Albert Gallatin
Gallatin made a careful balance of the advantages and inconveniences of
embargo, non-intercourse, and letters of marque. This paper, dated
February, 1809, and entitled, "Notes on the Political Situation," no
doubt served as a brief for consultation with Madison upon his inaugural
message, it being then understood that Gallatin was to be secretary of
state. As he states one of the advantages of letters of marque to be "a
greater chance of unity at home," this measure he probably preferred.
The Senate had already, on January 4, passed a bill ordering out the
entire naval force of the country, and on the 10th the House adopted the
same bill by a vote of 64 to 59. Mr. Gallatin opposed this action
strenuously. On February 2 the House voted by a large majority to remove
the embargo on March 4. Non-intercourse with Great Britain and France
and trade everywhere else were now the conditions. This significant
expression of the feeling of Congress no doubt determined Mr. Gallatin
to suggest letters of marque. Whether he pressed them upon Mr. Madison
or not is uncertain. Meanwhile Mr. Gallatin suffered the odium of
opposition to the will of Congress, and Mr. Madison's power was broken
before he took his seat. A few Republican senators inaugurated an
opposition to their chief after the fashion of modern days, and Mr.
Madison was given to understand that Mr. Gallatin would not be confirmed
if nominated as secretary of state. Mr. Madison yielded to this
dictation, and from that day forward was, as he deserved to be,
perplexed and harassed by a petty oligarchy. Mr. John Quincy Adams, in a
note on this affair, says that, "had Mr. Gallatin been appointed
secretary of state, it is highly probable war with Great Britain would
not have taken place." But it is improbable that any step in foreign
intercourse was taken without Mr. Gallatin's knowledge and approbation.
Such are the traditions of the triumvirate.
The first term of Madison's administration was not eventful. There was
discord in the cabinet. In the Senate the "invisibles," as the faction
which supported Robert Smith, the secretary of state, was aptly termed,
rejected Madison's nominations and opposed Gallatin's financial policy
as their interests or whims prompted. Randolph said of Madison at this
time, that he was "President _de jure_ only." Besides this domestic
strife, the cabinet was engaged in futile efforts to resist the
gradually tightening cordon of British aggression. Erskine's amateur
negotiations, quickly disavowed by the British government, and the short
and impertinent mission of Jackson, who succeeded him and was dismissed
from the United States, well served Canning's policy of delay. Madison,
whose prejudices were as strongly with Englishmen and English ways as
those of Jefferson were with the men and manners of France, averse to
war and withheld also by Gallatin's persistent objections, negotiated
and procrastinated until there was little left to argue about. In
December, 1809, Macon made an effort to pass a stringent navigation act
to meet the British Orders in Council and the French decrees. The bill
passed the House but was emasculated in the Senate, the Republican cabal
voting with the Federalists to strike out the effective clauses. The act
interdicting commercial intercourse with Great Britain and France
expired in May, 1810, and was not revived. A new act was passed, which
was a virtual surrender of every point in dispute. Resistance was
abandoned, and our ships and seamen were left to the mercy of both
belligerents.
Mr. Gallatin's entire energies were bent upon strengthening the Treasury
and opposing reckless expenditures. His most grievous disappointment,
however, was in the refusal of Congress to renew the charter of the Bank
of the United States. He used every possible effort to save this
institution, which, in the condition of the country, was indispensable
to a sound currency and the maintenance of specie payment. But with the
dead weight of Mr. Madison's silence, if not indifference, the struggle
was unequal and the bank fell. The course of Mr. Madison can hardly be
excused. Political history records few examples of a more cruel
desertion of a cabinet minister by his chief. Mr. Gallatin felt it
deeply and tendered his resignation. The administration was going to
pieces by sheer incapacity. The leaders took alarm and the cabinet was
reconstructed, Monroe being called to the Department of State. But the
enemies of Mr. Gallatin still clung to his skirts, determined to drag
him to the dust. Duane attacked him in the most dangerous manner.
Probably no man in America has ever been abused, vilified, maligned with
such deliberate persistency as was Gallatin in the "Aurora" from the
beginning of 1811 until the cabinet crisis, when Mr. Madison was
compelled to choose between Smith and himself. Day after day leaders
were devoted to personal assault upon him and to indirect insinuations
of his superiority to Madison, by which the artful editor sought to
arouse the jealousy of the President. The "Atlas at the side of the
President," the "Great Treasury Law Giver," the "First Lord of the
Treasury," the "Dagon of the Philistines," were favorite epithets. He
was charged by turns with betraying cabinet secrets to Randolph, with
amateur negotiation with Erskine, and with subserviency to British gold
in the support of the Bank of the United States. Here is an instance of
Duane's style: "We can say with perfect conviction that, if Mr. Madison
suffer this man to lord it over him, Mr. Gallatin will drag him down,
for no honest man in the country can support an administration of which
he is a member with consistency or a pure conscience." It was charged
upon Gallatin that his friends considered him as the real, while Madison
was the nominal, president. More than this, he was accused of
embezzlement and enormous speculations in the public lands. Gallatin's
party pride must have been strong indeed to have induced him to stay an
hour in an administration which granted its favors to the author of such
assaults upon one of its chosen leaders.
