The United States of America Part 16

many of them having been made into modern highways. As may be imagined, they were of great aid in extending another function of national activity --the postal system.

Waterways were as abundant in the western region during the War of 1812 as they were at any later time. That they were not more frequently employed as means of transportation was due to the fact that nature, in the process of time, had placed so many obstacles in them that they were practically useless. Sand-bars, sunken logs, acc.u.mulated driftwood, and hidden snags made water travel impossible except for light canoes.

During the summer season, when the campaigns were waged most vigorously, many of the streams were dried up and valueless for transportation purposes. But small imagination was required to see how man with proper resources could dredge channels, remove obstacles, and construct dams which would render these waterways useful during the larger part of the year. Boats propelled by poles might be guided up the tedious channels, but the use of steam was impossible until improvements had been made.

Fulton and Livingston made a success of steam navigation on the majestic Hudson in 1807. Only five years later, hardy spirits were not wanting at Pittsburg to equip a vessel with steam and venture down the tortuous Ohio to New Orleans. But impediments to navigation made such attempts simply experiments. Three years after the close of the war, the _Walk in the Water_ was launched on Lake Erie near Buffalo and eventually reached distant Mackinaw. The s.h.i.+p-building industry had been established on Lake Erie during the war and needed only the construction of harbours and placing of lights to open a vast inland commerce.

The strict constructionists were destined to spend many unpleasant hours over this question of inland commerce. That the Union had control of ocean or foreign commerce, no one denied. The ocean is common to all. But fresh water lies inland, among the States. Strict construction would not allow the central authority to undertake a public work in an individual State. Clearing waterways and constructing harbours might have been left to the respective States, if each stream and each lake had been located entirely within the confines of some State. Interstate commerce thus began early to play a part in making the Union. In former days, Congress had granted requests of Rhode Island, Maryland, and Georgia to be allowed to retain part of their imposts for completing their public works on rivers and harbours. The privilege was extended to other State at various times, the expenditures being withheld from the national revenues. The system was bad and produced frequent delay and abuse. It was really the Federal Government making the improvements indirectly. Evidently the work could be carried on more uniformly and systematically under central management.

Precedent had been established under the compulsion of war. The Carondelet ca.n.a.l was a private enterprise connecting Lake Pontchartrain with the city of New Orleans. Congress appropriated a sum of money, as the war came on, for making the ca.n.a.l navigable for the gunboats in order to protect New Orleans. Several similar instances might be cited during the progress of the war. Under such conditions, it was an easy matter to include in the Army Appropriation bill of 1819 a sum for making a complete survey of all watercourses tributary to the Mississippi on its western side, and on its eastern side north of the Ohio. There was in the same bill an appropriation for making surveys with maps and charts of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from the Falls of the Ohio to New Orleans, "for facilitating and ascertaining the most practical mode of improving the navigation of those rivers." No promise was made, but the ultimate purpose was to have the individual States or the Union improve the navigation of all these waterways. So insidiously was necessity making the Republicans commit themselves to the policies of their predecessors, that no one realised they were preparing by these actions to inaugurate the vast work of public improvement in the interior of the continent which characterised the middle period of American history.

Advocates of these national enterprises were encouraged by a clause in the Bank bill of 1816. In order to compel the State banks to resume specie payment and to rearrange the national finances after the war, the Republicans had been compelled to resort to the infamous Hamiltonian remedy of chartering a United States bank. Only financial desperation could warrant the adoption of a suggestion which the party had rejected five years before. Unconst.i.tutionally scarcely had a mention in the debates on the bill. Republican speakers and writers advocated a bank as eagerly as they had opposed one in 1791 and 1811. Calhoun was in favour of a new bank and Webster was opposed to it.

This second bank was chartered, like the first, for twenty years. It had a similar plan of organisation, although with a larger capital.

