What does " in a spirit forbidding every reliance not placed on" mean?

Does it mean "in a spirit that emphasizes the particular reliance on"?

oristarA wrote:

Does it mean "in a spirit that emphasizes the particular reliance on"?

Further context supplied by me: Second Inaugural Address, James Madison, Thursday, March 4, 1813: Washington, DC

Madison was the newly elected US President and he was talking about his government's attitude towards a possible forthcoming war with Great Britain.

The verb "forbid" is an absolute one. It is stronger than, and different in meaning from, for example, "discouraging". If I receive a message from another person (e.g. a police officer) forbidding me to leave my house, that person is ordering me not to leave. This would be a matter of fact.

However if I say I have received information which I describe as forbidding me to leave my house, that could mean that I have deduced from that information that I absolutely must not leave, or decided to pretend that is the case.

He wished to show that the US side did not want war, and that it had been forced upon them by the unco-operative British. The peaceful advances allegedly made by the US side towards the British seemed to be received by them in a spirit which forbade (did not allow) the US to rely on anything other than the power of their military.

Madison was a politician. He used "forbidding" because he wishes his listeners and readers to believe that he had no other choice than to go to war.

In March, 1813, Madison was the newly re-elected President, and the United States and England were already at war. English troops with Indian allies had already invaded the United States, taking a fortification near present-day Detroit, where England's Indian allies slaughtered most of the Americans who had surrendered on terms. United States troops and New York militia had crossed the Niagara River to attack Queenston, Upper Canada, but the militia proved to be unreliable and most who had crossed the river, recrossed the river. Those who remained were killed or captured when England's Indian allies attacked their flank. The United States Navy had already humiliated the Royal Navy on several occasions. USS Constitution engaged, captured and burned HMS Guerriere. USS United States engaged HMS Macedonian and captured her as a prize. USS Wasp engaged HMS Frolic and captured her as a prize. Wasp was an 18 gun sloop of war, and she was immediately captured herself by the 74 gun ship of the line, HMS Poictiers, with no dishonor. USS Hornet engaged and sank HMS Peacock in under 15 minutes. USS Constitution engaged HMS Java, captured her and burned her.

All of those events took place before Mr. Madison was inaugurated for his second term. Contrex implies that Mr. Madison was being less than honest about going to war. In 1807, HMS Leopard hailed USS Chesapeake off the coast of Virginia, in a friendly manner, and then demanded that she be allowed to search the ship. When her captain refused, Leopard fired a broadside into Chesapeake, killing and wounding about two dozen men. She then took four men off Cheseapeake whom she alleged were Englishmen and deserters--including a black man! When she arrived in Halifax, those four men were repatriated under orders from the Admiralty. Throughout the period of the Napoleonic wars, Royal Navy vessels routinely stopped American mechant ships, and pressed sailors out of their crews on the allegation that they were Englishmen and deserters. During the war, more than 2000 ordinary and able seamen, stating that they were Americans, languished in Dartmoor Prison rather than serve against the United States. An Englishman who served aboard HMS Macedonian and who wrote his memoirs many years later, reported that there was a large number of Americans on board, who did not want to fight against USS United States, and begged the captain to let them go below. He refused, and sent his midshipmen to the companionways armed with pistols to prevent anyone from going below. According to the autobiographer, that included a large number of Englishmen who had been pressed into the service and who also did not wish to fight. As midshipmen were ordinarily used as gun crew captains in a fight, that might account for Macedonian's poor performance in the engagement.

It is useful to remember that Contrex has an irrational hatred of the United States and all things American. Yes, the United States did not have to fight England--so long as they were willing to accept the principle that the Royal Navy could anything they damned well pleased on the world's oceans, including taking American sailors at will from unarmed merchant ships.

For anyone who doubts what i've written here, it's easy enough to show that Madison had been re-elected in 1812, and that the war was already under way. The naval engagements i've described can be found in The Naval War of 1812, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., New York, 1881--which is once again in print. The quality of Roosevelt's scholarship was such that when the Royal Navy compiled a history of their service in the 1890s, they commissioned Mr. Roosevelt to write the article on what they called the American War. I don't have the reference to the pressed sailor, the Englishman who served on Macedonian immediately at hand, but a gobshit like Contrex is not worth the effort.

