Part 6

President Madison, who assumed the executive chair in 1809, inherited a quarrel with Great Britain from his predecessor, which soon ripened into war. The great contest which raged between France and Great Britain early in the century could not but affect the rest of the civilized world. American commerce had already grown into importance, and was now seriously crippled by the arbitrary course respecting trade adopted by both of the belligerents. Each power forbade neutral nations to trade with its foe. But while Napoleon followed the example of Pitt in making a decree to this effect, the bearing of Great Britain towards this country, in respect to the prohibition of trade, was far more arrogant and vexatious than that of France. American ships were captured on the high seas by British men-of-war, carried into port, adjudged, and confiscated.

A still more serious assault upon our national honor was made by the British government. It claimed the right to search American vessels for British seamen, and proceeded to execute it. Thus sailors were taken from our ships by the hundred; and, on one occasion, an American ship, the Chesapeake, was fired upon and forcibly boarded by a British man-of-war, within sight of the Virginia coast. For a while retaliation was attempted in the shape of an embargo upon American vessels; but this was soon found to tend to the utter extitinction of our commerce, and the embargo was abandoned. Remonstrance with Great Britain proved to be of no avail. The English ministry at that time was a strict Tory one, and far from friendly in disposition toward the United States. Despite the protests of our envoy, the practice of search was vigorously pursued.

This was the state of affairs when James Madison became President. The party represented by him was now clamorous for war, while the old Federalists, especially those of New England, as earnestly deprecated it. At last it became apparent that war was the only remedy for the outrages committed almost without cessation on our commerce. The President sent a message to Congress expressing this opinion; and on the 18th of June, 1812, war was formally declared against Great Britain. This was evidently in accordance with the will of the nation: but we did not enter upon the conflict without the bitter opposition of the Federalists. A convention of the leading members of that party met at Hartford, held secret sessions, and issued an energetic protest against the war. This aroused a deep sense of hostility in the breasts of the war party; and, ever since, the Hartford Convention has been regarded as at least an injudicious demonstration at a period when war already existed, and when the government needed the support of every patriot to bring it to a successful end.

The Americans began hostilities by making an ineffectual attempt to conquer Canada. Meanwhile the English promptly took up the challenge, sent ships of war loaded with excellent soldiers, many of them veterans of the Napoleonic wars, across the Atlantic, and engaged Tecumseh, and other Indian chiefs inimical to the intruders upon their former hunting-grounds, to aid them in the contest. While Tecumseh, however, was defeated and killed, the successes of the American army were few compared with the brilliant exploits of our naval forces. The War of 1812 proved that the Americans had studied well the British example and system in naval warfare. It was emphatically a naval war, simply because Great Britain could only approach us from the sea. The victories of Hull and Perry showed the greatest maritime power on earth that, though our navy might be inferior to hers in distant waters, it was more than a match for hers on the Lakes and the American coast. If the Shannon captured the Chesapeake, and if gallant David Porter had at last to desert the burning Essex, on the other hand the capture of the Guerrière and the surrender of the British squadron on Lake Erie to Perry, more than compensated for our disasters.

It was the the last year of the war, which continued nearly three years, that the British landed on our southern coast, and, making havoc of villages and plantations as they went, took Washington, and burned the Capitol and the President's house, from which Mr. Madison and his family had happily escaped into Virginia. But the enemy found it impossible to pursue their temporary success to a decisive issue. Both countries were weary of the war, and overtures of peace having been made, four American commissioners--John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, and Jonathan Russell--were sent to Ghent, in Belgium, to meet British commissioners and conclude a treaty. The treaty of Ghent was signed on the 24th of December, 1814; and, singularly enough, while such subjects as the boundary line and the fisheries were discussed, that treaty contained no stipulation in regard to the British claim to the right of search.

In those days, when there were neither railways, steamships, nor telegraphs, news was long in travelling from one continent to the other. The tidings of the treaty did not reach New Orleans in time to prevent General Andrew Jackson from winning glory by defending that city from behind his cotton-bales. This was one of the most brilliant land-battles of the war, and was fought on the 8th of January, just a fortnight after peace had been formally concluded at Ghent.

