and, to quote Monroe's dispatch, "history records no example of so glorious a victory obtained with so little bloodshed on the part of the victorious."* All was exuberance of joy in the last weeks of this Congressional session. Debatable measures were laid aside, as the new aspect of affairs permitted. Military operations were declared suspended. All calls for additional troops were countermanded; the militia being discharged as speedily as possible, and the State volunteer act likewise repealed. Deferring Dallas's bank scheme, Congress provided for the immediate wants of the treasury by a temporary loan and a new issue of treasury notes. In token of reconciliation and renewed commerce the offending remnants of our discrimination and nonintercourse system, now harmless enough, were cleared away by an act of final repeal. In the midst of this happy work the clock struck the hour for a dissolution of the Thirteenth Congress; whose members, almost bewildered by the sudden transition from despair to delight, did not, however, disperse to their homes without recommending to the country a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God "for his great goodness manifested in restoring to these United States the blessing of peace." § SECTION II. PERIOD OF FOURTEENTH CONGRESS. MARCH 4, 1815-MARCH 3, 1817. THE last two years of Madison's administration, embracing the period of the fourteenth Congress, possess little historical interest. A nation of strong vitality emerging from a wasteful war, seeks needful rest and recuperation; accounts are cast and adjusted; scaffoldings are taken down and the house is * Monroe Correspondence, February 5th, 1815. † Monroe Correspondence, February, 1815; acts February 24th, 1815; March 3d, 1815. Act March 3d, 1815. ? Resolution XIII, 3 U. S. Statutes at Large, 250. 1815-17. DAWN OF A NEW ERA. 445 put to rights, swept, and garnished; the old order changes, but not yet giving place to the new. Our first consciousness was that of complete emancipation, like that of a child reaching majority. Neither French faction nor British faction could exist here longer. The American Union, henceforth a nation with peculiar interests and peculiar institutions, would pursue an independent course upon an independent responsi bility, free from the control of the Old World. Like passengers on an emigrant ship dropping down the channel, whose pilot has just left for shore, our people realized for the moment more keenly the severance of ties two centuries old, and of dependence as colonies upon Europe, hitherto habitual, than the new freedom of the deep and a new destiny. This constitutional Union had passed the outer light of early experiment. On the vanishing bank stood the great founders, the revolutionary fathers, the Mentors, all who had hoped or feared for it. A new era was dawning. Those provincial thirteen, or that frugal confederacy of unwarlike States; who would ever imagine such a Union again? Madison, certainly, who saw the driftwood of old parties floating by, had no strong desire but to avoid dangers, and round his anxious administration and long public career to a happy close. To provide a national peace establishment and restore the disordered finances was his main solicitude. Dec. 4 1815 The fourteenth Congress worked harmoniously with the Executive to the same end. After a long intermission, such as had not occurred for ten years, our new legislature assembled December 4th, to remain until the end of the following April; and then reassembling in Decem- Apr. 30,1816. ber, 1816, completed the biennial circuit with Dec. 2, 1816Madison himself. Most of the elections to this Mar. 3, 1817. Congress had been held during the war, so that Republicans and Federalists still kept their party distinctions. The administration majority of the former was about twelve in the Senate and fifty-two in the House ;* though upon various issues dividing quite differently. Factious opposition ceased. In * See 9 Niles's Register, 280, which divides the Senate 24 to 12, and the House 117 to 65. the House, Henry Clay, who had been chosen from his district while abroad, was re-elected Speaker on the first ballot.* 1807-1812. 1812. By far the most engrossing subject for Executive and Congress at this time was the re-establishment of the national finances. The system of commercial restrictions, commencing in 1807, had greatly reduced the product of customs revenue, Jefferson's main resource; but it was not until the crisis of war was reached, involving huge expenditures, that the extent of this loss became obvious; temporary loans having been paid off and the Treasury suffering no serious embarrassment. But in 1812, besides additional import duties, with discrimination against foreign vessels, Congress had recourse to the double expedient of permanent loans upon interestbearing stock, and Treasury notes running for a specified time, the latter also bearing interest and being receivable for national dues, though not a legal tender. The public credit sank while the public necessities grew more urgent, and hence by 1813 internal taxation was taken up, inclusive of a direct tax; a resource not, however, available until the following year, and most reluctantly sanctioned under the delusive style of "War-taxes." The National Treasury showed a deficit of nearly $31,000,000 in the estimates for 1814, nor had half of that year expired before the financial operations of the government were so heavily clogged that a special session of Congress in September, and a new Secretary, became indispensable. The notion of defraying the extraordinary war expenses by successive loans had ere this exploded. By the general suspension, moreover, of specie payments outside of New England, the country was flooded with an irredeemable paper currency, variable, and carrying no national sanction whatever. The funds of the Treasury could not be conveniently transferred; public engagements were dishonored. 