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CULTURE AND DEPRESSION
CULTURE AND DEPRESSION
Studies in the Anthropology
and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry
of Affect and Disorder

Edited by
Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1985 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Culture and depression.

(Comparative studies of health systems and

medical care)
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Depression, Mental—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Psychiatry,
Transcultural. I. Kleinman, Arthur. II. Good, Byron.
III. Series. [DNLM: 1. Cross-Cultural Comparison.
2. Depressive Disorder—psychology.
WM 171 C968]
RC537.C85 1985 616.85'27 85-2535
ISBN 0-520-05493-8

Printed in the United States of America

123456789
 Contents

Preface

Introduction: Culture and Depression

Arthur Kleinman
and Byron Good

Part I.
MEANINGS, RELATIONSHIPS, SOCIAL AFFECTS:
HISTORICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES ON DEPRESSION
Introduction to Part I 1

1.
Acedia the Sin and Its Relationship to Sorrow and
Melancholia
Stanley W. Jackson 43

2.
Depression and the Translation of Emotional Worlds
Catherine Lutz 63

3.
The Cultural Analysis of Depressive Affect: An Example
from New Guinea
Edward L. Schieffelin 101

4.
Depression, Buddhism, and the Work of Culture in
Sri Lanka
Gananath Obeyesekere 134
vi Contents

The Interpretive Basis of Depression

Charles F. Keyes 153

Part II.
DEPRESSIVE COGNITION, COMMUNICATION,
AND BEHAVIOR
Introduction to Part II 175

6.
Menstrual Pollution, Soul Loss, and the Comparative
Study of Emotions
Richard A. Shweder 182

7.
Dimensions of Dysphoria: The View from Linguistic
Anthropology
William O. Beeman 216

8.
The Theoretical Implications of Converging Research on
Depression and the Culture-Bound Syndromes
John E. Carr and Peter P. Vitaliano 244

Part III.
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT OF DEPRESSIVE
DISORDERS CROSS-CULTURALLY
Introduction to Part III 267

9.
A Study of Depression among Traditional Africans,
Urban North Americans, and Southeast Asian Refugees
Morton Beiser 272

10.
Cross-Cultural Studies of Depressive Disorders:
An Overview
Anthony J. Marsella, Norman Sartorius,
Assen Jablensky, and Fred R. Fenton 299
Contents vii

Part IV.
INTEGRATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL
EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRIC ANTHROPOLOGY
OF DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS
Introduction to Part IV 325

11.
The Depressive Experience in American Indian Communities:
A Challenge for Psychiatric Theory and Diagnosis
Spero M. Manson, James H. Shore,
and Joseph D. Bloom 331

12.
The Interpretation of Iranian Depressive Illness and
Dysphoric Affect
Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good,
and Robert Moradi 369

Somatization: The Interconnections in Chinese Society

among Culture, Depressive Experiences, and
the Meanings of Pain
Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman 429

Epilogue:
Culture and Depression
Byron Good and Arthur Kleinman 491

Contributors 507

Indexes 511

Author Index 513

Subject Index 521

 Preface

The editors began planning this volume in 1975. But it was not until 1982
that they were able to bring the contributors together as participants of a
double panel at the American Anthropological Association Annual
Meeting in Washington, D.C. The panel on "Culture and Depression:
Toward an Anthropology of Affect and Affective Disorder'' was spon-
sored by the American Ethnological Society and included the senior
authors of all the chapters in this volume, save two, along with several of
the second authors. To provide a historical comparison from the Western
tradition, the editors invited Stanley Jackson to modify a paper on acedia
and melancholia that had been published in the Bulletin of the History of
Medicine. They were also fortunate to enlist a contribution from An-
thony Marsella and his collaborators in the Mental Health Unit of the
W H O which both reviews that Unit's cross-cultural studies of depression
and updates Marsella's overview of cross-cultural psychological and
psychiatric contributions to this subject. With the exception of chap-
ter 1, then, all of the papers in this volume are original writings.
A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to start a Program in Cross-
Cultural Psychiatry and Medicine at Harvard University provided partial
support for the editing of the papers. The editors wish to acknowledge
the very helpful contribution of Joan Kleinman to the editorial work.
They thank Carol Casella-Jaillet for her fine secretarial services. An
invitation from our colleague David Maybury-Lewis, when he was
president of the American Ethnological Society, to organize a sympo-
sium gave us the chance to put planning into practice, for which we are
grateful.
X Preface

In 1980 we sent out letters of invitation. Along with them we included

a specific charge to each contributor and a group of papers that we felt
gave an overview of current studies of depression in psychiatry, psy-
chology, and cross-cultural research. A year before the meeting, we sent
each participant a second group of papers to update and extend the scope
of the earlier batch. It was our interest that these papers along with
participation in the panel would provide a common thread to the con-
tributions and initiate interaction and feedback among the distinctive
perspectives. After the meeting, we encouraged each of the authors to
revise their contributions in light of the other presentations and the
discussions. Finally, each paper has been extensively edited; most,
including our own, have gone through several substantial revisions. For
their serious commitment to this lengthy and burdensome process, their
wit and grace in the face of deadlines, and best of all their willingness to
engage in substantial rethinking and rewriting in response to critical
dialogue, we offer our many thanks to the participants.
There is no more difficult (and less rewarded) act of scholarship than
to step outside the accepted confines of one's discipline to argue with
members of other disciplines about a cross-cutting subject that is con-
stituted and expressed in greatly different ways when viewed here in an
anthropological, there in a psychiatric and psychological problem frame-
work. This book represents our attempt to bring such a cross-disciplinary
colloquy to bear on depression, one of the more common emotions and
disorders. The reader will find various traces of the colloquy: reworked
disciplinary accounts that respond to paradigm conflicts as much as to
questions of substance, debates between authors of the various chapters,
actual attempts to construct interdisciplinary research frameworks, and
the editors' overview of the exchange. Such an endeavor is likely to lead
to (and in this instance has in fact produced) a large book and one that
does not make for easy reading or simple conclusions. It is our hope that
our readers will be rewarded in much the same way that we the editors
have been: by coming away with a deeper sense of what distinguishes
anthropological, psychological, and psychiatric approaches to depres-
sion in cross-cultural perspective, and by discovering those areas in
which cross-disciplinary contributions are more availing and those in
which they are less so.
In a field as broad as this one, even a large volume can accommodate
only a few of the major perspectives. This is not an exhaustive compen-
dium: that would exhaust the reader even more than this rich display of
wares. We have concentrated most on anthropology, for it is our shared
Preface XI

