Is letting the government shut down going to get politicians
in trouble?
That’s the fond hope of Democrats watching the Tea Party-powered
Obamacare tantrum in Congress.
Maybe. Maybe not.
During the War of 1812, the Madison administration let the
whole capital get burned down and suffered minimal political damage.
Instead, it was the hapless Federalists, who were right
about the wrongness of the war, who were destroyed as a meaningful political
force.
Modern historians seem to be at a bit of a loss as to what
the War of 1812 was about. Nominally,
the war was about British maritime affronts—seizure of American merchant ships
and impressment of sailors off American ships—relating to Great Britain’s
global economic and military maneuverings against France during the Napoleonic
Wars.
Actually, the Madison administration had been engaged in
continual negotiations with Britain over these issues and, just before the US
declared war, the British withdrew the noxious “Orders in Council” that had
permitted its navy to feast on neutral US merchant shipping. Even as the war continued, so did trade, with
the British military machine in Europe hungry for supplies served by American
merchants (largely, but not solely from New England) hungry for profit.
The actual bottom line was that there was an eager war party—the
so-called “war hawks”—of the US western states, who made common cause with the
pro-French and Anglophobic Virginia faction controlling the federal
administration to stick it to John Bull.
Pro-British, pro-trade Federalists—concentrated in New
England--vocally opposed the war, and pointed out its logical, strategic, and
fiscal flaws. More significantly, they
viewed the war as a Republican political charade and refused to knuckle under to
the “rally around the flag” rhetoric.
Federalists criticized the conduct of the war, dragged their feet in
implementing measures relating to mobilizing and dispatching New England
militias out of state, and convened the “Hartford Convention” in 1814 to coordinate
New England’s pushback to the Madison administration and strive for a New
England voice—preferably a New England minority veto—in national affairs.
The war was largely a ridiculous screw-up. The greatest victory of US arms, the Battle
of New Orleans, famously occurred after the peace treaty had already been
negotiated in Ghent.
Ruinously expensive bounties (cash bonuses equivalent to a
workingman’s annual salary and grants of 160 acres of land) had to be offered
to fill the ranks with relatively unenthusiastic soldiers. Initially, the US Army was terribly led and
it was not until 1814 that US land forces gave a good account of themselves in
some remarkably fierce but strategically inconclusive engagements along the
US-Canada border. Notably, the
successful new commanders, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Harrison—both of whom subsequently
rode their military successes into the White House—had demonstrated their
leadership abilities and honed their skills during prior campaigns against the
Indians. (To me this demonstrates the
old truism of the US military: that over the last two centuries, the
effectiveness and credibility of US military might has relied to a certain
extent on the continual presence of convenient, feisty, but underpowered
enemies that can be beaten up at close and regular intervals to keep the
military muscle well toned and ready for The Big One.)
The Madison administration decided that escalation and
mission creep were the panaceas for the military and political problems of the
war, mounting “we will be welcomed as liberators” military campaigns against
Canada that opened the Republicans up to extremely well-founded Federalist
accusations that the war was not, as sold, a defensive war, but an
opportunistic venture in partisan politics and empire building.
In the event, the Republican hope that Napoleon would kick
England’s ass and drop Canada in the lap of the United States was
disappointed. Instead, 1813 saw a flood
of British ships and troops (freed up by Napoleon’s defeat) to North America,
driving the US government to consider conscription—regarded as the hallmark of
Napoleonic tyranny—to get enough troops into the field. The Madison administration was also compelled
to make large investments in the US Navy to challenge British control of the seas,
abandoning the Jeffersonian ideal of small coastal vessels in favor of a big, capable,
and effective Hamiltonian fleet of frigates.
The Madison administration had taken on disastrous levels of
debt in order to fund the war, whose duration and expense it had completely
underestimated.
An excellent account by Donald Hickey, The War of 1812—A Forgotten Conflict, provides this description of
the state of affairs in early 1815:
“[The Secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Dallas] sent two additional reports to Congress. The first…outlined the Treasury’s problems in
paying the national debt. The second…contained
Dallas’s estimates for 1815.
