Hugh Blair Grigsby - Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell

H >> Hugh Blair Grigsby >> Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell

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But this flattering prospect was soon to be overcast. England and France
had long been at war; and, at the period of which we are treating,
France had become the ruthless bandit of the land, and England the
wanton pirate of the sea. Each desired the cooperation of the United
States in the war--and each determined, in the event of our refusal to
take part in the controversy in its favor, to cripple our commerce by
all means within its reach. That commerce, fostered by our accidental
position as neutrals when the two great commercial nations of the world
were at war, had reached a marvellous height. Its keels vexed every sea.
Its flag was now seen in the frozen circles; and now it reflected from
its waving folds the fervors of the southern cross. Our merchants,
springing, as it were, in a single night from the station of ordinary
dealers and dependents on foreign countries to that of arbiters and
rulers of the commerce of the globe, were equal to their new position;
and our sailors, responsive to their will, gathered with their Briarean
arms the wealth of every realm. Foreign statesmen in the recesses of the
cabinet, and economists in the closet, beheld with amazement the rapid
growth of our marine. They saw a nation, which had not then attained its
seventeenth year, enjoying a commerce which nearly equalled in tonnage
that which England had been gradually forming from the date of the
Norman Conquest to that hour--a period of near eight hundred years. At
such an epoch a strict neutrality in respect of the contending powers
was the dictate alike of duty and interest. But such a policy was
distasteful to England and France; and the result was the issuing of his
successive decrees by Napoleon from Berlin and Milan, and the
promulgation of the successive British orders in council. These
iniquitous measures, the last mentioned of which, the British orders in
council, have been since pronounced illegal by the courts of England
herself, declared our ships with their cargoes forfeitable to England if
they touched a French port, and to France if they touched a port in
England or her dependencies.

In such a conjuncture opinions might well differ in respect of the
proper means of redress. The administration of Jefferson sought it by
long, able, and most urgent appeals to the sense of justice of the
contending parties, but sought in vain. When mere diplomacy, though
managed by the consummate ability and adroitness of William Pinkney at
the court of St. James, and by our ablest men fit the court of Napoleon,
proved fruitless, the administration, at the earnest solicitation of its
representatives at the hostile courts, determined to sustain our
diplomatic action by such legislative measures as were likely to reach
the interests of the contending powers. Non-intercourse and the embargo,
which kept our ships in port, followed; and the administration, still
pressing upon the belligerents the injustice and impolicy of their
conduct, awaited the effect of their restrictive policy. Meantime its
opponents were neither idle nor silent; and one long, universal cry rose
from all the commercial cities. Their ships, the merchants said, were
rotting at the wharf; if kept at home, they would soon become worthless;
if sent to sea, they could but be taken. It was urged by the merchants
that, even if England and France sequestered a number of their ships,
still the profits earned by such as might escape confiscation would
cover their losses on their investments. An able minority in Congress
sustained the views held by the mercantile interest; but a large
majority of both Houses of Congress, and of the people, approved the
policy of the administration.

At this eventful moment a new political party, consisting almost wholly
of Southern men, sprung into being. What added to its importance was,
that, though ridiculously small in respect of the numbers who composed
it, the members possessed great parliamentary eloquence and tact, and
had previously been regarded as among the firmest friends of the
administration. Its numbers were indeed so small both in Congress and
out of it, as to exercise no weight in the call of the ayes and noes, or
at the polls; but its members mingled in every debate, wrote plausible
essays in the papers, and used all justifiable means as well as some
that were questionable, in attaining their ends. Of this party, Mr.
Tazewell, though never a member, and only a casual coadjutor, was
considered to belong; but there was no evidence to show that he approved
the vile scheme of its leaders of embroiling the country in a war with
Spain. On the contrary, he held that the true remedy of existing
grievances in the first instance was an immediate declaration of war
against both belligerents, which, now that the curtain is lifted, we see
was the true remedy of the hour; but that, if from prudence a
declaration of war was withheld, it was unwise, by a total cessation of
our most gainful commerce, to inflict upon our own people all the
injuries which war would produce without any of the advantages that
might accrue from a successful prosecution of hostilities; that the
commercial regulations of England and France, though bearing
disastrously on us, were chiefly designed to injure each other during
actual war; and that, being war measures, they would determine on a
restoration of peace, when we could obtain from the respective powers
full redress for all our grievances.

