the
advocates of peace in a majority so decisive, the House showed unanimity
by passing in committee, without a dissenting voice, a Resolution that the
military and naval establishments ought to be reduced. April 16 this vote
was reached in committee; and the next day, by a vote of sixty to thirty-one,
the Resolution was formally adopted by the House. Of the minority, two
thirds were Northern men and all were Republicans.
In obedience to the order, Randolph promptly reported a bill for
reducing the navy.[152] All the gunboats, all but three of the frigates, and all
other armed vessels—three only excepted—were to be sold, their officers
and crews discharged; the navy-yards, except at Boston, New York, and
Norfolk, to be disused, and the marine corps reduced to two companies. A
few days later, April 24, Smilie of Pennsylvania reported a bill for a similar
reduction of the military establishment to three regiments. These measures
seemed to carry out the express will and orders of the House; but no sooner
did the House go into committee than the members astonished themselves

by striking out each section in succession. Gunboats, frigates, navy-yards,
and marines, each managed in turn to obtain a majority against reduction.
Then Randolph rose,—not in wrath, for he spoke with unusual calm, but
with a force which warranted the sway he so often exercised over men
whose minds were habitually in doubt. He had ever believed, he said, that
the people of the United States were destined to become a great naval
power, but if anything could prevent this result it would be the premature
attempts of the last two Administrations to force it. A naval power
necessarily grew out of tonnage and seamen, but both tonnage and seamen
had been systematically discouraged:—
“It has always been understood, according to my view of the subject, that one of
the principal uses of a navy was to protect commerce; but our political rule for some
time past has been that of inverse proportion, and we have discovered that commerce
is the natural protector of a navy.”

The inconsistency of Jefferson’s principles and practice was a target
which could be hit by the most inexperienced marksman, but Randolph
struck it with something more solid than an epigram when he discussed its
expense.
“Against the administration of Mr. Adams,” he said, “I, in common with many
others, did and do yet entertain a sentiment of hostility, and have repeatedly cried out
against it for extravagance and for profusion and for waste—wanton waste—of the
public resources. I find, however, upon consideration,—whether from the nature of
men, or from the nature of things, or from whatever other cause,—that that
Administration, grossly extravagant as I did then and still do believe it to have been, if
tried by the criterion of the succeeding one, was a pattern of retrenchment and
economy.”

In order to prove this charge he attacked Robert Smith’s administration
of the navy, asserting that while in 1800 each seaman cost about four
hundred and seventy-two dollars a year, in 1808 each seaman cost nearly
nine hundred dollars a year; and that the same excess existed in regard to
officers, marines, clothing, and provisions:—
“Yes, sir! we have economized until we absolutely have reduced the annual cost
of a seaman from $472—as it was under the very wasteful expenditure of Mr.
Adams’s administration—down to the moderate sum of $887. We have economized
until a paltry fleet consisting of vessels built to our hand, to say nothing of those that
have been sold, and the warlike stores of which have been retained and preserved,—
which fleet was built, equipped, and every cannon and implement of war purchased
under the old Administration,—has cost us twelve million dollars, when it cost the
preceding Administration but nine millions.”

Only one member replied on behalf of the Government to these
criticisms. Burwell Bassett of the naval committee ventured somewhat
timidly to defend, not so much Robert Smith as Secretary Hamilton, who,
he said, had reduced expenses at the navy-yard about one third. Most of the
frigates had been so thoroughly repaired as to be more valuable than when
first built. In the navy-yard itself everything was in good condition and well
conducted. Bassett’s testimony hardly met Randolph’s charges, but the
House sustained him on every point; and Boyd of New Jersey so far forgot
the respect due to a former vote, in which the House had resolved by a
majority of two to one that the army and navy ought to be reduced, as to say
that never since the government was formed had so preposterous a
proposition been offered. The end of the session arrived before the
discussion ceased.
The same inability to act, even where no apparent obstacle existed, was
shown in regard to the United States Bank, whose charter, granted for
twenty years by the First Congress in February, 1791, was to expire March
4, 1811. In the days of Federalist sway the Republicans had bitterly opposed
the Bank and denied the constitutional power of Congress to grant the
charter; but during the eight years of Jefferson’s rule the Bank had
continued without a question to do the financial work of government, and
no other agency existed or could be readily created capable of taking the
place of this machine, which, unlike any other in the government, worked
excellently well.
If its existence was to be continued, public interest required that the Act
should be passed at this session, since the actual charter was to expire in ten
months. If a new charter was to be refused, public interest required even
more urgently that ample warning of so radical a change should be given,
that the Treasury might not be suddenly crippled or general bankruptcy be
risked without notice.
No complaint of any kind was at that time made against the Bank; no
charge was brought against it of interference in politics, of corrupt
influence, or of mismanagement. Gallatin was known to favor it; the
President was not hostile, nor was any influence in the government
opposed; the Federalists who had created were bound to support it; and
except for the principles of some Southern Republicans who regarded
functions of government as germs of despotism, every political faction in

the country seemed consenting to the charter. January 29 the subject was
referred to a special committee. The committee reported a Resolution, and
in due course John Taylor of South Carolina brought in a bill, the result of
negotiations between the Treasury and the Bank, granting a new charter on
condition that the Bank should increase its capital two-and-a-half million
dollars, half of which should be paid outright to the government; that,
further, the Bank should bind itself to lend the government at three months’
notice any amount not exceeding in the whole five million dollars at a rate
not exceeding six per cent; that on all government deposits above the sum
of three millions, which should remain for one year, the Bank should pay
interest at the rate of three per cent; and that the government should have
the right at any time to increase the capital stock, and subscribe and own the
new stock to a fixed amount. These terms were especially valuable at the
moment, because they assisted the Treasury to meet an actual deficit, and
provided, as far as human foresight went, for financial dangers that might
rise from further foreign troubles. No serious opposition showed itself.
April 21 the House, by a majority of seventy-five to thirty-five, voted to
accept the price fixed for the charter; but the session closed without further
action.
When Congress adjourned, May 2, 1810, the result attained during five
months passed in continuous labor amounted to little more than the
constitutional necessities of government,—the appropriation bills; a loan for
five million dollars; an Act for taking a census of persons; an Act
appropriating sixty thousand dollars toward making the Cumberland Road;
an appropriation of five thousand dollars for experiments on Fulton’s
torpedoes; in regard to foreign affairs, Giles’s Resolution blaming the
conduct of the British minister, and Macon’s or Taylor’s Act, which
condoned that conduct. The old Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809,
expired by limitation with the expiring Congress May 1, 1810.
“We adjourned last night,” wrote Randolph to Nicholson the next day,[153] “a
little after twelve, having terminated a session of more than five months by
authorizing a loan of as many millions, and—all is told. The incapacity of
Government has long ceased to be a laughing matter. The Cabinet is all to pieces, and
the two Houses have tumbled about their own ears.”

With all Randolph’s faults, he had more of the qualities, training, and
insight of a statesman than were to be found elsewhere among the
representatives in the Eleventh Congress; and although himself largely the

cause of the chaos he described, he felt its disgraces and dangers. Society in
general troubled itself little about them. The commercial class, pleased to be
freed from restraints, and the agricultural class, consoled by the fair prices
of their produce, thought as little as possible about their failure in
government; what was called good society for the most part drew a bitter
pleasure from it. Yet beneath the general physical contentment almost
equally general moral disgust existed and made itself felt. President
Madison, who was in the best position to gauge popular opinion, began to
suspect the hardly perceptible movement of a coming tide. After the
adjournment he wrote to William Pinkney at London:[154]—
“Among the inducements to the experiment of an unrestricted commerce now
made were two which contributed essentially to the majority of votes in its favor,—
first, a general hope, favored by daily accounts from England, that an adjustment of
differences there, and thence in France, would render the measure safe and proper;
second, a willingness in not a few to teach the advocates for an open trade the folly as
well as degradation of their policy.... It will not be wonderful, therefore, if the passive
spirit which marked the late session of Congress should at the next meeting be roused
to the opposite point, more especially as the tone of the nation has never been so low
as that of its representatives.”

Madison still held to his favorite doctrine, and meant no more by his
warning than that the Eleventh Congress might be expected to reimpose
measures of commercial restriction:—
“The experiment [of free commerce] about to be made will probably open too late
the eyes of the people to the expediency and efficacy of the means [the embargo]
which they have suffered to be taken out of the hands of the Government and to be
incapacitated for future use.”[155]

This condolence with Jefferson over the fate of their experiment showed
the direction toward which Madison’s eyes were still turned; but, though a
firm believer in his own theory of peaceable coercion, he was ready and had
always been ready to accept and carry out any stronger scheme that
Congress might prefer. He had no definite plan of his own; he clung to the
idea that England and France could be brought by patience to respect
neutral claims of right; but he felt that the actual submission made by
Congress was apparent rather than real, and might be followed within a year
by renewed resistance.
Meanwhile nothing could be more dangerous to the Americans than the
loss of self-respect. The habit of denouncing themselves as cowards and of
hearing themselves denounced as a race that cared only for money tended to

produce the qualities imputed. Americans of 1810 were persuaded that they
could not meet Englishmen or Frenchmen on equal terms, man against man,
or stand in battle against the veterans of Napoleon or Nelson. The sense of
national and personal inferiority sank astonishingly deep. Reasonable
enough as regarded the immense superiority of Europe in organization, it
passed bounds when it condemned everything American as contemptible, or
when the Federalist gentry refused to admit the Democrats of Pennsylvania
or the Republicans of Virginia or the Government at Washington into the
circle of civilized life. Social self-abasement never went so far as in its
efforts to prove to Francis James Jackson, the British minister, that he was
right in treating the national government with contempt. Englishman as
Jackson was, and ready to assume without question every claim of
superiority that might be made for his country or his class, he was surprised
at the force of American allegiance to himself. As he travelled northward,
after his dismissal from Washington, his private letters gave a strange idea
of the chaos in American society. He wrote from Philadelphia,—
“The tide has turned completely in our favor. At Washington they are in a state of
the most animated confusion, the Cabinet divided, and the Democratic party going
various ways.... Their foreign politics embarrass them even more than home ones.
One moment they want another embargo; the next, to take off the restrictions; then, to
arm their merchantmen; and next, to declare war. In short, they do not know what to
be at.... Notwithstanding all that has passed,—which would fill volumes to relate in
full,—and the Government being at open war with me, ‘the respectability’ has been
both here and at Baltimore so anxious to show that they did not share the sentiments
of the Democrats that we have had throngs of visitors and innumerable invitations that
we could not accept, though we have dined at home but twice during the month we
have been here. To prevent this, the savages have threatened in one of their papers to
tar and feather every man who should ask me to his house.”[156]

Pleased with his social success at Baltimore and Philadelphia, Jackson
found New York and New England fairly delightful. His vogue in Baltimore
and Philadelphia meant little more than curiosity to see his wife and her
toilettes; but as he approached New England he became a personage in
politics, and received attentions such as he could hardly have expected even
from those European courts whose civility lingered in his mind. February
25 he wrote from New York:[157]—
“As we get farther north and east, the said Yankees improve very much. New York
is a fine town, unlike any other in America, and resembling more the best of our
country towns, with the additional advantage of the finest water that can be imagined.
There is as much life and bustle as at Liverpool or any other of our great commercial
towns; and like them New York has inhabitants who have made and are making rapid

and brilliant fortunes by their enterprise and industry.... We have met with unbounded
civility and good-will, and may be said to live here in triumph. We are now engaged
to dinner every day but two, till the end of the first week in March.... The governor of
Massachusetts has written to me to invite me to Boston, where, he says, he and many
others will be happy to receive me. That State, which is one of the most populous and
enlightened of the States of the Union, and, as you know, is the birthplace of
American independence, has done more toward justifying me to the world than it was
possible from the nature of things that I or any other person could do in the present
stage of the business. The legislature, which is not a mob like many that have passed
resolutions, has agreed to a report of a joint committee, and passed resolutions in
conformity with it, exculpating me altogether, and in the most direct manner
censuring the conduct of the President and of the general government.”

Boston newspapers of Feb. 9, 1810, contained the report and resolutions
in which the Massachusetts legislature, by a vote of two hundred and fifty-
four to one hundred and forty-five, declared that “they can perceive no just
or adequate cause” for breaking relations with the British minister, F. J.
Jackson; and this challenge to their own Government, backed by Governor
Gore’s invitation of Jackson to Boston, was intended to carry political
weight, even to the extent of forcing Madison to renew political relations,
as he had been forced to resume commercial relations, with England. Had
public opinion taken the intended course, Jackson’s visit to Boston would
have marked a demonstration of popular feeling against the national
government; nor were the Federalists in any way parties consenting to the
defeat of the scheme. The measures adopted by the Massachusetts
legislature in February came before the people at the State election early in
April, only six weeks after the General Court and Governor Gore had
condemned Madison. More than ninety thousand votes were cast, and the
Republican party, by a majority of about two thousand, not only turned
Governor Gore out of office, but also chose a General Court with a
Republican majority of twenty. At the same time similar changes of public
opinion restored New Hampshire to Republican control, and strengthened
the Republicans in New York and the Middle States. Not a doubt could exist
that the country sustained Madison, and that Jackson was not only an object
of decided unpopularity in America, but was far from being favored in
England. The advantage to be derived from his visit to Boston was no
longer evident, and after Governor Gore ceased to hold office, the good
taste of acting on an invitation thus practically withdrawn seemed doubtful;
but Jackson was not daunted by doubts.

Holding the promise of his Government that his mission should last at
least a year, Jackson beguiled the interval by such amusements as offered
themselves. In May he retired to a country-house on the North River, about
eight miles above New York, where he caught a glimpse of an American
invention which, as he had the good sense to suspect, was more important
than all the diplomatic quarrels in which he had ever engaged:—
“One of the curiosities that we daily see pass under our windows is the steamboat,
—a passage-vessel with accommodation for near a hundred persons. It is moved by a
steam-engine turning a wheel on either side of it, which acts like the main wheel of a
mill, and propels the vessel against wind and tide at the rate of four miles an hour. As
soon as it comes in sight there is a general rush of our household to watch and wonder
till it disappears. They don’t at all know what to make of the unnatural monster that
goes steadily careering on, with the wind directly in its teeth as often as not. I doubt
that I should be obeyed were I to desire any one of them to take a passage in
her.”[158]

After thus entertaining himself on the Hudson, the British minister made
his triumphal trip to Boston early in June, where he found a gratifying
welcome from society if not from the governor and legislature:—
“At Boston, ‘the headquarters of good principles,’ we were feasted most famously,
and I made there many interesting acquaintances. After living nine days in clover at
about eighteen of the principal houses,—having never less than two engagements per
day,—they gave me on the 10th a public dinner, at which near three hundred persons
were present, and where we had toasts and cheering and singing in the best style of
Bishopsgate Street or Merchant Taylor’s Hall. A party of gentlemen met me at the last
stage on entering Boston, and accompanied me to the first on my departure. At
another public dinner I was invited to on the 4th of June (the Ancient and Honorable
Artillery election dinner), and at which the governor, who is a Democrat, was present,
the clergy, the magistrates, the heads of the University of Cambridge, and the military
came to the top of the room in their respective bodies to be introduced to and to
compliment me. There is at Washington in consequence much ‘wailing and gnashing
of teeth.’”

At the public dinner given to Jackson June 11, after the guest of the
evening had retired, Senator Pickering gave a toast which became a party
cry: “The world’s last hope,—Britain’s fast-anchored isle!”[159]
From the moment the State officials withdrew from the reception, little
importance attached to the private acts of a society which might easily look
with interest at the rare appearance of a British minister in Boston; but the
political and social feeling was the same as though Governor Gore were
still in power, and created natural disgust among Republicans, who believed
that their Federalist opponents aimed at a dissolution of the Union and at a

retreat within the protection of Great Britain. If such ideas existed, they
showed themselves to Jackson in no recorded form. His visit to Boston was
a social amusement; and he regarded it, like the conduct of Congress, as a
triumph to himself only because it increased the mortifications of President
Madison, which counterbalanced in some degree his own want of energetic
support from Canning’s successor at the Foreign Office.
The history of Jackson and his mission did not quite end with his
departure from Boston in June, 1810, under escort of a mounted procession
of Boston Federalists. He thence went to Niagara,—a difficult journey; and
descending to Montreal and Quebec, returned to Albany, where he had the
unusual experience of seeing himself burned in effigy.
During all these wanderings he was a victim to the constant annoyance
of being able to quarrel neither with President Madison nor with his new
official chief, who showed a wish to quarrel as little as possible. Jackson
was as willing to find fault with one Government as with the other.
“I look forward with full confidence,” he wrote to his brother,[160] “for a full
approbation of what I have done. Ministers cannot disapprove of though they may be
sorry for it; and if they are sorry, it must be for the trouble it occasions them, for as I
have told them there is no loss of any adjustment of difficulties, that being
impracticable with this country upon the principles of my instructions. I hope they are
adopting the line that I recommended to them,—that of procrastinating any decision
whatever; but they might as well have told me so for my own guidance and
information, instead of leaving me a prey to all the lies and misrepresentations which
the Democrats have found it necessary to propagate on the subject for election
purposes. It would be an absolute disgrace to the country, and would produce an
impression never to be got over here,—the ill effects of which in all future
transactions we should not fail to be made sensible of,—if another minister were to be
sent out without some sort of satisfaction being taken or received for the treatment I
have experienced. They ought to insist on my being reinstated.”

The British government held a different opinion; and accordingly, at the
expiration of his stipulated twelve months, Sept. 16, 1810, Jackson set sail
for Europe, leaving J. P. Morier in charge of the British legation at
Washington.

CHAPTER XI.
If the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, irritated Napoleon,
Macon’s Act of May 1, 1810, might be expected to work in a manner still
more active.
The story has shown that Napoleon, toward the end of the year 1809,
felt many difficulties in giving new shape to his American policy after it
had been ruined by the Non-intercourse Act. His fixed idea required the
seizure of every American ship in Europe beyond the borders of France, as
he had for years seized American ships in his own ports. In part this wish
sprang from the Continental system, and was excused to some extent by the
plea that American commerce could be carried on only under British
protection; in part the seizure of American ships was a punishment for
defying the Emperor’s orders; and in part it was due to his necessities of
finance.
December 19, 1809, Napoleon wrote a brief order to Berthier, ordering
the seizure of all American vessels in the Spanish ports within his control;
[161]
vessels and cargoes, he said, were to be considered good prize. Having
taken this measure, he called a council of ministers for the next day, and
ordered Maret to bring there “everything relating to the judgments of the
prize-court; to the merchandise sequestered in the ports, which is spoiling.
If you have not all the information, ask the Minister of Finance.”[162]
The meaning of this preparation was to be sought in the Cabinet itself,
and in the Emperor’s surroundings. Peace with Austria left many vexations
in Napoleon’s path. Perhaps the unhappy situation of his brother Joseph at
Madrid troubled him less than the difficulty of reconciling the Empress
Josephine to a divorce, or the mortifications of negotiating for a wife among
Russian, German, and Austrian princesses; but annoyances like these,
though serious for ordinary men, could not be compared with the constant
trouble created by the Continental system of commercial restrictions and
the want of money it caused. Threatened with financial difficulties, and
obliged to study economies as well as to press contributions of war, the
Emperor found himself met by something resembling opposition among his
own ministers. As was his habit, he yielded at first to the advice he disliked,

and promised to do something for French industry. In November he
appointed a new Minister of the Interior, Montalivet, and lectured him on
the slowness of his bureaus in acting for the good of commerce.[163] From
such a mouth such a lesson startled the hearer, and Montalivet threw
himself with zeal into the prescribed work. To Fouché the Emperor read
another lecture compared with which the discourse to Montalivet was
commonplace. Fouché, a pronounced opponent of Napoleon’s commercial
restrictions, during the Emperor’s absence in Austria distributed too freely
his licenses for foreign trade: “I recognize always the same course in your
acts,” Napoleon wrote him. “You have not enough legality in your
head.”[164]
While thus teaching one minister to cherish commerce, and another to
respect legality, the Emperor listened to Champagny, who lost no chance of
advising the encouragement of neutral trade; and these three ministers—
Champagny, Fouché, and Montalivet—found a strong ally in the Minister
of the Treasury, Mollien, who has left the recorded opinion that the Imperial
system of commercial restriction was “the most disastrous and the most
false of fiscal inventions.”[165] The bias of Decrès, the Minister of Marine,
may be inferred from a story told by Marshal Marmont,[166] who, coming to
Paris at the close of 1809, called on his old friend and talked with the
enthusiasm of a successful soldier about the Emperor. “Well, Marmont,”
replied Decrès, “you are pleased at being made a marshal; you see
everything in bright colors. Do you want me to tell you the truth and to
unveil the future? The Emperor is mad—absolutely mad! He will upset us
all, and everything will end in a terrible disaster.” Taken in connection with
King Louis’ attitude in Holland, the Cabinet opposition of December, 1809,
amounted to rebellion against Napoleon’s authority.
At the Cabinet council of December 20 Montalivet made a written
report on the subject of American cotton, which threw so much blame on
the Imperial policy as to call a written contradiction from Napoleon. “An
American vessel,” the Emperor replied the next day,[167] “coming from
Louisiana to France will be well received here, no act of the government
forbidding the admission of American ships into French ports.” The
Americans, he explained, had prohibited commerce with France while
permitting it with Holland, Spain, and Naples; and in consequence “his
Majesty has used his right of influence over his neighbors because he was

unwilling that they should be treated differently from France, and he has
sequestered the ships destined for their ports;” but no such provision had
been made against American ships entering French ports.
Naturally piqued at an Imperial assertion that he had shown ignorance
of facts that deeply concerned his department, Montalivet sent to the
Treasury for information, with which, a few days afterward, he routed the
Emperor from the field. Unable to answer him, Napoleon referred his report
to Gaudin, Minister of Finance, with a curious marginal note, which showed
—what his ministers evidently believed—that the Emperor understood
neither the workings of his own system nor the laws of the United States:—
“Referred to the Minister of Finance to make me a report on this question: (1)
How is it conceivable that American ships come from America in spite of the
embargo? (2) How distinguish between ships coming from America and those coming
from London?”

Armstrong obtained immediate and accurate knowledge of this struggle
in council. Only a week after the Emperor wrote his note on the margin of
Montalivet’s report, Armstrong sent home a despatch on the subject:[168]—
“The veil which for some weeks past has covered the proceedings of the Cabinet
with regard to neutral commerce is now so far withdrawn as to enable us to see with
sufficient distinctness both the actors and the acting. The Ministers of Police and of
the Interior (Fouché and Montalivet) have come out openly and vigorously against the
present anti-commercial system, and have denounced it as ‘one originating in error
and productive only of evil, and particularly calculated to impoverish France and
enrich her enemy.’ While they have held this language in the Cabinet they have held
one of nearly the same tenor out of it, and have added (we may suppose on sufficient
authority) the most solemn assurances that the Emperor ‘never meant to do more than
to prevent the commerce of the United States from becoming tributary to Great
Britain; that a new decision would soon be taken by him on this subject, and that from
this the happiest results were to be expected.’”

