A Republic No More. Jay Cost

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СКАЧАТЬ developing the interior of the continent, an Empire of Liberty already mentioned above.⁹ Regardless of emphasis, the word “greatness” is an apt description of both policy agendas, and their quests for greatness invariably came into conflict with the republican limits implied by the Constitution.

      It was the Republican quest that precipitated the most ill-conceived war the United States would find itself in during the whole of the nineteenth century, the War of 1812. By the end of Madison’s first term, diplomacy had failed to induce England or France to respect America’s trading rights, and a new generation of Republican politicians—men like Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina—had entered the government with a hunger for glory. For them, nothing could be better than the acquisition of Canada from the British.¹⁰ Thus, the United States declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812.

      Unfortunately, the county lacked the institutions necessary to carry on an effective war effort. The Bank’s charter expired in 1811, and while Gallatin—whom Madison retained as secretary of the treasury—urged a renewal, the president was largely silent on the matter and Congress narrowly rejected it. As the conflict with Great Britain approached, Republicans assumed that acquiring loans to run the government during wartime would be an easy matter, but they were wrong.¹¹ So hard up during the war was Gallatin that he actually proposed an executive charter of a new bank without the assent of Congress.¹² Worse, the destruction of the Bank brought into being a large number of local banks chartered to fill the void. These institutions lent with gross irresponsibility, and the proliferation of bank notes during the early years of the war led to the eventual suspension of specie payments and devastating levels of price inflation.¹³

      The military was also woefully underprepared for war with Britain. An integral aspect of the Republican ideology was the virtue of the volunteer militia. Standing armies were a Jeffersonian bugaboo, and the Republicans believed that citizen soldiers could do the work just as well without threatening the republican quality of the nation.¹⁴ They were wrong, and as a consequence the American invasion of Canada was a complete failure. Worse, after Napoleon abdicated in the spring of 1814, the British were free to counterattack. Washington was burned to the ground, and it was only for improbable victories at Plattsburgh and Baltimore that America did not have to cede any territory when the peace was finally signed.¹⁵

      Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans—coming a few weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was negotiated—salvaged American pride, but the reality was that the country accomplished none of its initial goals. Fortunately, the final conclusion of Britain’s long conflict with Napoleon meant that the pressure on American commerce was removed.¹⁶ Historians have since judged this conflict to be largely fruitless, but Americans of that day and age did not see things that way. They felt that it was a vindication of their sovereign rights as an independent nation, and a laudable demonstration of the American will. Amidst all this enthusiasm, Monroe was elected to succeed Madison in 1816, winning every state except Connecticut, Delaware, and Massachusetts.

      Yet the “victory” in the War of 1812 ultimately brought discord within the Republican coalition. A growing nationalist faction within the party began pushing for an expansion of federal authority, beyond that which Jefferson had sanctioned. Leaders like Clay, Calhoun, and Quincy Adams—with the backing of Monroe (and, for the most part, Madison)—began to recognize the limits of strict Republicanism, and promoted a decidedly Hamiltonian program of protective tariffs to encourage American industry, a Second Bank to stabilize the nation’s finances, internal improvements to bind the country together, and an expanded military.¹⁷ Perhaps Monroe summarizes this Republican change of heart better than anybody:

      By the war we have acquired a character and rank among other nations which we did not enjoy before. We stand pledged to support this rank and character by the adoption of such measures as may evince on the part of the United States a firm resolution. We cannot go back. The spirit of the nation forbids it.¹⁸

      This is more than a little reminiscent of Hamilton’s call to national greatness in Federalist #11. Indeed, if the former secretary of the treasury had not been killed by Burr some twelve years earlier, he might have responded, “I told you so!”

      In that famous dinner conversation between Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton, the last expressed not only a level of comfort with corruption in government, but thought it integral to its proper function. As we noted in Chapter One, he declared of the British Constitution, “Purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, & it would become an impracticable government.”

      The Republicans of the 1810s and ’20s thought they could have a Hamiltonian-sized government without the corruption, but they were wrong. Though many historians have remembered the twenty or so years after the War of 1812 as the dawning of American nationalism, it also marked the rise of rampant political corruption, which reached such a level by Jackson’s second term that it challenged the very concept of the rule of law.¹⁹ This was the price that America had to pay for accepting a more expansive notion of government without insisting on institutional reforms.

      The most infamous example during this period came during the election of 1824. The story of the “corrupt bargain” between Clay and Quincy Adams has been told again and again. Clay, then the speaker of the House, had it in his power to decide who would be the next president, and after a private meeting chose Quincy Adams, who in turn named him secretary of state. While there is no direct evidence of a quid pro quo, the sequence of events rightly prompted nationwide outrage. Historian Harry Watson makes the point that an explicit bargain was not necessary for the outcome to be offensive: “to preserve their consciences in the expected proprieties of the day, the two men probably failed to state the bargain explicitly, but their gentlemen’s agreement had violated the standards of strict Republican morality.”²⁰ But that breach of the public trust had less to do with the growth of government than the decay of the first party system, about which we will have more to say in Chapter Three.

      Government growth nevertheless bred many innovative forms of perfidy, which unfortunately would become models for future generations of politicians on the make. Congress, unsurprisingly, had its fair share of scoundrels. The Republican embrace of internal improvements led to congressional logrolling (where legislators agree to support each other’s pet projects), such as with the omnibus rivers and harbors legislation of 1826.²¹ This meant in practice that Clay’s “American System”—a harmonization of sectional interests into a unified whole—achieved much less coherence than promised.²²

      Protective tariffs had a similar effect, facilitating regional payoffs and political corruption beyond what was previously possible. The most egregious example involved the aptly named “Tariff of Abominations” in 1828. Recognizing a growing national demand for a new protective tariff, Jackson’s allies in Congress sought to have it both ways. Jackson’s political base in the South did not want a new tariff, but the Mid-Atlantic swing states, especially Pennsylvania, desperately desired new protection; so Martin Van Buren and Silas Wright of New York and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania conspired to draft a tariff so extreme that (they thought) it would inevitably fail. Their tariff proposal layered gift upon gift for this industry and that sector of the economy, especially those situated in the Keystone State. Southern members of the House allowed the bill to pass through the lower chamber, believing that it would be struck down in the Senate, as it contained duties deemed too onerous for New England. But the Southerners miscalculated; after some amendments to make the tariff palatable to the Northeast, it passed through the Congress and was signed into law by President Quincy Adams. The Jacksonians reaped a huge political windfall and the Mid-Atlantic won an enormous economic payoff, but the southern economy suffered.²³

      Members of Congress not only played fast and loose with the legislature’s taxing and spending powers, СКАЧАТЬ