opinion that cross-cultural studies of emotions and illness can be faulted

most frequently because of anthropological naivete. We believe the
resulting approach offers a more discriminating understanding—often
of the problems in researching this subject as much as of the subject
itself. We encourage our readers to enter and expand the colloquy.
Enough hares have been started in these pages to keep us all busy for
years to come.

Cambridge, Massachusetts Arthur Kleinman

June 1984 Byron Good
 Introduction:
Culture and Depression
Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good

CULTURE AND DEPRESSION:

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM

Why should a group of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists

devote a volume to culture and depression? Historians tell us that the
Greek and Roman medical writers described "melancholic diseases"
among their populations which are quite similar to those seen by psy-
chiatrists today, and that the terms "melancholia," "depression," and
"mania" have a long and relatively stable history in European thought.
Although writers such as Robert Burton, whose compendious Anatomy
ofMelancholy (1621) summarized clinical lore of his day, sought causes
for the disorder in the black bile and described subtypes of melancholia
that ring strange today, there seems little question that the ancients
suffered depression as do people today. Furthermore, psychiatrists
practicing in Third World clinics and mental hospitals see patients who
are recognizably depressed and treat them with medical regimens current
in Western clinics, including antidepressant medications and supportive
therapy. This apparent universality arouses no surprise among con-
temporary biomedical researchers, who believe depression is a disease
that is found in all human populations and that we are just beginning to
understand. During the past decade, enormous strides have been taken in
unraveling the complex set of interacting biochemical and psychological
processes which produces depression. Although the picture is not as
clear as many researchers thought five years ago, there is little question
that neurotransmitters—bioamines involved in the transmission and
regulation of neurological messages—and a set of hormones are im-
plicated in depressive illness. So what is cultural about depression? What
2 Introduction

do anthropologists or cross-cultural psychiatrists have to offer to an

understanding of such a disorder? Is there reason to believe that life in
some societies is organized so as to protect their members from depres-
sive illness? Is there evidence that the condition looks quite different in
some cultures?
Growing evidence indicates the issues are not as clear as this picture of
depression as a universal disease would suggest. First, the study of
depression continues to be plagued by unresolved conceptual problems.
Depression is a transitory mood or emotion experienced at various times
by all individuals. It is also a symptom associated with a variety of
psychiatric disorders, from severe and debilitating diseases such as
schizophrenia to milder anxiety disorders. It is also a commonly diag-
nosed mental illness. Depression is thus considered mood, symptom,
and illness, and the relationship among these three conceptualizations
remains problematic. Is depressive illness a more severe and enduring
form of depressed emotions, or is it an altogether different process? Are
the boundaries between depressed mood and illness simply conven-
tional, or are they related to more essential differences between them?
Are depressive illnesses really discrete forms of pathology, separate
from anxiety disorders, for example, or is depression a symptom—like
fever—that may be associated with any number of disorders? These
basic questions continue to bedevil researchers and preclude clear
analysis of depressive illness.
Reading through the history of changes in conceptualization of the
subtypes of depression does not give one confidence that such problems
are about to be solved once and for all. The history of psychiatry is
strewn with "nosologies," or systems of categorization of depression.
Some are etiological categories, such as endogenous and reactive, re-
flecting interest in the underlying cause of a depression. Other distinc-
tions, such as that between primary and secondary depressions, are
relational, designating which is to be considered the illness, which the
symptom. Other categories, such as neurotic and psychotic, are descrip-
tive, indicating characteristics and severity of the disorder. The current
wisdom, represented in the American Psychiatric Association's most
recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III), eschews cause
altogether, treating psychiatric disorders as unitary diseases, precipi-
tated by social precursors and superimposed on enduring personality
characteristics. But is the depression of a basically healthy individual
with unresolved grief over loss of a spouse or child the same disease as a
depression of a more fundamentally troubled person? Anthropologists
are not, of course, the first to raise questions such as these. They are
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of the
United States of America, Volume 5 (of 9)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: History of the United States of America, Volume 5 (of 9)

During the first administration of James Madison

Author: Henry Adams

Release date: January 9, 2024 [eBook #72668]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889

Credits: Richard Hulse, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VOLUME 5 (OF 9) ***
THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1809–1813
 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY

HENRY ADAMS.
Vols. I. and II.—The First Administration of Jefferson. 1801–1805.
Vols. III. and IV.—The Second Administration of Jefferson. 1805–1809.
Vols. V. and VI.—The First Administration of Madison. 1809–1813.
Vols. VII., VIII., and IX.—The Second Administration of Madison. 1813–
1817. With an Index to the Entire Work. (In Press.)
 HISTORY
OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DURING THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF

