XXVII. of domestic manufactures, rapidly on the increase, though CHAPTER prosecuted as yet mainly by small capitalists, a new interest was fast rising, favorable to the total prohibition 1813. of foreign manufactures, and to the war as a means of it. The war party in Massachusetts, thus sustained, and with the general government to lean upon, still continued very formidable. In New Hampshire and Vermont it was still more so. Even in Connecticut and Rhode Isladd, where the new manufactures were extensively gone into, it began to rally. Its leaders watched with jealous eyes every movement of the Federalists, whom they overwhelmed with charges of want of patriotism, friendship for the enemy, sectional jealousies, and hostility to the Union; charges which, originating thus in New England itself, the Democrats of the other states were prompt to believe and to re-echo. The non-extension of the British blockade to New England had excited not a little jealousy-it was, perhaps, a principal occasion of the new embargo. An incident, real or imaginary, which had lately occurred at New London, was seized upon as additional proof of collusion between the Federalists and the enemy. As the winter approached, Decatur had expected to get to sea with his two frigates. Vexed to find himself thwarted in every attempt by the watchfulness of the enemy, he wrote to the Navy Department in a fit of disgust, that, beyond all doubt, the British had, by signals or otherwise, instantaneous information of all his movements; and as proof of it, he stated that, after several nights of favorable weather, the report circulating in the town that an attempt was to be made to get out, "in the course of the evening two blue lights were burned on both points of the harbor's mouth." These "signals to the enemy," for such he unhesitatingly pronounced them, had been Dec. CHAPTER repeated, so he wrote, and had been seen by twenty per XXVII. sons at least of the squadron, though it does not appear 1814, that Decatur himself was one of the number; and yet, so he bitterly complained, there were men in New London who had "the hardihood to disbelieve it, and the effrontery to avow their disbelief." This "hardihood" and "effrontery" were immediately set down as proofs of a guilty collusion, and, as the story spread, it was made to involve, not only these unbelievers of New London, but the great body of the Federalists of Connecticut, and, in fact, of New England. Such a clamor was raised about it, that one of the Connecticut members of Jan. 24. Congress moved for a committee of investigation, Fisk, of Vermont, not willing, probably, that so useful a tale should be spoiled, professed to tremble at the idea of an inquisitorial power to be exercised by the House of inquiring into particular acts of treason. Calhoun thought it a matter too diminutive to merit attention. The inquiry was thus quashed; but the story spread and grew, and the more vehement opponents of the war soon began to be stigmatized as "blue-light Federalists”—a term which even yet lingers in our political vocabulary. The Pennsylvania Legislature, only a few years before arrayed in arms against the authority of the nationJan. 18. al judiciary, now quoted largely from Washington's Fare well Address, expressing their astonishment at, and dis approbation of, Chittenden's proclamation and Otis's resolutions, and their readiness to aid the general government in bringing to justice all violators of the Constitution and the laws of the Union, and all aiders and com. forters of the enemy, whether directly or indirectly. The Feb. 12. new Democratic Legislature of New Jersey responded still more fiercely, expressing "their contempt and abhorrence of the ravings of an infuriated faction, whether POLICY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS LEADERS. 469 XXVII. issuing from a legislative body, a maniac governor, or dis- CHAPTER contented and ambitious demagogues," and declaring the resolution of the people, that is, of the Democrats of New 1814. Jersey, "to resist internal insurrection with the same readiness as the invasion of a cruel, vindictive, and savage foe." Placed in this narrow strait, with no state administration out of New England to sympathize with them, except those of Delaware and Maryland, the Massachusetts leaders, impelled to action by the more impassioned part of their own suffering and infuriated partisans, conducted themselves with firmness and decision, but also with great prudence. As they had formerly repudiated, so they did not now adopt the claim of a power in the state Legislatures-as set forth in the famous resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky-to nullify, by acts of their own, the unconstitutional legislation of Congress. To assert any such power was unnecessary, since unconstitutional acts were void in themselves, whereas this doctrine of nullification would seem to admit their validity until some state Legislature should choose to nullify them. But they did maintain, what came to much the same thing in practice, that it was both the right and the duty of the state courts, and of the state Legislatures acting through the state courts, to take care that no usurped and unconstitutional power was exercised within their jurisdiction, whether by the Federal government or any body else. Of the sort of opposition which they were ready to adopt, they gave an early specimen in the passage of an act forbidding the employment of their jails Feb. 7. by the United States for the confinement of prisoners committed by any other than judicial authority, and directing the jailers, at the end of thirty days, to discharge all British officers, prisoners of war, committed to them XXVII. CHAPTER for close confinement. This led to an act of Congress, authorizing the marshals of the United States, whenever 1814. the use of state jails was withdrawn, to provide other places of imprisonment; and to an application by the president to his faithful Legislature of Pennsylvania for the use of the Pennsylvania penitentiaries for the confinement of British officers, an application forthwith granted, though not with entire security against escape. Happily, however, this aggravating system soon came to an end. Some of the lately-imprisoned American officers having been released on parole, with a commission to inform the American government that the twentythree prisoners sent to England, charged with treason, had not been brought to trial, but remained on the ordinary footing of prisoners of war, this speedily led to a dismissal, on parole, of all the officers, prisoners on both sides. But the British government, in abandoning its untenable July 23. claim, sought still to cover its retreat by a proclamation, recalling all its subjects from foreign service, granting pardon for all past treasons of this sort on the score of probable ignorance, but threatening to punish as traitors all taken in the service of any hostile power after four months from the date of the proclamation-an empty threat, never attempted to be executed. April. The joint committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, to which the petitions for redress and protection Feb. 16 had been referred, set forth, in their report, as the sub stance of these complaints, a deep, however melancholy conviction, that the Constitution, an object of the peti tioners' particular reverence, had been endangered by a perversion of its powers, and that the basis of the Union, for which the petitioners expressed an ardent attachment, had been destroyed by a practical neglect of its principles. The basis of the Union, the grand inducement to POLICY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS LEADERS. 471 XXVII. the formation of the Federal Constitution, had been the CHAPTER protection of commerce, by the present administration so deliberately sacrificed; while an admission of new states 1814. to the South and West, not contemplated by the parties to the Constitution, and not warranted by its principles, threatened to reduce the voice of New England, once powerful and effectual in the national councils, to the feeble and disregarded expression of colonial complaints. It was to these sources that the petitioners traced the war, and the more recent calamity of the new embargo, cutting off their shore fishery and coasting trade, the last poor remnant of a once flourishing commerce, thus destroying their means in proportion as the demands of the government increased; an act more odious and unfeeling than the Boston Port Bill, which roused the colonies to independence; a gross and palpable violation of the principles of the Constitution, not to be submitted to without a pusillanimous surrender of their rights and liberties. In this exhibition of grievances, the committee declared their concurrence. "We believe that this war, so fertile in calamities, and so threatening in its consequences, has been waged with the worst possible views, and carried on in the worst possible manner; forming a union of wickedness and weakness which defies, for a parallel, the annals of the world. We believe, also, that its worst effects are yet to come; that loan upon loan, tax upon tax, and exaction upon exaction, must be imposed, until the comforts of the present and the hopes of the rising generation are destroyed. An impoverished people will be an enslaved people. An army of 60,000 men, become veteran by the time the war is ended, may become the instrument, as in former times, of destroying even the forms of liberty. It will be as easy to establish a president for life by their arms, as a president for four years |