2 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. [1812. We now propose, as intimated in our previous volume, to review the progress of this unhappy war with the United States.* To render this narrative more intelligible, we shall take a brief view of the position of the Union at the period of the rupture with Great Britain, in June, 1812. The Federal government as then constituted, and as still subsisting, entered upon its functions in 1789. On the 21st of February, 1787, Congress had declared that it was unable to conduct the government under the articles of the first confederation of 1777. Each of the thirteen States had then its separate legislature, each being, in fact, an independent republic assuming an absolute sovereignty. There was no sufficient central authority to act for the whole of the States as composing one nation. An assembly of fifty-five members, with Washington as its president, framed the second constitution, by which the authority is divided between the Federal government and the States. The object aimed at was, that each State should continue to govern itself in whatever concerned its internal affairs, but that the Union should represent one compact body, providing for the general exigencies of the people. The Constitution did not attempt to prescribe the government of the separate States, each of which had its own constitution. The nature and duties of the Federal government were defined with an exactness which shows how comprehensive was the prevision of the able men who drew up the articles which during a very long period maintained so many conflicting interests in tolerable harmony. The Federal government was endowed with legislative, executive, and judicial powers. All legislative authority was vested in a Congress of the United States, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Senate was composed of two members from each State, whether large or small. The House of Representatives was composed of a varying number from each State, according to the amount of population. With the Congress abided the power of raising an army and navy, of declaring war, of making peace, of levying taxes for the common defence and welfare of the United States. The executive power was vested in an elective President of the United States, who, in some particulars, was to act under the advice and with the consent of the Senate. The judicial power of the Federal government was vested in one supreme court, in district courts, and in circuit courts. The sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured amongst the original settlers, became the guiding principle of the revolution which established the independence of America. The most conspicuous leaders of that revolution were men of old family and of competent fortunes; but the democratic element, progressively increasing in power, gradually weakened and finally destroyed the influence derived from property and from ancient associations. The English laws of entail enabled estates, especially in Virginia, to be transmitted from generation to generation. Estates tail were abolished in Virginia in 1776: in other States the English entail laws were wholly suppressed; and in others were greatly modified. The desire for free circulation of property, in accordance with the general principles of equality which pervaded the American government, caused the rejection of the English laws respecting descent. "If a man dies intestate, his property goes Ante, vol. vii. p. 545. 1812.] STATES COMPOSING THE FEDERAL UNION. 3 to his heirs in a direct line. If he has but one heir or heiress, he or she succeeds to the whole. If there are several heirs of the same degree, they divide the inheritance equally amongst them, without distinction of sex.” * In 1790 the Federal Union comprised the New England States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut; the Middle States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland; the Southern States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Vermont had been added to the original Federation of thirteen Statesindicated by the stripes of the American flag. These States, with about 100,000 settlers in Tennessee and Kentucky, had, in 1790, according to the census, a population of about 4 millions; in 1800 the population was nearly 5 millions; in 1810 it was nearly 7 millions. The rate of increase in twenty years was very large in the States composing the Union in 1790; but a million of people had been added in 1810 by the families that had penetrated into the wilds of the West and South-West. Communities rose up, in regions almost unknown to the founders of the American republic, to claim their place in the Union as independent States, having a sufficient amount of population to entitle them to that distinction. Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792; Tennessee in 1796; Ohio in 1803. Louisiana, which had been purchased from France in 1803, became a member of the Federation in 1812. These States added largely to the democratic element in the government. In 1790 there were nearly 700,000 slaves in the Union; in 1800 they approached 900,000; in 1810 they amounted to nearly 1,200,000. Of the old States, the four Southern, with Maryland, contained, almost exclusively, the Slave Population. The coloured race were soon abundantly found amongst the swarms of the new Western States, particularly in Kentucky and Tennessee. In the ratio of Representatives to Population, three-fifths of the slaves were added to the whole number of free persons in each State. The slaves, uncared for by legislation, augmented the legislative power of the slave-owners. Universal Suffrage had one exception-" Blacks excluded." Such was the community