Disbursements for the year were expected to top $56,000,000 (including
$15,500,000 merely to service the debt), while income—even with new taxes—would
be a paltry $15,100,00. This meant that
the government would have to raise $40,900,000 through loans and treasury
notes.
…Republicans were dumbfounded…After
reading the report, [Speaker of the House John] Eppes ‘threw it upon the table
with expressive violence’ and, turning to Federalist William Gaston, half in
jest said: ‘Well, sir, will your party take the Government if we will give it
up to them?” “No, sir,” replied Gaston, “not
unless you will give it to us as we
gave it to you.” [page 247]
Thomas Jefferson offered his solution, issuing paper money,
and told Madison: “[O]ur experience…has proved [paper money] may be run up to
2. Or 300 M[illion] without more than doubling…prices.”[246] Considering that at the time US treasury
securities was selling—not trading, but selling, straight out of the gate—at a
20% discount, the Sage of Monticello’s optimism seems misplaced.
Of course, as a debtor of long standing, Jefferson was well
attuned to the inflation-loving attitude of the debt-loving (and bank-hating)
Republican base, and hostile to the hard discipline of the financial markets and
sound money championed by the Federalists.
Jefferson himself was something of a feckless amateur in
economic affairs, personal as well as national, as this account of his
indifferent management of his personal presidential finances reveals:
As he prepared to leave office,
Jefferson was shocked to learn that by trusting “rough estimates in my head,”
he had exceeded his salary by three to four months, which meant he had a debt
of about $10,000 that had to be covered.
After the Library of Congress got torched by the British in
1814, Jefferson’s protégé, President Madison, thoughtfully replenished the
nation’s strategic supply of books by purchasing Jefferson’s library for the
sum of $23,950. The Federalists, of
course, were not interested in this piece of Republican self-dealing—especially
since Jefferson had promised to donate his books to the nation at his demise at
no charge and the nation perhaps had more pressing priorities than restocking
the library. One Federalist spluttered that
Jefferson’s books would help disseminate his “infidel philosophy” and were
“good, bad, and indifferent...in languages which many can not read, and most
ought not.” The measure passed narrowly,
along partisan lines.
The Library of Congress windfall might have assisted
Jefferson in some of his temporary financial embarrassments (he immediately
used the proceeds to pay off $15,000 in debts), but did not spare him the
misery of dying in debt (after a dodgy scheme to maximize revenue from some
property by awarding it as a prize in a state-sanctioned raffle fell through),
leaving his heirs to liquidate his estate and sell off his real estate, art, chattels,
and slave holdings to partially settle accounts.
Anyway, back to the War of 1812.
In the end, the Republicans were forced to resort to that
despised instrument of the Federalists, chartering a national bank to make
sure, at the most vulgar level, that there was some bank out there that would
have no choice but to buy government securities.
The Madison administration also botched the defense of the
capitol—the panic-stricken encounter at Bladensburg, Virginia, was mockingly
called “The Bladensburg Races” for the dearth of US valor displayed—and in August
1814 the British marched into Washington and burned the key edifices of the
city to the ground.
Good lefties will recall that it was a distant ancestor of
the late and lamented Alexander Cockburn, one Sir Admiral George Cockburn, who
burned Washington. Alexander Cockburn’s
brother, the journalist Patrick Cockburn, provided an appreciation of his
ancestor and his handiwork to the Independent in 2012.
Mr. Hickey provides a helpful guide to the proper
pronunciation (“Co-burn”) and remarks: “Cockburn was a bold and able officer in
the prime of a long and distinguished naval career.” [153]
Contemporary
US opinion cared to differ, especially after his forces laid waste to the
Chesapeake region unopposed for 12 days in April 1813: “’Cockburn’s name was on
every tongue, with various particulars of his incredibly coarse and blackguard
misconduct.” At the fall of Washington, Cockburn refreshed himself at the White House with the supper that
President Madison had hurriedly abandoned, and then put the building to the
torch. British forces also fired the
Capitol, the Treasury, and the building housing the state and war departments.
