New Chapter!
Chapter Eight: False Prophets
A Crisis of Faith
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Albert Gallatin (1809 – 1813): Pennsylvania, Republican
4th President of New England and Protector of Her Liberties
“Almost all the expenses of government, but especially that species which most usually engenders a public debt – namely, the expenses of war – are a destruction of the capital employed to defray them.”
— Albert Gallatin, from the 1796 A Sketch on the Finances of the United States
George Clinton had been elected on the promise of inaction, but Albert Gallatin wanted to be an active Republican President. His first prime objective was to reduce the National Debt, and he and his Treasurer Samuel Dexter set about slashing it with aplomb. He’d succeed in reducing the debt by a quarter, but Gallatin’s star started falling as soon as it rose to its apex. Gallatin pushed the
National Road Act and the
Indian Non-Intercourse Act through Congress his first year in office. Neither made him popular with his constituents. The Republican credo opposed federal spending on internal improvements, no matter how useful a road from the Eastern states to the interior may be. The
Indian Non-Intercourse Act was merely a new policy forbidding anyone but the federal government from making treaties and buying land from the Native Americans, but the party smelled the whiff of federalism on their new President. They criticized him for limiting the rights of citizens to buy and sell land for themselves, and for continuing the restrictive policies that left the country vulnerable in the war.
Gallatin’s actions in the Northwest Territory had mixed reactions on either side of the party line. His enlightened opinion won him few favors and continued to stoke his party’s distaste of the new President’s autonomy. Gallatin considered the Northwest Territory and the country’s relationship with the Native population essential to their survival. Without a strong hold of the territory, and even its expansion, Gallatin and many other Yankees feared New England could be surrounded and overrun by the Americans. He relaxed restrictions on immigration, land speculation in the Northwest, and encouraged settlers in the country’s hard-won Territory. This mollified New Englanders, but soured relations with his Native allies. Gallatin was a man in the mold of Henry Knox, who regarded the Native Americans as equal human beings with significant cunning of their own. Gallatin corresponded with two of the most important Indian leaders of the Northwest, Little Turtle and Black Hoof. Both had their mettle tested in Hamilton’s War, and the years holding back the American legions gave many soldiers an appreciation for the Natives of the Territory. Most people didn’t share Gallatin’s feelings on the matter, but they recognized that Native reinforcements were essential in stemming the tide of American boots. As he reorganized the Northwest Territories into smaller components, he contemplated its administration. This was the genesis of Gallatin’s planned masterstroke: the
Black Hoof Act.
Gallatin wanted to reorganize tribal lands into reservations on select strategic spots of the Ohio River. These reservations would be centered on cities like the one already growing in Prophetstown, led by the charismatic Tecumseh and his brother, the prophet Cornplanter. The reservations would be built with fortification in mind, a first line of defense against Southern invaders. The reasoning was that though the United States of America would surely overrun and enslave the natives, they could at least come away with something by striking a deal with New England. Gallatin figured that the Native Americans could supplement Federal forces just as they had in the past, and they’d defend their land just as fiercely. He’d hoped these fortified reservations would bloom into independent cities. Gallatin planned to let Native Americans sell their land to the federal government and relocate to these regions in exchange for New England citizenship. The reservations would be treated as entities autonomous from the Territorial Government but subject to Federal law and the Constitution, untaxed but unrepresented. It wasn’t a terrible plan, but it was doomed to failure.
The question of the decade finally arrived on his desk in 1811. With its 20 year Charter expired, the National Bank of New England was due for either renewal or death. The decision was in the President’s hands. With their man in office, the Republican party rubbed their hands together and licked their lips. Gallatin’s great disappointment hit them like a ton of bricks. In his time in office, Gallatin apparently rethought his strong opinions regarding the Bank’s destruction. His efforts to reduce the debt submerged him in economics, and he came to realize the virtues of a National Bank. Though his own party called it a Federal vice, Gallatin gave the Bank his seal of approval to go on another 20 years.
Almost overnight, Gallatin’s support evaporated. Former friends denounced him and his French accent alongside old enemies, and his presence became poison on the Senate floor. When word got out about Gallatin’s plans for the Black Hoof Act, Gallatin was sunk. Those who supported European settlement in the Northwest denounced the notion of giving such valuable land to what they saw as a bunch of savages. Bigots of all breeds little trusted the Native Americans, despite their service in the war. They feared that a gift of rights and fortifications was like allowing a Trojan Horse to breach the gates. Most Native Americans also opposed both relocating and becoming subjects to the Federal government. Tecumseh turned his discontent into action and led the infamous
Tecumseh’s Rebellion in the latter days of 1811.
