e British
commander on the American station to be his avowed purpose to employ the
force under his direction "in destroying and laying waste such towns and
districts upon the coast as may be found assailable," adding to this
declaration the insulting pretext that it is in retaliation for a wanton
destruction committed by the army of the United States in Upper Canada,
when it is notorious that no destruction has been committed, which,
notwithstanding the multiplied outrages previously committed by the
enemy was not unauthorized, and promptly shown to be so, and that the
United States have been as constant in their endeavors to reclaim the
enemy from such outrages by the contrast of their own example as they
have been ready to terminate on reasonable conditions the war itself;
and

Whereas these proceedings and declared purposes, which exhibit a
deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity and the rules of
civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character
of extended devastation and barbarism at the very moment of negotiations
for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to
anything within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations but
in manful and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader:

Now, therefore, I, James Madison, President of the United States, do
issue this my proclamation, exhorting all the good people thereof to
unite their hearts and hands in giving effect to the ample means
possessed for that purpose. I enjoin it on all officers, civil and
military, to exert themselves in executing the duties with which they
are respectively charged; and more especially I require the officers
commanding the respective military districts to be vigilant and alert in
providing for the defense thereof, for the more effectual accomplishment
of which they are authorized to call to the defense of exposed and
threatened places portions of the militia most convenient thereto,
whether they be or be not parts of the quotas detached for the service
of the United States under requisitions of the General Government.

On an occasion which appeals so forcibly to the proud feelings and
patriotic devotion of the American people none will forget what they
owe to themselves, what they owe to their country and the high destinies
which await it, what to the glory acquired by their fathers in
establishing the independence which is now to be maintained by their
sons