1808.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

317

considered as lost. New Hampshire was hopeless. Pennsylvania was in great doubt.* In August the only States he felt sure of were Virginia, South Carolina, and those in the West.† But now the tide turned. No Federal candidate had as yet been nominated, for the leaders of that party had been vainly striving to persuade De Witt Clinton to join with them in supporting his uncle, George Clinton, for President. This in August he finally refused to do. The Federalists were then forced to name candidates of their own; selected Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King, and lost the State of New York. Had electors been chosen by popular vote on a general ticket, it cannot be doubted that the day would have gone against Madison. Happily for him, the custom of choosing electors by the Legislatures, then so general, saved him, for many of those bodies had been elected before the effects of the embargo were seriously felt. As it was, the great change which had taken place in the feelings of the people was most apparent. On the February morning, 1805, when the electoral votes were counted before Congress, but fourteen, cast by three States, were given to the Federalist candidates. On the February morning, 1809, when a like ceremony was performed, forty-seven votes, cast by seven States, were counted for Pinckney and King. In some States the old majority for Jefferson had been reduced. In three there was no majority at all. In three more the vote was divided. Six electors in New York refused to vote for Madison. Vermont, recollecting her ancient feud with New York, would not give one vote for Governor Clinton. North Carolina, which in 1804 cast fourteen votes for Jefferson, now gave three for Pinckney and King.

Just at the time when these elections were about to take place Congress met and matters came to a crisis. The Republican majority was immense. But it was unorganized, distracted, without a guide. Never in the history of our country was there a moment when the controlling hand of an executive was needed more. But the Executive, as on another occasion in his career, was not equal to the emergency. He

* Gallatin to Mrs. Gallatin, July 8, 1808. Adams's Gallatin, p. 373. Gallatin to Jefferson, August 6, 1808. Adams's Gallatin, p. 373. Presidential electors were not then chosen in all the States on the same day.

knew the embargo had failed. He knew that his own party would not longer support it. He knew his stanchest friends would not listen to his advice, and that even Virginia had turned from him. He was cowed, and, positively refusing to mark out a policy or suggest a course of action, he surrendered his trust, neglected his duty, and threw all responsibility on the man about to become his successor. He did not think it right, he said, to propose measures Madison would have to carry out.* True to this sentiment, he said not a word in his annual message regarding the embargo. He was content to sum up our relations with France, with Great Britain, Spain, the Barbary Powers, and the Indians, and to tell what had been done toward increasing the militia toward putting up forts along the coast, toward manufacturing guns, toward building up a navy, and cutting down the public debt. One hundred and three gun-boats had been built during the year, nearly eighteen millions of revenue had been collected, more than two millions of the debt cancelled, and more was to be cancelled on the first of January. Yet even when this was paid a large surplus would remain. What should be done with this annual surplus was, he thought, well worthy of consideration. Should it lie idle in the treasury vaults? Should the revenue be reduced? Should it not rather be laid out in roads, canals, rivers, and education? If Congress did not possess the power, then that power could be had by such an amendment to the Constitution as the States would approve. Confounded by his silence on the subject of embargo, the House sent so much of the message as related to foreign affairs to a committee with George Washington Campbell, of Tennessee, as chairman. Campbell turned to Madison. Madison it is likely turned to Gallatin, who in their joint name called on Jefferson to summon the Cabinet and decide on a definite course of action. But he would not, and Gallatin in despair wrote out a document which the committee presented and which is yet known as "Campbell Report."

While Gallatin was busy preparing it, the perplexity which

* Jefferson to Logan, December 27, 1808. Jefferson's Writings, vol. v, p. 404. Gallatin to Jefferson, November 15, 1808.

1808.

CAMPBELL'S REPORT.

319

afflicted the Cabinet was yet more finely displayed in the House. Member after member rose and presented resolutions of a most contradictory kind. Chittenden, of Vermont, demanded a prompt repeal of the embargo. Eppes, of Virginia, was for non-intercourse with Great Britain and France, and for arming and equipping more militia. Elliot, of Vermont, called for all instructions issued to revenue collectors regarding the execution of the laws. Another member demanded the names and places of residence of those who had evaded the embargo laws; another wanted a list of all orders, all decrees, and proclamations affecting the commercial rights of neutrals, issued by France and England since seventeen hundred and ninety-one. There were motions to forbid vessels to go from port to port along the coast unless owned and manned by citizens of the United States, and motions to suffer merchants to arm their ships and send them to countries not subject to the decrees and orders of Great Britain and France. Such resolutions were promptly sent to the Committee of the Whole. But whenever the motion was made to go into the Committee of the Whole to consider them it was voted down. The Republicans were quietly determined that nothing should be done till the committee appointed to consider so much of the message as related to foreign affairs had reported.

