To raise by taxation, so long as peace lasted, all the money to be spent by Congress, was the rule which Mr. Gallatin was now struggling to enforce. If Congress appropriated money, Congress must lay taxes. To maintain this ground required a firm, almost a rough hand, and unless both the Cabinet and the Senate were ready to support the Secretary of the Treasury in his effort, his position was untenable, and resignation must follow of course.
The question whether the Cabinet and Senate would support Mr. Gallatin was, therefore, the necessary point to decide in advance. In the Cabinet, Mr. Robert Smith was the dangerous element. In the Senate, General Samuel Smith and his friend Mr. Giles were the chief disturbing forces, since without them the fulminations of Leib and the Aurora offered, after all, no very serious danger. Unfortunately, a circumstance had now occurred which seriously embittered the relations between Mr. Gallatin and the Smiths. The failure and disappearance of the navy agent at Leghorn disclosed a somewhat loose way of managing business in the Navy Department, which had bought exchange on Leghorn, largely in bills on Samuel Smith and his relations, in excess of its wants, while at the same time it had neglected to make its naval officers draw on Leghorn, so that they had drawn on London at considerable extra expense. Thus, at the close of the Tripoli war a large balance had remained in the hands of the navy agent at Leghorn, which was partly sent back in specie to America by a ship of war, and partly carried off by the navy agent to Paris, where he was arrested by the interposition of our minister, General Armstrong, and compelled to disgorge. In all this there was enough to irritate Mr. Gallatin, who had for eight years endured, with such patience as he could command, the loose and extravagant habits of the Navy Department, and who was now making a new effort to enforce a thorough system of accountability in that department. But there appeared at first sight to be something still more objectionable in this transaction. Mr. Robert Smith, as Secretary of the Navy, had bought bills of exchange to the amount of a quarter of a million dollars, within two years, from his brother General Smith and his connections, and on the face of the accounts it appeared that these were to some extent accommodation bills; in other words, that the government money had been by collusion left in the hands of General Smith’s firm until it suited their convenience to remit it to Leghorn. The effect of this operation was to give the firm of Smith & Buchanan the use of public money without obliging them to make the same immediate provision for honoring their bills as would in other cases have been necessary; to give them also the almost exclusive privilege of selling bills on Leghorn, and to throw upon the public the risk arising from protested bills. This affair came to the knowledge of Mr. Gallatin at the time when General Smith was, with the aid of Mr. Giles and Dr. Leib, forcing Mr. Robert Smith upon Mr. Madison as Secretary of State, and in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Mr. Wilson Cary Nicholas, overthrowing Mr. Gallatin’s plans of public expenditure. He was very indignant, and expressed his opinions to his friend Joseph H. Nicholson, who made no secret of the story and used it to prevent the re-election of General Smith to the Senate. In the extra session in June, 1809, John Randolph, at the urgent request of Judge Nicholson, procured the appointment of an investigating committee, which published the facts. Mr. Gallatin was called upon for a report, which he made in February, 1811. General Smith on his side made a statement which certainly relieved him to a considerable extent from the weight of some of the most doubtful parts of the transaction. Mr. Gallatin had nothing to do with Judge Nicholson’s proceeding, and gave it no encouragement, but his feeling in regard to the scandal was very strong, and after the attacks made upon the Smiths, both by the investigating committee of the House and by the Baltimore press, the following exchange of letters occurred:
GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH TO GALLATIN.
Baltimore, 26th June, 1809.
Sir,—I do myself the honor to enclose two papers for your perusal. The editors of the Federal Republican make use of your name to bolster them up in the nefarious charge they have made against me, in the following manner, to wit: “Mr. Gallatin, we understand, spoke of this transaction in terms of great indignation.” I will not believe that any of that indignation could have been directed at me. I believe it impossible that any man who has the least pretensions to character would commit an act so base as that charged on me, to wit: “to secure a debt which I considered bad by transferring the same to the Navy Department, and thus involving the United States in the loss.” Some time after my house drew the last bill (for I was at Washington), an evil report had been sent from Leghorn relative to Degen, Purviance & Co., in consequence whereof Mr. Oliver (who had a ship ready to sail to their address) sent an agent, who, finding the house in as good credit as any in that city, did put the cargo under their care. I thought the house superior to any in Leghorn.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
S. Smith.
GALLATIN TO GENERAL SMITH.
Treasury Department, 29th June, 1809.
Sir,—I received the day before yesterday your letter of 26th inst., enclosing two Baltimore papers.
I have no other knowledge of the circumstances connected with the naval agency of Degen and Purviance than what is derived from their account as stated by the accountant of the Navy Department. The transaction, such as it appears there, is, under all its aspects, the most extraordinary that has fallen within my knowledge since I have been in this Department. It has certainly left very unfavorable impressions on my mind, and these have on one occasion been communicated verbally to a friend. Yet I hardly need say that I never supposed that the bills had been sold to government for the purpose “of securing a debt which you then considered bad, and of thus throwing the loss on the United States.” But I did believe that you had drawn without having previously placed sufficient funds in the hands of Degen and Purviance, and that they had accepted your bills and passed the amount to the credit of the United States, without having at the time in their hands sufficient funds belonging to you. That this was my impression you will perceive by the enclosed extract of a letter to Mr. Armstrong; and Mr. Purviance’s statement, which you enclosed to me, shows that I was not mistaken. I do not intend to comment on this and other circumstances of the case. Taking them altogether, I have believed that, if we failed in our endeavors to recover the money from Degen and from Mr. Purviance, we might have recourse against the drawers of the bills.
