Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1

So much of the President's message as related to the navy—three lines, wholly non-committal—was referred to a special committee. The report[355] was made by Langdon Cheves of South Carolina, whose clear and cogent exposition of the capabilities of the country and the possibility of providing a force efficient against Great Britain, under her existing embarrassments, was supported powerfully and perspicuously by William Lowndes of the same state. The text for their remarks was supplied by a sentence in the committee's report: "The important engine of national strength and national security, which is formed by a naval force, has hitherto been treated with a neglect highly impolitic, or supported by a spirit so languid, as, while it has preserved the existence of the establishment, has had the effect of loading it with the imputations of wasteful expense, and comparative inefficiency.... Such a course is impolitic under any circumstances." This was the condemnation of the party's past. Clay found his delight in dealing with some of the oratory, which on the present occasion still sustained—and for the moment successfully sustained—the prepossessions of Jefferson. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, were republics with free institutions and great navies; Carthage, Rome, Venice, and Genoa had lost their liberties, and their national existence. Clearly navies, besides being very costly, were fatal to constitutional freedom. Not in reply to such non sequitur, but quickened by an insight which was to receive earlier vindication than he could have anticipated, Quincy prophesied that, amid the diverse and contrary interests of the several states, which the lack of a common object of affection left still imperfectly unified in sentiment, a glorious navy, identified with the whole country because of its external action, yet local to no part, would supply a common centre for the enthusiasm not yet inspired by the central government, too closely associated for years back with a particular school of extreme political thought, narrowly territorial and clannish in its origin and manifestation. Within a twelvemonth, the "Constitution," most happily apt of all names ever given to a ship, became the embodiment of this verified prediction.

The report of the committee was modest in its scope. "To the defence of your ports and harbors, and the protection of your coasting trade, should be confined the present objects and operations of any navy which the United States can, or ought, to have." To this office it was estimated that twelve ships of the line and twenty frigates would suffice. Cheves and Lowndes were satisfied that such a fleet was within the resources of the country; and to insure the fifteen thousand seamen necessary to man it, they would be willing to limit the number of privateers,—a most wholesome and necessary provision. By a careful historical examination of Great Britain's past and present exigencies, it was shown that such a force would most probably keep clear the approaches to all American ports, the most critical zone for shipping, whether inward or outward bound; because, to counteract it, the enemy would have to employ numbers so largely superior that they could not be spared from her European conflict. The argument was sound; but unhappily Cheves, Lowndes, Clay, and Quincy did not represent the spirit of the men who for ten years had ruled the country and evolved the gunboat system. These, in their day of power, not yet fully past, had neither maintained the fleet nor accumulated material, and there was no seasoned timber to build with. The Administration which expired in 1801 had left timber for six 74-gun ships, of which now remained only enough for four. The rest had been wasted in gunboats, or otherwise. The committee therefore limited its recommendations to building the frigates, for which it was believed materials could be procured.

Even in this reduced form it proved impossible to overcome the opposition to a navy as economically expensive and politically dangerous. The question was amply debated; but as, on the one hand, little doubt was felt about the rapid conquest of Canada by militia and volunteers, so, on the other, the same disposition to trust to extemporized irregular forces encouraged reliance simply upon privateering. Private enterprise in such a cause undoubtedly has from time to time attained marked results; but in general effect the method is a wasteful expenditure of national resources, and, historically, saps the strength of the regular navy. In the manning of inefficient privateers—and the majority were inefficient and ineffective—were thrown away resources of seamen which, in an adequate naval force, organized and directed as it would have been by the admirable officers of that period, could have accomplished vastly more in the annoyance of British trade,—the one offensive naval undertaking left open to the nation. Even with the assistance of the Federalists the provision for the frigates could not be carried, though the majority was narrow—62 to 59. The same fate befell the proposition to provide a dockyard. All that could be had was an appropriation of six hundred thousand dollars, distributed over three successive years, for buying timber. These votes were taken January 27, 1812, in full expectation of war, and only five months before it was declared.

