John Quincy Adams — 03 - Chapter 1C

It would be idle to suppose that any man could be sufficiently callous not to feel keenly such treatment.

Mr. Adams was far from callous and he felt it deeply.

But he was not crushed or discouraged by it, as weaker spirits would have been, nor betrayed into any acts of foolish anger which must have recoiled upon himself.

In him warm feelings were found in singular combination with a cool head.

An unyielding (p. 034) temper and an obstinate courage, an invincible confidence in his own judgment, and a stern conscientiousness carried him through these earlier years of severe trial as they had afterwards to carry him through many more.

"The qualities of mind most peculiarly called for," he reflects in the Diary, "are firmness, perseverance, patience, coolness, and forbearance.

The prospect is not promising; yet the part to act may be as honorably performed as if success could attend it."

He understood the situation perfectly and met it with a better skill than that of the veteran politician.

By a long and tedious but sure process he forced his way to steadily increasing influence, and by the close of his fourth year we find him taking a part in the business of the Senate which may be fairly called prominent and important.

He was conquering success.

But if Mr. Adams's unpopularity was partly due to the fact that he was the son of his father, it was also largely attributable not only to his unconciliatory manners but to more substantial habits of mind and character.

It is probably impossible for any public man, really independent in his political action, to lead a very comfortable life amid the struggles of party.

Under the disadvantages involved in this habit Mr. Adams labored to a remarkable degree.

Since parties (p. 035) were first organized in this Republic no American statesman has ever approached him in persistent freedom of thought, speech, and action.

He was regarded as a Federalist, but his Federalism was subject to many modifications; the members of that party never were sure of his adherence, and felt bound to him by no very strong ties of political fellowship.

Towards the close of his senatorial term he recorded, in reminiscence, that he had more often voted with the administration than with the opposition.

The first matter of importance concerning which he was obliged to act was the acquisition of Louisiana and its admission as a state of the Union.

The Federalists were bitterly opposed to this measure, regarding it as an undue strengthening of the South and of the slavery influence, to the destruction of the fair balance of power between the two great sections of the country.

It was not then the moral aspect of the slavery element which stirred the northern temper, but only the antagonism of interests between the commercial cities of the North and the agricultural communities of the South.

In the discussions and votes which took place in this business Mr. Adams was in favor of the purchase, but denied with much emphasis the constitutionality of the process by which the purchased territory was brought into the (p. 036) fellowship of States.

This imperfect allegiance to the party gave more offence than satisfaction, and he found himself soundly berated in leading Federalist newspapers in New England, and angrily threatened with expulsion from the party.

But in the famous impeachment of Judge Chase, which aroused very strong feelings, Mr. Adams was fortunately able to vote for acquittal.

He regarded this measure, as well as the impeachment of Judge Pickering at the preceding session, as parts of an elaborate scheme on the part of the President for degrading the national judiciary and rendering it subservient to the legislative branch of the government.

So many, however, even of Mr. Jefferson's stanch adherents revolted against his requisitions on this occasion, and he himself so far lost heart before the final vote was taken, that several Republicans voted with the Federalists, and Mr. Adams could hardly claim much credit with his party for standing by them in this emergency.

It takes a long while for such a man to secure respect, and great ability for him ever to achieve influence.

In time, however, Mr. Adams saw gratifying indications that he was acquiring both, and in February, 1806, we find him writing:-- "This is the third session I have sat in Congress.

I came in (p. 037) as a member of a very small minority, and during the two former sessions almost uniformly avoided to take a lead; any other course would have been dishonest or ridiculous.

On the very few and unimportant objects which I did undertake, I met at first with universal opposition.

The last session my influence rose a little, at the present it has hitherto been apparently rising."

He was so far a cool and clear-headed judge, even in his own case, that this encouraging estimate may be accepted as correct upon his sole authority without other evidence.

