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CH. V.]

THE THIRD PRESIDENT.

was afforded to American vessels, Great Britain and France should still feel the loss of American commerce."

1809.

Acting on this view of the matter, Congress passed a law for repealing the embargo after the 4th of March, as to all nations except France and Great Britain, and interdicting with them all commercial intercourse whatever, whether by exporting or importing, either directly or circuitously. This measure has always since been known under the name of the nonintercourse law. It passed on the 27th of February, by eighty-one votes to forty.

With the 3d of March, 1809, the administration of Thomas Jefferson reached its close, and the tenth Congress terminated its second session.* Mr. Tucker indulges himself in several eulogistic paragraphs respecting the administration of the third president, its wisdom, its ability, its success, etc., and he quotes in full the address which was presented to Mr. Jefferson by the legislature of Virginia, on the 6th of February, in testimony of their esteem and approbation. A brief extract or two from this address may not be inappropriate in concluding our narrative of Mr. Jefferson's public life.

After recording the "points of his administration, which the historian would not fail to seize, to expand, and

For some remarks on Mr. Jefferson's administration, now just at its eventful close, see Appendix at the end of the present chapter. The reader who wishes to look at the third president's character from the point of view of those who do not admire or respect him, may also consult with advantage a caustic review of the life and character of Thomas Jefferson, in the "New York Review" for March, 1837, pp. 5–58.

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to teach posterity to dwell upon with delight," as they believed, the address proceeds:

"In the principles on which you have administered the government, we see only the continuation and maturity of the same virtues and abilities, which drew upon you in your youth the resentment of Dunmore. From the first brilliant and happy moment of your resistance to foreign tyranny, until the present day, we mark with pleasure and with gratitude the same uniform, consistent character, the same warm and devoted attachment to liberty and the republic, the same Roman love of your country, her fights, her peace, her honor, her prosperity.

"How blessed will be the retirement into which you are about to go! How deservedly blessed will it be! For you carry with you the richest of all rewards, the recollection of a life well spent in the service of your country, and proofs the most decisive, of the love, the gratitude, the veneration, of your countrymen.

"That your retirement may be as

*As an offset to these laudatory expressions, we may quote from the report of a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, made in January, 1809, in which the state of the country at the time is depicted in the following terms: "Our agriculture is discouraged; the fisheries abandoned; navigation forbidden : our commerce at home restrained, if not annihilated; our commerce abroad cut off; our navy sold, dismantled, or degraded to the service of cutters or gunboats; the revenue extinguished; the cause of justice interrupted; the military power exalted above the civil, and by setting up a standard of political faith, unknown to the Constitution, the nation is weakened by internal animosities and divisions, at the moment when it is unnecessarily and improvidently exposed to war with Great Britain, France, and Spain."

happy as your life has been virtuous and useful; that our youth may see in the blissful close of your days, an additional inducement to form themselves on your model, is the devout and earnest prayer of your fellow-citizens who compose the General Assembly of Virginia." Our own opinion of Mr. Jefferson's character as a man and as the head of the ruling party in the United States, might be set forth at large, were it at all needful on the present occasion; but, in truth, it is not. If, as we believe, our narrative of his public life and career is just, impartial, candid, and sufficiently full in respect to details, there is plainly little need, at our hands, of a formal delineation of his character and conduct. His acts will justify or condemn him, as they have all along in the judgment of the people; and his acts will prove incontestably, that he was either a high-minded, patriotic statesman and ruler, or an unscrupulous partisan and seeker after popular applause. Let the reader judge for himself, after carefully weighing the facts which are on record, and the principles which the third president avowed in his writings.

Thomas Jefferson must always fill a large space in our country's annals, whether it be for good or for evil. It is the duty of Americans to study his life and character, and to note well the effect produced by his opinions and principles upon our countrymen. If he were not the profound statesman and large-hearted patriot which his admirers claimed him to be, he was undoubtedly in possession of vast influence, and wielded it with consummate skill, for eight eventful years. If he were not a mere party leader, as his enemies openly and constantly asserted, it is undeniable that he never lost sight of the interests and the advancement of the party at whose head he was placed. Men have differed, widely differed, men will continue to differ, in their judgments respecting Thomas Jefferson and his claims to honor and respect. Let the youthful student weigh well what we have here laid before him, and what he will find in the authorities referred to in the course of our narrative; and let him judge soberly and fearlessly, as is the birthright no less than the bounden duty of every American.

