ish fleet
on Lake Erie by Perry. The third year has been a continued series of
victories; to wit, of Brown and Scott at Chippeway; of the same at
Niagara; of Gaines over Drummond at Fort Erie; that of Brown over
Drummond at the same place; the capture of another fleet on Lake
Champlain by M'Donough; the entire defeat of their army under Prevost,
on the same day, by M'Comb, and recently their defeats at New Orleans by
Jackson, Coffee, and Carroll, with the loss of four thousand men out of
nine thousand and six hundred, with their two Generals, Packingham and
Gibbs killed, and a third, Keane, wounded, mortally, as is said.

This series of successes has been tarnished only by the conflagrations
at Washington, a _coup de main_ differing from that at Richmond, which
you remember, in the revolutionary war, in the circumstance only, that
we had, in that case, but forty-eight hour's notice that an enemy had
arrived within our capes; whereas at Washington there was abundant
previous notice. The force designated by the President was the double of
what was necessary; but failed, as is the general opinion, through
the insubordination of Armstrong, who would never believe the attack
intended until it was actually made, and the sluggishness of Winder
before the occasion, and his indecision during it. Still, in the end,
the transaction has helped rather than hurt us, by arousing the general
indignation of our country, and by marking to the world of Europe the
Vandalism and brutal character of the English government. It has merely
served to immortalize their infamy. And add further, that through the
whole period of the war, we have beaten them single-handed at sea, and
so thoroughly established our superiority over them with equal force,
that they retire from that kind of contest, and never suffer their
frigates to cruise singly. The Endymion would never have engaged the
frigate President, but knowing herself backed by three frigates and
a razee, who, though somewhat slower sailors, would get up before she
could be taken. The disclosure to the world of the fatal secret that
they can be beaten at sea with an equal force, the evidence furnished by
the military operations of the last year that experience is rearing us
officers, who, when our means shall be fully under way, will plant our
standard on the walls of Quebec and Halifax, their recent and signal
disaster at New Orleans, and the evaporation of their hopes from the
Hartford Conven