But the fair prospect was overcast almost in its dawning, and a period of supreme trial and of apparently irretrievable ruin was at hand.

Topics were coming forward for discussion concerning which no American could be indifferent, and no man of Mr. Adams's spirit could be silent.

The policy of Great Britain towards this country, and the manner in which it was to be met, stirred profound feelings and opened such fierce dissensions as it is now difficult to appreciate.

For a brief time Mr. Adams was to be a prominent actor before the people.

It is fortunately needless to repeat, as it must ever be painful to remember, the familiar and too humiliating tale of the part which France and England were permitted for so many years to play in our national politics, when our parties were not divided upon American (p. 038) questions, but wholly by their sympathies with one or other of these contending European powers.

Under Washington the English party had, with infinite difficulty, been able to prevent their adversaries from fairly enlisting the United States as active partisans of France, in spite of the fact that most insulting treatment was received from that country.

Under John Adams the same so-called British faction had been baulked in their hope of precipitating a war with the French.

Now in Mr. Jefferson's second administration, the French party having won the ascendant, the new phase of the same long struggle presented the question, whether or not we should be drawn into a war with Great Britain.

Grave as must have been the disasters of such a war in 1806, grave as they were when the war actually came six years later, yet it is impossible to recall the provocations which were inflicted upon us without almost regretting that prudence was not cast to the winds and any woes encountered in preference to unresisting submission to such insolent outrages.

Our gorge rises at the narration three quarters of a century after the acts were done.

Mr. Adams took his position early and boldly.

In February, 1806, he introduced into the Senate certain resolutions strongly condemnatory of the right, claimed and vigorously exercised by the British, (p. 039) of seizing neutral vessels employed in conducting with the enemies of Great Britain any trade which had been customarily prohibited by that enemy in time of peace.

This doctrine was designed to shut out American merchants from certain privileges in trading with French colonies, which had been accorded only since France had become involved in war with Great Britain.

The principle was utterly illegal and extremely injurious.

Mr. Adams, in his first resolution, stigmatized it "as an unprovoked aggression upon the property of the citizens of these United States, a violation of their neutral rights, and an encroachment upon their national independence."

By his second resolution, the President was requested to demand and insist upon the restoration of property seized under this pretext, and upon indemnification for property already confiscated.

By a rare good fortune, Mr. Adams had the pleasure of seeing his propositions carried, only slightly modified by the omission of the words "to insist."

But they were carried, of course, by Republican votes, and they by no means advanced their mover in the favor of the Federalist party.

Strange as it may seem, that party, of which many of the foremost supporters were engaged in the very commerce which Great Britain aimed to suppress and destroy, seemed not to be so much (p. 040) incensed against her as against their own government.

The theory of the party was, substantially, that England had been driven into these measures by the friendly tone of our government towards France, and by her own stringent and overruling necessities.

The cure was not to be sought in resistance, not even in indignation and remonstrance addressed to that power, but rather in cementing an alliance with her, and even, if need should be, in taking active part in her holy cause.

The feeling seemed to be that we merited the chastisement because we had not allied ourselves with the chastiser.

These singular notions of the Federalists, however, were by no means the notions of Mr. John Quincy Adams, as we shall soon see.

On April 18, 1806, the Non-importation Act received the approval of the President.

It was the first measure indicative of resentment or retaliation which was taken by our government.

When it was upon its passage it encountered the vigorous resistance of the Federalists, but received the support of Mr. Adams.

On May 16, 1806, the British government made another long stride in the course of lawless oppression of neutrals, which phrase, as commerce then was, signified little else than Americans.

A proclamation was issued declaring the whole (p. 041) coast of the European continent, from Brest to the mouth of the Elbe, to be under blockade.

In fact, of course, the coast was not blockaded, and the proclamation was a falsehood, an unjustifiable effort to make words do the work of war-ships.

The doctrine which it was thus endeavored to establish had never been admitted into international law, has ever since been repudiated by universal consent of all nations, and is intrinsically preposterous.

