he time seemed to be at hand when the United
States must submit to peace on such terms as England chose to dictate,
or risk disruption and ruin. The administrative weaknesses of the
country {233} culminated in actual financial bankruptcy, which was due
in no small part to the fact that Federalist financiers and bankers,
determining to do all the damage possible, steadily refused to
subscribe to the loans or to give any assistance. The powerful New
England capital was entirely withheld. The result was that the strain
on the rest of the banks became too great; and after the capture of
Washington they all suspended specie payment, leaving the Government
only the notes of suspended banks, or its own depreciated treasury
notes for currency. All the coin in the country steadily flowed into
the vaults of New England banks, while the Federal Treasury was
compelled, on November 9, 1814, to admit its inability to pay interest
on its loans. Congress met in the autumn and endeavoured to remedy the
situation by chartering a bank; but under the general suspension of
specie payments it was impossible to start one solvent from the
beginning. When Congress authorized one without power to suspend
specie payments, Madison vetoed it as useless. All that could be done
was to issue more treasury notes. As for the army, a Bill for
compulsory service was brought in, showing the enormous change in
Republican ideals; but it failed to pass. Congress seemed helpless.
The American people would neither enlist for the war nor {234}
authorize their representatives to pass genuine war measures.

The Federalists, controlling most of the New England States, now felt
that the time had come to insist on a termination of their grievances.
Their governors had refused to allow militia to assist, their
legislatures had done nothing to aid the war; their capitalists had
declined to subscribe, and their farmers habitually sold provisions to
the British over the Canadian boundary, actually supplying Sir George
Prevost's army by contract. There met, at Hartford, on December 14,
1814, a convention of leading men, officially or unofficially
representing the five New England States, who agreed upon a document
which was intended to secure the special rights of their region. They
demanded amendments to the Constitution abolishing the reckoning of
slaves as basis for congressional representation, providing for the
partial distribution of government revenues a