NEW ORLEANS

The last campaign of the war, in the New Orleans district, began late in the fall of 1814. On December 23, the advance guard of the British army was within seven miles of New Orleans. General Jackson succeeded in administering such a check to that force that the commander waited for the main army. After another preliminary encounter, in which the advantage was with the Americans, the real battle came on January 8, 1815. The British forces, veterans of seven years' experience in Europe, were completely defeated, and by the end of January they were in full retreat. This victory, however, had no effect upon the outcome of the war, because just two weeks before the battle, the treaty of peace had been signed.

Even so, in the minds of Americans, Jackson's success seemed ample compensation for the disastrous record in 1812. The work of the younger commanders overcame the wretched shortcomings of John Armstrong, the Secretary of War, the niggardly financial policy of Congress, the exigencies of party politics, and the insufferable and amazing incompetence of President Madison. It was the sheer good fortune of the Americans, rather than any trace of ability in their administration which saved them from utter disaster.

THE HARTFORD CONVENTION

While the federal administration was demonstrating its incapacity in the conduct of the war, the New England Federalists were gradually moving from opposition toward secession. From the very beginning of Jefferson's first term, in fact from the day of John Adams's defeat in 1800, New England had complained about Democratic mismanagement. As they saw their commerce ruined and their prosperity destroyed under the operation of the Embargo, and of the war, their enthusiasm for the federal system vanished, and they turned their attention to something, anything, which would free them from the hopeless incubus of Madison.

In the years before 1812, and for many years afterward, the stock remedy for a dissatisfied section was the doctrine of states' rights, set forth in excellent manner in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. The New Englanders had even talked secession in 1804, and as they saw calamities accumulating around them, they naturally reverted to their states for protection. Perhaps the Federalist view was most

ably represented in some resolutions of the Connecticut and Massachusetts legislatures, which, in subject matter and tone, deserve to be ranked with their more famous prototypes from the South. The Connecticut legislature declared that "the state of Connecticut is a FREE, SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT state; that the United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated republic." In similar vein, the Great and General Court of the "free, sovereign, and independent State of Massachusetts" resolved that "Whenever the national compact is violated . . this legislature is bound to interpose its power, and wrest from the oppressor its victim. . . This is the spirit of our Union . . explained by the very man [Madison] who now sets at defiance all the principles of his early political life."

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Acting upon these principles, in September 1814, Massachusetts withdrew her militia from federal service, and placed the force, seventy thousand strong, well drilled and well equipped, under a state commander. This step was taken two weeks after the capture of Washington, and one week after a portion of Maine had been overrun by the enemy. Justification for the act was found in the necessity of providing for local defense, because of the notorious inability of the federal government. Connecticut had already done the same thing, and these state armies, more formidable than any federal forces, naturally gave the timid President ample cause for concern.

The Federalist attitude toward the war was made even plainer in the withholding of financial support. Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were as well able to furnish this kind of help as any other three states in the union. At the end of 1814 New England banks had nearly one-half of all the specie in the country. Of the first war loan of eleven million dollars, in the spring of 1812, New England took less than a million. During the whole war, New England bought less than three million dollars' worth of bonds, while the Middle States took thirty-five million. Refusing to use their wealth in helping their own government, they sent specie into Canada, and bought British drafts.

At the same time, New England merchants were furnishing supplies to British fleets operating off the coast, and sending beef for the British armies in Canada. At one time two thirds of the enemy forces were using American beef.

One of the best, clearest, and most logical expositions of the states'

rights doctrine and of the New England state of mind is to be found in a speech in the House of Representatives, delivered on December 9, 1814, against a proposed federal conscription law. "No law professedly passed for the purpose of compelling a service in the regular army, nor any law, which under color of military draft, shall compel men to serve in the army, not for the emergencies mentioned in the Constitution, but for long periods, & for the general objects of war, can be carried into effect. In my opinion, it ought not to be carried into effect. The operation of measures thus unconstitutional & illegal ought to be prevented, by a resort to other measures which are both constitutional & legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State Governments to protect their own authority over their own Militia, & to interpose between their citizens & arbitrary power. These are among the objects for which the State Governments exist; & their highest obligations bind them to the preservation of their own rights and the liberties of their people.. With the same earnestness

with which I now exhort you to forbear from these measures, I shall exhort them [his constituents] to exercise their unquestionable right of providing for the security of their own liberties."