As though to prevent President Madison from showing undue elation at
this announcement for the fiftieth time that the happiest results were to be
expected from the future, Armstrong wrote another letter, four days
afterward,[169] on the new confiscations and their cause. Frenchmen he said
would reason thus: “There is a deficit of fifty millions in the receipts of last
year. This must be supplied. Why not then put our hands into the pockets of
your citizens once more, since, as you continue to be embroiled with Great
Britain, we may do it with impunity.” Armstrong was angry, and could not
analyze to the bottom the Emperor’s methods or motives. Thiers, in later
years having the advantage of studying Napoleon’s papers, understood

better the nature of his genius. “To admit false neutrals in order to
confiscate them afterward, greatly pleased his astute (rusé) mind,” wrote
the French historian and statesman,[170] “little scrupulous in the choice of
means, especially in regard to shameless smugglers who violated at once
the laws of their own country and those of the country that consented to
admit them.” This description could not properly be applied to Americans,
since they violated neither their own law nor that of France by coming to
Amsterdam, San Sebastian, and Naples; but Thiers explained that the
Emperor considered all Americans as smugglers, and that he wrote to the
Prussian government: “Let the American ships enter your ports! Seize them
afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes to me, and I will take them in part
payment of the Prussian war-debt.”[171] Meanwhile the confiscation of
American ships helped in no way the objects promised by Napoleon to
Montalivet and Fouché. At a loss to invent a theory on which neutrals could
be at the same time plundered and encouraged, the Emperor referred the
subject to Champagny, January 10, in an interesting letter.[172] He called for
a complete history of his relations with the United States since the treaty of
Morfontaine. He ordered the recall of Turreau, in whom he said he had little
confidence, and who should be replaced by a more adroit agent:—
“Have several conferences, if necessary, with the American minister as well as
with the Secretary of Legation who has just come from London; in short, let me know
your opinion on the measures proper to be taken to get out of the position we are in
(pour sortir de la position où nous nous trouvons).”
“All the measures I have taken, as I have said several times, are only measures of
reprisal.... It was only to the new extension given to the right of blockade that I
opposed the Decree of Berlin; and even the Decree of Berlin ought to be considered
as a Continental, not as a maritime blockade, for it has been carried out in that form. I
regard it, in some sort, only as a protest, and a violence opposed to a violence....
Down to this point there was little harm. Neutrals still entered our ports; but the
British Orders in Council necessitated my Milan Decree, and from that time there
were no neutrals.... I am now assured that the English have given way; that they no
longer levy taxes on ships. Let me know if there is an authentic act which announces
it, and if there is none, let me know if the fact is true; for once I shall be assured that a
tax on navigation will not be established by England, I shall be able to give way on
many points.”

All Napoleon’s ministers must have known that these assertions of his
commercial policy were invented for a momentary purpose. He had himself
often declared, and caused them to declare, that his Continental system,
established by the Berlin Decree and enforced before the Orders in Council
were issued, had a broad military purpose quite independent of retaliation,

—that it was aimed at the destruction of England’s commerce and
resources. As for his profession of ignorance that England had abandoned
her transit duties on neutral merchandise, every minister was equally well
aware that only six months before, the Emperor had discussed with them
the measures to be taken in consequence of that abandonment; had sent
them the draft of a new decree founded upon it, and had finally decided to
do nothing only because England had again quarrelled with America over
Erskine’s arrangement. The pretexts alleged by Napoleon were such as his
ministers could not have believed; but they were satisfied to obtain on any
grounds the concessions they desired, and Champagny—or as he was
thenceforward called, the Due de Cadore—sent to Armstrong for the
information the Emperor professed to want.
January 18, M. Petry, at the order of Cadore, called on the American
minister, and requested from him a written memorandum expressing the
demands of his Government. Armstrong drew up a short minute of the
provisions to be made the material of a treaty.[173] The first Article required
the restoration of sequestered property; the next stipulated that any ship
which had paid tribute to a foreign Power should be liable to confiscation,
but that with this exception commerce should be free. Cadore sent this
paper to the Emperor, and within a few hours received a characteristic reply.
“You must see the American minister,” wrote Napoleon.[174] “It is quite too
ridiculous (par trop ridicule) that he should write things that no one can comprehend.
I prefer him to write in English, but fully and in a manner that we can understand. [It
is absurd] that in affairs so important he should content himself with writing letters of
four lines.... Send by special courier a cipher despatch to America to let it be
understood that that government is not represented here; that its minister does not
know French; is a morose man with whom one cannot treat; that all obstacles would
be raised if they had here an envoy to be talked with. Write in detail on this point.”

Petry returned to Armstrong with the condemned paper, and received
another, somewhat more elaborate, but hardly more agreeable to the
Emperor. January 25, Cadore himself sent for the American minister, and
discussed the subject. The Emperor, he said, would not commit himself to
the admission of colonial produce; he wished to restrict American
commerce to articles the growth or manufacture of the two countries; he
would not permit his neighbors to carry on a commerce with America
which he denied to himself; but the “only condition required for the
revocation by his Majesty of the Decree of Berlin will be a previous

revocation by the British government of her blockade of France, or part of
France (such as the coast from the Elbe to Brest, etc.), of a date anterior to
that of the aforesaid decree; and if the British government would then recall
the Orders in Council which had occasioned the Decree of Milan, that
decree should also be annulled.” This pledge purported to come directly
from the Emperor, and at Armstrong’s request was repeated in the
Emperor’s exact words.[175]
Neither the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of the Treasury, nor the
Emperor in these discussions alluded to the proposed Decree of Vienna, the
draft of which was sent to Paris in August, confiscating all American ships
in reprisal for the seizures of French ships threatened by the Non-
intercourse Act. Although that decree was the point which the Emperor
meant to reach, not until January 25—when Champagny, after dismissing
Armstrong, reported the interview to Napoleon, bringing with him at the
Emperor’s request the text of the Non-intercourse Act—did the Emperor at
last revert to the ideas of the Vienna Decree. The long hesitation proved
how little satisfactory the plea of retaliation was; but no other excuse could
be devised for a measure which Napoleon insisted upon carrying out, and
which Champagny had no choice but to execute. The Emperor dictated the
draft of a note,[176] in which the principles of confiscation were to be laid
down:—
“If American ships have been sequestered in France, France only imitates the
example given her by the American government; and the undersigned recalls to Mr.
Armstrong the Act of Congress of March 1, 1809, which orders in certain cases the
sequestration and confiscation of French ships, excludes them from American ports,
and interdicts France to the Americans. It is in reprisal of this last provision that the
American ships have been seized in Spain and Naples. The league against England,
which has the cause of neutrals for its object, embraces now all the Continental
peoples, and permits none of them to enjoy commercial advantages of which France is
deprived. France will permit it in no place where her influence extends; but she is
ready to grant every favor to the ships of a neutral Power which shall not have
subjected themselves to a tribute, and shall recognize only the laws of their own
country, not those of a foreign government.... If the Minister of the United States has
the power to conclude a convention proper to attain the object indicated, the
undersigned is ordered to give all his care to it, and to occupy himself upon it without
interruption.”

Perhaps this was the only occasion in Napoleon’s life when he stood
between a nation willing to be robbed and a consciousness that to rob it was
a blunder. The draft of his note showed his embarrassment. Remarkable in

many ways, it required special notice in two points. The proposed Vienna
Decree confiscated American ships because French ships were forbidden
under threat of confiscation to enter American ports. The note of January 25
suggested a variation from this idea. American ships were to be confiscated
everywhere except in France, because they were forbidden to enter France.
As they were also confiscated in France because they were forbidden to
leave America, the Emperor had nothing more to demand. His reasoning
was as convincing as a million bayonets could make it; but perhaps it was
less Napoleonic than the avowal that for six months the Emperor had been
engaged in inveigling American property into neutral ports in order that he
might seize it.
Apparently Cadore still raised obstacles to the Emperor’s will. For some
three weeks he held this note back, and when at last, February 14, he sent it
to Armstrong, he made changes which were not all improvements in the
Emperor’s text. Indeed, Napoleon might reasonably have found as much
fault with Champagny as he found with some of his generals, for failing to
carry out the orders he dictated:—
“His Majesty could place no reliance on the proceedings of the United States,
who, having no ground of complaint against France, comprised her in their acts of
exclusion, and since the month of May have forbidden the entrance of their ports to
French vessels, under the penalty of confiscation. As soon as his Majesty was
informed of this measure, he considered himself bound to order reprisals on American
vessels, not only in his territory, but likewise in the countries which are under his
influence. In the ports of Holland, of Spain, of Italy, and of Naples, American vessels
have been seized because the Americans have seized French vessels.”

After such long discussions and so many experiments, Napoleon had
become reckless of appearances when he allowed his foreign secretary to
send this note of Feb. 14, 1810, in which every line was a misstatement, and
every misstatement, as far as concerned America, was evident in its
purpose; while apart from these faults, the note erred in trying to cover too
much ground of complaint against the United States. Napoleon had, in the
projected Decree of Vienna, ordered retaliation everywhere for the
confiscation threatened by the Non-intercourse Act. Made to feel the
impossibility of this course, he changed his ground, continuing to confiscate
American ships in France under the old Bayonne Decree, and ordering the
sequestration of American ships throughout the rest of Europe on the plea
that other countries must not enjoy a commerce interdicted to France.
Cadore’s note abandoned this ground again, in order to return to the

doctrine of the projected Vienna Decree; and in the effort to give it a color
of reason, he asserted that the Americans had seized French vessels.
Such a letter was a declaration of war six months after beginning
hostilities; and it made no offer of peace except on condition that the United
States should pledge themselves to resist every British blockade which was
not real in the sense defined by Napoleon. Armstrong wrote to his
Government, in language as strong as he could use, that nothing was to be
expected from a policy that had no other foundation than force or fraud. His
angry remonstrances had embroiled him with the Emperor, and he was on
the point of quitting France. Under such circumstances he did not insist on
breaking off further conversations with Petry, but February 25 he positively
assured Petry that neither would the President and Senate ratify, nor would
he himself as negotiator accept, a treaty in any form which did not provide
reparation for the past as well as security for the future;[177] and March 10
he replied to the Duc de Cadore in what the Emperor would have called a
morose tone, denying every assertion made in Cadore’s note,—reminding
Cadore that the Emperor had received knowledge of the Non-intercourse
Act at the time of its passage without a sign of protest or complaint; and,
finally, renewing his old, longstanding grievances against “the daily and
practical outrages on the part of France.”[178]
When the Emperor received Armstrong’s letter, which was excessively
strong, and ended in a suggestion that Napoleon was trying to cover theft by
falsehood, he showed no sign of anger, but became almost apologetic, and
wrote to Cadore,[179]—
“Make a sketch of a reply to the American minister. It will be easy for you to
make him understand that I am master to do here what America does there; that when
America embargoes French ships entering her ports, I have the right to reciprocate.
You will explain to him how that law came to our knowledge only a short time ago,
and only when I had knowledge of it did I immediately prescribe the same measure;
that a few days before, I was busying myself with provisions for raising the actual
prohibitions on American merchandise, when the course of commerce (la voie du
commerce) made known to me that our honor was involved, and that no compromise
was possible; that I conceive America as entitled to prevent her ships from coming to
England and France; that I approved this last measure, though there was much to be
said about it; but that I cannot recognize that she should arrogate the right of seizing
French ships in her ports without putting herself in the case of incurring reciprocity.”

One must answer as one can the question why Cadore, who had in his
hands Armstrong’s letter of April 29, 1809,[180] officially communicating

the Non-intercourse Act, should not have suggested to Napoleon that some
limit to his failings of memory ought to be observed. Napoleon’s memory
was sometimes overtasked by the mass of details he undertook to carry in
his mind, but a striking incident always impressed itself there. Mme. de
Rémusat[181] told how Grétry, who as member of the Institute regularly
attended the Imperial audiences, was almost as regularly asked by
Napoleon, “Who are you?” Tired at last of this rough question, Grétry
replied by an answer equally blunt: “Sire, toujours Grétry;” and
thenceforward the Emperor never failed to remember him. The United
States in a similar tone recalled their affairs to the Emperor’s memory by
the Non-intercourse Act; but had this “toujours Grétry” not been enough,
Napoleon’s financial needs also made him peculiarly alive to every event
that could relieve them, and his correspondence proved that the Non-
intercourse Act as early as May, 1809, impressed him deeply. Yet in March,
1810, he not only convinced himself that this Act had just come to his
knowledge, producing in him an outburst of national dignity, but he also
convinced his Minister of Foreign Relations, who knew the contrary, that
these impressions were true, and made him witness them by his signature.
Acting without delay on the theory of sudden passion, the Emperor
signed, three days afterward, March 23, a decree known as the Decree of
Rambouillet, in which the result of these long hesitations was at last
condensed.[182] This document was a paraphrase of the projected Decree of
Vienna of Aug. 4, 1809; and it showed the tenacity with which Napoleon,
while seeming to yield to opposition, never failed to return to a purpose and
effect its object. In order to carry out the Decree of Vienna in that of
Rambouillet he was forced into a coup d’état. He had not only to expel his
brother Louis from Holland, and annex Holland to France, but also to drive
his ablest minister, Fouché, from the Cabinet.
Of the steps by which he accomplished his objects, something can be
seen in his letters; of his motives, no doubt ever existed. Armstrong
described them in strong language; but his language was that of a party
interested. Thiers recounted them as a panegyric, and his language was even
clearer than Armstrong’s. He made nothing of the Emperor’s pretence that
his seizures were in reprisal for the Non-intercourse Act. “This was an
official reason (une raison d’apparat),” said Thiers.[183] “He was in search
of a specious pretext for seizing in Holland, in France, in Italy, the mass of

American ships which smuggled for the English, and which were within his
reach. He had actually sequestered a considerable number; and in their rich
cargoes were to be found the means of furnishing his Treasury with
resources nearly equal to those procured for him by the contributions of war
imposed on the vanquished.”
The system of treating the United States as an enemy conquered in war
rested on a foundation of truth; and as usual with conquered countries it met
with most resistance, not from them but from bystanders. The Emperor of
Russia, the kings of Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, the Hanse Towns, and
King Louis of Holland were the chief obstacles to the success of the scheme
to which they were required to be parties. King Louis of Holland refused to
seize the American ships at Amsterdam, and forced his brother to the
conclusion that if nothing else could be done, Holland must be annexed to
France.
For many reasons the annexation of Holland met with little favor in the
Emperor’s family and among his Council. Chief among its opponents was
Fouché, who sacrificed himself in his efforts to prevent it. Driven to the
conviction that nothing but peace with England could put an end to the
Emperor’s experiments on the welfare of France, Fouché resolved that
peace should be made, and invented a scheme for bringing it about. As
Minister of Police he controlled secret means of intrigue, and probably he
acted without concert with his colleagues; but the motives which guided
him were common to almost all Napoleon’s Cabinet. The only difference
between ministers was, that while Cadore, Montalivet, Mollien, and Decrès
stopped their opposition when it became dangerous, Fouché undertook to
act.
Something of this came to Armstrong’s ears. As early as January 10[184]
he reported a remark which he could not understand. “‘Do not believe,’ said
a minister to me the other day, ‘that peace between us and England is
impossible. If we offer to her the commerce of the world, can she resist it?’”
Unknown to Armstrong, Napoleon had already made an advance to
England. For this purpose he employed Labouchere, the chief banker of
Holland, whose association with the Barings of London fitted him to act as
an intermediary. The message sent by the Emperor through Labouchere
could hardly be called an offer of terms; it amounted only to a threat that
unless England made peace Holland should be annexed to France, and

every avenue of illicit commerce in northern Europe should be stopped. In
itself this message could hardly serve as ground for a treaty; but Fouché,
without the Emperor’s knowledge, sent to London at the same time, about
January 18, a secret agent named Fagan, to suggest that if Great Britain
would abandon Spain, France would join in creating from the Spanish-
American colonies a monarchy for Ferdinand VII., and from Louisiana, at
the expense of the United States, a kingdom for the French Bourbons.[185]
This last idea bore on its face the marks of its origin. Fouché had
listened to Aaron Burr, who after years of effort reached Paris, and
presented to the government a memoir showing that with ten thousand
regular troops, and a combined attack from Canada and Louisiana, the
destruction of the United States was certain.[186] The scheme for placing the
Spanish Bourbons on a Spanish-American throne probably came from the
same Ouvrard whom Napoleon imprisoned at Vincennes, and whom Fouché
took into favor.
Labouchere and Fagan went to England, and early in February had
interviews with the British ministers, who quickly dismissed them. The only
impression made on the British government by the double mission was one
of perplexity at the object of an errand which appeared too absurd for
discussion. The two agents returned to the Continent, and reported the result
of their journey. Meanwhile Napoleon ordered Marshal Oudinot to march
his army-corps into Holland, a step which brought King Louis to immediate
submission. “I promise you,” wrote Louis, “to follow faithfully all the
engagements you shall impose upon me. I give you my word of honor to
follow them faithfully and loyally from the moment I shall have undertaken
them.”[187] While Cadore was still negotiating with Armstrong for an
arrangement with America, he was also employed in framing a treaty with
Louis, which exacted the seizure of all American ships and merchandise in
Dutch ports.[188] Louis came to Paris, and March 16 signed the treaty which
by a secret stipulation provided for the seizure of American property.[189]
Matters stood thus April 1, 1810, when the ceremonies of the Imperial
marriage interrupted for the moment further action. Napoleon had carried
his point in regard to the punishment of America; but the difficulties he had
already met were trifling compared with the difficulties to come.

CHAPTER XII.
Napoleon set out, April 27, with his new Empress on a wedding journey
to Holland. In the course of his journey an accident revealed to him the
secret correspondence which Fouché had conducted through Fagan with the
British government. Nothing criminal was alleged, nor was it evident that
the Minister of Police had acted contrary to the Emperor’s admitted wishes;
but since the fall of Talleyrand, Fouché alone had considered himself so
necessary to the Imperial service as to affect independence, and the
opportunity to discipline him could not be lost. June 3 he was disgraced,
and exiled to Italy. General Savary, Duc de Rovigo, succeeded him as
Minister of Police.
The fate of King Louis was almost equally swift. When he returned to
Holland after promising entire submission and signing the treaty of March
16, he could not endure the disgrace of carrying his pledges into effect. He
tried to evade the surrender of the American ships, and to resist the military
occupation of his kingdom. He showed public sympathy with the Emperor’s
opponents, and with riotous popular proceedings at Amsterdam. Once more
the Emperor was obliged to treat him as an enemy. June 24 the French
troops were ordered to occupy Amsterdam, and July 3 Louis, abdicating his
throne, took refuge in Germany. July 8 Napoleon signed a Decree annexing
Holland to France.[190]
The United States at the same time received their punishment for
opposing the Imperial will. The Decree of Rambouillet, though signed
March 23, was published only May 14, when the sequestrations previously
made in Holland, Spain, Italy, and France became in a manner legalized.
The value of the seizures in Holland and Spain was estimated by the
Emperor in arranging his budget for the current year as follows:[191]
American cargoes previously seized at Antwerp, two million dollars;
cargoes surrendered by Holland, two million four hundred thousand dollars;
seizures in Spain, one million six hundred thousand dollars.
In this estimate of six million dollars the seizures in France, Denmark,
Hamburg, Italy, and Naples were not included. The American consul at
Paris reported to Armstrong that between April 1809 and April 1810 fifty-

one American ships had been seized in the ports of France, forty-four in the
ports of Spain, twenty-eight in those of Naples, and eleven in those of
Holland.[192] Assuming an average value of thirty thousand dollars, these
one hundred and thirty-four American ships represented values exceeding
four millions. Adding to Napoleon’s estimate of six millions the Consul’s
reported seizure of seventy-nine ships in France and Naples, a sum of
nearly $8,400,000 was attained. In this estimate the seizures at Hamburg, in
Denmark, and in the Baltic were not included. On the whole the loss
occasioned to Americans could not be estimated at less than ten millions,
even after allowing for English property disguised as American. The
exports from the United States during the six months after the embargo
amounted to fifty-two million dollars,[193] exclusive of the ships; and as
England offered a less profitable market than the Continent, one fifth of this
commerce might easily have fallen into Napoleon’s hands. Twenty years
afterward the government of France paid five million dollars as indemnity
for a portion of the seizures, from which Napoleon by his own account
received not less than seven millions.
Profitable as this sweeping confiscation was, and thoroughly as
Napoleon overbore opposition in his family and Cabinet, such measures in
no way promised to retrieve the disaster his system suffered from the
defection of America. While England protected American ships in their
attempts to counteract his system in Spain, Holland, and in the Baltic, the
Emperor regarded American trade as identical with British, and confiscated
it accordingly; but by doing so he exhausted his means of punishment, and
since he could not march armies to New York and Baltimore as he marched
them to Amsterdam and Hamburg, he could only return on his steps and
effect by diplomacy what he could not effect by force. The Act of March 1,
1809, was a thorn in his side; but the news which arrived toward the end of
June, 1810, that Congress had repealed even that slight obstacle to trade
with England made some corrective action inevitable. The Act of May 1,
1810, struck a blow at the Emperor such as no Power in Europe dared aim,
for it threw open to British trade a market in the United States which would
alone compensate England for the loss of her trade with France and
Holland. Macon’s Act made the Milan Decree useless.
Napoleon no sooner learned that Congress had renewed intercourse with
England and France, than he wrote an interesting note[194] to Montalivet

dated June 25, the day after he ordered his army to seize Amsterdam.
“The Americans,” he said, “have raised the embargo on their ships so that all
American ships can leave America to come to France; but those which should come
here would be sequestered, because all would either have been visited by English
ships or would have touched in England. It is therefore probable that no American
ship will come into our ports without being assured of what France means to do in
regard to them.”

France could evidently do one of three things,—either avowedly
maintain her decrees, or expressly revoke them, or seem to revoke them
while in fact maintaining them. The process by which Napoleon made his
choice was characteristic.
“We may do two things,” he continued,—“either declare that the Decrees of
Berlin and Milan are repealed, and replace commerce where it formerly was; or
announce that the Decrees will be repealed September 1, if on that date the English
have repealed the Orders in Council. Or the English will withdraw their Orders in
Council, and then we shall have to ascertain whether the situation that follows will be
advantageous to us.”

Assuming that the decrees and orders were withdrawn, and American
ships admitted as neutrals, the Emperor explained how he should still
enforce his system as before:—
“This situation will have no influence on the customs legislation, which will
always regulate arbitrarily duties and prohibitions. The Americans will be able to
bring sugar and coffee into our ports,—the privateers will not stop them because the
flag covers the goods; but when they come into a port of France or a country under
the influence of France, they will find the customs legislation, by which we shall be
able to say that we do not want the sugar and coffee brought by the Americans
because they are English merchandise; that we do not want tobacco, etc.; that we do
not want such or such goods, which we can as we please class among prohibited
goods. Thus it is evident that we should commit ourselves to nothing.”

