The Life of Albert Gallatin

The papers of Mr. Gallatin, like those of Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, are quite silent upon this subject. On the other hand, the papers of Timothy Pickering supply at least the authority on which the charge was made. The two following letters tell their own story, and, although they affect Mr. Gallatin’s reputation only indirectly, they have a considerable negative value even for him.

TIMOTHY PICKERING TO ABRAHAM SHEPHERDCity of Washington, February 12, 1814.

Dear Sir, – At the last autumn session, Mr. Hanson, noticing the manner in which the war was produced, in addressing Clay, the Speaker, spoke to this effect: “You know, sir, that the President was coerced into the measure; that a committee called upon him and told him that if he did not recommend a declaration of war, he would lose his election. And then he sent his message recommending the declaration.”

Now, my dear sir, I learn from Mr. Hanson that Colonel Thomas Worthington, Senator, on his way home to Ohio, gave you the above information, and mentioned the names of Henry Clay, Felix Grundy, and some other or others who composed the committee. This is a very important fact, and I pray you will do me the favor to recollect and state to me all the information you possess on the subject; at what time and from whom you received it.

ABRAHAM SHEPHERD TO TIMOTHY PICKERINGNear Shepherdstown, February 20, 1814.

Dear Sir, – I received your favor of the 12th instant, and observed the contents. Some time in the beginning of April, 1812, General Worthington came to my house from the city to see Mrs. Worthington and children set out for Ohio; he continued part of two days at my house, within which time we had considerable conversation on the prospect of war. He insisted war was inevitable. I condemned the folly and madness of such a measure. He then told me that Mr. Bayard would first be sent to England to make one effort more to prevent the war; that Mr. Madison had consented to do so; and that Mr. Bayard had agreed to go; that he had used every means in his power with some more of the moderate men of their party to effect this object, and that he had frequent conversations with Mr. Madison and Bayard on this subject before it was effected, and that I might rely upon it that such measures would be adopted. He left my house and returned to the city. After the declaration of war and rising of Congress, General Worthington, on his way home to the State of Ohio, called at my house and stayed a night. I then asked him what had prevented the President from carrying into effect this intended mission to England, and observed I was very sorry it had not been put in execution. He answered he was as sorry as I possibly could be, and that he had never met with any occurrence in his life that had mortified him so much. He said as soon as he returned to the city from my house he was informed of what had taken place by a set of hot-headed, violent men, and he immediately waited on Mr. Madison to know the cause. Mr. Madison told him that his friends had waited upon him and said, if he did send Mr. Bayard to England they would forsake him and be opposed to him, and he was compelled to comply, or bound to comply, with their wishes. I then asked General Worthington who those hot-headed, violent men were. He said Mr. Clay was the principal. I cannot positively say, but think Grundy was mentioned with Clay.

I clearly understood that Clay and Grundy were two of the number that waited on the President. I did not ask him how he got his information. As I understood the business, a caucus was held and Mr. Clay and others appointed, and waited on the President in the absence of Worthington, which will ascertain when this business took place.

Mr. Pickering seems to have thought that this explanation hardly supported the charge, and he discreetly allowed the subject to drop. So far, indeed, as the original charge was concerned, the letter of Mr. Shepherd entirely disposed of it, and proved that Mr. Hanson and Mr. Pickering had no authority for asserting that the President was coerced into sending the message of June 1, or that this message was the price of his re-nomination. On the other hand, Mr. Shepherd’s statement raises a new charge against Mr. Madison. In his letter of 24th April, 1812, to Mr. Jefferson, the President said: “You will have noticed that the embargo, as recommended to Congress, was limited to sixty days. Its extension to ninety proceeded from the united votes of those who wished to make it a negotiating instead of a war measure,” &c., &c. Of these Senator Worthington was doubtless one, for the substitution of “90” for “60” was made by the Senate on April 3, on motion of Dr. Leib, and Worthington voted for it. There was, then, a party in Congress which wished to use the embargo as a weapon of negotiation. It is not improbable that this party may have wished Mr. Madison to send a special mission to England, and that they may have pressed Mr. Bayard for the place. It is possible that Clay and his friends may have told Mr. Madison that in such a step he must not expect their support. This is all that can be now affirmed in regard to the celebrated charge that Mr. Madison made war in order to obtain a re-election.

