The fascinating story of how New England Federalists threatened to dissolve the Union by making a separate peace with England during the War of 1812.
Many people would be surprised to learn that the struggle between Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party defined--and jeopardized--the political life of the early American republic. Richard Buel Jr.'s America on the Brink looks at why the Federalists, who worked so hard to consolidate the federal government before 1800, went to great lengths to subvert it after Jefferson's election. In addition to taking the side of the British in the diplomatic dance before the war, the Federalists did everything they could to impede the prosecution of the war, even threatening the Madison Administration with a separate peace for New England in 1814.
Readers fascinated by the world of the Founding Fathers will come away from this riveting account with a new appreciation for how close the new nation came to falling apart almost fifty years before the Civil War.
The fascinating story of how New England Federalists threatened to dissolve the Union by making a separate peace with England during the War of 1812.
Many people would be surprised to learn that the struggle between Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party defined--and jeopardized--the political life of the early American republic. Richard Buel Jr.'s America on the Brink looks at why the Federalists, who worked so hard to consolidate the federal government before 1800, went to great lengths to subvert it after Jefferson's election. In addition to taking the side of the British in the diplomatic dance before the war, the Federalists did everything they could to impede the prosecution of the war, even threatening the Madison Administration with a separate peace for New England in 1814.
Readers fascinated by the world of the Founding Fathers will come away from this riveting account with a new appreciation for how close the new nation came to falling apart almost fifty years before the Civil War.
America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic
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America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic
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Overview
The fascinating story of how New England Federalists threatened to dissolve the Union by making a separate peace with England during the War of 1812.
Many people would be surprised to learn that the struggle between Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party defined--and jeopardized--the political life of the early American republic. Richard Buel Jr.'s America on the Brink looks at why the Federalists, who worked so hard to consolidate the federal government before 1800, went to great lengths to subvert it after Jefferson's election. In addition to taking the side of the British in the diplomatic dance before the war, the Federalists did everything they could to impede the prosecution of the war, even threatening the Madison Administration with a separate peace for New England in 1814.
Readers fascinated by the world of the Founding Fathers will come away from this riveting account with a new appreciation for how close the new nation came to falling apart almost fifty years before the Civil War.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250106544 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 330 |
| Sales rank: | 392,384 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Richard Buel is Professor of History Emeritus at Wesleyan University. He is author of several books, including In Irons: Britain's Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy. He lives in Essex, Connecticut.
Read an Excerpt
America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic
By Richard Buel Jr.
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2005 Richard Buel, Jr.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-10654-4
CHAPTER 1
The Combustibles
Thomas Jefferson and his supporters hailed his election in 1800 as a second American Revolution. They claimed it had secured the triumph of Republicanism over monarchy. Today these assertions seem overwrought. Jefferson's opponents had no intention of reestablishing a monarchy. Instead we admire the peaceful transfer of power between bitter political rivals that took place in this election. To the participants in the drama, however, the rhetoric surrounding Jefferson's victory seemed anything but extravagant. All agreed that something fundamental had happened, marking a decisive turning point in the history of the American republic.
Jefferson and his allies saw the election of 1800 as confirming the loyalty of the nation's political majority to its new republican institutions. The disproportionate influence that slaveholders exerted over the electoral college through the three-fifths clause of the Constitution and the efforts of gentry leaders to narrow the choices the average voter could make failed to compromise their view. Most of the presidential electors in 1800 had either been directly selected by the state legislatures or elected in ways strongly influenced by them. Virginia's general ticket law, for instance, provided that only ballots listing twenty-two different candidates residing in as many separate districts would be counted. The law forced voters to rely on printed forms if they wished to have their preferences recorded. It also excluded the minority — in this case the Federalists — from claiming a portion of the state's electors. Instead, the law ensured that all of Virginia's twenty-two electoral votes went to Jefferson.
The Jeffersonians instead derived their Republican identity from opposition to the Alien Act, which allowed the president to order the deportation of aliens he considered enemies of the United States, and the Sedition Act. Though the former measure was never enforced, the latter had been used since its passage in July 1798 to curb criticism of John Adams's presidency. In granting federal courts jurisdiction over seditious libels, the Adams administration acquired a weapon with which to mount a coordinated campaign against opposition newspapers throughout the length and breadth of the land. Relying on common-law actions in the states would not have yielded the same result since even at the height of Federalist power the Republicans retained firm control over states like Virginia and Kentucky. Federalists claimed the statute penalized only falsehoods because a defendant was allowed to plead truth as a defense. But partisan administration of the law confirmed Republican objections that the Federalists wished to deny voters the ability to call elected officials to account. In challenging the basic premise of Republicanism the Sedition Law became an ideological embarrassment to the Federalists while it helped the Republicans organize political support when and where they needed it. And an unsuccessful Federalist attempt to extend the life of the Sedition Law beyond March 1801, provided the Republican coalition with a rallying point beyond Jefferson's initial electoral triumph.
