when no "hot-bed" system had been, if such was afterward, resorted to.

This session of Congress ended on the 18th of April, 1814. It was during this winter that Mr. Webster began that long course of practice in the Supreme Court of the United States which was seldom entirely interrupted from that time forward, although there came to be periods when his public and official duties obliged him to make great sacrifices in respect to his professional emoluments. At this period the court commenced its sessions in the month of February. Its term in the present year was closed about the middle of March. Mr. Webster was employed in several prize cases, none of which, however, involved very important questions.' We get the following item. of interest from his correspondence with his brother: "There is no man in the court that strikes me like Marshall. I have never seen a man of whose intellect I had a higher opinion.": After the adjournment of the court, Mr. Webster went with a few other gentlemen to dine with Judge Washington, at Mount Vernon.

1 Correspondence, i., 244.

For some very interesting descriptions of the other judges of that time, as well as of the Chief Justice, see the letters of Judge Story, given in his life by his son, Mr. W. W. Story, vol. i., pp. 166, et seq. These letters were written before Judge Story was on the bench, and while he was a member of Con

gress. He became a member of the court in 1811.

3 Letter to E. Webster.-Correspond ence, i., 244.) There is an error in the date of this letter in the printed copy. It should be March 29, 1814, instead of May. Mr. Webster was not in Washington after the end of the session of Congress.

CHAPTER VI.

1814-1815.

EXTRAORDINARY SESSION OF CONGRESS-BURNING OF THE CAPITOL BY THE ENGLISH-PEACE NEGOTIATIONS—THE HARTFORD CONVENTION-A LAND TAX-CONSCRIPTION—ATTEMPT TO CREATE A NATIONAL BANK.

THE

HE Thirteenth Congress was assembled by proclamation of the President in an extraordinary session, on the 19th of September, 1814. Grave events had occurred. In the preceding August, the enemy had landed a force fifty miles below Washington, which marched to the city, burned the capitol, the President's house, and some of the other public buildings, and then retired. The President's message, at the opening of the session, took notice of this "destruction of public edifices, protected, as monuments of the arts, by the laws of civilized warfare;" and, repelling the idea that any disgrace rould attach to ourselves from this occurrence, it proceeded to recapitulate the successes which we had met with elsewhere. Adverting to the great numbers of the militia that had necessarily been called into the field, the message recommended an increase of the regular army and a classification of the militia for active service. Adverting to the state of the finances, it called for pecuniary supplies on a scale commensurate with the extent and character which the war had assumed.

The diplomatic relations of the war had been somewhat changed since the last adjournment of Congress. An offer of mediation by the Emperor of Russia, made in March, 1813, had

been accepted by our Government, and commissioners had been sent to Europe to await the result of this proposal. The British Government declined the mediation, and proposed to treat directly with the United States. Accordingly, in January, (1814), a new commission was sent to our plenipotentiaries, who were then at Gottenburg. It was not, however, until August, that the British and American commissioners met, at Ghent; and when the session of Congress began in September, the negotiation was in progress, but with little prospect of a successful result. The measures of the session, therefore, related to the further prosecution of the war-or, as must be the case with nearly all measures in a time of war, they related directly or indirectly to the procurement of men and money.

Mr. Webster's policy was a policy of watchfulness. He was a member of the opposition, but an independent one. Although classed with the Federal party and generally acting with it, he was bound by no party trammels. He was totally unconnected with any measures of the New-England Federalists, which, whether justly or unjustly, were then and have since been regarded as objectionable. He left his home for this session of Congress before the famous "Hartford Convention" was talked of or contemplated.' When he heard afterward that such a

1 For the benefit of readers not familiar with our political history, to whom the name of the "Hartford Convention" will, of itself, carry no meaning, it may be well to explain that this was an assembly of delegates from some of the New-England States, which met at Hartford, in Connecticut, in the winter of 1814-'15, and sat with closed doors. It was composed of men of very high personal characters, belonging to the Federal party. It was then believed by their political opponents that their meeting had a treasonable object, namely, to withdraw the New-England States from the Union, on account of the war with Great Britain. This purpose has been denied, and explanations have been made; but the supposed treasonable character of the meeting has passed into a kind of popular maxim. Although Mr. Webster had no connection with it, and, in fact, disapproved of it, he never at any time regarded it as seditious or treasonable. He knew the chief persons who composed it too well to be

lieve that they were a knot of traitors. They were, in truth, some of the most eminent and virtuous citizens of New England, whose error consisted in holding a meeting of prominent and important men, in a time of war, to deliberate secretly on public affairs, when the administration of the Government was in the hands of the opposite party. Under such circumstances, they could not "escape calumny."