I am, sir, &c.
Such a letter was not calculated to conciliate the Smiths, and appears to have received no reply. General Smith ultimately secured his re-election to the Senate. As the case stood, therefore, Mr. Gallatin could count with absolute certainty upon the determined personal hostility of General Smith, Mr. Giles, and Dr. Leib, backed by the vigorous tactics of Duane and the Aurora, and he had to decide the very serious question whether he should remain in the Cabinet in the face of so alarming a party defection, or whether he should give way to it and retire. On the 11th May, 1809, he wrote to Judge Nicholson that the ensuing session would decide this point. Judge Nicholson replied in his own impetuous style: “Your retiring from office is a subject upon which I do not like to reflect, because I believe that you will be a great public loss. It will be a loss that Mr. Madison will feel immediately, but the public will not perceive it in its full extent for some years. When the government gets entirely in the possession of those men who are resolved to seize it, and their selfish and mercenary motives and conduct are hereafter exposed, as they must be, the public will then perceive how important it would have been to retain a man who was at once capable and honest. But I think, were I in your situation, I should not continue in the present state of the Cabinet, and I should tell Mr. Madison that it was impossible to serve with Mr. Smith after a development of the late transaction. The most perverse man must acknowledge the absolute dishonesty that is apparent on the face of it. I have never believed that you took as strong ground in the Cabinet as you ought to do, and it is time that you should do more than content yourself with a bare expression of opinion. I should say that Mr. Smith or myself must go out, and Mr. Madison ought to know you too well to believe that this contained anything of a threat. If you are disposed to continue in the Treasury, the Department of State might certainly be filled with an abler and a better man. Our love to Mrs. Gallatin. Tell her I agree with her that vice and corruption do rule everywhere, and it arises entirely from the ill-timed modesty of virtue.”
This last paragraph is in reply to the concluding paragraph of Mr. Gallatin’s letter: “Mrs. Gallatin says that vice and intrigue are all-powerful here and there [in Baltimore]. I tell her that virtue is its own reward, and she insists that that language is mere affectation.”
What Mr. Gallatin’s frame of mind now was may be seen from a letter to his old friend Badollet, whom he had sent out to the land-office at Vincennes, in the Indiana Territory, and who, discovering that vice and intrigue ruled even there, was carrying on a fierce and passionate struggle with General W. H. Harrison, the governor, to prevent the introduction of negro slavery.
GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.
Washington, 12th May, 1809.
I have received your letter of 7th March, and am as desirous as yourself of a refreshing interview. The summer session has prevented my going to Fayette this spring, but I must go there either in August or September. I cannot yet determine the precise week or month, and will not be able to stay more than four or five days, unless I return at that time with my family for the purpose of permanently residing there, which is not impossible, though not yet decided on. The decision, not to induce you into mistake, rests entirely with myself. Will it be prudent for you to incur the expense and trouble of so long a journey merely in order to see me? It was with regret that I saw you go to Vincennes; for I apprehended the climate, and I hated the distance. But there was no option. The Ohio representative claimed for residents there the exclusive right of filling the Federal offices in that State, and it was your express opinion that you could not subsist in Greene County. The same obstacles seem to oppose a change. I see no prospect of your being transferred to a nearer district, and you will find the same difficulty in supporting your family in case you should return to Pennsylvania. Still, I not only feel your situation, but I think that your happiness in the eve of life will in part depend on our spending it in the same vicinity. I know that it will be the case with me. If you can perceive any means in which I can assist to attain that object, state it fully and in all its details; that we may attempt whatever is practicable, but nothing rashly. What would your little property in Indiana sell for? What would be the expenses of bringing your family up the river? What are the precise ages and capacities of your children? I do not know what you can do yourself without an office, but I will not prejudge, and I earnestly wish that we may discover some means of reunion.
As to your squabbles and disappointment, they are matters of course. At what time or in what country did you ever hear that men assumed the privilege of being more honest than the mass of the society in which they lived, without being hated and persecuted? unless they chose to remain in perfect obscurity and to let others and the world take their own course, and in that case they can never have been heard of. All we can do here is to fulfil our duty, without looking at the consequences so far as relates to ourselves. If the love and esteem of others or general popularity follow, so much the better. But it is with these as with all other temporal blessings, such as wealth, health, &c., not to be despised, to be honestly attempted, but never to be considered as under our control or as objects to which a single particle of integrity, a single feeling of conscience should be sacrificed. I need not add that I preach better than I practise. But I may add that you practise better than I do, your complaining of the result only excepted. The purity with which you shall have exercised the duties of land-officer may be felt and continue to operate after you have ceased to act. And if you have had a share in preventing the establishment of slavery in Indiana, you will have done more good, to that part of the country at least, than commonly falls to the share of man. Be that feeling your reward. When you are tired of struggling with vice and selfishness, rest yourself, mind your own business, and fight them only when they come directly in your way.
