numerous, and such officers were worse than useless. The
war department showed no great knowledge, and poverty put
Disaster by Land.
its little knowledge out of service. Futile attempts
at invasion were followed by defeat or abortion, until
the political officers were weeded out at the end of the
year 1813, and Jacob Brown, Winfield Scott, E. W. Ripley and
others who had fought their way up were put in command. Then
for the first time the men were drilled and brought into effective
condition; and two successful battles in 1814—Chippewa and
Chippewa and Lundy's Lane.
Washington Burnt.
Lundy's Lane—threw some glory on the end of
the war. So weak were the preparations even for
defence that a British expedition in 1814 met no
effective resistance when it landed and burned
Washington. For some of the disasters the responsibility
rested as much, or more, upon the war department as upon
the officers and soldiers in the field.
145. The American navy was but a puny adversary for the British navy, which had captured or shut up in port all the other State of the Navy. navies of Europe. But the small number of American vessels, with the superabundance of trained officers, gave them one great advantage: the training and discipline of the men, and the equipment of the vessels, had been brought to the very highest point. Captains who could command a vessel but for a short time, yielding her then to another officer who was to take his sea service in rotation, were all ambitious to make their mark during their term. “The art of handling and fighting the old broadside sailing frigate” had been carried in the little American navy to a point which unvarying success and a tendency to fleet-combats had now made far less common among British captains. Altogether the American vessels gave a remarkably good account of themselves.
146. The home dislike to the war had increased steadily with the evidence of incompetent management by the administration. Feeling in New England. The Federalists, who had always desired a navy, pointed to the naval successes as the best proof of folly with which the war had been undertaken and managed. New England Federalists complained that the Federal government utterly neglected the defence of their coast, and that Southern influence was far too strong in national affairs. They showed at every opportunity a disposition to adopt the furthest stretch of state sovereignty, as stated in the Kentucky Resolutions; and every such development urged the national democracy unconsciously further on the road to nationality. When the New England states sent delegates to meet at Hartford, Hartford Convention. Conn. (q.v.), and consider their grievances and the best remedies—a step perfectly proper on the Democratic theory of a “voluntary Union”—treason was suspected, and a readiness to suppress it by force was plainly shown. The recommendations of the convention came to nothing; but the attitude of the dominant party towards it is one of the symptoms of the manner in which the trials of actual war were steadily reconciling democracy and nationality. The object which Hamilton had sought by high tariffs and the development of national classes had been attained by more natural and healthy means.
147. In April 1814 the first abdication of Napoleon took place, and Great Britain was able to give more attention to her American Peace. antagonist. The main attack was to be made on Louisiana, the weakest and most distant portion of the Union. A fleet and army were sent thither, but the British assault was completely repulsed (Jan. 8, 1815) by the Americans under Andrew Jackson. Peace had been made at Ghent fifteen days before the battle was fought, but the news of the battle and the peace reached Washington almost together, the former going far to make the latter tolerable.
148. The United States really secured a fairly good treaty. It is true that it said not a word about the questions of impressment, search and neutral rights, the grounds of the war; Great Britain did not abandon her position on any of them. But everybody knew that circumstances had changed. The new naval power whose frigates alone in the past twenty years had shown their ability to fight English frigates on equal terms was not likely to be troubled in future with the question of impressment; and in fact, while not renouncing the right, the British government no longer attempted to enforce it. The navy, it must be confessed, was the force which had at last given the United States a recognized and cordial acceptance in the family of nations; it had solved the problem of the reconciliation of democracy and nationality.
149. The remainder of this period is one of the barrenest in American history. The opposition of the Federalist party to the Extinction of the Federalist Party. war completed the measure of its unpopularity, and it had only a perfunctory existence for a few years longer. Scandal, intrigue and personal criticism became the most marked characteristics of American politics until the dominant party broke at the end of the period, and real party conflict was renewed. But the seeds of the final disruption are visible from the peace of 1814. The old-fashioned Republicans looked with intense suspicion on the new form of Republicanism generated by the war, a type which instinctively bent its energies toward the further development of national power. Clay was the natural leader of the new Democracy; but John Quincy Adams and others of Federalist antecedents or leanings took to the new doctrines kindly; and even Calhoun, Crawford and others of the Southern interest were at first strongly inclined to support them. One of the first effects was the revival of protection and of a national bank.
150. The charter of the national bank had expired in 1811, and the dominant party had refused to recharter it. The attempt to Bank of the United States. carry on the war by loans resulted in almost a bankruptcy and in a complete inability to act efficiently. As soon as peace gave time for consideration, a second bank was chartered (April 10, 1816) for twenty years, with a capital of $35,000,000, one-fifth of which was to be subscribed for by the national government. It was to have the custody of the government revenues, but the secretary of the treasury could divert the revenues to other custodians, giving his reasons for such action to Congress.
151. Protection was advocated again on national grounds, but not quite on those which had moved Hamilton. The additional Protection. receipts were now to be expended for fortifications and other national defences, and for national roads and canals, the latter to be considered solely as military measures, with an incidental benefit to the people. Business distress among the people gave additional force to the proposal. The war and blockade had been an active form of protection, under which American manufactures had sprung up in great abundance. As soon as peace was made English manufacturers drove their American rivals out of business or reduced them to desperate straits. Their cries for relief had a double effect. They gave the spur to the nationalizing advocates of protection, and, as most of the manufacturers were in New England or New York, they developed in the citadel of Federalism a class which looked for help to a Republican Congress, and was therefore bound to oppose the Federalist party. This was the main force Manufactures. which brought New England into the Republican fold before 1825. An increase in the number of spindles from 80,000 in 1811 to 500,000 in 1815, and in cotton consumption from 500 bales in 1800 to 90,000 in 1815, the rise of manufacturing towns, and the rapid development of the mechanical tendencies of a people who had been hitherto almost exclusively agricultural, were influences which were to be reckoned with in the politics of a democratic country.
152. The tariff of 1816 imposed a duty of about 25% on imports of cotton and woollen goods, and specific duties on iron imports, Tariff of 1816. except pig-iron, on which there was an ad valorem duty of 20%. In 1818 this duty also was made specific (50 cents a cwt.). The ad valorem duties carried most of the manufacturers through the financial crisis of 1818-1819, but the iron duties were less satisfactory. In English manufacture the substitution of coke for charcoal in iron production led to continual decrease in price. As the price went down the specific duties were continually increasing the absolute amount of protection. Thus spared the necessity for improvements
