owing to the
system of slavery--was intensely aristocratic. The war of 1812 with
England was so unpopular in New England, by reason of the injury which
it threatened to inflict on its commerce, that the Hartford Convention
of 1814 was more than suspected of a design to bring about the
secession of New England from the Union. A good deal of oratory was
called {376} out by the debates on the commercial treaty with Great
Britain, negotiated by Jay in 1795, by the Alien and Sedition Law of
1798, and by other pieces of Federalist legislation, previous to the
downfall of that party and the election of Jefferson to the presidency
in 1800. The best of the Federalist orators during those years was
Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, and the best of his orations was,
perhaps, his speech on the British treaty in the House of
Representatives, April 18, 1796. The speech was, in great measure, a
protest against American chauvinism and the violation of international
obligations. "It has been said the world ought to rejoice if Britain
was sunk in the sea; if where there are now men and wealth and laws and
liberty, there was no more than a sand bank for sea-monsters to fatten
on; space for the storms of the ocean to mingle in conflict.~.~.~.
What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man
was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent
preference because they are greener?~.~.~. I see no exception to the
respect that is paid among nations to the law of good faith.~.~.~. It
is observed by barbarians--a whiff of tobacco smoke or a string of
beads gives not merely binding force but sanctity to treaties. Even in
Algiers a truce may be bought for money, but, when ratified, even
Algiers is too wise or too just to disown and annul its obligation."
Ames was a scholar, and his speeches are more finished and thoughtful,
more _literary_, in a way, than those {377} of his contemporaries. His
eulogiums on Washington and Hamilton are elaborate tributes, rather
excessive, perhaps, in laudation and in classical allusions. In all
the oratory of the revolutionary period there is nothing equal in deep
and condensed energy of feeling to the single clause in Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address, "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain."

A prominent figure during and after the War of the Revolution was
Thomas Paine, or, as he was somewhat disrespectfully called, "Tom
Paine." He was a