¹ By far the most thorough presentation of the realist case in contemporary literature may be found in the writings of Hans J. Morgenthau. Convinced that “the world, imperfect as it is from the rational point of view, is the result of forces which are inherent in human nature,” Professor Morgenthau advocates an appeal to “historic precedent rather than to abstract principles, and aims at achievement of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good.” “Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States,” American Political Science Review (12, 1952), XLVI, 962.Google Scholar And see, on the question of “human nature,” his Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), especially pp. 154–155.Google Scholar It is Morgenthau's contention that the “extraordinary qualities” possessed by the early American realists—“political insight, historic perspective, and common sense”—are now only too rare in our statesmen. “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy: The National Interest vs. Moral Abstractions,” American Political Science Review (12, 1950), XLIV, 833.Google Scholar Once highly prized, such qualities have been giving way increasingly to “utopianism,” “moralism,” and “sentimentalism.” “Another ‘Great Debate’,” p. 976.Google Scholar

² Morgenthau, , “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy,” op. cit., p. 840.Google Scholar

³ Columbian Centinel, 02 10, 1798Google Scholar, December 13, 1800, May 2, 1804; Lowell, John, An Oration Pronounced at Boston, 07 4, 1799, pp. 10, 12, 19.Google Scholar And see the “Essex Result,” 1778Google Scholar, in Parsons, Theophilus Jr., Memoir of Theophilus Parsons (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1859), p. 365ff.Google Scholar An influential pamphlet attacking, in the name of the practical dictates of the experience of the past, the proposed Massachusetts Constitution of 1778, the Result may be regarded as a contemporary realist construction of the Declaration of Independence. It was endorsed by the charter members of The Essex Junto after having been drafted by Judge Parsons, described by his son as “eminently and thoroughly conservative. He was so by natural tendency, and by education and habit; the longer he lived, the more conservative he became…” Ibid., p. 36. The pamphlet argued the case against the extension of democracy and political equality largely on the ground that such a course had in the past unfailingly achieved the most horrid results.

⁴ Dickinson, John, in Elliot, T., ed., Debates on the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1901), V, 418.Google Scholar

⁵ “Men will pursue their interests.” Alexander Hamilton, in ibid., II, 320.

⁶ “If, in a few scattered instances, a brighter aspect is presented, they serve only as exceptions to admonish us of the general truth; and by their lustre to darken the gloom of the adverse prospect to which they are contrasted.” Madison, James, The Federalist, No. 37.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., No. 15. “To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human heart with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.” Ibid., No. 34.

⁸ Ibid., No. 57.

⁹ “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Ibid., No. 51. Cf. No. 55, in which there are emphasized those qualities in man “which justify a certain esteem and respect.” Such a position, however, must be deemed exceptional in light of the main burden of the argument advanced in The Federalist.

¹⁰ A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America (1787–1788)Google Scholar, Adams, C. F., ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), VI, 57.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Ibid., p. 61. “We certainly know, from the constitution of the human mind and heart and from universal experience, that the law of nature, the decalogue, and all the civil laws, will be violated, if men's passions are not restrained….” Ibid., p. 64, italics added.

¹³ Elliot, 's Debates, I, 76Google Scholar; The Federalist, No. 42. And see Jefferson to DrRush, Benjamin, 01 16, 1811Google Scholar, Ford, P. L., ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896), XI, 165–173Google Scholar, for the opinion that Hamilton as well exhibited little faith in the efficacy of reason, having instead relied upon either “force or fraud to govern men.”

¹⁴ Elliot, 's Debates, II, 251.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The Federalist, No, 10, 37.Google Scholar And see ibid., No. 43, 52.

¹⁶ Rev. Morse, Jedidiah to Wolcott, Oliver, 06 11, 1799Google Scholar, in Gibbs, G., Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, Edited from the Papers of Wolcott, Oliver, Secretary of the Treasury (New York: W. Van Norden, 1846), II, 241.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Adams, to DrPrice, Richard, 04 19, 1790Google Scholar, Adams, C. F., op. cit., IX, 564.Google Scholar And see Adams, to Brand, Thomas — Hollis, , 06 11, 1790Google Scholar, ibid., pp. 570–571. His Discourses on Davila, published in the Gazette of the United States in 1790Google Scholar, as well as the Letters of Publicola composed by John Quincy Adams for the Columbian Centinel some time later, were not very temperate assaults upon the “leveling theories” of the French Revolution, the latter dealing expressly with the heresies proclaimed by Tom Paine in his Rights of Man.