Mr. Madison’s Administration wanted energy and force. No one who is at all familiar with the private history of this party can escape the confession that the President commanded personal love and esteem in a far higher degree than obedience. Whether Senator Worthington counted Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin among the active supporters of his proposed peace mission does not appear, nor is there any clue to the other friends of that policy; but there can be little doubt that this was merely one of many suggestions with which the remnant of the old Jeffersonian democracy struggled in a helpless way to stem the current of the times. Mr. Gallatin’s ears were wearied with the complaints and remonstrances of his friends, the Macons, the Worthingtons, the Dallases, the Nicholsons; and the strident tones of John Randolph echoed their complaints to the public. The President heard, but, both by temperament and conviction, followed the path which seemed nearest the general popular movement, without a serious effort to direct it or to provide for its consequences. Even Mr. Worthington believed war to be inevitable. Yet had they known that only the utter disorganization of the British government now prevented a repeal of the orders in council; had there been an American minister in London capable of seeing through the outer shell of politics and of measuring the force of social movements, war might even yet have been avoided. Nay, had Mr. Madison thrown himself at this decisive moment into the arms of the peace party; had he, on the 1st April, 1812, sent to the Senate, together with his embargo message, the nominations of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Monroe or Mr. Gallatin as special commissioners to England, the war could hardly have happened, for the commissioners would have found the orders in council revoked before negotiations could have been seriously begun.

This, however, Mr. Madison did not know, and, perhaps, even had he known it, the fate of John Adams might have seemed to his gentler spirit a warning not to thwart a party policy. His action was founded on the official utterances of the British government and the temper of our own people; it was perfectly consistent from beginning to end, and there was no disagreement in the Cabinet on the subject. It is true that until Congress met he was in doubt what course was best to pursue; his message did not directly recommend war; but from the moment Congress assembled and showed a disposition to support the national dignity, Mr. Madison and his Cabinet accepted the situation and needed no outside compulsion. To use his own words, as written down by a celebrated visitor in the year 1836, “he knew the unprepared state of the country, but he esteemed it necessary to throw forward the flag of the country, sure that the people would press onward and defend it.”113 He had been ready to do this in the winter of 1808-09. He had urged measures almost equivalent to war in every following session, so far as Congress would allow him to do so. He had wished to maintain peace, but he had been quite aware that government must have the moral courage to resist outrage, as a condition of maintaining peace. It is not to be denied that his party was far behind him, and that, as a consequence, the whole foreign policy from February, 1809, to June, 1812, was one long series of blunders and misfortunes. France made a dupe of him and betrayed him into a diplomatic position which was, as regarded England, untenable. To use his own words in a letter to Joel Barlow, his minister at Paris, dated August 11, 1812: “The conduct of the French government … will be an everlasting reproach to it… In the event of a pacification with Great Britain, the full tide of indignation with which the public mind here is boiling, will be directed against France, if not obviated by a due reparation of her wrongs. War will be called for by the nation almost una voce.” But the diplomatic mistake did not affect the essential merits of the case, and the factiousness of Congress merely prevented the possibility of a peaceable solution. Neither the one nor the other offers the smallest evidence of inconsistency in Mr. Madison or in his Cabinet. Even Mr. Gallatin, to whose success peace was essential, had never wished and did not now wish to obtain it by deprecating war.

The real trouble which weighed upon the mind of Mr. Gallatin was not the war; he accepted this as inevitable. His difficulty was that the government wanted the faculties necessary for carrying on a war with success, and that Mr. Madison was not the person to supply, by his own energy and will, the deficiencies of the system. Mr. Gallatin knew, what was known to every member of Congress and every newspaper editor in the land, that both the Navy and Army Departments were wholly unequal to the war. With regard to the navy, this was of the less consequence, because the subordinate material was excellent, and our naval officers were sure to supply the lack of energy in their official head; yet even here the mere fact that Governor Hamilton wanted the qualities necessary to a Secretary of the Navy in war times diminished the confidence of the public and the vigor of the Cabinet. In regard to Dr. Eustis and the War Department the situation was far worse; this had always been the weak branch of our system, for the army was wanting in very nearly every element of success derived from efficient organization. Complete collapse was inevitable if the situation were prolonged.