The War of 1812, while it left many questions unsettled between the mother and the daughter country, practically put an end to the vexatious disturbance of our commerce by Great Britain. It also tended to give a longer lease of political power to what was then called the Republican party, and prepared the way for the "era of good feeling," over which the amiable though not conspicuously able President Monroe presided. The war also brought certain men prominently before the public eye. Hull, Bainbridge, Porter, Decatur, Rodgers, and Perry, were enshrined among the country's naval heroes. General Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, and General Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, later reaped the reward of the Presidency, the indirect result of their military exploits. The gallant Richard M. Johnson afterwards became Vice-President; and it was in the War of 1812 that General Winfield Scott won his first laurels, and that General Zachary Taylor, long afterwards President, gave promise of the military genius which later so much aided in bringing the Mexican War to a speedy and victorious end.

The period of the war and of the years immediately succeeding witnessed a very rapid growth of population, and a notable swelling of the tide of emigration westward. In 1816 Indiana came within the circle of States; followed alternately by slave and free states--Mississippi, 1817; Illinois, 1818; Alabama, 1819; Maine, 1820. and Missouri, 1821. The great highway built between Cumberland and Wheeling was all alive in those days with the wagons and groups of new settlers. A long era of peace was to follow, and to give the country opportunity to increase, to develop its resources, and to make rapid progress in its prosperity and the development of its institutions.

XI. THE MEXICAN WAR.

An interval of over thirty years elapsed between our second war with Great Britain and the war with Mexico. Although this period was one of external, and, excepting the troubles which now and then arose with the Indians, of internal peace, its social and political aspects are very full of interest. Within its limits the first railway and the first telegraph-lines were laid in the United States, and the great Erie Canal was built. After three tranquil presidential terms, presided over by the sensible though not brilliant Monroe, and by the shrewd, scholarly, and positive younger Adams, a man succeeded to the Executive Chair whose course was destined to revolutionize parties, to carry party bitterness to a height of great violence, and to divert the political destinies of the country into new channels. Andrew Jackson was well fitted by his strong will and stubborn courage to do the dangerous work of his time.

Various considerations induced the State of South Carolina to defy the Union. The alleged ground of her quarrel was the high rates of the tariff imposed by Congress upon imports. This tariff she resolved to resist; hence a resolution was passed by a convention in South Carolina that after a certain date the tariff should be null and void within her limits. It was further resolved that if the United States attempted to enforce it, South Carolina should secede, and form an independent government. John C. Calhoun was, or was charged with being, the instigator of this movement. It was at once quelled, however, by the prompt action of President Jackson. He sent troops and war-ships to Charleston, under the command of General Scott; and "nullification" was overawed and defeated.

President Jackson also had the nerve to veto the bill creating a national bank; and when, after two terms of service, he retired, he gave up to the rule of his designated successor a nation of fifteen millions of people, solvent, prosperous, and apparently destined to a long career of peace and power. The four years of President Van Buren's term were not notable for great events, and are chiefly interesting as exhibiting the re-formation of parties, in which the lines between the Whigs and the Democrats became more defined and distinct. Van Buren was the leader of the Democrats, but was soon to lose that leadership by reason of his connection with the fast-growing anti-slavery cause. Henry Clay was the Whig chief; and continued to be so, despite the rivalry of Webster, down to the time of his death. [Sidenote: Causes of the Mexican War.]

It was during the term of President John Tyler, who succeeded to the chief magistracy after poor worn-out old General Harrison had exercised its functions for one brief month, that the events took their rise which ripened into the War with Mexico. The large territory of Texas, lying upon our extreme southwestern border, between Louisiana and Mexico, had revolted from the latter nation and set up an independent republic of its own. Texas had been largely colonized from the slave States, and General Sam Houston, formerly of Tennessee, was its President.

The republic sought admission to our Union in 1837, but the application was then refused. Seven years later, Mr. Tyler gave it a more hospitable reception. A treaty was framed, and at first rejected by the United States Senate. At last, in March, 1845, just as Mr. Tyler was retiring from office, a resolution was adopted by both houses of Congress annexing Texas, and this resolution was approved by the outgoing President. The presidential campaign in the autumn of 1844, between Henry Clay as the Whig and James K. Polk as the Democratic candidate, was fought mainly upon the issue of this annexation, and the election of Mr. Polk was looked upon as a confirmation of it by the people.