Again and again, orally and in writing, in the presence of the whole
Council and in private to each minister, the Emperor had asserted positively
and even angrily that “all the measures I have taken, as I have said several
times, are only measures of reprisal;” yet after assuming that his reprisals
had succeeded, and that England had withdrawn her orders as France
should have withdrawn her decrees, he told Montalivet, as though it were a
matter of course, that he should carry out the same system by different
means. This method of fighting for the rights of neutrals differed but little,
and not to advantage, from the British method of fighting against them.

The Emperor put his new plan in shape. He proposed to recognize
neutral rights by issuing licenses under the name of permits for a score of
American vessels, and for the introduction of Georgia cotton, the article for
which Montalivet made his long struggle. This measure was to be so
organized that the shipments could take place only in a single designated
port of America, only with certificates of origin delivered by a single
French consul also to be designated; that the ship could enter only at one or
two designated ports of France; that independently of the certificates of
origin a cipher-letter should be written to the Minister of Foreign Relations
by the consul who should have given them; finally, that the ships should be
required to take in return wines, cognac, silks, and other French goods for
the value of the cargo.
Deep was Armstrong’s disgust when an Imperial Decree[195] appeared,
dated July 15, authorizing licenses for thirty American ships to sail from
Charleston or New York under the rigorous conditions detailed by this note;
but the thirty licenses were merely a beginning. Once having grasped the
idea that something must be done for French industry, the Emperor pressed
it with his usual energy and with the usual results. During the months of
June and July, while annexing Holland to his empire, he worked laboriously
on his new commercial system. He created a special Council of Commerce,
held meetings as often as twice a week, and issued decrees and orders by
dozens. The difficulty of understanding his new method was great, owing to
a duplication of orders not unusual with him; the meaning of a public
decree was affected by some secret decree or order not made public, and as
never failed to happen with his civil affairs, the whole mass became
confused.
Apparently the new system[196] rested on a decree of July 25, 1810,
which forbade any ship whatever to leave a French port for a foreign port
without a license; and this license, in the Emperor’s eyes, gave the character
of a French ship to the licensed vessel,—“that is to say, in two words, that I
will have no neutral vessel; and in fact there is none really neutral,—they
are all vessels which violate the blockade and pay ransom to the English.”
In other words the Emperor’s scheme was founded on his Berlin and Milan
Decree and left them intact except within the operation of the licenses. “For
these [licensed] ships,” he said,[197] “the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are
null and void; ... my licenses are a tacit privilege of exemption from my

decrees, on condition of conforming to the rules prescribed by the said
licenses.” The licenses themselves were classified in thirty different series,
[198]
—for the ocean, the Mediterranean, England, etc.,—and prescribed the
cargoes to be carried both on the inward and outward voyages.[199] They
made no distinction between neutrals and enemies; the license that
authorized a voyage from London was the same, except for its scries, as that
which covered a cargo of cotton from Charleston; and such distinction as
appeared, was limited to imposing on the neutral additional trouble to prove
that his goods were not English. In theory the import of such British
merchandise as would relieve England’s distress was forbidden, and the
export of French merchandise was encouraged, not only in order to assist
French industry, but also in order to drain England of specie. Especially the
sugar, coffee, and cotton of the colonies were prohibited; but when captured
by privateers or confiscated on land, colonial produce was first admitted to
the custom-house at a duty of fifty per cent, and then sold for the benefit of
the Imperial treasury.
This system and tariff Napoleon imposed on all the countries subject to
his power, including Switzerland, Naples, Hamburg, and the Hanse Towns;
while he exerted all his influence to force the same policy on Prussia and
Russia. As far as concerned the only neutral, the United States, the system
classified American ships either as English when unlicensed, or as French
when licensed; it imposed Imperial functions inconsistent with local law on
the French consuls in America, and violated both international and
municipal law only to produce another form of the Berlin and Milan
Decrees, in some respects more offensive than the original.
The character and actions of Napoleon were so overpowering that
history naturally follows their course rather than the acts of the undecided
and unenergetic governments which he drove before him; and for this
reason the replies made by Secretary Robert Smith to the flashes of
Imperial temper or policy have not hitherto been noticed. In truth, Secretary
Smith made no attempt to rival Napoleon in originality or in vigor of ideas
or expression. Neither his genius nor that of Madison shone bright in the
lurid glare of the Emperor’s planet. When Champagny’s letter of Aug. 22,
1809, reached Washington with its novel views about floating colonies,
rights of search, identity of blockade with siege, and warning of
confiscations in Holland, Spain, and Italy, President Madison, replying

through Robert Smith, Dec. 1, 1809, contented himself with silence in
regard to the threats, and with a mild dissent from the Emperor’s exposition
of the jus gentium. “However founded the definition of M. Champagny may
be in reason and general utility, and consequently however desirable to be
made the established law on the subject of blockades, a different practice
has too long prevailed among all nations, France as well as others, and is
too strongly authenticated by the writers of admitted authority, to be
combated by the United States.”
A touch of Madison’s humor brightened the monotony of these
commonplaces, but was not granted the freedom which the subject might
have allowed. The President felt no wish to dwell on what was
unreasonable or violent in Napoleon’s conduct. He passed lightly over the
floating colony, ignored the threatened seizure of American commerce, and
fastened on the closing paragraph of Champagny’s note, which promised
that if England would revoke her blockades, the decrees of France should
fall of themselves. This proposition, defined by Champagny and
commented by Armstrong, required that England should admit the whole
doctrine of floating colonies and siege-blockades. Madison knew it to be
impracticable and deceptive; but he was not bound to go beyond the letter
of the pledge, and although he declined to admit Napoleon among those
“writers of admitted authority” whose law prevailed among nations, he
instructed Armstrong to act without delay in the sense of Champagny’s
suggestion.
“You will of course,” wrote Secretary Smith to Armstrong, Dec. 1, 1809,
“understand it to be wished that you should ascertain the meaning of the French
government as to the condition on which it has been proposed to revoke the Berlin
Decree. On the principle which seems to be assumed by M. Champagny, nothing
more ought to be required than a recall by Great Britain of her proclamation or illegal
blockades which are of a date prior to that of the Berlin Decree, or a formal
declaration that they are not now in force.”[200]

January 25, 1810, Armstrong asked Cadore the question thus dictated,
and received for answer that the Emperor required only the revocation of
the British blockades as a condition of recalling the Decree of Berlin,—a
reply which Armstrong communicated the same day to Minister Pinkney at
London. No further instructions from Washington seem to have reached the
United States Legation at Paris until news arrived that on May 1 the Non-
intercourse Act had been repealed. No official information of the repeal was

received by Armstrong, but an American who brought despatches from
Pinkney in London brought also a printed copy of the Act of May 1, 1810.
In the want of official advices, probably July 9, Armstrong communicated
the Act of May 1 to the Duc de Cadore in the unofficial form of a
newspaper. Cadore replied that being so entirely unofficial, it could not be
made the ground-work of any government proceeding;[201] but he took it to
the Emperor, and Armstrong waited for some striking exhibition of
displeasure.
From that moment Armstrong’s relations with Cadore became
mysterious. Something unrecorded passed between them, for, July 19
Napoleon ordered Cadore to write to the French ambassador at St.
Petersburg a message for the American minister at that Court:[202]—
“Charge the Duc de Vicence to tell Mr. Adams that we have here an American
minister who says nothing; that we need an active man whom one can comprehend,
and by whose means we could come to an understanding with the Americans.”[203]

For three weeks Napoleon made no decision on the subject of the
American Act; then, after settling the annexation of Holland, he wrote to
Cadore July 31:[204]—
“After having much reflected on the affairs of America, I have thought that to
repeal my Decrees of Berlin and Milan would have no effect; that it would be better
for you to make a note to Mr. Armstrong by which you should let him know that you
have put under my eyes the details contained in the American newspaper; that I
should have liked to have a more official communication, but that time passes, and
that,—since he assures me we may regard this as official,—he can consider that my
Decrees of Berlin and Milan will have no effect, dating from November 1; and that he
is to consider them as withdrawn in consequence of such Act of the American
Congress, on condition that (à condition que) if the British Council does not withdraw
its Orders of 1807, the United States Congress shall fulfil the engagement it has taken
to re-establish its prohibitions on British commerce. This appears to me more suitable
than a decree which would cause a shock (qui ferait secousse) and would not fulfil my
object. This method appears to me more conformable to my dignity and to the
seriousness of the affair.”

The Emperor himself, August 2, dictated the letter,—the most important
he ever sent to the United States government. During the next three days he
made numerous changes in the draft; but at last it was signed and sent to the
American Legation.[205] Upon that paper, long famous as Cadore’s letter of
Aug. 5, 1810, turned the course of subsequent events; but apart from its
practical consequences the student of history, whether interested in the
character of Napoleon or of Madison, or in the legal aspects of war and

peace, or in the practice of governments and the capacity of different
peoples for self-government, could find few examples or illustrations better
suited to his purpose than the letter itself, the policy it revealed, and the
manner in which it was received by the United States and Great Britain.
Cadore began by saying that he had communicated to the Emperor the
newspaper containing the Act of Congress of May 1. The Emperor could
have wished that all the acts of the United States government which
concerned France had always been officially made known to him:—
“In general, he has only had indirect knowledge of them after a long interval of
time. From this delay serious inconveniences have resulted which would not have
existed had these acts been promptly and officially communicated.
“The Emperor applauded the general embargo laid by the United States on all
their vessels, because that measure, if it has been prejudicial to France, had in it at
least nothing offensive to her honor. It has caused her to lose her colonies of
Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne; the Emperor has not complained of it. He has
made this sacrifice to the principle which has determined the Americans to lay the
embargo.... The Act of March 1 [1809] raised the embargo and substituted for it a
measure the most injurious to the interests of France. This Act, of which the Emperor
knew nothing until very lately, interdicted to American vessels the commerce of
France at the time it authorized that to Spain, Naples, and Holland,—that is to say, to
the countries under French influence,—and denounced confiscation against all French
vessels which should enter the ports of America. Reprisal was a right, and
commanded by the dignity of France,—a circumstance on which it was impossible to
make a compromise (de transiger). The sequestration of all the American vessels in
France has been the necessary consequence of the measure taken by Congress.”

This preamble, interesting for the novelty of its assertions both of fact
and law, led to the conclusion that the Act of May 1, 1810, was a retreat
from the Act of March 1, 1809, and warranted France in accepting the offer
extended by both laws to the nation which should first “cease to violate the
neutral commerce of the United States.”
“In this new state of things,” concluded Cadore, “I am authorized to declare to
you, sir, that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after November 1
they will cease to have effect,—it being understood (bien entendu) that in
consequence of this declaration the English are to revoke their Orders in Council, and
renounce the new principles of blockade which they have wished to establish; or that
the United States, conformably to the Act you have just communicated, cause their
rights to be respected by the English.”

No phraseology could have more embarrassed President Madison,
while, as Napoleon had remarked to Montalivet a few days before, “it is
evident that we commit ourselves to nothing.”[206] So closely was the
Imperial promise imitated from that given by Erskine that the President

could hardly reject it, although no American merchant would have risked so
much as a cargo of salt-fish on a pledge of such a kind from such a man. As
though to warn the Americans, Napoleon added personal assurances that
gave to the whole proceeding an unpleasant air of burlesque:—
“It is with the most particular satisfaction, sir, that I make known to you this
determination of the Emperor. His Majesty loves the Americans. Their prosperity and
their commerce are within the scope of his policy. The independence of America is
one of the principal titles of glory to France. Since that epoch the Emperor is pleased
in aggrandizing the United States; and under all circumstances that which can
contribute to the independence, to the prosperity, and to the liberty of the Americans
the Emperor will consider as conformable with the interests of his Empire.”

One might doubt whether Napoleon or Canning were the more deficient
in good taste; but Americans whose nerves were irritated to fury by the
irony of Canning, found these expressions of Napoleon’s love rather absurd
than insulting. So little had the mere fact of violence to do with the temper
of politics, compared with the sentiments which surrounded it, that
Napoleon could seize without notice ten million dollars’ worth of American
property, imprisoning the American crews of two or three hundred vessels
in his dungeons, while at the same instant he told the Americans that he
loved them, that their commerce was within the scope of his policy, and as a
climax avowed a scheme to mislead the United States government, hardly
troubling himself to use forms likely to conceal his object; yet the vast
majority of Americans never greatly resented acts which seemed to them
like the exploits of an Italian brigand on the stage. Beyond doubt, Napoleon
regarded his professions of love and interest not as irony or extravagance,
but as adapted to deceive. A few weeks earlier he sent a message to the Czar
of Russia, who asked him to disavow the intention of restoring the kingdom
of Poland. “If I should ever sign,” replied Napoleon,[207] “a declaration that
the kingdom of Poland shall never be restored, it would be for the reason
that I intended to restore it,—a trap I should set for Russia;” and in signing
a declaration to the President that his decrees were repealed, he set a trap
for the United States, which he baited with professions of love that to a
more refined taste would have seemed fatal to his object.
This mixture of feline qualities,—energy, astuteness, secrecy, and
rapidity,—combined with ignorance of other natures than his own, was
shown in the act with which he concluded his arrangements of Aug. 5,
1810. About a fortnight before, by a secret decree dated July 22, 1810,[208]

he had ordered the proceeds of the American cargoes seized at Antwerp and
in Dutch and Spanish ports, valued by him at six million dollars, to be
turned into the Treasury as a part of his customs revenue devoted to the
service of 1809–10. In French ports he held still some fifty ships in
sequestration. Cadore’s letter of August 5 mentioned these ships as
sequestered,—a phrase implying that they would be held subject to future
negotiation and decision, liable to be returned to their owners; yet on the
same day Napoleon signed another secret decree[209] which condemned
without hearing or judgment all the ships and cargoes declared to be still in
sequestration by the letter that could hardly have yet been sent from
Cadore’s office. Every vessel which had arrived in French ports between
May 20, 1809, and May 1, 1810, suffered confiscation by this decree, which
further ordered that the American crews should be released from the
dungeons where they were held as prisoners of war, and that from August 5
to November 1, 1810, American ships should be allowed to enter French
ports, but should not discharge their cargoes without a license.
The Decree of August 5 was never made public. Armstrong indeed
employed the last hours of his stay in Paris in asking whether the French
government meant to admit further negotiation about these seizures,[210]
and Cadore replied that the law of reprisals was final;[211] but when Albert
Gallatin, as minister at Paris some ten years afterward, happened to obtain a
copy of the document, he expressed his anger at its secrecy in language
such as he used in regard to no other transaction of his public life. “No one
can suppose,” he wrote,[212] “that if it had been communicated or published
at the same time, the United States would with respect to the promised
revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees have taken that ground which
ultimately led to the war with Great Britain. It is indeed unnecessary to
comment on such a glaring act of combined injustice, bad faith, and
meanness as the enacting and concealment of that decree exhibits.” These
epithets would not have disturbed Napoleon. Politics were to him a
campaign, and if his opponents had not the sense to divine his movements
and motives, the disgrace and disaster were none of his.
More mysterious than the conduct of Napoleon was that of Armstrong.
Contenting himself with whatever the Emperor ordered, he refrained in his
despatches from saying more than was necessary for the record. He
protected himself from Napoleon’s personal attack by sending to the Duc de

Cadore an undated letter,[213] referring to the archives of Cadore’s
department for proof that every public measure of the United States had
been promptly and officially communicated to the French government; but
he wrote home no report of any conference with Cadore, he expressed no
opinion as to the faith of the Emperor’s promise, made no further protest
against the actual reprisals, and required no indemnity for past spoliations.
In fact, no action was asked from him; but he lent himself readily to the
silence that was needed. Cadore reported[214] to the Emperor that Armstrong
“before his departure wishes to open (engager) none of those difficult
questions which he foresees must rise between the two governments, in
order to arrive in America without having seen the fading of the glory he
attaches to having obtained the Note of August 5.” Too happy in the good
fortune that threw an apparent triumph into his hands at the moment when
he was ending his diplomatic career in disgust, he felt anxious only to
escape before another turn of the wheel should destroy his success. He
remained in Paris more than a month after receiving Cadore’s letter of
August 5, but reserved for a personal interview whatever information he
had to give the President; and his letters, like his despatches, expressed no
inconvenient opinions. Sept. 12, 1810, his long and extremely interesting
mission ended, and he quitted Paris on his homeward journey, leaving the
Legation in charge of Jonathan Russell of Rhode Island. Armstrong’s last
official act was to write from Bordeaux a letter to Pinkney at London,
declaring that the conditions imposed by Napoleon on the repeal of his
decrees were “not precedent, as has been supposed, but subsequent.”[215]

CHAPTER XIII.
While Napoleon labored to reconstruct his system mutilated by
American legislation, the Government of Great Britain sank lower and
lower toward disappearance, while the star of Spencer Perceval shone alone
with dull lustre on the British horizon. When the Portland ministry went to
pieces in September, 1809, Perceval became of necessity master of the
empire. Canning had quarrelled with him, and refused office except as
prime minister. Castlereagh had been so lately disgraced that he could bring
only weakness to the Government if he rejoined it. Both Castlereagh and
Sidmouth refused to serve with Canning on any terms. The Whigs,
represented by Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, were excluded by the King’s
prejudices, by their own pledges to the Irish Catholics, and by the great
preponderance of Tory opinion in the country. The Duke of Portland was
dying; King George himself was on the verge of insanity, and every one
supposed that the Prince of Wales, if he became regent, would at once
appoint a ministry from among his Whig friends. This stalemate, where
every piece on the chessboard stood in the way of its neighbor, and none
could move while the King and Spencer Perceval remained, seemed likely
to end in the destruction of the British empire. An economist wiser and
better educated than Napoleon might easily have inferred, as he did, that
with time England must succumb.
Perceval and his remaining friends—Liverpool, Bathurst, Eldon—
looked about them for allies. They would not, indeed they could not,
surrender the government to others, for no one offered to take it. In the
House of Lords they were strong, but in the Commons they had no speaker
except Perceval, while the opposition was strengthened by Canning, and
Castlereagh could not be safely reckoned as more than neutral. They sought
for allies both old and young in the Commons, but their search was almost
fruitless. They could find only young Viscount Palmerston, about five-and-
twenty years of age, who took the subordinate place of Secretary at War.
Nothing remained but to carry on the government by the Peers, with
Perceval as its only important representative in the Commons. The Lord
Hawkesbury of 1802, who had become Lord Liverpool at his father’s death,
and was actually head of the Home Office, succeeded Castlereagh as head

of the War Department. Spencer Perceval took the Duke of Portland’s place
as first Lord of the Treasury, retaining his old functions as Chancellor of the
Exchequer. These changes brought no new strength into the Cabinet; but
Canning’s place at the Foreign Office remained to be filled, and common
consent fixed upon one person as alone competent to bring with him to the
position a weight of character that could overbalance the losses the Cabinet
had suffered.
This person, hitherto unmentioned, was Richard Colley Wesley, or
Wellesley, born in Ireland in 1760, eldest son of the first Earl of
Mornington, whose younger son Arthur was born in 1769. Another brother,
Henry, born in 1773, rose to high rank in diplomacy under the later title of
Lord Cowley. In 1809 these three brothers were all actively employed in the
public service; but the foremost of the three was the eldest, the Marquess
Wellesley, whose reputation still overshadowed that of Arthur, then just
called to the peerage Sept. 4, 1809, as Viscount Wellington of Talavera, in
reward of his recent battle with Marshal Victor.
An Irish family neither wealthy nor very distinguished, the Wellesleys
owed their success to their abilities. The second Lord Mornington,
Marquess Wellesley, sprang into fame as a favorite of William Pitt, who
showed his power by pushing young men like Richard Wesley and George
Canning into positions of immense responsibility. Perhaps the favor shown
to the former may in part have had its source in some resemblance of
character which caused Pitt to feel a reflection of himself, for Mornington
was a scholar and an orator. His Latin verses were an ornament of Eton
scholarship; his oratory was classic like his verses; and his manners suited
the scholarship of his poetry and the Latinity of his orations. Lord
Mountmorris, one of his antagonists in the Irish Parliament of 1783,
ridiculed his rhetoric: “If formidable spectres portending the downfall of the
Constitution were to appear in this House, I admit that the noble Lord is
frightened with becoming dignity. The ancient Roscius or the modern
Garrick could not stand with a better grace at the appearance of a spectre.”
The orator whose air of dignity Lord Mountmorris thought so studied was
then twenty-three years old, and apparently never changed his manner. In
the British Parliament, thirteen years afterward, Sheridan described him as
presenting the same figure that Mountmorris laughed at. “Exactly two years
ago,” said Sheridan in 1796, “I remember to have seen the noble Lord with

the same sonorous voice, the same placid countenance, in the same attitude,
leaning gracefully upon the table, and giving an account from shreds and
patches of Brissot that the French republic would last but a few months
longer.” The aristocratic affectations, if they were affectations, of Lord
Mornington were conspicuous; but no man could safely laugh at one of the
Wellesleys. In 1797 Mr. Pitt suddenly sent this ornament of the peerage to
India as governor-general, and the world learned that since the time of Clive
no surer or bolder hand had guided the empire of England in the East.
When he took charge of the Indian government, French influence
contested his own at more than one court of the powerful native princes,
while his resources were neither great nor easily concentrated. During the
eight years of his sway he extirpated French influence; crushed the power
of Tippoo Sultaun; conquered the empire of Mysore, which had again and
again won victories over English armies within sight of Madras; broke up
the Mahratta confederacy; and doubled the British territory in India, besides
introducing or planning many important civil reforms. He shocked the
Court of Directors by arbitrary rule, extravagance in finance, and favoritism
toward his younger brothers; but success was the decisive answer to hostile
criticism, and even fanatics could hardly affirm that a governor-general,
though he might have every virtue, was fit for his place if he refused the
services of Arthur Wellesley when they might be had for the asking.
When Lord Wellesley, created an Irish marquess and English baron,
returned to England in 1806, he came home with the greatest name in the
empire next to that of Pitt.[216] He was asked to join the Portland
Administration, but declined. Canning was said to have taken offence at his
refusal;[217] but at last in disgust with Perceval, Canning connected himself
more closely than ever with the Marquess, doubtless in the hope of forcing
Castlereagh out in order to bring Wellesley in.[218] At Canning’s request in
April, 1809, the Marquess was appointed to the important and difficult post
of Ambassador Extraordinary to the Supreme Junta of Spain, then at
Seville; while at the same time his brother Arthur was made general-in-
chief in the Peninsula. Lord Wellesley went to Spain with the understanding
that he was soon to return and enter the Cabinet.[219] In October he learned
that Canning had broken up the Cabinet, and that while Canning himself on
one side expected the Wellesleys’ support, Perceval on the other was
begging for it, and the Whigs were waiting with open arms to welcome their