At different times in Mr. Webster's life efforts were made, by persons unfriendly to him, to connect him in some way with this assembly. Among these efforts, it appears that, about the year 1835, it was rumored that à Mr. Chamberlin, of New Hampshire, had received a letter from Mr. Webster, approving of the Hartford Convention. Mr. Chamberlin had died; but his papers were searched, and the letter, or a letter, was found, and brought to the city of New York, where a caucus was held over it. But, as it did not contain any mention of the Hartford Convention, it was not published

meeting was proposed, he advised the Governor of New Hamp shire not to appoint delegates to it. The State was, in fact, not represented, as a State, in that convention; although two of the counties on the Connecticut River, a hundred miles from Mr. Webster's residence, sent members to it. Mr. Webster had no connection with it whatever. This will account for a fact mentioned in the following extract from Mr. Ticknor's MS. "Recollections" of Mr. Webster, which gives some interesting sketches of his position and occupations during this session of Congress:

“In January and February, 1815, I passed some time at Washington. I lived at Crawford's Hotel, in Georgetown, which was then a sort of headquarters of the Federal members of Congress. Mr. King and Mr. Gore, members of the Senate, lived there with their wives, in a kind of state now unknown; each of them keeping a coach-and-four, and driving every morning to the humble chamber in which the Senate then met in consequence of the destruction of the capitol by the British. At the same hotel lived Mr. Mason, Mr. Webster, and several other distinguished Federal members of Congress. Mr. Webster, who had then been in Congress only a little more than two years, was already among its foremost men, and stood with Gaston and Hanson to lead the opposition in debate, on the floor of the lower House. Most of the Federal members at that time had ceased to visit at the President's house. Mr. Webster, however, thought it proper to continue to do so, and then and always maintained friendly relations with Mr. Madison, and spoke of him with respect. His society was much sought. His relations with Mr. Gore, dating from the period of his studying the law, and his intimate friendship with Mr. Mason, never at any moment interrupted or disturbed, made him a most welcome member of that brilliant circle, which generally met in the evening in the private parlor belonging to Mrs. King and Mrs. Gore, which was rather an elegant drawing-room, for the time.

"As I had passed two days at Hartford, in the same private quarters with Mr. Cabot, Mr. Otis, and several of the principal members of the Hartford Convention, then in session, the gentlemen, Mr. Gore and Mr. Mason especially, were very curious to learn from me any thing that I might know respecting that remarkable body. But I had no information to give them. I was travelling with Mr. S. G. Perkins, and for that reason alone lived

These facts were afterward communicated to Mr. Webster by a political opponent. Such was always the fate of attempts to identify him with that meeting. The impossibility of his having been connected with it, and his disapprobation of it, are stated in his Correspondence, vol. i., pp. 11, 184. The

fact stated by Mr. Ticknor, of Mr. Webster's and Mr. Mason's entire ignorance of what was going on at Hartford, is new and striking. As I shall not again allude to this topic, I may here refer the reader to Mr. Webster's speech in reply to Mr. Hayne ( Works, iii., 314, 315), for his views respecting the Hartford Convention.

with Mr. Cabot and his friends, who communicated none of their secrets to either of us. Mr. Gore, and more especially Mr. Mason and Mr. Webster, expressed their dissatisfaction with the meeting of the convention and more particularly that they received no information by correspondence from its members. They gave this as a reason for asking information concerning it, from me.

"Mr. Webster's room was next to Mr. Mason's. They dined at a congressional mess in the same house. Mr. Gore and Mr. King and their ladies had a private table together, to which they often invited friends. I heard Mr. Webster several times in the House, not in formal speeches, but in that very deliberate conversational manner, and with the peculiar exactness of phraseology, which marked him as a public debater to the end of his life. He did not fail then, any more than afterward, to command the attention of the House. The subjects on which he spoke related to the common course of business, and were not exciting or particularly interesting. I dined repeatedly at the congressional mess, of which he was one. I met him at Mr. Gore's table and elsewhere. In the mess he was very amusing, talking gayly, and as if no care rested upon him. Everywhere he was liked as a social companion.

"He was at this time much occupied with the study of English politics. Volumes of the 'Annual Register,' and the 'Parliamentary Debates,' covered his table; and while I was in Washington he read through Brougham's 'Colonial Policy of the European Powers,' parts of which he praised to me, while with other portions he was much dissatisfied. When conversing with the other members with whom I constantly saw him, he seemed to me to know more about the details of business before the House than any of them. I mean that he appeared to know more what was to come up next, or soon, facts which I was anxious to learn."

In the first debate of a general character in which Mr. Webster took any part at this session, his position as an opponent of the Administration and its policy was defined with so much precision, that no vote or action of his was likely to be, as in fact none was, at the time, misapprehended or misrepresented. A proposition came before the House at an early period in the session to grant a new land tax of twice the amount of the last one. In assigning his reasons for voting against it, Mr. Webster said that although majorities in legislative bodies sometimes believed it to be in their power to place dissenting members in a situation in which their conduct would be liable to unfavorable construction, there was rarely any serious difficulty attending such occasions, and on the present one there was nc difficulty at all. He did not feel himself under any necessity