should they get seduced by some strutting sergeant into taking up arms for the country, insubordination and even desersertion would become them.
"Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle
On them kittle-drums o yourn,
'Taint a knowin kind o cattle
That is ketched with mouldy corn.;[1]
While such were the troubles of waking hours, the bedchamber, too, of many Whigs had its troubled moments. Ghosts walked. John Jay, a sincere opponent of our second war against England, came back, holding out a scroll that bore these words of his, As the war has been constitutionally declared, the people are evidently bound to support it. Came back the Rev. David Osgood, D.D., of Medford, Massachusetts, with his sermon of June 27, 1812: My mind has been in a constant agony, not so much at the inevitable loss of our temporal prosperity and happiness, and the complicated miseries of war, as at its guilt, its outrage against heaven, against all truth, honesty, justice, goodness, against all the principles of social happiness. Came back another Federalist, the Rev. Elijah Parish, D.D., with a sermon recommending treason as a pious duty: New England, if invaded, would be obliged to defend herself. Do you not then owe it to your children, and owe it to your God, to make peace for yourselves? Unlike Jay, these men appeared to be unhappy; and then certain patriots of the Hartford Convention filed by with averted eyes, each dragging after him a blasted reputation.[2]
In one thing, however, the opponents of the war succeeded. Going far beyond the limits of reasonable criticism and helpful suggestions, and indulging in language calculated to dishearten and hamper the administration, they encouraged the enemy. It is merely Polk's war, announced the Boston Atlas, quoted in the Monitor Republicano. Mexico would have disgraced herself by receiving Slidell, declared the same journal. Her spirit, proclaimed the National Intelligencer, was fitted to command the admiration of all men capable of appreciating the virtue of courage and fortitude under the most disastrous circumstances. Severance, a member of Congress, openly applauded her resistance. We cannot beat her without ruining our finances, maintained Waddy Thompson. The destruction of her national in-
