Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. Concerning the infallible teaching of the Roman Pontiff: (continued 59)

Goldwin Smith, The United States, chapter 3.

See, also, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803-1804. Federalist Secession movement.

"In the winter … of 1803-4, immediately after, and as a consequence of, the acquisition of Louisiana, certain leaders of the Federal party conceived the project of the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Northern Confederacy. The justifying causes to those who entertained it were, that the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcended the constitutional powers of the government of the United States; that it created, in fact, a new confederacy, to which the States, united by the former compact, were not bound to adhere; that it was oppressive to the interests and destructive to the influence of the Northern section of the Confederacy, whose right and duty it therefore was to secede from the new body politic, and to constitute one of their own. It was lamented that one inevitable consequence of the annexation of Louisiana to the Union would be to diminish the relative weight and influence of the Northern section; that it would aggravate the evil of the slave representation; and endanger the Union itself, by the expansion of its bulk, and the enfeebling extension of its line of de·fence against foreign invasion. A Northern Confederacy was thought to be the only probable counterpoise to the manufacture of new States in the South. This project was quietly and extensively discussed at the time, by the members of Congress from Massachusetts and Connecticut especially. General Hamilton, indeed, was chosen as the person to be placed, at the proper time, at the head of the military movement which, it was foreseen, would be necessary for carrying the plan into execution. He was consulted on the subject; and although it is quite certain that he was opposed to it, he consented to attend a meeting of Federalists in Boston in the autumn of 1804, but his untimely death, in the summer of that year, prevented the meeting. To whatever proportions, however, the project might otherwise have gone, it was checked by the advantage which was evident to all of the securing of so large a domain, by the great desirableness of preventing France from holding the mouth of our great river, and by the settlement of the question of our national boundaries. These considerations gave a quietus for a time to the suggestions of sectional jealousy."

C. F. Robertson, The Louisiana Purchase in its Influence upon the American System (Papers of the American Historical Association, volume 1), pages 262-263.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804. Fifth Presidential Election.

Thomas Jefferson, Democratic Republican, reelected by the vote of 162 Electors in the College, against 14 voting for Charles C. Pinckney, Federalist. George Clinton was chosen Vice President.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1805. Impeachment and trial of Judge Chase.

In the closing hours of the session of Congress which expired March 4, 1803, proceedings of impeachment were begun for the removal from the bench of Judge Pickering, United States District Judge of New Hampshire, who had become mentally incapable of discharging the duties of his office. "By the federalists, the attack on Judge Pickering was taken as the first of a series of impeachments, intended to revolutionize the political character of the courts, but there is nothing to prove that this was then the intent of the majority. The most obnoxious justice on the supreme bench was Samuel Chase of Maryland, whose violence as a political partisan had certainly exposed him to the danger of impeachment; but two years had now passed without producing any sign of an intention to disturb him, and it might be supposed that the administration thus condoned his offences. Unluckily, Judge Chase had not the good taste or the judgment to be quiet. He irritated his enemies by new indiscretions, and on May 13, 1803, nearly three months after Pickering's impeachment, Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Joseph H. Nicholson, suggested that it would be well to take him in hand:—'You must have heard of the extraordinary charge of Chase to the grand jury at Baltimore. Ought this seditious and official attack on the principles of our Constitution and on the proceedings of a State to go unpunished? And to whom so pointedly as yourself will the public look for the necessary measures? I ask these questions for your consideration. As for myself, it is better that I should not interfere.' … Nicholson seems to have passed on to Randolph the charge he had received from the President. … On January 5, 1804, Randolph rose to move for an inquiry into the conduct of Judge Chase. … After a long debate, the inquiry was ordered, and Randolph, with his friend Nicholson, was put at the head of the committee. On March 26, 1804, they reported seven articles of impeachment. … With this the session ended, and the trial went over to the next year. … The impeachment of Justice Chase is a landmark in American history, because it was here that the Jeffersonian republicans fought their last aggressive battle, and, wavering under the shock of defeat, broke into factions which slowly abandoned the field and forgot their discipline. That such a battle must one day be fought for the control of the Judiciary was from the beginning believed by most republicans who understood their own principles. Without controlling the Judiciary, the people could never govern themselves in their own way; and although they might, over and over again, in every form of law and resolution, both state and national, enact and proclaim that theirs was not a despotic but a restricted government, which had no right to exercise powers not delegated to it, and over which they, as States, had absolute control, it was none the less certain that Chief Justice Marshall and his associates would disregard their will, and would impose upon them his own. The people were at the mercy of their creatures. The Constitutions of England, of Massachusetts, of Pennsylvania, authorized the removal of an obnoxious judge on a mere address of the legislature, but the Constitution of the United States had so fenced and fortified the Supreme Court that the legislature, the Executive, the people themselves, could exercise no control over it. {3330} A judge might make any decision, violate any duty, trample on any right, and if he took care to commit no indictable offence he was safe in office for life. On this license the Constitution imposed only one check: it said that all civil officers should be removed from office 'on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.' This right of impeachment was as yet undefined, and if stretched a little beyond strict construction it might easily be converted into something for which it had not been intended. … Judge Chase's offences were serious. The immediate cause of impeachment, his address to the grand jury at Baltimore on the 2d May, 1803, proved that he was not a proper person to be trusted with the interpretation of the laws. In this address he said that those laws were rapidly destroying all protection to property and all security to personal liberty. 'The late alteration of the federal Judiciary,' said he, 'by the abolition of the office of the sixteen circuit judges, and the recent change in our state Constitution by the establishing of universal suffrage, and the further alteration that is contemplated in our state Judiciary, if adopted, will, in my judgment, take away all security for property and personal liberty. The independence of the national Judiciary is already shaken to its foundations, and the virtue of the people alone can restore it.' That by this reference to the virtue of the people he meant to draw a contrast with the want of virtue in their government was made clear by a pointed insult to Mr. Jefferson: 'The modern doctrines by our late reformers, that all men in a state of society are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal rights, have brought this mighty mischief upon us, and I fear that it will rapidly progress until peace and order, freedom and property, shall be destroyed.' … There was gross absurdity in the idea that the people who, by an immense majority, had decided to carry on their government in one way should be forced by one of their own servants to turn about and go in the opposite direction; and the indecorum was greater than the absurdity, for if Judge Chase or any other official held such doctrines, even though he were right, he was bound not to insult officially the people who employed him. On these grounds Mr. Jefferson privately advised the impeachment, and perhaps Randolph might have acted more wisely had he followed Mr. Jefferson's hint to rely on this article alone, which in the end came nearer than any other to securing conviction. … The articles of impeachment which Randolph presented to the House on March 26, 1804, and which were, he claimed, drawn up with his own hand, rested wholly on the theory of Chase's criminality; they contained no suggestion that impeachment was a mere inquest of office. But when Congress met again, and, on December 3, the subject came again before the House, it was noticed that two new articles, the fifth and sixth, had been quietly interpolated, which roused suspicion of a change in Randolph's plan. … No one could doubt that Randolph and his friends, seeing how little their ultimate object would be advanced by a conviction on the old charges, inserted these new articles in order to correct their mistake and to make a foundation for the freer use of impeachment as a political weapon. The behavior of Giles and his friends in the Senate strengthened this suspicion. He made no concealment of his theories, and labored earnestly to prevent the Senate from calling itself a court, or from exercising any functions that belonged to a court of law."

H. Adams, John Randolph, chapters 4-6.

The doctrine of impeachment which Giles (Senator from Virginia) and John Randolph maintained, in connection with the trial of Judge Chase, and which seems to have been acquiesced in by the majority of their party, is reported by John Quincy Adams from a conversation to which he was a listener. In Mr. Adams' Memoirs, under date of December 21, 1804, the incident is related as follows: "There was little business to do [in the Senate], and the adjournment took place early. Sitting by the fireside afterwards, I witnessed a conversation between Mr. Giles and Mr. Israel Smith, on the subject of impeachments; during which Mr. John Randolph came in and took part in the discussion. Giles labored with excessive earnestness to convince Smith of certain principles, upon which not only Mr. Chase, but all the other Judges of the Supreme Court, excepting the one last appointed, must be impeached and removed. He treated with the utmost contempt the idea of an 'independent' judiciary—said there was not a word about such an independence in the Constitution, and that their pretensions to it were nothing more nor less than an attempt to establish an aristocratic despotism in themselves. The power of impeachment was given without limitation to the House of Representatives; the power of trying impeachments was given equally without limitation to the Senate; and if the Judges of the Supreme Court should dare, as they had done, to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional, or to send a mandamus to the Secretary of State, as they had done, it was the undoubted right of the House of Representatives to impeach them, and of the Senate to remove them, for giving such opinions, however honest and sincere they may have been in entertaining them. Impeachment was not a criminal prosecution; it was no prosecution at all. The Senate sitting for the trial of impeachments was not a court, and ought to discard and reject all process of analogy to a court of justice. A trial and removal of a judge upon impeachment need not imply any criminality or corruption in him. Congress had no power over the person, but only over the office. And a removal by impeachment was nothing more than a declaration by Congress to this effect: You hold dangerous opinions, and if you are suffered to carry them into effect you will work the destruction of the nation. We want your offices, for the purpose of giving them to men who will fill them better. In answer to all this, Mr. Smith only contended that honest error of opinion could not, as he conceived, be a subject of impeachment. And in pursuit of this principle he proved clearly enough the persecution and tyranny to which those of Giles and Randolph inevitably lead. It would, he said, establish 'a tyranny over opinions,' and he traced all the arguments of Giles to their only possible issue of rank absurdity. In all this conversation I opened my lips but once, in which I told Giles that I could not assent to his definition of the term impeachment."