He accordingly opposed the election of Mr. Madison to the presidency,
whom he regarded as the impersonation of the restrictive policy which he
had defended in his diplomatic writings, and from the press; and which
was deemed the pledge of its continuance; and, in the spring of 1809,
voted for the federal candidate for Congress, in opposition to Newton,
who, though coming from a sea-port, had gallantly upheld the commercial
policy of Jefferson, and who was returned by a decisive majority.

That epoch was the most mortifying in the annals of our country; and
posterity must decide whether any action of ours could have averted the
difficulty, and on whose shoulders the responsibility shall rest. When I
reflect upon the incidents of that day; when I recount the millions of
American capital sacrificed by the remorseless rapacity of England and
France; when I call up from their graves the hundreds and thousands of
American sailors, the sons of the men who had fought at Bunker Hill, who
had led the forlorn hope at Stony Point, who had bled on the sweltering
field of Eutaw, and who had stormed the outworks at York; when I reflect
that such men were forcibly taken from their ships, and were compelled
to fight the battles of England, to be doomed to the prison-ship, or to
be scourged by the lash, and that not one dollar of those pilfered
millions has yet been paid by one of the belligerents; and that all
those injuries are yet unavenged;--passions, which I fondly hoped had
long been quenched in my bosom, flame once more; and I am led to cherish
with still deeper affection that Federal Union which will enable us
henceforth to right such wrongs even though attempted by the combined
navies of the world.

The same reasons which induced Mr. Tazewell to oppose the restrictive
policy of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, led him
necessarily to oppose the war of 1812 with Great Britain. He believed
that, if a declaration of war had been expedient at any period of the
commercial difficulties with England and France, the proper time for
declaring it was when the offence was given, and when our commerce was
at the height, and our ability to sustain hostilities was proportionally
greater; that the administration, having waived the opportunity of
making a declaration in the first instance, and deliberately adopted the
policy of diplomacy and of commercial regulation as the proper means of
relief, our resources meantime having become crippled and our revenue
almost annihilated, it was bound to adhere to it during the existing
crisis; that the long and expensive war had impaired the resources of
England and France, who would soon be compelled from mere exhaustion to
make peace, and with the restoration of peace our difficulties would
necessarily terminate, and we might demand redress for the grievances
which we had sustained at their hands; that a declaration of war with
England would be substantially, as it turned out to be, a receipt in
full for our enormous commercial losses caused by her orders in council,
which losses must then be assumed by our own government, or fall on the
merchants, who would be crushed by their weight; that peace among the
belligerents might happen at any moment, while a war with one of them
would certainly involve a large expenditure of blood and money, and
might continue at the pleasure of the belligerent long after a general
pacification in Europe; and that, if war was to be waged as a measure of
redress for our violated rights, as both belligerents were equally
guilty, it should be declared against both.

In weighing the reasons on which any measure of public policy is
founded, we must always refer to the time when the deed was done and to
the position of the actors. At the present day, looking at the results
which are believed to have flowed from the war of 1812, and especially
our victories on the sea, we are inclined to blame those who opposed its
declaration, and extol the wisdom and gallantry of those who approved
it. This test, however, is neither philosophical nor just; and, as a
proof of the soundness of Mr. Tazewell's opinions, or that at least they
were not taken up, as has been alleged, from hostility to a democratic
administration, we may state the fact that Madison himself, of whose
administration the war shines as the crowning honor, was, like his
predecessor in the presidency, opposed originally to its declaration;
but was overruled or over-persuaded by the able and gallant young men
whose eloquence carried that measure through Congress; and it should
ever be remembered that, if the declaration had been postponed a few
weeks, the repeal of the British orders in council would have rendered
it unnecessary; and the thousands of precious lives and the millions of
treasure which it cost would have been saved to the country.