JAMES MADISON

By HENRY ADAMS

Vol. V.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1890
 Copyright, 1890
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
 CONTENTS OF VOL. V.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Subsidence of Faction 1
II. Alienation from France 22
III. Canning’s Concessions 42
IV. Erskine’s Arrangement 66
V. Disavowal of Erskine 87
VI. Francis James Jackson 109
VII. Napoleon’s Triumph 133
VIII. Executive Weakness 154
IX. Legislative Impotence 176
X. Incapacity of Government 199
XI. The Decree of Rambouillet 220
XII. Cadore’s Letter of August 5 241
XIII. The Marquess Wellesley 262
XIV. Government by Proclamation 289
XV. The Floridas and the Bank 316
XVI. Contract with France 338
XVII. Dismissal of Robert Smith 359
XVIII. Napoleon’s Delays 380
XIX. Russia and Sweden 404
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
 CHAPTER I.
The “National Intelligencer,” which called public attention only to
such points of interest as the Government wished to accent, noticed
that President Madison was “dressed in a full suit of cloth of
American manufacture” when he appeared at noon, March 4, 1809,
under escort of the “troops of cavalry of the city and Georgetown,”
amid a crowd of ten thousand people, to take the oath of office at
the Capitol. The suit of American clothes told more of Madison’s
tendencies than was to be learned from the language of the
Inaugural Address, which he delivered in a tone of voice so low as
not to be heard by the large audience gathered in the new and
imposing Representatives’ Hall.[1] Indeed, the Address suggested a
doubt whether the new President wished to be understood. The
conventionality of his thought nowhere betrayed itself more plainly
than in this speech on the greatest occasion of Madison’s life, when
he was required to explain the means by which he should retrieve
the failures of Jefferson.
“It is a precious reflection,” said Madison to his anxious audience,
“that the transition from this prosperous condition of our country to
the scene which has for some time been distressing us, is not
chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor as I trust on any
voluntary errors, in the public councils. Indulging no passions which
trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it has been the
true glory of the United States to cultivate peace by observing justice,
and to entitle themselves to the respect of the nations at war by
fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most scrupulous impartiality.
If there be candor in the world, the truth of these assertions will not
be questioned; posterity at least will do justice to them.”
Since none of Madison’s enemies, either abroad or at home,
intended to show him candor, his only hope was in posterity; yet the
judgment of posterity depended chiefly on the course which the new
President might take to remedy the misfortunes of his predecessor.
The nation expected from him some impulse toward the end he had
in mind; foreign nations were also waiting to learn whether they
should have to reckon with a new force in politics; but Madison
seemed to show his contentment with the policy hitherto pursued,
rather than his wish to change it.
“This unexceptionable course,” he continued, “could not avail
against the injustice and violence of the belligerent Powers. In their
rage against each other, or impelled by more direct motives, principles
of retaliation have been introduced equally contrary to universal
reason and acknowledged law. How long their arbitrary edicts will be
continued, in spite of the demonstrations that not even a pretext for
them has been given by the United States, and of the fair and liberal
attempt to induce a revocation of them, cannot be anticipated.
Assuring myself that under every vicissitude the determined spirit and
united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and
essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me, with no other
discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its
high duties.”
Neither the actual world nor posterity could find much in these
expressions on which to approve or condemn the policy of Madison,
for no policy could be deduced from them. The same iteration of
commonplaces marked the list of general principles which filled the
next paragraph of the Address. Balancing every suggestion of energy
by a corresponding limitation of scope, Madison showed only a wish
to remain within the limits defined by his predecessor. “To cherish
peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having corresponding
dispositions” seemed to imply possible recourse to war with other
nations; but “to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and
reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by
an appeal to arms” seemed to exclude the use of force. “To promote
by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to
manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce” was a
phrase so cautiously framed that no one could attack it. “To support
the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its
limitations as in its authorities,” seemed a duty so guarded as to
need no further antithesis; yet Madison did not omit the usual
obligation “to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the
States and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and essential
to, the success of the general system.” No one could object to the
phrases with which the Address defined Executive duties; but no one
could point out a syllable implying that Madison would bend his
energies with sterner purpose to maintain the nation’s rights.
At the close of the speech Chief-Justice Marshall administered the
oath; the new President then passed the militia in review, and in the
evening Madison and Jefferson attended an inauguration ball, where
“the crowd was excessive, the heat oppressive, and the
entertainment bad.”[2] With this complaint, so familiar on the
occasion, the day ended, and President Madison’s troubles began.
About March 1, Wilson Cary Nicholas had called on the President
elect to warn him that he must look for serious opposition to the
expected appointment of Gallatin as Secretary of State. Nicholas had
the best reason to know that Giles, Samuel Smith, and Leib were
bent on defeating Gallatin.
“I believed from what I heard he would be rejected,” wrote
Nicholas two years afterward;[3] “and that at all events, if he was not,
his confirmation would be by a bare majority. During my public service
but one event had ever occurred that gave me as much uneasiness: I
mean the degradation of the country at that very moment by the
abandonment of [the embargo].”
The two events were in fact somewhat alike in character. That
Gallatin should become Secretary of State seemed a point of little
consequence, even though it were the only remaining chance for
honorable peace; but that another secretary should be forced on the
President by a faction in the Senate, for the selfish objects of men
like Samuel Smith and Giles, foreboded revolution in the form of
government. Nicholas saw chiefly the danger which threatened his
friends; but the remoter peril to Executive independence promised
worse evils than could be caused even by the overthrow of the party
in power at a moment of foreign aggression.
The effort of Giles and Smith to control Madison had no excuse.
Gallatin’s foreign birth, the only objection urged against him,