J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, edited by C. F. Adams, volume 1, pages 322-323.

{3331}

The trial of Judge Chase was opened on the 9th of February, 1805, and ended on the 23d. By votes ranging from 15 to 34 (the total number of Senators being 34), he was acquitted on each of the charges—a result attributed considerably to the offensive and incapable manner in which the prosecution had been conducted by John Randolph.

J. Schouler, History of the United States, volume 2, page 77.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1805. Expedition of Lewis and Clark across the continent. The first exploration of the Missouri and beyond.

Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark "were the first men to cross the continent in our zone, the truly golden zone. A dozen years before them, Mackenzie had crossed in British dominions far north, but settlements are even now sparse in that parallel. Still earlier had Mexicans traversed the narrowing continent from the Gulf to the Pacific, but seemed to find little worth discovery. It was otherwise in the zone penetrated by Lewis and Clark. There development began at once and is now nowhere surpassed. Along their route ten States, with a census in 1890 of eight and a half millions, have arisen in the wilderness. … The credit of our Great Western discovery is due to Jefferson, though he never crossed the Alleghanies. When Columbus saw the Orinoco rushing into the ocean with irrepressible power and volume, he knew that he had anchored at the mouth of a continental river. So Jefferson, ascertaining that the Missouri, though called a branch, at once changed the color and character of the Mississippi, felt sure that whoever followed it would reach the innermost recesses of our America. Learning afterward that Captain Gray had pushed into the mouth of the Columbia only after nine days' breasting its outward current, he deemed that river a worthy counterpart of the Missouri, and was convinced that their headwaters could not be far apart in longitude. Inaugurated in 1801, before his first Presidential term was half over he had obtained, as a sort of secret-service fund, the small sum which sufficed to fit out the expedition. He had also selected Lewis, his private secretary, for its head, and put him in a course of special training. But the actual voyage up the Missouri, purchased April 30, 1803, was not begun till the middle of May, 1804. Forty-five persons in three boats composed the party. … After 171 days the year's advance ended with October, for the river was ready to freeze. The distance up stream they reckoned at 1,600 miles, or little more than 9 miles a day, a journey now made by railroad in forty-four hours. … Winter quarters were thirty miles above the Bismarck of our day. Here they were frozen in about five months. The huts they built and abundant fuel kept them warm. Thanks to their hunters and Indian traffic, food was seldom scarce. Officials of the Hudson's Bay Company (who had a post within a week's journey) and many inquisitive natives paid them visits. From all these it was their tireless endeavor to learn everything possible concerning the great unknown of the river beyond. Scarcely one could tell about distant places from personal observation, but some second-hand reports were afterward proved strangely accurate, even as to the Great Falls, which turned out to be a thousand miles away. It was not long, however, before they learned that the wife of Chaboneau, whom they had taken as a local interpreter, was a captive whose birth had been in the Rocky Mountains. She, named the Bird-woman, was the only person discoverable after a winter's search who could by possibility serve them as interpreter and guide among the unknown tongues and labyrinthine fastnesses which they must encounter. Early in April, 1805, the explorers, now numbering thirty-two, again began to urge their boats up the river, for their last year's labors had brought them no more than half-way to their first objective, its source. No more Indian purveyors or pilots: their own rifles were the sole reliance for food. Many a wigwam, but no Indian, was espied for four months and four days after they left their winter camp. It was through the great Lone Land that they groped their dark and perilous way. In twenty days after the spring start they arrived at the Yellowstone, and in thirty more they first sighted the Rocky Mountains. Making the portage at the Great Falls cost them a month of vexatious delay. Rowing on another month brought them on August 12 to a point where one of the men stood with one foot each side of the rivulet, and 'thanked God that he had lived to bestride the Missouri, heretofore deemed endless.' They dragged their canoes, however, up the rivulet for five days longer. It was 460 days since they had left the mouth of the river, and their mileage on its waters had been 3,096 miles. A mile further they stood on the great divide, and drank of springs which sent their water to the Pacific. But meantime they had been ready to starve in the mountains. Their hunters were of the best, but they found no game: buffaloes had gone down into the lowlands, the birds of heaven had fled, and edible roots were mostly unknown to them. For more than four months they had looked, and lo! there was no man. It was not till August 13 that, surprising a squaw so encumbered with pappooses that she could not escape, and winning her heart by the gift of a looking-glass and painting her cheeks, they formed friendship with her nation, one of whose chiefs proved to be a brother of their Bird-woman. Horses were about all they could obtain of these natives, streams were too full of rapids to be navigable, or no timber fit for canoes was within reach. So the party, subsisting on horse-flesh, and afterwards on dog-meat, toiled on along one of the worst possible routes. Nor was it till the 7th of October that they were able to embark in logs they had burned hollow, upon a branch of the Columbia, which, after manifold portages and perils, bore them to its mouth and the goal of their pilgrimage, late in November. Its distance from the starting-point, according to their estimate, was 4,134 miles. … Many an episode in this eventful transcontinental march and countermarch will hereafter glorify with romantic associations islands, rivers, rocks, cañons, and mountains all along its track. Among these none can be more touching than the story of the Bird-woman, her divination of routes, her courage when men quailed, her reunion with a long-lost brother, her spreading as good a table with bones as others could with meat, her morsel of bread for an invalid benefactor, her presence with her infant attesting to savages that the expedition could not be hostile. But when bounties in land and money were granted to others, she was unthought of. Statues of her, however, must yet be reared by grateful dwellers in lands she laid open for their happy homes. Western poets will liken her to Ariadne and Beatrice."

The Nation, October 26, 1893 (Reviewing Dr. Coues' edition of "History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark").

{3332}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1805, Jefferson's Plans of National defense. His Gunboat fleet.

Mr. Jefferson's views as to the measures required for national defense, in the disturbed foreign relations of the country, were indicated in his message to Congress, when it assembled in November, 1804, but were afterwards communicated more fully to Mr. Nicholson, of Maryland, chairman of the committee to which the subject was referred. "Concerning fortifications, he remarks that the plans and estimates of those required for our principal harbours, made fifty millions of dollars necessary for their completion. It would require 2,000 men to garrison them in peace, and 50,000 in war. When thus completed and manned, they would avail but little, as all military men agree that when vessels might pass a fort without tacking, though it may annoy, it cannot prevent them. Two modes of effecting the same object might be 'adopted in aid of each other.' 1. Heavy cannon on travelling carriages, with militia trained to the management of them. 2. Floating batteries or gunboats. There were, he estimated, fifteen harbours in the United States needing and deserving defence. They would require 250 gunboats. The cost of these had been estimated at 2,000 dollars each, but he puts it down at 4,000, amounting in all to 1,000,000 dollars. Such of them as were kept under a shelter, ready to be launched, when wanted, would cost nothing more than an inclosure, or sentinel; those that were afloat, with men enough to take care of them, about 2,000 dollars a year each; and those fully manned for action about 8,000 dollars a year. He thought twenty-five of the second description enough, when France and England were at war. When at war ourselves, some of the third description would be required, the precise number depending on circumstances. There were ten then built and building, and fifteen more it was thought would be sufficient to put every harbour into a respectable state of defence. Congress, neither fulfilling the wishes of the President, nor altogether resisting them, gave the President the means of partially trying his favourite scheme, by the appropriation of 60,000 dollars. The sufficiency of this species of naval defence occasioned a good deal of discussion about this time between the opponents and the supporters of the administration. … The scheme was vehemently assailed by his adversaries in every form of argument and ridicule, and was triumphantly adduced as a further proof that he was not a practical statesman. The officers of the navy were believed to be, with scarcely an exception, opposed to the system of gunboats, especially those who were assigned to this service, partly because it was found to be personally very uncomfortable, and yet more, perhaps, because the power they wielded was so inferior, and their command so insignificant, compared with that to which they had been familiarized. It was like compelling a proud man to give up a fine richly caparisoned charger for a pair of panniers and a donkey. To stem the current of public opinion, which so far as it was manifested, set so strong against these gunboats, and to turn it in their favour, Mr. Jefferson prevailed on Paine, who had since his return been addressing the people of the United States on various topics, through the newspapers, to become their advocate. He set about it with his wonted self-confidence and real talent in enforcing his views, and proceeded to show that a gun from a gunboat would do the same execution as from a seventy-four, and cost no more, perhaps less; but a ship carrying seventy-four guns, could bring only one half to bear on an enemy at once, whereas if they were distributed among seventy-four boats, they could all be equally effective at once. In spite of this logic, the public, pinning its faith on experienced men, remained incredulous; and when, soon afterwards, many of the new marine were driven ashore in a tempest, or were otherwise destroyed, no one seemed to regard their loss as a misfortune, and the officers of the navy did not affect to conceal their satisfaction: nor has any attempt been since made to replace them. … The error of Mr. Jefferson was not, as his enemies charged, in adopting a visionary scheme of defence, but in limiting his views from a motive of economy, to the protection of the harbours, and in leaving his country's commerce and seamen, on the ocean, defenceless."

