even felt in France and it had no appreciable influence on public policy in England. The case-hardened diplomats in Europe were proof against any scheme of coercion, peaceable or otherwise, which bothered them so slightly.

Failing to achieve the purpose for which it had been designed, Jefferson's Embargo destroyed the trade it was supposed to protect. A glance at the table given above (see page 278) shows how the export trade fell off, to the extent of almost eighty-six million dollars in a single year. In New England, where one third of the ships engaged in the carrying trade were owned, there was serious hardship. Vessels were left to rot at the wharves, shipyards and warehouses were empty, sailors were idle, farmers lost their markets. At the same time, the national revenue was cut down at least fifty per

cent.

Because the law was being violated at every opportunity, Jefferson urged Congress to enact a drastic enforcement measure. This was done in January, 1809. By this law the bond for coasting vessels was raised to six times the combined value of the vessel and the cargo, collectors were authorized to refuse clearance papers, if to their minds there appeared any intention to violate the law, and finally the use of the army and navy was authorized to compel obedience.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the wrath of New England should have flared up into a veritable fury. Where in the Constitution did the author of the Kentucky Resolutions find any warrant for the Embargo? To be sure, Congress had power to regulate trade, but regulation clearly did not mean ruin. Furthermore, when had the Federalists in their best days ever perpetrated anything so flagrantly tyrannical and unconstitutional as the Enforcing Act of 1809? The merchants could see little but ruin ahead.

It is sometimes difficult to maintain an attitude of correct sympathy for Jefferson. In the winter of 1809, appalled apparently at the enormous destruction wrought by the Embargo and thoroughly frightened at the uproar in New England-or abjectly penitent at his gigantic blunder-the unhappy President laid down the cares of office and retired to Monticello, the only instance of abdication in American history.

PRESIDENT MADISON

Jefferson's successor, acting President for two months, and duly elected President for the next eight years, was James Madison. In personal appearance the new executive was pretty much everything that Jefferson was not. The "little Virginian" was only five and a half feet tall, and nervous as a schoolgirl. On inauguration day he was literally half sick with fright. While Jefferson was always a speculative philosopher, and generally a practical politician, Madison was never anything but a methodical scholar and philosopher. In the Federal Convention, in Congress, and in the State Department, where extensive and exact knowledge was much needea, Madisoя was perfectly comfortable, and unusually competent. But in the president's chair, which demands a combination of keenness in seamy politics, farsightedness in public problems, and vigor in execution, Madison was woefully deficient.

He had every reason to be dizzy and pale at his inaugural reception. The party organization which made him President was the creation of his predecessor. Even Jefferson had found it hard at times to make his following stay with him. Madison found it impossible. The machine had made him President, and even had Madison been temperamentally able to give orders, his party would not have obeyed them. As it was, he was compelled to appoint as his Secretary of State an incompetent nobody, whose policy in public service had only one aim: the embarrassment of his chief. This incubus, Robert Smith, with his brother in the Senate, wrecked the financial policies which Madison and Gallatin had counted on to save the administration.

The first important project that came up for consideration, excepting of course the ever-present foreign problem, was the question of the United States Bank, the charter of which was due to expire on March 4, 1811. There was no doubt that the Bank had been profitable, that it had been soundly managed, and that it had rendered a distinct service to the government. Madison, Gallatin, and William H. Crawford of the Senate, an able financier, all favored a recharter. But the bank had been established by the Federalists, and most of the Democrats had consistently railed against it as unconstitutional. Robert Smith in the Cabinet, William Branch Giles in the Senate, and Duane of the Philadelphia Aurora all worked against it. So it

happened that the party which had accepted the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, the Embargo, and the Enforcing Act, now gave a spectacular exhibition of the soundness of their strict construction by refusing to continue the Bank.

The ablest man associated with Madison, Albert Gallatin, had considered the Bank essential. He saw it beaten by a group of secondrate politicians, men who could see little beyond their own immediate advantage and who showed no wisdom in deciding what that was. At the same time he saw appointment after appointment rejected by the same group, for reasons known only to themselves. With the situation brought to a crisis by Gallatin's wish to resign, the President was finally' compelled to act. Getting rid of Smith, he made Monroe Secretary of State, and by doing so at least brought about harmony in his official family.