Give my best and affectionate love to your worthy wife, who has been your greatest comfort in this world, and on whose judgment you may rely with great safety in any plan you may form.
Ever yours.
Mr. Gallatin did not follow the advice of Judge Nicholson. After the summer session of this year was over, the sudden disavowal by the British government of Mr. Erskine’s arrangement threw pressing burdens upon his shoulders. In reply to his summons to Washington, Mr. Madison wrote from Montpelier that he did not think his presence there necessary. On the 9th August the President’s proclamation was issued, accompanied by a circular from the Treasury reviving the Non-Importation Act, and the country settled back to its old condition of chronic complaint and discomfort. Nothing more could be done till the arrival of the new British envoy, Mr. Jackson, and the meeting of Congress, nor could energetic action be expected even then.
After the proclamation was issued, Mr. and Mrs. Gallatin went into Virginia to visit the Madisons, and the whole party, towards the end of August, arrived at Monticello. While there, Mr. Gallatin opened his mind fully to his friends, and the triumvirate deliberated solemnly upon the situation. What passed can only be inferred from the two following letters. No decisive action was taken or asked. Mr. Gallatin went no further than to explain his difficulties, leaving Mr. Madison to act as he pleased.
JEFFERSON TO GALLATIN.
Monticello, October 11, 1809.
Dear Sir—...I have reflected much and painfully on the change of dispositions which has taken place among the members of the Cabinet since the new arrangement, as you stated to me in the moment of our separation. It would be indeed a great public calamity were it to fix you in the purpose which you seemed to think possible. I consider the fortunes of our Republic as depending in an eminent degree on the extinction of the public debt before we engage in any war; because that done we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in peace and defend it in war without recurring either to new taxes or loans. But if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, its entire discharge will be despaired of, and we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption, and rottenness, closing with revolution. The discharge of the debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government, and it hangs on Mr. Madison and yourself alone. We will never see another President and Secretary of the Treasury making all other objects subordinate to this. Were either of you to be lost to the public, that great hope is lost. I had always cherished the idea that you would fix on that object the measure of your fame and of the gratitude which our country will owe you. Nor can I yield up this prospect to the secondary considerations which assail your tranquillity. For sure I am, they never can produce any other serious effect. Your value is too justly estimated by our fellow-citizens at large, as well as their functionaries, to admit any remissness in their support of you. My opinion always was that none of us ever occupied stronger ground in the esteem of Congress than yourself, and I am satisfied there is no one who does not feel your aid to be still as important for the future as it has been for the past. You have nothing, therefore, to apprehend in the dispositions of Congress, and still less of the President, who above all men is the most interested and affectionately disposed to support you. I hope, then, you will abandon entirely the idea you expressed to me, and that you will consider the eight years to come as essential to your political career. I should certainly consider any earlier day of your retirement as the most inauspicious day our new government has ever seen. In addition to the common interest in this question, I feel, particularly for myself, the considerations of gratitude which I personally owe you for your valuable aid during my administration of public affairs, a just sense of the large portion of the public approbation which was earned by your labors and belongs to you, and the sincere friendship and attachment which grew out of our joint exertions to promote the common good, and of which I pray you now to accept the most cordial and respectful assurances.
GALLATIN TO JEFFERSON.
Washington, November 8, 1809.
Dear Sir,—I perused your affectionate letter of the 11th ult. with lively sensations of pleasure, excited by that additional evidence of your continued kindness and partiality. To have acquired and preserved your friendship and confidence is more than sufficient to console me for some late personal mortifications, though I will not affect to conceal that these, coming from an unexpected quarter, and being as I thought unmerited, wounded my feelings more deeply than I had at first been aware of. [Had I listened only to those feelings, I would have resigned and probably taken this winter a seat in Congress, which as a personal object would have been much more pleasing than my present situation, and also better calculated to regain the ground which to my surprise I found I had lost at least in one of the branches of the Legislature. After mature consideration I relinquished the idea, at least for that time, in a great degree on account of my personal attachment to Mr. Madison, which is of old standing, I am sure reciprocal, and strengthened from greater intimacy; and also because I mistrusted my own judgment, and doubted whether I was not more useful where I was than I could be as a member of Congress. All this passed in my mind before the last session; and the communication which I made to you at Monticello arose from subsequent circumstances.][98]
Yet I can assure you that I will not listen to those feelings in forming a final determination on the subject on which I conversed with you at Monticello. The gratitude and duty I owe to the country which has received me and honored me beyond my deserts, the deep interest I feel in its future welfare and prosperity, the confidence placed by Mr. Madison in me, my personal and sincere attachment for him, the desire of honorably acquiring some share of reputation, every public and private motive would induce me not to abandon my post, if I am permitted to retain it, and if my remaining in office can be of public utility. But in both respects I have strong apprehensions, to which I alluded in our conversation. It has seemed to me from various circumstances that those who thought they had injured were disposed to destroy, and that they were sufficiently skilful 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. But if that ground which you have so forcibly presented to my view is deserted; if those principles which we have uniformly asserted and which were successfully supported during your Administration are no longer adhered to, you must agree with me that to continue in the Treasury would be neither useful to the public or honorable to myself.