Jefferson wrote to Mr. Wirt in May following, that, because of the bank,
endeavors were made to drive from the administration (of Mr. Madison)
the ablest man, except the President, who ever was in it, and to beat
down the President himself because he was unwilling to part with such a
counselor.
Monroe was appointed secretary of state in Smith's place in April, 1811.
Other changes followed in the cabinet, but brought little relief to Mr.
Gallatin. Financial affairs now occupied his entire attention; on the
one hand was a diminishing treasury; on the other an expenditure
reckless in itself and beyond the demands of the administration. Without
the sympathy of either the Senate or House, Mr. Gallatin's position
became daily more irksome, until at last he abandoned all attempt to
control the drift of party policy, took the war party at their word, and
sent in to the House a war budget.
Unfortunately for the country, the Republican party knew neither how to
prepare for war, nor how to keep the peace. Mr. Madison had none of the
qualifications of a war President; neither executive ability, decision
of character, nor yet that more important faculty, knowledge of men. In
his attachment to Mr. Madison and in loyalty to what remained of the
once proud triumvirate of talent and power, Mr. Gallatin supplied the
deficiencies of his fellows as best he could, until an offer of
mediation between the United States and Great Britain on the part of the
emperor of Russia presented an opportunity for honorable withdrawal and
service in another and perhaps more congenial field. In March, 1813, the
Russian minister, in a note to the secretary of state, tendered this
offer. Mr. Gallatin had completed his financial arrangements for the
year, and requested Mr. Madison to send him abroad on this mission.
Unwilling to take the risk of new appointments, the President acceded to
this proposal, and gave him leave of absence from his post in the
Treasury. Mr. Gallatin did not anticipate a long absence, and felt, as
he said to his old friend Badollet, that he could nowhere be more
usefully employed than in this negotiation. Certainly he could have no
regret in leaving a cabinet which had so little regard to his own
feelings and so little political decency as to confer the appointment of
adjutant-general in the United States army on his malignant assailant,
William Duane of the "Aurora."
Mr. Gallatin's mission, followed by the resignation of his post in the
cabinet, finally dissolved the political triumvirate, but not the
personal friendship of the men. Numerous attempts were made to alienate
both Jefferson and Madison from Gallatin while he held the portfolio of
the Treasury, but one and all they signally and ignominiously failed.
For Mr. Jefferson Mr. Gallatin had a regard near akin to reverence. A
portrait of the venerable sage was always on his study table. When about
setting out for France in 1816 he tendered his services to his old chief
and wrote to him that 'in every country and in all times he should never
cease to feel gratitude, respect, and attachment for him.' Jefferson
fully reciprocated this regard. From Monticello he wrote to Gallatin in
1823: "A visit from you to this place would indeed be a day of jubilee,
but your age and distance forbid the hope. Be this as it will, I shall
love you forever, and rejoice in your rejoicings and sympathize in your
ails. God bless and have you ever in His holy keeping." Nor does Mr.
Gallatin seem to have allowed any feeling of disappointment or
dissatisfaction at Mr. Madison's weakness to disturb their kindly
relations. Their letters close with the reciprocal assurance of
affection as well as of esteem.
CHAPTER VIII
IN DIPLOMACY
_The Treaty of Ghent_
On May 9, 1813, the ship Neptune sailed from New Castle on the Delaware,
having on board Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, ministers of the
United States, with their four secretaries, of whom were Mr. Gallatin's
son James, and George M. Dallas, son of his old Pennsylvania friend.
They were accompanied to sea by a revenue cutter. Off Cape Henlopen they
were overhauled by the British frigate on the station, and their
passport was countersigned by the English captain. On June 20 they
reached the mouth of the river Gotha. Here the vessel lay at quarantine
for forty-eight hours, during which the gentlemen paid a flying visit to
Gottenburg. At dusk, on the 24th, the Neptune anchored in Copenhagen
inner roads, the scene of Nelson's attack in 1801. Mr. Gallatin's brief
memoranda of his voyage contain some crisp expressions. He found
"despotism and no oppression. Poverty and no discontent. Civility and no
servile obsequiousness amongst the people. Decency and sobriety."
St. Petersburg was reached on July 21. Here Gallatin and Bayard found
John Quincy Adams, then minister to Russia. He was one of the three
commissioners appointed to treat for peace under the mediation which the
Emperor Alexander had offered to the United States. Bayard and Adams
were Federalists. To the moderate counsels of the former Jefferson owed
his peaceable election. Gallatin and Adams had the advantage of thorough
acquaintance with European politics. To Gallatin the study of history
was a passion. He was familiar with the facts and traditions of
diplomacy. He knew the purpose, the tenor, and the result of every
treaty made for centuries between the great powers; even their dates
were at ready command in his wonderful memory. But, excepting the few
Frenchmen of distinction who in the exile which political revulsions
imposed upon them had crossed the sea, he had no acquaintance with
Europeans of high position, and none whatever with the diplomatic