On November twenty-second Campbell's report was heard. It began with an examination of the reasons given. for issuing the decrees and orders in council, went over the history of each restriction, protested that the United States must either fight, submit, or go on with the embargo, and ended by offering three resolutions. One set forth that the United States could not submit to the edicts of Great Britain and France; another, that it would be well to shut out from the ports of the United States the ships, goods, and merchandise of France, England, and any power obeying the decrees violating the lawful commerce and neutral rights of the United States. The third declared that the country ought to be at once put in a more complete state of defence.

Six days later Campbell called up the first of these resolutions in the Committee of the Whole, and the debate began. Josiah Quincy led on the attack of the New England men;

John Randolph spoke for the discontended Republicans; Campbell defended the resolutions, and was supported by the shameful confessions of the Republicans that they were afraid to go to war. The decrees and orders had done their work, and the whole South for the moment was cowed into submission. From Jackson, of Virginia; from Willis Alston and Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina; from David Williams, of South Carolina; from George Troup, of Georgia; from Richard Johnson, of Kentucky, came language such as had rarely been heard in the halls of Congress. Meet the navy of Great Britain on the sea! exclaimed one. The very idea of such resistance is too idle to merit consideration.* If we have

war, said another, our towns will share the fate of Copenhagen. Arming our merchant ships, observed a third, is the same thing as declaring war; and are we ready to plunge naked and unarmed into a war for the gratification of a few bankrupt commercial speculators? +

During five days the debate went rambling on before the first resolution passed the committee unanimously. The Chairman then left his seat, took his stand before the Speaker, reported what had been done, and the resolution came up in the House. A new threshing of the old straw followed. The Berlin decree, the Milan decree, the orders in council, the killing of Pierce, the attack on the Chesapeake, the constitutionality of the embargo laws, the conduct of New England, the hissing at the London Tavern when Sir Francis Baring proposed the toast, The President of the United States, the charge of British influence, the charge of French influence, the burning of Copenhagen, the Spirit of Seventy-six, the rush of speculators into the market to buy up salt, dry-goods, molasses, sugar, the moment the embargo was laid-were dwelt upon over and over again. Never had there been heard in the House a debate so wandering, so confused, so full of repeti

* Willis Alston, Jr., Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, November 29, 1808, p. 556.

657.

† John G. Jackson, Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, December 2, 1808, p.

George M. Troup, Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, November 30, 1808, p.

1808.

GALLATIN CALLS FOR WAR.

321

tion. Rarely had there ever been one so long. That on the British treaty of 1794 was ended in eighteen days. That on the repeal of the Judiciary Act ran on for one month. That on the twelfth amendment took up parts of eleven days. But that on Campbell's report was not finished at sunrise of the twentieth day. The previous question was then unknown to the House of Representatives, and it was only by sitting all Saturday night and well into Sunday that a vote was forced on the second and third resolutions. The first had already passed with but two dissenting votes; the third passed without any; but when the roll was called for the vote on the second, eighty-four answered yea and thirty nay.

That the wishes and policy of the coming administration might not be misunderstood, Gallatin followed up the Campbell report with another in which he spoke more plainly still. As Secretary of the Treasury it became his duty to submit each year to Congress a statement of receipts and expenses. In making this in 1808 he took occasion to call for war. There would be, he said, on January first, 1809, in the treasury, in some form, sixteen millions of dollars. The expenses for that year would be thirteen millions, leaving a surplus of three millions to defray the outlay incident to preparation for war. What measures should be taken to provide funds for the ensuing years depended on what course was pursued toward the belligerents of Europe.

The meaning of this was that the incoming administration was ready for war, and that, if Congress would give it power to borrow, the fighting should be done without laying an internal tax of any kind whatsoever. In private the secretaries were more outspoken still, and before the end of December their friends were writing home that a plan had been arranged; that the embargo was to be partially raised; that a Non-intercourse Act was to be passed, to take effect on June first; and that meantime warlike preparations should go on.

In forming this plan, both Madison and Gallatin were strongly influenced by David Montague Erskine. If the trouble was ever to be settled peaceably, the hour, he thought, for such a settlement had come. The change in the adminis

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