1813. 1814. Dallas, we have seen, would at this point have re-established the National Bank; but prejudice was inveterate, and Congress, * Annals of Congress, 1815-1817. 1815-17. A NEW NATIONAL BANK. 447 instead, having first pressed internal taxation to the utmost,* pledged the internal revenues to public creditors and offered them loans and Treasury notes once more. But the new Treasury notes, as authorized, differed in principle from those of former issues; not expressed, to be sure, as a legal tender, but with principal and interest payable at no stated time, and as to denominations less than $100, negotiable and bearing no interest at all, thrown out, in fact, to struggle with the paper of the suspended banks as a sort of predominant currency by con sent. 1815. The suspension of specie payments, an inevitable consequence of this war, but by no means the sign of utter prostration so commonly supposed, had perplexed Dallas, Gallatin, and all our chief financiers greatly, for upon the point of public credit the public honor was still keenly sensitive. The Treasury in 1815 had been drawn into sharp competition with non-specie paying banks to supply the medium of circulation, the latter refusing to receive Treasury notes at par, and their own notes being refused by government in return. No State could lawfully emit bills of credit, and yet State corporations, chartered without the participation of Congress, were now circulating, after the war was over, a paper medium subject to most of the practical disadvantages of bills of credit. A speedy return to specie payments afforded the best meaus of extricating the Union from this discreditable state of things. With this end in view, Dallas, who had vainly striven to bring the local banks into mutual combination upon the subject of circulation, revived before the fourteenth Congress the plan of a national specie-paying bank,† such as Gallatin and the best financiers of the age approved. Under favoring conditions-the stronger local banks having already begun to refuse the paper of the weaker-the needful charter was procured; and for the second time in our history a National Bank appeared, yoking the public credit once more, as Hamilton's fiscal agent had done, with the private incorporators of a single * See supra, p. 417. + Dallas's Treasury Report, December, 1815; 9 Niles's Register, 261, 1816. moneyed institution. Upon this most important measure of the fourteenth Congress the first symptoms of party renovation might be seen in the union of that soon famous triumvirate, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, young men whose antecedents differed so greatly, in substantial support of this measure.* * For present financial ills the National Bank was the accepted panacea. They who had essayed fiscal operations without it were either silenced or converted. Republicans and Federalists in Congress voted for the act together. Madison, surmounting the prejudices of a lifetime, approved it. The stock * See act April 10th, 1816; Annals of Congress. The capital of this new National Bank was fixed at $35,000,000; an amount more than treble that of its predecessor, as the national development had justified. The par value of each share was $100. $7,000,000 of the capital were to be subscribed by the United States Government, the remaining $28,000,000 by individuals, companies, corporations, or States; no single subscription exceeding 3000 shares. Individual subscriptions were payable by instalments, extending over twelve months, in coin or funded stock of the United States at stated rates, the latter favor to government being enhanced by the further stipulated payment of $1,500,000 by instalments as a bonus for the charter. After payment of the first instalment of subscription dues the bank was to commence operations. While prescribing powers, duties, and restrictions to much the same extent as formerly, Congress enlarged the control of the public in these leading particulars: official direction, the establishment of branches, and supervision of the general management. Instead of permitting stockholders to choose all the directors, as in the first bank, government was to appoint five directors annually out of the twenty-five; the original subscriptions, moreover, were to be opened in every State. The directors at Philadelphia could no longer exercise a discretionary power as to establishing branch banks, but the law compelled them to do so in any State or the District of Columbia upon the demand of Congress and compliance with certain preliminary conditions. As a depository of the public moneys (which the bank was obliged to transfer without charge) its functions might be curtailed, should the Secretary of the Treasury so order, laying his reasons before Congress. And while the present charter, like the former, was limited in time to twenty years, Congress reserved new and express powers of inquisition, meanwhile, as to the management of this corporation, whose exercise might lead at any time to an earlier forfeiture under judicial process as for breach of trust. Many years after, as later history shows, these last two conditions of the charter became, in the hands of the bank's political enemies, a potent means of demolishing its influence. |