The whole speech, of which this quotation is a short extract, is a moving appeal for nullification, in case the measure under discussion should become law. Neither Jefferson in 1798 and 1799, nor John C. Calhoun in the years after 1825 could put more strongly the case for state "interposition" against federal authority. In this instance the speaker was not from the South, but from New England. Not so many years later he was destined to move over to the other side of the question, and on that side to deliver the most famous plea for federal supremacy ever heard in Congress: the great reply to Hayne. This speaker of December 9, 1814 was no other than Daniel Webster.

Between 1800 and 1814 the discussion of states' rights and secession had been so common in New England that the subject had no terrors for any one. The union was still comparatively young, still an experiment, and every New England Federalist was convinced that the experiment was going badly. For proof, look at the commercial record, they said. In 1814 various towns in Massachusetts began to urge a convention, to consider measures for protection against further evils. The local House of Representatives took up the project, and in October voted to appoint delegates to meet at Hartford, to confer

with delegates from the rest of New England. Among the Massachusetts representatives were George Cabot, Harrison Gray Otis, and Nathan Dane. Connecticut and Rhode Island took similar action, and on December 15, 1814, the Hartford Convention assembled. Represented in it were two distinct shades of opinion. All the members were thoroughly dissatisfied over the prevailing conditions, but they did not agree on a remedy. There is no doubt that the extremists were eager for secession. But the moderates controlled the deliberations, and they were prepared to try diplomacy and negotiation before they turned to the last resort. After a secret session of three weeks, they issued a report, setting forth their views. Part of this document consisted of quotations from Madison's own Virginia resolutions of 1798, now returning like an uneasy ghost, to add further torment to his troubled soul. "In cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, in the manner best calculated to secure that end." The President had good reason to fear that his own philosophy might be translated into action, against himself and his administration.

The report concluded with resolutions calling upon the states to adopt certain measures for their own protection. Their citizens were to be properly guarded against any federal conscription law; the states were to seek from the federal government authorization to defend their own territory, funds for which were to be derived from federal revenue, collected within the states. In addition the report recommended seven amendments to the Constitution, designed to abolish the three-fifths clause in the matter of representation, to make admission of new states impossible without a two-thirds majority in each house of Congress, to prohibit all embargoes of longer than sixty days, to prevent a declaration of war without a two-thirds vote, and others to put an end to the Virginia monopoly of the presidential office. If these various recommendations were unheeded, the delegates promised a second convention, and the promise was accompanied by a thinly veiled threat of secession.

The convention sent a committee on to Washington, to lay its demands before the federal authorities. But before they arrived news of Jackson's victory at New Orleans, followed by the report of satisfactory peace negotiations, made the errand ridiculous. This

news of victory and peace undoubtedly saved the union, for the New England Federalists, maddened by the ruin of their commerce, were bent upon serious business. With the war finally out of the way, the dissatisfied elements found it more profitable to resume their commercial operations than to continue the contest with the unfortunate Madison.

PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

Negotiations looking toward peace had been started in the very first year of the war. The Czar of Russia offered mediation, but while Madison accepted, the British government rejected the proposal. In the summer of 1813, Castlereagh offered to negotiate directly, and Madison was equally ready to grasp any scheme for getting out of the contest. It took time to bring the two groups of commissioners together, but they began their discussions in the summer of 1814. The American commission was noteworthy for the experience and sound common sense of all of its members, while three of them, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin, were men of outstanding ability.

John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams, had perhaps been more fortunate than the others in his opportunities and in the breadth of his experience. Having begun his career of public service at the age of eleven, when he acted as secretary to his father in Paris, 1778, he had represented his state in the federal Senate, and his country at St. Petersburg. In 1814 he was forty-seven years of age, with his qualities of strength and weakness fully developed. He was thoroughly familiar with the practice of diplomacy, and, unlike most diplomats of his time, honest and straightforward. But with all of his intellectual power and high principles, he had certain traits of personality and temperament which frequently proved embarrassing. Precise and stiff in manner, like his father, he antagonized those who might have been his friends. In dealing with strangers, colleagues, public officials, and even members of his own family he was generally cold and formal. Always aware of his own exalted purposes, and conscious of his own rectitude, he seemed self-important and priggish. He was indeed a good product of New England Puritanism; this he knew, and it was a matter of pride with him. Like all true Puritans, he was too introspective for his own good. Beginning at the age of eleven, he kept a diary regularly until within three days of his death, in which he recorded his extremely acute observations of public