CH. V.]

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS'S REMARKS.

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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS'S REMARKS ON JEFFERSON'S ADMINISTRATION.

In the first wars of the French Revolution, Great Britain had begun by straining the claim of belligerent, as against neutral rights, beyond all the theories of international jurisprudence, and even beyond her own ordinary practice. There is in all war a conflict between the belligerent and the neutral right, which can in its nature be settled only by convention. And in addition to all the ordinary asperities of dissension between the nation at war and the nation at peace, she had asserted a right of man-stealing from the vessels of the United States. The claim of right was to take by force all sea-faring men, her own subjects, wherever they were found by her naval officers, to serve their king in his wars. And under color of this tyrant's right, her naval officers, down to the most beardless midshipman, actually took from the American merchant vessels which they visited, any seaman whom they chose to take for a British subject. After the treaty of November, 1794, she had relaxed all her pretensions against the neutral rights, and had gradually abandoned the practice of impressment till she was on the point of renouncing it by a formal treaty stipulation.

At the renewal of the war, after the peace of Amiens, it was at first urged with much respect for the rights of neutrality, but the practice of impressment was soon renewed with aggravated severity, and the commerce of neutral nations with the colonies of the adverse belligerent was wholly interdicted on the pretence of justification, because it had been forbidden by the enemy herself in the time of peace. This pretension had been first raised by Great Britain in the seven years' war, but she had been overawed by the armed neutrality from maintaining it in the war of the American Revolution. In the midst of this war with Napoleon, she suddenly reasserted the principle, and by a secret order in council, swept

the ocean of nearly the whole mass of neutral commerce. Her war with France spread itself all over Europe, successively involving Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Denmark and Sweden. Not a single neutral power remained in Europe-and Great Britain, after annihilating at Trafalgar, the united naval power of France and Spain, ruling thenceforth with undisputed dominion upon the ocean, conceived the project of engrossing even the commerce with her enemy by intercepting all neutral navigation. These measures were met by corresponding acts of violence, and sophistical principles of nationa law, promulgated by Napoleon, rising to the summit of his greatness, and preparing his downfall by the abuse of his elevation.

Through this fiery ordeal the administration of Mr. Jefferson was to pass, and the severest of its tests were to be applied to Mr. Madison. His correspondence with the ministers of Great Britain, France, and Spain, and with the ministers of the United States to those nations during the remainder of Mr. Jefferson's administration, constitute the most important and most valuable materials of its history. His examination of the British doctrines relating to neutral trade, will hereafter be considered a standard treatise on the law of nations; not inferior to the works of any writer upon those subjects since the days of Grotius, and every way worthy of the author of Publius and Helvidius. There is indeed, in all the diplomatic papers of American statesmen, justly celebrated as they have been, nothing su perior to this dissertation, which was not strictly official. It was composed amid the duties of the department of state, never more arduous than at that time-in the summer of 1806. It was published inofficially, and a copy of it was laid on the table of each member of Congress at the commencement of the session in December, 1806.

The controversies of conflicting neutral and belligerent rights, continued through the whole.

of Mr. Jefferson's administration, during the latter part of which they were verging rapidly to war. He had carried the policy of peace perhaps to an extreme. His system of defence by commercial restrictions, dry-docks, gun-boats, and embargoes, was stretched to its last hair's breadth of endurance. Far be it from me, my fellow-citizens, to speak of this system or its motives with disrespect. If there be a duty, binding in chains more adamantine than all the rest the conscience of a chief magistrate of this Union, it is that of preserving peace with all mankindpeace with the other nations of the earth-peace among the several states of this Union-peace in the hearts and temper of our own people. Yet must a president of the United States never cease to feel that his charge is to maintain the rights, the interests, and the honor, no less than the peace of his country-nor will he be permitted to forget that peace must be the offspring of two concurring wills; that to seek peace is not always to ensure it. He must remember too, that a reliance upon the operation of measures, from their effect on the interests, however clear and unequivocal, of nations, cannot be safe against a counter current of their passions. That nations, like individuals, sacrifice their peace to their pride, to their hatred, to their envy, to their jealousy, and even to the craft, which the cunning of hackneyed politicians not unfrequently mistakes for policy. That nations, like individuals, have sometimes the misfortune of losing their senses, and that lunatic communities, which cannot be confined in hospitals, must be resisted in arms, as a single maniac is sometimes restored to reason by the scourge. That national madness is infectious, and that a paroxysm of it in one people, especially when generated by the Furies that preside over war, produces a counter paroxysm in the adverse party. Such is the melancholy condition, as yet,

of associated man. And while in the wise but mysterious dispensations of an overruling Providence, man shall so continue, the peace of every nation must depend not alone upon its own will, but upon that concurrently with the will of all others,

