Volume IV Part 1 (1/2)
The Life of John Marshall.
Volume 4.
by Albert J. Beveridge.
CHAPTER I
THE PERIOD OF AMERICANIZATION
Great Britain is fighting our battles and the battles of mankind, and France is combating for the power to enslave and plunder us and all the world. (Fisher Ames.)
Though every one of these Bugbears is an empty Phantom, yet the People seem to believe every article of this bombastical Creed.
Who shall touch these blind eyes. (John Adams.)
The object of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain. (Jefferson.)
I am for resistance by the _sword_. (Henry Clay.)
Into the life of John Marshall war was strangely woven. His birth, his young manhood, his public services before he became Chief Justice, were coincident with, and affected by, war. It seemed to be the decree of Fate that his career should march side by side with armed conflict, and that the final phase of that career should open with a war--a war, too, which brought forth a National consciousness among the people and demonstrated a National strength hitherto unsuspected in their fundamental law.
Yet, while American Nationalism was Marshall's one and only great conception, and the fostering of it the purpose of his life, he was wholly out of sympathy with the National movement that led to our second conflict with Great Britain, and against the continuance of it. He heartily shared the opinion of the Federalist leaders that the War of 1812 was unnecessary, unwise, and unrighteous.
By the time France and England had renewed hostilities in 1803, the sympathies of these men had become wholly British. The excesses of the French Revolution had started them on this course of feeling and thinking. Their detestation of Jefferson, their abhorrence of Republican doctrines, their resentment of Virginia domination, all hastened their progress toward partisans.h.i.+p for Great Britain. They had, indeed, reverted to the colonial state of mind, and the old phrases, ”the mother country,” ”the protection of the British fleet,”[1] were forever on their lips.
These Federalists pa.s.sionately hated France; to them France was only the monstrous child of the terrible Revolution which, in the name of human rights, had attacked successfully every idea dear to their hearts--upset all order, endangered all property, overturned all respectability. They were sure that Napoleon intended to subjugate the world; and that Great Britain was our only bulwark against the aggressions of the Conqueror--that ”varlet” whose ”patron-saint [is] Beelzebub,” as Gouverneur Morris referred to Napoleon.[2]
So, too, thought John Marshall. No man, except his kinsman Thomas Jefferson, cherished a prejudice more fondly than he. Perhaps no better example of first impressions strongly made and tenaciously retained can be found than in these two men. Jefferson was as hostile as Marshall was friendly to Great Britain; and they held exactly opposite sentiments toward France. Jefferson's strongest t.i.tle to immortality was the Declaration of Independence; nearly all of his foreign embroilments had been with British statesmen. In British conservatism he had found the most resolute opposition to those democratic reforms he so pa.s.sionately championed, and which he rightly considered the manifestations of a world movement.[3]
And Jefferson adored France, in whose entrancing capital he had spent his happiest years. There his radical tendencies had found encouragement. He looked upon the French Revolution as the breaking of humanity's chains, politically, intellectually, spiritually.[4] He believed that the war of the allied governments of Europe against the new-born French Republic was a monarchical combination to extinguish the flame of liberty which France had lighted.
Marshall, on the other hand, never could forget his experience with the French. And his revelation of what he had endured while in Paris had brought him his first National fame.[5] Then, too, his idol, Was.h.i.+ngton, had shared his own views--indeed, Marshall had been instrumental in the formation of Was.h.i.+ngton's settled opinions. Marshall had championed the Jay Treaty, and, in doing so, had necessarily taken the side of Great Britain as opposed to France.[6] His business interests[7] powerfully inclined him in the same direction. His personal friends were the ageing Federalists.
He had also become obsessed with an almost religious devotion to the rights of property, to steady government by ”the rich, the wise and good,”[8] to ”respectable” society. These convictions Marshall found most firmly retained and best defended in the commercial centers of the East and North. The stoutest champions of Marshall's beloved stability of inst.i.tutions and customs were the old Federalist leaders, particularly of New England and New York. They had been his comrades and a.s.sociates in bygone days and continued to be his intimates.
In short, John Marshall had become the personification of the reaction against popular government that followed the French Revolution. With him and men of his cast of mind, Great Britain had come to represent all that was enduring and good, and France all that was eruptive and evil.
Such was his outlook on social and political life when, after these traditional European foes were again at war, their spoliations of American commerce, violations of American rights, and insults to American honor once more became flagrant; and such continued to be his opinion and feeling after these aggressions had become intolerable.
Since the adoption of the Const.i.tution, nearly all Americans, except the younger generation, had become re-Europeanized in thought and feeling.
Their partisans.h.i.+p of France and Great Britain relegated America to a subordinate place in their minds and hearts. Just as the anti-Federalists and their successors, the Republicans, had been more concerned in the triumph of revolutionary France over ”monarchical”
England than in the maintenance of American interests, rights, and honor, so now the Federalists were equally violent in their champions.h.i.+p of Great Britain in her conflict with the France of Napoleon. Precisely as the French partisans of a few years earlier had a.s.serted that the cause of France was that of America also,[9] the Federalists now insisted that the success of Great Britain meant the salvation of the United States.
”Great Britain is fighting our battles and the battles of mankind, and France is combating for the power to enslave and plunder us and all the world,”[10] wrote that faithful interpreter of extreme New England Federalism, Fisher Ames, just after the European conflict was renewed.
Such opinions were not confined to the North and East. In South Carolina, John Rutledge was under the same spell. Writing to ”the head Quarters of good Principles,” Boston, he avowed that ”I have long considered England as but the advanced guard of our Country.... If they fall we do.”[11] Scores of quotations from prominent Federalists expressive of the same views might be adduced.[12] Even the a.s.sault on the Chesapeake did not change or even soften them.[13] On the other hand, the advocates of France as ardently upheld her cause, as fiercely a.s.sailed Great Britain.[14]
Never did Americans more seriously need emanc.i.p.ation from foreign influence than in the early decades of the Republic--never was it more vital to their well-being that the people should develop an American spirit, than at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.
Upon the renewal of the European conflict, Great Britain announced wholesale blockades of French ports,[15] ordered the seizure of neutral s.h.i.+ps wherever found carrying on trade with an enemy of England;[16] and forbade them to enter the harbors of immense stretches of European coasts.[17] In reply, Napoleon declared the British Islands to be under blockade, and ordered the capture in any waters whatsoever of all s.h.i.+ps that had entered British harbors.[18] Great Britain responded with the Orders in Council of 1807 which, in effect, prohibited the oceans to neutral vessels except such as traded directly with England or her colonies; and even this commerce was made subject to a special tax to be paid into the British treasury.[19] Napoleon's swift answer was the Milan Decree,[20] which, among other things, directed all s.h.i.+ps submitting to the British Orders in Council to be seized and confiscated in the ports of France or her allies, or captured on the high seas.
All these ”decrees,” ”orders,” and ”instructions” were, of course, in flagrant violation of international law, and were more injurious to America than to all other neutrals put together. Both belligerents bore down upon American commerce and seized American s.h.i.+ps with equal lawlessness.[21] But, since Great Britain commanded the oceans,[22] the United States suffered far more severely from the depredations of that Power.[23] Under pressure of conflict, Great Britain increased her impressment[24] of American sailors. In effect, our ports were blockaded.[25]
Jefferson's lifelong prejudice against Great Britain[26] would permit him to see in all this nothing but a sordid and brutal imperialism. Not for a moment did he understand or consider the British point of view.