alliance. Canning’s duel took place Sept. 21, 1809. October 5 Spencer
Perceval wrote to Wellesley at Seville, asking him to accept the Foreign
Office; while at the same time Canning informed the King that Lord
Wellesley would retire from office with himself.
In such a situation the most astute politician could not trust his own
judgment. No one could say whether Wellesley’s strength would invigorate
the Government, or whether Perceval’s weakness would exhaust Wellesley
as it had exhausted Canning. Canning and Wellesley held the same estimate
of Perceval. Canning had succeeded only in ruining himself by struggling to
rid the Government of that incubus, as he regarded it, and Wellesley had no
better right to expect success. On the other hand, if the Marquess should
join the Government he might assist his brother Arthur, who needed support
at home. Probably this idea turned the scale; at all events Wellesley
accepted Perceval’s offer, and gave his Administration a chance of life.
Wellesley could have had no hope of effecting any considerable object
except by carrying out Canning’s scheme, which required that Spencer
Perceval should be forced from power before the Government could be
placed on a strong foundation. His first experiences showed him the
difficulties in his way.
December 6, 1809, the Marquess was sworn as Secretary of State. A few
days afterward he appointed his brother Henry to the post he had himself
vacated, of Envoy to the Spanish Junta at Seville. The favoritism was
unfortunate, but Wellesley troubled himself little about odium; his single
thought was to support his “brother Arthur,” while England was far from
showing equal zeal in Arthur’s support. In spite of the success at Talavera,
Lord Wellington had been obliged to retreat into Portugal; the Spanish army
led by inferior generals ventured to march on Madrid, and November 19
was annihilated by the French at Ocaña, some fifty miles south of that city,
leaving the whole south and east of Spain unprotected. The French were
certain to reoccupy Seville if not to attack Cadiz. Affairs in the Peninsula
were at least as unpromising as they had ever been, and Englishmen might
be excused for doubting the policy of wasting British resources in fretting
one extremity of Napoleon’s enormous bulk.
While the Wellesley interest concentrated on the Peninsula, the Foreign
Office was interested in wider fields. The new secretary was expected to

devise some system of trade with the Spanish-American colonies which
should meet approval from the Junta, jealous with good reason of any
foreign interference with Mexico and Peru; but above all he was required to
take in hand the quarrel with the United States, and if possible to retrieve
the mistakes of Canning. He had been only a few weeks in office when
news arrived that President Madison refused to hold further relations with F.
J. Jackson, the British minister, and that Madison and Jackson were only
agreed in each requiring the punishment of the other. Pinkney soon
appeared at the Foreign office with a request for Jackson’s recall.
Lord Wellesley was in character to the full as arbitrary as George
Canning. Seven years of imperial power in India had trained him in habits
of autocratic authority; but he was a man of breeding, courteous, dignified,
and considerate of others’ dignity. In India he had shown what Canning
thought himself to possess,—the hand of iron in the velvet glove. Without a
tinge of Canning’s besetting vice, the passion to be clever, Wellesley never
fell into the fault of putting sarcasms or epigrams into his state papers. So
little offensive was he in manner, that although he brought about a war
between England and the United States no American held him as an enemy,
or retained so much ill-feeling toward him as to make even his name
familiar to American ears. In truth his subordinate position in the
Government prevented the exercise of his powers, and left him no
opportunity to develop the force of that character which had crushed Tippoo
Sultaun and tamed the Mahrattas. His colleagues allowed him to show only
the weaknesses of a strong nature, which may have been increased to vices
by the exhaustion of eight years’ severe labor in an Indian climate. What he
might have done had he taken Perceval’s place no one can say; what he did
or failed to do is more easily told.
When Pinkney came to explain the President’s action and wishes in
regard to Jackson, Wellesley, in a manner that seemed to the American
minister both frank and friendly, showed only the wish to conciliate. In a
short time Pinkney became so intimate with the new Foreign Secretary as to
excite comment. Nothing could be more encouraging than his reports to the
President of the change in disposition which had come over the Foreign
Office. Jan. 2, 1810, Pinkney, in a long note, explained to Wellesley the
President’s reasons for breaking off relations with Jackson.[220] His tone
was conciliatory, professing only the wish for friendly accommodation; and

Wellesley on his side not only received the note without objection, but
encouraged the hope that the President’s wishes would be gratified. Pinkney
reported that in conversation Lord Wellesley had promised at once to send
out a new envoy of diplomatic rank; to lose no time in settling the
“Chesapeake” affair; and afterward to take up the commercial questions
which had made the substance of Monroe’s treaty three years before. The
cordiality of these promises satisfied Pinkney that they were not meant to
deceive. If any one was deceived, the victim was not Pinkney but Wellesley
himself, who overrated his own power and underrated the inert resistance of
Spencer Perceval and the army of selfish interests at his back. Even
Jackson’s affair was not easily managed. Jackson could not be disavowed,
for he had done nothing more than his orders required him to do; nor could
a new minister be appointed until the year elapsed which Canning promised
for the term of Jackson’s mission. Between Canning on one side and
Perceval on the other, Wellesley found himself unable to act, and resorted to
delays.
Not until March 14 did Pinkney receive the promised reply[221] to his
note of January 2; and this reply was not all that Wellesley had given him to
expect. Compared with Canning’s notes, Wellesley’s letter might be called
affectionate; but it was less definite than Pinkney would have liked. His
Majesty, said Wellesley, regretted that the President should have interrupted
communications before his Majesty could manifest his invariable
disposition to maintain the relations of amity with the United States. Mr.
Jackson had most positively assured his Government that it was not his
purpose to give offence by anything he said or did; in such cases the usual
course would have been to convey a formal complaint, which would have
prevented the inconvenience of a suspension of relations. Yet his Majesty,
always disposed to pay the utmost attention to the wishes and sentiments of
States in amity with him, had directed the return of Mr. Jackson, though
without marking his conduct with any expression of displeasure, inasmuch
as Mr. Jackson’s “integrity, zeal, and ability have long been distinguished in
his Majesty’s service,” and he seemed to have committed no intentional
offence on the present occasion. Jackson was ordered to deliver his charge
into the hands of a properly qualified person, while his Majesty “would
receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any
communication which the Government of the United States may deem
beneficial to the mutual interests of both countries.”

This was but Canning once more, without the sarcasm. With his grand
air of sultan and viceroy, Wellesley ignored the existence of complaints, and
professed himself “ready to receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity
and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United
States may deem beneficial;” but when his course led, two years afterward,
to the only communication which could logically result,—a declaration of
war,—Wellesley declared in Parliament[222] “that a more unjust attack was
never made upon the peace of any nation than that of the American
government upon England;” and that “the American government had been
long infected with a deadly hatred toward this country, and (if he might be
allowed an unusual application of a word) with a deadly affection toward
France.” He blamed only his own colleagues, who “ought in fact to have
expected and been fully prepared for war with America.”
That the American government and people were infected with a deadly
hatred toward England, if not already true, was becoming true with a
rapidity which warranted Wellesley in taking it for fact, if he could do
nothing to prevent it; but he should at least have explained the reasons why
his colleagues, who in his opinion showed culpable neglect, failed to expect
war or to prepare for it. In truth his colleagues had as little reason to expect
war with America as he had to charge the American government with
“deadly affection” toward France. They would do nothing to conciliate the
United States because they had what seemed the best ground for thinking
that the United States were already conciliated, and that the difficulties
between America and France were such as to prevent America from
quarrelling with England. Wellesley’s note was written March 14; Louis of
Holland, March 16, signed the treaty obliging him to seize the American
ships in his ports; Napoleon signed, March 23, the Rambouillet Decree. In
every country within French control Napoleon was waging avowed war
against the United States in retaliation for the Non-intercourse Act; while in
America, March 31, Congress abandoned the idea of even a Navigation Act
against England, and May 1 restored relations with her, without asking an
equivalent or expressing unfriendly feeling. Under such circumstances,
ministers more intelligent than Spencer Perceval were warranted in thinking
that the part of wisdom was to leave American affairs alone.
The point was all-important in the story of the war. Governments rarely
succeed in forethought, and their favorite rule is to do nothing where

nothing need be done. Had the British government expected war, even
Spencer Perceval would have bestirred himself to prevent it; but ministers
neither expected nor had reason to expect hostilities. On the contrary, the
only bright spot in Perceval’s horizon was the United States, where his
influence seemed paramount. The triumph of Perceval’s policy there gave
him strength at home to disregard Wellesley’s attempts at domination. An
intelligent by-stander, through whom Lord Wellesley kept up relations with
the Whigs, wrote, May 1, to the Marquess of Buckingham a letter,[223]
which threw light on the ideas then influencing Wellesley:—
“The only hope Perceval can naturally have is in the turn which peace, or rather
accommodation, with America may give the public mind; as also the successes in
Spain against France which may be looked for. The former, in my opinion, as well
from the devotion of Pinkney to Lord Wellesley as the late rapacious act of Bonaparte,
may be looked on as certain.”

This letter, showing the certainty felt by all parties in American
friendship, happened to be written on the day when the President signed the
Act restoring commercial relations. After all that had occurred,—seizures,
blockades, impressments, and Orders in Council; the “Chesapeake” affair,
Rose’s mission, Canning’s letters, Erskine’s arrangement, and Jackson’s
dismissal,—the British government counted its American policy as its chief
success, and had the strongest reasons for doing so. American legislation
was controlled by British influence, and Napoleon reasonably thought that
neither robbery nor magnanimity would affect the result.
The Marquess of Buckingham’s friend gave him exact information, as
the news a few weeks later, of the Act of May 1, proved; but evidence much
more convincing of the confidence felt by ministers in the attitude of
America was given by George Canning, who claimed the credit for having
brought about that settlement which gave a new lease of life to the Perceval
Administration. June 15, a week before Parliament rose, Canning spoke.
[224]

“The recent proceedings of Congress,” he said, “have effected so much of what it
was the anxious wish of the Government of which I was a member to attain, that I
trust all our difficulties with America may be speedily adjusted. In truth I had never
much doubt upon my mind that America, if left to her own policy and to the effect of
those discussions which would take place in her own legislatures, general and
provincial, would at no distant period arrive at that point at which, by the late Act of
Congress, she appears to have arrived. No man is more anxious than I am for an
amicable accommodation with that Power; but I trust at the same time that the change
in the policy of the United States has not been effected by any improper concessions

on our part,—a circumstance which I can fully disclaim during the period that I
remained in office. I should rather hope that it has been the consequence of a
determined adherence to that system which has been so often declaimed against in
this House, but which has proved as clearly beneficial to the commercial interests as it
has been consistent with the political dignity of this nation.”

While it was possibly true, or soon became true, that the United States
were, as Wellesley afterward alleged, infected by a deadly hostility to
England, neither Wellesley nor Canning, nor any other English statesman in
the year 1810, suspected the strength of that passion, or dreamed of shaping
a policy to meet the hatred which ought to have been constantly in their
minds. Wellesley’s personal wishes were not easy to fathom, but they
probably leaned, under Pinkney’s influence, toward conciliation. His actual
measures showed a want of decision, or a degree of feebleness, unsuspected
in his character.
Quite early in Wellesley’s career as Foreign Secretary, an opportunity
occurred to test his energies. January 25, 1810,[225] Armstrong sent to
Pinkney a copy of Napoleon’s offer to withdraw the Decree of Berlin, if
England would withdraw her previous blockade of the coast from Elbe to
Brest. Nothing could be easier for England. The blockade of May 16, 1806,
had been invented by Charles James Fox at the beginning of his short
Administration as an act of friendship toward the United States, in order to
evade the application of Sir William Scott’s legal principles; it was strictly
enforced only between Ostend and the Seine, a short strip of coast within
the narrow seas completely under British control, and in part visible from
British shores, while the subsequent Orders in Council had substituted a
series of other measures in place of this temporary device, until at last the
blockade of Holland and the Empire, from the river Ems to Trieste,—in
which, April 26, 1809, the restrictive system of England was merged,—
seemed to sweep away all trace of the narrower restraint. No one but Sir
William Scott could say with certainty, as matter of law, whether Fox’s
blockade was or was not in force; but for years past England had
established a depot at Helgoland in the mouth of the Elbe, for no other
purpose than to violate its own blockade by smuggling merchandise into
Germany, Denmark, and Holland. From every point of view the continued
existence of Fox’s blockade seemed impossible to suppose.
February 15 Pinkney wrote to Wellesley, asking whether that or any
other blockade of France previous to January, 1807, was understood to be in

force.[226] March 2 Wellesley replied that the restrictions imposed in May,
1806, “were afterward comprehended in the Order of Council of Jan. 7,
1807, which order is still in force.”[227] This reply encouraged Pinkney to
infer that Fox’s blockade had merged in Howick’s Order in Council. March
7 he wrote again to the Marquess,[228]—
“I infer ... that the blockade ... is not itself in force, and that the restrictions which
it established rest altogether, so far as such restrictions exist at this time, upon an
Order or Orders in Council issued since the first day of January, 1807.”

To this easy question, which seemed hardly worth answering in the
negative, Wellesley replied, March 26,[229]
“The blockade notified by Great Britain in May, 1806, has never been formally
withdrawn. It cannot, therefore, be accurately stated that the restrictions which it
established rest altogether on the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807; they are
comprehended under the more extensive restrictions of that Order.”

This explanation, however satisfactory it might be to the admiralty
lawyer who may have framed it, conveyed no clear idea to the diplomatic
mind. The question whether the blockade of 1806 was or was not still in
force remained obscure. Pinkney thought it not in force, and wrote to
Armstrong,[230]—
“Certainly the inference is that the blockade of 1806 is virtually at an end, being
merged and comprehended in an Order in Council issued after the date of the Edict of
Berlin. I am, however, about to try to obtain a formal revocation of that blockade, and
of that of Venice [July 27, 1806], or at least a precise declaration that they are not in
force.”

His hopes were not strong, but he returned patiently to his task, and
April 30 wrote a third letter to Lord Wellesley,[231] in which he recited
Napoleon’s promise in full, and begged Wellesley to say “whether there
exists any objection on the part of his Majesty’s government to a
revocation, or to a declaration that they are no longer in force, of the
blockades in question, especially that of May, 1806.”
Already Pinkney had waited nearly three months for a plain answer to a
question which ought certainly to have received a satisfactory reply within a
week. He was destined to wait longer; indeed, the United States waited two
years for their answer before they declared war. The reason for this
incomprehensible behavior, at a moment when America was thought to be
friendly, cannot be fully explained; but evidence published in his brother’s

papers seems to show that Marquess Wellesley favored giving up not only
Fox’s blockade, but also the principle of commercial restrictions
represented both in the Orders of November, 1807, and in the blockade of
April, 1809. “He only agreed with his colleagues in the legality and
propriety of the orders when first enacted. He contended that they had
ceased to be applicable to the state of affairs; that they had become
inexpedient with regard to England, and would certainly produce a war with
America.”[232] That he insisted on this opinion in the Cabinet, or forced an
issue with his colleagues on the point, is not to be supposed; but without
doubt the treatment his opinions and authority received in the Cabinet was
the cause of his strange conduct toward the American minister.
Pinkney’s last letter about Fox’s blockade was dated April 30. As early
as April 25 every well-informed man in London knew that Wellesley was
on bad terms with his colleagues. The Marquess of Buckingham’s
correspondent had the news from Wellesley’s own mouth:[233]—
“Lord Wellesley complains that he has no weight whatever in Council; that there
is nothing doing there which marks energy or activity; that the affairs of the country
are quite at a standstill, and are likely to remain so; and that so little is his private
interest in any of the departments, that since his accession to office he has not been
able to make an exciseman.... Add to all this that he hates, despises, and is out of
friendship or even intimacy with every one of his colleagues at this moment.”[234]

Two years afterward the Marquess repeated the same story in public:
[235]
—
“Lord Wellesley,” he declared, speaking in the third person, “had repeatedly, with
great reluctance, yielded his opinions to the Cabinet on many other important points
[besides the war in the Peninsula]. He was sincerely convinced by experience that in
every such instance he had submitted to opinions more incorrect than his own, and
had sacrificed to the object of accommodation and temporary harmony more than he
could justify in point of strict public duty. In fact he was convinced by experience that
the Cabinet neither possessed ability nor knowledge to devise a good plan, nor temper
and discernment to adopt what he now thought necessary, unless Mr. Perceval should
concur with Lord Wellesley. To Mr. Perceval’s judgment or attainments Lord
Wellesley, under the same experience, could not pay any deference without injury to
the public service.”

Probably Wellesley did not conceal in Council the opinion of his
colleagues which he freely expressed in society. In every way they annoyed
him. A scholar, who prided himself on his classical studies and refined
tastes, he found these colleagues altering his state papers and criticising his
style. “He had thought he was among a Cabinet of statesmen,” he said; “he

found them a set of critics.” His own criticisms occasionally touched
matters more delicate than style. Once at a Cabinet meeting Lord
Westmoreland, the Privy Seal, put his feet on the table while Wellesley was
talking. The Foreign Secretary stopped short. “I will go on with my
remarks,” he said, “when the noble Lord resumes a more seemly attitude.”
Americans could hardly be blamed for holding a low opinion of this
Administration, when most intelligent Englishmen held the same. If Whigs
or Liberals like Grenville, Brougham, and Sydney Smith were prejudiced
critics, this charge could hardly be brought against Canning; but if
Canning’s opinion were set aside, the Wellesleys at least being identified
with his administration had every reason to wish Perceval success. How the
Marquess hated and despised Perceval; how he struggled to get rid of him,
and strained every nerve to bring Canning, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Grey, or
Grenville into the Government as a counter-balancing influence, can be
read in the biographies of all these men, and of many less famous. London
echoed with the Marquess’s deep disgust; every man of fair parts in
England sympathized with it, unless his personal interests or feelings bound
him to blind devotion. The yoke hung heavy on Whigs and Tories alike.
Even Lord Sidmouth rebelled against the commercial system to which
Perceval clung more desperately than to his offices or power. “Of that
destructive system,” wrote Sidmouth in the summer of 1810,[236] “all are
weary, ‘praeter atrocem animum Catonis.’”
Even Henry Wellesley, at Seville and Cadiz, felt the same heavy-hand
deadening the effect of every effort, and longed to do at Cadiz what Erskine
had done at Washington. March 4, 1810,[237] Perceval wrote to Lord
Wellesley begging him to instruct his brother Henry to obtain from the
Spanish Junta exclusive or at least special privileges in the trade of the
Spanish colonies, such as would admit British consuls to the chief places of
South America, and “give us a decided benefit and preference in the trade.”
Of course this preference was to be granted at the expense of the United
States, the solitary rival of England in those waters, but “as nearly hostile to
Spain as she can be without actually declaring war against her.” Soon
afterward the “Espagnol,” a Spanish periodical published in England,
applauded revolutionary movements in Caracas and Buenos Ayres, while it
asserted the impossibility of preventing the spread of the spirit of
independence in the Spanish-American colonies.

“You can have no idea,” wrote Henry Wellesley from Cadiz, August 31, to his
brother Arthur,[238] “of the ferment occasioned here by this article, which is
attributed to the Government,—as it is supposed, and I believe justly, that the
‘Espagnol’ is patronized by the Government, and contains its sentiments with regard
to the occurrences in Spain and the measures necessary in the present crisis of her
affairs.... It is wonderful that they cannot be satisfied in England with a commercial
arrangement which would be attended with immense advantages to ourselves, and
would likewise be greatly beneficial to Spain. I apprehend this to be the true spirit of
all commercial treaties; and why are we to take advantage of the weakness of Spain to
endeavor to impose terms upon her which would be ruinous and disgraceful? I have it
in my power to conclude to-morrow a commercial treaty which, without breaking in
upon the Spanish colonial laws, would pour millions into the pockets of our
merchants, and be equally advantageous to the resources; but this will not do, and we
must either have the trade direct with the colonies, or nothing. However, I have
received my answer, and the Government will not hear of opening the trade.”

The coincidence of opinion about Spencer Perceval extended
everywhere, except among the Church of England clergy, the country
squires, the shipping interests, the Royal household at Windsor, and the
Federalists of Boston and Connecticut. As though to make him an object of
execration, the long-threatened storm burst on the trade and private credit of
Great Britain. For some eighteen months gold stood at a premium of about
fifteen per cent; the exchanges remained steadily unfavorable, while credit
was strained to the utmost, until in July, 1810, half the traders in England,
and private banks by the score, were forced to suspend payment. Never
before, and probably never since, has England known such a fall in prices
and destruction of credit.[239]
This was the impending situation when Parliament adjourned, June 21,
with no bright spot on its horizon but the supposed friendship of America.
Meanwhile Pinkney wearied Wellesley for an answer to the question
whether Fox’s blockade was in force. June 10, June 23, and finally August
6, he renewed his formal request. “No importunity had before been spared
which it became me to use.”[240] He was met by the same torpor at every
other point. Wellesley promised to name a new minister to Washington, but
decided upon none. He invited overtures in regard to the “Chesapeake”
affair, but failed to act on them. Rumor said that he neglected business,
came rarely to Cabinet meetings, shut himself in his own house, saw only a
few friends, and abandoned the attempt to enforce his views. He resolved to
retire from the Cabinet, in despair of doing good, and waited only for the

month before the next meeting of Parliament, which he conceived to be the
most proper time for declaring his intention.[241]
In the midst of this chaos, such as England had rarely seen, fell Cadore’s
announcement of August 5 that the Imperial Decrees were withdrawn, bien
entendu that before November 1 England should have abandoned her
blockades, or America should have enforced her rights. Pinkney hastened to
lay this information before Lord Wellesley, August 25, and received the
usual friendly promises, which had ceased to gratify him. “I am truly
disgusted with this,” he wrote home, August 29,[242] “and would, if I
followed my own inclination, speedily put an end to it.” Two days afterward
he received from Wellesley a civil note,[243] saying that whenever the repeal
of the French Decrees should actually have taken effect, and the commerce
of neutral nations should have been restored to the condition in which it
previously stood, the system of counteraction adopted by England should be
abandoned. This reply, being merely another form of silence, irritated
Pinkney still more, while his instructions pressed him to act. He waited
until September 21, when he addressed to Wellesley a keen remonstrance.
“If I had been so fortunate,” he began,[244] “as to obtain for my hitherto
unanswered inquiry the notice which I had flattered myself it might receive,
and to which I certainly thought it was recommended by the plainest
considerations of policy and justice, it would not perhaps have been
necessary for me to trouble your Lordship with this letter;” and in this tone
he went on to protest against the “unwarrantable prohibitions of intercourse
rather than regular blockades,” which had helped in nearly obliterating
“every trace of the public law of the world”:—
“Your Lordship has informed me in a recent note that it is ‘his Majesty’s earnest
desire to see the commerce of the world restored to that freedom which is necessary
for its prosperity;’ and I cannot suppose that this freedom is understood to be
consistent with vast constructive blockades which may be so expanded at pleasure as,
without the aid of any new device, to oppress and annihilate every trade but that
which England thinks fit to license. It is not, I am sure, to such freedom that your
Lordship can be thought to allude.”

The Marquess of Buckingham’s well-advised correspondent some
weeks afterward[245] remarked that “Pinkney, who was at first all sweetness
and complaisance, has recently exhibited in his communications with Lord
Wellesley an ample measure of republican insolence.” Sweetness and
insolence were equally thrown away. Pinkney’s letter of September 21, like

most of his other letters, remained unanswered; and before November 1,
when Napoleon’s term for England’s action expired, a new turn of affairs
made answer impossible. The old King was allowed to visit the death-bed
of his favorite daughter the Princess Amelia; he excited himself over her
wishes and farewells, and October 25 his mind, long failing, gave way for
the last time. His insanity could not be disguised, and the Government fell
at once into confusion.

