This Senate of the Thirteenth Congress appointed a committee to communicate with President Madison concerning the constitutionality of appointing Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin to serve concurrently on the peace commission in Europe. When the chairman of that committee visited the White House, Madison told him that as he did not understand the committee to be empowered by the Senate to consult with the president in person, he would not discuss the matter with them. If, however, the Senate rectified this defect in the committee’s authority, Madison would speak with its members about the Gallatin issue. The Senate then perfected its orders to the committee members, who told Madison on behalf of the Senate that the two positions were so incompatible that Gallatin ought not to hold them both simultaneously. The committee’s report back to the Senate made clear both that the committee had told the president his physical indisposition had kept the Senate from communicating its displeasure sooner and that Madison had proven uninterested in communicating to them anything further than that, in the committee’s words, “he regretted that the measure had been taken under circumstances which deprived him of the aid or advice of the Senate”—which, too, was a reference to his life-threatening illness. The Senate rejected the Gallatin nomination by a vote of 17 ayes and 18 nays, with the Invisibles—Giles, Leib, and Smith—joining the Federalists, among others, in the majority. It then gave its consent to the appointments of John Quincy Adams and James Bayard by votes of 30–4 and 27–6. It next adopted a resolution objecting to the president’s having purported to appoint Gallatin, Adams, and Bayard under his recess appointments power. That power applied only to openings arising in preexisting positions during Senate recesses, the Senate reasoned, and these positions had instead been created during a Senate recess. The Senate insisted it respected the president’s authority, but added that it also had to insist on its own constitutional powers.17

  Soon thereafter Madison and the Senate had a similar misunderstanding regarding the president’s nomination of a minister plenipotentiary to Sweden. Madison nominated Jonathan Russell to the office, a senator proposed a motion that appointing anyone to that office would be inexpedient, and the Senate appointed a three-man committee including King and Giles, two devout oppositionists, to take it up with Madison.18 Madison sent the Senate a memorandum explaining that in his understanding, the proper course of action for the Senate would have been to communicate with the head of the relevant department, in this case the secretary of state, about the matter. As the Senate and the president were “coordinate” when it came to appointments, “appointment of a Committee of the Senate to confer immediately with the Executive himself, appears to lose sight of the coordinate relation … which the Constitution has established, and which ought therefore to be maintained.”19 The three-man committee’s composition hinted what the Senate felt disposed to do, and Madison’s letter did not save Russell’s nomination. The Senate did it without sending a delegation to consult with the secretary. Though they respected him, then, the senators did not defer to Madison as the “Father of the Constitution”—a title he anyway always rejected.

  However unhappy these developments may have been, American arms enjoyed monumental success in the Erie theater during the 1813 season. Its genesis lay in Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s shipbuilding program on Lake Erie. As the leading account says, “with this hastily constructed array of small brigs and schooners, he engaged and annihilated the British Lake Erie squadron on September 10.” In the process the slogan on his flagship’s battle flag, “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” won immortal fame. Having destroyed the enemy fleet, Perry dispatched to General William Henry Harrison a short note including another specimen of wordsmithing calculated to raise the hair on the nape of a reader’s neck: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.…”20 As Donald Hickey summarized matters, “The battle was the most important fought on the Great Lakes during the war. It changed the balance of power in the West and enabled the United States to recover all that it had lost in 1812.”21

  Perry’s feat opened occupied Detroit to American attack. Tecumseh delivered an emphatic speech imploring the British not to retreat and reminding the commander at Fort Amherstburg of the promises that had persuaded the Indians to take up the hatchet against the United States. “Listen!” he said, “You told us, at that time, to bring forward our families to this place; and we did so; and you promised to take care of them, and that they would want for nothing, while the men would go and fight the enemy.” All the British promises never to withdraw from British land that had drawn the Indians into the war on their side, he lamented, were being abandoned. “We must compare our father’s [King George’s] conduct to a fat animal, that carries its tail upon its back, but when affrighted, he drops it between his legs and runs off.”22 British soldier John Richardson, a witness to Tecumseh’s oration, later characterized him as having spoken “with powerful energy and gesticulation” and described him as one “whose gallant and impetuous spirit could ill brook retiring before his enemies.” Perhaps recalling that British general Henry Procter had made a significant contrast, Richardson added that the American warrior’s manner “could not fail to endear him to the soldier hearts of those who stood around, and inspire in them a veneration and esteem, not even surpassed by what they entertained for their own immediate leader.”23

