Chapter 8

In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22, Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, passed Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent. Before the passage of the bill England had been importing goods more cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment, advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States, with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824 the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features. Political leadership in the United States was passing from the South to the North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pushing to the front. Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio; manufacturing industries multiplied. From a sparsely inhabited country in 1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.

[Sidenote: American letters]

American letters were enriched in this year by Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," Paulding's "John Bull," Bancroft's "Politics in Ancient Greece," and Verplanck's "Revealed Religion."

[Sidenote: South American republics recognized]

During the first session of Congress a special message from President Monroe recommended the establishment of intercourse with the new independent States of South America--Venezuela, New Granada, Buenos Ayres, Chile and Peru. Congress voted for recognition by an overwhelming majority, and the President signed the bill. The United States was the first among the civilized powers to welcome the new republics.

The struggle for independence in South America was furthered more than ever by the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the Peninsula. In Spain the return of absolute rule was still followed by a reign of terror. The people there relapsed into medieval barbarism.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Constitution triumphant]

[Sidenote: Growth of republican sentiment]

[Sidenote: Iturbide shot]

[Sidenote: Santa Anna in power]

In Portugal, the revolution stirred up by Dom Miguel ended with the expulsion of that prince from Lisbon. His father, Dom Pedro, in Brazil, thought it wise to recognize the liberal constitution imposed upon him by his people. In the other Latin-American countries the people rebelled against one-man rule. In Chile, General O'Higgins was forced to resign his dictatorship and a provisional Triumvirate assumed the government. At Lima, Bolivar found his powers curtailed. Mariano Prado was elected president. The feeling against imperialism was so strong in Central America that all the smaller States joined in confederation to ward off this danger threatening them from Mexico. The Junta of San Salvador went so far as to pass a resolution favoring annexation by the United States of North America in case the Mexican imperialists crossed its borders. Eventually San Salvador, together with Nicaragua and Costa Rica, joined the Central American Union. The first Congress in Costa Rica elected Juan Mora president. In Mexico, in the meantime, a strong provisional government was established by Santa Anna. Ex-Emperor Iturbide, who in defiance of his exile returned to Mexico, was arrested as he landed at Sota la Marina in July. He was taken to the capital, tried, condemned, and shot. As he faced death he said: "Mexicans, I die because I came to help you. I die gladly, because I die among you. I die not as a traitor, but with honor." With Iturbide out of the way, Santa Anna established a government strong enough to accomplish the annexation of California. Henceforth there was no danger of a return to Spanish rule. In England, Canning followed Monroe with an absolute recognition of the independent governments in America.

[Sidenote: Death of Byron]

[Sidenote: Rhegas' hymn]

By this time public opinion in England had been aroused in behalf of the Greeks still struggling for their independence from the yoke of Turkey. A powerful impetus was given to this feeling by the tragic death of Lord Byron in Greece. A few months before the poet had sailed from Genoa for Greece to take active part in the war for freedom. He died of fever at Missolonghi on April 19, at the age of thirty-six. One of his last poems was a spirited translation of Rhegas' famous Greek national hymn:

Sons of the Greeks, arise! The glorious hour shines forth, And, worthy of such ties, Display who gave us worth!

Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet.

Then manfully despise The Turkish tyrant's yoke, Let your country see you rise, Till all her chains are broke.

Brave shades of chiefs and sages, Behold the coming strife! Greeks of past ages, Oh, start again to life!

At the sound of my trumpet, Break your sleep, join with me! And the seven-hill'd city seek, Fight, and win, till we are free!

[Sidenote: Goethe on Byron]

[Sidenote: Mazzini's verdict]

[Sidenote: Shelley's estimate]

[Sidenote: Symonds' judgment]

[Sidenote: Byron's best works]

