s the impersonation of the restrictive policy which he
had defended in his diplomatic writings, and from the press; and which
was deemed the pledge of its continuance; and, in the spring of 1809,
voted for the federal candidate for Congress, in opposition to Newton,
who, though coming from a sea-port, had gallantly upheld the commercial
policy of Jefferson, and who was returned by a decisive majority.

That epoch was the most mortifying in the annals of our country; and
posterity must decide whether any action of ours could have averted the
difficulty, and on whose shoulders the responsibility shall rest. When I
reflect upon the incidents of that day; when I recount the millions of
American capital sacrificed by the remorseless rapacity of England and
France; when I call up from their graves the hundreds and thousands of
American sailors, the sons of the men who had fought at Bunker Hill, who
had led the forlorn hope at Stony Point, who had bled on the sweltering
field of Eutaw, and who had stormed the outworks at York; when I reflect
that such men were forcibly taken from their ships, and were compelled
to fight the battles of England, to be doomed to the prison-ship, or to
be scourged by the lash, and that not one dollar of those pilfered
millions has yet been paid by one of the belligerents; and that all
those injuries are yet unavenged;--passions, which I fondly hoped had
long been quenched in my bosom, flame once more; and I am led to cherish
with still deeper affection that Federal Union which will enable us
henceforth to right such wrongs even though attempted by the combined
navies of the world.

The same reasons which induced Mr. Tazewell to oppose the restrictive
policy of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, led him
necessarily to oppose the war of 1812 with Great Britain. He believed
that, if a declaration of war had been expedient at any period of the
commercial difficulties with England and France, the proper time for
declaring it was when the offence was given, and when our commerce was
at the height, and our ability to sustain hostilities was proportionally
greater; that the administration, having waived the opportunity of
making a declaration in the first instance, and deliberately adopted the
policy of diplomacy and of commercial regulation as the proper means of
relief, our resources meantime having become crippled and our revenue
almost annihilated, it was bound to adhere to it during the ex