Early in April, Congress, in secret session, passed an Act of Embargo for ninety days, which became law on the fourth by the President's signature. The motive was twofold: to retain at home the ships and seamen of the nation, in anticipation of war, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy; and also to prevent the carriage of supplies indispensably necessary to the British armies in Spain. Both objects were defeated by the action of Quincy, in conjunction with Senator Lloyd of Massachusetts and Representative Emott of New York. Learning that the President intended to recommend the embargo, these gentlemen, as stated by Quincy on the floor of the House, despatched at once to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, expresses which left Washington March 31, the day before Madison's letter was dated. Four or five days' respite was thus secured, and the whole mercantile community set zealously to work to counteract the effects of the measure. "Niles' Register," published in Baltimore, said: "Drays were working night and day, from Tuesday night, March 31, and continued their toil till Sunday morning, incessantly. In this hurly-burly to palsy the arm of the Government all parties united. On Sunday perhaps not twenty seamen, able to do duty, could be found in all Baltimore." A New York paper is quoted as saying, "The property could not have been moved off with greater expedition had the city been enveloped in flames." From that port forty-eight vessels cleared; from Baltimore thirty-one; Philadelphia and Alexandria in like proportions. It was estimated that not less than two hundred thousand barrels of flour, besides grain in other shapes, and provisions of all kinds, to a total value of fifteen million dollars, were rushed out of the country in those five days, when labor-saving appliances were nearly unknown.[356]

Jonathan Russell, who was now chargé d'affaires at London, having been transferred from Paris upon the arrival of Armstrong's successor, Joel Barlow, wrote home, "The great shipments of provisions, which were hurried from America in expectation of the embargo, have given the Peninsula a supply for about two months; and at the expiration of that period the harvest in that region will furnish a stock for about three months more.... The avidity discovered by our countrymen to escape from the embargo, and the disregard of its policy, have encouraged this Government to hope that supplies will still continue to be received from the United States. The ship 'Lady Madison,' which left Liverpool in March, has returned thither with a cargo taken in off Sandy Hook without entering an American port. There are several vessels now about leaving this country with the intention not only of procuring a cargo in the same way, but of getting rid, illicitly, of one they carry out."[357]

It was, indeed, a conspicuous instance of mercantile avidity, wholly disregardful of patriotic considerations, such as is to be found in all times and in all countries; strictly analogous to the constant smuggling between France and Great Britain at this very time. Its significance in the present case, however, is as marking the widespread lack of a national patriotism, as distinct from purely local advantage and personal interests, which unhappily characterized Americans at this period. Of this Great Britain stood ready to avail herself, by extending to the United States the system of licenses, by which, combined with the Orders in Council, she was combating with a large degree of success Napoleon's Continental System. She hoped, and the sequel showed not unreasonably, that even during open hostilities she could in the same manner thwart the United States in its efforts to keep its own produce from her markets. Less than a fortnight after the American Declaration of War was received, Russell, who had not yet left England, wrote to the Secretary of State that the Board of Trade had given notice that licenses would be granted for American vessels to carry provisions from the United States to Cadiz and Lisbon, for the term of eight months; and that a policy had been issued at Lloyds to a New York firm, insuring flour from that port to the peninsula, warranted free from British capture, and from capture or detention by the Government of the United States.[358]

The British armies were thus nourished and dependent, both in Spain and in Canada. The supplying of the latter scarcely fell short of treason, and decisively affected the maintenance of the war in that quarter. It is difficult to demonstrate a moral distinction between what was done there, disregardful of national success, in shameful support of the enemy, and the supplying of the peninsula; but an intuitive sympathy extends to the latter a tolerance which the motives of the individual agents probably do not deserve, and for which calm reason cannot give a perfectly satisfactory account. But it was the misfortune of American policy, as shaped by the Administration, that it was committed to support Napoleon in his iniquitous attack upon the liberties of Spain; that it saw in his success the probable fulfilment of its designs upon the Floridas;[359] and that its chosen ground for proceeding against Great Britain, rather than France, was her refusal to conform her action to a statement of the Emperor's, the illusory and deceptive character of which became continually more apparent.

