Civil Affairs Considered

Let us here take a brief retrospective glance at civil affairs. Congress assembled on the 2d of November, 1812. Its counsels were divided by fierce party-spirit that boded evil to the public interests. The Democrats had a decided majority in both houses, and the measures of the administration were sustained. Madison was re-elected President of the republic. There had been some changes in the cabinet, John Armstrong having taken the place of William Eustis as Secretary of War, in January, 1813, and William Jones that of Paul Hamilton as Secretary of the Navy, at the same time. Mr. Monroe remained Secretary of State, and William Pinckney, Attorney-General. The British government had shown some desire for reconciliation, by a repeal of the Orders in Council, but there were other obstacles which kept the doors of amicable adjustment fast closed. The report of the Committee on Foreign Relations to the House of Representatives, by Mr. Calhoun, their chairman, had taken high ground, which the British government did not approve. "The impressment of our seamen," said that report, "being deservedly considered a principal cause of the war, the war ought to be prosecuted until that cause be removed. To appeal to arms in defence of a right, and to lay them down without securing it, or a satisfactory evidence of a good disposition in the opposite party to secure it, would be considered in no other light than a relinquishment of it. War having been declared, and the case of impressment being necessarily included as one of the most important causes, it is evident it must be provided for in the pacification. The omission of it, in a treaty of peace, would not leave it on its former ground; it would, in effect, be an absolute relinquishment--an idea at which the feelings of every American must revolt."

Almost simultaneously with the presentation of this report (January, 1813), which recommended negotiations for peace, the Prince Regent (the actual sovereign of Great Britain) issued a manifesto concerning the causes of the war and the subject of blockade and impressment, in which he declared that the war was not the consequence of any fault of Great Britain, but that it had been brought on by the partial conduct of the American government in overlooking the aggressions of the French in their negotiations with them. He alleged that a quarrel with Great Britain had been sought because she had adopted measures solely retaliative as toward France, and that as those measures had been abandoned by a repeal of the Orders in Council, the war was now continued on the question of impressment and search. On this point the Prince Regent took such a decisive position, that the door for negotiation seemed to be irrevocably shut. "His Royal Highness," said the manifesto, "can never admit that the exercise of undoubted and hitherto undisputed right of searching merchant-vessels in time of war, and the impressment of British seamen when found therein, can be deemed any violation of a neutral flag; neither can he admit, the taking of such seamen from on board such vessels can be considered by any neutral state as a hostile measure or a justifiable cause of war." This assertion was not correct, for the right of Great Britain to search and impress had been disputed by all the maritime nations of Europe for many years.

After reaffirming the old English doctrine respecting self-expatriation of a British subject, the manifesto continued: "But if to the practice of the United States to harbor British seamen, be added their assumed right to transfer the allegiance of British subjects, and thus to cancel the jurisdiction of their legitimate sovereign by acts of naturalization and certificates of citizenship, which they pretend to be as valid out of their own country as within it, it is obvious that to abandon this ancient right of Great Britain and to admit these novel pretensions of the United States, would be to expose the very foundation of our maritime strength." The manifesto charged our government with systematic efforts to inflame the people against Great Britain, and that a hostile temper toward that government, and "complete subserviency to the ruler of France," was evident in the official correspondence between the American and French governments. "While contending against France in defence not only of the liberties of Great Britain, but also of the world," said the manifesto, "His Royal Highness was entitled to look for a far different result. From their common origin--their common interest--from their professed principles of freedom and independence, the United States was the last power in which Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument and abettor of French tyranny." The Prince Regent also declared most solemnly, in that manifesto, that "the charge of exciting the Indians to offensive measures against the United States, is equally void of foundation." This denial was iterated and reiterated by British statesmen and publicists then, and have been ever since. It is very natural for a civilized and Christian people to repel the charge of complicity with savage pagans in the practice of merciless and barbarous warfare; but the fact has been too clearly proved by documentary and other evidence to be doubted.