CHAPTER XIV.
The summer of 1810 was quiet and hopeful in America. For the first
time since December, 1807, trade was free. Although little immigration
occurred, the census showed an increase in population of nearly thirty-
seven per cent in ten years,—from 5,300,000 to 7,240,000, of which less
than one hundred thousand was due to the purchase of Louisiana. Virginia
and Massachusetts still fairly held their own, and New York strode in
advance of Pennsylvania, while the West gained little relative weight. Ohio
had not yet a quarter of a million people, Indiana only twenty-four
thousand, and Illinois but twelve thousand, while Michigan contained less
than five thousand. The third census showed no decided change in the
balance of power from any point of view bounded by the usual horizon of
human life. Perhaps the growth of New York city and Philadelphia pointed
to a movement among the American people which might prove more
revolutionary than any mere agricultural movement westward. Each of
these cities contained a population of ninety-six thousand, while Baltimore
rose to forty-six thousand, and Boston to thirty-two thousand. The tendency
toward city life, if not yet unduly great, was worth noticing, especially
because it was confined to the seaboard States of the North.
The reason of this tendency could in part be seen in the Treasury reports
on American shipping, which reached in 1810 a registered tonnage of
1,424,000,—a point not again passed until 1826. The registered foreign
tonnage sprang to 984,000,—a point not again reached in nearly forty years.
New vessels were built to the amount of one hundred and twenty-seven
thousand tons in the year 1810.[246] The value of all the merchandise
exported in the year ending Sept. 30, 1810, amounted to nearly sixty-seven
million dollars, and of this sum about forty-two millions represented articles
of domestic production.[247] Except in the year before the embargo this
export of domestic produce had never been much exceeded.[248] The
imports, as measured by the revenue, were on the same scale. The net
customs-revenue which reached $16,500,000 in 1807, after falling in 1808
and 1809 to about $7,000,000, rose again to $12,750,000 in 1810.[249] The
profits of the export and import business fell chiefly to Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where the shipping belonged; and these cities

could not fail to attract labor as well as capital beyond the degree that a
conservative republican of the Revolutionary time would have thought safe.
More than half of these commercial exchanges were with England or
her dependencies. Great Britain and her American colonies, Portugal and
Spain in her military protection, and British India consumed at least one
half of the exports; while of the net revenue collected on imports, Gallatin
estimated six and a half millions as derived from articles imported from
Great Britain and the British dependencies, all other sources supplying
hardly six millions.[250] The nature of these imports could be only roughly
given. In general, sugar, molasses, coffee, wines, silk, and tea were not
British; but manufactures of cotton, linen, leather, paper, glass, earthen-
ware, iron, and other metals came chiefly from Great Britain. To the United
States this British trade brought most of the articles necessary to daily
comfort in every part of the domestic economy. The relief of recovering a
full and cheap supply exceeded the satisfaction of handsome profits on the
renewed trade. Experience of the hourly annoyance, expense, and physical
exposure caused by deprivation of what society considered necessities
rendered any return to the restrictive system in the highest degree unwise,
especially after the eastern people acquired conviction that the system had
proved a failure.
Thus the summer passed with much of the old contentment that marked
the first Administration of Jefferson. Having lost sight of national dignity,
the commercial class was contented under the protection of England; and
American ships in the Baltic, in Portugal, and in the West Indies never
hesitated to ask and were rarely refused the assistance of the British navy.
From time to time a few impressments were reported; but impressment had
never been the chief subject of complaint, and after the withdrawal of the
frigates blockading New York, little was heard of British violence. On the
other hand, Napoleon’s outrages roused great clamor in commercial society,
and his needless harshness to every victim, from the Pope to the American
sailors whom he shut up as prisoners of war, went far to palliate British
offences in the eyes of American merchants.
News of Napoleon’s seizures at San Sebastian arrived before the
adjournment of Congress May 1; and as fresh outrages were reported from
every quarter by every new arrival, and as Cadore’s letters became public,
even Madison broke into reproaches. May 25 he wrote to Jefferson:[251]

“The late confiscations by Bonaparte comprise robbery, theft, and breach of
trust, and exceed in turpitude any of his enormities not wasting human
blood.” These words seemed to show intense feeling, but Madison’s temper
indulged in outbursts of irritability without effect on his action; in reality,
his mind was bent beyond chance of change on the old idea of his
Revolutionary education,—that the United States must not regard France,
but must resist Great Britain by commercial restrictions. “This scene on the
Continent,” he continued to Jefferson, “and the effect of English monopoly
on the value of our produce are breaking the charm attached to what is
called free-trade, foolishly by some and wickedly by others.” He reverted to
his life-long theory of commercial regulations.
A few days afterward Madison wrote to Armstrong fresh instructions
founded on the Act of May 1, which was to be the new diplomatic guide.
These instructions,[252] dated June 5, were of course signed by the Secretary
of State, Robert Smith, who afterward claimed credit for them; but their
style, both of thought and expression, belonged to Madison. Even the
unfailing note of his mind—irritability without passion—was not wanting.
He would wait, he said, for further advices before making the proper
comments on Cadore’s letter of February 14 and on its doctrine of reprisals.
“I cannot, however, forbear informing you that a high indignation is felt by
the President, as well as by the public, at this act of violence on our
property, and at the outrage both in the language and in the matter of the
letter of the Duc de Cadore.” Turning from this subject, the despatch
requested that Napoleon would make use of the suggestion contained in the
Act of May 1, 1810. “If there be sincerity in the language held at different
times by the French government, and especially in the late overture, to
proceed to amicable and just arrangements in case of our refusal to submit
to the British Orders in Council, no pretext can be found for longer
declining to put an end to the decrees of which the United States have so
justly complained.” One condition alone was imposed on Armstrong
preliminary to the acceptance of French action under the law of May 1, but
this condition was essential:
“If, however, the arrangement contemplated by the law should be acceptable to
the French government, you will understand it to be the purpose of the President not
to proceed in giving it effect in case the late seizure of the property of the citizens of
the United States has been followed by an absolute confiscation, and restoration be
finally refused. The only ground short of a preliminary restoration of the property on
which the contemplated arrangement can be made will be an understanding that the

confiscation is reversible, and that it will become immediately the subject of
discussion with a reasonable prospect of justice to our injured citizens.”

The condition thus prescribed seemed both reasonable and mild in view
of the recent and continuous nature of the offence; but Madison could not,
even if he would, allow his own or public attention to be permanently
diverted from England. As early as June 22 he had begun to reconstruct in
his own mind the machinery of his restrictive system. “On the first
publication of the despatches by the ‘John Adams,’” he wrote to Jefferson,
[253]
“so strong a feeling was produced by Armstrong’s picture of the French
robbery that the attitude in which England was placed by the
correspondence between Pinkney and Wellesley was overlooked. The
public attention is beginning to fix itself on the proof it affords that the
original sin against neutrals lies with Great Britain; and that while she
acknowledges it, she persists in it.”
The theory of original sin led to many conclusions hard to reconcile;
but, as regarded Napoleon, Madison’s idea seemed both sensible and
dignified,—that England’s original fault in no way justified the recent acts
of France, which were equivalent to war on the United States, not as one
among neutrals, but as a particular enemy. Fresh instructions to Armstrong,
dated July 5,[254] reiterated the complaints, offers, and conditions of the
despatch sent one month before. Especially the condition precedent to
action under the law of May 1 was repeated with emphasis:—
“As has been heretofore stated to you, a satisfactory provision for restoring the
property lately surprised and seized, by the order or at the instance of the French
government, must be combined with a repeal of the French edicts with a view to a
non-intercourse with Great Britain, such a provision being an indispensable evidence
of the just purpose of France toward the United States. And you will moreover be
careful, in arranging such a provision for that particular case of spoliations, not to
weaken the ground on which a redress of others may be justly pursued.”

The instructions of June 5 and July 5 went their way; but although
Armstrong duly received them, and wrote to Cadore a letter evidently
founded on the despatch of June 5, he made no express allusion to his
instructions in writing either to the French government or to his own.
Although he remained in Paris till September 12, and on that day received
from Cadore an explicit avowal that the sequestered property would not be
restored, but that “the principles of reprisal must be the law,” he made no
protest.

Equally obscure was the conduct of Madison. Cadore’s letter of August
5 announcing that the French Decrees were withdrawn, on the
understanding that the United States should by November 1 enforce their
rights against England, reached Washington September 25, but not in
official form. Nothing is known of the impression it produced on the
Cabinet; nothing remains of any discussions that ensued. If Gallatin was
consulted, he left no trace of his opinion. Hamilton and Eustis had little
weight in deciding foreign questions. Robert Smith within a year afterward
publicly attacked the President for the course pursued, and gave the
impression that it was taken on Madison’s sole judgment. The President’s
only authority to act at all without consulting Congress depended on the
words of the law of May 1: “In case either Great Britain or France shall,
before the third day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that
they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, which
fact the President of the United States shall proclaim by proclamation,” the
non-intercourse of March 1, 1809, should at the end of three months revive
against the nation which had not revoked its edicts. Under this authority,
President Madison was required by Cadore’s letter to proclaim that France
had revoked or modified her edicts so that they ceased to violate the neutral
commerce of the United States.
Madison was doubtless a man of veracity; but how was it possible that
any man of veracity could proclaim that France had revoked or modified
her edicts so that they ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United
States when he had every reason to think that at least the Bayonne Decree,
barely six months old, would not be revoked, and when within a few weeks
he had officially declared that the revocation of the Bayonne Decree was
“an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France” preliminary to a
non-intercourse with England? If the President in June and July thought that
provision indispensable to the true intent of the law which he aided in
framing, he would assume something more than royal dispensing power by
setting the indispensable provision aside in November.
This objection was light in comparison with others. The law required
the President to proclaim a fact,—that France had revoked or modified her
decrees so that they ceased to violate the commerce of America. Of this fact
Cadore’s letter was the only proof; but evidently Cadore’s letter pledged the
Emperor to nothing. “I am authorized to declare to you,” wrote Cadore,

“that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after November
1 they will cease to have effect, on the understanding that in consequence of
this declaration ... the United States, conformably to the Act you have just
communicated, shall cause their rights to be respected by the English.”
Napoleon not only reserved to himself the right of judging whether the
measures to be taken by the United States should “cause their rights to be
respected,” but in doing so he reversed the process prescribed by the Act,
and required the President to enforce his rights before the Emperor should
withdraw his decrees.
From the standpoint of morality, perhaps the most serious objection of
all was the danger of sacrificing national and personal self-respect by
affecting to regard as honest a promise evidently framed to deceive, and
made by a man whom Madison habitually characterized in terms that
implied, to speak mildly, entire want of confidence. If America would
consent to assert her rights against England in no way more straightforward
than this, she might perhaps recover her neutral profits, but hardly her
national self-respect.
A few months afterward, when Robert Smith gave to the world the
amusing but not wholly new spectacle of a Secretary of State attacking his
own President for measures signed by his own name, Joel Barlow wrote for
the “National Intelligencer” a defence of the President’s course, in which he
gave reasons supplied by Madison himself for holding that Cadore’s letter
satisfied the conditions of Macon’s Act.
To the first objection, founded on the Rambouillet and Bayonne
Decrees, Barlow replied that the American government had habitually
distinguished between maritime edicts violating neutral rights and
municipal edicts attacking private property. “We could not in strictness
arraign such municipal spoliations under the head of violations of our
neutral rights, nor of consequence regard them as contemplated by the Acts
of Congress defining the acts whose revocation would satisfy the conditions
of that Act.” This reasoning, though not quite convincing, might have had
weight but for two objections. First, the President himself, in June and July,
had declared these municipal spoliations to be contemplated by Macon’s
Act as “an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France;”[255] and,
second, the President in November notified Armstrong, that,[256] “in issuing
the proclamation, it has been presumed that the requisition contained in that

letter [of July 5] on the subject of the sequestered property will have been
satisfied.” Barlow’s idea of a municipal spoliation, independent of the jus
gentium, was an afterthought intended to hide a miscalculation.
One other argument was advanced by Barlow. Erskine’s arrangement
having been accepted without question of previous British spoliations, not
only did impartiality require the same treatment for France, but a different
rule “would have led to the embarrassment of obliging the Executive, in
case the British government should be desirous of opening a free trade with
the United States by repealing its orders, to make it a prerequisite that Great
Britain also should indemnify for her respective spoliations.”
Such a prerequisite would have been proper, and ought to have been
imposed; but Barlow’s argument was again answered by the President
himself, who actually insisted on the demand against France, and assumed
the demand to be satisfied. If this was partiality to England, the President
was guilty of it. Probably at the time he saw reasons for thinking otherwise.
The secrecy, the continuance, the pretext of the French seizures, their
municipal and vindictive character and direct Imperial agency seemed to set
them apart from those of England, which, although equally illegal, were
always in the form of lawful trial and condemnation.
The same argument of impartiality served to justify immediate action on
Cadore’s offer as on Erskine’s, without waiting for its execution. That one
admitted mistake excused its own repetition in a worse form was a plea not
usually advanced by servants, either public or private; but in truth Erskine’s
pledge was distinct and unconditional, while Cadore’s depended on the
Emperor’s satisfaction with a preliminary act. Had Erskine made his
arrangement conditional on Canning’s approval of the President’s measures,
Madison would certainly have waited for that approval before acting under
the law; and after the disastrous results of precipitancy in 1809, when no
one questioned Erskine’s good faith, wisdom called for more caution rather
than less in acting, in 1810, on an offer or a pledge from a man in whom no
one felt any confidence at all.
In truth, Madison’s course in both cases was due not to logic, but to
impatience. As Barlow admitted: “We know it had been the aim of our
government for two or three years to divide the belligerents by inducing one
or the other of them to revoke its edicts, so that the example would lead to a

revocation by the other, or our contest be limited to a single one.” Madison
gave the same reason in a letter of October 19 to Jefferson:[257] “We hope
from the step the advantage at least of having but one contest on our hands
at a time.” He was mistaken, and no one expressed himself afterward in
language more bitter than he used against Napoleon for conduct that
deceived only those who lent themselves to deception.
October 31, Robert Smith sent for Turreau and gave him notice of the
decision reached by the President and Cabinet:[258]—
“The Executive,” said Robert Smith, “is determined not to suffer England longer
to trammel the commerce of the United States, and he hopes to be sustained by
Congress. If, then, England does not renounce her system of paper-blockades and the
other vexations resulting from it, no arrangement with that Power is to be expected;
and consequently you will see, in two days, the President’s proclamation appear,
founded on the provisions of the law requiring the non-intercourse to be enforced
against either nation which should fail to revoke its edicts after the other belligerent
had done so.... Although we have received nothing directly from Mr. Armstrong on
this subject, which is doubtless very extraordinary, we consider as sufficient for the
Government’s purposes the communication he made to Mr. Pinkney, which the latter
has transmitted to us.”

The next day Robert Smith made some further interesting remarks.[259]
“The Executive thinks,” he said, “that the measures he shall take in case
England continues to restrict our communications with Europe will lead
necessarily to war,” because of the terms of the non-intercourse. “We have
with us a majority of Congress, which has much to retrieve, and has been
accused of weakness by all parties.”
On leaving Smith, Turreau went to see Gallatin, “whose opinion in the
Cabinet is rarely favorable to us.”
“Mr. Gallatin (by the way long since on bad terms with Mr. Smith) told me that he
believed in war; that England could not suffer the execution of measures so
prejudicial to her, and especially in the actual circumstances could not renounce the
prerogatives of her maritime supremacy and of her commercial ascendency.”

Both Smith and Gallatin evidently expected that war was to result, not
from the further action of the United States, but from the resentment and
retaliation of England. They regarded the non-intercourse as a measure of
compulsion which would require England either to resent it or to yield.
Having decided to accept Cadore’s letter as proof that an actual repeal
of the French Decrees, within the meaning of the Act of Congress, had
taken place November 1, the President issued, November 2, his

proclamation declaring that “it has been officially made known to this
Government that the said edicts of France have been so revoked as that they
ceased, on the said first day of the present month, to violate the neutral
commerce of the United States;” and simultaneously Gallatin issued a
circular to the collectors of customs, announcing that commercial
intercourse with Great Britain would cease Feb. 2, 1811.
By this means Madison succeeded in reverting to his methods of
peaceful coercion. As concerned England, he could be blamed only on the
ground that his methods were admittedly inadequate, as Gallatin, only a
year before, had officially complained. Toward England the United States
had stood for five years in a position which warranted them in adopting any
measure of reprisal. The people of America alone had a right to object that
when Madison began his attack on England by proclaiming the French
Decrees to be revoked, he made himself a party to Napoleon’s fraud, and
could scarcely blame the Federalists for replying that neither in honor nor in
patriotism were they bound to abet him in such a scheme.
The Proclamation of Nov. 2, 1810, was not the only measure of the
autumn which exposed the President to something more severe than
criticism. At the moment when he challenged a contest with England on the
assertion that Napoleon had withdrawn his decrees, Madison resumed his
encroachments on Spain in a form equally open to objection.
The chaos that reigned at Madrid and Cadiz could not fail to make itself
felt throughout the Spanish empire. Under British influence, Buenos Ayres
in 1810 separated from the Supreme Junta, and drove out the viceroy whom
the Junta had appointed. In April of the same year Caracas followed the
example, and entered into a treaty with England, granting commercial
preferences equally annoying to the Spaniards and to the United States.
Miranda reappeared at the head of a revolution which quickly spread
through Venezuela and New Grenada. A civil war broke out in Mexico.
Even Cuba became uneasy. The bulky fabric of Spanish authority was
shaken, and no one doubted that it must soon fall in pieces forever.
England and the United States, like two vultures, hovered over the
expiring empire, snatching at the morsels they most coveted, while the
unfortunate Spaniards, to whom the rich prey belonged, flung themselves,
without leadership or resources, on the ranks of Napoleon’s armies.

England pursued her game over the whole of Spanish America, if not by
government authority, more effectively by private intrigue; while the United
States for the moment confined their activity to a single object, not wholly
without excuse.
As long as Baton Rouge and Mobile remained Spanish, New Orleans
was insecure. This evident danger prompted Madison, when Secretary of
State, to make a series of efforts, all more or less unfortunate, to gain
possession of West Florida; and perhaps nothing but Napoleon’s positive
threat of war prevented the seizure of Baton Rouge during Jefferson’s time.
After that crisis, the subject dropped from diplomatic discussion; but as
years passed, and Spanish power waned, American influence steadily
spread in the province. Numerous Americans settled in or near the district
of West Feliciana, within sight of Fort Adams, across the American border.
As their number increased, the Spanish flag at Baton Rouge became less
and less agreeable to them; but they waited until Buenos Ayres and Caracas
gave notice that Spain could be safely defied.
In the middle of July, 1810, the citizens of West Feliciana appointed
four delegates to a general convention, and sent invitations to the
neighboring districts inviting them to co-operate in re-establishing a settled
government. The convention was held July 25, and consisted of sixteen
delegates from four districts, who organized themselves as a legislature, and
with the aid or consent of the Spanish governor began to remodel the
government. After some weeks of activity they quarrelled with the
governor, charged him with perfidy, and suddenly assembling all the armed
men they could raise, assaulted Baton Rouge. The Spanish fort, at best
incapable of defence, was in charge of young Louis Grandpré, with a few
invalid or worthless soldiers. The young man thought himself bound in
honor to maintain a trust committed to him; he rejected the summons to
surrender, and when the Americans swarmed over the ruinous bastions they
found Louis Grandpré alone defending his flag. He was killed.
After capturing Baton Rouge, the Americans held a convention, which
declared itself representative of the people of West Florida, and September
26 issued a proclamation, which claimed place among the curious products
of that extraordinary time. “It is known to the world,” began this new
declaration of independence,[260] “with how much fidelity the good people
of this territory have professed and maintained allegiance to their legitimate

sovereign while any hope remained of receiving from him protection for
their property and lives.” The convention had acted in concert with the
Spanish governor “for the express purpose of preserving this territory, and
showing our attachment to the government which had heretofore protected
us;” but the governor had endeavored to pervert those concerted measures
into an engine of destruction; and therefore, “appealing to the Supreme
Ruler of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, we do solemnly
publish and declare the several districts composing the territory of West
Florida to be a free and independent State.”
A few days afterward the convention, through its president, wrote to the
Secretary of State, Robert Smith, urging the annexation of the new territory
to the United States, but claiming all the public lands in the province for
“the people of this Commonwealth, who have wrested the government and
country from Spain at the risk of their lives and fortunes.”[261] These words
accorded ill with their appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the world for the
rectitude of their intentions, and their protest of “our inviolable fidelity to
our king and parent country while so much as a shadow of legitimate
authority remained to be exercised over us.” Yet neither with nor without
their elaborate machinery of legitimate revolution could Madison have
anything to do with them. Innumerable obstacles stood in his way. They
declared the independence of territory which he had long since appropriated
to the United States. This course alone withheld Madison from recognizing
the new State; but other difficulties forbade any action at all. The
Constitution gave the President no power to use the army or navy of the
United States beyond the national limits, without the authority of Congress;
and although extreme emergency might have excused the President in
taking such action, no emergency existed in October, 1810, since Congress
would meet within six weeks, and neither Spain, France, nor England could
interfere in the interval. The President’s only legal course was to wait for
Congress to take what measures seemed good.
Madison saw all this, but though aware of his want of authority, felt the
strongest impulse to act without it. He described his dilemma to Jefferson in
a letter written before he received the request for annexation, then on its
way from Baton Rouge:[262]—
“The crisis in West Florida, as you will see, has come home to our feelings and
interests. It presents at the same time serious questions as to the authority of the

Executive, and the adequacy of the existing laws of the United States for territorial
administration. And the near approach of Congress might subject any intermediate
interposition of the Executive to the charge of being premature and disrespectful, if
not of being illegal. Still, there is great weight in the considerations that the country to
the Perdido, being our own, may be fairly taken possession of, if it can be done
without violence; above all, if there be danger of its passing into the hands of a third
and dangerous party.”