warranted doubt, not indeed of his fitness, but of difficulty in
obliging European powers to deal with a native of Geneva, who was
in their eyes either a subject of their own or an enemy at war; but
neither Napoleon nor King George in the year 1809 showed so much
regard to American feelings that the United States needed to affect
delicacy in respect to theirs; and Gallatin’s foreign birth became a
signal advantage if it should force England to accept the fact, even
though she refused to admit the law, of American naturalization.
Gallatin’s fitness was undisputed, and the last men who could
question it were Giles and Samuel Smith, who had been his friends
for twenty years, had trusted their greatest party interests in his
hands, had helped to put the Treasury under his control, and were at
the moment keeping him at its head when they might remove him to
the less responsible post of minister for foreign affairs. Any question
of Gallatin’s patriotism suggested ideas even more delicate than
those raised by doubts of his fitness. A party which had once trusted
Burr and which still trusted Wilkinson, not to mention Giles himself,
had little right to discuss Gallatin’s patriotism, or the honesty of
foreign-born citizens. Even the mild-spoken Wilson Cary Nicholas
almost lost his temper at this point. “I honestly believe,” he wrote in
1811, “if all our native citizens had as well discharged their duty to
their country, that we should by our energy have extorted from both
England and France a respect for our rights, and that before this day
we should have extricated ourselves from all our embarrassments
instead of having increased them.” The men who doubted Gallatin’s
patriotism were for the most part themselves habitually factious, or
actually dallying with ideas of treason.
Had any competent native American been pressed for the
Department of State, the Senate might still have had some pretext
for excluding Gallatin; but no such candidate could be suggested.
Giles was alone in thinking himself the proper secretary; Samuel
Smith probably stood in the same position; Monroe still sulked in
opposition and discredit; Armstrong, never quite trusted, was in
Paris; William Pinkney and J. Q. Adams were converts too recent for
such lofty promotion; G. W. Campbell and W. H. Crawford had
neither experience nor natural fitness for the post. The appointment
of Gallatin not only seemed to be, but actually was, necessary to
Madison’s Administration.
No argument affected the resistance of Giles and Samuel Smith,
and during the early days of March Madison could see no means of
avoiding a party schism. From that evil, at such a stage, he shrank.
While the subject still stood unsettled, some unknown person
suggested a new idea. If Robert Smith could be put in the Treasury,
his brother Samuel would vote to confirm Gallatin as Secretary of
State. The character of such a transaction needed no epithet; but
Madison went to Robert Smith and offered him the Treasury.[4] He
knew Smith to be incompetent, but he thought that with Gallatin’s
aid even an incompetent person might manage the finances; and
perhaps his astuteness went so far as to foresee what was to
happen,—that he should deal with the Smiths on some better
occasion in a more summary manner. Madison’s resemblance to a
cardinal was not wholly imaginary.[5]
While Robert Smith went to inquire into the details of Treasury
business before accepting the offered post, the President consulted
with Gallatin, who rejected the scheme at once. He could not, he
said, undertake the charge of both departments; the President
would do better to appoint Robert Smith Secretary of State, and
leave the Treasury as it was. Madison seized this outlet of escape.
He returned to Robert Smith with the offer of the State Department,
which Smith accepted. In making this arrangement Madison knew
that he must himself supply Smith’s deficiencies; but stronger wills
than that of Madison had yielded to party discontent, and he gained
much if he gained only time.
The true victim of the bargain was Gallatin, who might wisely
have chosen the moment for retiring from the Cabinet; but after
declining an arrangement in his favor, he could not fairly desert the
President, who had offered to sacrifice much for him, and he was
too proud to avow a personal slight as the motive of his public
action. Weakened already by the unexpected decline of his influence
in the Senate, his usefulness was sure to be still further lessened by
the charge of clinging to office; but after weighing the arguments for
retirement he decided to remain,[6] although he could not, even if
he would, forget that the quarrel which had been forced upon him
must be met as vigorously as it was made.
The War and Navy Departments remained to be filled. Dearborn,
who had continued in the War Department chiefly to oblige President
Jefferson, retired in the month of February to become Collector of
the port of Boston. As his successor, Madison selected William Eustis,
of Boston, who had served in Congress during Jefferson’s first
Administration. Eustis was about fifty-six years old; in the
Revolutionary War he had filled the post of hospital surgeon, and
since the peace he had practised his profession in Boston. Little
could be said of the appointment, except that no other candidate
was suggested who seemed better qualified for the place.[7]
To succeed Robert Smith at the Navy Department, Madison
selected Paul Hamilton, of South Carolina. Nothing was known of
Hamilton, except that he had been governor of his State some ten
years before. No one seemed aware why he had attracted the
President’s attention, or what qualities fitted him for the charge of
naval affairs; but he appeared in due time at Washington,—a South
Carolinian gentleman, little known in society or even to his
colleagues in the government, and little felt as an active force in the
struggle of parties and opinions.
From the outset Madison’s Cabinet was the least satisfactory that
any President had known. More than once the Federalist cabinets
had been convulsed by disagreements, but the Administration of
Madison had hardly strength to support two sides of a dispute.
Gallatin alone gave it character, but was himself in a sort of disgrace.
The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of
the Navy, overshadowed in the Cabinet by Gallatin, stood in a
position of inevitable hostility to his influence, although they
represented neither ideas nor constituents. While Gallatin exacted
economy, the army and navy required expenditures, and the two
secretaries necessarily looked to Robert Smith as their friend.
Toward Robert Smith Gallatin could feel only antipathy, which was
certainly shared by Madison. “We had all been astonished at his
appointment,” said Joel Barlow two years afterward;[8] “we all
learned the history of that miserable intrigue by which it was
effected.” Looking upon Robert Smith’s position as the result of a
“miserable intrigue,” Gallatin could make no secret of his contempt.
The social relations between them, which had once been intimate,
wholly ceased.
To embroil matters further, the defalcation of a navy agent at
Leghorn revealed business relations between the Navy Department
and Senator Samuel Smith’s mercantile firm which scandalized
Gallatin and drew from him a sharp criticism. He told Samuel Smith
that the transactions of the firm of Smith and Buchanan were the
