numbers, of the impossibility of detaining them in service long enough to make their arms of the least imaginable use, direful experience has at length instructed nations, that when they are in danger, they are to be preserved from it by their real soldiers. These are made, not in a tailor's shop, by facing blue cloth with red or yellow, but by learning in the field that subordination of mind that will make men do, and insure their doing, all that men possibly can do. .

Is there a spirit in our people that would supply the want of it in our rulers? Our total unpreparedness, both by land and sea, to make even the show of resistance against an attack, is certainly not from the want of military means in the United States, but from a dread of the loss of popularity, if they should call them forth.

If a storm should sink, or a fire-ship burn the British navy, we should feel that gripe in a month; General Turreau would quietly exercise all the authorities at Washington. Considering how tamely we give up our millions, while that navy still renders America inaccessible to France, is any man alive so absurd as to suppose, that our subjugation to French despotism would cost the great nation a single flask of powder? Take away the British navy, or give it to France, and we free Americans, so valiant of tongue, toe up in our stalls as tamely as our oxen.

The most successful way to prevent our servi

tude, is faithfully to expose our dangers. So far as our fate may depend on our wisdom or our choice, it is proper to call the attention of our citizens to the fact, that Bonaparte, though he has done much, has done it in vain, unless he can do one thing more. Give him the British navy, and he will govern the United States as absolutely, and certainly with as little mercy, as if our territory were a French department, and actually lay between the Seine and the Loire. Let our scribblers then extol the long-foreseeing wisdom of the Jeffersonian administration. Let them boast of their devotedness to the cause of the people. The man, whose chief merit is grounded on his having penned the declaration of independence, has done more than any other man living to undo it. . . .

Being master of the sea, he could make large and frequent detachments from his camp to defenceless regions, which he would strip. To this, let it be added, the American army, if we should have an army, being concentred to some wellchosen mountainous place, would of course leave the cities a prey.

Thus, it cannot be doubted that he would have horses to remount his cavalry. Suppose a numerous French army, having two fifths of its force cavalry, with all the formidable thousands of light artillery that brought Austria and Prussia to his feet in a day. Would the Ameri

can militia face this army? Suppose they do not -then our cities, our whole coast, and all the open cultivated country are French. Would the millions on and near the coast take flight to the mountains? Could they subsist, or would they remain long unmolested there? Mountains, when no equal army was in the field, never did stop the soldiers of Bonaparte.

Let us come back, then, to our militia army, since we are obliged to see that the French would effectually conquer our country, if our army should not be able to check their rapid progress. Could we collect an army? On all the coast would be terror, busy concern to hide property, and to shelter women, helpless age, and infancy. The seaports would not only retain their own men, but call in those of the neighboring country to defend them. Probably they would ask an addition of troops from government. . . .

It is not denied, that with three years' preparation we could have an army; but we make no preparation; and unless we enlist our men, the parade of militia is a serious buffoonery.

But the French-experience has shown, that when they win battles, they decide the war. Myriads of cavalry press upon the fugitives, and in half a day the defence of a nation is captive or slain. Defeat is irremediable destruction.

Would our stone walls stop their horse? Then the pioneers would pull down those walls. Shoot

ing from behind fences would not stop an army; nor would our militia venture on a measure that would be fatal; the numerous and widely extended flanking parties would cut off all such adventurers to a man. No, Mr. Jefferson, do not lull your fears to sleep, do not aggravate our public dangers by a mistake of our situation. There are times, and the case of invasion would be a time, when the mistakes of our rulers could not be committed with impunity.

Hence we conclude, that if our militia army should fight a battle, they would lose it. They would inevitably lose it, and the loss of the battle would be the loss of the country. The French would hold the coast by their fleet, and the interior by their army. Be it remembered, too, Canada would be French, if Great Britain should be subdued, and the Floridas and Louisiana, though she should not. Where, then, would be the security of the mountains? Much dreadful experience and more dreadful fears would follow the conquest, till at length, like the rest of the world, we should enjoy the quiet of despair and the sleep of slavery. Popularity, as dear perhaps as liberty, will be sought no more; and we shall place our happiness, if slaves may talk of happiness, in the smiles, or, still better, in the neglect of a master.

Fisher Ames, Works (Boston, 1854), II. 289-317 passim.

CHAPTER XIV - JEFFERSONIAN DE

MOCRACY (1801-1807)

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, his political opponents looked upon him as the leader of an unpatriotic party and the great task of his administration was to prove that he and his friends had as lively a national spirit as anybody. His inaugural address (see p. 94) is one of the great documents of our history. Within two years he found himself compelled in behalf of the nation to take ground to prevent the transfer of Louisiana to France. The Federalists urged war, but he succeeded by the arts of diplomacy in obtaining not only the mouth of the Mississippi but the whole western Mississippi basin. This achievement alone would have marked him as one of the great American statesmen. He then proceeded to open up a land passage to Oregon by the expedition of Lewis and Clark, and thus laid the foundation for a later annexation of Oregon. The annexation of Louisiana doubled the western country, and prepared for the immense stretch of territory extending to the Pacific Ocean. After these two great successes, Jefferson was called upon to protect neutral rights and neutral trade complicated by the wholesale impressment of American citizens. Jefferson disliked war, favored cheap methods of preparedness, and relied upon an appeal to the self interest of the two belligerents, England and France. They were interlocked in a gigantic struggle, ignored American rights, and all but wrecked Jefferson's policy of neutrality.