However, public opinion, which provided the necessary precondition for the Republican victory in the election of 1800, had been shaped as much by events in Europe as by the Sedition Law or the Alien Law. The Federalists had won control of all branches of the federal government in the late 1790s after a rupture between France and the United States over the Jay Treaty with Britain. The European war that exploded in 1793 in the wake of Louis XVI's execution had pitted the revolutionary republic of France against a coalition of monarchies led by Britain, known as the First Coalition. The ideological character of this conflict affected the American public in powerful ways. The majority of the people sympathized with France, because she had aided the United States during the revolutionary war and because she now seemed to be upholding the banner of Republicanism against the rest of Europe. Some Americans feared that if the First Coalition was victorious, it would then turn against the United States as the source of republican revolution. Americans' undisguised sympathy for France, together with the 1778 Franco-American treaty of alliance, led the British government to write off the United States as a French ally. This shaped Britain's approach to the second Washington administration and led her to attempt blocking U.S. commerce with France's West Indian colonies as well as with France herself.
The ensuing crisis brought the Republic to the brink of war with the former mother country. In the spring of 1794 Washington appointed the veteran diplomat John Jay — at the time chief justice of the Supreme Court — as special envoy to Britain to head off hostilities. Washington assumed that Jay was more likely to keep the peace with Britain than was any other prominent American because he held the Anglo-American commercial relationship in high esteem. Jay came home with a treaty, which addressed most of the outstanding problems between the United States and Britain, but at the cost of abandoning the claim that America's neutral flag would protect French property that was not contraband, though British property was protected from French seizure under Franco-American treaties. Thus the Jay Treaty seemed at odds with the Franco-American alliance. Washington reluctantly accepted it instead of risking war with Britain and pushed for its implementation despite intense popular opposition. Much of the resistance was based on fear that a betrayal of France would precipitate war with her. If America's revolutionary experience was any guide, war with one of Europe's two great powers meant military and economic dependence on the other. And what was to stop such dependence from pushing the United States back into Britain's arms, undoing all that had been won in the Revolution?
The souring of the Franco-American relationship over the next few years confirmed the Republican opposition's worst fears. Washington had appointed James Monroe ambassador to France in 1794 to reconcile the French government to a rapprochement between the United States and Britain. Monroe, however, took the part of France against the administration that had appointed him. At the same time the French ambassador to the United States, Pierre Adet, announced that France would equalize its treaty relationship with the United States by seizing American ships and cargoes as the Jay Treaty authorized the Royal Navy to. Adet subsequently tried to influence the election of 1796 in Jefferson's favor by announcing that France would sever diplomatic relations with the United States if Adams was elected. Adet's clumsy threat had no measurable effect on the Electoral College. But French hostility toward the United States increased after Adams became president. France started seizing vessels sailing under the American flag as Adet had threatened. And when Charles C. Pinckney, dispatched to Paris as Monroe's replacement, tried to present his credentials, the French Directory, which then governed France, refused to receive him. Instead French officials threatened to treat him as a common criminal so long as he remained in the country.
Adams responded to this rebuff by reappointing Pinckney to an expanded commission, which also included John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry, and fully empowering them to negotiate a settlement to America's differences with France. During the remainder of 1797 the Directory treated the three American diplomats in an even more humiliating fashion than it had previously treated Pinckney. Through intermediaries, Talleyrand, the French foreign secretary, demanded a formal apology for statements made by President Adams about the Directory. Talleyrand also insisted on money in the form of bribes and loans as the price of peace. But in doing so, he seriously overplayed his hand. The release of the diplomatic dispatches documenting the efforts of Talleyrand's agents, designated as X, Y, and Z, to humiliate the commissioners and extort money from them led to a popular outcry in the United States. It also tipped the balance of power in the Fifth Congress, heretofore evenly divided, in the Federalists' favor. They used the political windfall to lead the nation into a limited naval war against France between 1798 and 1800 in informal alliance with Britain, subsequently known as the "Quasi-War." Conflict with France allowed the Federalists to build up both branches of the armed forces. The government commissioned many new men-of-war, including several frigates built by private subscription. In addition, Washington agreed to assume nominal command of an expanded army that included volunteers as well as regulars, but only on condition that Hamilton exercise actual command. Enlarging the armed services gave the administration a new fund of patronage that rivaled the federal government's civil service. The Quasi-War also led Congress to pass security measures like the Alien and Sedition laws. Finally the conflict influenced the election of the Sixth Congress, which began during the autumn of 1798 and conferred decisive control of both branches of the national legislature on the Federalists.