The weight of government now fell almost wholly upon Mr. Monroe and Mr. Gallatin; it is believed that even the Act for the organization of the army at the beginning of the war was drawn up by Mr. Gallatin. The Cabinet broke down first of all, and this helplessness of the War Secretaries, as they were called, has led to a strange mystification of history in regard to the first achievements of our navy in 1812. Long afterwards, in the year 1845, Mr. C. J. Ingersoll published a history of the war, in which he dealt his blows very freely upon Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin, and charged them, among other things, with having meant to dismantle our frigates and convert them into harbor defences. This attack drew a paper from Commodore Stewart, who gave another account of the affair. His statement was that he and Commodore Bainbridge arrived at Washington on the 20th June; that on the 21st they were shown by Mr. Goldsborough, chief clerk of the Navy Department, a paper containing the orders, which had just been drawn, for Commodore Rodgers not to leave the waters of New York with his naval force; that on the same day the Secretary of the Navy informed them that it had been decided by the President and the Cabinet, to lay up our vessels of war in the harbor of New York; that they had an interview with the President on the same day, in which the President confirmed this decision; that on the 22d the two commodores presented a joint remonstrance; and that the subsequent orders, under which the vessels went to sea, were the result of this remonstrance. A letter of Mr. Goldsborough to Commodore Bainbridge, dated May 4, 1825, confirmed the fact of the joint remonstrance, and added some details in regard to the transaction.

This statement of Commodore Stewart drew from Mr. Gallatin a reply, which will be found in his printed Writings.114 He asserted that he had no recollection of any such scheme for laying up the frigates; that he was confident no such Cabinet council was ever held as was referred to by Commodore Stewart; that the President, under the laws, had no power to make such a disposition of the navy; that Congress had never contemplated anything of the sort; and that the orders previously or simultaneously given contradicted such an idea.

His remarks upon the Secretary of the Navy, however, show the situation as it then existed: “Owing to circumstances irrelevant to any question now at issue, my intercourse with Mr. Hamilton was very limited. He may have been inefficient; he certainly was an amiable, kind-hearted, and honorable gentleman. From his official reports he appears to have been devoted to the cause of the navy, and I never heard him express opinions such as he is stated to have entertained on that subject. Yet his official instructions of 18th June and 3d July, 1812, to Commodore Hull, which I saw for the first time in Mr. Ingersoll’s work, evince an anxiety bordering on timidity, a fear to assume any responsibility, and a wish, if any misfortune should happen, to make the officer solely responsible for it.”

Mr. Ingersoll and Commodore Stewart, though in different ways, both in effect charged upon Mr. Gallatin this scheme of laying up the navy; it was, according to them, his influence in the Cabinet which had almost deprived the nation of its maritime glories. This is one of those curious echoes of popular notions which so often bias historians, and was founded partly on his old hostility to the navy, partly on his known indisposition towards the war. There was, in fact, no truth in it. Mr. Gallatin has himself, in the paper quoted above, recorded his feelings about the navy at this time:

“For myself I have no reason to complain. Commodore Stewart, in mentioning my name, only repeats what he heard another say, and he ascribes to me none but honorable motives and opinions, which, as he believed, were generally those of the public at large. He says, indeed, that out of the navy he knew at Philadelphia but one man who thought otherwise. My associations were, however, more fortunate. From my numerous connections and friends in the navy, and particularly from conversations with Commodore Decatur, who had explained to me the various improvements introduced in our public ships, I had become satisfied that our navy would, on equal terms, prove equal to that of Great Britain, and I may aver that this was the opinion not only of Mr. Madison, but of the majority of those in and out of Congress with whom I conversed. The apprehension, as far as I knew, was not on that account, but that by reason of the prodigious numerical superiority of the British there would be little chance for engagements on equal terms, and that within a short time our public ships could afford no protection to our commerce. But this did not apply to the short period immediately subsequent to the declaration of war, when the British naval force in this quarter was hardly superior to that of the United States. The expectation was general, and nowhere more so than in New York, where the immediate capture of the Belvidere was anticipated, that our public ships would sail the moment that war was declared. In keeping them in port at that time the Administration would have acted in direct opposition to the intentions of Congress and to public opinion.”