A painting of Tecumseh's rebels desperate to retain their land and liberties.
Those who supported Little Turtle, Black Hoof, and an accord with New England fought with those who opposed appeasement under Tecumseh and the Prophet’s banner. Without significant outside support, Tecumseh largely fought a guerilla war, but the federal government and allied tribes crushed the rebellion. The reservations that followed would shame Gallatin’s high ideals, though they’d pale in comparison to American reservations and Andrew Jackson’s savagery.
After the Rebellion’s end, Gallatin served in reclusion. He didn’t bother seeking a 2nd term he knew would only end in more spitting vitriol. He spent his last year refocused on the debt. The Republicans and Tammany Hall still held a monopoly over the party system, but hairline cracks were beginning to show in its clay feet. The party was splitting between those with their hands in Tammany Hall and those who sought to create power centers of their own. The Federalists had been broken after the Fall of Hamilton, but they were in the fetal stages of their rebirth into the Whigs. The Clintons had opposed Burr’s political machine until necessity demanded they band together. Now George Clinton and Aaron Burr were dead and Alexander Hamilton was rotting in house arrest. Dewitt Clinton took up the torch of opposition within the Republican Party. He rallied moderate Republicans who saw Gallatin’s failure but recognized the worth of internal improvements like the Erie Canal. He had many detractors from the hardline of his party, but it seemed that the Republican dream of government in miniscule could not take root in New England’s soil. Dewitt Clinton won enough support from all sides of the political spectrum to defeat his opponents and boot Gallatin from office.
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James Madison (1805 – 1817): Virginia, Republican
3rd President of the United States of America
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
— James Madison, from his 1795 Political Observations
James Madison inherited a country fresh from defeat and poised for greatness. The United States lost the Northwest Territories, but gained an even greater prize from Napoleon. The vast
Louisiana Territory more than doubled the size of the country. Now they just had to manage it. Madison was by this point a political moderate. He started in the Federalist camp after the Revolution, but his friendship with Hamilton shattered with the failed First Philadelphia Convention. As a key figure in Jefferson and Greene's administration, he embraced their ideas of decentralization, but the late war proved to him that national institutions and some central power was necessary to safeguard the country against its enemies.
The American party system was still emerging when Madison took office. Jefferson and Greene both ran under the wide umbrella of the Democratic-Republicans, but two distinct factions emerged from the war. The Democrats hewed to the traditional ideas of states’ rights and minimal government. Others, like Madison, felt that the nation needed to change somewhat if it wanted to survive. They gathered as the Republicans. The American parties were still in fetal stages, nowhere near as structured as the various political organs in New England. The need for subterfuge under the Sedition Acts forged New England's Tammany Hall Republicans, and Hamilton's Society of the Cincinnati, now stripped of its extra-legal powers, provided both a warning and a model for future political organization. Though the American Republicans could not approach the level of organization that Yankee parties had developed by necessity, they were far more organized than their rival Democrats, and Madison swept the elections. His patriotic service to the prior administrations made him difficult to critique. Even the Democrats who opposed him had difficulty smearing him without smearing themselves.
Madison ran on the promise to build a new American system without destroying old liberties and old traditions. His administration snapped into action soon after his inauguration in late 1805. Madison commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the vast new territories to the West while The House of Representatives drafted the first successful tariff in the country's history. Many Americans were opposed to tariffs on principle before the war, but the need to protect American markets from being flooded by cheaper Yankee and British products made protectionism popular in the wake of the war. The Tariff of 1806 was received with surprising support, but Madison's chief goal was the establishment of a National Bank. Though the Republicans across the border were dead-set on killing their own Bank, Madison's Republicans hoped it would bring them closer to parity with their neighbor. The
First National Bank of the United States was founded in 1807, housed in Richmond, the country's capital. Some Americans still opposed it, especially the Democrats, but they were still a distinct minority. Most welcomed the touch of stability.
