Different feelings with which the Declaration of War was received — State of the parties at the commencement — Federalists and Democrats — Their hostility — Absurd doctrines of the Federalists — Hostility of New England — Unprepared state of the country — Culpable neglect of the government — Comparative strength of the two navies — Empty state of the Treasury — Inefficiency of the Cabinet.

The proud and sensitive American of to-day can scarcely comprehend how, under the heavy and protracted provocations which I have traced in the preceding chapter, the country could have been kept for so long a time from open hostilities. It would seem that the most arbitrary exercise of executive and legislative power, could not have prevented the people from rushing spontaneously to arms, and demanding their rights at the bayonet's point. He is still more astounded, when he remembers that this declaration of war was received with a storm of indignation by a large party in the Union—that all New England, with the exception of Vermont, anathematized it. The pulpit and the press thundered forth their maledictions, and the wrath of heaven was invoked on the heads of its authors. The flags of the shipping in Boston harbor were hoisted at half-mast, in token of mourning, and the spot rendered immortal by the patriots of the revolution, became the rallying place of the disaffected, and the hope of the enemy. A common welfare and a common country, could not allay this hostility, which strengthened instead of diminishing to the last, and which was so fanatical and blind in its violence, that it exhibited itself in the most monstrous forms. Our defeats were gloried in, and the triumphs of our oppressors hailed as an evidence that God was on their side, while downright insubordination, plots, and incipient rebellion, crippled the efforts of an already weak government, and swelled the disasters on which they fattened.

But to one who knows to what a height the spirit of faction will reach, nothing in all this unnatural hostility will seem strange. The country, at this time, was divided into Federalists and Democrats, who were scarcely less vindictive in their animosities, than the Whigs and Tories of the revolution. New England was the furnace of Federalism, and Boston the focal point from which issued incessant and bitter assaults on Jefferson's, and afterwards on Madison's administration. Thus, in the most trying period of our existence since the adoption of the constitution, the country was divided and torn by the fiercest spirit of faction with which it has ever been cursed.

I shall not enter into a history of the feuds of these two parties. The principle which originally divided them was plain. One was for a consolidated government, and more power in the executive; the other for a larger distribution of power among the separate states of the confederacy; one was strongly conservative, and the other tending to radicalism; one was for putting the strictest construction on the constitution, the other for giving it the greatest possible latitude. These two parties had grown up with the republic. Their germs were seen in the first convention that met after the achievement of our independence, to settle the form of government. On one point all were agreed—that our mutual safety and welfare depended on a confederacy, but a difference of opinion arose on the amount of power the separate states should confer on the Federal head. The constitution which was finally adopted was not stringent enough to suit the Federalists; but as a compromise, it was on the whole the best that could be secured. Besides, by standing firmly with the general government in all conflicts with the separate states, and with the executive when brought in collision with Congress, and by the great patronage of the President, that power which they preferred to see directly delegated might practically be obtained. This party numbered among its leaders, the first statesmen of the land.

Nor should these views be considered strange, nor the patriotism of those who held them be assailed. Some of the noblest men who offered their lives and fortunes to the cause of liberty, looked upon the British Government as the best in the world, and stripped of some of its peculiarities, and purged of its corruptions, would be the best that human ingenuity could devise. They did not originally war against a form of government, but to be free from its oppressive acts. They did not hate, they admired the British constitution, and took up arms not to destroy it, but to enjoy the rights it guaranteed to its subjects. The government, in the principles of which they had been educated, was the most prosperous and the strongest on the globe, and common wisdom dictated that all its good points should be retained and incorporated into our own. Why enter on an entirely new experiment when we had so much to build upon in the experience of the mother country? One of the grand features of that government was the central power lodged in the throne; so ours should be characterized by a strong executive. The very reason, the force of which was felt by all, and that made a confederacy indispensable, viz., that a number of independent states, separated by only imaginary lines, would, inevitably, lead to frequent collisions and final civil war, operated they thought with equal force against a loose confederacy. The same results would follow. The wisdom of these fears is seen at the present day, in the separate power demanded by some of the states, and alas was soon exhibited by the Federalists themselves in the spirit of disobedience they instilled into the people against the general government.