Commodore Stewart replied in rather indifferent temper to Mr. Gallatin’s very mild statement,115 but in doing so he printed the sailing orders of June 22, 1812. An examination of the Madison papers in the State Department at Washington also brings to light the following note, and by placing the note of Mr. Gallatin side by side with the sailing orders sent by the Secretary of the Navy to Commodore Rodgers, it will be easily seen who was responsible for sending Rodgers to sea.

GALLATIN TO MADISON[No date. June 20 or 21, 1812.]

Dear Sir, – I believe the weekly arrivals from foreign ports will for the coming four weeks average from one to one and a half million dollars a week. To protect these and our coasting vessels whilst the British have still an inferior force on our coasts, appears to me of primary importance. I think that orders to that effect ordering them to cruise accordingly ought to have been sent yesterday, and that at all events not one day longer ought to be lost.

Respectfully.SECRETARY HAMILTON TO COMMODORE RODGERSNavy Department, 22d June, 1812.

… For the present it has been judged expedient so to employ our public armed vessels as to afford to our returning commerce all possible protection. Nationally and individually the safe return of our commercial vessels is obviously of the highest importance, and, to accomplish this object as far as may be in your power, you will without doubt exert your utmost means and consult your best judgment… Your general cruising ground for the present will be from the Capes of the Chesapeake eastwardly. Commodore Decatur, … having the same object in view, will, for the present, cruise from New York southwardly… You are now in possession of the present views of the government in relation to the employment of our vessels of war…

These two documents establish beyond question the curious fact that it was Mr. Gallatin who fixed the policy of the Administration in regard to the navy in 1812; that it was he who urged the President and the Navy Department up to their work; and that it was he who should have had the credit, whatever it may be, of sending Rodgers and Decatur to sea. These orders of June 22 were the actual cruising orders which settled the policy of the navy for the time, and took the place of temporary orders issued to Rodgers on June 18, in which he was directed to make a dash at the British cruisers off Sandy Hook and return immediately to New York.

In the face of these incontrovertible pieces of evidence, one is left to wonder what can have been the foundation for the circumstantial story told by Stewart and Bainbridge that they read on June 21, 1812, in the chief clerk’s room at the Navy Department in Washington, orders which had just been drawn at the instance of Mr. Gallatin for Commodore Rodgers not to leave the waters of New York with his naval force; orders issued, as the Secretary of the Navy then and there explained, because it had been decided by the President and Cabinet, also at Mr. Gallatin’s suggestion, to dismantle the ships and use them as floating batteries to defend New York harbor; and that the cancelling of these orders and the reversal of this policy were due to the vehement remonstrances of these two gallant naval officers, who won a victory in the President’s mind over the blasting and fatal influence of Mr. Gallatin. It is a new illustration of the old jealousy between arms and gowns.

GALLATIN TO JOSEPH H. NICHOLSONWashington, 26th June, 1812.

Dear Sir, – I am just informed that you are in Baltimore. If it be true that your Legislature has authorized the banks to lend a portion of their capital to the United States, can you ascertain what amount may be obtained from them all either by taking stock or by way of temporary loans reimbursable at the expiration of one or more years? We have not money enough to last till 1st January next, and General Smith is using every endeavor to run us aground by opposing everything, Treasury notes, double duties, &c. The Senate is so nearly divided and the divisions so increased by that on the war question that we can hardly rely on carrying anything…