It differed most in offering to the National Government, not only a share of stock, but a "bonus," or gift, of a million and a half dollars for the privilege of the charter. Visions of internal improvements made possible by such a handsome gift immediately arose in the minds of some, although suspicion was the strongest feeling in the minds of others. The proposition was precisely along the Federalist idea of invested interests purchasing a monopoly from the Government, and was viewed in that light by old Republicans. It was denounced as a bribe similar to that given Parliament by the East India Company. Such scruples were overcome by comparing the "bonus" to the fee paid the National Government for a patent, which gave to the holder a monopoly, or to the free pa.s.sage granted troops over toll bridges in payment for a State charter. Undoubtedly the desire to use this money for public improvements aided in securing the pa.s.sage of the Bank bill.

These hopes a.s.sumed shape in the next session in "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," which pledged the proceeds of the "bonus" for constructing roads and ca.n.a.ls, and improving the navigation of watercourses. It was pa.s.sed by a close vote in each branch of Congress, after a long debate in the House upon the powers of the General Government. This debate showed Calhoun, the future spokesman of State rights, in favour of extended expenditures in the various States without const.i.tutional restriction, and Timothy Pickering, former member of John Adams's Cabinet, in the att.i.tude of denying the right of the National Government under the implied powers to expend a dollar without the consent of the State in which the improvement lay. Neither would he admit that the regulation of commerce included more than waterways. It was an additional evidence of the reversal of parties.

The Representatives from the Eastern States generally wished to use the money to relieve the ordinary burdens of taxation, realising that the larger part of these improvements would lie beyond the Alleghenies and, presumably, of no benefit to them. Individual members may have held great expectations of the grat.i.tude to be gained from their const.i.tuents by securing a share of the bank money. Madison rudely shattered these in the closing hours of his administration by vetoing the bill. It was a heroic duty. To such a distance had the party gone from the confines of strict construction, so resistless had been the hand of compulsion in the sixteen years of Republican administration, so powerfully had this internal improvement system affected the cupidity of the people, so careless had Congress grown of the difference between the reserved and expressed powers, that Madison felt it necessary to recall his party to its first principles. In his veto message, he spoke the almost forgotten language of the old days when he said that the power to regulate commerce did not extend to enterprises conducted within the several States; that the efforts of the Union should be confined to foreign commerce; that any expenditure of the bonus proceeds under the plea of the common defence would be to give Congress a general power of legislation. It was the first reaction after the compelling days of the war. It was not an agreeable or popular task, but it was done heroically. It was love's labour lost, because it was impossible for Madison or his successor long to hold in check the demands of the people for means of communication as they spread toward the West over the inviting public lands.

Partisan newspapers denied that Madison's action was inconsistent with prior recommendations of Presidents, with the report of Gallatin, and with the appropriations for the c.u.mberland Road. Gallatin's report, they said, was only a recommendation. The c.u.mberland National Road was the result of a bargain between the Federal Government and the State of Ohio and involved no violence to the Const.i.tution. As for prior messages, Jefferson, in 1806, had suggested an amendment to cover internal improvements, and Madison had been careful in 1816 to locate his proposed national university inside the District of Columbia, which was entirely under national control. Internal improvements, he had said in two different messages, should be authorised by an amendment.

At the same time, many of these papers lamented the fact that the hands of the Union were thus bound, while a few suggested that the obligation to "provide for the general welfare" would have been fulfilled better by building roads and ca.n.a.ls than by creating a bank and placing upon the people the burdens of a protective tariff. Having engaged in the war, they must abide by the compulsion which the war produced.

The few conservative Republicans who clung to the old doctrines of the party realised with dismay that the financial adjustments following the war were bound to drag them still farther into the former field of the enemy. The Jeffersonian commercial war, which had begun with the embargo of eight years before, had practically cut off the United States from the European sources of supply. In a crude way her people began to set up manufactories to supply needed goods. The waterfalls distributed so abundantly over the Northern States were harnessed for this purpose. Unconsciously the United States was coming into a commercial independence even more valuable than the political or navigation right for which she had contended in two wars. The world's peace of 1815 released the carrying trade; European goods poured into America; and the infant manufactures were undersold and threatened with ruin. As many as twenty vessels arrived in New York during one day in 1815, hurrying British goods to the reopened American market.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815. This "octagon"

house in Was.h.i.+ngton was occupied by President Madison while the White House was being rebuilt after being burned by the British in the War of 1812. It is now used as a club house.]

