NEW COMMISSION FOR PEACE.

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confirmed as minister to Sweden, some of the recusant CHAPTER Democratic senators having been lately lectured and whipped in by their respective state Legislatures.

1814.

While these appointments were still pending, a hot discussion arose in the House on the question of French influence. During the summer, Hanson had published in his Federal Republican a copy of Turreau's threatening letter, written during the pendency of the Erskine arrangement, and afterward withdrawn, of which mention has been made under that date. This publication had called out from Graham, chief clerk of the State Department, in whose handwriting the copy printed from was said to be, a denial that there was, or ever had been, any such letter on the files of the State Department, except one, of which he recollected to have made a translation for Smith's use, and which Turreau had afterward withdrawn. Hanson, now a member of the House, had moved for a committee to inquire into the history of this affair; a motion very ably supported by Grosvenor, on the ground that the president had no right to consent to the withdrawal of any paper from the files of the State Department, since the admission of such a right would sanction the destruction, or giving away, of any public document at any time, or even of all the papers in the custody of the Department. But, after a debate of three days, in which the charge of January, French influence was vehemently urged, and as indig nantly denied, the House voted down the proposed inquiry, substituting for it a call on the president for infor mation, which produced merely a repetition of Graham's Jan. 19.

statement.

The instructions as to the terms of peace, carried out by Clay and Russell, who soon sailed from New York, in the John Adams, fitted out as a cartel, were the same in substance as those formerly given. The sentiments

10-13.

Jan. 23. Feb. 23.

CHAPTER of the president on the subject of impressment were stated to have undergone no change. "This degrading '814 practice," said the new instructions, "must cease. Our flag must protect the crew, or the United States can not consider themselves an independent nation." To remove all pretexts on the part of Great Britain for evading this demand, the president would agree to exclude all British seamen from our vessels, and all natives of Britain except the few already naturalized, and would also stipulate for the surrender of British deserters, whether from public or private vessels. Should the late law relative to seamen not effectually accomplish the object, the president was willing, so the dispatch stated, in order "to prevent a possibility of failure, to go further." Feb. 8. Gallatin, who was still abroad, was presently added to the commission, Campbell, of the Senate, being simultaneously nominated to succeed him in the Treasury Department an appointment to which the president was, as it were, forced, by a resolution of inquiry, adopted in the Senate, on the subject of that office. Other changes soon took place. Pinkney not being willing to Feb. 25. reside at Washington, Richard Rush was appointed to

4

the attorney-generalship, which now became a cabinet office. Return J. Meigs, the governor of Ohio, was appointed postmaster general in place of Granger, long distrusted as of the discontented faction, and who now provoked his dismission by giving to Leib, a conspicuous leader of the same clique, the lucrative office of postmaster of Philadelphia. The strict administration party brought forward Grundy to succeed Clay as speaker of the House of Representatives; but the Federalists, voting with the anti-restriction Democrats, gave that Jan. 19. place to Cheves.

The most serious business of the session was the pro

ENLISTMENT BILL-WEBSTER'S SPEECH. 459

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viding recruits for the army, and replenishment for the CHAPTER empty treasury. As the enlistment of twelve months' men was found to stand in the way of more permanent 1814. engagements, the fourteen existing regiments of that character were to be replaced by men to serve for five years, nor were any volunteers to be retained except such as would engage for a like period. Three additional regiments of riflemen were to be raised; the two regiments of light dragoons were consolidated into one; the three regiments of artillery were reorganized into twelve battalions. Thus was authorized, could the ranks be filled, an army of 66,000 regulars. To fill those ranks, the money bounty was raised to the enormous sum of $124, fifty on enlisting, fifty on mustering, and the remainder when discharged; this latter sum, in case of death, to go to the soldier's representative. To any body who would bring in a recruit, eight dollars were to be allowed. The want of provision for the payment of the militia, in the interval between their marching and their being mustered into the service of the United States, had occasioned great complaints. That defect was now remedied. The option was also given to the president to call out militia for six months instead of three months, the longest period hitherto allowed.

These acts did not pass without numerous calls for the previous question, and committees of conference, nor without vehement and bitter debates, in which as well the policy as the conduct of the war were violently assailed. An amendment to the enlistment bill, restricting the employment of the troops to the defense of the territories of the United States, having been voted Jan. 14 down, 54 to 103, Daniel Webster addressed the House in his first set speech. In a measured succession of ponderous sentences, if with somewhat of the monotony,

XXVII.

CHAPTER yet with all the weight and sure aim of a trip-hammer he demolished the pretenses of the administration orators 1814. that it was the opposition who were to blame for the present state of affairs. This was an old charge, the usual resort of weak and wicked administrations; the same which, in Lord North's time, had been brought against Chatham, and Fox, and Barré, because they would not give the name of wisdom to what they believed to be the extreme of folly; an attempt to stifle the freedom of inquiry and discussion, against which he protested with most decided emphasis. That difficulty of raising troops, which made such enormous bounties necessary, grew out of the unpopularity of the war and its conduct, in those parts of the country where alone men were to be had. It was his advice not only to abandon all attempts at invasion and conquest, but to give over, also, that restrictive war waged upon commerce that policy which, under pretense of regulating trade, had totally annihilated it; a policy believed, by whole states and sections, to be a piece of unconstitutional oppression, and which, if consistent with the letter of the Constitution, was certainly contrary to its spirit, and the intentions of those who formed and adopted it.

There the united

"If the war must continue, go to the ocean. Let it no longer be said that not one ship of force built by your hands since the war yet floats. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortunes points you. wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water's edge. They are lost in attachment to the national character on that element, where that character is made respectable. In protecting naval in

PROCEEDINGS OF CONGRESS.

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In 1814.

interests by naval means, you will arm yourself with CHAPTER the whole power of national sentiment, and may command the whole abundance of national resources. time you may enable yourself to redress injuries in the place where they may be offered, and, if need be, to accompany your own flag throughout the world with the protection of your own cannon."

These exhortations to naval warfare did not produce much effect. The House, indeed, voted to authorize the purchasing or building twenty cruisers of from eight to twenty guns each, but the bill failed in the Senate. The only acts on this subject were one authorizing the April 16. appointment of flotilla officers, distinct from those of the navy, for the gun-boat squadrons; the addition of 700 men to the marines; the appropriation of $500,000 for

a steam frigate, or floating battery, for harbor defense, March 9. for which Fulton offered a plan; the authorizing the purchase, for $225,000, of the vessels captured on Lake April 18. Erie; the granting pensions to the widows and orphans

of officers killed in the public or private armed vessels of March 4. the United States; and the raising to $100 the premium for prisoners taken by privateers, the balance of exchange being now some two thousand against us.

Pending these discussions, calls were made on the president for information as to the late disasters on the frontiers. A full share of reprehension was also lavished on the officers of the army, said to be appointed mostly on political grounds, jealous of, and often hostile to each other, a large part of them ignorant of their duty, and skulking from it under pretense of ill health or otherwise, leaving the raw troops to the idleness of a winter encampment, suffering severely with sickness, and with nobody but subalterns to train or to control them.

Nor did the winter and spring operations of the grand