And such was the condition of the two mightiest nations of the earth during the administration of Mr. Jefferson. Frantic; in fits of mutual hatred, envy, and jealousy against each other; meditating mutual invasion and conquest; and forcing the other nations of the four quarters of the globe to the alternative of joining them as allies or encountering them as foes. Mr. Jefferson met them with moral philosophy and commercial restrictions, with dry-docks and gun-boats -with non-intercourses, and embargoes, till the American nation were told that they could not be kicked into a war, and till they were taunted by a British statesman in the imperial parliament of England, with their five fir frigates and their striped bunting.

Mr. Jefferson pursued his policy of peace till it brought the nation to the borders of internal war. An embargo of fourteen months' duration was at last reluctantly abandoned by him, when it had ceased to be obeyed by the people, and state courts were ready to pronounce it unconstitutional. A non-intercourse was then substi tuted in its place, and the helm of state passed from the hands of Mr. Jefferson to those of Mr. Madison, precisely at the moment of this pertur bation of earth and sea threatened with war from abroad and at home, but with the principle definitely settled, that in our intercourse with foreign. nations, reason, justice, and commercial restrictions require live-oak hearts and iron or brazen mouths to speak, that they may be distinctly heard, or attentively listened to, by the distant ears of foreigners, whether French or British, monarchial or republican.

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CHAPTER VI.

1809-1811.

THE TWO YEARS PRECEDING THE WAR.

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The Inauguration of James Madison - Inaugural Address of the fourth president — The new cabinet - Positics of affairs on Madison's accession-Conduct of England and France- Mr. Erskine's negotiations and their results - Opening of Congress - The president's message-The British government refuses to sanction Mr. Erskine's acts-Irritation and excitement-Views of the federalists—Mr. Jackson appointed minister from Englad His course · Congress meet- -President's message quoted-Resolutions of the Senate-Acts of the House The manufactures of the Union-Report on conduct of General Wilkinson - The Rambouillet decree - Napo leon's announcement of the revocation of his decrees - British government refuse to rescind the orders in council-Intercourse with France renewed - Occupancy of West Florida Congress meet in December, 1810 - - The president's message-Debate in the House on the petition of the territory of Orleans to be admitted as state - Quincy's speech-Question as to the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States - Debate on the subject-The result - Debate on the non-intercourse act-Feeling in the navy towards England — Affair of the President and the Little Belt - The United States and two British ships-Mr. Foster appointed maister from England - His correspondence with the secretary of state-Meeting of Congress looked for with anxiety – Troubles in the cabinet-Monroe appointed secretary of state-The Indians in the north-west-Tecun.seh's plans-General Harrison's movements -The battle of Tippecanoe - Severe and bloody contest - Its result.

On the 4th day of March, 1809, a goodly company assembled in the capitol at Washington, to witness the inauguration of James Madison as fourth president of the United States. Mr. Jefferson was there, as were also many members of Congress, the foreign ministers, and a crowd of citizens. Mr. Madison was clad in a plain suit of black, entirely of American manufacture, and modestly, yet in a dignified manner, went through the important ceremonies of the day. His inaugural address, though brief, was not deficient in energy and ability; and it met with general approbation. As on previous occasions, we give the address in full.

"Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
"Unwilling to depart from examples

VOL. III.-15

of the most revered authority, I avail myself of the occasion now presented, to express the profound impression made on me by the call of my country to the station, to the duties of which I am about to pledge myself by the most solemn of sanctions. So distinguished a mark of confidence, proceed. ing from the deliberate and tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would, under any circumstances, have commanded my gratitude and devotion, as well as filled me with an awful sense of the trust to be assumed. Under the various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to the existing period, I feel, that both the honor and the responsibility allotted to me are inexpressibly enhanced.

"The present situation of the world

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