To declare war because of the Orders in Council was a simple, straightforward, and wholly justifiable course; but the flying months made more and more evident, to the Government and its agents abroad, that it was vain to expect revocation on the ground of Napoleon's recall of his edicts, for they were not recalled. Having entered upon this course, however, it seemed impossible to recede, or to acknowledge a mistake, the pinch of which was nevertheless felt. Writing to Russell, whose service in Paris, from October, 1810, to October, 1811, and transfer thence to London, made him unusually familiar, on both sides of the Channel, with the controversy over Champagny's letter of August 5, 1810, Madison speaks "of the delicacy of our situation, having in view, on the one hand, the importance of obtaining from the French Government confirmation of the repeal of the Decrees, and on the other that of not weakening the ground on which the British repeal was urged."[360] That is, it would be awkward to have the British ministry find out that we were pressing France for a confirmation of that very revocation which we were confidently asserting to them to be indisputable, and to require in good faith the withdrawal of their Orders. Respecting action taken under the so-called repeal, Russell had written on March 15, 1811, over three months after it was said to take effect, "By forbearing to condemn, or to acquit, distinctly and loyally, [the vessels seized since November 1], this Government encourages us to persevere in our non-importation against England, and England to persist in her orders against us. This state of things appears calculated to produce mutual complaint and irritation, and cannot probably be long continued without leading to a more serious contest, ... which is perhaps an essential object of this country's policy."[361] July 15, he expressed regret to the Duke of Bassano, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the proceedings concerning captured American vessels "had been so partial, and confined to cases which from their peculiar circumstances proved nothing conclusively in relation to the revocation of the French Edicts."[362]

Russell might have found some light as to the causes of these delays, could he have seen a note addressed by the Emperor to the Administration of Commerce, April 29. In this, renewing the reasoning of the Bayonne Decree, he argued that every American vessel which touched at an English port was liable to confiscation in the United States; consequently, could be seized by an American cruiser on the open sea; therefore, was equally open to seizure there by a French cruiser—the demand advanced by Canning[363] which gave such just offence; and if by a French cruiser at sea, likewise in a French port by the French Government. She was in fact no longer American, not even a denationalized American, but an English vessel. Under this supposition, Napoleon luminously inferred, "It could be said: The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are recalled as to the United States, but, as every ship which has stopped in England, or is destined thither, is a ship unacknowledged (sans aveu), which American laws punish and confiscate, she may be confiscated in France." The Emperor concluded that should this theory not be capable of substantiation, the matter might for the present be left obscure.[364] On September 13 the ships in question had not been liberated.

Coincidently with his note to Bassano, Russell wrote to Monroe, "It is my conviction that the great object of their policy is to entangle us in a war with England. They therefore abstain from doing any act which would furnish clear and unequivocal testimony of the revocation of their decrees, lest it should induce the extinction of the British Orders, and thereby appease our irritation against their enemy. Hence, of all the captured vessels since November 1, the three which were liberated were precisely those which had not violated the Decrees."[365] Yet, such were the exigencies of the debate with England, those three cases were transmitted by him at the same time to the American chargé in London as evidence of the revocation.[366] To the French Minister he wrote again, August 8, "After the declarations of M. de Champagny and yourself, I cannot permit myself to doubt the revocation; ... but I may be allowed to lament that no fact has yet come to my knowledge of a character unequivocally and incontrovertibly to confirm that revocation." "That none of the captured vessels have been condemned, instead of proving the extinction of the edicts, appears rather to be evidence, at best, of a commutation of the penalty from prompt confiscation to perpetual detention."[367] The matter was further complicated by an announcement of Napoleon to the Chamber of Commerce, in April of the same year, that the Berlin and Milan Decrees were the fundamental law of the Empire concerning neutral commerce, and that American ships would be repelled from French ports, unless the United States conformed to those decrees, by excluding British ships and merchandise.[368] Under such conditions, argument with a sceptical British ministry was attended with difficulties. The position to which the Government had become reduced, by endeavoring to play off France and Great Britain against each other, in order to avoid a war with either, was as perplexing as humiliating. "Great anxiety,"[369] to which little sympathy can be extended, was felt in Washington as to the evidence for the actuality of the repeals.