The Democrats, on the other hand, saw in all this a decided leaning towards a monarchy, and afterwards boldly accused their adversaries of conspiring to erect a throne in the midst of this republic. They were taunted with sycophancy to England, and a craving after English distinctions and aristocratic preeminence. The principles on which the two parties rested had their birth in true patriotism, and their effect on the character of the Constitution was, doubtless, healthful. Nor was there anything in their nature adapted to awaken such vindictive hate. But like a strife between two individuals, the origin of which is soon lost sight of in the passion engendered by the conflict, so these two factions, in the heat of party rancor, forgot in the main the theories on which they split. In the proposition of every measure by either party for the welfare of the state, some secret plot was supposed to be concealed. The embarrassments in which this fierce hostile spirit placed the administration, rendering it timid and cautious, was increased by the form it took. The levelling and radical notions of the French revolution, followed as they were by such atrocities, disgusted the federalists, while the democrats, though they denounced the violence, sympathized with the people, and saw in the commotion the working of their own principles amid the oppressed masses of France. They not only loved France, as their old ally, but they sympathized with her in her efforts to hurl back the banded oppressors who sought to reestablish a hated throne in her midst. So while the former party stood charged with hating republics and wishing the domination of England, the latter was accused of seeking an alliance with the usurper Napoleon.

Many of the reasons given by the Federalists for their opposition, furnish another exhibition of the blinding power of party spirit. As to the simple question between England and America, it would seem that no sane man could doubt, that sufficient provocation had been given to justify us in a resort to arms. The impressment of six or seven thousand seamen, most of them American citizens, the destruction of nearly a thousand merchantmen, and the insults every where heaped upon our flag, were wrongs which could not be justified. They therefore endeavored to cover them up, by saying that the Democrats were assisting Bonaparte, whom they regarded as a monster in human form, and whose success would be the downfall of all liberty. The wrongs we suffered were thus lost sight of, in the greater wrong of crippling England in her desperate struggle with this modern Attila. Rather than endanger the success of that conflict, they would suffer for a time from the effect of her odious measures. They felt that England, in her conduct, was not governed by hostile feelings towards this country—that the evils she inflicted on us, were only incidental to the war she was waging against a tyrant. Placed in imminent peril, as the champion of freedom, she was compelled to resort to extraordinary measures, which though they injured us, were intended only to crush a common enemy. Hence the absurd interrogatory so incessantly urged by wise statesmen: "Why do you not declare war against France as well as England?"—as if the neglect to protect the interests and honor of the country in one quarter, rendered it obligatory on the government to neglect them in all quarters. The law which would redress one wrong, is none the less right, because he who administers it refuses to apply it to a second wrong. The injustice is in the person, not in the deed. Besides, when a nation is insulted and outraged by two powers, it has a perfect right to choose which it will first assault and chastise. And yet the false doctrine was constantly promulgated, that we had no right to declare war with England, without including France, because she was equally criminal. In other words, the nation was bound to bear quietly the evils under which it groaned, or embrace in the contest, France, which stood ready to do us justice the moment that England would.

It seems incredible that so absurd a dogma was soberly defended by clear-headed statesmen. Strictly applied, it would require a nation, for the sake of consistency, to submit to wrongs that degrade and ruin her, or enter on a war equally ruinous, from its magnitude, when there was a safe mode of procedure. Besides, all the circumstances pointed out England as our antagonist. She harassed our frontiers—had taken the first step against our commerce, and impressed our seamen. France was guilty only of violating the laws of neutrality, while she always stood pledged to recede from her position, if England would do the same, and finally did recede, leaving no cause for war. The seizures under the Rambouillet decree, were matters for negotiation before a declaration of war could be justified.