¹⁸ Columbian Centinel, 01 5, 16, 1793.Google Scholar On January 23 the newspaper toasted “Universal Liberty and Equality,” and three days later it had naught but praise for its “French brethren, in their glorious enterprise for the establishment of equal liberty” Cf. Rev. Bentley, William, Diary (Salem: The Essex Institute, 1905–1914), 01 18, 22, 25, 31, 1793, II, 2–4Google Scholar, for additional evidence of the good will with which even the bulk of conservatives greeted the early phases of the French Revolution.

¹⁹ Paine, Works, in Verse and Prose (Boston: J. Belcher, 1812), p. 77.Google Scholar Paine was to regret his “strippling attempt to smite the fame of Burke,” who was at the time busily engaged in writing polemics against the Revolution. The same poet who in 1792 sang “Hail, sacred Freedom! heaven-born goddess, hail!” was several years later to castigate Jeffersonianism as a “mere poisonous fungus.” He even went so far as to assume the Christian name Robert after discarding his original one, Thomas, indicating the low repute to which the author of Common sense had fallen since the American Revolution. See ibid., pp. xvii, xxix, 70, 320. Candidly admitting that there had been a time when “the imposture of the French Revolution was not seen through, when many honest and some enlightened citizens were deluded,” the Centinel for 04 15, 1797Google Scholar, expressed relief that such a period “happily for our independence is past.”

²⁰ “The foibles of the unfortunate monarch are more than overbalanced by his virtues—and the native goodness of his heart has been the theme of many a good man's panegyric.” Centinel, 03 16, 1793.Google Scholar

²¹ Stephen Higginson, quoted in Hazen, C. D., Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Extra Vol. XVI (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1897), p. ix.Google Scholar “The home issues were for a time subordinate, collateral; the real party lines were drawn on the other side of the Atlantic.” Ibid., p. x. Approximately nineteen-twentieths of the business of Congress from 1797 to 1801 was concerned with Franco-American relations. See Morison, S. E., The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), I, 59.Google Scholar

²² Ames, Fisher to Dwight, Theodore, 02 24, 1795Google Scholar, Ames, to Gore, Christopher, 11 10, 1799Google Scholar, Ames, S., ed., Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854), I, 169, 266.Google Scholar

²³ “Marat,” in the Columbian Centinel, 03 30, 1793.Google Scholar

²⁴ Rev. Osgood, David, A Sermon Delivered at Medford, Nov. 20, 1794, The Day of Annual Thanksgiving, p. 24.Google Scholar

²⁵ Lowell, John, An Oration Pronounced at Boston, 07 4, 1799, pp. 10, 12, 19.Google Scholar And see “Marat's Descent to the Shades,” Centinel, 12 12, 1795:Google Scholar

²⁶ Centinel, 11 9, 1799.Google Scholar The doctrine of the rights of man provided a great “temptation to induce people to throw off all restraint,” as a consequence furnishing them with encouragement to “rob, steal, plunder and cut throats—[to] turn paradise into a hell upon earth.” Ibid., November 6, 1799.

²⁷ Thus America must be protected at all costs “from the poison … of foreign principles.” Rev. Tappan, David, A Sermon Delivered at Charlestown, Feb. 19, 1795, the Day of General Thanksgiving, pp. 21–22, 27.Google Scholar

²⁸ Rev. Eckley, Joseph, A Discourse Delivered at Boston, Nov. 29, 1798, the Public Thanksgiving, p. 9Google Scholar; Rev. Emmons, Nathaniel, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency, Governor Sumner, Election Day, May 30, 1798, p. 25.Google Scholar