The situation was finally cleared up by a clever move of the British Cabinet, forcing Napoleon's hand at a moment when the Orders in Council could with difficulty be maintained longer against popular discontent. On March 10, 1812, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a report to the Senate, reiterated the demands of the Decrees, and asserted again that, until those demands were conceded by England, the Decrees must be enforced against Powers which permitted their flags to be denationalized. The position thus reaffirmed was emphasized by a requirement for a large increase of the army for this object. "It is necessary that all the disposable forces of France be available for sending everywhere where the English flag, and other flags, denationalized or convoyed by English ships of war, may seek to enter."[370] No exceptions in favor of the United States being stated, the British ministry construed the omission as conclusive proof of the unqualified continuance of the Decrees;[371] and the occasion was taken to issue an Order in Council, defining the Government's position, both in the past and for the future. Quoting the French minister's Report, as removing all doubts of Napoleon's persistence in the maintenance of a system, "as inconsistent with neutral rights and independence as it was hostile to the maritime rights and commercial interests of Great Britain," the Prince Regent declared that, "if at any time thereafter the Berlin and Milan Decrees should be absolutely and unconditionally repealed, by some authentic act of the French Government, publicly promulgated, then the Orders in Council of January, 1807, and April, 1809, shall without any further order be, and the same are hereby declared from thenceforth to be, wholly and absolutely revoked."[372] No exception could be taken to the phrasing or form of this Order. The wording was precise and explicit; the time fixed was definite,—the date of the French Repeal; the manner of revocation was the same as that of promulgation, an Order in Council observant of all usual formalities.

In substance, this well-timed State Paper challenged Champagny's letter of August 5, 1810, and the American Non-Importation Act based upon it. Both these asserted the revocation of the French Decrees. The British Cabinet, seizing a happy opportunity, asked of the world the production of the revocation, or else the justification of its own course. The demand went far to silence the growing discontents at home, and to embarrass the American Government in the grounds upon which it had chosen to base its action. It was well calculated also to disconcert the Emperor, for, unless he did something more definite, dissension would increase in the United States, where, as Barlow wrote, "It is well known to the world, for our public documents are full of it, that great doubts exist, even among our best informed merchants, and in the halls of Congress itself, whether the Berlin and Milan Decrees are to this day repealed, or even modified, in regard to the United States." The sentence is taken from a letter[373] which he addressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, May 1, 1812, when he had received the recent British Order. He pointed out how astutely this step was calculated to undo the effect of Champagny's letter, and to weaken the American Administration at the critical moment when it was known to be preparing for war. He urged that the French Government should now make and publish an authentic Act, declaring the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as relative to the United States, to have ceased in November, 1810. "Such an act is absolutely necessary to the American Government; and, though solicited as an accommodation, it may be demanded as a right. If it was the duty of France to cease to apply those Decrees to the United States, it is equally her duty to promulgate it to the world in as formal a manner as we have promulgated our law for the exclusion of British merchandise. She ought to declare and publish the non-application of these Decrees in the same forms in which she enacted the Decrees. The President has instructed me to propose and press this object."

At last the demand was made which should have been enforced eighteen months before. After sending the letter, Barlow had "a pretty sharp conversation" with Bassano, in which he perceived a singular reluctance to answer his letter. At last the Duke placed before him a Decree, drawn up in due and customary form, dated a year before,—April 28, 1811,—declaring that "the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are definitively, and to date from the first day of November last, [1810], considered as not having existed in regard to American vessels."[374] This Decree, Bassano said, had been communicated to Russell, and also sent to Serrurier, the French minister at Washington, with orders to convey it to the American Government. Both Russell and Serrurier denied ever having received the paper.[375]

Barlow made no comment upon the strange manner in which this document was produced to him, and confined himself to inquiring if it had been published. The reply could only be, No; a singular admission with regard to a formal paper a year old, and of such importance to all concerned. He then asked that a copy might be sent him. Upon receipt, he at once hastened it to Russell in London, by the sloop of war "Wasp," then lying in a French port. He wrote, "You will doubtless render an essential service to both Great Britain and the United States by communicating it without loss of time to the Foreign Secretary. If by this the cause of war should be removed, there is an obvious reason for keeping the secret, if possible, so long as that the "Wasp" may not bring the news to this country in any other manner but in your despatch. This Government, as you must long have perceived, wishes not to see that effect produced; and I should not probably have obtained the letter and documents from the Minister, if the Prince Regent's Declaration had not convinced this Government that the war was now become inevitable."[376]

Russell transmitted the Decree to the British Foreign Secretary May 20, 1812. The Government was at the moment in confusion, through the assassination, May 11, of Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister; who, though not esteemed of the first order of statesmanship by his contemporaries and colleagues, had been found in recent negotiations the only available man about whom a cabinet could unite. A period of suspense followed, in which the difficulty of forming a new government, owing to personal antagonisms, was complicated by radical differences as to public policy, especially in the cardinal point of pursuing or relinquishing the war in the peninsula. Not till near the middle of June was an arrangement reached. The same ministry, substantially, remained in power, with Lord Liverpool as premier; Castlereagh continuing as Foreign Secretary. This retained in office the party identified with the Orders in Council, and favoring armed support to the Spanish revolt.

