Volume IV Part 2 (2/2)
The Governors of the New England States refused to aid the National Government with the militia.[132] In Congress the Federalists were obstructing war measures and embarra.s.sing the Government in every way their ingenuity could devise. One method was to force the Administration to tell the truth about Napoleon's pretended revocation of his obnoxious decree. A resolution asking the President to inform the House ”when, by whom, and in what manner, the first intelligence was given to this Government” of the St. Cloud Decree, was offered by Daniel Webster,[133]
who had been elected to Congress from New Hamps.h.i.+re as the fiercest youthful antagonist of the war in his State.[134] The Republicans agreed, and Webster's resolution was pa.s.sed by a vote of 137 yeas to only 26 nays.[135]
In compliance the President transmitted a long report. It was signed by the Secretary of State, James Monroe, but bears the imprint of Madison's lucid mind. The report states the facts upon which Congress was compelled to declare war and demonstrates that the Decree of St. Cloud had nothing to do with our militant action, since it was not received until more than a month after our declaration of war. Then follow several clear and brilliant paragraphs setting forth the American view of the causes and purposes of the war.[136]
Timothy Pickering was not now in the Senate. The Republican success in Ma.s.sachusetts at the State election of 1810 had given the Legislature to that party,[137] and the pugnacious Federalist leader was left at home.
There he raged and intrigued and wrote reams of letters. Monroe's report lent new fury to his always burning wrath, and he sent that doc.u.ment, with his malediction upon it, to John Marshall at Richmond. In reply the Chief Justice said that the report ”contains a labored apology for France but none for ourselves. It furnishes no reason for our tame unmurmuring acquiescence under the double insult of withholding this paper [Decree of St. Cloud] from us & declaring in our face that it has been put in our possession.
”The report is silent on another subject of still deeper interest. It leaves unnoticed the fact that the Berlin & Milan decrees were certainly not repealed by that insidious decree of April since it had never been communicated to the French courts and cruizers, & since their cruizers had at a period subsequent to the pretended date of that decree received orders to continue to execute the offensive decrees on American vessels.
”The report manifests no sensibility at the disgraceful circ.u.mstances which tend strongly to prove that this paper was fabricated to satisfy the importunities of Mr. Barlow, was antedated to suit French purposes; nor at the contempt manifested for the feelings of Americans and their government, by not deigning so to antedate it as to save the credit of our Administration by giving some plausibility to their a.s.sertion that the repeal had taken place on the 1^{st} of Nov^r--But this is a subject with which I dare not trust myself.”
The plight of the American land forces, the splendid and unrivaled victories of the American Navy, apparently concerned Marshall not at all. His eyes were turned toward Europe; his ears strained to catch the sounds from foreign battle-fields.
”I look with anxious solicitude--with mingled hope & fear,” he continues, ”to the great events which are taking place in the north of Germany. It appears probable that a great battle will be fought on or near the Elbe & never had the world more at stake than will probably depend on that battle.
”Your opinions had led me to hope that there was some prospect for a particular peace for ourselves. My own judgement, could I trust it, would tell me that peace or war will be determined by the events in Europe.”[138]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Tim Pickering]
The ”great battle” which Marshall foresaw had been fought nearly eight weeks before his letter was written. Napoleon had been crus.h.i.+ngly defeated at Leipzig in October, 1813, and the British, Prussian, and other armies which Great Britain had combined against him, were already invading France. When, later, the news of this arrived in America, it was hailed by the Federalists with extravagant rejoicings.[139]
Secession, if the war were continued, now became the purpose of the more determined Federalist leaders. It was hopeless to keep up the struggle, they said. The Administration had precipitated hostilities without reason or right, without conscience or sense.[140] The people never had favored this wretched conflict; and now the tyrannical Government, failing to secure volunteers, had resorted to conscription--an ”infamous” expedient resorted to in brutal violation of the Const.i.tution.[141] So came the Hartford Convention which the cool wisdom of George Cabot saved from proclaiming secession.[142]
Of the two pretenses for war against Great Britain, the Federalists alleged that one had been removed even before we declared war, and that only the false and shallow excuse of British impressment of American seamen remained. Madison and Monroe recognized this as the one great remaining issue, and an Administration pamphlet was published a.s.serting the reason and justice of the American position. This position was that men of every country have a natural right to remove to another land and there become citizens or subjects, ent.i.tled to the protection of the government of the nation of their adoption. The British principle, on the contrary, was that British subjects could never thus expatriate themselves, and that, if they did so, the British Government could seize them wherever found, and by force compel them to serve the Empire in any manner the Government chose to direct.