The British, however, designed to make it effective, and set to work in earnest to confiscate all vessels and cargoes captured on their way from any neutral nation to any port within the proscribed district.

On November 21, next following, Napoleon retaliated by the Berlin decree, so called, declaring the entire British Isles to be under blockade, and forbidding any vessel which had been in any English port after publication of his decree to enter any port in the dominions under his control.

In January, 1807, England made the next move by an order, likewise in contravention of international law, forbidding to neutrals all commerce between ports of the enemies of Great Britain.

On November 11, 1807, the famous British Order in Council was issued, declaring neutral vessels and cargoes bound to any port or colony of any country with which (p. 042) England was then at war, and which was closed to English ships, to be liable to capture and confiscation.

A few days later, November 25, 1807, another Order established a rate of duties to be paid in England upon all neutral merchandise which should be permitted to be carried in neutral bottoms to countries at war with that power.

December 17, 1807, Napoleon retorted by the Milan decree, which declared denationalized and subject to capture and condemnation every vessel, to whatsoever nation belonging, which should have submitted to search by an English ship, or should be on a voyage to England, or should have paid any tax to the English government.

All these regulations, though purporting to be aimed at neutrals generally, in fact bore almost exclusively upon the United States, who alone were undertaking to conduct any neutral commerce worthy of mention.

As Mr. Adams afterwards remarked, the effect of these illegal proclamations and unjustifiable novel doctrines "placed the commerce and shipping of the United States, with regard to all Europe and European colonies (Sweden alone excepted), in nearly the same state as it would have been, if, on that same 11th of November, England and France had both declared war against the United States."

The merchants of this country might as well have burned their ships as have submitted to these decrees.

(p. 043) All this while the impressment of American seamen by British ships of war was being vigorously prosecuted.

This is one of those outrages so long ago laid away among the mouldering tombs in the historical graveyard that few persons now appreciate its enormity, or the extent to which it was carried.

Those who will be at the pains to ascertain the truth in the matter will feel that the bloodiest, most costly, and most disastrous war would have been better than tame endurance of treatment so brutal and unjustifiable that it finds no parallel even in the long and dark list of wrongs which Great Britain has been wont to inflict upon all the weaker or the uncivilized peoples with whom she has been brought or has gratuitously forced herself into unwelcome contact.

It was not an occasional act of high-handed arrogance that was done; there were not only a few unfortunate victims, of whom a large proportion might be of unascertained nationality.

It was an organized system worked upon a very large scale.

Every American seaman felt it necessary to have a certificate of citizenship, accompanied by a description of his features and of all the marks upon his person, as Mr. Adams said, "like the advertisement for a runaway negro slave."

Nor was even this protection by any means sure to be always (p. 044) efficient.

The number of undoubted American citizens who were seized rose in a few years actually to many thousands.

They were often taken without so much as a false pretence to right; but with the acknowledgment that they were Americans, they were seized upon the plea of a necessity for their services in the British ship.

Some American vessels were left so denuded of seamen that they were lost at sea for want of hands to man them; the destruction of lives as well as property, unquestionably thus caused, was immense.

When after the lapse of a long time and of infinite negotiation the American citizenship of some individual was clearly shown, still the chances of his return were small; some false and ignoble subterfuge was resorted to; he was not to be found; the name did not occur on the rolls of the navy; he had died, or been discharged, or had deserted, or had been shot.

The more illegal the act committed by any British officer the more sure he was of reward, till it seemed that the impressment of American citizens was an even surer road to promotion than valor in an engagement with the enemy.

Such were the substantial wrongs inflicted by Great Britain; nor were any pains taken to cloak their character; on the contrary, they were done with more than British insolence and offensiveness, and were accompanied with insults which alone (p. 045) constituted sufficient provocation to war.

To all this, for a long time, nothing but empty and utterly futile protests were opposed by this country.