Yes, the United States did not have to fight England--so long as they were willing to accept the principle that the Royal Navy could anything they damned well pleased on the world's oceans, including taking American sailors at will from unarmed merchant ships.

Sarcasm

The experience of American history is that anyone who relies on the militia is doomed to defeat. The few exceptions in which the militia performed well are just that--exceptions which prove the rule.

The militia performed poorly in Massachusetts at the beginning of the revolution, with a few notable exceptions. The militia from the New England states performed well when under the command of Benedict Arnold during the Saratoga campaign. The militia, however, usually performed poorly in the revolution, and Washington was contemptuous of them. At the battle of Hannah's Cowpens in the South, Daniel Morgan exploited the propensity of the militia to run away. He simply asked them to "give them two good fires" (meaning to shoot, reload and shoot again), and then they could "skeedaddle" (meaning they could run away). When the troops of his opponent, Tarleton, approached the American position, the militia fired, reloaded and fired again, and then ran away. They ran on either side of a low hill upon which Morgan has stationed his Continentals--the long service, highly experienced troops. Tarleton's troops hurried on, thinking they had routed the enemy, and became disorganized. At that point, the Continentals began firing steadily at them, and the English advance began to falter. Meanwhile, the militia officers had rounded up their men and reformed them. The militia came out from behind the hill to attack one flank of Tarleton's troops, and William Washington's Continental dragoons rode out from behind the hill to attack the other flank. Tarleton's command was thoroughly routed, and Tarleton, whose name once spread terror throughout the Carolinas, was never a threat again.

But Morgan exploited the unreliability of the militia. In the war of 1812, the militia had a miserable record. At Queenston, they didn't simply run away, they ran down to the Niagara River, and pushed the wounded out of their way so they could get in the boats and cross back to the New York side. At Bladensburg in Maryland, there were six or seven thousand militia, facing about two thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns in Spain. The militia ran away. There were sailors from Jefferson's stupid gunboat navy (now at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay), and they seized the militia's artillery. English officers at the battle praised the sailors, saying that they stood to their guns "even after all of their officers were shot down and we were among them with the bayonet." Backing the sailors were Marines who had marched out from the city of Washington, and they fought off repeated attacks until the sun went down, and then marched away taking all of their dead and wounded with them.

Their miserable performance continued. At the battle of New Orleans (actually fought after the peace had been concluded, but no one in North America knew it yet), on the left bank of the river, to the east, Jackson had his Tennessee volunteers, the Crescent City militia (militia from New Orleans, who were, after all, defending their homes) and once again, sailors and Marines from Jefferson's idiotic gunboat navy, which was now at the bottom of the Mississippi River. They not only stopped repeated attacks by Wellington's veterans, they inflicted horrible casualties among the English officers, including shooting down Packenham, who commanded the force. On the right bank (west side) of the river, the Kentucky militia got a good look at the redcoats coming at them, threw down their guns and ran away. In the American civil war, the militia were a sad joke.

Jackson had fought the Creek War (1813) using Tennessee volunteers,who were largely drawn from the militia. After the Creek War, veterans of Jackson's campaign were rewarded with commissions in the state militia. In 1824, although Jackson won the popular vote, opponents of Jackson voted for John Quincy Adams in the Electoral College, and Adams became President, even though he was supposed to have been Jackson's Vice President. Jackson went back to Tennessee, and, using the wreck of Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party (usually called the Republicans--and no relation to the modern Republican Party) organized a new political party using his old wartime cronies from the militia. That was the birth of the Democratic Party, and it was built from the ground up using militia officers as the political organizers. Jackson used the same process to build a party organization from the ground up in the other states, and in the 1828 election, he defeated Adams, 56% to 44%. But he absolutely buried him in the Electoral College, 178 to 83.

Jackon's fulsome praise of the militia was a political ploy, it had nothing to do with the dismal record of the militia in American wars, something of which Jackson was well aware.