federalist opposition to the administration. Some
Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having
with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when
the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign
affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and
favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of
commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had
cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for
orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.

Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New
York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where
embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire
tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its
sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound
rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible.
Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or
countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature
in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally
binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested
by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature
"to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the
assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering,
referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to
be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and
putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A
sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting
too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it
said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in
the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began
to be sedulously hushed--in consequence of the glorious news of victory
and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.

[Illustration: Five men in a small boat on the ocean. They are
surrounded by smoke and bursting shells.]
Perry transferring his Colors from the Lawrence to the Niagara.

While the Congregationalists, es