Conscientious Objectors

By Richard Brookhiser

Congressional Democrats are struggling to find the right formula for ending the war in Iraq. "This is a campaign," said New York Senator Charles Schumer, looking forward to a series of hearings and resolutions. "We are going to continue this discussion ... and we believe the more [the war] is debated and discussed ... the less flexibility the President will have in maintaining his course." Why not just try to pull the plug? Maybe Schumer has read about the War of 1812.

One of the first, and bitterest, campaigns against a President's course in wartime was mounted by the Federalist Party. The Federalists, followers of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, had accomplished great things during the 1790s. But they suffered from the taint of elitism and in the election of 1800 lost the White House and Congress to their enemies, the Republicans (ancestors of today's Democrats). Federalism shrank to a regional bloc based in New England.

The issue that enraged and revived the party was war. The first two Republican Presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, tried to keep the U.S. out of the superpower struggle between Britain and Napoleonic France. But in 1812, Madison and a Congress dominated by a cadre of young firebrands--Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun--declared war on Britain.

Madison argued that he had been driven to fight by British "outrages" against American shipping. The British navy was stopping American vessels on the high seas, seizing goods it defined as contraband and sailors it defined as British deserters. But America had its own imperial dreams: the war's supporters were nicknamed war hawks because of their constant birdlike calls for "Canada, Canada, Canada." Former President Jefferson thought conquering Canada would be "a mere matter of marching." Federalists were appalled. Gouverneur Morris, the peg-legged ladies' man who had drafted the Constitution, declared that a war of choice fought for such reasons was "founded in moral wrong"; anyone who supported it would be guilty of "impiety."

The war had glorious successes and humiliating defeats: American frigates beat British ships; Detroit fell to the enemy. The crisis came in 1814, when Napoleon's defeat freed British resources for a final push in the U.S. The British tried, and failed, to take Lake Champlain in upstate New York. They burned Washington but were stopped outside Baltimore (a battle that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner), and they prepared to attack New Orleans.

In this moment of peril, radical Federalists wanted to break America up. Morris called for New England and New York to secede. He admitted this would cause "civil war. And what of it?" New England Federalists tried a moderate-seeming two-step. Delegates from five states met in Hartford, Conn., in December 1814 for a three-week-long convention. They wanted to divert federal tax revenue to their states for self-defense and have the central government recognize state laws shielding their citizens from conscription--in effect, giving New England its own military and foreign policy. If Madison balked at these modest proposals, they said, then another convention "must act as such urgent circumstances may require." First the demand, then the threat.

Commissioners carrying the resolutions of the Hartford Convention headed for Washington in February 1815. They were preceded by news of a tremendous U.S. victory at New Orleans. A diplomatic bulletin followed the military one: British and American diplomats, who had been meeting in Belgium since the previous summer, had cobbled together a peace treaty pleasing to both sides.

The war ended on a high note. The Federalist Party ended on a low one. It carried a new taint: defeatism and treason. The last Federalist presidential candidate ran in 1816, carrying only three states. Federalism became a political cussword; decades later, a young Abraham Lincoln would joke that his enemies accused him of it.

Suppose the Battle of New Orleans had gone the other way. How would the Federalists have looked then? Morris thought he knew: "The madmen and traitors assembled at Hartford" would be "hailed" as "patriots and sages."

The antiwar Federalists had the courage of their convictions, playing a weak hand--they were always a congressional minority--boldly. But their overthrow was a lesson in practical politics. If you stick your neck out too far, it may get broken. Today's Democrats are wise to debate and discuss.