NON-INTERCOURSE

Jefferson's foreign policy, which among other troubles Madison had inherited, had accomplished nothing abroad, while it aroused bitter resentment at home. It fell to the new executive to do something, anything, to make the situation less bad. Just before the end of Jefferson's term, Congress repealed the Embargo, substituting for it a non-intercourse arrangement. This allowed trade with all the world but the makers of the two sets of restrictive decrees. Early in Madison's administration it seemed that he had a chance to restore commerce with England. George Canning, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, sent over a young minister named Erskine. Erskine and Madison agreed on the form of a treaty, covering reparation for the Chesapeake affair, the recall of the Orders in Council, and paving the way for a comprehensive commercial treaty. The Englishman had, however, been instructed not to grant these concessions without an agreement on the part of the United States to relinquish trade with the West Indies, and to permit England to enforce American non-intercourse with France. Because this condition had not been fulfilled, Canning recalled Erskine, and repudiated his treaty. The situation therefore remained unchanged.

On May 1, 1810, the original non-intercourse policy was abandoned. In its place a measure known as "Macon Bill No. 2" allowed trade with all the world. This provided that in case either Great Britain or France would revoke her obnoxious decrees, and the other

power should fail to do so, then the President should restore nonintercourse with the offending nation. Napoleon had rather enjoyed the Embargo and non-intercourse schemes, because they enabled him to seize all American vessels in his ports. By so doing he could assist a friendly power in enforcing its laws. But the Macon Bill was a different matter. Anxious to prevent the reopening of AngloAmerican trade, he announced in October, 1810, in the "Cadore Letter," that his decrees were revoked, with the understanding that the United States should compel England to revoke hers.

Eager to find a way out of a bad situation, and ignoring the patent absurdities in Napoleon's proposal, Madison accepted it as though it were a genuine repeal of the French decrees. The British government insisted that the Cadore Letter was a mere blind, and refused to repeal the Orders in Council; non-intercourse with England was therefore revived.

During 1810 the much harassed American export trade had begun to revive, reaching on September 30 the total of $66,757,970. With the revival of non-intercourse it declined again, and when the War of 1812 was well under way, it dropped to under $7,000,000. Before the war started, the British government disavowed the act of the captain of the Leopard, and made reparation for the Chesapeake affair, but all attempts to settle the other troubles resulted in failure. Madison had been granted three years of experimentation in foreign relations, and at the end of that time his power of control was taken

away.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WAR OF 1812

So far as causes went, there was no more reason for an American declaration of war in 1812 than at any other time in the preceding twenty years, except of course the years of peace from 1801 to 1803. But while conditions remained the same, human factors were subject to change, and in 1810 the country elected a new Congress.

The old one, the eleventh, had included a majority of slow-moving members, who realized the difficulties under which the country labored, without being able to devise any plans for removing them. Bad as the commercial situation had been, they had not wanted war, for that would have made matters worse. Under the circumstances, war to them meant little more than a public confession of hopelessness and helplessness. In the new Congress there were numbers of younger men, restless spirits who had long chafed under the cool indignities heaped upon the United States by the British and French governments. Little given to considering remote consequences, they demanded war to vindicate American honor.

In this group were included Henry Clay of Kentucky, chosen speaker of the House, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Cheves, Calhoun, and Lowndes of South Carolina. Angered at the long manifestation of incompetence, they made up their minds to act. They would at least have the satisfaction of doing something, and whether they got results or not they would in their very action free themselves from much torment of soul.

On November 29, 1811, Peter B. Porter, an older radical, chairman of the House committee on foreign affairs, submitted a report demanding war. This show of spirit found an enthusiastic response in the country at large. From state after state resolutions came in, urging an immediate declaration.

But it was one thing to talk war, and a very different one to provide the necessary forces and supplies. It was not until June 26, 1812, a week after the declaration of war, that Congress passed a bill for increasing the standing army to twenty-five thousand men. A bill