home should have joined in the cry. The calm American historian, however, should not be misled to censure as "timid," "weak," "vacillating", "feeble," "subservient to Napoleon," etc., the great and patriotic men who guided the country with honor and safety through the most dangerous period of modern times, and brought it from the conflict more than doubled in territory, and ready to enter upon the growing period of its history.
None of these adverse critics have explained their own paradoxes: that the policy which they denounce as weak ultimately attained its object over the greatest maritime power of Europe, and over domestic factions; that the opponents of this policy could offer only obstructions but no substitute, and expressed sentiments tending to a course certainly more "timid" and "feeble," if not unpatriotic; that the embargo, the only part of Jefferson’s policy not followed to its complete conclusion, was supplanted, for the time, by a policy of despicable weakness and abject submission ; that when resort was finally had to war, those who had denounced the embargo and all the measures of peace became violent opponents of war, and threatened the dissolution of the Union; that the party which sustained Jefferson s policy was endorsed at every presidential election by strong majorities, finally overwhelmed all opposition, and brought about the only period of American history w*hich ever resembled a political millennium "The Era of Good Feeling."
Such results are never accomplished by weak and vacillating men. They come only to those who, through the vicissitudes of fortune, pursue intelligent designs with fixed purpose. The truth is, the men who controlled American destinies during that eventful period were patriots and statesmen of the highest type. They clung with tenacity to the wisest policy pursued by any nation, and they deserve the gratitude and admiration of posterity.
It is fashionable among a certain class of writers to com-