G. Tucker, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, volume 2, chapter 8.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809. Difficulties with Great Britain. Neutral rights. The Right of Search. Impressment. Blockade by Orders in Council and the Berlin and Milan Decrees. Embargo and Non-intercourse.

For a time, after 1803, almost the whole carrying trade of Europe was in American hands. "The merchant flag of every belligerent, save England, disappeared from the sea. France and Holland absolutely ceased to trade under their flags. Spain for a while continued to transport her specie and her bullion in her own ships protected by her men-of-war. But this, too, she soon gave up, and by 1806 the dollars of Mexico and the ingots of Peru were brought to her shores in American bottoms. It was under our flag that the gum trade was carried on with Senegal; that the sugar trade was carried on with Cuba; that coffee was exported from Caracas; and hides and indigo from South America. From Vera Cruz, from Carthagena, from La Plata, from the French colonies in the Antilles, from Cayenne, from Dutch Guiana, from the Isles of France and Reunion, from Batavia and Manilla, great fleets of American merchantmen sailed for the United States, there to neutralize the voyage and then go on to Europe. They filled the warehouses at Cadiz and Antwerp to overflowing. They glutted the markets of Embden and Lisbon, Hamburg and Copenhagen with the produce of the West Indies and the fabrics of the East, and, bringing back the products of the looms and forges of Germany to the New World, drove out the manufactures of Yorkshire, Manchester, and Birmingham. But this splendid trade was already marked for destruction. That Great Britain should long treat it with indifference was impossible. … She determined … to destroy it, and to destroy it in two ways: by paper blockades and by admiralty decisions. In January, 1804, accordingly, Great Britain blockaded the ports of Guadeloupe and Martinique. In April her commander at Jamaica blockaded Curaçoa. In August she extended the blockade to the Straits of Dover and the English Channel."

J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, volume 3, pages 225-226.

{3333}

"It had not yet come to be the acknowledged law of nations that free ships make free goods. But nearly the same purpose was answered, if the property of belligerents could be safely carried in neutral ships under the pretense of being owned by neutrals. The products of the French colonies, for example, could be loaded on board of American vessels, taken to the United States and reshipped there for France as American property. England looked upon this as an evasion of the recognized public law that property of belligerents was good prize. … It was denied that neutrals could take advantage of a state of war to enter upon a trade which had not existed in time of peace; and American ships were seized on the high seas, taken into port, and condemned in the Admiralty Courts for carrying enemy's goods in such a trade. The exercise of that right, if it were one by the recognized law of nations, would be of great injury to American commerce, unless it could be successfully resisted. … A war with England must be a naval war; and the United States not only had no navy of any consequence, but it was a part of Mr. Jefferson's policy, in contrast with the policy of the preceding administrations, that there should be none, except … gunboats kept on wheels and under cover in readiness to repel an invasion. But there was no fear of invasion, for by that England could gain nothing. 'She is renewing,' Madison wrote in the autumn of 1805, 'her depredations on our commerce in the most ruinous shapes, and has kindled a more general indignation among our merchants than was ever before expressed.' These depredations were not confined to the seizing and confiscating American ships under the pretense that their cargoes were contraband. Seamen were taken out of them on the charge of being British subjects and deserters, not only on the high seas in larger numbers than ever before, but within the waters of the United States. No doubt these seamen were often British subjects and their seizure was justifiable, provided England could rightfully extend to all parts of the globe and to the ships of all nations the merciless system of impressment to which her own people were compelled to submit at home. … But even if it could be granted that English naval officers might seize such men without recourse to law, wherever they should be found and without respect for the flag of another nation, it was a national insult and outrage, calling for resentment and resistance, to impress American citizens under the pretense that they were British subjects. But what was the remedy? As a last resort in such cases, nations have but one. Diplomacy and legislation may be first tried, but if these fail, war must be the final ordeal. For this the Administration made no preparation, and the more evident the unreadiness the less was the chance of redress in any other way. … The first measure adopted to meet the aggressions of the English was an act prohibiting the importation of certain British products. This had always been a favorite policy with Madison. … The President and Secretary were in perfect accord; for Jefferson preferred anything to war, and Madison was persuaded that England would be brought to terms by the loss of the best market for her manufactures. … But the Administration did not rely upon legislation alone in this emergency. The President followed up the act prohibiting the introduction of British goods by sending William Pinkney to England in the spring of 1806, to join Monroe, the resident minister, in an attempt at negotiation. These commissioners soon wrote that there was good reason for hoping that a treaty would be concluded, and thereupon the non-importation act was for a time suspended. In December came the news that a treaty was agreed upon, and soon after it was received by the President. … Monroe and Pinkney were enjoined, in tho instructions written by the Secretary of State, to make the abandonment of impressment the first condition of a treaty. A treaty, nevertheless, was agreed upon, without this provision. … Without consulting the Senate, though Congress was in session when the treaty was received, and although the Senate had been previously informed that one had been agreed upon, the President rejected it. … As England's need of seamen increased, the captains of her cruisers, encouraged by the failure of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling American ships. … In the summer of 1807 an outrage was perpetrated on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize the contempt with which a nation must be looked upon which only screamed like a woman at wrongs which it wanted the courage and strength to resent, or the wisdom to compound for. The Chesapeake was followed out of the harbor of Norfolk by the British man-of-war Leopard, and when a few miles at sea, the Chesapeake being brought to under the pretense that the English captain wished to put some dispatches on board for Europe, a demand was made for certain deserters supposed to be on the American frigate. Commodore Barron replied that he knew of no deserters on his ship, and that he could permit no search to be made, even if there were. After some further altercation the Englishman fired a broadside, killing and wounding a number of the Chesapeake's crew. Commodore Barron could do nothing else but surrender, for he had only a single gun in readiness for use, and that was fired only once and then with a coal from the cook's galley. The ship was then boarded, the crew mustered, and four men arrested as deserters. Three of them were negroes,—two natives of the United States, the other of South America. The fourth man, probably, was an Englishman. … For this direct national insult, explanation, apology, and reparation were demanded, and at the same time the President put forth a proclamation forbidding all British ships of war to remain in American waters. … Some preparation was made for war, but it was only to call upon the militia to be in readiness, and to order Mr. Jefferson's gunboats to the most exposed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed. The captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed from his command, as having exceeded his duty; but a proclamation on that side was also issued, requiring all ships of war to seize British seamen on board foreign merchantmen, to demand them from foreign ships of war, and if the demand was refused to report the fact to the admiral of the fleet. … New perils all the while were besetting American commerce. {3334} In November, 1806, Napoleon's Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the introduction into France of the products of Great Britain and her colonies, whether in her own ships or those of other nations. … The decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation of a British order in council of six months before, which had established a partial blockade of a portion of the French coast. … In the autumn of 1807 [the President] called a special session of Congress. … He sent a special message to the Senate, recommending an embargo. An act was almost immediately passed, which, if anything more was needed to complete the ruin of American commerce, supplied that deficiency. A month before this time the English ministry had issued a new order in council—the news of which reached Jefferson as he was about to send in his message—proclaiming a blockade of pretty much all Europe, and forbidding any trade in neutral vessels, unless they had first gone into some British port and paid duties on their cargoes; and within 24 hours of the President's message, recommending the embargo, Napoleon proclaimed a new decree from Milan, by which it was declared that any ship was lawful prize that had anything whatever to do with Great Britain. … Within four months of its enactment, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared, in a debate in Congress, that 'an experiment, such as is now making, was never before—I will not say tried—it never before entered into the human imagination. There is nothing like it in the narrations of history or in the tales of fiction.' … The prosperity and tranquillity which marked the earlier years of Jefferson's administration disappeared in its last year. … The mischievous results of the embargo policy were evident enough to a sufficient number of Republicans to secure, in February, 1809, the repeal [by the Non-intercourse Bill] of that measure, to take effect the next month as to all countries except England and France."

S. H. Gay, James Madison, chapter 17.

The Non-intercourse Bill which repealed the general provisions of the Embargo Act "excluded all public and private vessels of France and England from American waters; forbade under severe penalties the importation of British or French goods; … and gave the President authority to reopen by proclamation the trade with France or England in case either of these countries should cease to violate neutral rights. … Such a non-intercourse merely sanctioned smuggling."

H. Adams, History of the United States: Second Administration of Jefferson, volume 2, page 445.

ALSO IN: H. S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, volume 3, chapters 3-7.

E. Schuyler, American Diplomacy, chapters 5 and 7.

A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution, chapters 17-18 (volume 2).

F. Wharton, Digest of the International Law of the United States, chapters 7, 16, and 21 (volume 2-3).

See, also, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1803; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812, and FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1806-1807. Aaron Burr's filibustering scheme. His arrest and trial.