No sooner had the new President been inaugurated than what the Whig leaders had earnestly predicted came to pass. A dispute arose with Mexico as to the boundary between that country and Texas. Mexico claimed that this boundary was the river Nueces; Texas asserted it to be the Rio Grande. The matter was one of some importance, as the Nueces is a hundred miles northeastward from the Rio Grande, and that much of territory was therefore in dispute. The brief negotiations which ensued with a view to the settlement of this question, proved abortive. President Polk accordingly ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed territory with a small body of troops. Taylor concentrated his men at Corpus Christi, near the frontier.

The Mexicans were equally prompt, and the first collisions occurred at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, near the Rio Grande. General Taylor repulsed the enemy with little difficulty and but small loss, and, crossing the Rio Grande, advanced upon and captured Matamoras. Thus far the hostilities had proceeded when a formal declaration of war was made against Mexico by the United States. Clay and the Whigs strenuously opposed this action; but the administration party bore down all opposition. Volunteers now flocked, especially from the Southern States, to Taylor's standard; and in a few weeks he found himself at the head of a resolute though not very well disciplined force of nearly eight thousand men. Monterey, a fortified town of considerable importance, was held by about nine thousand Mexican troops. General Taylor's objective point was the City of Mexico.

After an attack of three days, Monterey fell into his hands. Victory followed his army everywhere. Santa Anna, a crafty and able man, who had sat in the presidential chair of Mexico, was now in command of the Mexican army, and confronted Taylor at Huena Vista. His gallant attempt to stay the advance of the triumphant Americans, however, failed, for Taylor defeated him in what was perhaps the most brilliantly and hotly contested action of the war. Taylor's force at Buena Vista numbered about six thousand men, the larger part of them being but rudely disciplined soldiers. Santa Anna's command comprised at least twenty thousand Mexicans. It was at Buena Vista that the Lancers, the best body of troops in the Mexican army, were routed by the dashing onset of the American volunteers.

General Scott now appeared upon the scene to reap fresh victories, and to lend powerful aid, by his scientific skill and ripe military judgment, in bringing the war to a decisive issue. He was despatched with an army to attack Vera Cruz, the most important port and fort on the Mexican coast. His force numbered between eleven and twelve thousand men, and he was supported by Commodore Matthew Perry, who operated with a fleet in the Gulf. Vera Cruz fell after a vigorous bombardment and a brave defence. The Mexicans could no longer hold the fortress of San Juan D'Ulloa, which was speedily occupied by General Scott. The two victories of Buena Vista and Vera Cruz rendered the cause of the Mexicans hopeless. The fall of the capital was only a question of more or less delay. The resistance of the Mexicans was still obstinate, though always ineffectual. The troops of the United States won in succession the battles of Cerro Gordo, Cherubusco, El Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. Finally, on the 14th of September, 1847, the American army of six thousand, under Winfield Scott, entered the City of Mexico. This was one year and four months after war had been declared by Congress.

Besides these main operations, there were various collateral movements designed to cripple the power and diminish the territory of Mexico. General Kearney, with an independent force of volunteers, had marched into and taken possession of the province of New Mexico; Colonel Doliphan had in like manner occupied Chihuahua; while Colonel Fremont, placing himself at the head of a band of American settlers recruited in the valley of the Sacramento, and supported by Commodore Stockton, had availed himself of the opportunity to hold Upper California for the United States.

Thus Mexico was subdued and compelled to come to terms, her enemy dictating these from her own capital. Commissioners met at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo to conclude a treaty of peace. By this instrument Mexico agreed to accept the Rio Grande as the boundary between herself and Texas, adding thereby to the territory of the United States an area of not less than five hundred thousand square miles; to make over New Mexico and Upper California to the United States in consideration of the sum of fifteen millions of dollars; and to guarantee the debts due from Mexico to American citizens. This treaty was duly ratified and exchanged in the spring of 1848--about two years after the beginning of hostilities.

The political effect of the Mexican War was to add a large territory and a fast-increasing population to the tier of slave-holding States, and thus to aggrandize the slave-holding oligarchy, as opposed to the party in favor of free soil. On the other hand, the military glory won by General Taylor, and his adoption in the year after the war as the Whig candidate for the Presidency, singularly enough brought into power the party which had persistently opposed both the annexation of Texas, and the war which had been undertaken to complete it. The Mexican War provided the parties with four presidential candidates, Generals Taylor, Scott, Pierce, and Fremont, two of whom succeeded in reaching the summit of executive authority. When Colonel Fremont raised the American standard in California, it was little imagined that he was acquiring a province for the country the value of which was destined to be incalculably greater than the Texan republic. Within a year, however, the gold mines had been discovered, and that wonderful civilization of the Pacific Coast which we now witness had begun to grow up in the far western wilderness.