The delay in settling the government afforded an excuse for postponing action upon the newly discovered French Decree. It permitted also time for reflection. Just before Perceval's death, Russell had noted a firm determination to maintain the Orders in Council, conditioned only by the late Declaration of April 21; but at the same time there was evident apprehension of the consequences of war with the United States.[377] This, he carefully explained, was due to no apprehension of American military power. Even Lord Grenville, one of the chief leaders of the Opposition, was satisfied that the United States could not conquer Canada. "We are, indeed, most miserably underrated in Europe." "It is not believed here, notwithstanding the spirited report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, that we shall resort to any definitive measures. We have indeed a reputation in Europe for saying so much and doing so little that we shall not be believed in earnest until we act in a manner not to be mistaken." "I am persuaded this Government has presumed much on our weakness and divisions, and that it continues to believe that we have not energy and union enough to make effective war. Nor is this confined to the ministry, but extends to the leaders of the Opposition." "Mr. Perceval is well known to calculate with confidence that even in case of war we shall be obliged to resort to a license trade for a supply of British manufactures." "He considers us incapable even of bearing the privations of a state of hostility with England, and much more incapable of becoming a formidable enemy." On March 3 Perceval in a debate in the House had indicated the most positive intentions of maintaining the Orders, and asserted that, in consequence of Napoleon's Decrees, Great Britain was no longer restrained by the law of nations in the extent or form of retaliation to which she may resort upon the enemy. "I cannot perceive the slightest indication of apprehension of a rupture with the United States, or any measure of preparation to meet such an event. Such is the conviction of our total inability to make war that the five or six thousand troops now in Canada are considered to be amply sufficient to protect that province against our mightiest efforts."[378] A revolution of sentiment was to be noted even in the minds of former advocates. Castlereagh, at a levee on March 12, said to Russell that the movements in the United States appeared to him to be nothing but party evolutions.

There was, however, another side to the question which occasioned more concern to the British ministry. "It is the increasing want of our intercourse," wrote Russell May 9, "rather than the apprehension of our arms which leads to a conciliatory spirit" which he had recently noticed. "They will endeavor to avoid the calamity of war with the United States by every means which can save their pride and their consistency. The scarcity of bread in this country, the distress of the manufacturing towns, and the absolute dependency of the allied troops in the Peninsula on our supplies, form a check on their conduct which they can scarcely have the hardihood to disregard."[379] Two days after these words were written, the murder of Perceval added political anarchy to the embarrassments of the Government. The crisis then impending was indeed momentous. War between France and Russia was certain. Upon its outcome depended the fall of the Continental System, or its prevalence over all Europe in an extent and with a rigor never yet reached. "Some of the Powers of Europe," said the Emperor, "have not fulfilled their promise with respect to the Continental System. I must force them to it." In carrying this message to the Senate, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said: "In whatever port of Europe a British ship can enter there must be a French garrison to prevent it;"[380] an interesting commentary upon the neutral regulations to which the United States professed that neither she nor Great Britain had any claim to object, because municipal. Great Britain had already touched ruin too nearly to think lightly of the conditions. By her Orders in Council she had so retorted Napoleon's Decrees as to induce him, in order still further to enforce them, into the Peninsular War, and now into that with Russia. To uphold the latter, her busy negotiators, profiting by his high-handedness, had obtained for the Czar peace with Sweden and Turkey. More completely to sustain him, it was essential to support in fullest effect the powerful diversion which retained three hundred thousand French troops in Spain. To do this, the assistance of American food supplies was imperative.