²⁹ Quoted in Morse, A. E., The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800 (Princeton: The University Library, 1909), note, p. 169.Google Scholar Horrified by the “foreign intrigue” which he discerned everywhere, Morse called upon all who loved their “holy religion” and their native land to “shun the philosophists of Europe, and … [to] discard and detest their baneful principles.” A Sermon Preached at Charlestown, Nov. 29, 1798, the Anniversary Thanksgiving, pp. 15, 22.Google Scholar A leading Congregationalist minister and a noted geographer, Morse claimed to have had in his possession “an official, authenticated list of the names, ages, places of nativity, professions, etc., of the officers and members of a Society” organized in America by the “Grand Orient” of France in order to subvert American institutions. See A Sermon Delivered at Charlestown, April 25, 1799, the Day of the National Fast, p. 12.Google Scholar Driven by his “intense desire to save religion, and firmly convinced of his evangelistic sentiments,” Morse had exaggerated the French threat “beyond all factual evidence.” Morse, J. K., Jedidiah Morse, a Champion of New England Orthodoxy (New York: Columbia University, 1939), p. 56.Google Scholar

³⁰ Quoted in Dorfman, J., The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–1865 (New York: the Viking Press, 1946), I, 317.Google Scholar“Peace with France is not desired as it should not be.” Ames, Fisher, in Ames, S., ed., Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854), I, 254.Google Scholar “… if a treaty be made with France their [the Republicans'] ascendancy will be sure.” Higginson, Stephen, in American Historical Association (1896), I, 836.Google Scholar

³¹ Ames, Fisher to Pickering, Timothy, 11 5, 1799Google Scholar, Pickering Mss., XXV, 271Google Scholar, Massachusetts Historical Society. “We rest our hopes on foolish and fanatical grounds— on the superior morals and self-supporting theories of our age and our country—on human nature being different from what it is and better here than anywhere else.” Ames, to Hamilton, , 01 26. 1797Google Scholar, quoted in Beard, C. A., Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1949), note, p. 356.Google ScholarCf. Hamilton, to Washington, 08 18, 1792Google Scholar, Lodge, H. C., ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904), II, 455Google Scholar: Hamilton had little patience with “empirics and speculative thinkers” who “entertained the dangerous hope of man's perfectibility.” For only a “sound suspicion of man's depravity is the secure basis for public policy.” The “vain reveries of a false and new-fangled philosophy” threatened to subordinate “all that is sacred, revered, enduring, and substantial in society.” The rationalists were guilty, therefore, of propagating the kind of “errors to be found only in the cottages of peasants.”

³² Lowell, John, op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

³³ Rev. Eckley, Joseph, op. cit., p. 10.Google Scholar

³⁴ Rev. Porter, Eliphalet, A Discourse Delivered at Roxbury, May 9, 1798, the National Fast, p. 33.Google Scholar And see Rev. Dana, Daniel, Two Sermons Delivered at Newburyport, April 25, 1799, the Day of the National Fast, p. 16Google Scholar: “Alas! why should a people blest with [happiness] turn away in disgust from what they have, and sigh after what they have not—and cannot have, until the nature of man be altered, or the laws of heaven reversed?”

³⁵ Even John Adams, one of the truly great realist thinkers of his time, was not altogether secure against the barbs of the anti-theoretical Federalists. The President was accused by Fisher Ames of having proclaimed such heresies as political liberty and equality! See Ames, to Wolcott, , 08 3, 1800.Google ScholarGibbs, G., op. cit., II, 396.Google Scholar As is the case with most esoteric schools of doctrine, deviations from orthodoxy were apparently recognizable only by the orthodox.

³⁶ Jefferson, to Gerry, Elbridge, 01 26, 1799Google Scholar, Ford, P. L. ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904), IX, 19Google Scholar. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Jefferson's analysis of the origins of the Revolution was entirely Lockean in character, Europe had been “deluged in blood” because the rulers of the people, “instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, [had] clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms.” Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, ibid., X, 43. What could have been more “realistic”?

³⁷ “He came from France in the moment of a fermentation, which he had a share in exciting, and in the passions and feelings of which he shared both from temperament and situation.” Hamilton, to Carrington, Colonel Edward, 05 26, 1792Google Scholar, Lodge, H. C., op. cit., IX, 528.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ames, to Wolcott, , 06 12, 1800Google Scholar. Gibbs, G., op. cit., II, 370Google Scholar. Cf. Morgenthau's evaluation of Jefferson: “What was said of Gladstone could also have been said of Jefferson … : what the moral law demands was by a felicitous coincidence always identical with what the national interest seemed to require.” “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy,” op. cit., p. 844Google Scholar. Much the same kind of judgment could be made in the case of Hamilton— only in reverse: what the national interest seemed to require was by a felicitous coincidence always identical with what his ideology demanded.