If war, with all its possible compensations, be at all times a dangerous
and uncertain measure--if all the treasures and glories which human
hands can hold, and the imaginations of men may compute, in the
estimation of the true patriot as well as the true Christian, sink into
dust, when compared with the unnecessary and wanton sacrifice of the
life of the humblest citizen of the Republic--if the war with England
cost millions of wealth, and the shedding of the blood of tens of
thousands of our fellow-men,--then it is something to say that, if the
policy of Tazewell had been pursued for a few weeks--a policy which, so
far as war was concerned, had been, up to its declaration, the
deliberate policy of Jefferson and Madison--that war which had been
postponed to the dawn of the pacification in Europe, would not have
occurred.

The question for posterity to decide is, not whether, if we judge by
results, Tazewell was right or wrong--a mode of judging too fallacious
and too dangerous in human affairs, and subjecting the responsibility of
human actors to too fearful a test,--but which, even if applied to the
course of Mr. Tazewell, would confirm, beyond question, the wisdom of
the policy which he advised at the time; but the question is, whether
his policy was not such as a great statesman, intent solely upon the
welfare of his country, might not have pursued, not only without
impairing the public confidence in his patriotism, integrity, and
attachment to the cardinal principles of his political faith, but such
as, even with the facts then before him, reflected high credit upon his
sagacity and courage.

But whatever were his views about the policy of declaring war at any
particular time, no sooner was war declared than he gave it a cordial
support. In concert with the administration, and in connection with his
friend and associate, Gen. Taylor, to whom was assigned the command of
the forces at Norfolk, he exerted all his powers to put our port in a
posture of defence. He hailed, especially, our victories on the sea with
enthusiastic applause, and ever rejoiced that the treaty of Ghent was
preceded, at least in this country, by the glorious Eighth of January.

To confirm the remark that Mr. Tazewell, though opposed to the
restrictive policy of Jefferson, was still friendly to that statesman,
and was unwilling to be considered hostile to him, I may recall to the
recollection of my elder hearers an incident which created much
amusement when it occurred. It appears that, in the winter of 1807, when
Tazewell had been sent to the Assembly to attend to some local interests
of Norfolk, a caucus of the republican members had been called in
Richmond with a view of denouncing those who opposed the restrictive
policy as deserters from the party. When the night of the caucus
arrived, Tazewell, who was confined to his bed by sickness, heard of the
gathering for the first time. Ill as he was, he hastened to the place of
meeting, and, with his head bound with napkins, and in haggard attire,
made his appearance in the middle of the caucus. The clever young men
who then managed the machinery of the party were struck dumb by his
presence as by that of an apparition. Then Tazewell spoke. He reasoned
upon the impolicy of forcing a third party into existence, when, while
he was speaking, the winds might bear over the waters the revocation of
the British orders and the French decrees, and all would be well. He
showed that, while he disapproved a single measure of the
administration, he heartily approved its general policy, and the
constitutional doctrines which composed its faith. There was no reply.
The meeting dispersed, and my democratic friends have ever since been
cautious how they undertook to read clever fellows out of the party.

In 1807 occurred one of those painful incidents which roused the people
of that day to madness--which fills the heart, even at this late day,
with pain and sadness, but which has such a connection with Mr.
Tazewell, that I, a Norfolk man, addressing Norfolk men, cannot pass it
by in silence. On the early morn of the 22d of June, a frigate, built by
your own mechanics, in sight of your city, baptized in the waters of
your own Elizabeth, bearing the name of your own noble bay, and under
the command of as gallant a Virginian as ever trod a deck, lifting her
anchor in the Roads, put out to sea on the errand of her country. On the
following day, unsuspecting of danger, she was attacked by the British
frigate Leopard, and became her prize. The commander of the Leopard,
when he had taken from the Chesapeake certain men whom he alleged were
deserters from the British flag, declined to take further possession of
the captured frigate, which returned to the Roads. Three of our men were
killed, and sixteen wounded, during the attack. These wounded men were
brought to the marine hospital, and received every possible attention.
One of them died, and was buried with all the solemnities of public
sorrow.

