very New England home was, "Thank God for Hull's victory!" Nothing
could have been better timed and more dramatic. The papers which
announced the humiliating surrender of General Hull contained the news
of his nephew's victory.

If the victory of the Constitution was won on unequal terms,--the
Guerriere was undoubtedly inferior,--the British Admiralty could not
excuse a second naval defeat on this score. On October 17, the American
sloop-of-war Wasp encountered the brig Frolic convoying merchantmen six
hundred miles east of Norfolk. There was little to choose between the
vessels either in size or equipment, yet the marksmanship of the
American gunners was so far superior that in forty-three minutes the
crew of the Wasp had boarded the Frolic. Not even the subsequent capture
of both vessels by a British ship-of-the-line could dim the glory of
this victory. A week later the frigate United States under Captain
Decatur captured the Macedonia and brought her into New London--"the
only British frigate ever brought as a prize into an American port." In
December the Constitution, now commanded by Captain Bainbridge, added to
her laurels by overpowering the powerful frigate Java.

The effect of these disasters upon the British public was out of all
proportion to the actual value of the vessels lost. Canning afterward
declared that the loss of the Guerriere and the Macedonia produced a
sensation scarcely to be equaled by the most violent convulsion of
nature. "The sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was
broken by those unfortunate captures."

In the midst of the war occurred a presidential election. Madison had
been the unanimous choice of the congressional caucus held in May; but
only eighty-three out of one hundred and thirty-three Republicans had
attended, and the discontent of New York Republicans was well known. The
nomination of De Witt Clinton by the New York legislative caucus opened
wide the breach in the party. In September a convention of Federalists
repeated the error of 1804 and indorsed Clinton's nomination, naming as
his partner Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania. Elbridge Gerry, of
Massachusetts, was finally nominated for Vice-President by the
Republicans. The alternatives presented to the people seemed to be
Madison and continued war ineffectively conducted, or Clinton and still
more humiliating peace. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and all the New
England States but Vermont, preferred Clinton.