Monroe's brother-in-law, George Hay, still the United States Attorney for the District of Virginia, was selected to write the exposition of the American view. It seems probable that his ma.n.u.script was carefully revised by Madison and Monroe, and perhaps by Jefferson.[143] Certainly Hay stated with singular precision the views of the great Republican triumvirate. The pamphlet was ent.i.tled ”A Treatise on Expatriation.” He began: ”I hold in utter reprobation the idea that a man is bound by an obligation, permanent and unalterable, to the government of a country which he has abandoned and his allegiance to which he has solemnly adjured.”[144]
Immediately John Lowell answered.[145] Nothing keener and more spirited ever came from the pen of that gifted man. ”The presidential pamphleteer,” as Lowell called Hay, ignored the law. The maxim, once a subject always a subject, was as true of America as of Britain. Had not Ellsworth, when Chief Justice, so decided in the famous case of Isaac Williams?[146] Yet Hay sneered at the opinion of that distinguished jurist.[147]
Pickering joyfully dispatched Lowell's brochure to Marshall, who lost not a moment in writing of his admiration. ”I had yesterday the pleasure of receiving your letter of the 8th accompanying M^r Lowell's very masterly review of the treatise on expatriation. I have read it with great pleasure, & thank you very sincerely for this mark of your recollection.
”Could I have ever entertained doubts on the subject, this review would certainly have removed them. Mingled with much pungent raillery is a solidity of argument and an array of authority which in my judgement is entirely conclusive. But in truth it is a question upon which I never entertained a scintilla of doubt; and have never yet heard an argument which ought to excite a doubt in any sound and reflecting mind. It will be to every thinking American a most afflicting circ.u.mstance, should our government on a principle so completely rejected by the world proceed to the execution of unfortunate, of honorable, and of innocent men.”[148]
Astonis.h.i.+ng and repellent as these words now appear, they expressed the views of every Federalist lawyer in America. The doctrine of perpetual allegiance was indeed then held and practiced by every government except our own,[149] nor was it rejected by the United States until the Administration became Republican. Marshall, announcing the opinion of the Supreme Court in 1804, had held that an alien could take lands in New Jersey because he had lived in that State when, in 1776, the Legislature pa.s.sed a law making all residents citizens.[150] Thus he had declared that an American citizen did not cease to be such because he had become the subject of a foreign power. Four years later, in another opinion involving expatriation, he had stated the law to be that a British subject, born in England before 1775, could not take, by devise, lands in Maryland, the statute of that State forbidding aliens from thus acquiring property there.[151] In both these cases, however, Marshall refrained from expressly declaring in terms against the American doctrine.
Even as late as 1821 the Chief Justice undoubtedly retained his opinion that the right of expatriation did not exist,[152] although he did not say so in express terms. But in Marshall's letter on Lowell's pamphlet he flatly avows his belief in the principle of perpetual allegiance, any direct expression on which he so carefully avoided when deciding cases involving it.
Thus the record shows that John Marshall was as bitterly opposed to the War of 1812 as was Pickering or Otis or Lowell. So entirely had he become one of ”the aristocracy of talents of reputation, & of property,”
as Plumer, in 1804, had so accurately styled the cla.s.s of which he himself was then a member,[153] that Marshall looked upon all but one subject then before the people with the eyes of confirmed reaction. That subject was Nationalism. To that supreme cause he was devoted with all the pa.s.sion of his deep and powerful nature; and in the service of that cause he was soon to do much more than he had already performed.
Our second war with Great Britain accomplished none of the tangible and immediate objects for which it was fought. The British refused to abandon ”the right” of impressment; or to disclaim the British sovereignty of the oceans whenever they chose to a.s.sert it; or to pay a farthing for their spoliation of American commerce. On the other hand, the British did not secure one of their demands.[154] The peace treaty did little more than to end hostilities.
But the war achieved an inestimable good--it de-Europeanized America. It put an end to our thinking and feeling only in European terms and emotions. It developed the spirit of the new America, born since our political independence had been achieved, and now for the first time emanc.i.p.ated from the intellectual and spiritual sovereignty of the Old World. It had revealed to this purely American generation a consciousness of its own strength; it could exult in the fact that at last America had dared to fight.
The American Navy, s.h.i.+p for s.h.i.+p, officer for officer, man for man, had proved itself superior to the British Navy, the very name of which had hitherto been mentioned only in terror or admiration of its unconquerable might. In the end, raw and untrained American troops had beaten British regulars. American riflemen of the West and South had overwhelmed the flower of all the armies of Europe. An American frontier officer, Andrew Jackson, had easily outwitted some of Great Britain's ablest and most experienced professional generals. In short, on land and sea America had stood up to, had really beaten, the tremendous Power that had overthrown the mighty Napoleon.
Such were the feelings and thoughts of that Young America which had come into being since John Marshall had put aside his Revolutionary uniform and arms. And in terms very much like those of the foregoing paragraph the American people generally expressed their sentiments.
Moreover, the Embargo, the Non-Intercourse and Non-Importation Acts, the British blockades, the war itself, had revolutionized the country economically and socially. American manufacturing was firmly established. Land travel and land traffic grew to proportions never before imagined, never before desired. The people of distant sections became acquainted.
The eyes of all Americans, except those of the aged or ageing, were turned from across the Atlantic Ocean toward the boundless, the alluring West--their thoughts diverted from the commotions of Europe and the historic antagonism of foreign nations, to the economic conquest of a limitless and virgin empire and to the development of incalculable and untouched resources, all American and all their own.
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