  Tecumseh’s eminence as an Indian warrior made General William Henry Harrison’s victory in the Battle of the Thames, which proved pivotal in the history of the Northwest, even more significant. Fighting a battle somewhere on the Thames line northward represented a concession by Procter to Tecumseh.24 Harrison, on the other hand, augmented his force with a levy of three thousand new Kentuckians, Governor Isaac Shelby among them, which gave him about fifty-five hundred men. (He had to turn away Ohioan volunteers for lack of supplies.)

  Richard M. Johnson, in command of twelve hundred cavalrymen, led a charge against the British force of approximately six hundred British in two lines of battle, with five hundred or so Indians anchoring the British force next to the swamp on their right. The Americans made short work of the enemy force, though Procter did escape. Oddly the American horsemen relied on muskets rather than sabers. When the horsemen on the American right passed through the British lines, dismounted, and began to fire, the enemy was soon overcome. The battle lasted forty-five minutes at most, and British forces got off only one volley.25

  Tecumseh died in this brief battle. Legend has it that Richard M. Johnson killed him. The notoriety accruing to Johnson as a result ultimately vaulted him to the vice presidency of the United States. Perhaps more remarkably Johnson eventually lived openly with a mixed-race slave woman, by whom he had several children, as his common-law wife, and his Kentucky constituents again elected him to high office.26 Of more lasting moment, Tecumseh’s fighting death on October 15, 1813, meant that Indian power in the Old Northwest was gone for good.27

  As these events transpired on the United States’ northern flank, epic developments played out in Europe. By the middle of 1813, Napoleon had assembled a new army—though a smaller, less veteran one, and one plagued by lack of horses. The year’s campaign came to a head in and around the beautiful old German city of Leipzig, where French forces found themselves faced by a numerically superior coalition of Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Swedish ones. The diplomatic and military failures that had brought the armies of his former ally Alexander; his father-in-law Francis I of Austria; Frederick William III (the Prussian king he had treated disdainfully after Jena-Auerstadt in 1806); and former French marshal, now Crown Prince of Sweden Karl XIV Johan Bernadotte into coalition against his, left Napoleon at last with forces inferior to his adversaries’. Although Napoleon had won significant battles at Lutzen and Bautzen earlier in that year’s campaign, the Battle of Nations was a full-fledged disaster. He had about two hundred thousand men at this great decision point, but his enemies massed three hundred thousand. In the words of its leading chronicler, “a combination of awakening Germanic nationalism and fast-exhausting French resources resulted in heavy defeat and the loss of almost all terrain lying to the east of the Rhine.”28 Any reasonable observer would have deduced that this must auger disaster for the fledgling North American republic, as Britain’s military resources would be freed up for deployment against the United States.

  42

  Madison’s Annual Message was delivered to Capitol Hill on December 7, 1813.1 He began by noting his disappointment that the British had rejected Alexander’s offer of mediation. He asserted that this left America no alternative but to rely on her strength, which he illustrated by recounting a string of naval victories of which Perry’s was the most notable and important. It had led to the success in the Battle of the Thames, “which quickly terminated in the capture of the British and dispersion of the savage force.” Harrison, Johnson, and Governor Shelby—“whose heroism, signalized in the war which established the Independence of his Country, sought at an advanced age, a share in hardships and battles, for maintaining its rights and its safety”—drew particular praise. Progress on the banks of Lake Ontario, which like Lake Erie had come to be dominated by American arms, had been foiled in its beginnings by the weather, so that the planned campaign along the St. Lawrence had come to naught.