Casuistry might carry the United States government far. The military
occupation of West Florida was an act of war against Spain. “From present
appearances,” continued Madison, “our occupancy of West Florida would
be resented by Spain, by England, and by France, and bring on, not a
triangular, but quadrangular contest.” Napoleon himself never committed a
more arbitrary act than that of marching an army, without notice, into a
neighbor’s territory, on the plea that he claimed it as his own. None of
Madison’s predecessors ventured on such liberties with the law; none of his
successors dared imitate them, except under the pretext that war already
existed by the act of the adverse government.
Madison was regarded by his contemporaries as a precise, well-
balanced, even a timid man, argumentative to satiety, never carried away by
bursts of passion, fretful rather than vehement, pertinacious rather than
resolute,—a character that seemed incapable of surprising the world by
reckless ambition or lawless acts; yet this circumspect citizen, always
treated by his associates with a shade of contempt as a closet politician,
paid surprisingly little regard to rules of consistency or caution. His Virginia
Resolutions of 1798, his instructions in the Louisiana purchase, his
assumption of Livingston’s claim to West Florida, his treatment of Yrujo,
his embargo policy, his acceptance of Erskine’s arrangement, his acceptance
of Cadore’s arrangement, and his occupation of West Florida were all
examples of the same trait; and an abundance of others were to come. He
ignored caution in pursuit of an object which seemed to him proper in itself;
nor could he understand why this quiet and patriotic conduct should rouse
tempests of passion in his opponents, whose violence, by contrast, increased
the apparent placidity of his own persistence.
Forestalling the action of Congress which was to meet within five
weeks, President Madison issued, Oct. 27, 1810, a proclamation
announcing that Governor Claiborne would take possession of West Florida
to the river Perdido, in the name and behalf of the United States. This
proclamation, one of the most remarkable documents in the archives of the

United States government, began by reasserting the familiar claim to West
Florida as included in the Louisiana purchase:—
“And whereas the acquiescence of the United States in the temporary continuance
of the said territory under the Spanish authority was not the result of any distrust of
their title, as has been particularly evinced by the general tenor of their laws and by
the distinction made in the application of those laws between that territory and foreign
countries, but was occasioned by their conciliatory views, and by a confidence in the
justice of their cause, and in the success of candid discussion and amicable
negotiation with a just and friendly Power; ... considering, moreover, that under these
peculiar and imperative circumstances a forbearance on the part of the United States
to occupy the territory in question, and thereby guard against the confusions and
contingencies which threaten it, might be construed into a dereliction of their title or
an insensibility to the importance of the stake; considering that in the hands of the
United States it will not cease to be a subject of fair and friendly negotiation and
adjustment; considering finally that the Acts of Congress, though contemplating a
present possession by a foreign authority, have contemplated also an eventual
possession of the said territory by the United States, and are accordingly so framed as
in that case to extend in their operation to the same,”—

Considering all these reasons, substantially the same self-interest by
which France justified her decrees, and England her impressments, the
President ordered Governor Claiborne, with the aid of the United States
army, to occupy the country and to govern it as a part of his own Orleans
territory.[263] By a letter of the same date the Secretary of State informed
Claiborne, that, “if contrary to expectation, the occupation of this
[revolutionized] territory should be opposed by force, the commanding
officer of the regular troops on the Mississippi will have orders from the
Secretary of War to afford you, upon your application, the requisite aid....
Should however any particular place, however small, remain in possession
of a Spanish force, you will not proceed to employ force against it, but you
will make immediate report thereof to this Department.”[264] Having by
these few strokes of his pen authorized the seizure of territory belonging to
“a just and friendly Power,” and having legislated for a foreign people
without consulting their wishes, the President sent to the revolutionary
convention at Baton Rouge a sharp message through Governor Holmes of
the Mississippi territory, to the effect that their independence was an
impertinence, and their designs on the public lands were something worse.
[265]

A few days after taking these measures, Robert Smith explained their
causes to Turreau in the same conversation in which he announced the
decision to accept Cadore’s letter as the foundation of non-intercourse with

England. The wish to preclude British occupation of Florida was the motive
alleged by Smith for the intended occupation by the United States.[266]
“As for the Floridas, I swear, General, on my honor as a gentleman,” said Robert
Smith to Turreau, October 31, “not only that we are strangers to everything that has
happened, but even that the Americans who have appeared there either as agents or
leaders are enemies of the Executive, and act in this sense against the Federal
government as well as against Spain.... Moreover these men and some others have
been led into these measures by the hope of obtaining from a new government
considerable concessions of lands. In any case you will soon learn the measures we
have taken to prevent the English from being received at Baton Rouge as they have
been at Pensacola, which would render them absolute masters of our outlets by the
Mobile and Mississippi. We hope that your Government will not take it ill that we
should defend the part of Florida in dispute between Spain and us; and whether our
pretensions are well-founded or not, your interest, like ours, requires us to oppose the
enterprises of England in that country.”

Claiborne took possession of the revolutionized districts December 7,
and the Spanish governor at Mobile was not sorry to see the insurgents so
promptly repressed and deprived of their expected profits. Yet Claiborne did
not advance to the Perdido; he went no farther than the Pearl River, and
began friendly negotiations with Governor Folch at Mobile for delivery of
the country still held by the Spaniards between the Pearl and the Perdido.
Governor Folch had none but diplomatic weapons to use in his defence, but
he used these to save that portion of the province for some years to Spain.
The four districts west of the Pearl River were organized by Claiborne
as a part of the territory of Orleans, in which shape, the President’s
proclamation had said, “it will not cease to be a subject of fair and friendly
negotiation and adjustment” with Spain. Within a few weeks the President
announced to Congress in his Annual Message that “the legality and
necessity of the course pursued” required from the Legislature “whatever
provisions may be due to the essential rights and equitable interests of the
people thus brought into the bosom of the American family.” The difficulty
of reconciling two such assertions perplexed many persons who in the
interests of law and of society wished to understand how a people already
brought into the bosom of the American family could remain a subject of
fair negotiation with a foreign Power. The point became further complicated
by the admission of Louisiana as a State into the Union, with the four
districts which were “to be a subject of fair and friendly negotiation.”
The first result of these tortuous proceedings was to call a protest from
Morier, the British chargé at Washington, who wrote to the Secretary of

State, December 15, a letter[267] containing one paragraph worth noting:—
“Would it not have been worthy of the generosity of a free nation like this,
bearing, as it doubtless does, a respect for the rights of a gallant people at this moment
engaged in a noble struggle for its liberty,—would it not have been an act on the part
of this country dictated by the sacred ties of good neighborhood and friendship which
exist between it and Spain, to have simply offered its assistance to crush the common
enemy of both, rather than to have made such interference the pretext for wresting a
province from a friendly Power, and that at the time of her adversity?”

Spain had little reason to draw distinctions between friends, allies, and
enemies. She could hardly stop to remember that the United States were
filching a petty sand-heap in a remote corner of the world, at a time when
England was “wresting” not one but all the splendid American provinces
from their parent country, and when France was kneeling on the victim’s
breast and aiming stab after stab at her heart.

CHAPTER XV.
The elections for the Twelfth Congress, as far as they took place in
1810, showed a change in public opinion, and not only reduced the
Federalists to their old rank of a faction rather than a party, but also
weakened the conservative Republicans of Jefferson’s school; while the
losses of both strengthened a new party, which called itself Republican, but
favored energy in government. Henry Clay and William Lowndes, John C.
Calhoun and Felix Grundy, Langdon Cheves and Peter B. Porter, whatever
they might at times say, cared little for Jeffersonian or Madisonian dogmas.
The election which decided the character of the Twelfth Congress, by
choosing men of this character to lead it, decided also the popular judgment
on the Eleventh Congress, which had as yet run only half its course. Rarely
in American history has any particular Congress been held in high popular
esteem, but seldom if ever was a Congress overwhelmed by contempt so
deep and general as that which withered the Eleventh in the midst of its
career. Not only did Republicans and Federalists think alike for once, but
even among the members themselves no one of weight had a good word to
say of the body to which he belonged.
Quick to feel a popular rebuke, Congressmen submitted to punishment,
and obeyed the orders they would rather have resisted; but their work in
such a temper was sure to be done without good-will or good faith, for a
body which had lost its own respect could hardly respect its successor. The
American system of prolonging the existence of one Legislature after
electing another, never worked worse in practice than when it allowed this
rump Congress of 1809, the mere scourings of the embargo, to assume the
task of preparing for the War of 1812, to which it was altogether opposed
and in which it could not believe. No Congress had been confronted by
greater perplexities. President Madison submitted to it a number of
Executive acts more than doubtful in legality, which must all be approved;
and these measures, when approved, led to a policy of war with England
and Spain, which required great increase of Executive strength, careful
reorganization of the Executive machinery, especially great care of the
national credit and of its chief financial agents,—political duties of extreme
difficulty and delicacy.

President Madison’s Annual Message, December 5, called attention to
such business as he wished to present. Naturally, the revocation of the
French Decrees took the first place. The President assumed that the
revocation was complete, and that his proclamation was issued in regular
course, “as prescribed by law,” the President having no discretion; but he
admitted disappointment that the sequestered property had not been
restored. “It was particularly anticipated that, as a further evidence of just
disposition toward them, restoration would have been immediately made of
the property of our citizens, seized under a misapplication of the principle
of reprisals, combined with a misconstruction of a law of the United States.
This expectation has not been fulfilled.” England had not yet relinquished
her illegitimate blockades, and she avowed that the blockade of May, 1806,
was comprehended in the subsequent Orders in Council; the withdrawal of
that blockade had therefore been required by the President as one of the
conditions of renewing intercourse with Great Britain. The state of the
Spanish monarchy had produced a change in West Florida, a district “which
though of right appertaining to the United States had remained in the
possession of Spain, awaiting the result of negotiations for its actual
delivery to them.” The Spanish authority being subverted, the President did
not delay taking possession; “the legality and necessity of the course
pursued assure me of the favorable light in which it will present itself to the
Legislature.”
If this sketch of foreign affairs lacked perfect candor, the view of
domestic concerns gave matter for other doubts. “With the Indian tribes,”
said the Message, “the peace and friendship of the United States are found
to be so eligible that the general disposition to preserve both continues to
gain strength.” The story of Tippecanoe and Tecumthe soon threw new light
on this assertion. To Indian friendship domestic prosperity succeeded, and
the Message praised the economy and policy of manufactures. “How far it
may be expedient to guard the infancy of this improvement in the
distribution of labor by regulations of the commercial tariff, is a subject
which cannot fail to suggest itself to your patriotic reflections.” A
navigation law was also required to place American shipping on a level of
competition with foreign vessels. A national university “would contribute
not less to strengthen the foundations than to adorn the structure of our free
and happy system of government.” Further means for repressing the slave-
trade were required. Fortifications, arms, and organization of the militia

were to be provided. The Military School at West Point needed
enlargement.
Congress found more satisfaction in Gallatin’s Annual Report, sent to
Congress a week afterward, than they could draw from Madison’s Message,
for Gallatin told them that he had succeeded in bringing the current
expenses within the annual income; and only in case they should decide to
prohibit the importation of British goods after Feb. 2, 1811, should he need
further legislation both to make good the revenue and to enforce the
prohibition.
Congress lost no time. West Florida called first for attention; and
Senator Giles, December 18, reported a bill extending the territory of
Orleans to the river Perdido, in accordance with the President’s measures.
In the debate which followed, Federalist senators attacked the President for
exceeding the law and violating the Constitution. Their argument was
founded on the facts already told, and required nothing more to support it;
but the defence had greater interest, for no one could foretell with certainty
by what expedient senators would cover an Executive act which, like the
purchase of Louisiana itself, had best be accepted in silence as plainly
beyond the Constitution. Henry Clay acted as the President’s champion, and
explained on his behalf that the Act of Oct. 31, 1803, authorizing the
President to occupy the ceded territory of Louisiana, was still in force,
although regular possession to the Iberville had been taken, Dec. 20, 1803,
in pursuance of that Act, without further demand on the part of the United
States, and although the Act of March 20, 1804, providing for the temporary
government of the territory, declared that “the Act passed the 31st day of
October ... shall continue in force until the 1st day of October, 1804.” In
face of this double difficulty,—the exhaustion of the power and its express
limitation,—Clay asserted that the power had not been exhausted, and that
the limitation, though apparently general, was intended only for the
provisional government established by another portion of the Act of 1803.
He produced in his support the Act of Feb. 24, 1804, empowering the
President, to erect West Florida into a collection district whenever he
deemed it expedient. “These laws,” continued Clay, “furnish a legislative
construction of the treaty correspondent with that given by the Executive,
and they vest in this branch of the government indisputably a power to take
possession of the country whenever it might be proper in his discretion.”

Congress approved this opinion, which was in truth neither weaker nor
stronger than the arguments by which the Louisiana purchase itself had
been sustained. Fate willed that every measure connected with that territory
should be imbued with the same spirit of force or fraud which tainted its
title. The Southern States needed the Floridas, and cared little what law
might be cited to warrant seizing them; yet a Virginia Republican should
have been startled at learning that after October, 1803, every President, past
or to come, had the right to march the army or send the navy of the United
States at any time to occupy not only West Florida, but also Texas and
Oregon, as far as the North Pole itself, since they claimed it all, except the
Russian possessions, as a part of the Louisiana purchase, with more reason
than they claimed West Florida.
As usual, the most pungent critic of Republican doctrines was Senator
Pickering, who if he could not convince, could always annoy the majority.
He replied to Clay, and in the course of his speech read Talleyrand’s letter
of Dec. 21, 1804, which put an end to Monroe’s attempt to include West
Florida in the Louisiana purchase. Nothing could be more apt; but nothing
could be more annoying to the Administration, for Talleyrand’s letter was
still secret. Confidentially communicated with other papers to Congress by
Jefferson, Dec. 6, 1805, the injunction of secrecy had never been removed,
and the publication tended to throw contempt on Madison not only for his
past but particularly for his present dalliance with Napoleon. Pickering
could charge, with more than usual appearance of probability, that West
Florida was to be Madison’s reward for accepting the plainly deceptive
pledge of Cadore’s letter of August 5. The Senate, with some doubts,
resented Pickering’s conduct to a moderate extent. Samuel Smith moved it
to be “a palpable violation of the rules;” and with the omission of
“palpable,” the resolution was adopted. The deference to Executive
authority which allowed so important a paper to be suppressed for five
years showed more political sagacity than was proved in censuring
Pickering by a party vote, which he would regard as a compliment, because
he read a document that the Administration should have been ashamed not
to publish and resent.
The interlude helped only to embarrass the true question,—what should
be done with West Florida. President Madison’s doctrine, embodied in
Giles’s bill, carried out the Livingston-Monroe theory that West Florida

belonged to Louisiana. In theory, this arrangement might answer the
purpose for which it was invented; but in fact West Florida did not belong
to Louisiana, either as a Spanish or as an American province, and could not
be treated as though it did. If Mobile Bay and the Gulf coast as far as the
Perdido belonged to Louisiana, the territory afterward divided into the
States of Alabama and Mississippi had no outlet to the gulf. Georgia would
never consent to such treatment, merely to support President Madison in
alleging that West Florida was occupied by him as a part of the Orleans
territory. Senator Giles’s bill was silently dropped.
The Senate reached this point December 31, but meanwhile the House
reached the same standstill from another side. December 17 the Speaker
appointed a committee, with Macon at its head, to report on the admission
of Orleans territory as a State. The admission of the State of Louisiana into
the Union was for many reasons a serious moment in American history; but
one of its lesser incidents was the doubt which so much perplexed the
Senate, whether Louisiana included West Florida. If this was the case, then
by the third article of the treaty of purchase the inhabitants of Mobile and
the district between Mobile and Baton Rouge, without division, should be
“incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as
possible” to the Union as part of the territory of Orleans. This was the
opinion of Macon and his committee, as it had been that of Giles and his
committee, and of the President and his Cabinet. December 27 Macon
reported a bill admitting Louisiana, with West Florida to the Perdido, as a
State; but no sooner did the debates begin, than the Georgians for the first
time showed delicacy in regard to the rights of Spain. Troup could not
consent to include in any State this territory “yet in dispute and subject to
negotiation.” Bibb held the same misgivings: “The President by his
proclamation, although he had required its occupation, had declared that the
right should be subject to negotiation; now, if it became a State, would not
all right of negotiation be taken from the President?” To prevent this danger,
Bibb moved that West Florida, from the Iberville to the Perdido, should be
annexed to the Mississippi Territory or made a separate government.
On the other hand, Rhea of Tennessee held that no other course was
open to Congress than to admit the Orleans territory in its full extent as
ceded by France, according to the President’s assertion. The treaty was
peremptory, and Congress was bound by it to annex no part of the Orleans

purchase to a pre-existing territory. West Florida belonged to Louisiana, and
could not lawfully be given to Mississippi.
The House tried as usual to defer or compromise its difficulty. January
9, Macon’s bill was so amended as to withdraw West Florida from its
operation; but when on the following day two members in succession asked
the House to provide a government for West Florida, the House referred the
motions back to the committee, and there the matter rested. No man knew
whether West Florida belonged to Louisiana or not. If the President was
right, Mobile and all the Gulf shore to a point within ten miles of Pensacola,
although still held by the Spaniards, made part of the State of Louisiana,
and even an Act of Congress could not affect it; while if this was not the
case, the President in ordering the seizure of West Florida had violated the
Constitution and made war on Spain.
Hardly had the House admitted its helplessness in the face of this
difficulty, when it was obliged to meet the larger issue involved in the
Louisiana affair; for Jan. 14, 1811, Josiah Quincy, with extreme
deliberation, uttered and committed to writing a sentence which remained
long famous:—
“If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of
this Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the
right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,—
amicably if they can, violently if they must.”

The Speaker decided this language to be disorderly; but the House, by a
vote of fifty-six to fifty-three, reversed the ruling, and Quincy went on
arguing, as Jefferson had argued eight years before, that the introduction of
new States, outside the original Union, was no part of the compact, and
must end in overwhelming the original partners.
Quincy’s protest wanted only one quality to give it force. He spoke in
the name of no party to the original compact. His own State of
Massachusetts assented to the admission of Louisiana, and neither the
governor nor the legislature countenanced the doctrine of Quincy and
Pickering. If the partners themselves made no protest, the act had all the
legality it needed, in the absence of appeal to higher authority; but it
consummated a change in the nature of the United States government, and
its results, however slow, could not fail to create what was in effect a new
Constitution.

The House, without further delay, passed the bill by a vote of seventy-
seven to thirty-six. After some amendment by the Senate, and dispute
between the Houses, the bill was sent to the President, and Feb. 20, 1811,
received his signature. The Act fixed the Iberville and the Sabine for the
eastern and western boundaries of the new State. Meanwhile West Florida
remained, till further legislation, a part of Orleans Territory for all purposes
except those of admission into the Union; and, according to the view
implied by the action of Executive and Legislature, the President retained
power to order the military occupation of Texas under the Act of Oct. 31,
1803, subject to government afterward, like West Florida, by the
proconsular authority of the Executive.
As though the Florida affair needed still further complication, the
President, January 3, sent to Congress a secret message asking authority to
seize East Florida:—
“I recommend ... the expediency of authorizing the Executive to take temporary
possession of any part or parts of the said territory, in pursuance of arrangements
which may be desired by the Spanish authorities.... The wisdom of Congress will at
the same time determine how far it may be expedient to provide for the event of a
subversion of the Spanish authorities within the territory in question, and an
apprehended occupancy thereof by any other foreign Power.”

In secret session Congress debated and passed an Act, approved Jan. 15,
1811, authorizing the President to take possession of East Florida, in case
the local authority should consent or a foreign Power should attempt to
occupy it. The President immediately appointed two commissioners to carry
the law into effect. The orders he gave them, the meaning they put on these
orders, the action they took, and the President’s further measures were to
form another remarkable episode in the complicated history of Florida.
Congress next turned to the charter of the United States Bank; but if it
succumbed before West Florida, it was helpless in dealing with finance.
Long hesitation had ended by creating difficulties. Local interests hostile to
the Bank sprang into existence. In many States private banks were applying
for charters, and preparing to issue notes in the hope of seizing their share
of the profits of the United States Bank. The influence of these new
corporations was great. They induced one State legislature after another to
instruct their senators on the subject. That Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland should wish to appropriate the profits of the National Bank was
not surprising, but that Virginia and Kentucky should make themselves

instruments of the capitalist States showed little knowledge of their true
interests. As the crisis came near, the struggle became hotter, until it rivalled
the embargo excitement, and every hour of delay increased the vehemence
of opposition to the charter.
The Bank was vulnerable on more than one side. Largely owned in
England, it roused jealousy as a foreign influence. Congress could hardly
blame this ownership, since Congress itself, in 1802, aided President
Jefferson in selling to the Barings, at a premium of forty-five per cent, the
two thousand two hundred and twenty Bank shares still belonging to the
government. The operation brought to the Treasury not only a profit of four
hundred thousand dollars in premiums, but also about thirteen hundred
thousand dollars of British capital to be used for American purposes. Fully
two thirds of the Bank stock, amounting to ten million dollars, were owned
in England; all the five thousand shares originally subscribed by the United
States government had been sold to England; and as the Bank was a mere
creature of the United States government, these seven millions of British
capital were equivalent to a score of British frigates or regiments lent to the
United States to use against England in war. By returning them, the United
States seriously weakened themselves and strengthened their enemy.
Unfortunately this interest was national. Local interests felt that
Englishmen received profits which should belong to Americans; and
capitalists in general were not inclined to lower their profits by inviting
foreign capital into the country unless they shared its returns. The second
misfortune of the Bank was that of being a Federalist creation, chiefly used
for the benefit of Federalists, who owned most of the active capital in the
country. The third objection went deeper. The Bank was the last vestige of
strong government created by the Federalists,—a possible engine of
despotism; and no one could deny that if decentralization was wise, the
Bank should be suppressed. Finally, the Bank was a bulwark to Gallatin; its
destruction would weaken Madison and drive Gallatin from office.
Doubtless the objections to the Bank were so strong as some day to
become fatal. In a society and government so little developed as those of
America, a National Bank was out of keeping with other institutions. Even
in England and France these banks exercised more influence over the
Treasury than was proper; and in America, if once the Bank should unite in
political sympathy with the Government, it might do no little harm. The

necessity for such an institution was merely one of the moment, but in the
period of national history between 1790 and 1860, the year 1811 was
perhaps the only moment when destruction of the Bank threatened national
ruin. A financial cataclysm had prostrated credit from St. Petersburg to New
Orleans. Prices were nominal. England owed America large sums of money,
but instead of discharging the debt, she was trying to escape payment and
withdraw specie. Already the supply of specie in the United States was
insufficient to sustain the bank-note circulation. In New York city the State
banks were supposed to hold not more than half a million dollars, and in
Pennsylvania not much more than a million; while the Bank of the United
States had lost three and a half millions in eleven months, and had but five
and a half millions left.[268]
Meanwhile the State banks not only expanded their issues, but also
rapidly increased in number. Suppression of the National Bank could not
fail to stimulate this movement. “The banks established by the State
legislatures will scramble for the privilege of filling the chasm to be made
by the destruction of the Bank of the United States. Already are they
preparing for the patriotic endeavor. Our State legislatures are to be
importuned to become bank jobbers and joint undertakers and copartners in
the enterprise.”[269] Nothing could prevent expansion of credit, drain of
specie, bankruptcy and confusion of the currency; and this was to be done
at the time the country entered into a war with the only Power whose
influence could shake the Union to its foundation.
Madison stood aloof, and left on Gallatin the burden of the struggle; but
Gallatin’s energies and influence could do little with the Eleventh Congress.
He was strongest in the House; but there the debate, after many speeches,
ended, January 24, by a vote of sixty-five to sixty-four in favor of indefinite
postponement, and by common consent all parties waited for the Senate to
decide. The omen was not happy for the Treasury.
Gallatin had at last found a capable senator to support him. The political
fortunes of William Henry Crawford, which ended only at the threshold of
the White House, drew no small part of their growth from his courageous
defence of the Treasury during these chaotic years. Crawford showed the
faults of a strong nature,—he was overbearing, high-tempered, and his
ambition did not spurn what his enemies called intrigue; but he possessed
the courage of Henry Clay, with more than Clay’s intelligence, though far

less than his charm. Crawford was never weak, rarely oratorical; and if he
was ever emotional he reserved his emotion for other places than the
Senate. “One man at last appeared who filled my expectations,” wrote
Gallatin many years afterward to an old and intimate friend.[270] “This was
Mr. Crawford, who united to a powerful mind a most correct judgment and
an inflexible integrity,—which last quality, not sufficiently tempered by
indulgence and civility, has prevented his acquiring general popularity.”
February 5 he introduced into the Senate a bill continuing the old Bank
charter for twenty years on certain conditions; and February 11 he
supported the bill in a speech remarkable for the severity of its truths. He
began by challenging the Constitution itself:—
“Upon the most thorough examination [of the Constitution] I am induced to
believe that many of the various constructions given to it are the result of a belief that
it is absolutely perfect. It has become so extremely fashionable to eulogize this
Constitution, whether the object of the eulogist is the extension or contraction of the
powers of the government, that whenever its eulogium is pronounced I feel an
involuntary apprehension of mischief.”

