For Honour's Sake (14 page)

It seems unlikely either bothered to read the documents before the purchase or after. They proved worthless. No conspirators were named, no specifics of rebellious plots revealed. Henry was quickly exposed as a sleazy opportunist. Several American journalists noted that the papers contained nothing that could not be learned by reading any Boston newspaper.
²⁵
After an initial flurry of outrage in both the popular press and on the Congress floor, the matter largely fizzled out.

Meantime the tone of debate in both Senate and Congress reflected growing support for war and some recognition that the administration needed the means to prosecute it. On March 14, Congress authorized an $11-million loan but refused to impose taxes on the American people or on business transactions conducted within the boundaries of the country. That left Gallatin increasingly dependent on declining customs duties and export taxes for government revenue.
²⁶

Clay and Monroe met the morning after Congress approved the war loan and agreed that matters had to be brought to a head. Their idea was that America should again impose an embargo upon itself for thirty days and that upon its termination war would automatically follow. In a note Clay sent Monroe that afternoon, he argued that an embargo would “above all powerfully accelerate preparations for the War. By the expiration of the Embargo the
Hornet
will have returned with good or bad news, and of course the question of War may then be fairly decided.”

In the margin of the note, he scribbled, “Alth.' the power of declaring War belongs to Congress, I do not see that it less falls within the scope of the President's constitutional duty to recommend such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient than any other which, being suggested by him, they alone can adopt.”
²⁷

On March 31, Monroe huddled with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in what were supposed to be secret proceedings. John Randolph, however, refused to be bound by secrecy and read to Congress some of the notes he took during the meeting. Monroe, he revealed, opened the meeting by saying that “without an accommodation with Great Britain Congress ought to declare war before adjourning.” The only reason for not issuing an immediate declaration, Monroe had continued, was that the country was unprepared. He therefore proposed an embargo
not exceeding sixty days “as preparatory to war.” There was also the need to await the return
of Hornet.
Monroe added: “Without war, public expectations would be defeated and our character destroyed abroad.”
²⁸

Two days later Congress passed an embargo bill by a vote of seventy to forty-one. The following day, April 3, Senate approval was given but the embargo's length extended to ninety days. Madison signed the bill into law three days later.

The pace of events now quickened, and all eyes in Washington turned toward the Atlantic in anticipation of
Hornet's
imminent arrival. But by early May she still had not appeared, and Madison stuck to his guns that no war declaration could occur until she arrived. A Kentucky newspaper editor vented his frustration that a single ship should take on such prominence. “Ever since her sailing the cant word has been, the
Hornet,
the
Hornet.
What sting she will bring on her return.”
²⁹

On May 18, Madison was nominated Republican candidate for the next presidential race and five days later a bag of dispatches from the just-arrived
Hornet
was rushed to Washington. The news was disappointing. Joel Barlow, the minister to France, reported that no commercial treaty seemed imminent. The French were also unwilling to release the American ships they had impounded. For his part, Jonathan Russell, chargé d'affaires in London, reported that the orders-in-council were being strongly contested by British manufacturers but there was scant hope of their repeal. No instructions had been sent to the British minister to the United States to offer any olive branches.
³⁰

Finding France's policy “puzzling,” Madison and his administration became suddenly hesitant. Gallatin was again vacillating away from war, and Monroe was falling into bouts of depression over its prospect. Had Madison thought back to a letter that Russell had sent to Monroe in July of 1811, while he was legation secretary to America's French mission, France's purpose might have been understood. “The great object” of Napoleon's policy, Russell had written, was “to entangle us in a war with England.”
³¹

Shortly after
Hornet's
return, Clay led a deputation of congressional Republicans into a private meeting with Madison. Clay told the president that the time had come for decisive action and “that a majority of Congressmen would support war if the President recommended it.”
³²

On June 1, Madison did precisely that, and three days later the House voted for war by a margin of seventy-nine to forty-nine. The vote, however, was taken in secrecy and not announced, pending its adoption by the Senate. There the matter was more closely contested. Various senators presented motions to modify the effect of war or to limit its dimensions. One called for the Senate to approve only a maritime war, as it was on the seas that America's rights had been violated. The motion was defeated on June 15 by a vote of eighteen to fourteen.

