What So Proudly We Hailed: Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812

2. The "Party War" of 1812: Yesterday's Lessons for Today's Partisan Politics

8 ChapterTwo The “Party War” of 1812: Yesterday’s Lessons for Today’s Partisan Politics Pietro S. Nivola The most distinctive feature of American politics in recent decades has been the deepening polarization of the political parties.1 Democrats and Republicans have seemed unable to bridge their fundamental differences or to compromise, even on the country’s most urgent imperatives. Disagreements between the two sides intensified in the summer of 2011. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives squared off against the Democrats, who held the White House and Senate, in a tense showdown occasioned by the Treasury’s pressing need to borrow money. In the course of this row, the antagonists took the government to the brink of default. Not only that, but Congress, along with a president who appeared at least partly complicit, passed up an extraordinary opportunity to strike a “grand bargain” on fiscal policy, a deal that would have begun to correct the nation’s structural budget deficit and an alarming rise in sovereign debt.2 To many commentators, the degree of partisan discord these days appears “unprecedented.”3 When, if ever before, had our party politics degenerated to the point of gambling so recklessly with the future of the republic? As a matter of fact, two political parties were acrimoniously at odds in the United States a couple of centuries ago, and politicians in Washington, including some revered ones, acted no less hazardously. On the bicentennial of the War of 1812, that obscure, largely forgotten misadventure, it is worth revisiting what transpired. The events of that time have some important implications for the present. Probing them, this chapter discusses the motives and meaning of the War of 1812, with emphasis on the salience of partisanship. Then as now, the interests and ideological biases of political parties played a fateful role. 02-2414-8 ch2.indd 8 9/11/12 3:45 PM The “Party War” of 1812 / 9 History, as Tolstoy stressed, can bring surprises, since it so often seems to chart its own unexpected course. For the rival political parties two hundred years ago, there was considerable irony in the eventual outcome. In the confrontation between them, one side had the better case, but it was destined to lose nonetheless. Then, in short order, the winners had the political equivalent of an out-of-body experience; they underwent something akin to a doctrinal metamorphosis. In the partisan drama of the present day, for good or ill, a similar sequel cannot necessarily be ruled out. The War of 1812 Thirty years after the end of hostilities in the American Revolution, Congress declared a second war against Great Britain. The ostensible cause involved American maritime rights, which had been abridged by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. For years, the United States had complained about Britain’s harassment of neutral merchant shipping, the intrusive search and seizure of suspected contraband on American vessels that might make their way to the European continent, and the practice of “impressing,” or conscripting , thousands of members of their crews as a means of meeting manpower shortages in His Majesty’s far-flung fleet. The conventional chronicle has it that those provocations were unique and unrelenting, even gratuitous, and that by 1812 they had become intolerable . American endeavors to reach a negotiated end to the depredations had been futile, as had U.S. attempts to exert pressure through a series of experiments with economic sanctions, beginning with President Jefferson’s largely self-defeating trade embargo in 1807. Finally, according to the usual narrative , the patience of even a scrupulously reflective and reluctant American president, James Madison, who had taken office in 1809, just wore out. Exasperated , Madison presumably was left with only two possibilities: capitulate or fight back. In certain respects, the conventional account falls short. To begin with, Britain ’s interference with open trade was anything but unique. The frequency of French seizures of American ships sometimes matched or exceeded Britain’s.4 At a critical point, France’s claim to have relaxed its own continental system of commercial restrictions was so transparently phony and deceptive as “to give sight to the blind,” in the words of John Quincy Adams.5 Yet, Madison deemed it expedient to act as if Napoleon had to be given the benefit of the doubt.6 02-2414-8 ch2.indd 9 9/11/12 3:45 PM 10 / Pietro S...