The affair of the Chesapeake, indeed, threatened for a brief moment to bring things to a crisis.

That vessel, an American frigate, commanded by Commodore Barron, sailed on June 22, 1807, from Hampton Roads.

The Leopard, a British fifty-gun ship, followed her, and before she was out of sight of land, hailed her and demanded the delivery of four men, of whom three at least were surely native Americans.

Barron refused the demand, though his ship was wholly unprepared for action.

Thereupon the Englishman opened his broadsides, killed three men and wounded sixteen, boarded the Chesapeake and took off the four sailors.

They were carried to Halifax and tried by court-martial for desertion: one of them was hanged; one died in confinement, and five years elapsed before the other two were returned to the Chesapeake in Boston harbor.

This wound was sufficiently deep to arouse a real spirit of resentment and revenge, and England went so far as to dispatch Mr. Rose to this country upon a pretended mission of peace, though the fraudulent character of his errand was sufficiently indicated by the fact that within a few hours after his departure the first of the above named Orders in Council was issued but had not (p. 046) been communicated to him.

As Mr. Adams indignantly said, "the same penful of ink which signed his instructions might have been used also to sign these illegal orders."

Admiral Berkeley, the commander of the Leopard, received the punishment which he might justly have expected if precedent was to count for anything in the naval service of Great Britain,--he was promoted.

It is hardly worth while to endeavor to measure the comparative wrongfulness of the conduct of England and of France.

The behavior of each was utterly unjustifiable; though England by committing the first extreme breach of international law gave to France the excuse of retaliation.

There was, however, vast difference in the practical effect of the British and French decrees.

The former wrought serious injury, falling little short of total destruction, to American shipping and commerce; the latter were only in a much less degree hurtful.

The immense naval power of England and the channels in which our trade naturally flowed combined to make her destructive capacity as towards us very great.

It was the outrages inflicted by her which brought the merchants of the United States face to face with ruin;

they suffered not very greatly at the hands of Napoleon.

Neither could the villainous process of impressment be conducted by Frenchmen.

(p. 047) France gave us cause for war, but England seemed resolved to drive us into it.

As British aggressions grew steadily and rapidly more intolerable, Mr. Adams found himself straining farther and farther away from those Federalist moorings at which, it must be confessed, he had long swung very precariously.

The constituency which he represented was indeed in a quandary so embarrassing as hardly to be capable of maintaining any consistent policy.

The New England of that day was a trading community, of which the industry and capital were almost exclusively centred in ship-owning and commerce.

The merchants, almost to a man, had long been the most Anglican of Federalists in their political sympathies.

Now they found themselves suffering utterly ruinous treatment at the hands of those whom they had loved overmuch.

They were being ruthlessly destroyed by their friends, to whom they had been, so to speak, almost disloyally loyal.

They saw their business annihilated, their property seized, and yet could not give utterance to resentment, or counsel resistance, without such a humiliating devouring of all their own principles and sentiments as they could by no possibility bring themselves to endure.

There was but one road open to them, and that was the ignoble one of casting themselves wholly (p. 048) into the arms of England, of rewarding her blows with caresses, of submitting to be fairly scourged into a servile alliance with her.

It is not surprising that the independent temper of Mr. Adams revolted at the position which his party seemed not reluctant to assume at this juncture.

Yet not very much better seemed for a time the policy of the administration.

Jefferson was far from being a man for troubled seasons, which called for high spirit and executive energy.

His flotillas of gunboats and like idle and silly fantasies only excited Mr. Adams's disgust.

In fact, there was upon all sides a strong dread of a war with England, not always openly expressed, but now perfectly visible, arising with some from regard for that country, in others prompted by fear of her power.

Alone among public men Mr. Adams, while earnestly hoping to escape war, was not willing to seek that escape by unlimited weakness and unbounded submission to lawless injury.