that, in 1812, declared war against Great Britain. John Adams, the second President of the United States, was elected upon the retirement of Washington after his eight years' service, at the end of 1796. According to the American constitution, the President might be once re-elected on the expiration of his first term of four years. Adams was not so re-elected, although he had filled the office of Vice-President for eight years under Washington. Each of these eminent men was opposed to the extreme Democratic party, of which Jefferson was the most distinguished representative. The contest between the Federalists and the Democrats was the most violent that the Union had beheld; and it ended by the election of Jefferson as President by a majority of one vote of the electoral body. Jefferson himself described this event of 1801 as a pacific revolution, as real as that of 1776—a revolution not in the form of the powers, but in the principles, of the government, which had compelled the vessel of the Kent's "Commentaries," quoted in De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America,” vol. i. p. 283. 4 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY-WAR DECLARED. [1812. state to float out of the monarchical current in which a faction, as if possessed-a faction composed of Anglicised Royalists and Aristocrats-had detained it during the sleep of the people. The revolution of 1801, he held, had carried the vessel of the state into its natural course-the Republican and Democratic course.* During the Presidency of Washington it was with great difficulty that he could prevent the sympathies of the people with Republican France from plunging America into a war with England. There had been a French and an English party since the Union of the States in 1789. It is pointed out as remarkable, that most of the veterans who bore arms against England during the Revolution had become of the English party. This party included the majority of the wealthy and the educated. But the universality of suffrage more and more compelled every candidate for power to become the partizan of France. When the Democratic party became supreme under Jefferson from 1801 to 1809, and afterwards under James Madison, although it might have been conceived that the despotism of the Consulate and the Empire would have revolted the genuine friends of liberty, the commercial derangements arising out of Bonaparte's Milan and Berlin decrees were tenderly dealt with, whilst the results of the counter measures of the British Orders in Council created in the majority an exclusive bitterness of feeling against this country. The injuries inflicted upon American commerce by the decrees of Napoleon called forth no warlike manifestation of American resentment. The Orders in Council of England, in connection with the assertion of our claim to a right of search for British sailors in American trading vessels, produced a hostile Message to Congress of the American President on the 1st of June, 1812. This was the prologue to the Act of the 18th of June of the Senate and House of Representatives, by which war was declared "to exist between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof and the United States of America and their territories." Five days after the date of this declaration of war, and before the Message of Madison could have been known in England, our government had unconditionally suspended the Orders in Council as regarded. America. A conditional revocation of the Orders had appeared in the "London Gazette" of the 3rd of April. This holding out the hand of fellowship did not produce a corresponding demonstration. The great Democratic party were bent upon war.§ To attempt to arrive at an impartial estimate of facts from the counterpleas of two parties in a civil cause, is a very difficult and unsatisfactory task. To judge between two angry nations by the accusations and recriminations of their manifestoes, would be an attempt still more embarrassing to the historian. The Message of the American President of the 1st of June is such an ex-parte manifesto; the Declaration of the Prince Regent, relative to the causes and origin of the war with America, of the 9th of January, 1813, is a * Cornelis de Wit, "Thomas Jefferson, Étude Historique," Paris, 1861. 1812.] REMONSTRANCE OF THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 5 state paper of a similar character. There is, however, a very remarkable document of American origin, which, although coming from a community whose interests were deeply opposed to the war, may furnish some evidence to test the value of the rival pleas of the two belligerent governments.† On the 14th of June, 1813, the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts addressed a Remonstrance to the Senate and Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled, in which it was contended that, "the promptness with which Great Britain hastened to repeal her Orders, before the declaration of war by the United States was made known to her, and the restoration of an immense amount of property, then within her power, can leave but little doubt that the war, on our part, was premature; and still less, that the perseverance in it, after that repeal was known, was improper, impolitic, and unjust." The Legislature of Massachusetts maintained that the United States had never induced Great Britain to believe that the impressment of her own seamen on board of American ships was a reasonable ground of war. It held that the evil of impressment had been grossly exaggerated; ‡ and that an honest and fair proposal to exclude the subjects of Great Britain from the American service would have produced an honourable and advantageous arrangement of the whole