PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. 297 XXIV. that were wanted, but weight of character and knowl- CHAPTER edge of detail, which could not be had for $1500 a year. Thus pressed, the House passed a bill for two assistant 1812. secretaries of war; but the Smith faction in the Senate harangued against this division of responsibility, while the papers in their interest did not hesitate to ascribe the whole difficulty to the incapacity of Eustis, whom the president was loudly called upon to dismiss. It seems remarkable, indeed, that just upon the eve of a war, of which they professed themselves most ardent advocates, this senatorial faction should have taken the responsibility of defeating a bill which the president himself had so urgently pressed, The peace men, secret and open, aided by a considerable number of the war party, came near carrying an adjournment, to give the members, weary with five months of warlike preparations, an opportunity to attend to their own affairs. The Senate actually voted to adjourn, first for forty, and then for twenty days; and it Ap. 25–29 was only by a majority of eight or ten that the House refused to concur. The Federalists saw another omen of peace in the partial failure of the eleven million loan, May ? which, instead of being rapidly filled up at the opening of the books, had been taken only to the amount of six millions, two-thirds subscribed by banks, and the other third by individuals. Yet, with this fact staring the war party in the face, nothing was done toward forwarding the new tax bills. But, whatever hesitation there might be in the cabinet, whatever irresolution on the part of many members of Congress, the new leaders were determined on war. Preparations for it were in their eyes of little consequence. Once plunge the country in, and preparations then would be absolutely necessary. To impose taxes XXIV. CHAPTER before war was declared might cool the warlike ardor of the nation. When the war was once fairly commenced, 1812. taxes, if needed, would follow of course. Such was the policy openly avowed by the Aurora, and on it the war leaders evidently acted. One difficulty, however, still remained. Though willing to sign a bill declaring war, Madison was very unwilling to take any further responsibility in bringing it on. But the leaders of the war party were inexorable. The war must not seem to be forced on the president; it must be, not their war-the war of a few young, hotheaded, upstart leaders-but his. A committee, headed by the imperious. Clay, waited upon him with assurances to that effect. He must consent to recommend a declaration of war, or they would not support him as president. To this hard condition Madison yielded; and, the preliminaries thus arranged, the congressional caucus was May 18. presently held. Eighty-two members were present. Varnum acted as president, and Richard M. Johnson as secretary. For president, Madison received the entire vote of the caucus. George Clinton, the late vice-president, had died a few weeks before, and for that office Langdon was nominated. He was already seventy-one years of age, and had lately retired from the government of his own state, where Plumer, a recruit from the Federal party, had just been chosen to succeed him. On the score of age and infirmities, Langdon declined the nomination, which, as a solace for his late defeat in Massachusetts, was subsequently bestowed on the aged Gerry, for whom sixteen votes had been given at the first caucus. caucus re-enacted the old farce of resolving that they made the nominations only in their individual character; but they took a new step in advance, by appointing a committee of correspondence and arrangements, of one The · PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. 299 for each state, to see that the nominations were duly CHAPTER respected. XXIV. De Witt Clinton's position had been a good deal mod- 1812. ified, not only by the selection of Madison as the war and congressional candidate, but by the triumph of the Federalists in the recent New York election, occasioned by alarm at the prospect of war. He still persevered, however, in his presidential aspirations, and his supporters in the New York Legislature still stood by him. His or gan, the Columbian, thundered against Virginia dictation, and dwelt upon the fact that, by the new census and new apportionment, New York stood at the head of the states. When the prorogued Legislature again came together, in spite of reiterated charges of bribery and corruption, sustained by affidavits, and even by a conviction of bribery obtained against one of the bank lobby agents, the act incorporating the Bank of North America was passed by a decided majority, and approved by the Council of Revision, who seemed to regard rather the merits of the bill itself than the motives or conduct of some of its advocates. Oliver Wolcott, late of the Merchants' Bank, and former Secretary of the Treasury, became president, but it was found impossible to get the stock taken up on the terms proposed, and the succeeding Legislature reduced the capital from six to four millions, relinquished the right of the state to a loan of a million at five per cent., and cut down the bonus from $600,000 to $100,000, which was paid into the school fund. As soon as the Bank of America had been chartered, a caucus of the Republican members was held, at which May 28. Clinton was nominated for the presidency, but not without a good deal of opposition from Erastus Root, late a member of Congress, and from the late chief justice and governor, Morgan Lewis, now a state senator, and just CHAPTER appointed by Madison to the new office of Quarter-master XXIV. General-a duty which he had discharged for Gates's 1812. army during Burgoyne's invasion. This opposition was zealously joined by all Clinton's old opponents in the city of New York, already known as the Tammany party. The old Burr party, stimulated by encouragement from Washington, was at the bottom of this opposition to Clinton. Van Ness, Burr's second in the duel with Hamilton, incapacitated as he was to hold any state office, was appointed about this time Federal judge for the district of New York. In the National Advocate, shortly after established, and edited by Henry Wheaton, the opponents of Clinton obtained an able newspaper organ. The returning Hornet brought anxiously-expected dispatches from Barlow, on whose arrival at Paris, Russell had proceeded to London. Thus far his mission had been fruitless. He could hold out no promise either of indemnity for past spoliations or of any commercial relaxations for the future. He had, indeed, some faint expectation of obtaining by a treaty, with the idea of which he had from time to time been deluded, an express exemption of the United States from the maritime operation of the Berlin and Milan decrees. But the idea of such a treaty did not strike Madison's cabinet so favorably. They had all along maintained, and on that ground all their recent policy had been based, that as to the United States those decrees had ceased to exist. If so, what need to exempt the United States by treaty? Would not such a treaty go to confirm the assertions of the Federalists and the British ministry, that the United States had heretofore been deluded by a pretended repeal which did not exist? Meanwhile the argument against the fact of any such repeal was strengthened by a new report to the emperor made by the minister of foreign FRENCH DECREES AND BRITISH ORDERS. 301 XXIV. affairs, and laid before the Conservative Senate-a paper CHAPTER brought out by the Hornet-in which the Berlin and Milan decrees were spoken of, without any reservation 1812. or exception, as the settled policy of the empire, to be March 10. enforced against all nations who should suffer their flags to be denationalized by submitting to the pretensions of the British of a right to seize enemy's goods in neutral vessels, to treat timber and naval stores as contraband, or to blockade ports not also invested by land. If, however, the war party were a little mortified at Bonaparte's obstinacy in keeping himself quite as much in the wrong, to say the least of it, as did the English, they derived, however, a corresponding satisfaction from the equal obstinacy and equal extravagance of the British ministry in maintaining their favorite orders. The dissatisfaction of many British merchants with the license system, which opened a wide door to favoritism, and the pressure of the renewed non-importation, which began to be severely felt by the British manufacturers, had occasioned a motion by Brougham, now a member of Parliament, for an inquiry into those two subjects. In the debate which ensued, the reputed fathers of the orders in council, Rose and Stephen-the latter the author of "War in Disguise," by which the first impulse had been given to the late monopolizing policy of Great Britain— openly placed the defense of those orders on purely commercial grounds. Should they be repealed, France would be able to supply herself with raw materials through the agency of American vessels, and by the same agency to distribute her manufactures through the world, thus destroying the commercial and manufacturing monopoly which alone furnished Great Britain with the pecuniary means of sustaining the war. Canning, not now a member of the cabinet, piqued at |