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improvements by the general government, made its entrance into American politics. It was denied by the strict constructionists that the Constitution gave the government power to appropriate money for the purpose, but they supported some of the most em

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

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phatic enterprises of the sort notwithstanding. In 1807, Secretary Gallatin was directed to report a scheme for a general movement in this direction, and the next year he proposed a great road from Maine to Georgia, to cost $7,800,000.00, and canals and other works. estimated to cost in all twenty millions. The question stirred political circles for half a century. In 1838, John C. Calhoun declared that his life should be devoted to efforts to stop internal improvements by Congress, in the hope of restoring the government to its pristine purity, but in 1816, he had believed the powers of Congress ample to "bind the republic together by a perfect system of roads and canals," and reported a bill to appropriate money for the purpose.

This embryo capital, where fancy sees
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;
Which second-sighted seers, e'en now, adorn,
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn,
Though nought but woods and Jefferson they see,
Where streets should run and sages ought to be.

- Thomas Moore, Letter from Washington, in 1804.

CHAPTER XIX.

WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

AMES MADISON, of Virginia, a graduate of

JAM

the College of New Jersey, a scholar of extensive culture, and, as Jefferson said, "of a pure and spotless virtue which no calumny has ever attempted to sully," became the fourth President of the United States, March 4th, 1809. He was a man who made his mark by the strength of his character and the closeness of his logic; not by aggressiveness or impetuosity. At first a Federalist, and one of the authors of the essays which so much influenced public opinion at the time that the Constitution was under consideration, he subsequently became a leader in the opposition party, and when he took the place of President Jefferson, made no change in the policy of the government. It was hoped, however, that he would. not sympathize with the strong anti-British sentiments of his predecessor, and the public expected that the pending difficulties with England would soon be settled.

At the moment when the new President assumed his office, the Governor of Canada, Sir James Craig, was plotting in an underhanded way to undermine the Union, by commissioning an adventurer, John Henry by name, to go to Boston to organize a revolution in

JOHN HENRY'S SCHEME.

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favor of England.* This man seems to have been simply looking for an opportunity to fill his pockets, but he managed, three years later, to give the impression that he had been the accredited agent of the British government to increase the antagonism of the Federal party against the Union, to deepen the discontent already felt in New England, and to create a popular feeling in favor of the secession of the Eastern States and their union with Canada. The government paid Henry fifty thousand dollars for his pretended revelations, and the feeling of the public was strengthened against England to a wonderful extent. The Federalists could not prove the falsity of the story of Henry, though it was not shown that he had succeeded in corrupting a single American, and the Republicans, or Democrats, were glad to have such telling testimony against their partisan opponents as Henry was popularly supposed to have furnished. was generally believed that the British ministry had been proved to be more hostile to America and less to be trusted than it had been supposed to be, and the war feeling was greatly increased.

It

The Embargo Act, which had been repealed three days before Madison entered office, was followed by other measures intended to offset the unfriendly acts. of Great Britain and France, but they were neither successful nor popular. They all interfered with American commerce, and did no special damage to her opponents. In 1810, in seemed as though France was about to institute friendly measures, when Napoleon promised to retract his decrees of which the United States complained, provided England would recall its

* See Schouler's "History of the United States," ii. 346-47.

Orders in council. This England refused to do until France should actually set the example. The negotiations dropped without effect.

The second session of the eleventh Congress was noteworthy on account of a debate upon the proposition to enable the territory of Orleans to become a member of the Union, a movement that was earnestly opposed by the Federalists of New England, who construed the clause in the Constitution regarding the admission of new States as applying only to the territory of the then existing Union, and not to any acquired, as this had been, since the adoption of the Constitution. The founders of the republic had grave fears that a republican government was not possible in an extended country, and though Washington had declared in his farewell address that there was reason to hope "that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of government for the respective subdivisions," might "afford a happy issue to the experiment," others were still fearful lest expansion should prove disastrous, and they opposed this, the first proposition to erect a State west of the Mississippi River. When the bill was under discussion, in the midst of loud cries of "Order! order!" Josiah Quincy said (January 14, 1811), “If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation, and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some definitely to prepare for a separation; amicably, if they can, violently, if they must."

Mr. Quincy looked with dismay upon the regions watered by the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Red

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