made by them whenever they pleased. They
believed, or pretended to believe, that the majority of the people,
owing to dissensions and a desire to be free from the mother country,
would not take part against them in this contest with Great Britain."
(Dr. Miles' History of Canada, Part III., Chap. iii., p. 201.)]

CHAPTER XLIX.

DECLARATION OF WAR BY THE UNITED STATES AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN, AND
PREPARATIONS FOR THE INVASION OF CANADA.

The Bill for declaring war against Britain passed the Congress June
18th, 1812, after protracted discussions: by the House of Congress, by a
majority of forty--seventy-nine to thirty-nine--by the Senate, by a
majority of six.[184] The vote for the declaration of war was a purely
party vote; the war itself was a purely partizan war--the carrying out
of intrigue between the American Democratic President and the French
despoiler of Europe--a war against the intelligence and patriotism of
the American people, as well as against the independence and liberties
of nations; a war in which the very selection of generals and officers
were, as a general rule, partizan appointments.[185]

The war party consisted largely of the mob or refuse of the nation--of
those who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by such a
war--facts which will go far to account, with three or four exceptions,
for the inferior character of the American generals and officers in the
war; men appointed to offices for which they had no qualifications, and
to situations in which they could, without stint, rob their country of
its money, if not of its reputation.

In New York, a Convention of delegates from several counties of the
State was held at Albany, on the 17th and 18th days of September, 1812,
in which the war was denounced as unjustifiable, unprincipled, and
unpatriotic, and as subservient, simply subservient to the cause of the
French Emperor against England.[186]

The address of the House of Representatives of the State of
Massachusetts presented in a still stronger light and with unanswerable
argument the causes of this unjust and cruel war, as wanton and
unprovoked, and the climax of the various outrages committed against
Great Britain.

Yet even the English Orders in Council--made the pretext for the war by
President Madison and his partizans--impolitic as those Orders were on
the part of England, being founded not on sound national policy, but
dictated by revenge on Napoleon on account of his Ber