Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Certainly in a partisan sense, Madison could in fact declare victory. Military success enhances political careers, especially among those affiliated with the winning political party. That was certainly true for the War of 1812. Donald Hickey described the legacy of the War of 1812: “Four statesmen—James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry Harrison—were able to parlay their public service during the war into the presidency, and three others—Daniel D. Tompkins, John C. Calhoun, and Richard M. Johnson—were elevated to the vice-presidency.”48 Of these seven men, all but John Quincy Adams were Republicans during the war and Adams did not have strong party ties. In fact, Republican Henry Clay, upon failing in his own bid for the presidency, was instrumental in Adams’s selection as president in the House of Representatives. Adams, son of founding father John Adams, would become the sixth US president, in 1825.

Federalists might have expected to have done well electorally, given so few gains for so much treasure and lives expended. Yet, writes Madison biographer Richard Brookhiser, by “not losing, America had won. . . . Madison made a peace and called it victory, and the nation was so giddy from a combination of relief and pride that no one disputed him.”49 Federalists had borne the brunt of the war’s economic costs, but for their opposition to the war, they were labeled traitors.

What If?

JAMES MADISON, BY ALL APPEARANCES, ALLOWED THE YOUNG, RISING party leaders, men like Clay and Calhoun, to lead him by the nose rather than take responsibility for the war. We must ask: why? The answer is not hard to find. Rather than veto the war bill, Madison signed it, recognizing that it came amid discussion over who would be the Republican nominee for president in the 1812 election. As British representative Foster wrote to London, “The reason why there has been no nomination made in caucus yet, by the Democratic [that is, Republican, sometimes then referred to as Democrat and later as Democrat-Republican] members, of Mr. Madison as candidate for the Presidency is, as I am assured in confidence, because the war party have suspected him not to have been serious in his late hostile measures, and wish previously to ascertain his real sentiments. I have been endeavoring to put the Federalists upon insinuating that they will support him, if he will agree to give up the advocates for war.”50 Madison, of course, did not “give up the advocates for war” and he did receive his party’s nomination. As noted by Sidney Gray in his history of Madison: “Mr. Madison for years had opposed a war with England as unwise and useless,—unwise, because the United States was not in a condition to go to war with the greatest naval power in the world; and useless, because the end to be reached by war could be gained more certainly, and at infinitely less cost, by peaceful measures. The situation had not changed. . . . But the faction determined upon war must have at their command an administration to carry out that policy. Their choice was not limited to Madison for an available candidate. Whoever was nominated by the [Republicans for the 1812 presidential election] was sure to be chosen, and Madison had two formidable rivals . . . eager for war.”51

The Federalists recognized that the War Hawks had maneuvered Madison into supporting the war. Speaking in the debate over a bill to provide more resources for the invasion of Canada, introduced in December 1812, Federalist Josiah Quincy III of Massachusetts explicitly pointed to Madison’s motives:

The war was declared. Canada was invaded. We were in haste to plunge into these great difficulties, and we have now reason, as well as leisure enough, for regret and repentance. The great mistake of all those who reasoned concerning the war and the invasion of Canada, and concluded that it was impossible that either should be seriously intended, resulted from this, that they never took into consideration the connection of both those events with the great election for the chief magistracy which was then pending. It never was sufficiently considered by them that plunging into war with Great Britain was among the conditions on which the support for the Presidency was made dependent. They did not understand that an invasion of Canada was to be in truth only a mode of carrying on an electioneering campaign. But since events have explained political purposes there is no difficulty in seeing the connections between projects and interests. It is now apparent to the most mole-sighted how a nation may be disgraced, and yet a cabinet attain its desired honors. All is clear. A country may be ruined in making an Administration happy.52

Our line of reasoning follows Quincy’s conclusions, that the motivations for war too often are personal and not undertaken for the national good: “Let the American people receive this as an undoubted truth, which experience will verify. Whoever plants the American standard on the walls of Quebec conquers it for himself, and not for the people of the United States.”53

Madison had correctly diagnosed the pathology of leaders and the ease with which they place personal aggrandizement over the national good. As he had foreseen, he chose retention of the presidency as more important than preventing an unproductive war. Here we can ask what if this brilliant man had acted more courageously—as he had done through most of his career—by standing up to the War Hawks faction. We may well ask what might have happened had he followed his own advice when he noted, “The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”54

The War Hawk faction was but a small portion of the membership in the House of Representatives. The faction’s leaders, Clay and Calhoun, were new to the House and keen to build their reputations and power base. In fact, Henry Clay, to whom Madison deferred on the war issue, turned the position of speaker of the house into the powerful position it is today. Still, Madison, not Clay, was president. He could have thrown his backing somewhere between the Invisibles and the Clintonians. That would almost certainly have bolstered their political weight in the House and the Senate and diminished the War Hawks’ ability to muster sufficient support to declare war.

Had Madison acted on his instincts to avoid war, what might then have been the consequences? First, however unpleasantly the Indians were being treated, the territorial gains sought at their expense would surely have continued to go forward unfettered by concern for their welfare or for just treatment. Enough Indian leaders were willing to surrender large tracts of their lands at an easily met economic price offered by the US government, that the urge for war against them would have been diminished. With a more generous provision of funds and greater efforts to align with the Indians, it is certainly imaginable that the professional, friendly relations that George Washington experienced early in his career with Half-King might have been achieved much more widely and to everyone’s benefit, Indian and settler alike. With regard to Canada, Madison might have turned to Congress to allocate funds equal to a fraction of the eventual cost of the war with the purpose of making defection from Britain and alignment—even incorporation—with the United States more attractive. There were, after all, at the time only about 300,000 Europeans in Canada. The vinegar of war seems a much less productive way to gain their support than the sugar of enrichment. Special privileges and other private benefits are effective means of “buying” support when the number of people whose support is sought is rather small, as was the case in Canada.

The British, to be sure, were keen to retain control over Canada. Their interest, however, was primarily economic and not political. Negotiating continuation of their fur trading and other commercial interests on mutually acceptable terms might have been feasible and might have diminished the risk of war. Of course, it might have been the case, as was the experience of the United States in many of its dealings with Britain, that a negotiated agreement would have proven difficult to achieve. In the worst-case scenario, such an effort might have resulted in the US government’s abandoning its ambition to control Canada. Since after the heavy costs of the War of 1812 Canada remained British, not having fought to gain such control in the first place would have produced an equal outcome but without the loss of life and treasure. Thus, negotiation held open the possibility of attracting the Canadians to join the United States or, failing to do so, still would have left all parties better off than they were after bearing the costs of war.