Aaron Burr had been chosen vice-president in 1800. But he had lost all his friends in both parties in the election. In the course of a bitter political quarrel in New York, in 1804, he challenged Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton was mad enough to accept the challenge and was killed. Burr, "after his duel with General Hamilton, and after the term of his office as vice-president had expired, … seemed to be left alone, and abandoned by all political parties. The state of public feeling in New York was such, after the death of Hamilton, that his presence in that city could not be endured. In New Jersey he had been indicted by a grand jury for murder. Thus situated, his ambitious, active and restless spirit rendered his condition intolerable to himself. On the 22nd March, but a few days after he left forever the presidency of the United States senate, he wrote to his son-in-law, Mr. Joseph Alston, that he 'was under ostracism. In New York,' said he, 'I am to be disfranchised, and in New Jersey to be hanged. Having substantial objections to both, I shall not, for the present, hazard either, but shall seek another country.' Accordingly, early in May, he left Philadelphia for the western country, and arrived at Lexington, in Kentucky, on the 20th of that month. After travelling with great rapidity through that state, he directed his course to Nashville, in Tennessee, and from thence he journied through the woods to Natchez. From Natchez he went by land to New Orleans, where he arrived on the 25th June, 1805. At that time, General Wilkinson was in that city, or in its neighborhood, and commanded the United States troops stationed there. It does not appear that he remained long in New Orleans, but soon again returned to Lexington, in Kentucky, by the way of Nashville. He was at Cincinnati, and at several places in Ohio, but in a very short time made his appearance at St. Louis, in Missouri, and from thence he travelled to Washington, at which place he arrived on the 29th day of November. These immense journies he performed in a little more than six months; before the great western rivers were rendered navigable by steam, and when the roads were badly constructed; and through a considerable part of the country traversed by him there were no roads at all. His movements were veiled in mystery, and all men wondered what could be the motive which induced these extraordinary journies. From January, 1806, to the month of August following, he spent his time principally in Washington and Philadelphia; but, in the month of August, he again set his face towards the west, and was soon afterwards found in Kentucky. About this time boats were provided, provisions and munitions of war were collected, and men were gathering at different points on the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. Government now began to be alarmed. Mr. Tiffin, governor of Ohio, under the advice of the president (Jefferson), seized the boats and their cargo, and Burr was arrested in Kentucky; but no sufficient proof appearing against him he was discharged. On the 23d January, 1807, Mr. Jefferson sent a message to congress, accompanied by several affidavits, in which he gave the history of Burr's transactions, so far as they had come to the knowledge of the administration. The message stated that, on the 21st of October, General Wilkinson wrote to the president that, from a letter he had received from Burr, he had ascertained that his objects were, a severance of the union on the line of the Allegany mountains, an attack upon Mexico, and the establishment of an independent government in Mexico, of which Burr was to be the head. That to cover his movements, he had purchased, or pretended to have purchased, of one Lynch, a tract of country claimed by Baron Bastiop, lying near Natchitoches, on which he proposed to make a settlement. {3335} That he had found, by the proceedings of the governor and people of Ohio and Kentucky, that the western people were not prepared to join him; but notwithstanding, there was reason to believe that he intended, with what force he could collect, to attack New Orleans, get the control of the funds of the bank, seize upon the military and naval stores which might be found there, and then proceed against Mexico. The president assured congress that there was no reason to apprehend that any foreign power would aid Colonel Burr. A considerable part of the evidence going to show that Burr entertained criminal designs, depended on the affidavit of Wilkinson. It is not my intention to examine into the proofs of the guilt or innocence of Burr, further than to remark, that from the character of the vain, vaporing and unprincipled Wilkinson, as before and since developed, no dependence can safely be placed upon his statements, unless supported by strong circumstances, or other evidence; and I believe it will not at this day be doubted, that if Burr plotted treason, Wilkinson, in the first instance, agreed to be his accomplice; that, as their operations progressed, he began seriously to doubt of success, and then communicated his knowledge of the affair to the government, in order to save himself, and perhaps obtain a reward. … That Burr himself was deceived by Wilkinson, there can be no doubt. … But there was other evidence besides that of Wilkinson, against Burr, which has never been explained. … If his object was merely an attack upon Mexico, why did he not openly avow it, when charged and indicted for treason against his country? … Again, unless Colonel William Eaton, the man who had then recently so gallantly distinguished himself on the Barbary coasts, has perjured himself, Burr did form a treasonable plot against his country. Colonel Eaton, on the 26th January, deposed, in open court, held before Judge Cranch and others, at Washington, that during the preceding winter (1806), Burr called upon him, and, in the first instance, represented that he was employed by the government to raise a military force to attack the Spanish Provinces in North America, and invited Eaton to take a command in the expedition; that Eaton, being a restless, enterprising man, readily acceded to the proposal; that Burr made frequent calls upon him, and in his subsequent interviews complained of the inefficiency and timidity of the government, and, eventually, fully developed his project; which was to separate the western states from the union, and establish himself as sovereign of the country. … Burr did not succeed in collecting and organizing a force on the western waters; but, on the 1st day of March, he was discovered wandering alone in the Tombigbee country, near the line of Florida. … The trial of the indictment against Burr, for treason, occupied many weeks, but he was finally acquitted by the jury, without swearing any witness in his defence. The acquittal seems to have been on technical grounds. … After his acquittal, Colonel Burr appears still to have persevered in the project of making an effort to detach Mexico from the Spanish government. On the 7th of June, 1808, he sailed from New York for Europe, it would seem in the hope of engaging the British government to fit out an expedition against Mexico, in which he would take a part. In this he was entirely unsuccessful. His application to the French government was equally vain and useless. He spent four years wandering about in Europe."

J. D. Hammond, History of Political Parties in the State of New York, chapter 12 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: W. H. Safford, The Blennerhassett Papers, chapters 6-15.

M. L. Davis, Memoirs of Burr, volume 2, chapters 17-20.

J. Parton, Life of Burr, chapters 21-26 (volume 2).

H. Adams, History of the United States: Second Administration of Jefferson, volume 1, chapters 10-14 and 19.

D. Robertson, Report of Trials of Burr.

See BLENNERHASSETT'S ISLAND.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1806-1812. The Cumberland Road. The first National work of "Internal Improvement."

"In 1806 the United States began the Cumberland Road, its first work of the kind; but it was intended to open up the public lands in Ohio and the country west, and was nominally paid for out of the proceeds of those public lands. Just as the embargo policy was taking effect, Gallatin, encouraged by the accumulation of a surplus in the Treasury, brought in a report, April 4, 1808, suggesting the construction of a great system of internal improvements: it was to include coastwise canals across the isthmuses of Cape Cod, New Jersey, upper Delaware and eastern North Carolina; roads were to be constructed from Maine to Georgia, and thence to New Orleans, and from Washington westward to Detroit and St. Louis. He estimated the cost at twenty millions, to be provided in ten annual instalments. Jefferson himself was so carried away with this prospect of public improvement that he recommended a constitutional amendment to authorize such expenditures. The whole scheme disappeared when the surplus vanished; but from year to year small appropriations were made for the Cumberland Road, so that up to 1812 more than $200,000 had been expended upon it."

A. B. Hart, Formation of the Union (Epochs of American History), section 121.

"The Cumberland Road was always a pet enterprise with Mr. Clay. … Its eastern terminus was Cumberland on the Potomac, from which it takes its name. Thence it was projected to Wheeling on the Ohio, crossing the Alleganies; from Wheeling to Columbus, Ohio; and thence westward through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, to Jefferson, the capital of the latter State. … After Mr. Clay went to Congress in 1806, and while he was there, this great national work required and realized his constant attention and zealous advocacy. It was owing to his exertions chiefly that it ever reached Wheeling, and passed on so far into the State of Ohio. The last appropriations made for this road were in 1834 and 1835, with a view of repairing it, and giving it over to the States through which it passed, if they would accept it, and keep it in repair."

C. Colton, Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Henry Clay, volume 6, page 7.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1807. Practical beginning of steam-boat navigation.

See STEAM NAVIGATION.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1807. Abolition of the Slave-Trade. The measure in Congress. Significance of Southern action.