When the fatal tidings were known, there arose a piercing shriek of
agony and grief, followed presently by the low, touching wail from the
stricken heart of the nation. And then, the louder and the longer for
the delay, came the cry for vengeance, which burst from the lips of a
whole people. The promptness and dispatch with which the British frigate
acted indicated deliberate design; and the suspicion instantly flashed
across the public mind that the consular authorities of England in our
port were privy to its execution. The outbreak in Norfolk was terrible.
Had Col. Hamilton, the consul, not been long and intimately known and
loved by the people, he would have been taken from his house and
gibbeted on the square, as an expiation of the blood of our countrymen,
wantonly shed, in a time of peace, by a British captain. An unfortunate
British officer, who came up from one of the four frigates in the bay,
had well-nigh been torn in pieces by the infuriated people. In such a
conjuncture the ordinary forms of government were overlooked, and the
citizens in full assembly, the venerable Mathews in the chair,
appointed, as in the days of the Revolution, a Committee of Safety. A
preamble, setting forth in becoming terms the outrage on the Chesapeake,
was adopted, and it was resolved that there should be no intercourse
with the British frigates in our waters, or with their agents, until the
decision of the federal government was known, under the penalty of being
deemed infamous; and the Committee of Safety, consisting of fourteen of
our most worthy citizens, some of whose descendants are now within the
sound of my voice, were authorized to take such measures as the
emergency demanded.[6]

As soon as Commodore Douglas read the resolves of the Norfolk meeting,
he addressed an insolent note to the mayor of the borough, in which he
declared that if the resolutions were not _instantly annulled_, he would
prohibit every vessel bound in or out of Norfolk from proceeding to her
place of destination. This letter was written on board the Bellona
frigate, on the third of July. "You are aware," said this haughty
Briton, "that the British flag never has, nor ever will be insulted
with impunity." After some further remarks, he adds: "It therefore rests
with the inhabitants of Norfolk either to engage in a war, or remain on
terms of peace." And he closed his letter by saying that he had
proceeded with his squadron, which consisted of four fifty-gun frigates,
to Hampton Roads, to await the answer of the mayor of Norfolk, which he
hoped would be forwarded without delay.

It is in this stage of the proceedings, which he probably regulated from
the first, that I shall introduce Mr. Tazewell to your notice. No
community was ever placed in a more delicate dilemma. The stoppage of
our commerce would produce great inconvenience, and there was no force
which the federal government could command at all competent to raise the
embargo; and at any moment blood might be shed. The people, meantime,
were in a tempest of rage. I have heard, from men who saw those times,
that, if the British commodore had put his threat in execution--if, in
so doing, as would have been inevitable, he had taken another human
life, or shed another drop of American blood, not only would war have
followed, but something worse than war, which, even at this distance of
time, we tremble to contemplate. The blood of innocent Englishmen would
have been shed everywhere as a propitiation to the manes of our murdered
countrymen. Under these circumstances Tazewell dictated the celebrated
letter of the mayor of Norfolk, which was admired over the whole
country, not only for its spirit, but for the admirable tact with which
it put the British commodore in the wrong. That letter, which was
written on the Fourth of July, begins with this paragraph:

"Sir, I have received your menacing letter of yesterday. The day on
which this answer is written ought of itself to prove to the subjects of
your sovereign that the American people are not to be intimidated by
menace; or induced to adopt any measures except by a sense of their
perfect propriety. Seduced by the false show of security, they may be
sometimes surprised and slaughtered, while unprepared to resist a
supposed friend. That delusive security is now passed forever. The late
occurrence has taught us to confide our safety no longer to anything
than to our own force. We do not seek hostility, nor shall we avoid it.
We are prepared for the worst you may attempt, and will do whatever
shall be judged proper to repel force, whensoever your efforts shall
render any act of ours necessary. Thus much for the threats in your
letter."

Of this letter Tazewell was appointed to be the bearer, and, attended by
a friend whose son is now a leading member of our bar,[7] delivered it
to Commodore Douglas on board the Bellona frigate in the presence of the
captains of the fleet. An account of the scene is fortunately preserved
by his own pen in a letter to the Mayor; and it is plain to see that the
British captains, among whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, to whom Lord Nelson
addressed in his dying moments that affectionate request, surprised and
overwhelmed by the address and ability of Tazewell, recanted all their
threats; and in their letter of the 5th breathed nothing but amity and
peace. Whoever will read the letter of Commodore Douglas of the 3d of
July, and his letter of the 5th, will see the most amusing instance of
backing out in the annals of diplomacy. The federal government now took
the case in hand, and the committee of safety in an eloquent address
resigned the authority with which they had been invested by the people.