  Madison lamented that the British, rather than emulating the Americans in not enlisting Indian nations into their forces, thus “mitigating [the war’s] calamities,” had instead employed them. “Wherever they could be turned against us, no exertions to effect it, have been spared.” In the Southwest “a bloody fanaticism, recently propagated among them” had made it “necessary to crush such a war before it could spread among the contiguous tribes, and before it could favor enterprises of the Enemy into that vicinity.” He then made reference to the American victories at Tallushatchee and Talladega only a few weeks earlier, where as many as five hundred Creek warriors met their ends. Here for the first time the name of Major General Andrew Jackson, “an Officer equally distinguished for his patriotism and his military talents,” came to national attention.2 Madison lamented that the British perseverance in recruiting Indian allies into their service had at last “forced upon us” a “departure from our protracted forbearance to accept the services tendered by them.” Even in accepting groups of Indians into their ranks, he insisted, the Americans had not followed “the example of the enemy, who owe the advantages they have occasionally gained in battle, chiefly to the number of their savage associates; and who have not controuled them, either from their usual practice of indiscriminate massacre on defenseless inhabitants, or from scenes of carnage without a parallel, on prisoners to the British arms, guarded by all the laws … of honorable war.”

  Ruminating on this subject naturally led Madison into a lengthy passage on British treatment of American immigrants from Britain taken prisoner during the war. As they had been sent to Britain “for trial as criminals,” “a like number of British prisoners of war were put into confinement, with a notification that they would experience whatever violence might be committed on the American prisoners of war, sent to Great Britain.” When the British responded to this by putting twice as many Americans under close confinement and warning of the destruction they would mete out on American coastal towns in case the U.S. Government reciprocated for any executions the British might inflict, America had “immediately put into close confinement” an equal number of British prisoners and informed the enemy of this step. If the British continued on this path, America would reciprocate, Madison said, “any other proceedings against us, contrary to the legitimate modes of warfare.”

  In closing his address the president invoked the deity and foreshadowed the direction in which Republican statecraft would head in years to come. “If the war has increased the interruptions of our commerce,” he mused, “it has at the same time cherished and multiplied our manufactures; so as to make us independent of all other countries for the more essential branches, for which we aught to be dependent on none.…” He added that the war’s effect in eliciting and displaying America’s military capacity and might ought to make foreign countries more respectful of Americans’ rights in the future.

  Just over three weeks after Madison sent out his Annual Message, important news arrived from Europe on a Royal Navy schooner. Napoleon had suffered a significant defeat at Leipzig, which might be expected to cut the legs out from under America’s negotiating position, and Lord Castlereagh, the British secretary of state for foreign affairs, countered Madison’s acceptance of Alexander’s offer of mediation between the two warring parties with an offer of direct negotiations either in London or in Gothenburg, Sweden. Madison told Congress he had accepted Gothenburg. He hastened to add that “vigorous preparations for carrying on the war, can in no respect impede the progress to a favorable result; whilst a relaxation of such preparations, should the wishes of the United States for a speedy restoration of the blessings of peace be disappointed, would necessarily have the most injurious consequences.”3 (Here, as in his 1812 message hinting that the Congress should declare war, Madison avoided outright giving the Legislative Branch advice.) Within days the president nominated Henry Clay, James Bayard, and Jonathan Russell to join John Quincy Adams in Europe. The Senate ratified these appointments overwhelmingly.4 While Castlereagh’s answer had included a statement that he wanted an agreement “not inconsistent with the established maxims of public law, and with the maritime rights of the British empire,” Clay at a public dinner for Commodore Perry before he departed toasted, “The policy which looks to peace as the end of war—and to the war as the means of peace.” Perhaps the British intended to extract agreement that impressment and regulation of neutrals’ seaborne trade were George III’s rights, but Americans did not intend to agree to any such thing.5

  The departures brought on yet another Cabinet shuffle. Gallatin’s departure left Madison without his ablest subordinate and necessitated that he choose someone new for the most important post. Senator George W. Campbell of Tennessee, who had played a prominent role in Congress supporting the administration’s financial measures, did not measure up. Next most notably, William Pinkney was out as attorney general. Though that was a part-time job in those days, his considerable legal ability and notable intelligence would be missed. As prominent Old Republican congressman and former speaker of the House Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina summarized these developments, “That Campbell and Rush [Pinkney’s successor] are equal to Gallatin and Pinkney is not, I imagine, believed by anyone who knows them.”6 Of the adept Cabinet officers, only Monroe remained—and the worst stretch of Madison’s administration was in the immediate offing.