By the terms of the Constitution, Congress was deprived of power to interfere with the importation of slaves before the year 1808, but no longer. The time now approached when that restraint would cease, and the President in his annual message brought the subject to notice. {3336} "It was referred to a committee of which Mr. Early of Georgia was the chairman. There was no difference of opinion as to the prohibition of the traffic, or at least no expression of any; but the practical details of the law, the penalties by which it was to be enforced, and, above all, the disposition to be made of such negroes as might be brought into the country in violation of it, gave rise to violent and excited debates. The committee reported a law prohibiting the slave-trade after the 31st of December, 1807, imposing certain penalties for its breach, and providing that all negroes imported after that date should be forfeited. The object of this provision undoubtedly was to obtain directly what the Constitution only gave indirectly and by implication,—the sanction of the government of the United States to the principle of slave-holding, by making it hold and sell men as property. The astuteness of the slave-holding mind on all points touching slavery was shown in this proposition, and all the tactics of bullying and bluster with which later Congressional campaigns have made us familiar, were employed in the debate to which it gave rise. It having been moved that the words 'shall be entitled to his or her freedom' should be inserted after the word 'forfeited,' a furious fight ensued over this amendment. The Southern members resisted it, on the ground that the emancipation of the imported Africans would increase the number of free negroes, who, as Mr. Early affirmed, 'were considered in the States where they are found in considerable numbers as instruments of murder, theft, and conflagration.' And so craftily was this proposition of forfeiture to the government qualified, that its drift was not at first discerned by the Northern members. For, strong as was their disapprobation of slavery in the abstract, they felt no disposition to expose their Southern brethren to all the horrors of insurrection which it was assumed would follow the multiplication of free negroes. Indeed, Mr. Early candidly said, that, if these negroes were left free in the Southern States, not one of them would be alive in a year. And although the Federalists as a party, and Mr. Quincy eminently among them, regarded the political element of slavery as full of dangers to the future of the nation, these opinions had worked no personal and social alienation between Northern and Southern men, such as has since taken place. … There was, therefore, quite disposition enough to arrange this matter in the way the most satisfactory to the masters, without so rigid a regard to the rights of the negroes as, it is to be hoped, would have been had in later times. Mr. Quincy at first opposed striking out the forfeiture clause, on the ground that this was the only way in which the United States could get the control of the Africans, so as to dispose of them in the manner most for their own interest. … These views influenced a majority of the Northern members until the question of the final passage of the bill approached. At last they came to a sense of the disgrace which the forfeiture of the negroes to the government, and the permission to it to sell them as slaves if it so pleased, would bring upon the nation, and the whole matter was recommitted to a committee of one from each State. … This committee reported a bill providing that such imported negroes should be sent to such States as had abolished slavery, there to be bound out as apprentices for a term of years, at the expiration of which they should be free. This bill produced a scene of great and violent excitement on the part of the slaveholders. Mr. Early declared that the people of the South would resist this provision with their lives! This resistance to a measure which proposed doing all the slaveholders had demanded for their own safety, to wit, removing the imported negroes from the slaveholding domain and providing for them in the Free States, showed that their purpose was, at least in part, to have the negroes sold as slaves to themselves. This object they did virtually gain at last, as the final settlement was by a bill originating in the Senate, providing that, though neither importer nor purchaser should have a title to such negroes, still the negroes should be subject to any regulation for their disposal that should be made by the States into which they might be brought. The design of the slaveholding party to make the United States recognize the rightfulness of property in man was thus avoided, but it was at the cost of leaving the imported Africans to the tender mercies of the Slave States. The fact that the slaveholders were greatly incensed at the result, and regarded it as an injury and an affront, does not make this disposition of these unfortunates any the less discreditable to Congress or the nation."

E. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, chapter 5.

See, also, SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1792-1807.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1808. The effects of the Embargo.

"The dread of war, radical in the Republican theory, sprang not so much from the supposed waste of life or resources as from the retroactive effects which war must exert upon the form of government; but the experience of a few months showed that the embargo as a system was rapidly leading to the same effects. … Personal liberties and rights of property were more directly curtailed in the United States by embargo than in Great Britain by centuries of almost continuous foreign war. … While the constitutional cost of the two systems was not altogether unlike, the economical cost was a point not easily settled. No one could say what might be the financial expense of embargo as compared with war. Yet Jefferson himself in the end admitted that the embargo had no claim to respect as an economical measure. … As the order was carried along the seacoast, every artisan dropped his tools, every merchant closed his doors, every ship was dismantled. American produce—wheat, timber, cotton, tobacco, rice—dropped in value or became unsalable; every imported article rose in price; wages stopped; swarms of debtors became bankrupt; thousands of sailors hung idle round the wharves trying to find employment on coasters, and escape to the West Indies or Nova Scotia. A reign of idleness began; and the men who were not already ruined felt that their ruin was only a matter of time. The British traveller, Lambert, who visited New York in 1808, described it as resembling a place ravaged by pestilence:—'The port indeed was full of shipping, but they were dismantled and laid up; their decks were cleared, their hatches fastened down, and scarcely a sailor was to be found on board. Not a box, bale, cask, barrel, or package was to be seen upon the wharves.' … In New England, where the struggle of existence was keenest, the embargo struck like a thunderbolt, and society for a moment thought itself at an end. {3337} Foreign commerce and shipping were the life of the people, —the ocean, as Pickering said, was their farm. The outcry of suffering interests became every day more violent, as the public learned that this paralysis was not a matter of weeks, but of months or years. … The belief that Jefferson, sold to France, wished to destroy American commerce and to strike a deadly blow at New and Old England at once, maddened the sensitive temper of the people. Immense losses, sweeping away their savings and spreading bankruptcy through every village, gave ample cause for their complaints. Yet in truth, New England was better able to defy the embargo than she was willing to suppose. She lost nothing except profits which the belligerents had in any case confiscated; her timber would not harm for keeping, and her fish were safe in the ocean. The embargo gave her almost a monopoly of the American market for domestic manufactures; no part of the country was so well situated or so well equipped for smuggling. … The growers of wheat and live stock in the Middle States were more hardly treated. Their wheat, reduced in value from two dollars to seventy-five cents a bushel, became practically unsalable. … The manufacturers of Pennsylvania could not but feel the stimulus of the new demand; so violent a system of protection was never applied to them before or since. Probably for that reason the embargo was not so unpopular in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, and Jefferson had nothing to fear from political revolution in this calm and plodding community. The true burden of the embargo fell on the Southern States, but most severely upon the great State of Virginia. Slowly decaying, but still half patriarchal, Virginia society could neither economize nor liquidate. Tobacco was worthless; but 400,000 negro slaves must be clothed and fed, great establishments must be kept up, the social scale of living could not be reduced, and even could not clear a large landed estate without creating new encumbrances in a country bankruptcy where land and negroes were the only forms of property on which money could be raised. Stay-laws were tried, but served only to prolong the agony. With astonishing rapidity Virginia succumbed to ruin, while continuing to support the system that was draining her strength."

H. Adams, History of the United States: Second Administration of Jefferson, volume 2, chapter 12.

"'Our passion,' said Jefferson, 'is peace.' He not only recoiled as a philanthropist from bloodshed, but as a politician he with reason dreaded military propensities and sabre sway. Such preparations for war as he could be induced to make were scrupulously defensive, and his fleet of gun-boats for the protection of the coast to be launched when the invader should appear excited a smile. Alone among all statesmen he tried to make war without bloodshed by means of an embargo on trade. … It is not the highest of his titles to fame in the eyes of his countrymen, but it may be not the lowest in the court of humanity, that he sacrificed his popularity in the attempt to find a bloodless substitute for war. His memory recovered from the shock and his reign over American opinion endured."

Goldwin Smith, The United States: An outline of Political History, 1492-1871, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: H. A. Hill, Trade and Commerce of Boston, 1780-1880 (Memorial History of Boston, volume 4, part 2, chapter 8).

E. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, chapters 6-7.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1808. Sixth Presidential Election. Jefferson succeeded by Madison.

"In anticipation of Jefferson's retirement there had been … no little dispute and lively canvassing as to the next incumbency of the presidential chair. … Upon Madison, it was generally considered that Jefferson had fixed his personal preference. … But Madison had many political enemies in the Republican ranks among Virginians themselves. … Monroe was the growing favorite. Republicans in Congress, who, from one cause or another, had become disaffected to the Secretary of State, made their new choice manifest. The Quids [see QUIDS], having courted Monroe by letter when he was abroad, crowded about him when he passed through Washington on his way home, just as the Embargo became a law. … Monroe hesitated, unwilling to make a breach; and rather than hazard the Republican cause, or the future prospects of their favorite, his more temperate friends took him off the list of candidates, so that at the usual Congressional caucus, held at the capital, Madison was nominated almost unanimously for President, and George Clinton for Vice-President. But out of 139 Republican Senators and Representatives only 89 were present at this caucus, some being sick or absent from the city, and others keeping away because dissatisfied. Clinton had been a disappointed candidate, as well as Monroe, for the highest honors. … His ambition was pursued beyond the caucus, notwithstanding his renomination as Vice-President, until the friends of Madison, who had profited by the diversion among competitors, threatened to drop Clinton from the regular ticket unless he relinquished his pretensions to a higher place than that already assigned him. Meantime the schismatic Republicans had united in protesting to the country against Congressional dictation, at the same time pronouncing that the caucus which had nominated Madison was irregularly held. This open letter was signed by 17 Republican members of Congress. … Unfortunately for their influence in the canvass, however, they could not agree as to whether Monroe or Clinton should head the ticket. Objectionable, moreover, as the Congressional caucus might be, many more Presidential terms elapsed before other nominating machinery superseded it. National delegates, the national congress or convention of a party, was an idea too huge as yet for American politics to grasp in these days of plain frugality. … Harassed with foes within and without, with dissensions among the friends of rival candidates for the succession, with an odious and profitless measure to execute, against which citizens employed both cunning and force, it seemed, at one time, as if the administration party would go down in the fall elections. But Jefferson's wonderful popularity and the buoyancy of Republican principles carried the day. The regular Presidential ticket prevailed, not without a diminished majority."

J. Schouler, History of the United States, chapter 6, section 2 (volume 2).

James Madison, Democratic Republican, was elected, receiving 122 votes in the Electoral College; George Clinton, of the same party, receiving 6, and Charles C. Pinckney, Federalist, 47. George Clinton was chosen Vice President.

{3338}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1808-1810. Substitution of Non-intercourse for Embargo. Delusive conduct of Napoleon.

