with spirit the harassing war with which their country was threatened. pro To the west of the Alleghanies, to draft the militia had been a work of supererogation; all the demands of the republic were answered, and more than answered by volunteers. In fearlessness and enterprise this army of patriots was unrivalled, but discipline was only to be learned in the school of adversity. It is doubtful indeed, whether they ever completely acquired it, in the sense understood by military men. It was rather a sympathy of feeling than submission to authority, that duced concert of action; it was enthusiasm supplying the place of skill; or intuitive genius that of experience. We find a handful of youths, whose leader had numbered but twenty years, putting to flight a band of veteran troops and practised Indian warriors, flushed with victory, and tenfold the number of their stripling adversaries. But they had pledged their lives to redeem the honour of the republic, tarnished in the preceding campaign; and moreover to avenge the death of their friends and relatives, slaughtered by the savage allies of their opponents.* It is worthy of notice, that the employment of Indians in the *This young hero, no less distinguished for his tender humanity than his romantic valour, had been entrusted with the defence of a fort, commanding one of the rivers that fall into lake Erie. His general, receiving intimation that a strong party of the enemy was about to invest it, despatched orders to the little garrison to destroy the works, and make good a retreat. Young Croghan, knowing the importance of the post he occupied, and, recalling with his companions their sacred engagement, determined to disobey orders, and wait the enemy. A more desperate stand was, perhaps, never made. The solemn obligation which bound these devoted youths, and the steady composure with which they took their measures, preserves them from the charge of rashness. Provided as they were with no other weapons than their muskets and one piece of ordnance, and surrounded on all sides by gunboats, veteran soldiers, and yelling savages, their victory seems little less than miraculous; it was, however, complete; and led the way in that train of successes which followed on the western and northern frontier ending in the battle of Plattsburgh. SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH, CENTRE, AND EAST. 261 British service has always had a different effect from that intended. It does not strike terror, but rather whets the valour of those opposed to such relentless adversaries. After the massacre at the river Raisin, noticed in a former letter, the tide of victory turned in favour of the Americans. The spirit of the southern and middle states was little less ardent than that of the west; but had it been otherwise, the descents made on their shores by the enemies' ships, the sack of villages, which, scattered along a coast of two thousand miles extent, it was often impossible to guard, and finally the burning of the infant capital, had been sufficient to rouse the energy displayed at Baltimore and New-Orleans. However mortifying at the moment, the conflagration of the seat of government was, perhaps, productive of more lasting benefit to the republic than any one of its most splendid victories. There was one quarter of this great confederacy which had hitherto exhibited a lamentable deficiency of patriotism. The conduct of some of the New-England states at the opening of the contest, is not very easy to explain. That Massachusetts, who thirty years before had led the van in the army of patriots, whose cause too it was that her sister states so generously advocated, that she should suddenly so forget her former self, as to stand by, a sullen spectator of a conflict which involved the honour and national existence of the great republic, of which till now she had formed so distinguished a member, seems at once the most extraordinary and lamentable dereliction of principle to be found in the annals of nations! She appears to have been made the dupe of a party whose name, until this time, had been respected even by the nation from whom it stood aloof, and then to have been angry because others saw this, and laughed at her cullibility. Among the first Federals, there were men no less re spectable for their virtues than their talents; but these had gradually fallen off from the minority, to mingle themselves with the bulk of the nation, leaving only the' old tories and some disappointed politicians, to disgrace a title which patriots had worn, and under its specious mask to attempt the ruin of their country. In this, fortunately, they failed; but may the lesson prove a warning not to Massachusetts only, but to each and all of these confederated states! I have already had occasion to observe upon the change wrought by the last war in the condition of the republic; it not only settled its place among the nations, but cemented its internal union; even those who from party ill humour, had refused their concurrence with the measures of government, and their sympathy in the feelings of their fellow citizens, were gradually warmed by the enthusiasm that surrounded them, or by the pressure of common danger forced to make common cause. At the close of the contest, one general feeling pervaded the whole great Union. The name of a party once respectable, but now disgraced by itself, became universally odious; and its members, to rise from the contempt into which they had fallen, found it advisable to declare their own conversion to the principles of popular government and federal union. It may now be said, that the party once misnamed Federal has ceased to exist. There is indeed a difference of political character, or, what will express it better, a varying intensity of republican feeling discernible in the different component parts of this great Union; but all are now equally devoted to the national institutions, and in all difference of opinion, admit the necessity of the minority yielding to the majority. And, what is yet more important, these differences of opinion do not hinge upon the merits or demerits of foreign nations, French or English, Dutch or Portuguese. The wish of your venerable friend is now realized; - his countrymen are Americans. Genet may now make the tour of the states, and Henry of New-England, with infinite safety to the peace of their citizens; and even Massachusetts herself would now blush at the name of the Hartford Convention.* * Genet is, or was at least when the Author was last in Albany, a peaceable and obscure citizen of the state of New-York. It is curious in a democracy, to see how soon the factious sink into insignificance. Aaron Burr was pointed out to me in the Mayor's court at New-York, an old man whom none cast an eye upon except an idle stranger. In Europe, the bustling demagogue is sent to prison, or to the scaffold, and metamorphosed into a martyr ; in America, he is left to walk at large, and soon no one thinks about him. 264 LETTER XX. UNANIMITY OF SENTIMENT THROUGHOUT THE NATION. MY DEAR FRIEND, New-York, January, 1820. THERE is at present no appearance of any regular and standing minority in the nation, or consequently in the house of congress; it is no longer a dispute how the nation is to be governed; the sovereignty is avowedly and practically with the people, who have agreed to exercise that sovereignty in no other way than by representatives, bound to obey the instructions of their electors. If they do not obey their instructions, they are thrown aside and others put in their place. An opposition on the part of the governors to the governed, would here only be absurd; they are the servants of the people, not their masters; vested with just as much power as their employers see good to charge them with, and constrained to exercise that power, not after their own fancy, but after that of the nation.* * * The representative will, of course, sometimes find a struggle within him between his own conviction and the expressed wishes of his electors, and* sometimes conscientiously abide by the former. I remember the case of a distinguished member from the west of Pennsylvania, (Mr. Baldwin,) who once voted in decided opposition to his received instructions. At his return home, he was summoned to give an explanation or apology, under risk of being thrown out. The member replied, that, at the time of his vote, he had expressed his regret that his opinion differed from that of his electors; but |