The power of the New England Navy was fresh in American minds. They remembered how Hamilton’s frigates seized the Chesapeake as soon as the French threat was gone, how the Yankees nearly swallowed the peninsula whole. Madison and his party were determined not to be bested again so easily. The House passed the
Naval Reform Act of 1808, allocating certain funds gathered from the tariff and the bank to the regeneration of the American Navy. Their coast guard was no match for Yankee’s dozen frigates, each one stuffed to the brim with cannons. The American Navy was both outnumbered and outgunned during the war. Two of its frigates, the
USS Columbia and the
USS Revolution, were sunk in the latter years of the war, and worse yet, the
USS Washington was captured by the Yankees. Only the
USS Republican remained, battered but alive. The Naval Reform Act, often called the “Great Naval Reform Act,” approved repairs on the damaged coast guard and poor
USS Republican, but also commissioned the creation of eight new frigates, armed to the teeth just like their sister’s ships. This act above all others in his first term won the approval of the public. The ships already being built in harbors throughout the states stood as a symbol of the country’s triumphant rise.
He won the next election by an even greater margin than before and promised to continue his wave of reforms. Madison masterminded the
Militia Reformation Act, passed by the House in late 1810. Greene’s administration passed the Militia Reorganization Act of 1797 in the same vein, but it was a rush job full of half-measures, a desperate scramble to prepare for imminent war. Years of planning and hard-won experience informed Madison’s Reformation Act. It brought the militia back up to modern standards and expanded its numbers while providing greater support for the training of volunteers. The American people would still balk at a standing army. The President himself promised to,
James Madison said:
“Keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics — that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.”
Still, the military of the United States expanded to new heights, and the Yankees on the other side of the Ohio were glad to live in an Era of Good Feelings. The rose-colored glasses only seemed to slip for a moment with the
German Coast Uprising of 1811. According to reports, hundreds of slaves passed through the newborn Orleans Territory like a hurricane. They gathered new slaves as they traveled from plantation to plantation, burning each one to the ground. As they approached the territorial capital at New Orleans, the mass chanted a familiar motto: “Freedom or Death!” The white men of the territory formed militias to root them out, but it took weeks to round them all up. The slaves chose to fight for their liberty, but they were repaid with far more cruelty than my own freedom-seeking ancestors. Many insurgents were decapitated throughout the search, their heads placed on pikes to strike fear in the hearts of those few that remained free. Pre-existing slave codes were tightened and those states and territories that did not have a slave code adopted one. Soon after the Uprising, slaves were more restricted in their movements and in their actions than ever. In 1812, the Territory of Orleans joined the union as the State of Louisiana, the first State carved out from the Louisiana Purchase. Madison ran for a 3rd term in 1813, and his astonishing successes made him difficult to contest.
The Creek Wars began shortly before the election. The conflict began as a war between factions among the Creeks, but Madison sprung at the chance to expand American territory in the Southeast. The Red Stick faction battling the United States was supported by Spanish and British interests, but they were no match for the reinvigorated American armies. General Andrew Jackson seized massive amounts of territory even from the allied Creek and won glory throughout the country.
The Napoleonic Wars finally came to a close in 1815 and the world began to settle. The House passed the
Tariff of 1816 to further protect American industry from the new influx of British goods. That was the Year Without Summer, a climate crisis that caused famine throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Three terms was enough for Madison. He doubted the public would support a 4th term, and he felt assured of the country’s future. He endorsed his Secretary of State and Jefferson’s great pupil, James Monroe, to succeed him as leader of the Republican Party. In the latter days of his presidency, a number of politicians in the party championed a
Bonus Bill that would allow the federal government to allocate “bonus” federal funds to internal improvements. The Bill was championed by up-and-comer Representative Calhoun from South Carolina, and nearly passed through the House, but Madison vetoed the bill. Even after years of creating national institutions and revising the system Jefferson had put in place, he still shared Jefferson’s strict constitutionalism. As much as Madison favored internal improvements, roads and canals to connect and protect the states, he held that the constitution had not granted the federal government such powers. In 1817, James Monroe became the next Republican President of the United States. Even then, many Americans felt Madison would be remembered as his country’s greatest President, and Monroe’s future in the office seemed bright. Madison’s reputation would hold out, but Monroe would not be so lucky. Cracks were already beginning to show in the new order of the continent, and the Era of Good Feelings was already fading away. The twin sisters trampled on the weak, shackled slaves and conquered natives, to fortify each one against the other. Even at peace, they prepared for war, and preparation can give prophecy the power to fulfill itself. We all strive to be the masters of our own destinies, but in trying to control the world, we become slaves to our own devices.
Ezekiel 22:25 and 22:29 said:
“There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows…the people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.”