Instantly the public thought turned to a protective tariff, not only to save the manufactures, but as a retributive measure against England.

"It is now a little more than a year," wrote a correspondent to Niles's _Register_, "since we closed a contest in arms with Great Britain in glory. A new struggle has already commenced with the same nation in the arts as connected with agriculture, commerce, and manufacture."

Another contributor urged the necessity of protecting and cheris.h.i.+ng the manufacture of everything--from a toothpick to a s.h.i.+p, from a needle to a cannon, a thread of yarn to a bale of cloth--unless we could exchange some commodity for them. "You spread too much canvas,"

was the reason reported to have been given an American by an Englishman for certain restrictive measures on American commerce.

"Americanism" showed itself in the press as well as in congressional debates. Writers contrasted the probable happiness of an imaginary "Anglo-American province," located on the Atlantic coast-plain, dependent upon the Old World for its straw hats, boot, shoes, cotton, linen, and cloth, with an "Economic Republic," located as far inland as the banks of the Ohio, and depending entirely on home industries.

A rumour that the rebuilt Executive Mansion was to be furnished with articles from Europe brought an indignant denial from the Administration. Only porcelain, mirror plate, carpets, and a few minor articles, such as were not produced in the United States, had been imported. It was announced that President Monroe had given orders to use home manufactures as far as possible in furnis.h.i.+ng all public buildings in Was.h.i.+ngton. The American Society for the Advancement of Domestic Manufactures was favoured by ex-Presidents Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, as well as by President Monroe. The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Domestic Industry issued addresses to the people.

Under the influence of the embargo the census of 1810 had been made to include a survey of American manufactures. It showed that nearly two hundred million dollars' worth of goods were manufactured annually in the United States. Undoubtedly this sum had been greatly increased during the two years of war. Newspapers printed accounts of the large output of woollen mills in New England, of the starting of gla.s.s and iron factories, of new methods for weaving, of looms to be operated by steam power, of the discovery of lead, copper, asbestos, and other mines. The frontier city of Cincinnati reported the establishment of manufactories of tools, implements, ground mustard, and castor oil.

It was said in 1816 that not less than nineteen million dollars' worth of woollen goods alone were being produced in the United States, which must suffer from European compet.i.tion unless protected. A steam vessel, so it was reported, built at New York, was about to attempt to cross the Atlantic to Russia, where Fulton had been given a monopoly of steam navigation for twenty-five years.

So completely had the New England States alienated themselves from the Administration by their conduct during the war that an appeal from them for protecting manufactures in which they were most largely interested would have had small influence, unless the general condition of the country had demanded action, as shown above. The Southern States, which dominated Government, could afford to be magnanimous. They had permanent protection in their cotton, tobacco, and sugar exports as the means of their commercial salvation. "Let us be charitable toward the Hartford conventionists; let us make them feel that they have a country," said a member of Congress, in discussing the impost bill of 1816, which partook somewhat of the nature of a tariff bill along Hamiltonian lines, although framed by Jeffersonians. Few speakers showed a tendency to discuss the proposition from a party standpoint.

"The duty of a paternal government" was referred to as freely as if the Hamilton days had come again.

As usual in a tariff debate, expediency and self-interest ruled. The difficulty of reconciling the varied interests in a common measure seemed at times insurmountable. The South wanted a high duty upon sugars and a low duty upon coa.r.s.e cloth. The New England delegates insisted upon the contrary.

"The order of the day seems to be to catch and keep and huckster sectional interests without regarding the nation as a whole," wrote a disgusted member to one of his const.i.tuents. "We can unite, as you have seen, from Maine to Louisiana in favor of voting money into our own pockets; but I despair of seeing a united vote in favor of our const.i.tuents."

