The Life of Albert Gallatin

These fears proved ungrounded; Mr. Madison was elected by a large majority, and only the New England States reverted to opposition; but New England was on the verge of adopting the ground taken by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison ten years before, and declaring the embargo, as they had declared the sedition law, unconstitutional, null, and void. Mr. Canning treated the embargo with sarcastic and patronizing contempt as a foolish policy, which he regretted because it was very inconvenient to the Americans. As an “engine for national purposes” it had utterly failed, but no one was agreed what to do next.

GALLATIN TO HIS WIFEWashington, July, 1808.

I enclose a National Intelligencer, one paragraph of which, together with the Bayonne decree, contains the substance of the intelligence. The last we have not officially. I think the aspect of affairs unfavorable. England seems to rely on our own divisions and on the aggressions of France as sufficient to force us into a change of measures, perhaps war with France, without any previous reparation or relaxation on her part. Of the real views of the French Emperor nothing more is known than what appears on the face of his decrees and in his acts; and these manifest, in my opinion, either a deep resentment because we would not make war against England, or a wish to seek a quarrel with us. Between the two our situation is extremely critical, and I believe that poor, limited human wisdom can do and will do but little to extricate us. Yet I do not feel despondent, for so long as we adhere strictly to justice towards all, I have a perfect reliance on the continued protection of that Providence which has raised us and blessed us as a nation. But we have been too happy and too prosperous, and we consider as great misfortunes some privations and a share in the general calamities of the world. Compared with other nations, our share is indeed very small…

GALLATIN TO JOSEPH H. NICHOLSONWashington, 18th October, 1808.

… Your political questions are of no easy solution. We cannot yet conjecture whether the belligerent powers will alter their orders and decrees, and if they do not, what is to be done? I am as much at a loss what answer to make as yourself. The embargo, having been adopted, ought, if there was virtue enough in the Eastern people, to be continued. But without the support and the full support of the people, such a strong coercive measure cannot be fairly executed. If the embargo is taken off, I do not perceive yet any medium between absolute subjection or war. Perhaps, however, some substitute may be devised. A non-importation act is the only one which has been suggested; and that would not answer entirely the object which had been intended by the embargo, which was to avoid war without submitting to the decrees of either nation…

GALLATIN TO CHARLES PINCKNEY, Governor of South Carolina24th October, 1808.

… On the subject of the embargo, and particularly of what you should communicate to the Legislature, I must refer you to the President, who can alone judge of the propriety and extent of communications prior to the meeting of Congress. As an individual, but this is conjecture and not fact, I believe that the British ministry is either unwilling, if they can avoid it, to repeal their orders in any event whatever, or that they wait for the result of their intrigues and of the exertions of their friends here, with hopes of producing irresistible dissatisfaction to the embargo, and a change of measures and of men. I trust that if this be their object they will be disappointed, and of the steadiness and patriotism of South Carolina I never entertained any doubt. On an alteration in the measures of the French Emperor I place no more confidence, perhaps even less, than on Great Britain. The only difference in his favor, and it arises probably from inability alone, is that he interferes not with our domestic concerns. But let those nations pursue what course they please, I feel a perfect confidence that America will never adopt a policy which would render her subservient to either, and that, after twenty-five years of peace and unparalleled prosperity, she will meet with fortitude the crisis, be it what it will, which may result from the difficult situation in which she is for the first time placed since the treaty of 1783.