On November 17, 1807, Mr. Adams, who never in his life allowed fear to become a motive, wrote, with obvious contempt and indignation: "I observe among the members great embarrassment, alarm, anxiety, and confusion of mind, but no preparation for any measure of vigor, and an obvious strong disposition to yield all that Great Britain may (p. 049) require, to preserve peace, under a thin external show of dignity and bravery."

This tame and vacillating spirit roused his ire, and as it was chiefly manifested by his own party it alienated him from them farther than ever.

Yet his wrath was so far held in reasonable check by his discretion that he would still have liked to avoid the perilous conclusion of arms, and though his impulse was to fight, yet he could not but recognize that the sensible course was to be content, for the time at least, with a manifestation of resentment, and the most vigorous acts short of war which the government could be induced to undertake.

On this sentiment were based his introduction of the aforementioned resolutions, his willingness to support the administration, and his vote for the Non-importation Act in spite of a dislike for it as a very imperfectly satisfactory measure.

But it was not alone his naturally independent temper which led him thus to feel so differently from other members of his party.

In Europe he had had opportunities of forming a judgment more accurate than was possible for most Americans concerning the sentiments and policy of England towards this country.

Not only had he been present at the negotiations resulting in the treaty of peace, but he had also afterwards been for several months engaged in the personal discussion of commercial questions with (p. 050) the British minister of foreign affairs.

From all that he had thus seen and heard he had reached the conviction, unquestionably correct, that the British were not only resolved to adopt a selfish course towards the United States, which might have been expected, but that they were consistently pursuing the further distinct design of crippling and destroying American commerce, to the utmost degree which their own extensive trade and great naval authority and power rendered possible.

So long as he held this firm belief, it was inevitable that he should be at issue with the Federalists in all matters concerning our policy towards Great Britain.

The ill-will naturally engendered in him by this conviction was increased to profound indignation when illiberal measures were succeeded by insults, by substantial wrongs in direct contravention of law, and by acts properly to be described as of real hostility.

For Mr. Adams was by nature not only independent, but resentful and combative.

When, soon after the attack of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake, he heard the transaction "openly justified at noon-day," by a prominent Federalist,[1] "in a public insurance office upon the exchange at Boston," his temper rose.

"This," he afterward wrote, "this was the cause ...

which alienated me from that day (p. 051) and forever from the councils of the Federal party."

When the news of that outrage reached Boston, Mr. Adams was there, and desired that the leading Federalists in the city should at once "take the lead in promoting a strong and clear expression of the sentiments of the people, and in an open and free-hearted manner, setting aside all party feelings, declare their determination at that crisis to support the government of their country."

But unfortunately these gentlemen were by no means prepared for any such action, and foolishly left it for the friends of the administration to give the first utterance to a feeling which it is hard to excuse any American for not entertaining beneath such provocation.

It was the Jeffersonians, accordingly, who convened "an informal meeting of the citizens of Boston and the neighboring towns," at which Mr. Adams was present, and by which he was put upon a committee to draw and report resolutions.

These resolutions pledged a cheerful coöperation "in any measures, however serious," which the government might deem necessary and a support of the same with "lives and fortunes."

The Federalists, learning too late that their backwardness at this crisis was a blunder, caused a town meeting to be called at Faneuil Hall a few days later.

This also (p. 052) Mr. Adams attended, and again was put on the committee to draft resolutions, which were only a little less strong than those of the earlier assemblage.

But though many of the Federalists thus tardily and reluctantly fell in with the popular sentiment, they were for the most part heartily incensed against Mr. Adams.

They threatened him that he should "have his head taken off for apostasy," and gave him to understand that he "should no longer be considered as having any communion with the party."

If he had not already quite left them, they now turned him out from their community.

But such abusive treatment was ill adapted to influence a man of his temper.

Martyrdom, which in time he came to relish, had not now any terrors for him; and he would have lost as many heads as ever grew on Hydra, ere he would have yielded on a point of principle.