The reduction of the public debt was certainly the principal object in bringing me into office, and our success in that respect has been due both to the joint and continued efforts of the several branches of government and to the prosperous situation of the country. I am sensible that the work cannot progress under adverse circumstances. If the United States shall be forced into a state of actual war, all the resources of the country must be called forth to make it efficient, and new loans will undoubtedly be wanted. But whilst peace is preserved the revenue will, at all events, be sufficient to pay the interest and to defray necessary expenses. 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 whilst peace continues the aggregate of 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, my dear sir, 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. I thought I owed it to candor and friendship to communicate as I did to Mr. Madison and to yourself my fears of a tendency in that direction, arising from the quarter and causes which I pointed out, and the effect such a result must have on my conduct. I earnestly wish that my apprehensions may have been groundless, and it is a question which facts and particularly the approaching session of Congress will decide. No efforts shall be wanted on my part in support of our old principles. But, whatever the result may be, I never can forget either your eminent services to the United States, nor how much I owe to you for having permitted me to take a subordinate part in your labors.
Mr. Jefferson’s letter was obviously written not merely to encourage Mr. Gallatin, but to be shown to members of Congress. From it one would suppose that Mr. Gallatin had in the moment of departure merely suggested the possibility of his retirement; from Mr. Gallatin’s reply, which has no such semi-official reticence, the real import of the conversation, and the fact that it was addressed to Mr. Madison, are made evident.
“Those who thought they had injured were disposed to destroy, and were sufficiently skilful and formidable to effect their object.” Mr. Gallatin’s life for the next four years was little more than a commentary on this paragraph. There has, perhaps, never in our history been a personal contest more determined, more ferocious, more mischievous than this between Mr. Gallatin, with the Executive behind him, and the knot of his enemies who controlled the Senate; it is not too much to say that to this struggle, complicating itself with the rising spirit of young nationality, we owe the war of 1812, and some of the most imminent perils the nation ever incurred. It was not unlike the great contest of ten years before between John Adams and a similar group of Senators; it went through a similar phase, and in each case the result was dependent on the question of war or peace. There are few more interesting contrasts of character in our history than that between the New England President, with his intense personality and his overpowering bursts of passion, confronting his enemies with a will that could not control or even mask its features, and “the Genevan,” as the Aurora called him, calm, reticent, wary, never vehement, full of resource, ignoring enmity, hating strife. Perhaps a combination of two such characters, if they could have been made to work in harmony, might have proved too much even for the Senate; and, if so, a problem in American history might have been solved, for, as it was, the Senate succeeded in overthrowing both.
As Mr. Gallatin had predicted, the mission of Mr. Jackson proved to be merely one more insult, and our government very soon put an end to its relations with him and sent him away; but, in doing so, Mr. Madison expressly declared the undiminished desire of the United States to establish friendly relations with Great Britain, so that the only effect of this episode was to procure one year more of delay; precisely the object which Mr. Canning had in view. As the country now stood, Mr. Canning’s policy had been completely successful; he had taken away the neutral commerce of the United States, and the United States had submitted to his will; he had taken away her seamen, and she forced her seamen to go. Just at this moment Mr. Canning himself was thrown out of office; his dictatorial temper met more resistance from his colleagues than from America, and he found himself a private man, with a duel on his hands, at the instant when his administration of foreign affairs was most triumphant. His successor was the Marquess Wellesley, whose reputation for courtesy and liberality was high, and therefore inspired the United States with a hope of justice, for even Mr. Madison, as his letters show, could never quite persuade himself that the British government meant what its acts proclaimed.
The dismissal of Mr. Jackson immediately preceded the meeting of Congress; the interval was hardly sufficient to supply time for elaborating a new policy. The President’s message, sent in on the 29th November, 1809, was very non-committal on the subject of further legislation, and only expressed two opinions as to its character; he was confident that it would be worthy of the nation, and that it would be stamped with unanimity. What ground Mr. Madison had for this confidence, nowhere appears; and if he was honest in expressing this as an opinion rather than as a hope, he was very little aware of the condition of Congress; even Mr. Jefferson never was more mistaken.
As usual, the task of creating and carrying through Congress the Executive policy fell upon Mr. Gallatin, and as usual, bowing to the necessities of the situation, he set himself to invent some scheme that would have a chance of uniting a majority in its support and of giving government solid ground to stand upon. The task was more than difficult, it was impossible. Since the war-policy broke down and the embargo was abandoned, no solid ground was left; Mr. Gallatin, however, had this riddle to solve, and his solution was not wanting in ingenuity.
His report, sent in on December 8, 1809, for the first time announced a deficit. “The expenses of government, exclusively of the payments on account of the principal of the debt, have exceeded the actual receipts into the Treasury by a sum of near $1,300,000.” This was a part of the price of the embargo. For the next year authority for a loan of $4,000,000 would be required in case the military and naval expenditure were as large as in 1809; if Congress should resolve on a permanent increase in the military and naval establishments, additional duties would be requisite; if not, a continuation of the Mediterranean Fund would be sufficient.