Mr. Gallatin, to judge from these last words, which he repeated in “Campbell’s Report,” seems to have considered the situation as infinitely more difficult than it had been in 1798 or in 1794. In one respect at least he was certainly right. Mr. Jefferson’s hope of having to swallow less foreign insolence than his predecessors was by this time thoroughly dispelled. There seems to have been no form of insult, simple or aggravated, which Mr. Jefferson and his Administration did not swallow; between the exquisitely exasperating satire of Mr. Canning and the peremptory brutality of Bonaparte, he was absolutely extinguished; he abandoned his hope of balancing one belligerent against another, and his expectation of guiding them by their interests; he abandoned even the embargo; he laid down the sceptre of party leadership; he had no longer a party; Virginia herself ceased to be guided by his opinion; his most intimate friend, Mr. Wilson Cary Nicholas, favored war; Mr. William B. Giles was of the same mode of thinking; Mr. Jefferson, overwhelmed by all these difficulties, longed for the moment of his retreat: “Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.”89 So cowed was he as to do what no President had ever done before, or has ever done since, and what no President has a constitutional right to do: he abdicated the duties of his office, and no entreaty could induce him to resume them. So soon as the election was decided, he hastened to throw upon his successor the burden of responsibility and withdrew himself from all but the formalities of administration: “I have thought it right,” he wrote on December 27, 1808, “to take no part myself in proposing measures, the execution of which will devolve on my successor. I am therefore chiefly an unmeddling listener to what others say.”90 “Our situation is truly difficult. We have been pressed by the belligerents to the very wall, and all further retreat is impracticable.”

The duty of providing a policy fell of necessity upon Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin, although they could not act effectively without the President’s power. Under these circumstances, on the 7th November, 1808, Congress met. The President’s message, in conformity with his determination to decline any expression of opinion,91 proposed nothing in regard to the embargo, and this silence necessarily threw the party into still greater disorder, until Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin were driven to make a combined attempt to recall Mr. Jefferson to his duties.

GALLATIN TO JEFFERSONDepartment of Treasury, 15th November, 1808.

Dear Sir, – Both Mr. Madison and myself concur in opinion that, considering the temper of the Legislature, or rather of its members, it would be eligible to point out to them some precise and distinct course.

As to what that should be we may not all perfectly agree, and perhaps the knowledge of the various feelings of the members and of the apparent public opinion may on consideration induce a revision of our own. I feel myself nearly as undetermined between enforcing the embargo or war as I was on our last meetings. But I think that we must (or rather you must) decide the question absolutely, so that we may point out a decisive course either way to our friends. Mr. Madison, being unwell, proposed that I should call on you and suggest our wish that we might with the other gentlemen be called by you on that subject. Should you think that course proper, the sooner the better. The current business has prevented my waiting on you personally in the course of the morning.

Mr. Jefferson, however, as appears from his letter to Dr. Logan of December 27, quoted above, persisted in declining responsibility. Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin were obliged to follow another course. Mr. Gallatin drafted a report for the Committee of Foreign Relations, which was, on the 22d November, 1808, presented to the House by Mr. G. W. Campbell for the committee, and which has been always known under the name of Campbell’s Report. This paper is probably the best statement ever made of the American argument against the British government and the orders in council; it certainly disposed of the pretence that those orders were justifiable either on the ground of retaliation upon France or on that of American acquiescence in French infractions of international law; but its chief object was to unite the Republican party on common ground and to serve as the foundation of a policy; for this purpose it concluded by recommending the adoption of three resolutions, the first of which pledged the nation not to submit to the edicts of Great Britain and France; the second pledged them to exclude the commerce and productions of those countries from our ports; and the third, to take immediate measures to put the United States in a better condition of defence. These resolutions were debated nearly a month, and finally adopted by large majorities.

In the mean time Mr. Gallatin asked for the extension which he needed of powers to carry out the embargo law, and the force to back these powers. A bill to that effect was soon reported, and was rapidly passed, a bill famous in history as the Enforcement Act. It was a terrible measure, and in comparison with its sweeping grants of arbitrary power, all previous enactments of the United States Congress sank into comparative insignificance. How it could be defended under any conceivable theory of the Republican party, and how it could receive the support of any Republican whose memory extended ten years back, are questions which would be difficult to answer if the Annals of Congress were not at hand to explain. The two parties had completely changed their position, and while the Republicans stood on the ground once occupied by the Federalists, the Federalists were seeking safety under the States’ rights doctrines formerly avowed by the Virginia and Kentucky Republicans.

