men. Actually the army
consisted of ten regiments with ranks half filled, scattered in
garrisons from Mackinac to Lake Champlain,--a force of less than 10,000
men, of whom 4000 were raw recruits. The staff was made up of old and
incompetent officers; and from a military point of view the new
appointments left much to be desired. The navy which was to contest the
supremacy of the seas with the victor at Trafalgar consisted of twelve
sea-going vessels and some two hundred gunboats, which were useless
except for coast defense. There was bitter truth in the manifesto issued
by the Federalist members of Congress when it said: "Our enemy is the
greatest maritime power that has ever been on earth, and to her we offer
the most tempting prizes. Our merchantmen are on every sea. Our rich
cities lie along the Atlantic seaboard close to the water's edge. And to
defend these from the cruisers of Great Britain we are to have an army
of raw recruits yet to be raised and a navy of gunboats now stranded on
the beaches and frigates that have long been rotting in the slime of the
Potomac."

The worst aspect of the war was its sectional character. New England was
in opposition. From the outset the activity of the National
Administration was weakened by the indubitable fact that the United
States, as the Federalists were never tired of repeating, began the war
"as a divided people." When General Dearborn made requisition upon the
governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut for militia to defend the
coast, Governor Strong ignored the summons. Pressed for a reply, he
finally stated to the Secretary of War that the judges of the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts had advised him that the commanders-in-chief of
the militia in the several States, rather than the President, had the
right to determine whether any of the exigencies contemplated by the
Constitution existed so as to require them to place the militia in the
service of the United States. The judges also advised the governor that
the militia, when in the service of the United States, could not
lawfully be commanded by any federal officers below the President, but
only by state officers. The general assembly of Connecticut sustained
Governor Griswold in a similar attitude toward the federal authorities,
holding that the war was an offensive war to which the provisions of the
Constitution respecting the militia did not apply.

From the first the war-hawks had cried, "On to Canada," for their