But the essence of the report lay in its last paragraph. “Whatever may be the decision of Congress in other respects, there is a subject which seems to require immediate attention. The provisions adopted for the purpose of carrying into effect the non-intercourse with England and France, particularly as modified by the act of last session, under an expectation that the orders of council of Great Britain had been revoked, are inefficient and altogether inapplicable to existing circumstances. It will be sufficient to observe that exportation by land is not forbidden, and that no bonds being required from vessels ostensibly employed in the coasting-trade, nor any authority vested by law which will justify detention, those vessels daily sail for British ports without any other remedy but the precarious mode of instituting prosecutions against the apparent owners. It is unnecessary and it would be painful to dwell on all the effects of those violations of the laws. But without any allusion to the efficiency or political object of any system, and merely with a view to its execution, it is incumbent to state that from the experience of the last two years a perfect conviction arises 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 that all the restrictions, so far at least as they affect the commerce and navigation of the citizens of the United States, ought to be removed.”
This report, as already said, was sent to Congress on the 8th December, 1809. On the 19th December, Mr. Macon, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, reported a bill which was understood to come from the Treasury Department, and which explained the somewhat obscure suggestion in the last lines of the report. This bill, commonly known as Macon’s bill, No. 1, contained twelve sections. The 1st and 2d excluded English and French ships of war from our harbors; the 3d excluded English and French merchant vessels from our harbors; the 4th restricted all importations of English and French goods to vessels owned wholly by United States citizens; the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th restricted these importations to such as came directly from England and France; the 9th authorized the President to remove these restrictions whenever either England or France should remove theirs; the 11th repealed the old non-intercourse, and the 12th limited the duration of the act to the 4th March, 1810.
The bill was in short a Navigation Act of the most severe kind, and met the orders in council and the French edicts on their own ground. The Federalists at once pointed out that the measure was a violent one; that it would be immediately met by Great Britain with retaliatory measures, and that the result must amount to a new embargo or to war. To this the supporters of the bill replied that government contemplated such retaliation; that it was intended to throw the burden upon England and compel her to carry it; that Congress had tried an embargo, the principle of which was non-exportation; that it had tried non-intercourse, the principle of which was non-importation; and now, since both these had failed, it must try a navigation law that could only be countervailed by restrictive measures to be carried out by England herself.
The fact soon appeared that this bill was a very difficult one for its opponents to deal with; it did in fact strike out the only policy, short of war, which was likely to bring England to terms, and which, according to Mr. Huskisson’s assertion some years later,[99] she has always found herself powerless to meet. The opponents of the bill at once showed their embarrassment in a manner which is always proof of weakness; they adopted in the same breath two contradictory arguments; the bill was too strong, and it was too weak. For the Federalists it was too strong; they wished frankly to take sides with England. For Duane and Leib it was too weak, a mean submission, a futile and disgraceful measure; not that they wished war, for they did not as yet venture to take that ground; not that they suggested any practical measure that would stand a moment’s criticism; but that they were decidedly opposed to this special plan. So far as war was concerned, the President was still in advance of Congress, for not only was Macon’s bill a stronger measure than the majority relished, but the President was calling upon Congress to fill up the army and the navy, and Mr. Gallatin was steadily pressing for war taxes.
After more than a month of debate, Macon’s bill passed the House by 73 to 52, and went up to the Senate, where it was consigned to the tender mercies of General Smith and Mr. Giles. On the motion of General Smith, February 21, 1810, all the clauses except the 1st, 2d, and 12th were struck out by a vote of 16 to 11. The Senate debates are not reported, but General Smith subsequently made a speech on the bill, which he printed, and in which he took the ground that the measure was feeble, and that it was so strong as to justify England in confiscating all our trade. This was the ground also taken by the Aurora. General Smith proposed to arm our merchant vessels and furnish them convoy, a measure over and over again rejected. By a vote of 17 to 15 the Senate ultimately adhered to its amendments and killed the bill, Gallatin’s personal enemies deciding the result.
Throughout all this transaction the Secretary of State had acted a curious part. Silent or assenting in the Cabinet, where, notwithstanding rumors to the contrary, there was always apparent cordiality, Mr. Smith’s conversation out-of-doors, and especially with opponents of the Administration, was very free in condemnation of the whole policy which he officially represented.[100] No one, indeed, either in or out of the Cabinet, pretended an enthusiastic admiration of Macon’s bill; Mr. Madison, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Macon himself, only regarded it as “better than nothing,” and “nothing” was the alternative. Congress had put the country into a position equally humiliating, ridiculous, and unprofitable; it had for two sessions refused to follow the Administration and had refused to impose any policy of its own. The influence of General Smith, solitary and unsupported except by Leib and the Aurora faction, now barred the path of legislation and held Congress down to its contemptible and crouching attitude of impotent gesticulation and rant. The Secretary of State was a party to his brother’s acts, and although too dull a man to have any distinct scheme of his own or any depth of intrigue; although obliged to let the President write his official papers and Mr. Gallatin control both his foreign and his domestic policy, he nevertheless used the liberty thus obtained to talk with unreserved freedom both to Federalists and discontented Republicans about the characters of his associates and the contents of his despatches.