  When the two houses of Congress heard the president’s message read, members can have been excused for taking its close somewhat sardonically. Whatever “daily testimonies of increasing harmony throughout the nation” the president might be hearing, sectional discord in the form of party conflict remained a prominent feature of the American scene. Congressman John C. Calhoun rose in the House a few days later to address this matter at length.7

  The war’s opponents, Calhoun began, insisted that the American effort was offensive. He would show the contrary. After defining an “offensive war” as a war that “has its origin in ambition, avarice or any of the like passions,” he said that a defensive war is one “to repel insult, injury or oppression.” This distinction made clear why Americans generally opposed offensive war: “the American sense of justice accounts for their feelings.” The war’s opponents on the other side of the House insisted “that if the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees had been communicated in time to the British government, the Orders in Council would have been repealed; and had the last event happened, the war would not have been declared.” Here they have admitted, he continued, “that the Orders in Council, and not the conquest of Canada, as they now pretend, was the cause of the war; and it would be idle to enquire whether to resist them was in its nature offensive or defensive.” “It would be equally so to examine whether the cause of continuing the war, to protect our seamen from impressment, is of an offensive or defensive character.” If the war had originated and been continued with these goals, it would “not become offensive by being carried beyond the limits of our territory. The motive and cause will ever give character.…” The administration’s opponents in the House admitted as much, he chortled, when they offered as an alternative to the current strategy that of pursuing the war at sea alone. “What! to the ocean! Carry the war beyond our territory! Make it offensive! The gentlemen surely do not intend to support an offensive war.” “It is then admitted,” the Carolinian said, “that it does not cease to be [defensive] by its being waged at sea.…”

  Calhoun hurried to add that he “thought no effort ought to be wanting to reduce Canada. Should success accompany our arms,” he reasoned, “we would be indemnified for the privations and expenses of the war, by the acquisition of an extensive and valuable territory.” Besides that, offensive operations in Canada forced the enemy to deploy military assets there which he might otherwise set to ravaging the American coast. “Thus, even under the limited view of defence, the most effectual mode is that, which has been adopted.…”

  These considerations led Calhoun into a larger topic of which he thought this one formed a part: that of the nature of congressional opposition to the American war effort. Though he conceded that opposition might legitimately arise out of differing evaluations of circumstances, he classified the bulk of antiwar agitation in America as “factious.” “[H]ow much,” he asked, “has it debilitated the energies of our country?” Even though men knew “of its pernicious effect,” did they not agree that “every means that could excite opposition had … been unceasingly applied?” “In an unexampled state of national difficulties,” he continued, “from the first belligerent decree against our neutral commerce down to this day, he would ask which one of all the measures of our government to resist this almost universal depredation,… has not, under one pretext or another, been opposed, ridiculed and weakened? Yes,” he warmed to his argument, “opposed with a violence that would lead to a belief that the constituted authorities, instead of opposing the most gross and outrageous injustice, sought only the destruction of their country.” By their arguments, it seemed to the committee chairman that opposition congressmen wanted people to “Withhold the laws; withhold the loans; withhold the men who are to fight our battles; or, in other words, to destroy the public faith, and deliver the country unarmed to the mercy of the enemy. Suppose all of their objects accomplished,” he concluded, “and what would be the situation of the country?” It seemed that what had begun in this hall had “gone forth into the community, and wherever it has appeared, has exhibited the same dangerous appearances.”