As leaders of the Republican opposition, Jefferson and Madison turned in desperation to the few states still under Republican control. They drafted resolutions challenging the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition laws, and the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky adopted the resolutions. Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions pronounced the Alien and Sedition laws "altogether void and of no effect," thus laying the cornerstone for a doctrine of nullification that would become central in the defense of slavery. Madison was more judicious in wording the Virginia Resolutions so that the legislature appeared to state an opinion rather than make a legislative determination of whether the law had any force within the state. This, at least, was the gloss Madison subsequently put on his handiwork in a carefully argued report that replied to the eight critical responses the Virginia Resolutions elicited from other states. By the time Madison's defense appeared in 1800, however, events had moved in a direction that made the Republicans feel less desperate and made the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions recede as an object of concern to the Federalists.
Just when it looked as though the Federalists had bested their Republican adversaries, President Adams decided to renew negotiations with France. Adams's decision alarmed those of his domestic allies who felt the United States had every reason to distrust France. They were especially loath to surrender the political advantage they were reaping from the Quasi-War, hoping that the longer hostilities lasted the more Americans would be purged of their affection for their former ally. Subsequent investigators have criticized Adams's behavior while approving the results of his peace initiative. Efforts by members of his own cabinet to portray the president's actions as inconsistent — together with Adams's preference for keeping his own counsel — enveloped this, the most important decision of his presidency, in a cloud of controversy. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick's monumental The Age of Federalism paints a picture of an otherwise indecisive president resolving to take the initiative in ending the Quasi-War in response to his cabinet's objections to his doing so. Adams's fear that Hamilton might attempt a coup, combined with the growing unpopularity of the army that he commanded, eventually led Adams to order the new commissioners to France despite uncertainties about how they would be received.
There is another, more flattering way to understand Adams's behavior. Though in October 1798 the president had been willing to consider declaring war against France, he quickly realized that such a course risked national disintegration. All that was needed to ignite a civil war on American soil was the arrival in the Chesapeake of a small expeditionary force led by one of the military adventurers the French Revolution was producing. Once there, the Virginia gentry that dreaded dependence on Britain would be more likely to join them than resist them. Relying on Britain's navy to deny a French squadron access to North America was unrealistic, since it had twice failed to do so during the revolutionary war and, more recently, had permitted Napoleon to reach Egypt by sea.
Adams's peace initiative was complicated by the political confusion into which the French were falling at the time. Meaningful negotiations made sense only with a stable government, and in the summer of 1799 the Directory appeared to be crumbling. But experience had shown that France's most likely response to domestic instability was foreign adventures. Hamilton's army, top-heavy with officers though otherwise undermanned, would be no match for a French expeditionary force in league with the Virginians. Adams's decision to press negotiations with an untested government rather than chance stumbling into a war that had the potential for destroying the nation involved risks, but was hardly perverse. In retrospect the success of this diplomatic initiative in producing an accommodation with France even made it seem wise.
The news of the Franco-American Convention of 1800 arrived in the United States just before the Electoral College met to choose the next president. But instead of politically benefiting the administration, the diplomatic initiative worked to Jefferson's advantage. Cabinet opposition to his peace initiative had finally led Adams to dismiss Timothy Pickering, his secretary of state, and James McHenry, his secretary of war. The purge created a rift in the ranks of the Federalist leadership on the eve of the presidential election. Alexander Hamilton felt the cabinet dismissals were aimed at him and wrote a bitter personal attack against Adams during the autumn. Hamilton circulated his pamphlet among fellow Federalist leaders, hoping it would influence Federalist electors to substitute Charles C. Pinckney for Adams when the Electoral College voted. But Hamilton's pamphlet also found its way into the hands of a Republican editor who gleefully published it on the eve of the election. It is unlikely that Hamilton's indiscretion would by itself have led to the election of either Jefferson or Burr, the two Republican candidates, had the nation remained at war — however limited — with France, given Jefferson's public identification with the French cause. The Republicans had benefited from the diminished tempo of hostilities between the United States and France during 1800, but only the Franco-American Convention of 1800 assured the American public and the presidential electors that the two nations were no longer enemies.
