CHAPTER XXXVI. SUBMISSION. WHILE Madison and Gallatin were attempting to WE bring Congress to the point of repealing the embargo in favor of war, they were endeavoring to work on England through Erskine. They told Erskine that the alternatives open to the United States were embargo and war; that the people of the country were beginning to regard the embargo as too passive; and that America must be driven to endeavor to maintain her rights against the two greatest powers in the world, unless one of them should revoke her anti-neutral decrees. In that case, the United States would side with that one against the other, provided the other persisted in her war upon the commerce of the United States.* Madison hoped through Erskine to induce England to revoke her decrees when she saw that it would result in a war between the United States and Napoleon. Before the vote on the resolutions recommended by Campbell's report had been taken, Gallatin presented his annual report on the finances (December nual report. 10, 1808). It amounted to a recommenda- Gallatin's antion of war. He told Congress that even in case of war against both England and France, no in *Erskine to Canning, December 4, 1808. ernal taxes were contemplated.* Internal taxes, as we know, had always been bitterly opposed by the Republicaus. Gallatin told them that they need not hesitate to declare war through fear of internal taxes. He said that loans should be principally relied on and that the revenue derived from duties on imports would be amply sufficient, during long intervals of peace, not only to defray current expenses, but to pay the debts contracted in war. Extra session. In accordance with the policy of the incoming Administration, Smilie offered (January 7) in the House of Representatives a resolution declaring that a committee should be appointed to take into consideration the propriety of providing by law for an early meeting of the next Congress. It was distinctly understood that the extra session was contemplated for the purpose of declaring war. In the debate on the bill providing for the extra session on the fourth Monday in May, J. G. Jackson, Madison's brotherin-law, said: "I think, by passing this bill, we give the nation a pledge that it shall be the ne plus ultra, which shall give to foreign nations time to revise their conduct towards us, and will give them time to consider whether or not they will have war with us."† If the Federalists had believed this, if through earnest conferences between the members of the Admin *Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, 1765. istration and the leaders of the Federalists, partisanship could have been subordinated to patriotism, if they could have been convinced of the sincere desire of the Administration to isolate the enemies of the United States so that the country might have but one enemy to fight, and that enemy Napoleon-the United States would have been spared a great humiliation, and a still greater danger. But they did not believe it. They believed that if war was declared against France and England, the war against France would be merely nominal, since France had no territory that we could attack without encountering the fleets of England. Many of them believed that the Administration had no idea of declaring war under any circumstances, that the proposed extra session for the purpose of declaring war was a mere trick to deceive the people, as Quincy declared in a speech as remarkable for its ability as it was for its bitterness. He Quincy told the House that it had been deceived when it passed the embargo laws, that coercion was its real object, and not precaution, as was pretended. said that the proposed extra session had a similar object-that it was not intended that Quincy's speech. Congress should declare war under certain contingencies that was a mere pretence; its real object was to delude the people into submitting to the embargo a little longer, that if the people would bear it, "this embargo will be continued, not only until next May, but until next September, yes, sir, to next May twelve months;" "that it was intended to persevere in the measure until it effect, if possible, the proposed object.” He declared that "it was never intended by Administration to do anything else effectual for the support of our maritime rights. Sir, I am sick, sick to loathing, of this eternal clamor of war, war, war, which has been kept up incessantly on this floor, now for more than two years. Sir, if I can help it, the old women of this country shall not be frightened in this way any longer. I have been a long time a close observer of what has been said and done by the majority of this House, and for one, I am satisfied that no insult, however gross, offered to us by either France or Great Britain, could force this majority into the declaration of war. To use a strong but common expression, it could not be kicked into such a declaration by either nation." If the majority meant war they would have prepared for it. What preparation had they made? They had built one hundred and seventy gun boats; they had in requisition one hundred thousand militia. "You talk of going to war against Great Britain with, I believe, only one frigate and five sloops of war in commission! And yet you have not the resolution to meet the expense of the paltry little navy which is rotting in the Potomac. *** You go to war with all the revenue to be derived from commerce annihilated, and possessing no other resource than loans or direct or other internal taxes! You! A party that rose into power by declaiming against direct taxes and loans"!* *Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, 1111-1114. The sting of Quincy's taunts lay in their truth. After all the insults of England and France, the House could still vapor about the preservation of peace with honor! The next day (January 20), the bill for an extra session passed by a vote of eighty to twenty-six. On the surface it looked as if the policy of Madison and Gallatin would be carried out to the letter. Their resolutions (recommended in Campbell's Report and intended to commit the House to embargo or war) had been passed by an overwhelming majority; Erskine was writing dispatch after dispatch to prove to his government that if they did not revoke their Orders in Council, the United States would declare war against them in June. But Madison and Gallatin committed one fatal blunder. For some reason, perhaps because they regarded it as derogatory to the dignity of the government not to enforce the embargo laws as long as they remained laws, perhaps because they wished to drive the people into preferring war through the very odiousness of the alternative, perhaps because they yielded to the spell of Jefferson's influence, who permitted himself to hope that if the embargo was rigorously enforced, England would be compelled to revoke her decrees-they urged the Enforcing Act of which a preceding chapter has given some account and which became a law January 9. The discontent in New England at once rose to the point of danger to the Union. A few radi Nullification in cals like Pickering, Otis, Gore and Hillhouse New England. were ready to resort to extreme measures |