"All through the year 1808 and the first two months of 1809, the heavy hand of the embargo was laid on American commerce. The close of Jefferson's administration was signalized by an important change in the policy of the American Government. Almost the last act which Jefferson performed as President was to sign the new law which repealed the embargo, and substituted non-intercourse—a law which instead of universal prohibition of trade, merely prohibited commerce with Great Britain and with the countries under French control. The statute further authorized the President to suspend this prohibition as to either Great Britain or France as soon as one or the other should desist from violating neutral rights. An excuse for renewing commercial relations was not long delayed. On April 21, 1809, immediately upon the rather unexpected conclusion of a liberal and satisfactory diplomatic arrangement with Erskine, the British minister in Washington, the non-intercourse act was suspended as to Great Britain; and foreign trade, long dormant, suddenly sprang into excessive activity. This happy truce was short-lived. Erskine had effected his arrangement by a deliberate and almost defiant disregard of Canning's instructions; and his acts were promptly disavowed by his government. His recall was followed by a renewal of non-intercourse under a presidential proclamation of August 9, 1809. But notwithstanding the disavowal of Erskine, the British Government had made an apparent concession to the United States by the adoption of new orders in council which revoked the stringent prohibitions of the orders of 1807, and substituted a paper blockade of all ports and places under the government of France—a distinction which, on the whole, was perhaps without any important difference. France, on the other hand, entered upon a course of further aggressions. Louis Bonaparte was driven from his kingdom of Holland because he refused to attack neutral commerce, and all American ships found lying at Amsterdam were seized. Finally, by the decree of Rambouillet, every American ship found in any French port was confiscated and ordered sold. England and the United States thus seemed for the moment to be slowly drawing together in the presence of a common enemy, when suddenly the whole situation of affairs was changed by the formal announcement on August 5, 1810, of the Emperor's intended revocation of the decrees of Berlin and Milan, such revocation to take place on the first day of the following November, provided the British Government revoked their orders in council, or (and this was the important provision) the United States caused their rights to be respected. This promise, as Napoleon had privately pointed out a few days before, committed him to nothing; but it was accepted with all seriousness on the part of the United States. In reliance upon the imperial word, commercial intercourse with Great Britain—which had been once more resumed in May, 1810—was for the third time suspended. This, it was thought, was 'causing American rights to be respected'; and although the condemnation of American ships went on without a pause in every continental port, the Government of the United States clung with the strongest pertinacity to the belief that Napoleon's declarations were sincere. The practical effect of all this was to bar the door against any possible settlement with Great Britain. Commerce was now permanently suspended; there was a long list of grievances to be redressed, and negotiation was exhausted."

G. L. Rives, editor, Selections from the Correspondence of Thomas Barclay, chapter 6.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1810. The Third Census.

Total population, 7,215,791 (being an increase of nearly 36½ per cent. over the population shown in 1800), classed and distributed as follows:

North.

White. Free black. Slave. Connecticut. 255,279 6,453 310 Illinois. 11,501 613 168 Indiana. 23,890 393 237 Maine. 227,736 969 0 Massachusetts. 465,303 6,737 0 Michigan. 4,618 120 24 New Hampshire. 213,390 970 0 New Jersey. 226,861 7,843 10,851 New York. 918,699 25,333 15,017 Ohio. 228,861 1,899 0 Pennsylvania. 786,804 22,492 795 Rhode Island. 73,314 3,609 108 Vermont. 216,963 750 0 ———- ——— ——— Total 3,653,219 78,181 27,510

South.

White. Free black. Slave. Delaware. 55,361 13,136 4,177 District of Columbia. 16,079 2,549 5,395 Georgia. 145,414 1,801 105,218 Kentucky. 324,237 1,713 80,561 Louisiana. 34,311 7,585 34,660 Maryland. 235,117 33,927 111,502 Mississippi. 23,024 240 17,088 Missouri. 17,227 607 3,011 North Carolina. 376,410 10,266 168,824 South Carolina. 214,196 4,554 196,365 Tennessee. 215,875 1,317 44,535 Virginia. 551,534 30,570 392,518 ———- ———- ———- 2,208,785 108,265 1,163,854

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1810-1812. Continued provocation from England and France. The "War of 1812" against Great Britain declared.

"Congress, on May 1, 1810, passed an act providing that commercial non-intercourse with the belligerent powers should cease with the end of the session, only armed ships being excluded from American ports; and further, that, in case either of them should recall its obnoxious orders or decrees, the President should announce the fact by proclamation, and if the other did not do the same within three months, the non-intercourse act should be revived against that one,—a measure adopted only because Congress, in its helplessness, did not know what else to do. The conduct of France had meanwhile been no less offensive than that of Great Britain. On all sorts of pretexts American ships were seized in the harbors and waters controlled by French power. A spirited remonstrance on the part of Armstrong, the American Minister, was answered by the issue of the Rambouillet Decree in May, 1810, ordering the sale of American vessels and cargoes seized, and directing like confiscation of all American vessels entering any ports under the control of France. {3339} This decree was designed to stop the surreptitious trade that was still being carried on between England and the continent in American bottoms. When it failed in accomplishing that end, Napoleon instructed his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Champagny, to inform the American Minister that the Berlin and Milan Decrees were revoked, and would cease to have effect on November 1, 1810, if the English would revoke their Orders in Council, and recall their new principles of blockade, or if the United States would 'cause their rights to be respected by the English,'—in the first place restore the non-intercourse act as to Great Britain. … The British government, being notified of this by the American Minister, declared on September 29 that Great Britain would recall the Orders in Council when the revocation of the French decrees should have actually taken effect, and the commerce of neutrals should have been restored. … Madison, … leaning toward France, as was traditional with the Republican party, and glad to grasp even at the semblance of an advantage, chose to regard the withdrawal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees as actual and done in good faith, and announced it as a matter of fact on November 1, 1810. French armed ships were no longer excluded from American ports. On February 2, 1811, the non-importation act was revived as to Great Britain. In May the British Court of Admiralty delivered an opinion that no evidence existed of the withdrawal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, which resulted in the condemnation of a number of American vessels and their cargoes. Additional irritation was caused by the capture, off Sandy Hook, of an American vessel bound to France, by some fresh cases of search and impressment, and by an encounter between the American frigate President and the British sloop Little Belt, which fired into one another, the British vessel suffering most. But was American commerce safe in French ports? By no means. … Outrages on American ships by French men-of-war and privateers went on as before, … The pretended French concession was, therefore, a mere farce. Truly, there were American grievances enough. Over 900 American ships had been seized by the British, and more than 550 by the French. … By both belligerents the United States had been kicked and cuffed like a mere interloper among the nations of the earth, who had no rights entitled to respectful consideration. Their insolence seemed to have been increased by the irresolution of the American government, the distraction of counsel in Congress, and the division of sentiment among the people. … But … young Republican leaders came to the front to interpret the 'national spirit and expectation.' They totally eclipsed the old chiefs by their dash and brilliancy. Foremost among them stood Henry Clay; then John C. Calhoun, William Lowndes, Felix Grundy, Langdon Cheves, and others. They believed that, if the American Republic was to maintain anything like the dignity of an independent power, and to preserve, or rather, regain, the respect of mankind in any degree,—ay, its self-respect,—it must cease to submit to humiliation and contemptuous treatment; it must fight,—fight somebody who had wronged or insulted it. The Republicans having always a tender side for France, and the fiction of French concessions being accepted, the theory of the war party was that, of the two belligerents, England had more insolently maltreated the United States. Rumors were spread that an Indian war then going on, and resulting in the battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811, was owing to English intrigues. Adding this to the old Revolutionary reminiscences of British oppression, it was not unnatural that the national wrath should generally turn against Great Britain. … Not only the regular army was increased, but the President was authorized to accept and employ 50,000 volunteers. Then a bill was introduced providing for the building of ten new frigates. … The war spirit in the country gradually rose, and manifested itself noisily in public meetings, passing resolutions, and memorializing Congress. It was increased in intensity by a sensational 'exposure,' a batch of papers laid before Congress by the President in March, 1812. They had been sold to the government by John Henry, an Irish adventurer, and disclosed a confidential mission to New England, undertaken by Henry in 1809 at the request of Sir James Craig, the governor of Canada, to encourage a disunion movement in the Eastern States. This was the story. Whatever its foundation, it was believed, and greatly increased popular excitement." On the 4th of April the President signed a bill laying an embargo on commerce with Great Britain for ninety days. "All over the country the embargo was understood as meaning an immediate preparation for war. … In May, 1812, President Madison was nominated for reelection by the congressional caucus. It has been said that he was dragooned into the war policy by Clay and his followers with the threat that, unless he yielded to their views, another candidate for the presidency would be chosen. This Clay denied, and there was no evidence to discredit his denial. Madison was simply swept into the current by the impetuosity of Young America. … On June 1 the President's war message came. On June 18 a bill in accordance with it, which had passed both Houses, was signed by the President, who proclaimed hostilities the next day. Thus Young America, led by Henry Clay, carried their point. But there was something disquieting in their victory. The majority they commanded in Congress was not so large as a majority for a declaration of war should be. In the House, Pennsylvania and the states south and west of it gave 62 votes for the war, and 32 against it; the states north and east of Pennsylvania gave 17 yeas and 32 nays,—in all 79 for and 49 against war. This showed a difference of sentiment according to geographical divisions. Not even all the Republicans were in favor of war. … Nor were the United States in any sense well prepared for a war with a first-class power."