³⁹ Pickering, Timothy to King, Rufus, 03 4, 1804Google Scholar, Pickering, to Lyman, Theodore, 03 14, 1804Google Scholar, in Adams, Henry, ed., Documents Relating to New-England Federalism, 1800–1815 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877), Appendix, pp. 351, 360.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Sedgwick, Theodore to King, Rufus, 12 14, 1801, February 20, 1802Google Scholar, Cabot, George to King, , 04 13, 1802Google Scholar, Hale, Joseph to King, , 12 19, 1801, April 13, 1802Google Scholar, King, C. R., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900), IV, 35, 39, 73, 106–107, 165Google Scholar; Webster, Daniel, Writings and Speeches (Boston: Little, Brown, 1903), XVII, 127Google Scholar; Ames, to Lawrence, Amos A., 09 22, 1832Google Scholar, Amos A. Lawrence Mss., Vol. I, Mass. Historical Society; Sullivan, William to Appleton, Nathan, 04 13, 1832Google Scholar, Appleton Mss., Vol. II, Mass. Historical Society.Google Scholar

⁴¹ “Lucan,” in the Columbian Centinel, 07 11, 1804.Google Scholar

⁴² See Jefferson, to Humphreys, David, 03 18, 1789Google Scholar, Randolph, T. J., ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830), II, 447Google Scholar; Jefferson, , “First Inaugural Address,” 03 4, 1801Google Scholar, Richardson, J. D., ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1902 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1917), I, 309–12Google Scholar; Ames, Fisher to Smith, Jeremiah, 11 22, 1798Google Scholar, Ames, S., op. cit., I, 240–241Google Scholar. “The Struggle with the Jacobins is like the good Christian's with the evil one.” Ames, to Gore, Christopher, 12 18, 1798Google Scholar, ibid., p. 245.

⁴³ Jefferson, , “First Inaugural Address,”Google ScholarRichardson, J. D., op. cit., I, 311Google Scholar; Ames, to Gore, , 11 10, 1799Google Scholar, Ames, S., op. cit., I, 266Google Scholar. “Precept is thrown away on mankind. The stripes of adversity, while they tingle, print political construction more than skin deep.” Ames to Dwight, December 7, 1798?, Washburn Mss., Vol. IVGoogle Scholar, Mass. Historical Society. Ames was convinced that “nothing short of experience that cuts the flesh and dresses the wounds with caustics, will cure the errors of public opinion.” Ames, to Pickering, , 11 5, 1799Google Scholar, Pickering Mss., XXV, 271Google Scholar, Mass Historical Society.

⁴⁴ “Firm and Steady,” in the Centinel, 08 9, 1800.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Bradford, Alden, An Oration Pronounced at Wiscasset, 07 4, 1804, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. A conservative historian, Bradford displayed a profound contempt for those who argued “that characters should be tried at the bar of public opinion. What senseless jargon! The decision would frequently be against the truly meritorious, and in favor of the most worthless.” Ibid., p. 18. And see [Sampson, Ezra], The Sham Patriot Unmasked, Being an Exposition of the Fatally Successful Arts of Demagogues, to Exalt Themselves, by Flattering and Swindling the People … etc. (n.p.: 1806), p. 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Bates, Isaac C., An Oration Pronounced at Northampton, 07 4, 1805, p. 9.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Jefferson, to Kercheval, , 07 12, 1816Google Scholar. Ford, P. L., op. cit., X, 42Google Scholar. “I join you … in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances,” Jefferson wrote to a young friend in 1799. “This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating, and their friends here re-echoing; and applying especially to religion and politics. … as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.” Letter to William Munford; in Koch, A. and Amon, H., “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,” William and Mary Quarterly (04, 1948), p. 145ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See Brown, Charles Brockden, The British Treaty (1808)Google Scholar, quoted in Dorfman, J., op. cit., I, 322.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ames, Fisher, “No Revolutionist,” Palladium, 11, 1801Google Scholar, in Ames, S., op. cit., II, 205.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ames, to Wolcott, , 01 12, 1800Google Scholar, Gibbs, G., op. cit., I, 319Google Scholar. The standards of “men of sense” in New England must have been uncommonly high, for even John Marshall was taken to task for being “too much guided by the refinements of Theory.” See Sedgwick, Theodore to King, Rufus, 02 6, 05 11, 1800Google Scholar, King, C. R., op. cit., II, 156, III, 236.Google Scholar

⁵¹ “Livy,” in the Centinel, 03 14, 1798Google Scholar; “Decius,” ibid., July 9, 1800.