The Admiral displayed the trademark Cockburnian
combativeness when dealing with his adversaries in the press.
According to Wikipedia:
The day after the destruction of
the White House, Rear Admiral Cockburn entered the building of the D.C.
newspaper, the National Intelligencer [a quasi-governmental newspaper that handled the British very roughly],
intending to burn it down. However, several women persuaded him not to because
they were afraid the fire would spread to their neighboring houses. Cockburn
wanted to destroy the newspaper because its reporters had written so negatively
about him, branding him as "The Ruffian." Instead, he ordered his
troops to tear the building down brick by brick, ordering all the "C"
type destroyed "so that the rascals can have no further means of abusing
my name".
Once the National Intelligencer
replenished its supply of “C” type, it resumed publication and sniffed that Cockburn
acted “quite the mountebank, exhibiting…a gross levity of manner, displaying
sundry articles of trifling value of which he had robbed the president’s house”
and berating the absent editors “with much of the peculiar slang of the Common
Sewer.” [199]
Admiral Cockburn was apparently not haunted by remorse over
the burning of the American capital. The
formal portrait of Cockburn painted circa 1817 by John James Hall shows him
posed triumphantly before the flaming ruins of Washington. The painting resides at that shrine of
British naval derring do, the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
The War of 1812 was by no stretch of the imagination an
American victory. The peace settlement
simply returned conditions to the antebellum status quo. The United States, while perfecting its
world-class army and navy (and preparing it for non-stop exercise in the wars
of expansion to come and, of course, the Civil War), was near bankruptcy and
had its capital burned down.
But there was intense national pride (and, I expect, relief)
that the US had fought Great Britain to a draw. Federalists ended up taking a
public relations beating for their lack of war enthusiasm, the Hartford
Convention was rather unfairly labeled as a treasonous convocation, and
Federalism retreated from the national stage to become a sectional affectation
of the New England rump.
Jeffersonians touted the War of 1812 as “America’s Second
War of Independence.” This ridiculous
and self-serving formulation, reflecting a desire to cut New England—Federalist
vanguard of the somewhat more authentic first revolution—down to size and
inflate Jeffersonian pretensions, is in some ways completely correct.
The War of 1812 declared the independence of the rest of the
United States from Federalist preoccupation with international commerce,
prudent fiscal policy, and careful accommodation with Great Britain. In fact, by fighting a botched war about
British maritime issues markedly remote from the Republicans’ continental,
agricultural, and expansionist interests but dear to the hearts, pocketbooks,
and power of the Federalists, the Jeffersonians and the war hawks casually
trampled upon existential Federalist priorities, counsel, and opposition, and demonstrated
the utterly peripheral and disposable character of Federalist interest in the
national discourse.
The war was the event that confirmed that a hell for leather
dash for a continental empire (and into civil war) would drive American
politics for the next decades.
Federalists would be passengers on this juggernaut, not the driver.
The war also affirmed a uniquely American brand of impunity:
the reality that, on top of democracy and economic freedom, a miraculous
combination of geographic distance, vast resource wealth, military capability, virulent
nationalism, a youthful and rapidly increasing population, growing commercial
and financial heft, and lucky accidents in Europe (such as the global supremacy
of America’s primary trading partner, Great Britain) made it possible for the
United States to start and then survive a totally screwed up war.
In other words, the War of 1812 can be seen as the birth of
American exceptionalism, especially if one defines “exceptionalism” as “exceptional
national resilience that not even exceptional stupidity can overcome”.
In fact, the greater the stupidity, the more awesome the
resilience, and the greater the victory!
I see the same defiance—defiance of expert opinion, defiance
of consequences, the fundamental defiance of the idea that genuine limits
exist--in Republican Tea Party flirting with government shutdown and default
over Obamacare.
It will be interesting to see who reaps the political
benefits—and who reaps the whirlwind—in this confrontation.
