Struggle for National Government

In May, 1806, the British Government, by orders in council, declared a blockade of the whole continent of Europe from Brest to the Elbe, about Boo miles. In November, after the battle of Jena, Napoleon answered by the "Berlin decree," in which he assumed to blockade the British Isles, thus beginning his "conti nental systeni." A year later the British Government answered by further orders in council, forbidding American trade with any country from which the British flag was excluded, allowing direct trade from the United States to Sweden only, in American prod ucts, and permitting American trade with other parts of Europe only on condition of touching in England and paying duties.

Napoleon retorted with the "Milan decree," declaring good prize any vessel which should submit to search by a British ship; but this was evidently a vain fulmination.

The Navy.

The Democratic Party of the United States was almost exclusively agricultural and had little sympathy with com mercial interests; it was pledged to the reduction of national ex penses and the debt, and did not wish to take up the responsibility for a navy; and, as the section of country most affected by the orders in council, New England, was Federalist, a tinge of politi cal feeling could not but colour the decisions of the dominant party. Various ridiculous proposals were considered as substi tutes for a necessarily naval war; and perhaps the most ridicu lous was adopted. Since the use of non-intercourse agreements as revolutionary weapons against Great Britain, an overweening con fidence in such measures had sprung up, and one of them was now resorted to—the embargo of Dec. 22, 1807, forbidding foreign commerce altogether. It was expected to starve Great Britain into a change of policy; and its effects may be seen by comparing the $20,000,000 exports of 1790, $49,000,000 of 1807 and $9,000, 000 of 1808. It does not seem to have struck those who passed the measure that the agricultural districts also might find the change unpleasant ; but that was the result, and their complaints reinforced those of New England. The pressure had been slightly relieved by the substitution of the Non-Intercourse Law of March I, 1809; it prohibited commercial intercourse with Great Britain and France and their dependencies, leaving other foreign commerce open, prohibited the importation from any quarter of British and French goods, and forbade the entrance of British or French vessels, public or private, into any port of the United States. Madison, Jefferson's secretary of State, who suc ceeded Jefferson in 1809, assumed in the Presidency a burden which was not enviable. New England was in a ferment, and was suspected of designs to resist the restrictive system by force; and the Administration did not face the future with confidence.

The War of 1812.

The Non-Intercourse Law was to be in force only "until the end of the next session of Congress" and was to be abandoned as to either belligerent which should aban don its attacks on neutral commerce, and maintained against the other. In 1810 the American Government was led to believe that

France had abandoned its system. Napoleon continued to enforce it in fact ; but his official fiction served its purpose of limiting the non-intercourse for the future to Great Britain, and thus strain ing relations between that country and the United States still further. The elections of 1811-12 resulted everywhere in the defeat of "submission men" and in the choice of new members who were determined to resort to war against Great Britain. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford and other new men seized the lead in the two houses of Congress, and forced Madison, it is said, to agree to a declaration of war as a condition of his renomination in 1812. Madison sent to Con gress a confidential "war message" on June 1 and on the 18th war was declared. The national democracy meant to attack Great Britain in Canada, partly to gratify its western constituency, who had been harassed by Indian attacks, asserted to have been insti gated from Canada. Premonitions of success were drawn from the battle of Tippecanoe, in which William Henry Harrison had defeated in 1811 the north-western league of Indians formed by Tecumseh. Between the solidly settled Atlantic States and the Canadian frontier was a wide stretch of unsettled or thinly settled country, which was itself a formidable obstacle to war. Ohio had been admitted as a State in 1802, and Louisiana was admitted in 1812; but their admission had been due to the desire to grant them self-government rather than to their full development in population and resources. Cincinnati was a little settlement of 2,500 inhabitants; the fringe of settled country ran not very far north of it ; all beyond was a wilderness. The case was much the same with western New York. It would have been far less costly, as events proved, to have entered at once upon a naval war; but the crusade against Canada had been proclaimed all through Ken tucky and the west, and their people were determined to wipe out their old scores before the conclusion of the war. (For the mili tary and naval events of the war see WAR OF 1812, THE.) The war opened with disaster—Gen. William Hull's surrender of Detroit; and disaster attended it for two years. Political ap pointments to positions in the regular army were numerous and such officers were worse than useless. 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 ; two successful battles in i8I4—Chippewa and 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 resist ance when it landed and burned Washington.