The following day, Bayard, who still believed that the British would rescind the orders-in-council, introduced a motion to “postpone the further consideration of the bill to the thirty-first day of October.” Now, he said, “was not a time at which war ought to be declared…. It is not enough that we have cause of war; we must see that we are prepared, and in a condition to make war. You do not go to war for the benefit of your enemy, but your own advantage; not to give proofs of a vain and heedless courage, but to assert your rights and redress your wrongs.” He pleaded for time to bring home American ships to save them from seizure, time to raise a proper army and to build a strong navy. “Was any nation ever less prepared for war?” Bayard asked. The senator warned that war would cause economic chaos because of the loss of trade that could not be elsewhere replaced. “The laws of war will operate still more extensively than the Orders-in-Council; and though no doubt we shall gratify the Emperor of France, we shall enjoy little commerce with his dominions. As it regards, therefore, our interest, it is found in protracting the present state of affairs.” The motion was defeated twenty-three to nine.
³³

On June 17, the Senate voted nineteen to thirteen in favour of immediate and unrestricted war. The next day, the House accepted a few minor Senate amendments to the war bill and then Madison fixed his signature to it. Then, noted government comptroller Richard Rush, the president personally visited the offices of War and Navy “in a manner worthy of a little commander in chief with his little round hat and huge cockade.”
³⁴

“
We shall have war,” Clay
wrote ecstatically. “Every patriot bosom must throb with anxious solicitude for the result. Every patriot arm will assist in making that result conducive to the glory of our beloved country.”
³⁵
Henry Clay had his war.

“
A
t the moment of the declaration of war,” James Monroe later wrote, “the President, regretting the necessity which produced it, looked to its termination.” The secretary of state and the majority of James Madison's administration were similarly minded. Monroe, however, was more ardent than the others in this desire. As a result, he indulged in the fanciful delusion that declaration of war alone would bring about the downfall of Secretary of Foreign Affairs Viscount Castlereagh, a hard-line supporter of the orders-in-council. Nobody in Washington, however, was aware that Britain's government had been cast into disarray by Prime Minister Spencer Perceval's assassination on May 11.

Perceval was gunned down by a deranged man named John Bellingham, who while imprisoned in Russia had sought assistance in securing his release from the British representative, Leveson Gower, but was refused any help. Upon serving out his sentence, Bellingham returned to Britain bankrupt and intent on revenge. Unable to locate Gower, he decided that Perceval—whom he had never met—would suffice. Bellingham was hanged for the murder.

Having only returned to the cabinet earlier that year to head the Foreign Affairs Department, Castlereagh handily survived the ensuing month-long cabinet reorganization, not only retaining that position but also being appointed leader of the House of Commons. Save for Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, this made him the cabinet's most powerful member.

Ignorant of these events, Monroe considered that the continuing war with France was surely so calamitous that the British would prefer to treat rather than deny themselves all trade with America. Such were the growing shortages in Britain, Monroe believed, that the government must “afford vast facilities to our trade,” so that the United States could perhaps prosecute a war against that nation while simultaneously trading with it until peace was agreed. America should, he confided to John Taylor of Carolina, “open our ports & trade & fight & fight & trade.” If there was war, Monroe assured his friend, none of it would be fought on American soil and there would be no more loss of commercial trade than had been the case under the embargo or non-importation act.
¹

This rosy scenario, where the United States was spared any loss or inconvenience, was glaringly at odds with events already unfolding in Washington and elsewhere. The day after the declaration's signing, Madison received Augustus Foster, the British minister to America. Foster, having assumed the post in the summer of 1811, had issued a stream of reports home detailing the many divisions present in American society and among its politicians regarding any discussion of war. The tenor of these notes had lulled Castlereagh into complacently believing no true crisis brewed and consequently no reconsideration of the orders-in-council was warranted. Now Foster belatedly attempted to limit the consequence of the war declaration by proposing that both sides avoid hostile acts until he could personally carry the declaration back to Britain. He would, of course, welcomely also take along any proposal Madison wished to send that might resolve the matter peacefully.

Hobbled by the necessity to offer no fodder to the many critics who accused him of lacking sufficient martial fire, Madison reluctantly declined this offer. Diplomatic relations between the two countries, the president said, must cease immediately. He would, however, leave chargé d'affaires Jonathan Russell in London to oversee treatment of prisoners, and Foster's legation secretary, Anthony St. John Baker, could do the same in Washington. Desperate to offer some olive branch, no matter how meagre, Foster said Baker's first duty would be to see to the repatriation of two of the seamen seized from
Chesapeake
five years
earlier. They
were,
he reported,
already
aboard HMS
Bramble
en route from Halifax to American waters.

Madison received this news without comment, no doubt because those unfortunate sailors had long since been martyred to the cause of war and their release was of no consequence. Instead, he assured Foster that British packet ships could pass freely under flag of truce between North America and Britain to sustain a limited channel for diplomatic communication through the offices of Baker and Russell.

Foster was still packing when a pouch of British newspapers borne by such a ship was delivered to Madison on June 22. The press reported that the British government might be on the verge of rescinding the orders-in-council. Realizing Liverpool's government could have no knowledge yet that America had declared war and so must be responding purely to domestic opposition, Madison sensed an opportunity to secure peace and hurriedly invited Foster for a farewell visit. With Baker in tow, Foster reported to Madison's office, where the president made it plain that he desired to eliminate the causes of the war in order to restore peace.