most extraordinary that had fallen within his knowledge since he had
been in the Treasury, and had left very unfavorable impressions on
his mind.[9] Smith was then struggling for a re-election to the
Senate, and felt the hand of Gallatin as a chief obstacle in his way.
The feud became almost mortal under these reciprocal injuries; but
Samuel Smith gained all his objects, and for the time held Gallatin
and Madison at his mercy. Had he been able to separate them, his
influence would have had no bounds, except his want of ability.
Yet Madison was always a dangerous enemy, gifted with a quality
of persistence singularly sure in its results. An example of this
persistence occurred at the moment of yielding to the Smiths’
intrigues, when, perhaps partly in the hope of profiting by his
sacrifice, he approached the Senate once more on the subject of the
mission to Russia. February 27, the nomination of William Short to
St. Petersburg had been unanimously rejected. March 6, with the
nominations of Robert Smith and William Eustis to the Cabinet,
Madison sent the names of J. Q. Adams as minister at St.
Petersburg, and of Thomas Sumter as minister to Brazil. He asked
the Senate to establish two new missions at once. March 7 the
Senate confirmed all the other nominations, but by a vote of
seventeen to fifteen, adhered to the opinion that a mission to Russia
was inexpedient. Both Giles and Samuel Smith supported the
Government; but the two senators from Pennsylvania, the two from
Kentucky, together with Anderson of Tennessee and William H.
Crawford, persisted in aiding the Federalists to defeat the President’s
wish. Yet the majority was so small as to prove that Madison would
carry his point in the end. Senators who rejected the services of
Gallatin and John Quincy Adams in order to employ those of Robert
Smith, Dr. Eustis, and Governor Hamilton could not but suffer
discredit. Faction which had no capacity of its own, and which
showed only dislike of ability in others, could never rule a
government in times of danger or distress.
After thus embarrassing the President in organizing his service
the Senate rose, leaving Madison in peace until May 22, when the
Eleventh Congress was to meet in special session. The outlook was
more discouraging than at the beginning of any previous
Administration. President Jefferson had strained his authority to
breaking, and the sudden reaction threw society as well as
government into disorder. The factiousness at Washington reflected
only in a mild form the worse factiousness elsewhere. The
Legislature of Massachusetts, having issued its Address to the
People, adjourned; and a few days afterward the people, by an
election which called out more than ninety thousand votes,
dismissed their Republican governor, and by a majority of two or
three thousand chose Christopher Gore in his place. The new
Legislature was more decidedly Federalist than the old one. New
Hampshire effected the same revolution. Rhode Island followed. In
New York the Federalists carried the Legislature, as they did also in
Maryland.
Even in Pennsylvania, although nothing shook the fixed political
character of the State, the epidemic of faction broke out. While the
legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut declared Acts of
Congress unconstitutional, and refused aid to execute them, the
legislature of Pennsylvania authorized Governor Snyder to resist by
armed force a mandate of the Supreme Court; and when the United
States marshal attempted to serve process on the person of certain
respondents at the suit of Gideon Olmstead, he found himself
stopped by State militia acting under orders.
In a country where popular temper had easier means of
concentrating its violence, government might have been paralyzed
by these proofs of low esteem; but America had not by far reached
such a stage, and dark as the prospect was both within and without,
Madison could safely disregard dangers on which most rulers had
habitually to count. His difficulties were only an inheritance from the
old Administration, and began to disappear as quickly as they had
risen. At a word from the President the State of Pennsylvania
recovered its natural common-sense, and with some little sacrifice of
dignity gave way. The popular successes won by the Federalists
were hardly more serious than the momentary folly of Pennsylvania.
As yet, the Union stood in no danger. The Federalists gained many
votes; but these were the votes of moderate men who would desert
their new companions on the first sign of a treasonable act, and
their presence tended to make the party cautious rather than rash.
John Henry, the secret agent of Sir James Craig, reported with truth
to the governor-general that the Federalist leaders at Boston found
disunion a very delicate topic, and that “an unpopular war ... can
alone produce a sudden separation of any section of this country
from the common head.”[10] In public, the most violent Federalists
curbed their tongues whenever the Union was discussed, and
instead of threatening to dissolve it, contented themselves by
charging the blame on the Southern States in case it should fall to
pieces. Success sobered them; the repeal of the embargo seemed so
great a triumph that they were almost tempted into good humor.
On the people of New England other motives more directly selfish
began to have effect. The chief sources of their wealth were
shipping and manufactures. The embargo destroyed the value of the
shipping after it had been diminished by the belligerent edicts; the
repeal of the embargo restored the value. The Federalist newspapers
tried to prove that this was not the case, and that the Non-
intercourse Act, which prohibited commerce with England, France, or
their dependencies, was as ruinous as embargo itself; but the
shipping soon showed that Gottenburg, Riga, Lisbon, and the
Spanish ports in America were markets almost as convenient as
London or Havre for the sale of American produce. The Yankee ship-
owner received freights to Europe by circuitous routes, on the
accumulations of two years in grain, cotton, tobacco, and timber, of
the whole United States, besides the freights of an extended coast-
trade. Massachusetts owned more than a third of the American
registered tonnage, and the returns for 1809 and 1810 proved that
her profits were great. The registered tonnage of Massachusetts
employed in foreign trade was 213,000 tons in 1800, and rose to
310,000 tons in 1807 before the embargo; in 1809 it rose again to
324,000; in 1810 it made another leap to 352,000 tons. The coasting
trade employed in 1807 about 90,000 tons of Massachusetts
shipping which was much increased by the embargo, and again
reduced by its repeal; but in 1809 and 1810 this enrolled shipping
still stood far above the prosperous level of 1807, and averaged
110,000 tons for the two years.[11]
Such rapid and general improvement in shipping proved that New
England had better employment than political factiousness to occupy
the thoughts of her citizens; but large as the profits on freights
might be, they hardly equalled the profits on manufactures. In truth,
the manufactories of New England were created by the embargo,
which obliged the whole nation to consume their products or to go
without. The first American cotton mills, begun as early as 1787, met
with so little success that when the embargo was imposed in 1807,
only fifteen mills with about eight thousand spindles were in