⁵² See Paine, Robert Treat, Oration, 07 17, 1799Google Scholar, Paine, , op, cit., pp. 307–308, 342Google Scholar. And see [Gardiner, John S. J.], Remarks on the Jacobiniad: Revised and Corrected by the Author (Boston: 1798), p. viGoogle Scholar, for a further sample of the attack on Jefferson as a “philosopher in the modern sense,” who possessed “all the credulous incredulity attached to that character.” The Rev. William Ellery Channing, who was to become the leader of American Unitarianism some years later, solemnly swore that should “Jacobinism” triumph here, he would “curse and quit” his native land. “I never will breathe the same air with those who are tainted with the foul impurities of French principles.” Channing, W. H., Memoir of William Ellery Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Society, 1874), I, 95.Google Scholar

⁵³ Where, for example, Jefferson encouraged the use of “reason” in order to “correct the crude essays” of the founders of the Revolutionary state constitutions, in 1820 John Adams supported retention of the property qualification in the Massachusetts Constitution for the reason that it had been placed there by “our ancestors.” It is rather difficult to believe, however, that Adams had forgotten the fact that he himself had drafted the original document in 1780, when a property qualification substantially higher than that obtaining in the old Provincial Charter was adopted! See Jefferson, to Kercheval, , 07 12, 1816Google Scholar, Ford, P. L., op. cit., X, 43Google Scholar; Adams, , in Journal of Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts, 1820–21 (Boston: The Daily Advertiser, 1853), p. 279.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Laws and institutions “must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, … [they] must advance also. … We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” Jefferson, to Kercheval, , 07 12, 1816Google Scholar, Ford, P. L., op. cit., X, 43.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ To become a “philosopher of the new kind” was really quite simple. “Let any man revile Christianity, let him exercise an uncontrollable and unconquerable malevolence to the clergy, and spin out some new political theory,” and he could not fail to qualify. Oration on Opinion, Hanover, 1801Google Scholar, Webster, D., op. cit., XV, 494–501Google Scholar. Fond, after 1836, of depicting himself as a firm Jeffersonian democrat, Webster was later to repudiate this rhetorical effort, delivered at the Dartmouth College commencement, as a “sufficiently boyish performance.” See ibid., note, p. 494.

⁵⁶ “Falkland,” No. II, Palladium, February, 1801, in Ames, S., op. cit., II, 135Google Scholar. The anti-rationalists declared that they would “never be afflicted with the folly, nor misguided by the vanity of modern philosophism; but adhering to the good old school of their fathers, prefer the wisdom of experience to the illusions of theory.” Columbian Centinel, August 14, 1802.

⁵⁷ Rev. Puffer, Reuben, A Sermon Delivered before His Excellency, Governor Strong, Election Day, May 25, 1803, p. 31Google Scholar. And see Rev. Williams, Solomon, Three Sermons Preached at Northampton, March 30, and April 4 1805, the National Fast, pp. 5–6Google Scholar. Williams assailed the “theorists” for having disseminated some of the following “opinions” then “current” in America: “That human nature is capable here of what modern philosophers call perfectibility: … that nearly all old opinions are wrong: that our ancestors were, for the most part, fools or knaves: … that innovations are always preferable to long established usages and habits: that restraints are abusive: that order is hurtful: that subordination is foolish. …” Cf. “The ‘Enlightened Eighteenth Century’; or the ‘Age of Reason’,” Centinel, 01 14, 1801:Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See Sullivan, William, An Oration Pronounced at Boston, 07 4, 1803, p. 6Google Scholar; Danforth, Thomas, An Oration Pronounced at Boston, 07 4, 1804, p. 14Google Scholar; Langdon, Chauncy, An Oration Delivered at Pawlet, 07 4, 1807, p. 16.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Reporting a dinner in honor of Timothy Pickering, a champion of the anti-embargo forces, the Columbian Centinel for May 28, 1809 stated that one of the guests had fondly toasted the time when “Every one [would be] in his element: May the Seaman return from the spade to the capstern, and the Philosopher from the chair of state to the closet.” And see the Centinel for 01 18, 1809:Google Scholar