War being now declared, Mr. Gallatin was condemned to do that which, of all financial work, he most abhorred; to pile debt upon debt; “to act the part of a mere financier; to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of loans,” and, in the inevitable waste of war, to be the helpless abettor of extravagance and mismanagement. These were not the objects for which he had taken office; they were, in fact, precisely the acts for which he had attacked his predecessors, had driven them from power, and appropriated their offices and honors, and no one felt this inconsistency more severely than Mr. Gallatin himself, although five years of painful effort and constant failure had taught him how feeble were party principles and private convictions in the face of facts. He was compelled to go on and to see worse things still. Every part of the administrative system, except one, collapsed. The war was miserably disastrous. The Act for raising 25,000 men had not become law until the 11th January, 1812; the selection of officers was not completed until the close of the year; the recruiting service was not organized in time; the enlistments fell short of the most moderate calculation, and the total number of recruits was so small as to make impossible any decisive movement on the line of Lake Champlain, although Montreal was almost unprotected. No sufficient naval force was provided on the Lakes, and in consequence an American army at Detroit was surrounded and captured by a mere mob of Canadians and Indians, who, inferior in every other respect to their opponents, had the inestimable advantage of a brave, energetic, and capable leader. Bad as this experience was, it hardly equalled the military performances at Niagara, where the commanding generals showed a degree of incompetence that descended at last to sheer buffoonery. The War Department in all its branches completely broke down, and if it had not been for the exploits of those half-dozen frigates whose construction had been so vehemently resisted by the Republican party under Mr. Gallatin’s lead, the Navy Department would have appeared equally poorly. The control of the Lakes was in fact lost, and only partially regained in 1813; the whole gun-boat system, on which millions had been wasted, went to pieces; even the frigates were mostly soon captured or blockaded, and, but for the privateers, England, at the end of the war, had little to fear on the ocean. Amid this general collapse of administration, Mr. Gallatin might have found hope and comfort had Congress shown capacity, but Congress was at least as inefficient as the Executive. Nothing could induce it to face the situation; with the exception of an Act for doubling the duties on importations, it passed no tax law until more than a year after the declaration of war, and it was not till the public credit was ruined and the Treasury notes were dishonored that Mr. Dallas, then Secretary of the Treasury, succeeded in bringing the Legislature to double the direct tax, to increase the rate of the internal duties and add new ones, immediately before the peace.116

A thorough reorganization of the Executive Departments was necessary, and should have been undertaken by the President before the war was even declared, but energy in administration was not a characteristic of Mr. Madison. He hesitated, delayed, postponed, and at length, as in the case of Robert Smith, he was dragged at the heels of men and events. Hardly a month had passed since the declaration of war, and Congress had adjourned on July 6 to meet again on the 3d November; Mr. Gallatin had just started for New York to seek for money, and the President had set out for his farm at Montpelier, when an express arrived with the news that General Hull had surrendered Detroit. What Mr. Gallatin thought of this affair may be inferred from the following extract of a letter to his wife:

GALLATIN TO HIS WIFEWashington, 31st August, 1812.

… Hull has in unaccountable manner surrendered all his troops (about 1800) prisoners of war to an inferior force. We have no direct accounts from him, but the fear of Indians for himself and the inhabitants is the probable cause of his not having extricated himself by retiring and abandoning the country. Proper measures for repairing the loss will be adopted; but how they will be executed by Eustis, no one can say…

The disaster at Detroit made a change in the War Department inevitable, but the change was not yet made. Mr. Gallatin pressed it as necessary from a financial point of view. When he found that the army and navy estimates would require a loan of $21,000,000 for the year 1813, he wrote to the President as follows: “I think a loan to that amount to be altogether unattainable. From banks we can expect little or nothing, as they have already lent nearly to the full extent of their faculties. All that I could obtain this year from individual subscriptions does not exceed $3,200,000. There are but two practicable ways of diminishing the expenditure: 1, by confining it to necessary objects; 2, by introducing perfect system and suppressing abuses in the necessary branches. 1. In the War Department, to reduce the calls for militia, and, above all, to keep the control over those calls and other contingent expenses; in the Navy, to diminish greatly the number of gun-boats, and to strike off all supernumerary midshipmen, pursers, sailing-masters, and other unnecessary officers. 2. System requires skill in forming and decision in executing. But the preparing and executing such plans must rest almost exclusively with the heads of the Departments. I have no doubt that knowledge and talents would save several millions, and the necessary business be better done.”