If peace with the United States could be maintained, the triumph of British diplomacy would be unqualified. The announcement of the alleged Decree of April 28, 1811, came therefore most opportunely to save their pride and self-consistency. On June 23 Castlereagh transmitted to Russell an Order in Council published that day, revoking as to the United States the celebrated Orders of January 7, 1807, and April 26, 1809. "I am to request you," ran his letter, "that you will acquaint your Government that the Prince Regent's ministers have taken the earliest opportunity, after the resumption of the Government, to advise his Royal Highness to the adoption of a measure grounded upon the document communicated by you to this office on the 20th ultimo;"[381] that is upon the Decree of April 28. No one affected to believe that this had been framed at the date it bore. "There was something so very much like fraud on the face of it," wrote Russell, "that in several conversations which I have since had with Lord Castlereagh, particularly at a dinner at the Lord Mayor's, when I was placed next his lordship, I have taken care not to commit the honor of my Government by attempting its vindication. When his lordship called it a strange proceeding, a new specimen of French diplomacy, a trick unworthy of a civilized government, I have merely replied that the motives or good faith of the Government which issued it, or the real time when it was issued, were of little importance as to the effect which it ought to have here; that it was sufficient that it contained a most precise and formal declaration that the Berlin and Milan Decrees were revoked, in relation to America, from November 1, 1810."[382]

This was true; but the contention of the British Government had been that the system of the Decrees was one whole; that its effect upon America could not be dissociated from that upon continental neutral states, where it was enforced under the guise of municipal regulations; and that it must be revoked as a whole, in order to impose the repeal of the Orders in Council. This position had been reaffirmed in the recent Order of April 21. Opinion will therefore differ as to the ministry's success in escaping, under the cover of the new Decree, from the dilemma in which they were placed by the irresistible agitation against the Orders in Council spreading through the nation, and the necessity of avoiding war with the United States, if possible, because of the affairs of the Peninsula. They made the best of it by alleging, as it were, the spirit of the Order of April 21; the disposition "to take such measures as may tend to re-establish the intercourse between neutral and belligerent nations upon its accustomed principles." For this reason, while avowing explicitly that the tenor of the Decree did not meet the requirements of the late Order, the Orders in Council were revoked from August 1 next following; and vessels captured after May 20, the date of Russell's communicating the Decree, would be released. The ministry thus receded gracefully under compulsion; and for their own people at least saved their face.

Superficially the British diplomatic triumph for the moment seemed complete. They had withdrawn their head from the noose just as it began to tighten; and they had done so not on any ground of stringent requirement, but with expressions of desire to go even farther than their just claims, in order to promote conciliation. Russell naturally felt a moment of bitter discomfiture. "In yielding, the ministers appear to have been extremely perplexed in seeking for a subterfuge for their credit. All their feelings and all their prejudices revolted at the idea of publicly bending to the Opposition, or truckling to the United States, and they were compelled to seize on the French Decree of April 28, 1811, as the only means of saving themselves from the degradation of acknowledging that they were vanquished. Without this decree they would have been obliged to yield, and I almost regret that it existed to furnish a salvo, miserable as it is, for their pride. Our victory, however, is still complete, and I trust that those who have refused to support our Government in the contest will at least be willing to allow it the honors of a triumph."[383]

Russell wrote under the mistaken impression that the repeal of the Orders had come in time to save war; in which event the yielding of the British ministry, identified as it was with the Orders in Council, might be construed as a triumph for the system of peaceable coercion, by commercial restrictions, which formed the whole policy of Jefferson and Madison. The triumph claimed by him must be qualified, however, by the reflection that it was obtained at the expense of becoming the dupe of a French deception, on its face so obvious as to deprive mistake of the excuse of plausibility. The eagerness of the Government, and of its representatives abroad, for a diplomatic triumph, had precipitated them into a step for which, on the grounds taken, no justification existed; and they had since then been dragged at the wheels of Napoleon's chariot, in a constant dust of mystification, until he had finally achieved the end of his scheming and landed them in a war for which they were utterly unprepared, and which it had been the chief object of commercial reprisals to avoid. Thus considered, the triumph was barren.

On June 1, 1812, President Madison sent to Congress a message,[384] reciting the long list of international wrongs endured at the hands of Great Britain, and recommending to the deliberations of Congress the question of peace or war. On June 4 the House of Representatives, by a vote of seventy-nine yeas to forty-nine nays, declared that a state of war existed between the United States and Great Britain. The bill then went to the Senate, where it was discussed, amended, and passed on June 17, by nineteen yeas to thirteen nays. The next day the House concurred in the Senate's amendments, and the bill thus passed received the President's signature immediately. The war thus began, formally, on June 18, 1812, five days before the repeal of the British Orders in Council.