operation, producing some three hundred thousand pounds of yarn
a year. These eight thousand spindles, representing a capital of half
a million dollars, were chiefly in or near Rhode Island.
The embargo and non-importation Acts went into effect in the
last days of 1807. Within less than two years the number of spindles
was increased, or arrangements were made for increasing it, from
eight thousand to eighty thousand.[12] Nearly four million dollars of
capital were invested in mills, and four thousand persons were in
their employ, or expected soon to be employed in them. The cotton
cost about twenty cents a pound; the yarn sold on an average at
about $1.12½ a pound. Besides these mills, which were worked
mostly by water but partly by horsepower, the domestic manufacture
of cotton and linen supplied a much larger part of the market. Two
thirds of the clothing and house-linen used in the United States
outside of the cities was made in farm-houses, and nearly every
farmer in New England sold some portion of the stock woven every
year by the women of his household. Much of this coarse but strong
flaxen material, sold at about fifteen or twenty cents a yard by the
spinner, was sent to the Southern States.[13]
While the cotton and linen industries of the North became
profitable, the manufactures of wool lagged little behind. William
Whittemore, who owned the patent for a machine which
manufactured wool and cotton cards, reported from Cambridge in
Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1809, that only the want of card-wire
prevented him from using all his machines to the full extent of their
power.[14] “Since the obstructions to our foreign trade, the
manufactures of our country have increased astonishingly,” he wrote.
“The demand for wool and cotton cards the present season has been
twice as great as it has been any year preceding.” Scarcity of good
wool checked the growth of this industry, and the demand soon
roused a mania among farmers for improving the breed of sheep.
Between one hundred and three hundred per cent of profit attended
all these industries, and little or no capital was required.
All the Northern and Eastern States shared in the advantages of
this production, for which Virginia with the Western and Southern
States paid; but in the whole Union New England fared best. Already
the development of small industries had taken place, which, by
making a varied aggregate, became the foundation and the security
of Yankee wealth. Massachusetts taxed her neighbors on many small
articles of daily use. She employed in the single manufacture of hats
four thousand persons,—more than were yet engaged in the cotton
mills. More than a million and a half of hats were annually made,
and three fourths of these were sold beyond the State; between
three and four million dollars a year flowed into Massachusetts in
exchange for hats alone.[15] At Lynn, in Massachusetts, were made
one hundred thousand pairs of women’s shoes every year. The town
of Roxbury made eight hundred thousand pounds of soap.
Massachusetts supplied the country with cut-iron nails to the value
of twelve hundred thousand dollars a year. Connecticut supplied the
whole country with tin-ware.
New industries sprang up rapidly on a soil and in a climate where
the struggle of life was more severe than elsewhere in the Union,
and where already capital existed in quantities that made production
easy. One industry stimulated another. Women had much to do with
the work, and their quickness and patience of details added largely
to the income of New England at the cost of less active
communities. Their hands wove most of the cotton and woollen
cloths sent in large quantities to the West and South; but they were
inventors as well as workmen. In 1801, when English straw-bonnets
were in fashion, a girl of Wrentham, not far from Boston, found that
she could make for herself a straw-hat as good as the imported one.
In a few months every girl in the county of Norfolk made her own
straw-bonnet; and soon the South and West paid two hundred
thousand dollars a year to the county of Norfolk for straw hats and
bonnets.[16]
At no time could such industries have been established without
the stimulus of a handsome profit; but when Virginia compelled
Massachusetts and the Northern States to accept a monopoly of the
American market, the Yankee manufacturer must have expected to
get, and actually got, great profits for his cottons and woollens, his
hats, shoes, soap, and nails. As though this were not more than
enough, Virginia gave the Northern shipowners the whole freight on
Southern produce, two thirds of which in one form or another went
into the hands of New England shipbuilders, shippers, and
merchants. Slowly the specie capital of the Union drifted towards the
Banks of Boston and New Haven, until, as the story will show, the
steady drain of specie eastward bankrupted the other States and the
national government. Never, before or since, was the country so
racked to create and support monopolies as in 1808, 1809, and
1810, under Southern rule, and under the system of the President
who began his career by declaring that if he could prevent the
government from wasting the labors of the people under the
pretence of protecting them, they must become happy.[17] The navy
and army of the United States were employed, and were paid
millions of dollars, during these years in order to shut out foreign
competition, and compel New England at the cannon’s mouth to
accept these enormous bribes.
The Yankee, however ill-tempered he might be, was shrewd
enough to see where his profit lay. The Federalist leaders and
newspapers grumbled without intermission that their life-blood was
drained to support a negro-slave aristocracy, “baser than its own
slaves,” as their phrase went; but they took the profits thrust upon
them; and what they could not clutch was taken by New York and
Pennsylvania, while Virginia slowly sank into ruin. Virginia paid the
price to gratify her passion for political power; and at the time, she
paid it knowingly and willingly. John Randolph protested almost
alone. American manufactures owed more to Jefferson and
Virginians, who disliked them, than to Northern statesmen, who
merely encouraged them after they were established.
These movements and tendencies were rather felt than
understood amid the uproar of personal and local interests; but the
repeal of the embargo had the effect intended by the Virginians,—it
paralyzed Pickering and the party of forcible resistance. New England
quickly turned from revolutionary thoughts while she engaged in
money-making; and as though the tide of fortune had at last set in
Madison’s favor, a stroke of his diplomacy raised the tottering
Administration to a sudden height of popularity such as Jefferson
himself had never reached.
 CHAPTER II.
When Napoleon, Aug. 3, 1808, heard at Bordeaux that the
Spaniards had captured Dupont’s army at Baylen and Rosily’s ships
at Cadiz, and had thrown eighty thousand French troops back upon
the Pyrenees, his anger was great; but his perplexity was much
greater. In a character so interesting as that of Napoleon, the
moments of perplexity were best worth study; and in his career no
single moment occurred when he had more reason to call upon his
genius for a resource than when he faced at Bordeaux the failure of
his greatest scheme. From St. Petersburg to Gibraltar every
