same effect as the British navigation acts, one aim of which was to give British vessels the carriage of American products.

The non-intercourse law was repealed after a little more than a year, but it gave Napoleon another opportunity to seize American ships. Under the Rambouillet Decree of March, 1810, several hundred vessels were confiscated on the ground that American law forbade their entry into French ports. Napoleon's zeal for the enforcement of United States law was in proportion to his need of money.

As a means of coercion non-intercourse was weaker than the embargo, and while it had led to negotiations they had miscarried. May 1, 1810, another act passed Congress known as "Macon's Bill No. 2." It repealed all restrictions on trade with the warring powers. If either would remove its own restrictions on American trade, however, the President was directed to renew non-intercourse with the other. Thus our treatment of each belligerent was made conditional upon the conduct of the other. It was hoped that both would yield if either did.

Macon's Bill No. 2 had at least the merit of benefiting commerce, as is shown by the increase in tonnage, the rise in the value of exports, and the greater revenue from customs. And it seemed at first that it might accomplish its purpose, for the French foreign minister announced to John Armstrong, American representative in Paris, that the Napoleonic decrees were revoked and would cease to have effect after November 1 - it being understood that the English would revoke the Orders in Council, or that the United States "shall cause their rights to be respected by the English."

Madison accepted this conditional statement as a bona-fide revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and demanded that England revoke her Orders. The notice to Armstrong was not followed by any public notice on the part of France, however, and the British refused to accept the French action as genuine. On November 2 Madison therefore proclaimed the renewal of non-intercourse with England, effective after ninety days, unless meantime the Orders in Council were withdrawn. But the French seizures of ships did not cease, and the British complained of the unfairness of non-intercourse with them alone when France was equally guilty of offenses.

Napoleon was playing a shrewd game. He probably did not wish England to revoke the Orders in Council; and by continuing to seize American vessels he made revocation impossible. But he did not condemn the ships seized, in order that the United States might cling to the belief that the decrees were not to be enforced, and thus be led to persist in non-intercourse with England. He doubtless aimed not only to encourage the United States to maintain non-intercourse, but to embarrass his enemy still further by inveigling the United States into war with her.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER XV

Elections of 1804 and 1808. For these campaigns as for others the best concise account is by Stanwood, The Presidency.

Relations with England. An extraordinarily clear and readable account is that by Mahan, Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812.

The War of Orders and Decrees. Channing, United States, IV, gives an excellent summary of the French Decrees and British Orders in Council.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WAR OF 1812

THE RISE OF THE WAR PARTY

While difficulties in the international situation were multiplying, the peaceful temper which the Madison administration had inherited from the Jeffersonian régime had gradually vanished. The generation which had fought the Revolution was passing from the stage, giving place to a younger one, less prudent and more inclined to action. The congressional election of 1810 brought defeat to half of the old members including many of the men of pacific views; their seats were taken by new men who owed their election to a growing impatience with the policy of peace at almost any price.

Among the men who entered the arena of national politics at about this time were those who were to be the foremost leaders in Congress until the eve of the Civil War. Henry Clay of Kentucky, John C. Calhoun of western South Carolina, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who took his seat in 1813, attained such preeminence as to win the title of the "great triumvirate." Less well-known and yet important names are those of Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Peter B. Porter of western New York. It will be noted that all of these except Webster were from new states or the frontier regions of old ones. With the same exception all were Republicans. To the same group of young Republicans belonged William Lowndes and Langdon Cheves, Calhoun's colleagues from South Carolina.

The events of the year following this memorable election of 1810 added fuel to a spreading fire. As in the days before Jay's treaty, the people of the Ohio Valley believed that England was behind the Indian resistance to their efforts to obtain land cessions. The Greenville treaty line of 1795 had not long satis

fied the land-hungry white man. That line left almost the whole of Indiana within the Indian country, and William Henry Harrison, as governor of Indiana Territory, was exceedingly zealous in opening new tracts for settlement. Treaty after treaty for this purpose at length stirred the tribesmen to make a concerted stand against further cessions.

The leader of this concert was the great Tecumseh, a worthy successor of Pontiac. His brother the "Prophet" introduced a supernatural element into the movement by preaching in the name of the Great Spirit a return to the aboriginal simplicity of life. Casting off the vices of the white men would be rewarded, he taught, by the aid of the Great Spirit in resisting them. Tecumseh aimed to organize the tribes of a vast territory to act as a unit in making land cessions, or, if necessary, war. Visiting Harrison, he made an eloquent plea for peace on the basis of the integrity of the territory of the Indians. Soon afterwards he visited the southern tribes (his mother was probably a Creek) hoping to win their support of his plan.

Taking advantage of his absence and believing that his activity threatened hostilities, Harrison led troops into a tract ceded in 1809 by a treaty which the natives had afterwards repudiated. His menacing approach to the Prophet's Town at Tippecanoe drew upon him an attack which was repelled only with difficulty and loss. This was in November, 1811. Because the Indians abandoned the village after the battle, Harrison became a hero in the eyes of the frontiersmen as the victor of Tippecanoe.

The fact that the natives had received guns and powder from the British traders convinced the westerners that the hostilities were incited by the Canadian officials, and that the Indians could not be permanently pacified without displacing the British power in Canada. Land speculators probably encouraged a belief which promoted their plans to dispossess the natives, and the influence of the British was doubtless exaggerated. The clash between the races inflamed the West with a desire for war with England and for the conquest of Canada.

Madison read the signs of the times as shown by the election of 1810 and his administration stiffened its tone towards England. The election almost coincided with the date set for the revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees. With the renewal of non-inter

course with England in the early months of 1811, Pinkney, minister since the failure of the negotiations of 1806, was ordered home. No minister had been sent to Washington in place of the dismissed Jackson, and this was made the pretext for Pinkney's withdrawal. Taken at this time, the action was part of a studied effort to impress the British government with the gravity of the displeasure of the United States.

Although a new minister to the United States was appointed before Pinkney left London, and although the Marquis of Wellesley, Canning's successor, requested Pinkney to remain, he would not do so because the British still refused to recall the Orders in Council. The new British minister, A. J. Foster, nevertheless proceeded to Washington, and with due formalities restored to the deck of the "Chesapeake" two survivors of the quartette of sailors who had been impressed four years before.

Notwithstanding reparation for the "Chesapeake" outrage England was still firm in her insistence upon the Orders when the new Congress assembled in November, 1811. The Indian troubles were at their height as the new men elected the year before took their seats. They sealed their triumph by seizing control of the House and electing Henry Clay as Speaker. These Young Republicans, Randolph referred to as "the boys," and dubbed "War Hawks" because of their eagerness to take arms against England. The War Hawks thought more in terms of the nation and less in terms of local interests than had the Republican "fathers" who formulated the doctrine of strict construction and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions; the insults to New England commerce they felt as a national affront even more than did the skippers upon whom the losses fell. But events in the West aroused their passionate hatred of the power which, with Grundy, they believed set on "the ruthless savages to tomahawk our women and children."

The election of Clay as Speaker is said to have been prompted by the belief that he was the only man among the Young Republicans who could curb John Randolph, the free lance.1 Its deeper

1 Randolph is the most remarkable eccentric in our history. His membership in Congress was almost continuous for a generation, in spite of his political nonconformity. Beginning his career as a regular Republican, he soon gave free rein to his extraordinary personality and became a thorn in the side of Jefferson. His speeches were long and often incoherent, yet no public man has coined more telling phrases.