While the Declaration of War was still under debate, the Secretary of War, Eustis, on June 8 reported to the Senate that of the ten thousand men authorized as a peace establishment, there were in service six thousand seven hundred and forty-four. He was unable to state what number had been enlisted of the twenty-five thousand regulars provided by the legislation of the current session; a singular exhibition of the efficiency of the Department. He had no hesitation, however, in expressing an unofficial opinion that there were five thousand of these recruits. It is scarce necessary to surmise what the condition of the army was likely to be, with James Wilkinson as the senior general officer of consecutive service, and with Dearborn, a man of sixty, and in civil life ever since the War of Independence, as the first major-general appointed under the new legislation. The navy had a noble and competent body of officers, in the prime of life, a large proportion of whom had seen instructive service in the Barbary conflict; but, as has been seen, Congress had no faith in a navy, and refused it any increase. In this distrust the Administration shared.

Mr. Monroe, indeed, probably through his residence abroad, had attained a juster view of the influence of a navy on foreign relations. He has already been quoted in this connection,[385] but in a letter to a friend, two years before 1812, he developed his opinions with some precision. "I gave my opinion that our naval force ought to be increased. In advising this, I urged that the naval force of the United States ought not to be regulated by reference to the navies of the Great Powers, but to the strength of the squadrons which they usually stationed in time of war on our coasts, at the mouths of great rivers, and in our harbors. I thought that such a force, incorporated permanently with our system, would give weight at all times to our negotiations, and by means thereof prevent wars and save money."[386] Monroe at this time was not in the Administration. Such a policy was diametrically opposed to that of Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin; and when war came, ships had not been provided. Under the circumstances the disposition of the Government was to put the ships they had under a glass case.

"At the commencement of the war," wrote Monroe to Jefferson, "I was decidedly of your opinion, that the best disposition which could be made of our little navy would be to keep it in a body in a safe port, from which it might sally, only on some important occasion, to render essential service. Its safety, in itself, appeared an important object; as, while safe, it formed a check on the enemy in all operations along our coast, and increased proportionately his expense, in the force to be kept up, as well to annoy our commerce as to protect his own. The reasoning against this, in which all naval officers have agreed, is that, if stationed together in a port,—New York, for example,—the British would immediately block up this, by a force rather superior, and then harass our coast and commerce, without restraint, and with any force, however small. In that case a single frigate might, by cruising along the coast, and menacing continually different parts, keep in motion great bodies of militia; that, while our frigates are at sea, the expectation that they may be met together will compel the British to keep in a body, whenever they institute a blockade or cruise, a force equal at least to our own whole force; that they, [the American vessels] being the best sailors, hazard little by cruising separately, or together occasionally, as they might bring on an action, or avoid one, as they saw fit; that in that measure they would annoy the enemy's commerce wherever they went, excite alarm in the West Indies and elsewhere, and even give protection to our own trade by drawing the enemy's squadron from our own coast.... The reasoning in favor of each plan is so nearly equal that it is hard to say which is best."[387] It is to be hoped that the sequel will show which was best, although little can be hoped when means, military and naval, have been allowed to waste as they had under the essentially unmilitary Administrations since 1801.

On November 25, 1811, seven months before the war began, the Secretary of the Treasury, Gallatin, communicated to the Senate a report on the State of the Finances,[388] in which he showed that since 1801, by economies which totally crippled the war power of the nation, the public debt had been diminished from $80,000,000 to $34,000,000,—a saving of $46,000,000, which lessened the annual interest on the debt by $2,000,000. A good financial showing, doubtless; but, had there been on hand the troops and the ships, which the saved money represented, the War of 1812 might have had an issue more satisfactory to national retrospect. Gallatin also showed, in this paper, that by the restrictive system, enforced against Great Britain in consequence of the Administration's decision that Napoleon's revocation of his Decrees was real, the revenue had dropped from $12,000,000 to $6,000,000; leaving the nation with a probable deficiency of $2,000,000, on the estimate of a year of peace for 1812.

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