shopkeeper knew that England had escaped, and all believed that no
combination either of force or fraud could again be made with
reasonable hope of driving her commerce from its channels. On this
belief every merchant, as well as every government in the world,
was actually shaping calculations. Napoleon also must shape his
calculations on theirs, since he had failed to force theirs into the
path of his own. The escape of England made useless the machinery
he had created for her ruin. Spain, Russia, and Austria had little
value for his immediate object, except as their control was necessary
for the subjection of England; and the military occupation of Spain
beyond the Ebro became worse than a blunder from the moment
when Cadiz and Lisbon, Cuba and Mexico, Brazil and Peru threw
themselves into England’s arms.[18]
More than once this history has shown that Napoleon never
hesitated to throw aside a plan which had miscarried. If he did not in
the autumn of 1808 throw aside his Spanish schemes, the reason
could only be that he saw no other resource, and that in his belief
his power would suffer too much from the shock of admitting failure.
He showed unusual signs of vacillation, and of a desire to escape the
position into which his miscalculations had led him. Instead of going
at once to Spain and restoring order to his armies, he left his brother
helpless at Vittoria while he passed three months in negotiations
looking toward peace with England. In September he went to
Germany, where he met the Czar of Russia at Erfurt, and induced
Alexander, or consented to his inducement, to join in an autograph
letter to the King of England, marked by the usual Napoleonic
character, and offering the principle of uti possidetis as the
preliminary to a general peace. England regarded this advance as
deceptive, and George Canning was never more successful than in
the gesture of self-restrained contempt with which he tossed back
the letter that Napoleon and Alexander had presumed to address to
a constitutional King of England; but even Canning could hardly
suppose that Napoleon would invite an insult without a motive. From
whatever side Napoleon approached the situation he could invent no
line of conduct which did not imply the triumph of England. Study
the problem as he might, he could not escape from the political and
military disadvantages he incurred from the Spanish uprising.
Without the consent of England he could neither free his civil
government from the system of commercial restriction, nor free his
military strength from partial paralysis in Spain; and England refused
to help him, or even to hear reason from Alexander.
Thenceforward a want of distinct purpose showed itself in
Napoleon’s acts. Unable either to enforce or to abandon his
Continental system, he began to use it for momentary objects,—
sometimes to weaken England, sometimes to obtain money, or as
the pretext for conquests. Unable to hold the Peninsula or to
withdraw from it, he seemed at one time resolved on conquest, at
another disposed toward retreat. In the autumn of 1808 both paths
ran together, for his credit required him to conquer before he could
honorably establish any dynasty on the throne; and during the
months of September and October he marched new French armies
across the Pyrenees and massed an irresistible force behind the
Ebro. A year before, he had thought one hundred thousand men
enough to occupy all Spain and Portugal; but in October, 1808, he
held not less than two hundred and fifty thousand men beyond the
Pyrenees, ready to move at the moment of his arrival.
 October 25, after his return from Germany, the Emperor
pronounced a speech at the opening of his legislative chambers; and
the embarrassment of his true position was evident under the words
in which he covered it.
“Russia and Denmark,” he said, “have united with me against
England. The United States have preferred to renounce commerce
and the sea rather than recognize their slavery. A part of my army
marches against those that England has formed or disembarked in
Spain. It is a special benefit of that Providence which has constantly
protected our arms, that passion has so blinded English councils as to
make them renounce the protection of the sea and at last present
their armies on the Continent. I depart in a few days to place myself
at the head of my army, and with God’s aid to crown the King of Spain
in Madrid, and plant my eagles on the forts of Lisbon.”
He left Paris October 29, and ten days later, November 9, began
the campaign which still attracts the admiration of military critics,
but which did not result in planting his eagles on the forts of Lisbon.
“To my great astonishment,” he afterward said,[19] “I had to fight
the battles of Tudela, Espinosa, Burgos, and Somo Sierra, to gain
Madrid, which, in spite of my victories, refused me admission during
two days.” After disposing in rapid succession of all the Spanish
armies, he occupied Madrid December 4, and found himself at the
end of his campaign. The conquest of Lisbon and Cadiz required
more time, and led to less military result than suited his objects. At
that moment he learned that an English army under Sir John Moore
had ventured to march from Portugal into the north of Spain, and
had already advanced so far toward Burgos as to make their capture
possible. The destruction of an English army, however small, offered
Napoleon the triumph he wanted. Rapidly collecting his forces, he
hurried across the Guadarrama Mountains to cut off Moore’s retreat;
but for once he was out-generalled. Sir John Moore not only saved
his own army, but also led the French a long and exhausting chase
to the extreme northwestern shore of Spain, where the British fleet
carried Moore’s army out of their reach.
Napoleon would not have been the genius he was had he wasted
his energies in following Moore to Corunna, or in trying to plant his
eagles on the forts of Lisbon or Cadiz. A year earlier, Lisbon and
Cadiz had been central points of his scheme; but in December, 1808,
they were worth to him little more than any other seaports without
fleets or colonies. For Spain and Portugal Napoleon showed that he
had no further use. The moment he saw that Moore had escaped,
which became clear when the Emperor reached Astorga, Jan. 2,
1809, throwing upon Soult the task of marching one hundred and
fifty miles to Corunna after Moore and the British army, Napoleon
stopped short, turned about, and with rapidity unusual even for him,
quitted Spain forever. “The affairs of Spain are finished,” he wrote
January 16;[20] although Joseph had the best reason to know and
much cause to tell how his brother left nothing finished in Spain.
“The circumstances of Europe oblige me to go for three weeks to
Paris,” he wrote to Joseph early in the morning of January 15; “if
nothing prevents, I shall be back again before the end of
February.”[21] With characteristic mixture of harshness and
tenderness toward his elder brother, he wrote at noon the same day
another account, equally deceptive, of his motives and intentions:—
“You must say everywhere, and make the army believe, that I shall
return in three or four weeks. In fact, my mere presence at Paris will
make Austria shrink back to her nullity; and then, before the end of
October, I will be back here. I shall be in Paris in five days. I shall go
at full speed, day and night, as far as Bordeaux. Meanwhile everything
will go on quieting itself in Spain.”[22]