As a result of eight years’ conscientious and painful effort, the situation was calculated to sober and sadden the most sanguine Democrat. The idea was at last impressed with unmistakable emphasis upon every honest and reflecting mind in the Republican party that the failures of the past were not due to the faults of the past only, and that circumstances must by their nature be stronger and more permanent than men. Brought at last face to face with this new political fact which gave the lie to all his theories and hopes, even the sanguine and supple Jefferson felt the solid earth reel under him,92 and his courage fled; it was long before he recovered his old confidence, and he never could speak of the embargo and the last year of his Presidency without showing traces of the mental shock he had suffered.

Mr. Gallatin was made of different stuff. In his youth almost as sanguine as Mr. Jefferson, he knew better how to accept defeat and adapt himself to circumstances, how to abandon theory and to move with his generation; but it needed all and more than all the toughness of Mr. Gallatin’s character to support his courage in this emergency. He knew, quite as well as John Randolph or as any Federalist, how far he had drifted from his true course, and how arbitrary, odious, and dangerous was the course he had to pursue; but he at least now learned to recognize in the fullest extent the omnipotence of circumstance. He had no longer a principle to guide him. Except, somewhere far in the background, a general theory that peace was better than war, not a shred was left of Republican principles. Facts, not theories, were all that survived in the wreck of Mr. Jefferson’s Administration, and the solitary fact which asserted itself prominently above all others, was that the United States could only be likened to an unfortunate rat worried by two terrier bull-dogs; whether it fought or whether it fled, its destiny was to be eaten up. The only choice was one of evils; that of the manner of extinction. The country had selected the manner of its own free will, not under any urgency from Mr. Gallatin; but when it was tried, it was found to be suicide by suffocation. New England, hostile to the government, and dependent more immediately on commerce than her neighbors, resisted, revolted, and gasped convulsively for life and air. Her struggle saved her; necessity taught new modes of existence and made her at length almost independent of the sea. Virginia, however, friendly to the government and herself responsible for the choice, submitted with hardly a murmur, and never recovered from the shock; her ruin was accelerated with frightful rapidity because she made no struggle for life.

Mr. Gallatin saw the situation as clearly as most men of his time, and at this moment, when New England was struggling most wildly, he was obliged to say whether in his opinion the policy of government should be changed or not. How slowly and doubtfully he came to his decision has been seen in his letters, and was inevitable from his character. As he said on December 18, 1807, to Mr. Jefferson, he preferred war in every point of view to a permanent embargo; but the embargo had been adopted as a policy; it had been maintained at a fearful cost; the injury it could inflict was for the most part accomplished; the difficulties of enforcing it were overcome; its effect on England was only beginning to be felt; so far as New England was concerned, the danger was less imminent than it appeared to be, and the task of carrying that part of the country into armed rebellion was by no means an easy one; to abandon the embargo now was to exhibit the government in the light of a vacillating and feeble guide, to destroy all popular faith in its wisdom and courage, to shake the supports and undermine the authority of the new Administration, and to encourage every element of faction. Abroad the effect of this feebleness would be fatal. In the face of opponents like Canning and Bonaparte, weakness of will was the only unpardonable and irrevocable crime.