XII. THE SLAVERY AGITATION.

The United States inherited, and had to accept, from the colonial system, a great moral and social wrong. Slavery, planted on our soil soon after its first settlement, had spread not only through the South, but had existed for a time even in the Puritan colonies of New England. An active slave-trade had grown up, and was still flourishing at the time that the constitution was framed. There is every reason to believe that the most eminent and enlightened even of Southern statesmen, in the very infancy of the Republic, regarded African bondage as not only a moral, but, in many regards, a material evil. Washington and Jefferson especially uttered, in no doubtful accents, their dislike of the system; while such northern statesmen as Franklin, Adams, and Roger Sherman protested in yet sterner tones against its continuance.

But slavery, like many traditional abuses of nations, was so securely lodged, so difficult to uproot, that wise men at once deplored its presence and despaired of its abolition. While, therefore, the framers of the constitution refused to insert a direct recognition of slavery in that instrument, choosing to regard it as temporary, and likely in time to become extinct, other subjects, crowding upon the attention of statesmen at the period of political formation, pushed this of slavery for a while into the background. The first definite collision between the upholders and the opponents of slavery occurred when, as a consequence of the rapid growth of the country, the territories began one after another to knock for admission into the household of States. The dispute came to an issue in the year 1820. Missouri sought admission into the Union, and it was attempted to admit her as a slave state. Then the Northern statesmen declared that some limit or restriction should be placed upon future admissions of States, in regard to slavery.

The debates in Congress were long and warm. Every argument which has since become so familiar on the subject was advanced on one side and on the other. The moral evil of slavery, its demoralizing influence upon freeman and bondman, its cruelties in practice, were dilated upon by some; others pictured "the peculiar institution" in its more patriarchal and pleasant aspects. Finally, the northern members agreed to admit Missouri as a slave State, on condition that thenceforth all new states north of the line of 36°30'north latitude--known as "Mason and Dixon's line"--should be free; while all new states south of that line should decide for themselves whether they should be free or slave. It was the vain hope of the statesmen of Monroe's time that this settlement, known in history as the "Missouri Compromise," would be accepted as final, and that the mutual ill-feeling which had already become bitter between the sections would be finally allayed by it.

They flattered themselves that they had put a period to the agitation, and that the irritating question was now cast outside the domain of American politics. Perhaps they did not sufficiently reflect that the same power which had established the boundaries of slavery might, when the opportunity was ripe, erase them. The slavery agitation was, however, only in its infancy. It had within it a vital and irrepressible element of growth. With the advance of civil liberty, the growth of education, it, too, must necessarily make progress. As yet it was in the hands of so-called "fanatics." Respectable statesmanship, having made the Missouri Compromise, would have no more of it.

It was early in General Jackson's presidency that the small but determined "Liberty party" of the North began to attract attention by what was considered the extravagance of its utterances, and the absurdity of its proposals. The Quaker Lundy published his "Genius of Universal Emancipation"; Garrison put forth the "Liberator" at Boston; and soon, in various parts of the Union, abolition tracts and fanatical orators brought down upon them not only the execration of the South, but the assaults of northern mobs. An insurrection, under the lead of a negro named Turner, broke out in Virginia, and massacres and burnings followed. The Georgia Legislature put a price upon Garrison's head; and that devoted advocate of human freedom responded by founding the New England Anti-Slavery Society--an example soon followed in various places through the North.

The cause was right, and grew despite every obstacle of mob violence, persecution, contempt, and, not the least, the indignant hostility of respectable statesmanship. Yet evidences began to appear, here and there, that the sympathy even of official responsibility was gradually leaning to the principle of liberty. The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared the child Med, whose master had brought her to Boston, to have become by that act free. There was still, however, much suffering in store for the anti-slavery advocates. Garrison, in attempting to speak before the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, was dragged through the streets by an enraged mob, and was only saved from death by being hurried to the jail as a refuge. A hall in Philadelphia which had been desecrated by an abolition conference, was burned. Elijah Lovejoy, an Illinois abolition editor, was killed by a mob. These are a few among many examples of the violence with which the abolitionists were treated.