One of the obvious results of the peace of 1815 with Great Britain was
the active employment of our commercial marine. During the war the seeds
of new enterprises had been sown, and much of that capital which had
previously been employed in navigation had been diverted, and fresh
capital was required in its place. There was a general desire for the
creation of new banks; and as the principles of banking, which have
become more familiar since, were in 1816 comparatively unknown to those
who composed a majority of the assembly, it was important that Norfolk
should be ably represented in the assembly. At this time the existing
banks, which had suspended during the war, had not resumed the payment
of specie. On the subject of banks, Tazewell though brought up by men
who had been almost ruined by a paper currency and hated the name, his
own father having been one of the most active statesmen in forcing a
resumption of specie payments after the peace of 1783, was not unwilling
that commercial men should employ the agency of banks under proper
restrictions; and having been elected by the people of Norfolk to the
House of Delegates without his knowledge and during his absence from
home, he took his seat in that body in 1816. Let it be remembered, that
when he took this trust from the people of Norfolk, he was constantly
engaged in the highest duties of his profession; that he was not only
employed in courts, but was consulted by foreign clients--by the
merchants of London and by the Court of Rome; and that his absence from
town in the performance of his duties in the assembly would result in
the loss of thousands at a time when he was far from being a wealthy
man; and we will have some idea of the principles which guided his
conduct in respect of the public service. He sought nothing--he asked
nothing from public bodies or from the people, but he recognized the
obligation resting on every citizen to serve his country; and when an
emergent case occurred, and he was called out by the people, he never
declined office, but entered into it at every personal sacrifice,
performing its duties with such success and such ability as to leave an
impression upon the times in which he lived.[8] He practically defeated
the wild banking schemes of the session by the insertion of a specie
clause which was readily adopted by the friends of those measures, but
which, as was designed, made their schemes impracticable.

But his great effort in the assembly of 1816 was his speech on the
Convention bill of that year. He spoke in reply to the late Gen. Smythe
of Wythe; and in an argument of uncommon power, which formed one of the
eloquent traditions of the House when I took my seat in it twelve years
later, he answered the objections urged against the existing
constitution, and sustained that instrument in all its length and
breadth. His speech produced a wonderful effect upon all who heard it.
The late Philip Doddridge, one of the ablest and most decided of all Mr.
Tazewell's opponents in state and federal politics, but ever abounding
in that magnanimity which flourishes most in the finest minds, always
spoke of the argument of Mr. Tazewell in reply to Gen. Smythe as
extraordinary--as surpassing any that he ever heard in a deliberative
assembly. He told me so in conversation, and he afterwards spoke of it
in the same exalted strain in the House of Delegates and in the
Convention of 1829. The result of the Convention discussion was, that,
though a bill calling a Convention passed the House by a small majority,
it was lost in the Senate; and a compromise was effected between the
East and the West by reorganizing the basis of representation in the
Senate on white population according to the census of 1810. In this as
on most other occasions the testimony magnifying the speeches of
Tazewell come from a hostile quarter.

His election to the Senate of the United States in 1824 was one of the
severest trials of his life. Having withdrawn alike from the inferior
and appellate courts, he anxiously desired to spend the reminder of his
days in the bosom of his family, and to mingle no more in public
affairs. To undertake any special service in behalf of his country was
always a grateful employment; but to leave his home for months, and to
be engaged in the monotonous routine of deliberative bodies, was most
distasteful to him; but, true to the great maxim of his life--never to
seek or to decline a public trust--he accepted the appointment; and took
his seat in the early part of January, 1825. A casual view of his career
in that body, which extended from 1825 to 1833--a period of nearly eight
years--during which he held, at least in the estimation of Virginia, if
not of the whole Union, the foremost place, would alone occupy the brief
hour allotted me on the present occasion. The exciting questions of that
exciting period would pass in review; and the ashes are too thinly
spread over the smouldered fires of those days yet to be trodden with
safety, and certainly not with pleasure by some of those who hear me,
and who heartily joined in decreeing a tribute to the memory of Mr.
Tazewell. I will merely allude to two or three speeches and writings,
which the student of history may consult as specimens of parliamentary
ability, and as eminently displaying the caste of Mr. Tazewell's
intellectual character as well as his views on political subjects.

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