Part 10 (1/2)
CHAPTER XX
CONCLUSION
Early in the war Mr Madison said to a friend, in a letter ”altogether _private_ and written in confidence,” that the way to make the conflict both ”short and successful would be to convince the enemy that he was to contend with the whole and not part of the nation” That it was a war of a party, and not of the people, was a discouragearded it, which he could never see any way of overco from disaster ”If the war o to the ocean Let it no longer be said that not one shi+p of force, built by your hands since the war, yet floats If you are seriously contending for hts can be defended There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you Even our party divisions, acrie In protecting naval interests by naval means, you will arm yourself with the whole power of national sentiment, and may co now in one view the events of those years, it is easy to see in our generation how mad were Madison and his party to turn deaf ears to such considerations as these Their force and wisdohteen months of disaster on land, which had made the war daily more and more unpopular; and by brilliant success for a time at sea, when each fresh victory was hailed with universal enthusiasm ”Our little naval triu of the latter; and the only importance he seee and jealousy” in England and moved her to increase her naval force How could Mr Madison expect that the whole and not a part only of the nation could uphold an ad, could be reproached on the floor of Congress with not having launched a shi+p since the as begun? Or did he only choose to reht either success or honor to the national arms, was the creation of the Federalists in spite of the Jeffersonian policy? It surely would have been wiser to try to propitiate New England, hich he was in perpetual worry and conflict, by enlisting it in a naval war in which it had solad to escape idleness and poverty at hoh they were reluctant to aid in a vain attempt to conquer Canada
[Illustration: _Battle of Lake Erie_]
Even to that purpose, however, Massachusetts contributed, in the second cale State; and New England land could have given no stronger proof of her loyalty, if only Mr Madison had kno to turn it to advantage He was absolutely deaf and blind to it; but his ears were quick to hear and his eyes to see, when he learned presently that the New Englanders were seriously calculating the value of the Union under such rule as they had had of late It was not often that he relieved hi now, in writing to Governor Nicholas of Virginia, that ”the greater part of the people in that quarter have been brought by their leaders, aided by their priests, under a delusion scarcely exceeded by that recorded in the period of witchcraft; and the leaders the daily more desperate in the use theya practical direction Mr Madison had learned before the letter ritten that a convention was about to h in a balance, upon the one side, the continuation of such government as that of the last two or three years, and, upon the other side, the value of the Union He ardently hoped that the coree upon a treaty; and there seeood reason why there should not be peace when nothing was to be said of the cause of the war, no apology demanded for the past, and no stipulation for the future But if by any chance the commissioners should fail, Mr Madison saw in the Hartford Convention the huge shadow of a con war It was the first step in dead earnest for the formation of a Northern Confederacy, and it is quite possible he may have felt that he was not the man for such a crisis
Every line of the letter pulsates with anxiety The only consoling thought in it is that without ”foreign cooperation revolt and separation will hardly be risked,” and to such cooperation he hoped a land people would not consent A treaty of peace, however, came to save him and the Union Within a feeeks the ad at Harrison Gray Otis of Boston, who had started for Washi+ngton as the representative of the Hartford Convention, but turned back at the news of peace; and were advertising hi under the nah of recovery froht
If ambition to be a second tiainst his own better judgland, he paid a heavy penalty It was the act of a party politician and not of a statesman; for the country was no more prepared for a war in 1812, when as a politician he assented to it, than it had been for the previous half dozen years when as a statesave the influence of the United States in support of a despotisation of all Europe; he threw a fresh obstacle in the way of that power to which Europe could chiefly look to resist a common enemy; and he did both under the pretense that the just coainst one of these powers than against the other
He declared warwhich ceased to exist before a bloas struck; he then rejected an offer of peace because another wrong was still persisted in; but finally, of his own motion, he accepted a treaty in which the assumed cause of as not even alluded to
That Mr Madison was not a good war President, either by training or by temperament, was, if it may be said of any man, his misfortune rather than his fault But it was his fault rather than his ed in a day into a line of conduct which the sober judgment of years had disapproved He is usually and reat arity in all the purely personal relations of life; of h not brilliant, quality; and a diligent student of the science of government, the practice of which he made a profession But he was better fitted by nature for a legislator than for executive office, and his fah his position would have been less exalted, had his life been exclusively devoted to that branch of government for which he was best fitted It was not ed the country into an unnecessary war; but when it was on his hands he neither knehat to do with it hiht men who did know
It is our amiable weakness--if one eese are swans, or rather eagles; that we are apt to mistake notoriety for reputation; that it is the popular belief of the larger nuuished position, is by virtue of that fact a great and good man
This is not less true, in a measure, of Mr Madison than of some other ht that they deserved to be But, if that false esti undercurrent of opinion, co those whose business or whose pleasure it is to look beneath the surface of things historical, that he anting in strength of character and in courage
He did not lack discernment as to isest and best; but he was too easily influenced by others, or led by the hope of gaining so prize which ambition coveted, to turn his back upon his own convictions It was this weakness which swept hiles were hopeless Had he refused to assument condemned, and which he should have known that he wanted the peculiar ability to bring to a successful and honorable conclusion, he ht never have been President, but his faht have overlooked the act of political fickleness in his earlier career, which was so warmly resented by many of his contemporaries Abandonment of party is too common and often too justifiable to be accounted as necessarily a crime; and it can rarely be said with positiveness, whatever the probabilities, that a political deserter is certainly moved by base motives It is rather from _ex post facto_ than from immediate evidence, as in Madison's case, that a just verdict is likely to be reached But there can be neither doubt nor n affairs during the two years preceding the declaration of war against England; nor of the re the ency of his own creation
Opposition to war generally and therefore opposition to an army and navy were sound cardinal principles in the Jeffersonian school of politics
Mr Madison was curiously blind to the logical consequences of this doctrine; he could not see, or he would not consider, that, ar seemed advisable to an administration, the result must depend mainly upon the success of the appeal to the people for their countenance and help But he unwisely sought to raise and employ an army for the invasion and conquest of the territory of the enee proportion of the wealthiest and ent people in the country; while at the sae in a naval warfare which had opened with unexpected brilliancy, and would, had it been followed up, have been sure of popular support His title to fame rests, with the multitude, upon the fact that he was one of the earlier Presidents of the republic
But it is that period of his career which least entitles hiratitude and respect by his country huust, 1814, when the British admiral, cockburn, entered the Hall of Representatives, at the head of a band of followers, and springing into the speaker's chair shouted: ”Shall this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? All for it will say, Aye!” Early in the war Madison had written to Jefferson, ”We do not apprehend invasion by land,”--the one thing, it would seem, that a cole aim was the invasion and conquest of the enemy's territory His devotion to this one purpose, to the exclusion of any other idea of either offense or defense, and in spite of continued failure, was almost an infatuation Within a year of that expression of confidence to Mr