The War of 1812 by Donald R Hickey

Author:Donald R Hickey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780252093739
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Disaffection in New England

Prosperity in the middle and western states no doubt contributed to the popularity of the war, but deteriorating economic conditions had the opposite effect in New England. By the fall of 1814, all eyes were on what a New Jersey Federalist called “the cloud arising in the East,” a cloud that was “black, alarming, portentous.”97 Growing sectionalism in New England was a source of grave concern to Republicans. “It is too plain,” William Duane told Jefferson, “that we are not all republicans nor all federalists—and the spirit of faction in the East . . . has been too much encouraged.”98 A Philadelphia Republican expressed fear that the moderates in New England “would be driven of[f] the stage by Marats Robenspears Bounapartes etc.,” and the Russian minister claimed that “there is not a state in Europe which, in similar circumstances, would not have been considered on the eve of revolution.”99

President Madison found New England’s disaffection alarming. William Wirt described him in October 1814 as “miserably shattered and woe-begone.” “His mind seems full of the New England revolt,” said Wirt; “he introduced the subject & continued to press it, painful as it obviously was to him.”100 The following month the subject still weighed heavily on the president’s mind. “You are not mistaken,” he wrote a friend, “in viewing the conduct of the Eastern states as the source of our greatest difficulties in carrying on the war; as it certainly is the greatest if not the sole inducement with the enemy to persevere in it.”101

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