Another motive which probably decided Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin was one they could not use for an argument. Mr. Erskine, the British minister at Washington, was a young man of liberal politics and with an American wife; he was honestly anxious to restore friendly relations between the two governments, and he was stimulated by the idea of winning distinction. It appears from his letters that as early as the end of November, 1808, the moment the election was fairly decided and Mr. Jefferson had in effect surrendered the Presidency to Mr. Madison, the idea had begun to work in his mind that the time for attempting a reconciliation had come. What Mr. Canning had refused to concede to Mr. Jefferson, the friend of France, he might be willing to offer to Mr. Madison, whose sympathies were rather English than French. Mr. Erskine lost no time in sounding the members of the new Administration, and he found them one and all disposed to encourage him. He talked long and earnestly with Mr. Gallatin, “whose character,” he wrote to Mr. Canning on December 4, 1808, “must be well known to you to be held in the greatest respect in this country for his unrivalled talents as a financier and a statesman.” Mr. Gallatin flattered and encouraged him. “At the close of my interview with Mr. Gallatin, he said, in a familiar way, ‘You see, sir, we could settle a treaty in my private room in two hours which might perhaps be found to be as lasting as if it was bound up in all the formalities of a regular system.’” He hinted to Mr. Gallatin his theory that Mr. Jefferson had acted with partiality to France, at which Mr. Gallatin “seemed to check himself,” and turned the conversation immediately upon the character of Mr. Madison, saying “that he could not be accused of having such a bias towards France,” whereat the young diplomatist, instead of inferring that Mr. Gallatin saw through him and all his little motives and meant to let them work undisturbed, drew only the inference that Mr. Gallatin thought as he did about Mr. Jefferson, but dared not say so.

Acting under these impressions, Mr. Erskine early in December, 1808, wrote a series of despatches to Mr. Canning, suggesting that this favorable moment should be used. While waiting for the necessary instructions, he continued his friendly relations with the Cabinet, and the Cabinet, not a little pleased at discovering at length one example of a friendly Englishman, cultivated these relations with cordiality.

The policy adopted by Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin is to be found in scattered pieces of evidence. Mr. Gallatin’s letter of 15th November, 1808, to Mr. Jefferson seems to prove that he was still on that day not quite decided; but his annual report, dated December 10, which was clearly intended to supply to some extent the want of distinctness in the President’s message, shows that in the interval the course had been marked out which the new Administration meant to pursue.

This report began, as usual, with a sketch of the financial situation. The receipts of the Treasury during the year ending September 30, 1808, had been $17,952,000, a sum greater than the receipts of any preceding year, but principally consisting of revenue accrued during 1807. On January 1, 1809, the Treasury would have a sum of $16,000,000 on hand, of which Mr. Gallatin estimated that the expenses of 1809 would consume $13,000,000, leaving a surplus of only $3,000,000 to be disposed of.

Thus the government could look forward with confidence to the 1st January, 1810, and if extraordinary preparations for war were necessary, it could, by stopping the redemption of debt, provide some $5,000,000 additional for the year without recurring to loans.

After thus describing the resources of the government, the Secretary proceeded to discuss its probable expenses under the four contingencies among which he supposed the choice of Congress to lie. Two of these were merely forms of submission to Great Britain and France, and, as in this case resistance would not be contemplated, no provision beyond an immediate reduction of expenses was required. The other two were forms of resistance; embargo, or war.

The embargo considered as a temporary measure, which would ultimately be superseded by war, was, financially, to be considered as a war measure, and preparations made accordingly; while if the embargo were adopted as a permanent system, coterminous with the belligerent edicts, it was a peace measure, and needed no other provision than economy at least for the next two years.

War must be carried on principally by loans, and the embargo had produced a situation most favorable for effecting loans. No internal taxes of any description need be imposed. All that the Treasury required, besides economy, was to double the import duties; to limit the system of drawbacks; either to repeal or to complete the partial non-intercourse law, and to reform the system of accountability in the Army and Navy Departments.

The report was decidedly warlike; clearly, if war was to come, Mr. Gallatin wished it to be begun within another year. His policy, therefore, is evident; he would have had Congress take a strong tone; continue the embargo for a given time until the results of Mr. Erskine’s representations should be known; and let it be clearly understood that the embargo was to give place to war. He would have had Congress apply six or eight millions to the purchase of arms and stores, to the building of forts or of ships, and to the organization of the militia; and with a firm party behind him and such measures of preparation, he would have spoken to Mr. Canning and to Napoleon with as much authority as it was in his power to command. He would boldly have retaliated upon both.