Upon the party theory that Congress could exercise no implied power,
and therefore could not charter a corporation, Crawford fell energetically,
until he came in contact with the instructions of State legislatures, which he
swept out of his path with actual contempt:—
“What is the inducement with these great States to put down the Bank of the
United States? Their avarice combined with their love of domination!... The great
commercial States are to monopolize the benefits which are to arise from the deposits
of your public money. The suppression of this Bank will benefit none of the interior or
smaller States in which there is little or no revenue collected. As the whole benefit is
to be engrossed by three or four of the great Atlantic States, so the whole of the power
which the dissolution of this Bank will take from the national government will be
exclusively monopolized by the same States.”

Under Gallatin’s teaching, Crawford bade fair to make himself, what the
South so greatly needed, a statesman who understood its interests; but he
was far in advance of his people. The society from which he sprang was
more correctly represented by Giles, who answered him in the manner for
which the Virginia senator had acquired unpleasant notoriety. February 14
John Randolph, who with all his faults was not so factious as to join in the
scheme of the State banks, wrote to his friend Nicholson:[271] “Giles made
this morning the most unintelligible speech on the Bank of the United
States that I ever heard.” Never had Giles taken more trouble to be judicial,
candid, and temperate; no one could have admitted with more impartiality

the force of his opponent’s arguments; but his instincts, stronger than his
logic, compelled him to vote against the Bank. The conclusion was as
certain as the process was vague.
Henry Clay, who followed on the same side, ironically complimented
the Virginia senator, who had “certainly demonstrated to the satisfaction of
all who heard him both that it was constitutional and unconstitutional,
highly proper and improper, to prolong the charter of the Bank;” but Clay’s
irony was as unfortunate as Giles’s logic. The sarcasm thrown at Giles
recoiled on Clay himself, for he passed the rest of his life in contradicting
and repenting the speech he made at this moment, in which he took ground
against the power of Congress to create corporations. “The power to charter
companies is not specified in the grant, and, I contend, is of a nature not
transferable by mere implication. It is one of the most exalted attributes of
sovereignty.” The legislation of twenty years which enforced the opposite
opinion he swept aside in his peculiar manner. “This doctrine of precedents,
applied to the legislature, appears to me to be fraught with the most
mischievous consequences.” With more than his ordinary self-confidence,
he affirmed that the Treasury could be as well conducted without as with
the Bank; and he closed with a burst of rhetoric hardly to be paralleled in
his oratory, by holding the Bank responsible for not preventing Great
Britain from attacking the “Chesapeake,” impressing American seamen, and
issuing the Orders in Council.
Clay’s excuse for extravagances like these was neither his youth nor his
ignorance of affairs nor his obedience to instructions, nor yet a certain want
of tact which made him through life the victim of needless mistakes, but
was rather the simple repentance with which, within five years, he threw
himself on the mercy of the public, admitting that had he foreseen the effect
of his course he would have acted in a very different way.[272] Even for
Giles some apology might be made, for no one could deny that consistency
required him to vote as he did, and he could appeal to the record in his
defence. The worst offender was not Giles or Clay, but Samuel Smith.
When Crawford flung so freely his charges of avarice and ambition
about the Senate chamber, he had Samuel Smith directly in his eye; for
Smith’s action was avowedly controlled by his interests, and since his
speech on Macon’s bill his attitude toward public measures was better
understood than before. No one could conceive Smith to be influenced by

conscientious scruples about implied powers, but many persons besides
Madison and Gallatin believed him to be selfish and grasping. Baltimore
favored State banks, and Smith lent his reputation as a business man to the
service of local politics and interests, except so far as in doing this he aimed
at the overthrow of Gallatin. He gave what amounted to a pledge of his
character as a merchant to the assertion that the State, banks were better,
safer, and more efficient agencies for the Treasury than the Bank of the
United States could possibly be. In making the speech which advanced
these doctrines, he threw out an express challenge to Gallatin. “The
secretary is considered by his friends a very great man in fiscal operations;
in commercial matters I may be permitted to have opinions of my own.” As
a commercial authority he asserted that government had much greater
control over the State banks than over the United States Bank; that more
confidence could be put in the security of the State banks than in that of the
National Bank; that they could more easily effect the necessary exchanges;
that they were as prudently conducted; that the National Bank did not act as
a check upon them, but they acted as a check upon it; that the ordinary and
extraordinary business of the Treasury could be as effectually and securely
done by the State banks; and that the liquidation of the United States Bank
would “be remembered nine days and not much longer.” When five years
afterward the fallacy of these opinions became too notorious for question,
Smith did not, like Clay, throw himself on the justice of his country or
admit his errors, but he voted to re-establish the Bank in a far more
extensive form, and took the ground that it was the only means of repairing
mistakes which he had been a principal agent in making.
The other speeches made in this debate, although quite equal in ability
to these, carried less political weight, for they implied less factiousness.
One remained, which excited no small curiosity and some amusement.
When the Senate, February 20, divided on the motion to strike out the
enacting clause, seventeen senators voted for the Bank and seventeen voted
against it. Nine Northern senators voted in its favor, including seven of the
ten from New England, and nine on the opposite side. Eight Southern
senators voted one way, and eight the other. Of the twenty-seven
Republican senators, seventeen voted against the Bank, and ten in its favor;
while the three senators who were supposed to be in personal opposition to
the President—Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael Leib—all voted in

opposition. The force of personal feeling was credited with still another
vote; for when the result was announced, the Vice-President, George
Clinton, whose attitude was notorious, made a short address to the effect
that “the power to create corporations is not expressly granted; it is a high
attribute of sovereignty, and in its nature not accessorial or derivative by
implication, but primary and independent.” On this ground he threw his
casting vote against the bill.
So perished the first Bank of the United States; and with its destruction
the Federalist crisis, so long threatened, began at last to throw its shadow
over the government.

CHAPTER XVI.
While Congress recoiled from the problem of West Florida, and by a
single voice decreed that the United States Bank should cease to exist,
nothing had yet been decided in regard to England and France.
This delay was not due to negligence. From the first day of the session
anxiety had been great; but decision, which even in indifferent matters was
difficult for the Eleventh Congress, became impossible in so complicated a
subject as that of foreign relations. The President’s proclamation named
Feb. 2, 1811, as the day when intercourse with England was to cease.
Congress had been six weeks in session, and had barely a fortnight to spare,
when at last the subject was brought before the House, January 15, by John
W. Eppes of Virginia, chairman of the committees of Ways and Means and
Foreign Relations, who reported a bill for regulating commercial
intercourse with Great Britain. As a third or fourth commercial experiment,
—a companion to the partial Non-intercourse Act of April, 1806; the
embargo of December, 1807; and the total Non-intercourse Act of March,
1809,—the new bill promised more discontent in America than it was ever
likely to create in England. The measure was not a non-intercourse, but a
non-importation, severe and searching, in some ways almost as violent as
the embargo; and was to be passed by a Congress elected expressly for the
purpose of repealing the embargo.
The proposed bill lay on the Speaker’s table. February approached, and
still Congress did nothing; yet this delay substituted in place of the
Constitution a system of government by proclamation. In two instances
involving not only foreign war, but also more than half the foreign trade and
several principles of fundamental law, the country depended in February,
1810, on two Executive proclamations, which rested on two assertions of
fact that no one believed to be true. In spite of Madison and his
proclamations, West Florida was not a part of Louisiana; Napoleon had not
withdrawn his decrees,—and Congress was unwilling to support either
assertion.
Unless the Berlin and Milan Decrees were repealed Nov. 1, 1810, as
Cadore’s letter was held to promise, neither President nor Congress could

reasonably take the ground that Cadore’s letter, of itself, revived the non-
intercourse against England. The United States had the right to make war on
England with or without notice, either for her past spoliations, her actual
blockades, her Orders in Council other than blockades, her Rule of 1756,
her impressments, or her attack on the “Chesapeake,” not yet redressed,—
possibly also for other reasons less notorious; but the right to make war did
not carry with it the right to require that the world should declare to be true
an assertion which the world knew to be false. Unless England were a
shrew to be tamed, President Madison could hardly insist on her admitting
the sun to be the moon; and so well was Congress aware of this difficulty
that it waited in silence for two months, until, February 2, the President’s
proclamation went into effect; while the longer Congress waited, the greater
became its doubts.
Only one proof could be admitted as sufficient evidence that the French
Decrees were repealed. The Emperor had violated American rights by
decree, and until he restored them by decree no municipal order of his
subordinates could replace the United States in the position they claimed.
For this reason the President and Congress waited anxiously for news from
Paris to November 1, when the decree of appeal should have issued. The
news came, but included no decree. The President then assumed that at least
the Decrees of Berlin and Milan would not be enforced in France after
November 1; but letters from Bordeaux, dated Dec. 14, 1810, brought news
that two American vessels which entered that port about December 1 had
been sequestered. No other American vessels were known to have arrived in
French ports except with French licenses.
This intelligence was a disaster. The President communicated it to
Congress in a brief message;[273] January 31; and so serious was its effect
that on February 2, when the non-intercourse revived by proclamation,
Eppes rose in the House and moved to recommit his bill on the ground that
the behavior of France gave no excuse for action against England. “The
non-intercourse went into operation to-day,” he said. “It had been
considered by the Committee of Foreign Relations that in the present state
of our affairs it would be better to provide for the relief of our own citizens
and suspend the passage of the law for enforcing the non-intercourse until
the doubts hanging over our foreign relations were dissipated.”

The opposition would have done well to let Eppes struggle with his
difficulties as he best could without interference; but Randolph, who liked
to press an advantage, professing a wish to relieve the President “from the
dilemma in which he must now stand,” moved the repeal of the Non-
intercourse Act of March 1, 1809,—a step which if taken would have
repealed also the President’s proclamation. The motion brought on a
premature debate. Out-reasoned, out-manœuvred, and driven to the wall,
the Republicans could only become dogged and defiant. They took the
ground that retreat was impossible. Eppes avowed that he considered the
national faith pledged to France; and although he would not enforce the
non-intercourse against England until he had certain knowledge that the
French Decrees were withdrawn, he must have unequivocal evidence that
France had “violated the faith pledged to this nation” before he would vote
to repeal the law. Apologetic throughout, he admitted that indemnity for the
French seizures had always been considered an essential part of any
arrangement with Napoleon, yet held that the national faith was pledged to
that arrangement, although an essential part of the Emperor’s obligation
was omitted. Every speaker on the Republican side, with the exception of
Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill of New York, asserted with increasing vehemence
that the Act of May 1, 1810, created a contract with France, made perfect by
Cadore’s letter of August 5. This legal view of Napoleonic statesmanship
had much force with the Republican lawyers of the Eleventh Congress,
although its necessary consequence followed its announcement; for since
law, whatever lawyers might sometimes seem to assert, was not politics,—
differing especially in the point that law had a sanction of force, while
international politics had none,—and since Napoleon could in no way be
controlled by any sanction, and still less be trusted, the so-called contract,
while binding on America, in no way bound France.
Even Langdon Cheves, the new member from South Carolina,
maintained that the United States could no longer break their compact with
the Emperor. “Was it not better,” he asked, “that the nation should preserve
all it had left,—its good faith? Its property and honor had been sacrificed,
and all that was left was its good faith.” Cheves admitted that his doctrine
of “good faith” had an ulterior motive, which was to force a conflict with
England. “He had never been satisfied with the wisdom or propriety of the
law of May last in any other view than one. He believed it would make the
country act a part worthy of its character; it would precipitate us on a

particular enemy,—and this, he believed, the country required.” He went so
far as to assert “that the decrees were removed, and that if the violation of
our rights continued to-morrow, yet the decrees were so revoked on the 1st
of November last as that they did cease to violate our commerce. If our
rights are now violated, it is a violation independent of the decrees, by the
mere will of an arbitrary and powerful government.” Rhea of Tennessee
went further still. “If any compact,” said he, “can be of greater dignity than
a treaty, the law of May 1, made by the constituted authorities of the United
States, and agreed to and acted on by the constituted authorities of France,
forms that compact.”
When one nation is agreed in the policy of fighting another any pretext
will answer, and Government need not even be greatly concerned to give
any reason at all; but in the condition of America in 1810, grave dangers
might result from setting aside the four or five just issues of war with
England in order to insist on an issue that revolted common-sense. If
ingenuity had been provoked to suggest the course which would rouse most
repugnance in the minds of the largest possible number of Americans, no
device better suited for its purpose than the theory of Eppes, Cheves, and
Rhea could have been proposed; and if they wished to exasperate the
conscience of New England in especial to fanatical violence, they came
nearest their end by insisting on an involuntary, one-sided compact,
intended to force Massachusetts and Connecticut to do the will of the man
whom a majority of the people in New England seriously regarded as anti-
Christ. Even on the floor of the House no Republican could stand a moment
before John Randolph without better protection than this compact with
France, which France herself did not recognize.
“This is the 2d of February,” said Randolph. “The time has arrived, the hour now
is, when gentlemen by their own arguments, if their arguments be just, are bound to
fulfil the contract, which I do not undertake to expound, but which they say has been
made—certainly in a manner very novel to our Constitution—between the House of
Representatives on the one hand and Bonaparte on the other,—a bargain which, like
the bargains of old with the Devil, there is no shaking off. It is a bargain which
credulity and imbecility enter into with cunning and power.... I call upon gentlemen to
make good their promise to his Majesty the Emperor of the French and King of Italy;
to redeem their pledge; to cut off in fact nearly the whole of our existing trade in
return for the liberty of trading by license from the three favored ports which it has
pleased his Imperial Majesty to privilege. No man believes—I beg pardon, sir; I was
going to say, but I will not, that no man believes one syllable of this breach of faith on
our part. I have too much confidence in the honor of gentlemen not to be convinced
that they have persuaded themselves to this effect, although it is incomprehensible to

me. Bound, sir, to whom? To Bonaparte? Bound to Shylock? Bound to render up not
only the pound of flesh, but every jot of blood in the Constitution? Does he come
forward with his pockets swelled with American treasure; do his minions, fattened
upon our soil, whether obtained by public rapine or private extortion, do they come
forward, calling upon us to make sacrifices of our best interest on the shrine of their
resentments, in the name, too, of good faith?”

The majority showed its usual weakness in debate, but rejected
Randolph’s motion by a vote of sixty-seven to forty-five; and after rejecting
it, knew not what to do. Eppes reported a new bill to suspend for a time the
operation of the non-intercourse, and a new debate began. February 9 Eppes
rejoiced the House by opening a fresh hope of some decided policy. A new
French minister was soon to arrive in place of Turreau, and further
legislation must wait his arrival.
“He has left France,” said Eppes, “at a time to bring us certain information on this
question. I have no wish to enter on this interesting question with a bandage round my
eyes. Whether France has complied with her engagements, whether France has failed
in her engagements, cannot be a subject of ingenious speculation many days longer.”

Further proceedings were suspended until Congress should learn what
Napoleon’s agent would say.[274]
The new minister arrived almost immediately. Unlike Turreau, Serurier
was a diplomate by profession. He had last served as French minister at the
Hague, where, by no fault of his own, he drove King Louis of Holland from
his throne. February 16 he was presented to the President, and the next day
had a long interview with Robert Smith, who learned that he brought no
instructions or information of any kind on the one subject that engrossed
diplomatic attention. The scene with Francis James Jackson was repeated
with the French minister. Again and again Smith pressed his inquiries,
which Serurier politely declined to answer except by resenting any
suggestion that the Emperor would fail to keep his word.[275]
After this interview, on the same day, the President apparently held a
Cabinet meeting, and probably also consulted certain party leaders in
Congress; but no record of such conferences has been preserved, nor is
anything known of the arguments that ended in the most hazardous decision
yet risked. If disagreement took place,—if Gallatin, Eppes, Robert Smith, or
Crawford remonstrated against the course pursued, not a whisper of their
arguments was heard beyond the Cabinet. Serurier himself is the only
authority for inferring that some conference was probably held; but he knew

so little, that in giving to his Government an account of his first day in
Washington he closed the despatch by reporting in a few lines the decision,
of which he could have hardly suspected the importance. His interview with
Robert Smith took place on the morning of February 17; the afternoon was
probably passed by the President and Cabinet in conference; in the evening
Mrs. Madison held a reception, where Serurier was received with general
cordiality:—
“In coming away, Mr. Smith—probably intending to say something agreeable, and
something that I might regard as the effect of our first conversations—assured me that
he was authorized to give me the pledge that if (pour peu que) England should show
the least new resistance to the withdrawal of her orders, the Government had decided
to increase the stringency of the non-intercourse, and to give that measure all the
effect it ought to have.”

The decision to enforce and re-enforce the non-intercourse against
England implied that the President considered Napoleon’s Decrees to be
withdrawn. February 17, at latest, the decision was made. February 19 the
President sent to Congress a Message containing two French documents.
[276]
The first was a letter, dated December 25, from the Duc de Massa,
Minister of Justice, to the President of the Council of Prizes, which recited
the words of Cadore’s letter and the measures taken by the American
government in consequence, and ordered that all captured American vessels
should thenceforward not be judged according to the principles of the
Decrees of Berlin and Milan, which “shall remain suspended;” but such
captured vessels should be sequestrated, “the rights of the proprietors being
reserved to them until the 2d of February next, the period at which the
United States, having fulfilled the engagement to cause their rights to be
respected, the said captures shall be declared null by the Council.” The
second letter, of the same date, was written by Gaudin, Duc de Gaete,
Minister of Finance, to the Director-General of the Customs, directing him
thenceforward not to enforce the Berlin and Milan Decrees against
American vessels.
On these letters, not on any communications from Scrurier, the
President rested his decision that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan were so
revoked as no longer to violate the neutral commerce of the United States.
Obviously they failed to prove more than that the decrees were partially
suspended. According to these orders the decrees were not under any
circumstances to be revoked, but their operation upon American commerce

in France was to cease in case the Emperor should be satisfied that America
had previously enforced against England the principles of the decrees. This
was the converse of the American demand, and was in effect the attitude of
England. The same packet which brought Jonathan Russell’s despatch
containing the two letters of the French ministers brought also the
“Moniteur” of December 15, which contained the Duc de Cadore’s official
Report on Foreign Relations,—a paper understood to express the Emperor’s
own language, and to be decisive as to the meaning of his foreign policy:—
“Sire, as long as England shall persist in her Orders in Council, your Majesty will
persist in your decrees; will oppose the blockade of the Continent to the blockade of
the coast, and the confiscation of British merchandise on the Continent to the pillage
on the seas. My duty obliges me to say to your Majesty, You cannot henceforward
hope to recall your enemies to more moderate ideas except by perseverance in this
system.”

These documents, combined with a knowledge of the license system,
showed the true scope and meaning of Cadore’s pledge so clearly as to
leave no possibility of doubt. If America chose to accept these limitations of
her neutral rights, she was at liberty to do so; but she could hardly require
England to admit that the Berlin and Milan Decrees were in any sense
revoked because American ships were thenceforward to be admitted to
France subject to the system of those decrees. Napoleon concealed neither
his policy nor his motives, and as these did not warrant the assertion that
France had ceased to violate the neutral rights of America, President
Madison was obliged to assume that the Emperor meant to do more. A
month after his decision was made, he wrote to Jefferson a letter of
speculation as to the reasons that prevented the Emperor from taking the
action assumed to belong to his plans:[277]—
“It is, as you remark, difficult to understand the meaning of Bonaparte toward us.
There is little doubt that his want of money and his ignorance of commerce have had a
material influence. He has also distrusted the stability and efficacy of our pledge to
renew the non-intercourse against Great Britain, and has wished to execute his in a
manner that would keep pace only with the execution of ours, and at the same time
leave no interval for the operation of the British Orders without a counter-operation in
either his or our measures. In all this his folly is obvious.”

Such language was not only inconsistent with the doctrine that the
French Decrees stood repealed in such a manner as no longer to violate
American commerce, but it also showed that Madison deceived himself as
to Napoleon’s character and his policy. Of all theories on which to found
political action, the least reasonable was that of assuming Napoleon to be

foolish; yet his “obvious folly” was Madison’s explanation of an ingenious
and successful device to enforce the Continental system.
Having adopted a policy, Madison could not but carry it to its practical
results. Robert Smith came to him February 20 with the draft of a note
addressed to Serurier, asking for information as to the withdrawal of the
decrees,—a course similar to that adopted with Jackson. “I was, to my
astonishment, told by him that it would not be expedient to send to Mr.
Serurier any such note. His deportment during this interview evinced a high
degree of disquietude, which occasionally betrayed him into fretful
expressions.”[278]
Smith did not understand the uselessness of asking Serurier for
information he could not give, after deciding to act on such information as
though it had been given. Although every one knew privately that Serurier
would say nothing on the subject, the President could not afford to give the
silence official emphasis; and he probably regarded Smith’s attempt to do
so as a part of his general effort to discredit the whole system of
commercial restrictions. The proposed letter to Serurier could be of no use
except to embarrass Congress in legislating against England. Already the
first steps for this purpose had been arranged, and the next day, February
21, Eppes moved in the House to amend his bill by substituting two new
sections, which revived the non-intercourse of March, 1809, against
England in respect to all vessels which left a British port after Feb. 2, 1811,
and forbade the courts to entertain the question whether the French edicts
were or were not revoked.
Nothing short of a revolution in the form of government could force
such a bill through Congress at so late an hour; but the Republican party
having decided on the measure, did not shrink from employing the means.
February 23 the House went into committee and took up Eppes’s new
bill. That it was unsatisfactory could not be denied. Robert Wright of
Maryland—a new member, of the war party—moved to amend by requiring
from England an arrangement about impressments as an additional
condition of restoring intercourse, and had the Government intended to
make war its ultimate object it would have adopted Wright’s motion; but the
House had no such object. Impressment was not one of the grievances
which of late had been urged against England; indeed, the subject had

somewhat fallen out of sight, and so little did the House care to insist upon
it, that only twenty-one votes supported Wright’s motion. On the other
hand, the conduct of France was hotly discussed, but only by Federalists.
The Republicans sat silent.
After one day’s debate the bill was reported, and February 26 the true
struggle began. The House sat eighteen hours, while the minority consumed
time by long speeches and dilatory motions. During the last four hours no
quorum was present, and the Speaker decided that in the absence of a
quorum no compulsory process could be issued. When the House
reassembled at half-past ten on the morning of February 27, long speeches
were resumed. The evening session began at six o’clock, when on both
sides patience was exhausted. Randolph made two successive motions to
postpone. Eppes declared that Randolph’s motive was to delay and defeat
the bill; Randolph retorted by the lie direct, and for a time the House fell
into confusion, while Eppes wrote a challenge on the spot, and sent it by
Richard M. Johnson to Randolph, who left the House to instruct his second.
Until half-past two o’clock in the morning of February 28 time was
consumed in these tactics,—about eighty members being present, and the
majority keeping silence. At that hour Barent Gardenier was on the floor
making another diffuse harangue, when Thomas Gholson of Virginia called
for the previous question on the last motion before the House. According to
the rules, Speaker Varnum stated the motion: “Shall the main question be
now put?” It was decided in the affirmative. Gardenier immediately
attempted to speak on the main question, when Gholson called him to order.
Then followed the coup d’état.
“The Speaker decided that according to the late practice of the House it was in
order to debate the main question after the previous question had been taken. He said
that this practice had been established by the House by a decision two years ago, in
opposition to an opinion which he himself had always entertained and had then
declared. His decision on that occasion was reversed, and he felt himself bound by
that expression of the House.”