This tariff measure of 1816, the first after the war, was a protective action in form rather than by intention. The Republicans looked on it as corrective of the many acts which during the war had almost doubled the duties to secure revenue. It was a kind of transition from the tariff policy of the Hamiltonians, nearly twenty years before, to that of Clay, ten years later. That tariff issues were not yet developed and sectional interests appreciated is evidenced by the fact that Calhoun was an earnest advocate of this measure and that Webster voted against it. A comparison of the votes in House and Senate indicated slightly the sectional tendency which was to characterise the tariff question when fully developed.

VOTES OF APRIL 8 AND APRIL 19, 1816, ON REGULATING DUTIES

House Senate North of Mason and Dixon line /For.......63.......16 Against...14........2 South of Mason and Dixon line /For.......25........9 Against...40........5

The measure was pa.s.sed by the vote of the Eastern or manufacturing States, aided by the South-western States, who were expecting some kind of paternalistic benefit to their hemp or other products. In the Senate, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana voted solidly for the tariff, and in the House these three States furnished nine affirmative to four negative votes. The five New England States, already strong advocates for increasing protection, gave in the House seventeen votes in favour to two against the experiment. Virginia and South Carolina furnished twenty-seven of the negative votes in the House. Strange to say, South Carolina, the opposition leader of a later day, gave a majority for the bill in both branches of Congress.

It is scarcely just to call this tariff of 1816 a protective measure, since it was ent.i.tled "An act to regulate the duties on imports and tonnage." It was a natural result of the att.i.tude of the "war-hawks,"

isolated from European influence and developing self-reliance and self-dependence. It was looked upon as reducing the tariff to a peace basis. The war duties on woollen and cotton goods, rating as high as thirty per cent., were to be gradually scaled down to half that amount.

But the discrimination in favour of certain goods made easier the demand for a greater discrimination a few years later, and divided the party upon the old Hamiltonian policy of protection.

CHAPTER XVIII

SECTIONAL DISCORD OVER TERRITORY

Before the addition of Louisiana, the American settlements west of the Alleghenies extended in a thin wedge to the Mississippi, having the British Canadians on the north and the Spanish in the Floridas to the southward. After Louisiana was added, these settlements const.i.tuted the ligament which bound the older to the newer part. Both British and Spanish had formerly been on the advance line; now they were on the American flank. Invasion from each direction had to be guarded against during the war. The strength of Britain and the fidelity of the Canadians prevented the conquest and addition of Canada during hostilities. But the disintegrating power of Spain in the New World held out hope that eventually the Floridas might be acquired and the American possessions be rounded out on the Gulf at least. It is safe to say that from the moment of taking possession of Louisiana the retention of the Floridas by any foreign power was felt to be an incongruity.

The Floridas, or the western portion at least, would have been annexed to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 if the Jeffersonians had been expansionists at heart. Livingston, whose antecedents were more Federalistic than the majority of Jefferson's appointees, advised taking immediate possession of the Floridas upon the a.s.sumption that they were part of Louisiana. In this opinion Monroe concurred, although less ardently. Considering the uncertain boundaries of "Louisiana," and that such action might offend Britain or Spain in the critical situation of foreign affairs, Jefferson preferred to await the process of time and the restless nature of his countrymen.

"It is probable," said he, "that the inhabitants of Louisiana on the left bank of the Mississippi and inland eastwardly to a considerable extent will very soon be received under our jurisdiction, and that this end of West Florida will thus be peaceably gotten possession of. For Mobile and the eastern end, we must await favorable conjunctures."

Never was prophecy more accurately fulfilled. Spanish power in the New World disintegrated rapidly after Napoleon dispossessed King Ferdinand.

Americans settled with impunity between the Pearl and the Mississippi south of the line of thirty-one, which had been agreed upon in 1795 as the boundary between the United States and the Spanish Floridas.