Giving out that the conduct of Austria required his presence at

Paris, he succeeded in imposing this fiction upon Europe by the
empire of his will. Europe accepted the fable, which became history;
but although the Emperor soon disposed of Austria, and although
Spain was a more difficult problem than Austria ever was, Napoleon
never kept his word to Joseph, and never again ventured within
sight of the mistakes he could no longer correct.
Meanwhile Armstrong, disgusted with the disappointments and
annoyances of his residence at Paris, had become anxious to escape
without further loss of credit. His letters to Madison, published by
Congress, returned to terrify his French acquaintance, and to close
his sources of information. He could see no hope of further
usefulness. As early as Oct. 25, 1808, when the Emperor was
addressing his legislative chambers before setting out for Spain,
Armstrong wrote to Madison that no good could come from keeping
an American minister at Paris.[23] Yet in the enforced idleness of the
month when Napoleon was in Spain, Armstrong found one ally
whose aid was well worth seeking. After the Czar Alexander
accepted, at Tilsit, the ascendency of Napoleon, he appointed as his
minister of foreign relations the Count Nicholas Roumanzoff. The
Czar was still a young man in his thirty-first year, while Roumanzoff,
fifty-four years old, had the full powers of maturity. Together they
shaped a Russian policy, in the traditional direction of Russian
interests, founded upon jealousy of British maritime tyranny. Lord
Howick’s and Spencer Perceval’s Orders in Council served to sharpen
Russian as well as American antipathies, and brought the two distant
nations into a sympathy which was certainly not deep, but which
England had reason to fear. In the autumn of 1808 Count
Roumanzoff came to Paris to arrange with Champagny the details of
their joint diplomacy; and at the same time, in the month of
November, William Short arrived in Paris secretly accredited as
minister plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg, but waiting confirmation
by the Senate before going to his post. When Armstrong told
Roumanzoff that an American minister would soon be on his way to
St. Petersburg, the count was highly pleased, and promised at once
to send a full minister to replace André Daschkoff, the chargé at
Washington. “Ever since I came into office,” he said to Armstrong,
[24] “I have been desirous of producing this effect; for in dissolving
our commercial connections with Great Britain it became necessary
to seek some other power in whom we might find a substitute; and
on looking round I could see none but the United States who were
at all competent to this object.” So far as concerned England, the
alliance promised great advantages; but Armstrong’s chief anxiety
affected France, and when he attempted to enlist Roumanzoff in
resistance to Napoleon’s robberies, he found no encouragement.
Roumanzoff had already tried his influence with Napoleon on behalf
of the Danes, who wanted compensation for their plundered
commerce. “Give them a civil answer,” replied Napoleon,[25] “but of
course one never pays for this sort of thing,—On ne paye jamais ces
choses-là, n’est-ce pas?” From Roumanzoff’s refusal, Armstrong
inferred that no change need be hoped in Napoleon’s conduct.
“On the contrary,” he wrote to Madison, the day when Napoleon
abandoned the pursuit of Sir John Moore,[26] “their anti-neutral
system is more rigidly observed; the embargo on ships of the United
States found here before the imperial decrees were issued is
continued; every ship of ours coming into a port of France or of her
allies is immediately seized and sequestered; cargoes regularly
admitted to entry by the custom-houses are withheld from their
owners; ships most obviously exceptions to the operation of the
Decrees have been recently condemned; and—what in my view of the
subject does not admit of aggravation—the burning of the ship
‘Brutus’ on the high seas, so far from being disavowed, is substantially
justified.”
Had this been all, perhaps President Madison and Congress might
have waited with courtesy, if not with hope, for Napoleon’s pleasure;
but grievances equally serious ran back to the year 1803, and not
one of them had been redressed by France.
“It is now three years since one of her admirals, on the principle of
self-preservation, burnt four of our ships at sea, and the Emperor
immediately acknowledged the debt and repeatedly promised to
discharge it; but not a shilling has yet been paid, nor is it probable
that a shilling ever will be paid. Besides this breach of justice in the
first instance and of promise in the last, we have to complain that bills
of exchange drawn to the order of citizens of the United States by the
public functionaries of France, to the amount of many millions of
dollars, and for articles of the first necessity, and drawn many years
ago, are not only not paid, but are officially denounced as not
payable.”
Armstrong’s temper, bad in the winter, became worse in the
spring, until his letters to the Department of State seemed to leave
no remedy but war for the grievances he described. The angry tone
of his despatches was not counteracted by fair words in the