Thus the policy of a Navigation Act was defeated, and another year was lost. Only at the very close of the session, when it became apparent that something must be done, Mr. Macon got his bill No. 2 before the House. This was on April 7, and on the 10th he wrote to Nicholson: “I am at a loss to guess what we shall do on the subject of foreign relations. 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.” After a violent struggle between the two Houses, a bill was at length passed, on May 1, 1810, which has strong claims to be considered the most disgraceful act on the American statute-book. It surrendered all resistance to the British and French orders and edicts; it repealed the non-importation law; it left our shipping unprotected to the operation of foreign municipal laws; it offered not even a protest against violence and robbery such as few powerful nations had ever endured except at the edge of the sword; and its only proposition towards these two foreign nations, each of which had exhausted upon us every form of insult and robbery, was an offer that if either would repeal its edicts, the United States would prohibit trade with the other.
The imagination can scarcely conceive of any act more undignified, more cowardly, or, as it proved, more mischievous; but in the utter paralysis into which these party quarrels had now brought Congress, this was all the legislation that could be got, although, in justice to Congress, it is but fair to add that even this was universally contemned. The Administration had nothing to do but to execute it, and to make what it could of the policy it established.
In the contest upon Macon’s bill, Mr. Gallatin had the President’s full support and co-operation. But in another and to him a much more serious struggle he stood quite alone, and all he could obtain from the President was that the Executive influence should not be thrown against him. The charter of the United States Bank was about to expire. In the present condition of the country, with war always in prospect and public and private finances seriously disordered, the bank was an institution almost if not quite indispensable to the Treasury. To abolish it was to create artificially and unnecessarily a very serious financial embarrassment at the moment when the national existence might turn on financial steadiness. To create a new system that would answer the same purposes would be the work of years, and would require the most careful experiments. The subject had been referred to Mr. Gallatin by the Senate, and he had at the close of the last session sent in a report representing in strong language the advantages derived from the bank. He now drew up a bill by which the existing charter was to be considerably modified; the capital raised to thirty millions, three-fifths of which was to be lent to the government; branch banks to be established in each State, and half the directors appointed by the State; with various other provisions intended to secure the utmost possible advantage to the government. Parties at once divided on this question as on the foreign intercourse question, but with a change of sides. The Federalists favored, the old Republicans resisted, the bank, and General Smith resisted Mr. Gallatin. During this session, however, little more was done than to introduce the bills; the matter was then thrown aside until next year.
These subjects, and a hasty report on domestic manufactures, occupied the session almost exclusively, so far as Mr. Gallatin was concerned. When Congress rose, on the 1st May, 1810, every one was obliged to concede that a more futile session had never been held, and the Aurora fulminated against Mr. Gallatin as the cause of all its shortcomings. More and more the different elements of personal discontent made common cause against the Secretary of the Treasury, and before the end of the year 1810 the Aurora and its allies opened a determined assault upon him with the avowed intention of driving him from office.
It was in reference to these attacks, which incessantly recurred to the old stories of 1806, that Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Gallatin as follows:
JEFFERSON TO GALLATIN.
16 August, 1810.
I have seen with infinite grief the set which is made at you in the public papers, and with the more as my name has been so much used in it. I hope we both know one another too well to receive impression from circumstances of this kind. A twelve years’ intimate and friendly intercourse must be better evidence to each of the dispositions of the other than the letters of foreign ministers to their courts, or tortured inferences from facts true or false. I have too thorough a conviction of your cordial good-will towards me, and too strong a sense of the faithful and able assistance I received from you, to relinquish them on any evidence but of my own senses. With entire confidence in your assurance of these truths I shall add those only of my constant affection and high respect.
“The letters of foreign ministers to their courts” were Mr. Erskine’s despatches of December, 1808, to Mr. Canning, which had been printed in England, and, on reaching America, compelled Mr. Gallatin very reluctantly to make a public denial of their accuracy.[101] They represented Mr. Gallatin as acquiescing in the belief that Mr. Jefferson was under French influence. Mr. Gallatin, with the aid of Mr. Madison, drew up a paper correcting Mr. Erskine’s errors, and of course stimulating the attacks of the Aurora. To Mr. Jefferson’s letter Gallatin replied:
GALLATIN TO JEFFERSON.
10th September, 1810.
I need not say how much shocked I was by Mr. Erskine’s despatch. However reluctant to a newspaper publication and to a denial on matters of fact, I could not permit my name to be ever hereafter quoted in support of the vile charges of foreign partialities ascribed to you, and I knew that in that respect my disavowal would be decisive, for, if my testimony was believed, they did not exist, and if disbelieved, no faith could be placed in whatever I might be supposed to have said to Erskine. Although I never for a moment supposed that either his letter or any newspaper attack could, after so long and intimate acquaintance, create a doubt in your mind of the sincerity and warmth of my sentiments towards you, or alter your friendship for me, the assurance was highly acceptable and gratefully received. The newspaper publications to which you allude, I have heard of, but not seen, having not received the papers south of this place [New York] during my stay here. But I had anticipated that from various quarters a combined and malignant attack would be made whenever a favorable opportunity offered itself. Of the true causes and real authors I will say nothing. And however painful the circumstance and injurious the effect, the esteem of those who know me and the consciousness of having exclusively devoted my faculties to the public good, and of having severely performed public duties without regard to personal consequences, will, I hope, support me against evils for which there is no other remedy. Yet that a diminution of public confidence should lessen my usefulness will be a subject of deep regret.