This was the plan adopted for the new Administration and earnestly pressed by the Secretary of the Treasury whom the President elect then looked upon as his future Secretary of State. Mr. Jefferson’s theory that his successor was responsible for the government after his election was decided, utterly untenable and mischievous as it was, compelled Mr. Madison to act through Mr. Gallatin. The whole future of his Administration turned on his success in holding the party together on this line of policy, and Mr. Gallatin labored night and day to effect this object.

MACON TO JOSEPH H. NICHOLSONWashington, December 4, 1808.

… The war men in the House of Representatives are, I conceive, gaining strength, and I should not be much surprised if we should be at war with both Great Britain and France before the 4th of March. Gallatin is most decidedly for war, and I think that the Vice-President and W. C. Nicholas are of the same opinion. It is said that the President gives no opinion as to the measures that ought to be adopted. It is not known whether he be for war or peace. It is reported that Mr. Madison is for the plan which I have submitted, with the addition of high protecting duties to encourage the manufacturers of the United States. I am as much against war as Gallatin is in favor of it. Thus I have continued in Congress till there is not one of my old fellow-laborers that agrees with me in opinion. I do not know what plan Randolph will pursue. He is against continuing the embargo. I wish he would lay some plan before the House. It grieves me to the heart to be compelled from a sense of right and duty to oppose him. I am not consulted, as you seem to suppose, about anything, nor do I consult any one. I am about as much out of fashion as our grand-mothers’ ruffle cuffs, and I do not believe that I shall be in fashion as soon as they will.

GALLATIN TO JOSEPH H. NICHOLSONWashington, 29th December, 1808.1809.

… Never was I so overwhelmed with public business. That would be nothing if we went right. But a great confusion and perplexity reign in Congress. Mr. Madison is, as I always knew him, slow in taking his ground, but firm when the storm arises. What I had foreseen has taken place. A majority will not adhere to the embargo much longer, and if war be not speedily determined on, submission will soon ensue. This entirely between us. When will you be here? We expect you, and the sooner the better. Exclusively of the pleasure we always have in seeing you, rely upon it that your presence will at this crisis be useful. I actually want time to give you more details, but I will only state that it is intended by the Essex Junto to prevail on the Massachusetts Legislature, who meet in two or three weeks, to call a convention of the five New England States, to which they will try to add New York; and that something must be done to anticipate and defeat that nefarious plan.

Mr. Jefferson’s private letters tell the story of Mr. Madison’s failure to control his party, and of the collapse of his war policy. On the 19th January, 1809, he wrote to Thomas Lomax:93 “I think Congress, although they have not passed any bill indicative of their intentions, except the new embargo law, have evidently made up their minds to let that continue only till their meeting in May, and then to issue letters of marque and reprisal against such powers as shall not then have repealed their illegal decrees. Some circumstances have taken place which render it very possible that Great Britain may revoke her orders of council. This will be known before May.” Two days later, Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Leiper:94 “The House of Representatives passed last night a bill for the meeting of Congress on the 22d of May. This substantially decides the course they mean to pursue, – that is, to let the embargo continue till then, when it will cease, and letters of marque and reprisal be issued against such nations as shall not then have repealed their obnoxious edicts. The great majority seem to have made up their minds on this, while there is considerable diversity of opinion on the details of preparation, to wit: naval force, volunteers, army, non-intercourse, &c.” But on the 7th February Mr. Jefferson wrote:95 “I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate of inducing the people there to either separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to removing the embargo on the 4th of March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations.” The defeat of the Administration on the crucial point of fixing the 1st June, 1809, for removing the embargo, took place on February 2, by a vote of 73 to 40. The substitution of March 4 was carried on February 3, by a vote of 70, no ayes and noes having been taken on either side. The new Administration had already met with a serious if not fatal check. As Mr. Gallatin said in a note to Mr. Jefferson of February 4, the day after the disaster: “As far as my information goes, everything grows more quiet in Massachusetts and Maine. All would be well if our friends remained firm here.”