1813. THIRTEENTH CONGRESS MEETS. 379 son, whose tarry was brief, there was room at the top for a more youthful and moderate type of the commercial, prosperous, and conservative North. Such a distinction a tall son of New Hampshire, bred to the bar, but with the farm manners still clinging to his person, having olive complexion, cavernous eyes, and a massive forehead, and being as a speaker clear, deliberate, and impressive, now claimed. Clay, with a quick appreciation of talent, put him at once, though a new member, upon Calhoun's committee, that of Foreign Affairs; and a month did not elapse before this Eastern youth introduced well-drawn resolutions of inquiry into the French repealing decrees, resolutions quite embarrassing to the administration, but which, after much discussion, the majority was driven to adopt. This new-school Federalist was Daniel Webster. Gore, of Massachusetts, Webster's early friend and patron, and Jeremiah Mason, of New Hampshire, occupied Federal seats among the new senators. But a better statesman, and far more experienced than either of those eminent lawyers in public life, was Rufus King, just selected by the New York legislature through an accidental local disarrangement of parties. King sat in the Senate for many years longer, the last embodiment of well-bred, and withal moderate Federalism, courtly and polished in manners, always in full dress, with silk stockings and small clothes, as became one of Washington's own pattern. Crawford now departing, the administration leadership in the Senate devolved upon Campbell, of Tennessee. May 24 Aug. 2. This first session of the new Congress extended to the 2d of August. The President's message showed that the receipts of the treasury, loans and treasury notes included, would probably carry the government through the current year;* after which period additional taxes were indispensable, both as a means of revenue and for the security of such new loans as might have to be raised here after. *There had been nearly $16,000,000 expenditures since the 1st of October, 1812; not less than $29,000,000 more were reckoned needful to the end of December. President's Message. Regretfully enough did the legislature now proceed to reerect that internal revenue system, which it had been the earliest glory of a Jeffersonian Congress to demolish. The States were marked off into collection districts for direct taxes and internal duties, each with its appropriate officers, and a commissioner to superintend.* Duties were levied upon refined sugars, carriages, licenses to distillers, auction sales of merchandise and vessels, the retailers of wines, spirits, and foreign merchandise.† A direct tax of $3,000,000 was apportioned among the respective States, with the privilege to each of paying its quota as under the Confederation. Last of all, notes and bills of exchange were made subject to a stamp duty.§ From all these internal duties a produce of about $2,000,000 might be derived in addition to the land tax; but even this was quite inadequate for carrying on a war, and a new loan of $7,500,000 was accordingly authorized besides; 88 cents on the dollar being by this time the standard of the national credit.|| The scheme of these tax bills Gallatin had left behind him, and much as their various items were disrelished the measures passed both Houses with little debate. Unable to pick a quarrel over his budget, Gallatin's personal enemies contrived, nevertheless, to block his confirmation to Russia; for while the cry of "foreigner" was raised against him outside, the Giles faction in the Senate maintained decorously, with Federal members to back them, that the Cabinet functions were incompatible with those of envoy extraordinary; a sound objection, doubtless, in theory, which should have been obviated. Gallatin himself had not been thoughtless on this point; but becoming confirmed in habits of reticence, he had preferred that the President should decide the delicate question as contingencies might require, wearied for his own part of playing the distressed financier, and mainly intent upon securing an honorable respite, together with the better opportunity for fame and public usefulness as a negotiator of peace. The Senate inquired, after the names of diplomatic agents had been sent in, whether *Acts of July 22, 1813; July 24, 1813. Adams's Gallatin, 480. Act of August 2, 1813. 1813. AMERICAN ENVOYS TO RUSSIA. 381 Gallatin still retained the Secretaryship of the Treasury; Madison responded that he did, the duties of that office being meantime discharged by the Secretary of the Navy; whereupon the Senate appointed a committee to confer with the President. A similar committee was appointed upon the nomination of Jonathan Russell as minister to Sweden, a mission of whose expediency the Senate could not be persuaded. Giles and King served on both committees. The President, being confined at that time with a bilious fever, suffered great annoyance from this attempt to control him. Standing upon the diguity of his office, he refused to recognize the official capacity of either committee, and as to Gallatin left the nomination to stand as sent in. He had secretly hoped that a body which had twice permitted a Chief Justice to go abroad on diplomatic errands would not rob this momentous embassy of the very best capacity at its service; but in this Madison miscalculated, for the Senate, adhering to its own dignity and its objections, rejected both Russell and Gallatin, the latter by a single vote. John Quincy Adams and Bayard, however, were confirmed by large majorities, as was also the selection of Crawford for the French mission.