Gholson appealed. The Speaker decided that the appeal was debatable,
but his decision was reversed by a vote of sixty-six to thirteen. The House
then, without a division, reversed his first ruling, and ordered that
thenceforth, after the motion for the previous question should have been
decided in the affirmative, the main question should not be debated.

By this means and by persistent silence the majority put an end to
debate. When Randolph returned to the hall and heard what had been done,
he burst into reproaches that the House had disgraced itself; but his outcry,
which like his language to Eppes was attributed to drink, received no
answer except cries to order. Further resistance was not carried to extremes;
perhaps the dilatory tactics of later times were hardly applicable to so small
a body as the House of 1811, or needed time for development; at all events
the bill was forced to its passage, and at about five o’clock on the morning
of February 28 the House passed it by a vote of sixty-four to twelve. March
2 it passed the Senate, and was approved by the President. Of all the
Republicans, Macon alone in the House and Bradley of Vermont in the
Senate voted against it. Matthew Lyon, who also opposed it, left the House
in disgust without voting.
The rule of the previous question thus adopted has been the subject of
much criticism, and doubtless tended among other causes to affect the
character of the House until in some respects it became rather a court of
registration than a deliberative body. With few exceptions in history, this
result has proved inevitable in large assemblies whose cumbrous
inefficiency has obstructed public needs or interests; and perhaps the House
of Representatives in 1811 was not to blame for seeking to correct vices
inherent in its character. Such great and permanent changes implied a
sufficient cause behind them, even though they led to worse evils. The
previous question was a rude expedient for removing wanton obstruction,
and might have been the source of benefit rather than of injury to the public
service had the House succeeded in giving its new character systematic
improvement; but in American history the previous question became an
interesting study, because it marked deterioration. Of all the defences
provided by the Constitution for special or feeble interests, the right of
debate was supposed to be the most valuable; and nowhere was this right so
necessary as in Congress. Not even in the courts of justice was deliberation
more essential than in the House of Representatives. The Republicans came
into office in 1801 to protect special and feeble interests, and had no other
reason for existence than as the enemies of centralized power; yet
circumstances drove them to impose silence on the voice of a minority that
wanted only to prevent an improper act, and they did so by methods
substantially the same as those used by Cromwell or Napoleon. In neither
case was the minority consulted or its protest regarded. The difference was

rather in the character of the actors. The great usurpers of history had in one
sense a sufficient motive, for they needed the power they seized, and meant
to use it. The Republican majority in the Eleventh Congress neither needed
power nor meant to use it. Their object was not to strengthen government,
or to prepare for war, or even to suppress popular liberties for their own
pleasure, but merely to carry out an Executive scheme which required no
haste, and was to be followed by no strong measures. As far as human
intelligence could be called blind, the intelligence which guided the House
was the blind instinct of power.
The same instinct was shown in the behavior of Congress toward other
matters of legislation. Under Executive pressure, the Acts authorizing or
approving the seizure of East and West Florida, the admission of Louisiana
as a State, and the revival of non-intercourse against England were passed;
and this series of measures seemed to a large minority a domestic revolution
preliminary to foreign war. Naturally the Federalists and independent
Republicans looked for the measures to be taken in order to meet or to
escape the dangers thus invited. The Federalists had no small share of
English respect for whatever was fixed, and they needed only to be satisfied
that the Union was strong in order to yield whatever obedience it required;
but they wondered how Madison with his weak Cabinet and Eppes with his
still less intelligent majority meant to create and handle the weapons that
were to drive Old England from the ocean and to hold New England on the
land. They could not believe that a government would fling itself headlong
out of the window in order to oblige the people to save it from breaking its
neck.
So far from grasping at weapons, Congress and the Executive seemed
bent only on throwing away the weapons they held. The Bank perished
almost with the same breath that revived the non-intercourse against
England. By abolishing the Bank, Congress threw away a large sum of
money which Gallatin hoped to employ for his current demand and for
possible war. By forbidding the importation of English merchandise,
Congress further struck off one half the annual revenue. Gallatin foresaw
the danger to the Treasury long before it was realized, and January 28 wrote
a letter to Eppes advising a general increase of duties on such importations
as might be permitted by law. February 6 Eppes reported from the Ways and
Means Committee a bill to this effect; but the House failed to act upon it.

Congress would consent to no new taxation; and as the Treasury could not
be allowed to fail in its engagements, the House authorized a loan of five
million dollars.
Such financial expedients looked toward any result except a policy of
vigor, and the rest of the winter’s legislation bore out the belief that no
vigor was in the mind of Government. The Tenth Congress had increased
the military establishment, until in 1808 the appropriations exceeded
$4,700,000. The Eleventh Congress reduced them in 1809–1810 to about
$3,100,000; in 1811 Congress appropriated barely $3,000,000. The naval
appropriations in 1809 reached nearly $3,000,000; in 1810 they were
reduced to about $1,600,000; in 1811 Congress appropriated $1,870,000.
Even in a time of profound peace, when no thought of war disturbed the
world, such armaments would have been hardly sufficient for purposes of
police on the coasts and in the territories.
A short debate took place at the last moment of the session, on a bill
authorizing the President to accept a corps of fifty thousand volunteers. The
measure had been reported by Crawford of Georgia in the Senate, from a
committee appointed to consider the occupation of West Florida. March 1
the Senate passed the bill without a division, for it implied neither a new
principle nor any necessary expense; while the President, without such
authority, would find himself helpless to deal with any trouble that might
arise from the affairs of Florida. When the bill reached the House, John
Dawson of Virginia urged its adoption; “it was incumbent on them,” he
said, “to do something to provide for defence.” Matthew Lyon said he had
frequently voted for such bills when there was no prospect of war; “and
now, when we were going to war [with Spain], and giving the provocation
ourselves, he was of opinion it ought to be passed.” The House, without a
division, indefinitely postponed the bill; and thus refusing to do more
business of any kind, toward midnight of Sunday, March 3, the Eleventh
Congress expired, leaving behind it, in the minds of many serious citizens,
the repute of having brought Government to the last stage of imbecility
before dissolution.

CHAPTER XVII.
The government of the United States reached, March 4, 1811, the lowest
point of its long decline. President Madison had remained so passive before
domestic faction, while so active in foreign affairs, that the functions of
government promised to end in confusion. Besides the greater failures of
the last session, more than one personal slight had been inflicted on the
President. He obtained the confirmation of Joel Barlow as Armstrong’s
successor at Paris, by a vote of twenty-one to eleven in the Senate; but
when he nominated Alexander Wolcott of Connecticut to succeed Justice
Cushing on the Supreme Bench, he met a sharp rebuff. The selection was
far from brilliant, but New England offered no great choice among
Republicans suited to the bench. Sullivan was dead; Levi Lincoln declined
the office; Barnabas Bidwell, detected in a petty defalcation, had absconded
to Canada; Joseph Story, still a young man, only thirty-one years of age,
was obnoxious to many Republicans on account of his hostility to the
embargo, and particularly to Jefferson, who took personal interest in this
appointment.[279] The President could think of no one who brought stronger
recommendations than Wolcott, and accordingly sent his name to the
Senate. A few days afterward John Randolph wrote to his friend Nicholson,
[280]
—
“The Senate have rejected the nomination of Alexander Wolcott to the bench of
the Supreme Court, twenty-four to nine. The President is said to have felt great
mortification at this result. The truth seems to be that he is President de jure only.
Who exercises the office de facto I know not, but it seems agreed on all hands that
‘there is something behind the throne greater than the throne itself.’”

February 21 the President nominated J. Q. Adams, then absent as
minister at St. Petersburg, to the same place, and the Senate unanimously
confirmed the appointment. The rejection of Wolcott had no meaning
further than showing the opinion held by the Republican party of their
President’s judgment.
“Our Cabinet presents a novel spectacle in the world;” continued Randolph.
“Divided against itself, and the most deadly animosity raging between its principal
members,—what can come of it but confusion, mischief, and ruin? Macon is quite out
of heart.”

Gallatin was also out of heart. The conduct of Duane and his “Aurora”
put additional venom into the wounds made by the session. Commonly
some foundation of truth or probability lay beneath political attacks; some
show of evidence or some responsible voucher was alleged if not produced,
and the charges against public men, to be accepted, were shaped to suit the
known character and habits of the victims; but this was not the case with
Duane’s assertions of Gallatin’s wealth, speculations, embezzlements, and
secret intrigues. Duane assumed the truth of his own inventions, and
although few persons might be so credulous as to believe him, many were
so far influenced as to draw aside and leave Gallatin and the Smiths to fight
out their battles as they liked. This withdrawal of active support chiefly
weakened the Administration. President Madison had no hold over his
friends so long as he refused to declare whom he regarded as friends. He
lost not only the Smiths, but also Gallatin, by standing aloof.
“Things as they are cannot go on much longer,” wrote Randolph, February 17.
“The Adminstration are now in fact aground at the pitch of high tide, and a spring tide
too. Nothing then remains but to lighten the ship, which a dead calm has hitherto kept
from going to pieces. If the cabal succeed in their present projects, and I see nothing
but promptitude and decision that can prevent it, the nation is undone.”

This judgment was so far true that none but persons hostile to all central
government could look toward the future without alarm; for if the system
continued in the future to lose energy as in the ten years past, the time was
not far distant when the country must revert to the old Confederation, or to
ties equally weak. Such a result was the outcome of Randolph’s principles,
and he should have welcomed it; but Randolph was a creature of emotions;
with feminine faults he had feminine instincts and insight, which made him
often shrink from results of his own acts. At this crisis he showed more
political judgment than could be expected from wiser men. Though a
Republican of the narrowest Virginia creed, he would take part with none of
the factions that racked the government. He opposed vehemently not only
the legislative assertion that the French Decrees were withdrawn, but also
the legislative violence that overthrew the constitution of the House by
means of the previous question. If Randolph was wrong on either of these
points, he was at least wrong in company with history itself. He favored his
old policy of peace, economy, and a decentralized government, and lost his
temper with his colleague Eppes, to the verge of a duel; but for this course
he was little to be blamed, since the policy was that of his party, and the
contest was not of his making. He gave to Gallatin all the support he had to

give. Though more deeply committed than any regular party man to the
Constitutional doctrines of narrow construction, he voted with the friends of
the Bank. “Randolph’s opinion on the bill to renew the charter of the United
States Bank is, I believe, unknown to every person except himself,” wrote
Macon, February 20,[281]—although Macon, himself opposed to the Bank,
was Randolph’s intimate friend. Disgusted with the factiousness of others,
Randolph became almost statesmanlike, and for a brief moment showed
how valuable he might have been had his balance equalled his intelligence.
Randolph had long since ceased to hold direct relations with Gallatin,
but neither then nor ever afterward did he doubt that Gallatin was the only
capable character in the Government, and that he must be supported. “The
cabal,” whose influence excited disgust in his mind as it did in that of
Macon, ought to be put down, and Randolph said plainly to Gallatin’s
friends that the President must be compelled to do it.[282] This dreaded cabal
drew life only from the President himself; in any other sense it was a
creature of the imagination. So little did Randolph and Macon know about
it that they called its members “the invisibles,” and puzzled themselves to
account for the influence it appeared to exert. In truth, the cabal had no
strength that warranted the alarm it roused. Samuel Smith’s abilities have
shown themselves in the story. Few men of the time stand more definitely
imaged than he in speeches, letters, intrigues, and ambitions, for the
exactest measurement; but measured in whatever way he pleased, he was
rather mischievous than alarming. His brother Robert, whom he had made
Secretary of State, was a mere instrument. Giles possessed more ability, but
could never become the leader of a party, or win the confidence of the
public. Vice-President Clinton and his friends were an independent faction,
ready to coalesce with the Smiths and Giles for any personal objects; but
they had little more capacity than the Marylanders. Michael Leib and
Duane of the “Aurora” were more useful as intriguers, because they had
less to lose; but they were also more dangerous to their friends. Seven or
eight Federalist senators also could be depended upon as allies for all
ordinary purposes of faction. Yet in such a combination no solidarity
existed; no common head, no plan, no object held its members together. The
persons engaged in this petty and vexatious war on the Administration
could not invent a scheme of common action, or provide a capable leader,
or act in unison on any two measures. As Randolph justly said:[283]

“I am satisfied that Mr. Gallatin, by a timely resistance to their schemes, might
have defeated them and rendered the whole cabal as impotent as Nature would seem
to have intended them to be; for in point of ability (capacity for intrigue excepted),
they are utterly contemptible and insignificant.”

Randolph had ruined himself by impetuosity; his only idea of resistance
implied violence. Gallatin never used the knife except when every other
means had been tried; but when he did so, his act was proof that no other
outlet could be opened by the clearest head and the most patient temper of
his time. For two years he had waited, while the problem he placed before
Madison and Jefferson in 1809 became more perplexed and less soluble
with every month; but when the Eleventh Congress expired, he reached the
same conclusion with Randolph, that promptitude and decision could alone
save Madison. Acting on this belief, he wrote a letter of resignation.[284]
“It appears to me,” he told the President, “that not only capacity and talents in the
Administration, but also a perfect heartfelt cordiality among its members, are
essentially necessary to command the public confidence, and to produce the requisite
union of views and action between the several branches of government. In at least one
of these points your present Administration is defective; and the effects, already
sensibly felt, become every day more extensive and fatal. New subdivisions and
personal factions, equally hostile to yourself and the general welfare, daily acquire
additional strength. Measures of vital importance have been and are defeated; every
operation, even of the most simple and ordinary nature, is prevented or impeded; the
embarrassments of government, great as from foreign causes they already are, are
unnecessarily increased; public confidence in the public councils and in the Executive
is impaired,—and every day seems to increase every one of these evils. Such a state
of things cannot last; a radical and speedy remedy has become absolutely necessary.”

Gallatin’s resignation obliged the President to act. How long he might
still have waited had Gallatin taken no step, only those can say who best
understand the peculiarities of his temper; but in any case he could hardly
have much longer postponed a crisis. Not only were his ablest supporters,
like Crawford, as impatient as Randolph of the situation, but his own
personal grievances were becoming intolerable. He could acquiesce with
patience while Gallatin and the Treasury were sacrificed; but he could not
bear to be crossed in his foreign policy, or to be opposed on his sensitive
point,—the system of commercial restrictions. Gallatin probably liked the
non-intercourse as little as it was liked by the Smiths; but he did not, as a
Cabinet minister, intrigue against the President’s policy, while Robert and
Samuel Smith did little else.
When Gallatin, probably March 5, sent, or brought, his resignation to
the White House, Madison declined to accept it, and at once authorized

Gallatin to sound James Monroe on the offer of the State Department.
Gallatin sent for Richard Brent, Giles’s colleague in the Senate, who wrote
to Monroe March 7. Brent’s letter, followed by others, opened another act in
the political drama, for it made Monroe Secretary of State and President of
the United States, and prolonged the Virginia dynasty for eight years; but in
order to reach this result, Monroe himself had to thread more than one dark
and dangerous passage, which would have wrecked the fortunes of any man
not born to carry a charmed political life.
Monroe’s return to the paths of promotion had been steady and even
rapid. In 1808 he was the rival candidate for the Presidency, on the ground
that he leaned toward reconciliation with England, while Madison leaned
toward France. Without wholly abandoning this attitude, Monroe was
invited to become the Republican governor of Virginia; and when attacked
for his want of sympathy with Madison, he made explanations, both public
and private, which so much irritated his old friend John Randolph as to
draw from him a letter, Jan. 14, 1811,[285] telling Monroe of reports
industriously circulated, “that in order to promote your election to the chief
magistracy of this Commonwealth, you have descended to unbecoming
compliances with the members of the Assembly, not excepting your
bitterest personal enemies; that you have volunteered explanations to them
of the differences heretofore subsisting between yourself and the
Administration which amount to a dereliction of the ground which you took
after your return from England, and even of your warmest personal
friends.” The charge was never answered to Randolph’s satisfaction.[286]
Monroe could not publicly avow that he had made a succession of mistakes,
partly under Randolph’s influence, which he wished to correct and forget;
but on this tacit understanding he was elected governor of Virginia, and for
the rest of his life became to John Randolph an object of little esteem
considering the confidence and admiration he had so long inspired.
More than most men, Randolph could claim the merits of his own
defects. If he was morbidly proud and sensitive, he was at least quick to
understand when he had lost a friend. Of him Monroe rid himself without
trouble; but Monroe labored under the misfortune that his other oldest and
best friends were of the same political stamp. Chief among these, the
Mentor of Virginia politics, was John Taylor of Caroline,—a man whose
high character, consistent opinions, and considerable abilities made him a

valuable ally. Another was Littleton Walker Tazewell. To them, after the
rupture with Randolph, Monroe wrote, excusing his course in becoming the
Republican candidate for governor, and reasserting in sufficiently strong
terms his want of confidence in President Madison:[287]—
“I fear, if the system of policy which has been so long persevered in, after so
many proofs of its dangerous tendency, is still adhered to, that a crisis will arise the
dangers of which will require all the virtue, firmness, and talents of our country to
avert. And that it will be persevered in seems too probable while the present men
remain in power.... And if the blame of improvident and injudicious measures is ever
to attach to them among the people, it must be by leaving to the authors of those
measures the entire responsibility belonging to them.”

Within six weeks after this letter had been written, Monroe was asked to
join the men in power, and to share the blame of those “improvident and
injudicious measures,” the responsibility for which ought, as he conceived,
to be left entirely to their authors. He wrote at once to Colonel Taylor for
advice; and the reply threw much light on the personal and public motives
supposed to guide the new Secretary of State. Colonel Taylor advised
Monroe to accept the President’s invitation, for several reasons.[288]
Assuming that Monroe was to succeed Madison as the next Republican
candidate for the Presidency, he took for granted that Monroe was to follow
the lines of his old opinions, and to correct Madison’s leanings toward
France.
“Our foreign relations,” continued Taylor, “seem to be drawing to a crisis, and you
ought to be in the public eye when it happens, for your own sake, independently of the
services you can render your country. It is probable that this crisis will occur on a full
discovery that France will not do our commerce any substantial good without an
equivalent which would amount to its destruction. So soon as this discovery is made,
the Government, in all its departments, will alter its policy, and your occupancy of a
conspicuous station will shed upon you the glory of its having come round to your
opinion.”

Colonel Taylor gave no thought to the opposite possibility that Monroe
might come round to the opinion of the Government; yet his argument
seemed to place Monroe in a position where, if he could not convert
Madison, he would have no choice but to let Madison convert him.
“This offer to you is an indication of a disposition in Mr. Madison to relieve
himself of the burden [of certain persons and measures]; and if you suffer yourself to
lose the benefit of this disposition, another will gain it to your inestimable injury.
Suppose this other should be a competitor for the Presidency, will it not be a decisive
advantage over you? General Armstrong is probably taking measures for this object....
One consideration of great weight is that the public think you an honest man. If this

opinion is true, the acceptance seems to be a duty toward relieving it from the
suspicion that there are too many avaricious or ambitious intriguers of apparent
influence in the government. I suppose the President and Gallatin (whom I know) to
be wholly guided by what they think to be the public good; and should you happen to
concur with them, it will abate much of the jealousy (though I hope it will never be
smothered) with which Executive designs are viewed; and to moderate it, under the
perilous situation of the country, is in my view desirable.”

The country reached a perilous pass when John Taylor of Caroline made
plans to strengthen the Executive; but he could not have calculated on
Monroe’s readiness to follow this course so far as it ended in leading him.
Taylor’s advice threw Monroe into the full current of Executive influence.
Alliance with Madison and Gallatin, rupture with France, antagonism to the
Smiths and Clintons, jealousy of Armstrong, and defiance of Duane were
sound policy, and united honesty with self-interest; but their success
depended on elements that Taylor could not measure.
That Monroe shared these views, that they were in fact the common
stock of his personal party, might be seen not only in his previous letters,
but even more in his reply to Senator Brent,[289] written March 18.
“You intimate,” said Monroe to Brent, “that the situation of the country is such as
to leave me no alternative. I am aware that our public affairs are far from being in a
tranquil and secure state. I may add that there is much reason to fear that a crisis is
approaching of a very dangerous tendency,—one which menaces the overthrow of the
whole Republican party. Is the Administration impressed with this sentiment, and
prepared to act on it? Are things in such a state as to allow the Administration to take
the whole subject into consideration, and to provide for the safety of the country and
of free government by such measures as circumstances may require, and a
comprehensive view of them suggest? Or are we pledged by what is already done to
remain spectators of the interior movement, in the expectation of some change abroad
as the ground on which we are to act? I have no doubt, from my knowledge of the
President and Mr. Gallatin,—with the former of whom I have been long and
intimately connected in friendship, and for both of whom, in great and leading points
of character, I have the highest consideration and respect,—that if I came into the
Government the utmost cordiality would subsist between us, and that any opinions
which I might entertain and express respecting our public affairs would receive, so far
as circumstances would permit, all the attention to which they might be entitled; but if
our course is fixed, and the destiny of our country dependent on arrangements already
made, I do not perceive how it would be possible for me to render any service at this
time in the general government.”

If the President’s proclamation of Nov. 2, 1810, and the Act of Congress
passed March 2, 1811, three weeks before Monroe wrote this letter, had not
fixed the course and destiny of the country, instructions to Pinkney and
Jonathan Russell—on which those two agents had already acted, and which