question. The Prince Regent, in his Declaration, avers, that the complete subserviency of the government of the United States to the ruler of France was the real cause of the war; that "from their common origin, from their common interests, and from their professed principles of freedom. and independence, the United States was the last power in which Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument and abettor of French tyranny." The Remonstrance of the Legislature of Massachusetts echoes this charge in words of glowing eloquence: "If war must have been the portion of these United States; if they were destined by Providence to march the downward road to slavery, through foreign conquest and military usurpation; your remonstrants regret that such a moment and such an occasion should have been chosen for the experiment; that while the oppressed nations of Europe are making a magnanimous and glorious effort against the common enemy of free states, we alone, the descendants of the pilgrims, sworn foes to civil and religious slavery, should voluntarily co-operate with the oppressor to bind other nations in his chains." The policy of Jefferson during the eight years of his Presidency, and that of Madison during the first three years of his tenure of office, was not to draw the sword against either of the two great belligerents who interfered with the peaceful course of American commerce by their decrees and counterdecrees. Their weapons were embargoes and tariffs. Gradually the warparty in the States became irresistible. Six months only were wanting to the completion of the term of Madison's Presidency; he would not be reelected if he did not yield to the popular' voice, whose passionate expression, in the Slave States especially, was no evidence against its real strength. In a Hansard, vol. xxiv. p. 363. + "Annual Register," 1813, p. 409 (State Papers). Simond says that one half of the crews of American ships were British seamen, having false protections, and yet not one in a hundred was impressed. He himself owned twenty-four American vessels, and had not ten sailors impressed out of them during the war, although a great number were British-born. ("Tour," vol. i. p. 334.) 6 POPULAR VIOLENCE-EXTRAVAGANT HOPES-TAXES. [1812. The news mixed government the violence of the multitude has a counterpoise in the sagacity and prudence of the more educated classes. In America, when two generals, friends of Washington, who had advocated peace, were conveyed to prison to shelter them from the mob, and when the mob broke open the prison, fractured the skull of one, and killed another on the spot, the lesson was very intelligible to waverers between war and peace. Jefferson himself dreaded going to war, because "the licentious and lying character of our journals, but more than this, the marvellous credulity with which the members of Congress received every current lie," would produce constant embarrassment to the government in the conduct of the war. papers had become a new power in the Federation, "indispensable to the existence of freedom, and nearly incompatible with the maintenance of public order."* Yet their rapid and excessive multiplication had neutralized their influence. In 1775 there were 37 newspapers in the thirteen States; in 1810 there were 358 in the Union. Jefferson, however "quaker" was his general policy, looked upon the probable issue of the war of 1812 with an almost childish confidence. The United States had only to create a marine to free the seas from the ascendancy of Great Britain. Upon American ground they would be irresistible. The invasion of Canada would be only a march. To carry Halifax would be merely an affair of a few months. New York might be burnt by the British fleet, but could not the government of the Union, in its turn, cause London to be burnt by English mercenaries, easily recruited from a starving corrupt population? No truce, no intermission, before Canada was obtained as an indemnity for a thousand ships seized by British cruisers, and for six thousand seamen carried off by impressment. No sheathing the sword before full security for the future was obtained for every man sailing under the American flag. All this accomplished, peace with Great Britain, and war with France. Such were the dreams of the man who drew the first Declaration of Independence, and who believed that nothing was beyond the power of a democratic government.† The warlike impulses of this democracy were sensibly mitigated by the sudden pressure of taxation for the general purposes of the Federal government, in addition to the local taxation of each State. In the four years ended 1811, the expenditure upon the Military and Naval Establishments was about 24 millions of dollars. In the four years ended 1815, they had reached 102 millions of dollars. The Public Debt had been more than doubled between 1813 and 1816, as compared with the four previous years. The injurious effects to the commerce of both countries which resulted from the British Orders in Council, the American Embargo Acts, and the war, are manifest in the returns of exports of British produce to the United States, and of the total exports from American ports to all countries. In 1807 the United States imported nearly twenty-nine millions of pounds' worth of foreign merchandise, and exported twenty-two millions and a half of home and foreign produce. In 1811 the imports and the exports were less by one half. In 1814 the total imports from all parts of the world * De Tocqueville, vol. ii. p. 20. These opinions are supported by a reference to five letters of Jefferson, of January, June, and August, 1812, to be found in "Works of Jefferson," vol. vi. See De Wit, "Thomas Jefferson," p. 356. |