Byron's death served the Greek cause better perhaps than all he could have achieved had his life been prolonged. It caused a greater stir throughout Continental Europe than it did in England. In truth Byron's poetry was more appreciated by the world at large than by his countrymen--a literary anomaly that has prevailed even to the end of the Nineteenth Century. Goethe said of Byron after his death: "The English may think of Byron as they please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be compared with him. He is different from all the others, and for the most part greater." Mazzini, many years later, concluded his famous essay on Byron and Goethe with this vindication of the English poet's claim: "The day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron. England too, will, I hope, one day remember the mission--so entirely English, yet hitherto overlooked by her--which Byron fulfilled on the Continent; the European cast given by him to English literature, and the appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened among us." Shelley, who knew Byron intimately, has given perhaps the best expression to the English view of him. He said of him in 1822: "The coarse music which he produced touched a chord to which a million hearts responded.... Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, Byron, like Shelley, appeared as a monster of impious wickedness. Unlike Shelley, he attained thereby the vogue of the forbidden. His earliest poems achieved what the French call a _succes de scandal_. His satire, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," brought to the youthful poet a notoriety amounting to fame. After the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," in 1812, according to his own phrase, he awoke to find himself famous, and became a spoiled child of society. Trelawney has recorded that Byron was what London in the days of the Prince Regent made him. One of Byron's ablest critics, Symonds, has put this even more strongly: "His judgment of the world was prematurely warped, while his naturally earnest feelings were overlaid with affectations and prejudices which he never succeeded in shaking off.... It was his misfortune to be well born, but ill bred, combining the pride of a peer with the self-consciousness of a parvenu." Byron's life in London between 1812 and 1816 certainly increased his tendency to cynicism, as did his divorce from his wife. While these experiences distorted his personal character, they supplied him, however, with much of the irony wrought into his masterpiece, "Don Juan." His poetic genius derived its strongest stimulus from his imbittered domestic life and from his travels in Spain, Italy and Greece. This twofold character of the poet it is that is revealed in his best poems, "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." He used both works as receptacles for the most incongruous ideas. "If things are farcical," he once said to Trelawney, "they will do for 'Don Juan'; if heroical, you shall have another canto of 'Childe Harold.'" This means of disposing of his poetic ideas accounts for the great volume of Byron's verse as well as for its inequality. That "Don Juan" was never finished cannot therefore be regretted.

[Sidenote: His last verses]

Byron's last verses were lines written on January 22, 1824, at Missolonghi. To one of his English military associates in the expedition of Lepanto he remarked: "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better than what I usually write." They were the famous lines, "On this Day I complete my Thirty-sixth Year":

'Tis time the heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move; Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

* * * * *

Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!) Awake my spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home!

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live? The land of honorable death Is here--Up, to the field, and give Away thy breath!

Seek out--less often sought than found-- A soldier's grave, for thee the best! Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest!

[Sidenote: Russian suzerainty rejected by Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ibrahim invades Greece]

[Sidenote: Sack of Psara]

When Byron died, Missolonghi had been delivered from its first siege. Greece was plunged in civil war. Kolokotrones, who set himself up against the government of Konduriottes and Kolletes, was overthrown and lodged in a prison on the island of Hydra. An offer of Russian intervention at the price of Russian suzerainty was rejected by the Greeks. Encouraged by this, the Sultan appealed to his vassal, Mehemet Ali of Egypt, to help him exterminate the Greeks. The island of Crete was held out to Mehemet Ali as a prize. The ambitious ruler of Egypt responded with enthusiasm. He raised an army of 90,000 men and a fleet, and sent them forth under the command of his adopted son Ibrahim. Early in the spring the Egyptian expedition landed in Crete and all but exterminated its Greek population. The island of Kossos was next captured; and its inhabitants were butchered. In July, the Turkish fleet took advantage of the Greek Government's weakness to make a descent upon Psara, one of the choicest islands of Greece. In spite of desperate resistance, the citadel of Psara was stormed, and the Psariotes were put to the sword. Thousands were slain, while the women and children were carried off as slaves. How little the miseries of the Greeks affected the rulers of Europe may be gathered from this bright side light on Metternich given by his secretary Gentz:

[Sidenote: Metternich's comment]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Turkish fleet]

"Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which unfortunately I could not accompany him. I at once sent a letter after him from Ischl with the important news of the Psariote defeat.... The prince soon came back to me; and (pianissimo, in order that friends of Greece might not hear it) we congratulated one another on the event, which may very well prove the beginning of the end for the Greek insurrection." The Greeks, instead of desponding, were aroused to fiercer resistance than ever. A Hydriote fleet foiled Ibrahim Pasha's attempt on Samos. When he tried to return to Crete his fleet was beaten back with a signal reverse. Finally, late in the year, the Egyptians succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Hydriote sea-captains, and regained their base of supplies in Crete.