The election of 1800 proved to be decisive. Though the Federalists had divided in the late 1790s over prolonging the war against France, they remained united in their desire to avoid war with Britain. Losing control of the federal government's executive branch meant losing most of the power they had formerly enjoyed in shaping the nation's foreign policy. As their adversaries grasped the executive reins, Federalist options for opposing Republican initiatives narrowed to Congress and the state governments. The Republican triumph of 1800, then, deprived the Federalists of the principal advantage they had relied on to compensate for the unpopularity of their preference for Britain. At the same time it conferred on the Jeffersonians an advantage, which they hardly needed because most Americans were pro-French. Federalist leaders saw an ominous potential in the new situation. They feared the Republicans would be tempted to provoke Great Britain whenever they lost popular favor because bad relations with the former mother country guaranteed popularity. And would not such a tendency eventually lead to war, since the Republicans did not share the Federalists' understanding of the world and consequently were bound to mismanage the Republic's affairs? War with Britain became the Federalists' nightmare because they were convinced it would force the nation into another alliance with France, as had been the case during the Revolution, and "Frenchify" the United States.
The Federalists had another reason for despair relating to the international situation, though this one had domestic roots. From 1787 through 1789 they had presided over the formation, ratification, and implementation of the federal Constitution in the expectation that the new government would be insulated from popular pressures that were obstructing the solution of postwar problems. The most pressing of these was funding the revolutionary debt. Congress's lack of revenue at the end of the war had allowed speculators to buy up that debt at bargain prices, thus complicating the establishment of public credit by polarizing a minority of public creditors against a majority of public debtors. In 1786, Shays's Rebellion, ignited by a Massachusetts attempt at heroic taxation, had led many of the Revolution's gentry leadership to conclude that the only chance for establishing public credit lay in creating a national government less vulnerable to popular pressures than the state governments were. They counted on the enhanced revenues that a uniform tax on imports, known as an "impost," was likely to produce, even though this tax was unlikely to be properly collected unless the national government also assumed the outstanding debts of the states. Otherwise, state creditors would be deprived of an interest in seeing that the impost was paid. Hamilton did manage to reconcile the interests of the two categories of creditors by assuming most of the state debts, but at the cost of alienating Madison and most of Virginia's leadership. Though the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 seemed to confirm Republican anxieties about the consequences of oppressive taxation, rising yields from the impost soon afterward vindicated the wisdom of Hamilton's policy. The establishment of public credit in turn validated the political structure created by the Constitution and made preserving the antipopulist character of national politics seem all the more desirable to the Federalists.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic by Richard Buel Jr.. Copyright © 2005 Richard Buel, Jr.. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction * The Combustibles * Massachusetts Ablaze * Dividing to Conquer * Paying the Piper * The Struggle over Declaring War * The Perils of Peace * Toward the Hartford Convention * Epilogue * Afterword
Recipe
"The founding generation feared partisan conflict, and Richard Buel shows why. No previous writer has so persuasively illuminated the inextricable connections between divisions over foreign policy and partisan political alignments during a period of revolutionary instability and change throughout the Atlantic world. After Jefferson's election, Federalists who had struggled so hard to secure the success of the American experiment during the 1790s jeopardized the union's survival as they sought to regain power on the national level and preserve their tenuous control in New England. America on the Brink is an important contribution to our understanding of the founding of the American federal republic. Buel's fine book represents political history at its very best."--Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Professor of History, University of Virginia
"Buel's keen analysis of the partisan battle between Federalists and Jeffersonians argues powerfully that prominent Massachusetts leaders aimed to subvert the United States government during the War of 1812. This fresh, clearheaded, and masterful narrative reveals the intricate political maneuvers of politicians and statesmen during a perilous era."--Richard D. Brown, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History and Director, University of Connecticut Humanities Institute Department of History
"In this carefully researched and vigorously argued account of America's least understood war, Richard Buel offers a searching critique of the political motives that placed Federalist leaders in Massachusetts and Connecticut at loggerheads with the national government. Artfully surveying the realms of politics and diplomacyfrom an avowedly Republican perspective, Buel closely examines the political rhetoric, partisan calculations, and internal divisions of both parties, and explains how these in turn affected and impaired the conduct of the war. In doing so, he makes a potent case for taking seriously the depth of Federalist animosity toward Republican policies and the extent to which opposition to the war went beyond non-compliance with national measures to countenance the collapse of the new American nation-state. Not every student of the war may accept his conclusions, but his argument supports a critical reappraisal of a seemingly disloyal opposition."--Jack Rakove, Stanford University