Meanwhile, the situation of affairs abroad was more and more becoming the measure of American politics, and the question of war or peace was more and more clearly defined as the turning-point of Mr. Gallatin’s life. The exhaustion of the Treasury was alone, for him, a sufficient argument against war. He began to believe, and he was right in believing, that the worst had now passed; that, as America could hardly suffer more humiliation than she had already borne, her objects could perhaps be attained by peaceful methods; and almost mechanically, as the government became impressed with this conviction, the opposition, so far as it was personal, tended to the opposite side, and advocated war. There was no other ground to stand upon, unless they went frankly over to the Federalists, which was rapidly becoming inevitable if they continued their old tactics.
Curiously enough, the feeble and disgraceful law of May 1, 1810, known as Macon’s law, had a more immediate effect on the situation abroad than any of the stronger measures which had been tried. Ever since the repeal of the embargo on March 4, 1809, England had been the favored nation; our people, in fact, gave her our commerce on her own terms, and were glad to do so. Macon’s law did away with even the pretence of resistance to her authority on the ocean. Disgraceful as such a result doubtless was to the honor and dignity of the United States, it was in its effects on France a very vigorous engine, for it was nothing more nor less than taking active part with England against her; and inasmuch as Bonaparte had within his limited range shown, if possible, somewhat more disposition to rob us, and a still greater latitude of personal insult, than had been displayed even by Mr. Canning, this result might fairly be viewed with indifference, or perhaps with some slight satisfaction, by the people of the United States. Upon the Emperor it acted, as with a man of his temper was not unnatural, in a most decided manner; he was furious; he seized all the American property he could get within his clutches; he stormed at the American minister, and heaped outrage upon insult; but the fatal arrow could not be shaken out; random as the shot had been, it struck a vital spot, and Bonaparte had to submit. The change which he was thus forced to make illustrates his character.
When the Act of May 1, 1810, commonly known as Macon’s Act, reached Paris, General Armstrong communicated it inofficially to the minister of foreign affairs, Champagny, Duke de Cadore, who laid it before the Emperor. According to all ordinary theories, the Act of May 1, by which the non-intercourse was repealed, would work against France and against France alone; by it America abandoned even the pretence of resisting the absolute domination of England on the seas, and accepted whatever commercial law she chose to impose. The Emperor, moreover, had no means of counteracting or punishing it. He had already resorted to the strongest measure at his command, and seized all the American vessels he could lay his hands on. These were now waiting condemnation. The next step was war, which would, of course, operate only to the advantage of England. For once Bonaparte was obliged to retrace his steps, or at least affect to do so.
On the 5th August, therefore, the Duke de Cadore wrote to General Armstrong a letter, in which, with the usual effrontery of the imperial government, he took the ground that the Act of May 1 was a concession to France, and that France recognized its obligations. “The Emperor loves the Americans;” the Emperor revoked his decrees of Berlin and Milan, which, after the 1st November next, would cease to have effect, it being understood that, in consequence of this declaration, the English should revoke their orders in council and renounce their new principles of blockade, or that America should carry out the terms of the Act and cause her rights to be respected.
This letter was curious in many ways, but it is to be observed more particularly that while Macon’s law required either belligerent to “so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States,” the Emperor as a matter of fact revoked only the Berlin and Milan decrees, and said nothing of others still more offensive, especially the Rambouillet decree, then only four months old, under which he now held and meant to continue holding possession of all the American property in France,—a decree unknown to Congress when the law of May 1 was passed.
Then came the Emperor’s master-stroke, which was to punish the Americans for blundering into success. Long unknown to our government, it was only revealed by accident to Mr. Gallatin when minister to France in 1821, after Napoleon and his decrees had been forgotten by all but the unhappy merchants whom he had plundered. At that time the Duke de Bassano, Napoleon’s Minister of State, had been allowed by the government of Louis XVIII. to return to Paris. He had preserved a register of the various acts and decrees of Napoleon, and was more intimate with their nature and bearing than any one even in the government of that time. To him the claimants sometimes applied for copies of documents to support their memorials, and he furnished them. On one occasion they sought the text of an order by which the proceeds of certain cargoes sequestered at Antwerp were transferred to the Treasury. The Duke furnished what he supposed to be the paper, and it was brought to Mr. Gallatin. The following extract from his despatch of 15th September, 1821, to the Department of State explains what this paper was, and what his sensations were in regard to it.
“The enclosed copy of a decree dated at Trianon on the 5th of August, 1810, which has never been published nor, to my knowledge, communicated to our ministers or government, was obtained through a private channel.... It bears date the same day on which it was officially communicated to our minister that the Berlin and Milan decrees would be revoked on the first day of the ensuing November, and no one can suppose 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 enactment and concealment of that decree exhibits.”