[Sidenote: Burmese war]

[Sidenote: Siege of Rangoon]

[Sidenote: British checked at Donabew]

While Canning's Ministry was still preparing the ground for European intervention in Greece, the British Government in India found itself with another native war on its hands. In 1822, the Burmese leader Bundula had invaded the countries between Burma and Bengal. The Burmese conquered the independent principalities of Assam and Munipore, and threatened Cachar. Next Bundula invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of British sepoys. It was evident that the Burmese were bent on the conquest of Bengal. Lord Amherst, who had assumed charge early in 1824, sent an expedition against them under Sir Archibald Campbell. The resistance of the Burmese was despicable. The British soldiers nowhere found foes worthy of their steel. In May, the British expedition, having marched straight to Burma, occupied the capital Rangoon, which was found deserted and denuded of all supplies. Ill fed and far from succor, the British had to spend a rainy season there. Taking advantage of their precarious position, Bundula returned late in the year with an army of 60,000 men. The Englishmen were besieged. In December they made a successful sortie and stormed the Burmese stockades. Bundula with the remains of his army was driven up the banks of the river Irawaddy. They made a stand at Donabew, some forty miles from Rangoon, where they held the British in check.

[Sidenote: German letters]

The rest of the world throughout this year lay in profound peace. In Germany the rulers of the various principalities were allowed to continue their reigns undisturbed. Only in Brunswick the assumption of the government by Charles Frederick William met with the disapproval of the German Diet. Although pronounced incapable of reigning, he succeeded none the less in clinging to his throne. A more important event for the enlightened element in Germany was the appearance of the first of Leopold von Ranke's great histories of the Romance and Teutonic peoples. In the realm of poetry a stir was created by the publication of Rueckert's and Boerne's lyrics, and Heinrich Heine's "Alamansor" and "Ratcliffe."

[Sidenote: French literature]

[Sidenote: Clericals in the ascendant]

[Sidenote: Chateaubriand dismissed]

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

In France, Lamartine brought out his "Death of Socrates," and Louis Thiers published the first instalments of his great "History of the French Revolution." Simultaneously there appeared Francois Mignet's "History of the French Revolution." While these historians were expounding the lessons of this great regeneration of France, the Royalists in the Chambers did their best to undo its work. After the ejection of Manuel from the Chambers, and the Ministers' consequent appeal to the country, the elections were so manipulated by the government that only nineteen Liberal members were returned to the Chambers. Immediate advantage was taken of this to favor the Clericals and returned Emigrees, and to change the laws so as to elect a new House every seven years, instead of one-fifth part of the Chamber each year. Monseigneur Frayssinous, the leader of the Clericals, was made Minister of Public Instruction. The friction between Prime Minister Villele and Chateaubriand was ended by Villele's summary dismissal of Chateaubriand as Foreign Minister. Chateaubriand at once became the most formidable opponent of the Ministry in the "Journal des Debats," and in the Chamber of Peers. At this stage of public affairs Louis XVIII. died, on September 16, with the ancient pomp of royalty. Before he expired he said, pointing to his bed: "My brother will not die in that bed." The old King's prophecy was based on the character of the French people as much as on that of his brother. Indeed, Louis XVIII. was the only French ruler during the Nineteenth Century who died as a sovereign in his bed. He was duly succeeded by his brother, Count of Artois, who took the title "Charles X." and retained Villele as Minister of France.

1825

[Sidenote: Charles X.]

Charles X. was crowned King of France in the Cathedral of Rheims. His first public measure was the appropriation of a million francs to indemnify the French Royalists, whose lands had been confiscated during the French Revolution. Next came the proposal of a law on sacrilege, and one for primogeniture. Both bills were strenuously opposed by the Liberals. Broglie exclaimed: "What you are now preparing is a social and political revolution, a revolution against the revolution which changed France nearly forty years ago." Old Lafayette was glad to leave the country to visit North America.

[Sidenote: American election contest]

[Sidenote: John Quincy Adams President]

[Sidenote: Henry Clay rewarded]

[Sidenote: Changes in American politics]

[Sidenote: Adams's first message]

