if she had
been at war with Spain. Veteran officers who had served in the British
armies against Napoleon, joined the South American forces, and an Irish
Legion of one thousand men, raised by General D'Evereux, sailed from
Dublin for Colombia. A banquet was given to General D'Evereux, before his
departure, at which two thousand guests were present, and the celebrated
orator, Charles Philips, delivered a most eloquent address. Lord
Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, commanding the Chilian fleet, drove the
Spaniards from the Pacific. American as well as English officers and
seamen served under Cochrane's flag, and took part in his exploits, of
which the most brilliant was the cutting out of a Spanish frigate from
under the guns of Callao. Under the protection of the batteries of the
castle of Callao lay three Spanish armed vessels, a forty-gun frigate and
two sloops-of-war, guarded by fourteen gunboats. On the night of the
fifth of November, 1820, Lord Cochrane, with 240 volunteers in fourteen
boats, entered the inner harbor, and succeeded in cutting out the Spanish
frigate with the loss of only forty-one men killed and wounded. The
Spanish loss was 120 men. This success annihilated the Spanish naval
power in those waters.

* * *

When a commissioner from the patriots of New Grenada applied at
Washington in 1812, for assistance, President Madison answered that
"though the United States were not in alliance, they were at peace with
Spain, and could not therefore assist the independents; still, as
inhabitants of the same continent, they wished well to their exertions."
Notwithstanding the policy of the government, founded on the dictates of
prudence and caution, the people of the United States almost universally
felt a deep and lively interest in the success of their brethren in South
America, engaged in the same desperate struggle for liberty which they
themselves had gone through. Near the close of the year 1817, the
President of the United States appointed three commissioners, Messrs.
Rodney, Bland, and Graham, to visit the revolted colonies in South
America and to ascertain their political condition, and their means and
prospects of securing their independence; and early in 1818, the
legislators of Kentucky adopted resolutions, expressing their sense of
the propriety and expediency of the national government acknowledging the
independence of the South American republics. These resolu