Soon the invaders were in dispute with the Spanish commandant at Baton Rouge over smuggling and the runaway slaves. Complaints reached Congress that the commandant at Mobile was collecting toll and hara.s.sing American vessels carrying goods to and from the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers north of the boundary. The old controversy over the navigation of the Mississippi had come again on Mobile Bay. In 1810, the American settlers west of the Pearl set up an independent government at Buhler's Plains with John Mills and Dr. Steele as officials. The Spanish commandant and governor were soon after driven out, a pet.i.tion sent to Congress, and by proclamation of October 27, 1810, President Madison extended the authority of the United States over the indefinite region known as West Florida. The action was based on the Louisiana claim, which had not been relinquished since the purchase, and on the danger to the adjacent parts of the United States in the present crisis.

A secret resolution of Congress at the same time authorised the President to take possession of the remaining Floridas, if England showed a disposition to seize the land as an aggressive act. Since Spain had come under the control of France, this action was not an improbability. But aside from temporarily occupying Pensacola, the British made no attempt to take the Floridas during the War of 1812, although rumours of that kind were frequent. Simultaneous with the end of the war came the restoration of Spanish authority in the Old World and its threatened restoration in the New. In this chaotic condition of Spanish affairs, President Monroe ordered a band of freebooters to be driven out of Amelia Island, in East Florida, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, near the Georgia boundary.

The troops employed in this work remained on the island, notwithstanding Spanish protest. General Jackson, being ordered to subdue the Seminole Indians in Florida, who were harbouring fugitive slaves, invaded the Spanish territory, cleaned it up in the true Jacksonian manner, hanged two Englishmen, and "omitted nothing that characterises a haughty conqueror,"

as Onis, the Spanish Minister at Was.h.i.+ngton, protested. The embarra.s.sed Administration, through its spokesman, John Quincy Adams, explained that Jackson intended only to restore order where Spanish authority had failed.

At the same time Adams reopened negotiations by which Spain eventually ceded the troublesome Floridas to the United States for a money consideration.

The additions of territory to the national domain, strong Union-making elements as they are, have had a curious connection one with another.

The navigation of the Mississippi, left unsettled with Spain from the Peace of 1783, led directly to the attempt to purchase the "island"

of New Orleans, and consequently to the Louisiana acquisition. The uncertain boundary of Louisiana caused the annexation of West Florida, and that success made a final settlement of East Florida easier. The readiness with which the Americans could invade her territory, unchecked by other powers, made Spain, in her helplessness, consent to this treaty of 1819, by which the entire Gulf territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mexican province of Texas became American soil. The ethics of the entire transaction may be questionable. It smacks of invasion, stretching of claims, a show of force, and soothing balm of gold. What territorial conquest in the history of the world has been entirely free from criticism? However, the increase of national prestige and the stimulation of national pride which resulted are the factors to be considered in the story of the United States.

The Florida Purchase was a second instance of bringing national prestige to the Union by the party originally afraid of giving it too much power. The action brought in its train as many embarra.s.sing questions and as many demands for the fostering care of government as did the Louisiana Purchase. Yet precedent made the questions easier to answer in favour of centralisation and made the steps easier to take by the scrupulous Jeffersonians.

It is worthy of notice that the people of the Floridas were promised, in the annexation treaty of 1819, incorporation into the Union "as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal Const.i.tution," no time being specified. The Louisianians had found, as stated heretofore, that the phrase "as soon as possible" in the treaty of 1803 was capable of a very loose interpretation at the hands of their new sovereign. They had to wait nine years before the first portion was admitted to statehood. Perhaps to avoid a deluge of pet.i.tions and protests, such as came from the inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase when given a territorial standing, John Quincy Adams may have invented the new phrase "as soon as consistent." Under this provision, portions of the Florida Purchase were added to adjacent States and the residue compelled to wait twenty-five years before statehood was given to it. The rights of man and citizens.h.i.+p in the State had again been temporarily lost sight of by the party of which these were basic principles.