In the United States the election of 1824 had to be decided by the House of Representatives. For the Presidency the candidates were Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Crawford and Clay, and for the Vice-Presidency Calhoun, Sanford, Macon, Jackson, Van Buren and Clay. They all belonged to the Democratic-Republican party. Jackson had received the highest number of electoral votes--99 were for him and 84 for Adams. Calhoun, as candidate for Vice-President, led with 182 votes. In the House of Representatives Clay, as leader, opposed Jackson. Adams was declared President, with Calhoun for Vice-President. The electoral vote of thirteen States was given to Adams, while Jackson received seven. John Quincy Adams was then fifty-eight years of age. Washington had made him Minister to The Hague, and then to Lisbon, and in 1797 his father, then President, sent him as Minister to Berlin. In 1803, he was United States Senator. Six years later he was Minister to Russia. During both of Monroe's terms he was Secretary of State. Upon his inauguration as President, Adams made Clay Secretary of State. Wirt, McLean and Southard were retained in the Cabinet. The adherents of Jackson declared that a bargain had been made between Clay and Adams, who then paid Clay they alleged for his support in the "scrub race" for the Presidency. Randolph characterized the supposed arrangement as a "bargain between the Puritan and the Black Leg," and in consequence was challenged by Clay to fight a duel. Neither was injured. The election was followed by an immediate reorganization of political parties, on the question of supporting Adams's administration. Whether the successor of Adams should be a Northerner or a Southerner was the question at issue. His opponents were slave-holders and their Northern friends; his supporters, the antagonists of the Democratic party, whether known as National Republican, Whig or Republican party, all of which terms were in use. For the first time the new Congress, under the reapportionment, represented the entire population of the country, with New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the lead. In the Senate were men of brilliant promise. Clay was still a leader, and so was Webster, in the rising majesty of his renown. The contest between the parties was narrowed down to two great issues--internal improvements under national auspices and tariff for the protection of manufactures. President Adams in his first message gave opportunity for concerted opposition. He took advanced ground in favor of national expenditure on internal improvements, and urged the multiplication of canals, the endowment of a national university, expenditures for scientific research, and the erection of a national observatory. He announced that an invitation had been accepted from the South American states to a conference at Panama, in regard to the formation of a political and commercial league between the two Americas. The Senate requested President Adams to give it information "touching the principles and practice of the Spanish-American states, or any of them--in regard to negro slavery." The subject was debated for almost the entire session. When enough had been said to show that slavery must not be interfered with, the delegates were nominated and an appropriation was made. The delegates never went.

[Sidenote: Erie Canal completed]

[Sidenote: Beneficial results]

On November 4, the first boat travelling along the new Erie Canal reached New York. Through the efforts of De Witt Clinton, the State of New York without Congressional aid had completed the great Erie Canal. Its annual tolls were found to amount to half its cost. The financial and commercial results of the great work were immediate and manifest. The cost of carrying freight between Albany and New York was reduced from the 1820 rate of $88 per ton, to $22.50, and soon to $6.50. Travel was no less facilitated, so that it was possible for emigrants to reach Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin cheaply. These fertile States grew accordingly in population. In 1825 the Capitol at Washington was nearly completed; the outer walls proved to be uninjured by the fire of 1814. The foundation of the central building had been laid in 1818, and this edifice was now completed on its original plan.

[Sidenote: Lafayette visits America]

The American visit of the old Marquis de la Fayette--to give him his French name--was celebrated with national rejoicings. Years ago, when he left the American republic after its independence was achieved, it was a poor, weak and struggling nation. Its prosperity and increasing power now amazed him. The thirteen colonies along the coast had increased to twenty-four independent, growing and progressive commonwealths, reaching a thousand miles westward from the sea. Lafayette was the nation's guest for a year. On June 17, 1825, just fifty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, he laid the cornerstone of the obelisk which commemorates that battle in Boston. On this same occasion Daniel Webster made one of his great speeches. Lafayette returned to France in the American frigate "Brandywine," named in honor of the first battle in which Lafayette fought and was wounded half a century before. Congress presented him with a gift of $200,000 in money, and with a township of land in recognition of the disinterested services of his youth.

[Sidenote: Argentine Republic]

Shortly before President Adams accepted the invitation to send North American representatives to the proposed Congress of Panama, thirteen independent States joined at Buenos Ayres in a powerful confederation and formed the Republic of Argentine. A national constitution was adopted and Rivadiera elected President. The new republic was soon called upon to prove its mettle in the war levied against it by Brazil for the possession of Uruguay. In the end Uruguay remained a part of Argentina. Brazil had previously achieved its complete independence from the mother country by assuming the public debt of Portugal, amounting to some ten million dollars. England gave its official recognition to these new changes of government as it had to the others.

[Sidenote: Burmese reverses]

[Sidenote: New British acquisitions]