Series, Vol.
III., Chap. xxi., p. 123.)

"The place of the first major-general, with the command of the Northern
Department, had been given to the petted favourite, Henry Dearborn, late
Secretary of War, and, since Madison's accession, collector of the port
of Boston--a lucrative post, kept in his family by his son's appointment
to it."--"Wilkinson, the senior brigadier, just acquitted by
court-martial of long-pending charges against him, had been sent to New
Orleans [afterwards to Canada] to relieve Hampton [who was afterwards
sent to Canada], whose command there had been a constant scene of
collision and turmoil with his officers. Commissions as brigadiers,
under the late Acts, had been given to Bloomfield, Governor of New
Jersey; to James Winchester, of Tennessee; and to Hull, Governor of
Michigan Territory. * * Hampton and Smythe had been civilians for more
than thirty years, and were indebted for their present appointments
rather to political than to military considerations. Of the inferiors of
the old army, presently distinguished, Alexander MacNab, of the
Engineers, was now a colonel, and Winfield Scott and Edmund Gaines
lieutenant-colonels. A lieutenant-colonelcy in one of the new regiments
had been given to Eleazar W. Ripley, a young Democrat from Maine, who
had succeeded Storey, of the late Democratic Massachusetts House of
Representatives. Ripley's subsequent conduct justified his appointment;
but the colonel of that same regiment was afterwards cashiered for
peculation; and as few of the new regimental officers had any military
knowledge, so numbers of them were quite destitute of those qualities
without which even that knowledge would have been of little avail."
(Hildreth's History of the United States, Second Series, Vol. III.,
Chap, xxiv., pp. 308-310.)]

[Footnote 186: "The following are extracts from the resolutions of this
famous Convention:

"Taking solely into consideration the time and circumstances of the
declaration of the present war, the condition of the country, and state
of the public mind, we are constrained to consider, and feel it our duty
to pronounce it a most rash, unwise, and inexpedient measure, the
adoption of which ought forever to deprive its authors of the esteem and
confidence of an enlightened people; because, as the injuries we have
received from France are at least equal in amount to those we have
sustained from England, and have been attended with circumstances of
still g