Having been converted into territories, the additions to domain came directly under the care of the National Government. Bound by national honour as well as by a regard for the sacredness of statehood to bestow upon this public land such protection and such improvements as might encourage migration to it, and thus hasten the time of full rights for its people, the Republicans might yet have pursued a parsimonious policy, if increasing migration to the United States had not impelled them to action to provide homes for the mult.i.tude. No such influx from the Old World had been seen as followed the close of the Napoleonic wars. It was small compared with the full tide of migration, which set in about 1845. But it seemed marvellous at the time. Fifteen hundred were counted in some weeks, mostly Irish and English, with a sprinkling of French and German. No record was kept of the number of arrivals until 1820, and statistics are simply approximate.

Viewing the Old World as again under the curse of monarchy, and the new-comers as refugees from oppression, the Republican party found itself ready to arrange for the easiest possible disposal of the public lands. "Let them come," said one writer. "Good and wholesome laws with the avenues to wealth and independence opened to honest industry will tame even Mr. Peel's 'Untamably ferocious' Irishmen! as well as suppress English mobs crying for employment and bread, without the use of the bayonet." Descriptions of the economic unrest in Europe following the close of the Napoleonic wars were fully circulated in American newspapers. The number of bankruptcies, the idle custom-house clerks, the labouring poor applying at the different sessions for certificates to migrate to America, the British vessels antic.i.p.ating desertions by sailing for the New World with double crews, the steps taken by the British Government to prevent artisans from leaving, the ruse of coming through Canada to escape question and detention--all this was delightful reading for the American public.

Many of the emigrants pa.s.sed the Allegheny barrier, notwithstanding the hards.h.i.+ps of travel, to make homes in the new States and Territories of the West and South-west. Birkbeck and his colony of Englishmen came to southern Illinois. The Rappites planted the community of New Harmony on the Wabash in Indiana. Congress granted land to a colony of refugees in Alabama. Numerous towns were laid out on the upper Mississippi and the Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase. Protecting garrisons were established far up the Missouri River and at the Falls of St. Anthony, near the headwaters of the Mississippi, "two thousand miles from the sea." Buffalo and Erie, names not to be found upon the map before the war, were now busy ports with a thriving lake commerce. Semi-weekly posts were carried to Detroit, Green Bay, and far Michilimackinac.

These evidences of the vast extent of the national domain excited both pride and fear. Unless the distant parts could be more closely cemented, the days of Western unrest and foreign intrigue might come again. The demand for government aid to public improvements sprang up anew. Colonel Johnson, attempting to take a small fleet of steamboats up the Missouri to the Yellowstone in 1819 to open a new route for trade with China by way of the Columbia River, was hindered by sand-bars and snags, or "planters." Various improvements in rivers and the construction of ca.n.a.ls undertaken by different States were reported in Congress.

Government aid in the shape of subscriptions to stock was contemplated in some cases. Gallatin's report of 1809, recommending the expenditure of twenty million dollars on public works, was reprinted. The c.u.mberland Road was given over three hundred thousand dollars in a single appropriation. Two and a half million dollars were spent annually on the navy. Various arguments were used to harmonise these expenditures with the economic principles of the Republicans. Twenty s.h.i.+ps-of-the-line could be built, it was said, for much less than the cost of drafting the militia and the losses in a single State during one year of the recent war. Ten thousand seamen afloat would be of more service than fifty thousand militia in preventing "a foreign enemy ever again polluting the sh.o.r.es of the United States." The only danger to this policy would be in putting such a power into the hands of the Chief Executive; but this could be averted, it was declared, by the ballot. National feeling ran high, as it usually does following a war, over both national defence and home development.

In the midst of this great impetus toward nationality came a sudden revelation of the sectional discord which it was hoped had been laid for ever. A vast extent of territory has its advantages in wealth and population; but it also has its dangers in the differences of climate, products, and labour thereby engendered. The United States could not hope to be free from this menace, common to all governments with extensive domains, until time had proved the necessity for union, and use had made its burdens appear lighter. Sectional jealousies had been quieted in the Convention of 1787 by establis.h.i.+ng "balances" in representation and taxation. It was unfortunate to recognise the existence of sections and to perpetuate them in this manner; but compromise was the only way possible at the time.