* British Orders in Council, issued in the autumn of 1812, artfully assailed Eastern merchants on their weak side by offering exclusively to citizens of the Eastern States licenses to trade with the West Indies; that privilege which, on behalf of this Union, Jay and Monroe had hitherto sought in vain. Of these orders the previous Congress had been apprised too late to counteract their influence. By a law of the present session, therefore, heavy penalties were denounced against the use of British licenses. A general embargo, such as the President favored, failed, however, in the Senate.‡ Our war narrative turns to the war operations of 1813 by land and sea. * See 4 Niles's Register, 357, 377, 409. Gallatin's appointment was negatived by 18 to 17; Giles, Leib, and Smith of the number. On the inexpediency of the Swedish mission the vote stood 22 to 14. † President's Message, February 24, 1813. Annals of Congress; Act of August 2, 1813. Jan. 10-22. Jan. 22. (1.) Harrison's Northwestern Campaign and Perry's Victory on Lake Erie.-The winter expedition of the Northwest army for the recovery of Detroit had been retarded by a disaster which overtook Winchester's command near the Maumee Rapids, at a little village on the River Raisin. By Harrison's orders Winchester had started for these Rapids, whence, having first concentrated troops as if for winter quarters, the design was that he should advance fifty miles farther, when weather permitted, cross the frozen Detroit, and fall suddenly upon Malden. Winchester not only pushed on incautiously to his first destination, but with a design more humane than prudent, undertook to protect against a British and Indian raid the alarmed inhabitants of Frenchtown,* a place thirty miles nearer Malden. Here he was overpowered by the enemy, which fell upon the American forces suddenly at daybreak, with yells and a shower of bombshells and canister. Winchester having been taken prisoner, Colonel Proctor, the British commander, extorted from him the unconditional surrender of all his troops, some 700 in number, as the only means of saving them from the tomahawk and scalping-knife of his own merciless allies, whose bloodthirstiness Proctor professed himself unable to restrain. To Malden, such prisoners as were not too exhausted to walk, proceeded under guard, there to be penned through a stormy night, without tents or blankets, shivering over a feeble fire. Our sick and wounded, who had been left at Frenchtown, with a single officer and two or three interpreters for a guard, under a solemn promise that sleds would be sent to remove them, the British commander shamefully abandoned to their fate, together with the remnant of the town's inhabitants. While the half-drunken savages plundered the village and set dwellings on fire, where these disabled soldiers lay, a number, unable to move, were consumed in the flames; others who attempted to escape were tomahawked and scalped, as many of their comrades had been in battle. Men who worked their way into the open air were scalped and thrown back into the flames, and such of the Jan. 23 *Now the town of Monroe, Michigan. 1513. HARRISON'S CAMPAIGN. 383 remaining soldiers as fell exhausted while dragging their weary way to Malden encountered a fate not less horrible. Officers and men, many of them the flower of Kentucky, perished victims to barbarities like these, abhorrent to civilized warfare, of which the British Colonel Proctor and Captain Elliott were not innocent. Besides the American loss in prisoners at the sad affair of the Raisin, nearly 200 were killed and missing.* Jan. 16-22. Hearing at the Upper Sandusky of Winchester's intended. movement, Harrison had pressed to his relief with reinforcements, but fugitives from Frenchtown brought the melancholy tidings of disaster; and Harrison fell back to the Rapids, there to strengthen the post known as Fort Meigs, and go into winter quarters. The terms of many of his troops having now expired, the Northwestern army was for many months too feeble to begin a forward movement. But Harrison possessed the unabated confidence of the West, and, promoted to be one of the new major-generals, he received, through the zealous co-operation of Ohio and Kentucky, whose people were inflamed to take vengeance, enough volunteer reinforcements to relieve Fort Meigs from Proctor's investment in the spring, and at length the quota requisite for resuming the offensive; other frontier plans of the War Department having long deranged his own in this quarter. May. Sept. The splendid co-operation of an American flotilla on Lake Erie opened the way to Detroit and victory. For that memorable service Commodore Chauncey had detailed an aspiring young naval officer, Captain Oliver H. Perry, of Rhode Island. Our little Lake squadron was tediously constructed at Presqu' Isle (now Erie). When all at last was ready, Perry, who had long chafed in spirit while the British fleet hovered in sight like a hawk, sailed forth to dispute the supremacy of the broad inland waters. His heavier vessels were floated over the bar not without difficulty. After conferring at Sandusky upon the combined plan of operations. with General Harrison, from whom he received a small detail * Lossing's War of 1812, 348-475; 6 Hildreth. August. |