e represented to be treasonable, seditious, disaffected, and
thoroughly imbued with hatred towards Great Britain. He shortly
afterwards re-instated, in their respective ranks in the militia, such
officers as had been set aside by Sir James Craig, without just cause,
and indeed spared no exertion to make the people his friends, well
judging that the office, or place men would, of necessity be so. On the
28th of May, he levied and organised four battalions of embodied
militia; and a regiment of voltigeurs was raised, the latter being
placed under the command of Major De Salaberry, a French-Canadian, who
had served in the 60th regiment of foot.

There was need for this embodiment of troops. Already, dating from the
3rd of April, the American Congress had passed an Act laying an embargo
for ninety days on all vessels within the jurisdiction of the United
States. The President, Mr. Jefferson, had recommended the embargo. He
had long intended to gratify the lower appetites of the worst class of
the American people, who were now more numerous than that respectable
class of republicans of which that great man, Washington, was himself
the type. The measure was preparatory to a war with Great Britain. And
war was very soon afterwards declared. On the 4th of June, a bill
declaring that war existed between Great Britain and the United States
passed the House of Representatives by a majority of seventy-nine to
forty-nine. The bill was taken to the Senate, and there it passed only
by the narrow majority of six. The vote was nineteen voices in the
affirmative and thirteen in the negative. Mr. Jefferson assented to the
bill on the 18th of June. The grounds of war were set forth in a
message of the President to Congress, on the 1st of June. The
impressment of American seamen by British naval officers; the blockade
of the ports of the enemies of Great Britain, supported by no adequate
force, in consequence of which American commerce had been plundered in
every sea, and the great staples of the country cut off from their
legitimate markets; and on account of the British Orders in Council.
The Committee on Foreign relations believed that the freeborn sons of
America were worthy to enjoy the liberty which their fathers had
purchased at the price of much blood and treasure. They saw by the
measures adopted by Great Britain, a course commenced and persisted in,
which might lead to a loss of national character and independence, and
they felt n