C. Schurz, Life of Henry Clay, volume 1, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: S. Perkins, History of the Late War, chapters 1-2.

C. J. Ingersoll, Historical Sketch of the Second War between the United States and Great Britain, volume 1, chapter 1.

E. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, chapters 9-12.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1811. Refusal to re-charter the Bank of the United States.

See MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1791-1816.

{3340}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1811. General Harrison's campaign against Tecumseh and his league. The Battle of Tippecanoe.

"During the interval between the Tripolitan war and the war of 1812, one noticeable campaign was made against the Indians. The operation took place in 1811, under General William H. Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, and was directed against the Shawnees and other tribes which adhered to Tecumseh. This chief, with his brother, known as 'the Prophet,' had been engaged since 1806 in planning a species of crusade against the whites, and had acquired great influence among the northwestern Indians. For the previous two years Harrison's suspicions had been aroused by reports of Tecumseh's intrigues, and attempts had been made from time to time to negotiate with him, but without satisfactory results. In the summer of 1811 it was decided to strike a decisive blow at the Indians, and in the autumn Harrison, with a regiment of regulars under Colonel Boyd, and a force of militia, marched upon Tecumseh's town, situated on the Tippecanoe River. On the 7th of November the Indians, in Tecumseh's absence, attempted to surprise Harrison's camp, but in the battle which followed they were driven off, and presently abandoned their town, which Harrison burned. The invading force then retired. The importance of the expedition was largely due to the military reputation which Harrison acquired by it."

J. R. Soley, The Wars of the United States (Narrative and Critical History of the United States, volume 7, chapter 6).

ALSO IN: American State Papers: Indian Affairs, volume 1, page 776.

E. Eggleston and L. E. Seelye, Tecumseh, chapters 12-23.

H. Adams, History of the United States: First Administration of Madison, volume 2, chapters 4-5.

J. B. Dillon, History of Indiana, chapters 35-38.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812 (April). Admission of Louisiana into the Union.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1812.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812 (June-October). Rioting at Baltimore. The opening of the war and the unreadiness of the nation for it. Hull's disastrous campaign and surrender, at Detroit.

"It was perhaps characteristic of the conduct of the war, that the first blood spilled should be American blood, shed by Americans. … In the night of June 22d, three days after the proclamation of war, a mob in Baltimore sacked the office of the 'Federal Republican,' edited by Alexander Hanson, because he had opposed the war policy. The mob also attacked the residences of several prominent Federalists, and burned one of them. Vessels in the harbor, too, were visited and plundered. About a month later Hanson resumed the publication of his paper, and in the night of July 26th the mob gathered again." This time they were resisted and one was killed; whereupon the authorities seized Hanson and his friends and lodged them in jail. "The rioters, thus encouraged by those whose business it was to punish them, attacked the jail the next night, murdered General Lingan [one of Hanson's defenders], injured General [Henry] Lee so that he was a cripple for the rest of his life, and beat several of the other victims and subjected them to torture. The leaders of the mob were brought to trial, but were acquitted! In this state of affairs, the war party in the country being but little stronger than the peace party, the youngest and almost the weakest of civilized nations went to war with one of the oldest and most powerful. The regular army of the United States numbered only 6,000 men; but Congress had passed an act authorizing its increase to 25,000, and in addition to this the President was empowered to call for 50,000 volunteers, and to use the militia to the extent of 100,000. Henry Dearborn, of Massachusetts, was made a major-general and appointed to command the land forces. Against the thousand vessels and 144,000 sailors of the British navy, the Americans had 20 war-ships and a few gunboats, the whole carrying about 300 guns. But these figures, taken alone, are deceptive; since a very large part of the British force was engaged in the European wars, and the practical question was, what force the United States could bring against so much as England could spare for operations on the high seas and on this side of the Atlantic. In that comparison, the discrepancy was not so great, and the United States had an enormous element of strength in her fine merchant marine. Her commerce being temporarily suspended to a large degree, there was an abundance both of ships and sailors, from which to build up a navy and fit out a fleet of privateers. Indeed, privateering was the business that now offered the largest prizes to mariners and ship-owners. … War with Great Britain being determined upon, the plan of campaign that first and most strongly presented itself to the Administration was the conquest of the British provinces on our northern border. … In planning for the invasion of Canada, the Administration counted largely upon a supposed readiness of the Canadians to throw off their allegiance to Great Britain and join with the United States. Such expectations have almost never been realized, and in this instance they were completely disappointed. In the preceding February, William Hull, Governor of the Territory of Michigan, who had rendered distinguished service in the Revolution, had been made a brigadier-general and placed in command of the forces in Ohio, with orders to march them to Detroit, to protect the Territory against the Indians, who were becoming troublesome. In June he was in command of about 2,000 men, in northern Ohio, moving slowly through the wilderness. On the day when war was declared, June 18th, the Secretary of War wrote him two letters. The first, in which the declaration was not mentioned, was despatched by a special messenger, and reached General Hull on the 24th. The other informed him of the declaration of war, but was sent by mail to Cleveland, there to take its chance of reaching the General by whatever conveyance might be found. The consequence was, that he did not receive it till the 2d of July. But every British commander in Canada learned the news several days earlier. Hull arrived at Detroit on the 5th of July and set about organizing his forces. On the 9th he received from the War Department orders to begin the invasion of Canada by taking possession of Malden, 15 miles below Detroit, on the other side of the river, if he thought he could do so with safety to his own posts. He crossed on the 12th, and issued a proclamation to the Canadians." He found the enemy too strongly fortified at Malden to be prudently assaulted with raw troops and without artillery. "So it was decided to defer the attack, and in a few days came the news that, on the declaration of war, a force of over 600—British and Indians—had promptly moved against the American post at Michilimackinac—on the rocky little island of Mackinaw, commanding the strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan—and the garrison of 61 officers and men capitulated on the 16th of July. {3341} This disaster to the Americans roused the Indians to renewed hostility against them, while it proportionately disheartened Hull, and seems to have been the first step in the breaking down of his courage. After a few skirmishes, he recrossed to Detroit on the 7th of August. Meanwhile the British Colonel Proctor had arrived at Malden with reënforcements, and on Hull's withdrawal to Detroit he threw a force across the river to intercept his supplies. This force consisted of a small number of British regulars and a considerable number of Indians commanded by the famous Tecumseh." Two considerable engagements occurred between this force and detachments sent out to meet an expected supply train. In the first, the Americans were badly beaten; in the second, they drove the enemy to their boats with heavy loss; but the supply train was not secured. "During this gloomy state of things at Detroit, a bloody affair took place on ground that is now within the city of Chicago. Fort Dearborn stood at the mouth of Chicago River, and was occupied by a garrison of about 50 soldiers, with several families. Captain Nathan Heald, commanding the post, had been ordered by General Hull to abandon it and remove his force to Detroit. "To conciliate the neighboring Indians who professed friendliness, he promised to give them all the property in the fort which he could not carry; but before making the delivery to them he foolishly destroyed all the arms, the gunpowder and the liquors. Enraged by this proceeding, which they considered a trick, the savages pursued Captain Heald's small party, waylaid them among the Sand-hills on the lake shore, and massacred the greater part, twelve children included. The scalps which they took were sold to Colonel Proctor, "who had offered a premium for American scalps." The same day on which this occurred, August 15th, "the British General Isaac Brock, who had arrived at Malden a few days before and assumed command there, formally demanded the surrender of Detroit. This demand included a plain threat of massacre in case of refusal. Said Brock in his letter: 'It is far from my intention to join in a war of extermination; but you must be aware that the numerous bodies of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences.' … Brock's force, according to his own testimony, numbered 1,330 men, including 600 Indians, and he had also two ships of war. Hull had present for duty about 1,000 men. Brock sent a large body of Indians across the river that night, at a point five miles below the fort, and early in the morning crossed with the remainder of his troops, and at once marched on the place." On the approach of the attacking force Hull offered to surrender. "The articles of capitulation were drawn up, and the American general surrendered, not merely the fort and its garrison, but the whole Territory of Michigan, of which he was Governor. … Hull's officers were incensed at his action, and he was subsequently court-martialled, convicted of cowardice, and condemned to death; but the President pardoned him, in consideration of his age and his services in the Revolution. … Subsequent investigations, if they do not exonerate General Hull, have at least greatly modified the blame attached to him."

R. Johnson, History of the War of 1812-15, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: J. F. Clarke, History of the Campaign of 1812 and Surrender of the Post at Detroit.

B. J. Lossing, Hull's Surrender (Potter's American Monthly, August, 1875).

F. S. Drake, Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, pages 341-354.

S. C. Clark, Hull's Surrender at Detroit (Magazine of American History, volume 27).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812. The opposition of the Federalists to the war.

