lieved himself by intemperate language, but he could not help
saying now, in writing to Governor Nicholas of Virginia, that "the
greater part of the people in that quarter have been brought by their
leaders, aided by their priests, under a delusion scarcely exceeded by
that recorded in the period of witchcraft; and the leaders themselves
are becoming daily more desperate in the use they make of it." The
"delusion" was taking a practical direction. Mr. Madison had learned
before the letter was written that a convention was about to meet at
Hartford, the object of which was to weigh in a balance, upon the one
side, the continuation of such government as that of the last two or
three years, and, upon the other side, the value of the Union. He
ardently hoped that the commissioners, then assembled at Ghent, would
agree upon a treaty; and there seemed to be no good reason why there
should not be peace when nothing was to be said of the cause of the
war, no apology demanded for the past, and no stipulation for the
future. But if by any chance the commissioners should fail, Mr. Madison
saw in the Hartford Convention the huge shadow of a coming conflict more
difficult to deal with than a foreign war. It was the first step in dead
earnest for the formation of a Northern Confederacy, and it is quite
possible he may have felt that he was not the man for such a crisis.
Every line of the letter pulsates with anxiety. The only consoling
thought in it is that without "foreign cooperation revolt and separation
will hardly be risked," and to such cooperation he hoped a majority of
the New England people would not consent. A treaty of peace, however,
came to save him and the Union. Within a few weeks the administration
papers were laughing at Harrison Gray Otis of Boston, who had started
for Washington as the representative of the Hartford Convention, but
turned back at the news of peace; and were advertising him as missing
under the name of Titus Oates. It was, however, the hysterical laugh of
recovery from a terrible fright.

If ambition to be a second time President led Mr. Madison to consent
against his own better judgment to a war with England, he paid a heavy
penalty. It was the act of a party politician and not of a statesman;
for the country was no more prepared for a war in 1812, when as a
politician he assented to it, than it had been for the previous half
dozen years when as a statesman he had opposed it. He gave the influence