As Jefferson was the head of the Democratic party, the Federalists bent all their energies against his administration, and on his retirement transferred their hostility to that of Madison. But the Federalists were not all opposed to the war. The elder Adams, the noblest chief of Federalism, was too clear-headed and high-minded a statesman to let party spirit come between him and his country's good, and he firmly advocated it, which brought down on him the condemnation of many of his friends. Said he—"It is utterly incomprehensible to me that a rational, social, or moral creature can say the war is unjust; how it can be said to be unnecessary is very mysterious. I have thought it both just and necessary for five or six years." His son, John Quincy, deserted the party to uphold the war. On the other hand, many friends of the administration and several members of the cabinet were wholly opposed to it. There seemed to be an awe of England oppressing our older statesmen that rendered them insensible to insult, and willing to see the country the scorn and contempt of the world, for its base submission under the unparalleled indignities heaped upon it, rather than risk a conflict with that strong power. Many of the merchants, also, who saw that their own ruin would inevitably follow hostilities, were averse to it—indeed, the learning and intelligence of the land was against it—but the people of the South and West, between whom and their country's honor and rights selfish interests and bitter party hate did not come, nobly sustained it. The gloomy prospect with which a nation always enters on an unequal war, was in our case saddened by these divided feelings of the people, and by the open animosity of several of the States. In order to paralyze us still more, and render our complete humiliation certain, provided England would strike a bold and decided blow, no preparation had been made for the struggle. Although we had been for many years on the verge of war, we had done comparatively nothing to meet its exigences, but stood and stupidly gazed into its fearful abyss.

The income from the customs, in 1811, was $13,000,000. This, of course, the Government knew would decrease in time of war, as it did, to $9,500,000. Our debt at this period was $45,000,000. Yet a loan of $11,000,000, five millions of Treasury Notes, and the revenue from the imposts, which were doubled, was all the money furnished to carry on a war, which was to cost over thirty millions a year. Congress, however, did, as a last act of wisdom, appropriate $100,000 to the support, expense, exchange, &c., of prisoners of war. The utter blindness which had fallen on the Government was exhibited more fully in its neglect of the Navy. Under the "peace establishment" of 1801, our navy had been reduced, and from that time to 1812, "a period of eleven eventful years, during which the nation was scarcely a day without suffering a violation of its neutral rights, not a single frigate had been added to the navy." Gun-boats had been built for the protection of our harbors, and the marine corps increased by seven hundred men, and $200,000 per annum was appropriated to rebuild three frigates that had been suffered to decay. Beyond this, nothing was done, and with but nine frigates and a few other cruising vessels of less rate, while seven thousand of our merchant ships were scattered over the ocean claiming our protection, we plunged into a war with a nation that had a hundred ships of the line in commission, and more than a thousand vessels of war which bore her flag of defiance over the deep.

Superadded to all, the President, commander-in-chief of the army, was utterly ignorant of war, and by nature and in principle wholly repugnant to it. Conscious of his high and responsible position, he resolved to press it with vigor. But he was unfortunate in his Cabinet. Mr. Monroe, Secretary of State, had seen a little military service, but only in a subordinate capacity. Mr. Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, first opposed the declaration of war, and afterwards insisted that the only hope of the country lay in a speedy peace. Hamilton, Secretary of the Navy, and Eustis, Secretary of War, were both ignorant of the duties of their respective departments. Pinckney, the Attorney-General, shook his head at our prospects, while Gideon Granger, Postmaster-General,[14] openly declared that the war could not but end in failure, while Madison conducted its operations. To complete the climax, a General wholly unfit for his position, was to open the campaign. At this critical juncture, too, we had scarcely any representatives abroad to enlist sympathy with us in our struggle. Mr. Adams had been sent to Russia, and Joel Barlow was our Minister to France. The latter, however, died in Poland a few months after he received the news of our declaration of war, leaving us with scarcely a representative in Europe.

It is not a matter of surprise that such a commencement to the war was disastrous; the wonder is, that five, instead of two years of defeat, were not meted out to us, as a just punishment for such stupidity and neglect. Nothing but the momentous events transpiring in Europe, distracting the attention of England, and rendering the presence of her armies necessary at home, prevented her from striking us a blow, from which it would have taken years to recover. May our Government never be left to try such an experiment again!