"Unfortunately for the Federalists, while they were wholly right in many of their criticisms on the manner in which the war came about, they put themselves in the wrong as to its main feature. We can now see that in their just wrath against Napoleon they would have let the nation remain in a position of perpetual childhood and subordination before England. No doubt there were various points at issue in the impending contest, but the most important one, and the only one that remained in dispute all through the war, was that of the right of search and impressment. … It must be understood that this was not a question of reclaiming deserters from the British navy, for the seamen in question had very rarely belonged to it. There existed in England at that time an outrage on civilization, now abandoned, called impressment, by which any sailor and many who were not sailors could be seized and compelled to serve in the navy. The horrors of the 'press-gang,' as exhibited in the sea-side towns of England, have formed the theme of many novels. It was bad enough at home, but when applied on board the vessels of a nation with which England was at peace, it became one of those outrages which only proceed from the strong to the weak, and are never reciprocated. Lord Collingwood said well, in one of his letters, that England would not submit to such an aggression for an hour. Merely to yield to visitation for such a purpose was a confession of national weakness; but the actual case was far worse than this. … We have … Cobbett's statement of the consequences. 'Great numbers of Americans have been impressed,' he adds, 'and are now in our navy. … That many of these men have died on board our ships, that many have been worn out in the service, there is no doubt.' … In 1806 the merchants of Boston had called upon the general government to 'assert our rights and support the dignity of the United States.' … Yet it shows the height of party feeling that when, in 1812, Mr. Madison's government finally went to war for these very rights, the measure met with the bitterest opposition from the whole Federalist party, and from the commercial States generally. A good type of the Federalist opposition on this particular point is to be found in the pamphlets of John Lowell. John Lowell was the son of the eminent Massachusetts judge of that name; he was a well-educated lawyer, who was president of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, and wrote under the name of 'A New England Farmer.' In spite of the protests offered half a dozen years before by his own neighbors, he declared the whole outcry against impressment to be a device of Mr. Madison's party. … He argued unflinchingly for the English right of search, called it a 'consecrated' right, maintained that the allegiance of British subjects was perpetual, and that no residence in a foreign country could absolve them. … {3342} While such a man, with a large party behind him, took this position, it must simply be said that the American republic had not yet asserted itself to be a nation. Soon after the Revolution, when some one spoke of that contest to Franklin as the war for independence, he said, 'Say rather the war of the Revolution; the war for independence is yet to be fought.' The war of 1812 was just the contest he described. To this excitement directed against the war, the pulpit very largely contributed, the chief lever applied by the Federalist clergy being found in the atrocities of Napoleon. … The Federalist leaders took distinctly the ground that they should refuse to obey a conscription law to raise troops for the conquest of Canada; and when that very questionable measure failed by one vote in the Senate, the nation may have escaped a serious outbreak. … It might, indeed, have been far more dangerous than the Hartford Convention of 1814 [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER)], which was, after all, only a peaceable meeting of some two dozen men, with George Cabot at their head—men of whom very few had even a covert purpose of dissolving the Union, but who were driven to something very near desperation by the prostration of their commerce and the defencelessness of their coast."

T. W. Higginson, Larger History of the United States, chapter 15.

ALSO IN: H. von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the United States, volume 1, chapter 6.

H. C. Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot, chapters 11-12.

E. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, chapters 11-14.

See, also, BLUE-LIGHT FEDERALISTS.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812 (September-November). The opening of the war on the New York frontier. The Battle of Queenstown Heights.

"To put Dearborn [who commanded in the northern department] in a condition to act with effect, Governor Tompkins [of the state of New York] made the greatest efforts to get out the New York quota of militia. The Democratic Legislature of Vermont voted to add to the pay of their militia in service as much as was paid by the United States. At the same time they passed a stringent drafting law, and offered $30 bounty to volunteers. By the co-operating exertions of these states and of the war department, some 3,000 regulars and 2,000 militia were presently assembled on Lake Champlain, under Dearborn's immediate command. Another force of 2,000 militia was stationed at different points along the south bank of the St. Lawrence, their left resting on Sackett's Harbor. A third army was collected along the Niagara River, from Fort Niagara to Buffalo, then a village of a thousand or two inhabitants, in the midst of a newly-settled district. This latter force of nearly 6,000 men, half regulars and volunteers and half militia, was under the immediate command of Major-general Van Rensselaer, a Federalist. … The first skirmishes on the New York frontier grew out of attempts, not unsuccessful, made principally from Ogdensburg, a new but much the largest village on the American side of the St. Lawrence, to intercept the British supplies proceeding upward in boats. The militia officer in command at Ogdensburg was General Jacob Brown. A Pennsylvanian by birth, a Quaker by education, while employed as a teacher in the city of New York, some newspaper essays of his had attracted the attention of Alexander Hamilton, to whom, during the quasi war of '98, he became military secretary. Removing afterward to the new settlements of Northwestern New York, his enterprise had founded the flourishing village of Brownsville, not far from Sackett's Harbor. … His success in repulsing a British force of 700 men, which attempted to cross from Prescott to attack Ogdensburg, laid the foundation of a military reputation which soon placed him at the head of the American army. There had been built on Lake Ontario, out of the gun-boat appropriations, but by a fortunate improvement upon Jefferson's model, a sloop of war of light draft, mounting 16 guns. This vessel, called the Oneida, just before the breaking out of the war had been furnished with a regular-bred commander and crew. She was attacked shortly after at Sackett's Harbor by five British vessels, three of them larger than herself, but manned only by lake watermen. By landing part of her guns, and establishing a battery on shore, she succeeded, however, in beating them off. Hull's failure having shown how important was the control of the lakes, a judicious selection was made of Captain Chauncey, hitherto at the head of the New York Navy Yard, to take command on those waters. Along with Henry Eckford as naval constructor, and soon followed by ship-carpenters, naval stores, guns, and presently by parties of seamen, he was sent to Sackett's Harbor [September, 1812], then held by a garrison of 200 regulars. That newly-settled region could supply nothing but timber; every thing else had to be transported from Albany at vast expense. … A 24-gun ship was at once commenced; for immediate use, Chauncey purchased six of the small schooners employed in the then infant commerce of the lake, which, though very ill adapted for war, he armed with four guns each. With these and the Oneida he put out on the lake, and soon [November 8] drove the British ships into Kingston. … While thus employed, Chauncey had sent Lieutenant Elliot to Buffalo, with a party of seamen, to make arrangements for a force on the upper lakes. Elliot, soon after his arrival, succeeded in cutting out [October 9] from under the guns of Fort Erie, nearly Opposite Buffalo, two British vessels just arrived from Detroit. One, the late Adams, which the British had armed and equipped, grounded, and it became necessary to destroy her. The other, the Caledonia, of two guns, was brought off, and became the nucleus of the naval force of Lake Erie. Elliot also purchased several small schooners lying in the Niagara River; but they, as well as the Caledonia, lay blockaded at Black Rock [now a part of the city of Buffalo], the passage into the lake being commanded by the guns of Fort Erie. The troops along the Niagara frontier, highly excited by Elliot's exploit, demanded to be led against the enemy; and, under the idea that the British village of Queenstown, at the foot of the falls [a few miles below] might furnish comfortable winter quarters for a part of his troops, Van Rensselaer resolved to attack it."

R. Hildreth, History of the United States, 2d series, chapter 25 (volume 3).

{3343}

The Niagara River, 35 miles long, which conducts the waters of the upper lakes through Erie into Ontario, constituted an important military frontier in such a war; its banks sparsely settled, and the crossing a narrow one. Below the roaring cataracts had assembled another little army, supplied in great measure by regiments of the New York quota, Major-General Van Rensselaer, of the militia of that State, a prominent Federalist, being in command. Hull's sudden surrender left Brock free to confront this second adversary with a moderate force from the Canada side, not without feeling uncertain as to where the American blow would be struck. By October Van Rensselaer had 6,000 men, half of them regulars; and, yielding to the impatience of his volunteers and the public press, he gave orders to cross the river from Lewiston to Queenston. High bluffs arose on either side. There were not boats enough provided to carry more than half the advance party at a time. Too much reliance was placed upon militia, while regulars won the laurels. Wool, a young captain, and Lieutenant-Colonel Scott did gallant work on Queenston Heights; and General Brock, the conqueror of Detroit, fell mortally wounded; but reinforcements crossed too slowly, and with the green militia dreading death, many of the reserve pleading legal exemption from service in an enemy's country, their deserted comrades on the Canada side, unable to return, were forced to surrender. Van Rensselaer, whose advance had been premature, resigned in disgust, leaving a less capable but more pretentious officer, of Virginia birth, General Alexander Smyth, to succeed him. Smyth had a gift of windy composition, which fortunately, imposed upon the inhabitants of Western New York just long enough to check despondency and restore a glow to the recruiting service. 'Come on, my heroes,' was his cry, 'and when you attack the enemy's batteries, let your rallying word be: "The cannon lost at Detroit, or death!". All this inkshed promised an exploit for invading Canada from the upper end of the Niagara, between Fort Erie and Chippewa. By the 27th of November Smyth had concentrated at Black Rock, near Buffalo, a fair army, 4,500 troops, comprising, in addition to the regulars, volunteer regiments from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York; the last under the command of General Porter, the representative in Congress, whose report, twelve months before, had given the first loud note of war. The big moment approached; but, notwithstanding the sonorous promise of 'memorable to-morrows,' and an embarkation to the music of 'Yankee Doodle,' one or two shivering attempts were made to land on the opposite shore, and then the volunteers were dismissed to their homes, and regulars ordered into winter-quarters. Disorderly scenes ensued. Our insubordinate and mortified soldiers discharged their muskets in all directions. Porter having openly charged Smyth with cowardice, the two crossed to Grand Island to fight a duel, and then shook hands. … But the country could not be reconciled to such generalship, and Smyth was presently cashiered."