⁶⁰ [Lowell, John] Thoughts upon the Conduct of Our Administration, by a Friend to Peace (1808)Google Scholar; Address to the People of Massachusetts by the Legislature, 03 1, 1809, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Rev. Gardiner, John S. J., A Sermon Preached at Boston, December 1, 1808, the Day of Public Thanksgiving, pp. 15, 21Google Scholar. “To the truly philosophic mind, neither warped by prejudice, nor biased by partialities, no nation ever presented a sublimer spectacle than Great Britain. … I blush for an American, who does not glory in drawing his lineage from this great people.” Ibid., pp. 8–9. And see A Political Sermon addressed to the Electors of Middlesex (1808)Google Scholar; Richardson, James, An Oration Pronounced at Dedham, 07 4, 1808, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

⁶² [Lowell, John], The New-England Patriot; Being a Candid Comparison of the Principles and Conduct of the Washington and Jefferson Administrations (1810), pp. 19–20Google Scholar. And see the Columbian Centinel, 09 14, 1808, July 12, 1809Google Scholar; Rev. Osgood, David, A Discourse Delivered at Cambridge, 04 8, 1810Google Scholar; A Discourse Delivered before the Legislature of Massachusetts, 05 31, 1809Google Scholar; Rev. Parish, Elijah, A Sermon Preached before the Legislature of Massachusetts, 05 30, 1810.Google Scholar

⁶³ It is the opinion of the contemporary realists that the War of 1812 was an “ideological war,” a tactical mistake which endangered the European balance of power. Professor Morgenthau regards 1812 as the “sole major exception” to the consistent American practice of pursuing “policies aiming at the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe.” “Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy,” op. cit., p. 835.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Congressman Thomas R. Gold to Nathan Appleton, June 12, 1812, Appleton, Mss., Vol. I, Massachusetts Historical Society. Gold volunteered the information that “4 or 5 [Federalist] Senators voted for the bill, to prostrate the Administration.” It would seem that there were some among the opposition who were willing to play the dangerous game to the hilt in order to capture the national government at the next election. Incidentally, Napoleon had not always been the mortal enemy of the New England realists. See, for example, General Henry Knox to General David Cobb, March 22, 1800, in Drake, Francis S., Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox (Boston: S. G. Drake, 1873), p. 115Google Scholar: “Bonaparte, what a glorious fellow! How completely he has averted the monster anarchy and the mad democracy! I hope in God that no fanatic will assassinate him …”

⁶⁵ Nathan, to Appleton, Samuel, 06 30, 1812Google Scholar, Appleton Mss., op. cit.

⁶⁶ Henry Lee to ?. August 16, 1814. Porter, K. W., The Jacksons and the Lees (Cambridge: Harvard, 1937), I, 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁷ North American Review, 11, 1815, II, 85.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Pierce, Benjamin, An Oration Delivered at Salem, 07 4 1812, pp. 11, 15–16Google Scholar. The role of the New England clergy in opposing the war was identical with that which it played in the opposition to the French Revolution, to Jeffersonian Democracy, and to the embargo. See Adams, Henry, op. cit., VI, 400Google Scholar; Rev. Bentley, William, op. cit., Vol. IV, pp. 116–267Google Scholar; Clericus, “An Apology for the Clergy,” Centinel, 09 30, 1812Google Scholar; Rev. Channing, William Ellery, A Sermon Preached at Boston, 07 23, 1812Google Scholar. and A Discourse Delivered in Commemoration of the Goodness of God in Delivering the Christian World from Military Despotism, 06 15, 1814Google Scholar; Rev. Gardiner, John S. J., A Discourse Delivered at Boston, 07 23, 1812Google Scholar; Rev. Smith, John, A Sermon Delivered at Salem, New Hampshire, 03 25, 1813Google Scholar; Rev. Parish, Elijah, A Discourse Delivered at Byfield, 04 8, 1813Google Scholar: “The blood of the slain will cry from the ground. … Do not, I beseech you, do not move a finger to promote this wicked war.”