The text of this decree which proved how “His Majesty loves the Americans. Their prosperity and their commerce are within the scope of his policy;” and which was written with the same pen on the same day as that celebrated declaration of Napoleonic affection,—the full text of this decree may be seen attached to Mr. Gallatin’s despatch.[102] Under the pretext of reprisals for American confiscations which had never in fact been made,[103] it confiscated into the imperial treasury, without trial or delay, all American property in France, both that which had been already sequestered and sold, subject to final judgment, and that which was still in the form of merchandise or ships brought into France previous to the 1st May, 1810, the date of Macon’s Act. And it further provided that until November 1, when the Berlin and Milan decrees were to be conditionally revoked, American ships should be allowed to enter French ports, but not to unload, and presumably not to depart, without a permission from the Emperor.
When Mr. Gallatin, at sixty years of age, used language so strong as that just quoted and characterized an act as one of combined injustice, bad faith, and meanness, the world may very reasonably conclude that he was unusually moved. On another occasion he called it “a mean and perfidious act.” There was good reason why he should have been deeply exasperated at the discovery, for of that meanness and perfidy he was principal victim.
What share Mr. Gallatin now had in deciding the action of the President is unknown. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it is to be presumed that he at least acquiesced in the decision of the Cabinet, yet not only is it clear that the letter of Champagny of August 5 was not a compliance with the terms of Macon’s Act; did not revoke or modify Napoleon’s edicts so as that “they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States,” and, therefore, that the President had no legal power to act as though it did; but it is clear, from Secretary Smith’s letter on the subject to General Armstrong, dated November 2, 1810, that the President was aware of the fact and escaped it only by strange subterfuge. Already on the 5th July Mr. Smith had instructed General Armstrong that “a satisfactory provision for restoring the property lately surprised and seized by the order or at the instance of the French government must be combined with a repeal of the French edicts, with a view to a non-intercourse with Great Britain, such a provision Union being an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France toward the United States.” Yet, on the 2d November, writing to General Armstrong that the President had issued his proclamation against England on the strength of the French revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees alone, Mr. Smith could only justify this evident abandonment of his former and correct ground by adding: “You will, however, let the French government understand that this has been done on the ground that the repeal of these decrees does involve an extinguishment of all the edicts of of France actually violating our neutral rights.... It is to be remarked, moreover, that 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;” and the writer goes on to show on what evidence this presumption rested.
That is to say, President Madison did an act which he recognized as one of doubtful propriety, on the ground of two assumptions of fact, neither of which had the smallest foundation. These objections and criticisms were made at the time, and they were semi-officially answered by Joel Barlow in the National Intelligencer of July 9, 1811, by drawing a distinction between “belligerent maritime edicts violating our neutral rights, and edicts authorizing other depredations on the property of our citizens.” The Berlin and Milan decrees, it appears, were maritime; the Rambouillet decree was municipal, not a violation of our neutral rights contemplated by Macon’s Act. Similar British depredations had been disregarded in accepting Erskine’s arrangement.
If this were the case in November, Mr. Madison would have done better not to have said in July that a revocation of the Rambouillet decree was an indispensable evidence of the Emperor’s intentions, and also that he assumed, on the part of the French government, an extinguishment of all its edicts and a restoration of the sequestered property as the ground of his proclamation. Moreover, if this were the case, it is not quite plain why Mr. Gallatin should have declared in 1821 that a knowledge of the secret Trianon decree would have prevented Mr. Madison from issuing that proclamation. The Trianon decree was merely the authority for acts which were notorious.
Although there is not a shadow of evidence to show what Mr. Gallatin’s opinions on this question were, yet the result of the decision was so important in its ultimate bearings upon his fortune that the subject could not be left unmentioned. In Mr. Madison’s private letters of this time there is a disposition clearly evident to subordinate all other considerations to the object of bringing England to terms, and this doubtless was the tendency of public feeling. Acting on this principle, the Administration decided that Champagny’s announcement of the intended revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees was a sufficient fulfilment of the terms of Macon’s Act, and accordingly, on the 1st November, issued the proclamation to that effect. Simultaneously Mr. Gallatin issued a circular to the collectors announcing that after the 2d February, 1811, all intercourse with Great Britain and her dependencies would cease.
In this there was nothing unfair to England. Napoleon had in appearance been compelled to give way, and the United States had a perfect right to make the most of her success. If in doing so she submitted to more robbery, this was no more than she had done when she had attempted similar arrangements with England; it was less than she had done every day for nearly twenty years, in submitting to the impressments of her seamen for the benefit of the British navy. Nevertheless, the ground on which she stood was very weak as regarded argument, for there could be no reasonable doubt then, any more than there was ten years later, that Bonaparte had acted a “mean and perfidious” part, and yet she called upon England to act as though it were an honest one. England rightly enough replied that Napoleon was attempting another fraud to which England would not be a party; thus the situation was rendered more critical than ever, and Napoleon, by a course of conduct which was precisely what Mr. Gallatin described it in 1821, plunged the United States into a war with England on ground that, so far as France was concerned, would not bear examination.