News came soon after of the capture of the British sloop Alert by the American frigate Essex, and on Dec. 7 it was known that the United States, commanded by Decatur, had taken the Macedonian. “This is the third victory which has crowned our little naval force with laurels—may they bloom perennial!” exclaimed Coleman. He rather ill-naturedly accused the Administration of begrudging the seamen, who were mostly Yankees, their victories. “Our language is,” he concluded, “give us commerce and let us alone to protect it. We have ships and we have men; nor will we go to France for either, though your Jeffersons may recommend it ever so warmly.”
Nor did the Evening Post fail to take a vigorously patriotic attitude upon the questions raised by the Hartford Convention. The year 1814 drew to a close with the entire coast tightly blockaded by the British, the invasions of Canada all failures, the capitol at Washington in ashes, the British in possession of northern Maine, and their hands at last free in Europe. Mr. Madison’s war had ceased to be an offensive war, and had become defensive. The national government, almost without an army, almost without money, seemed on the point of collapse. On Dec. 15 there met at Hartford a convention of delegates from all the New England States, who for three weeks deliberated in secret; some believed that they were laying plans to declare all New England—as Nantucket had already declared herself—neutral, and to throw open its ports to the British, while others said that they were plotting secession, and the erection of a Yankee republic.
Coleman at the time had been called to Middletown, Conn., on business, and proceeded to Hartford to see some friends. Theodore Dwight, the secretary of the convention, later stated that the editor tried to gain informal entrance, but this Coleman denied. He never, even when years afterward the Hartford Convention had become an object of deep reproach, condemned it. But upon returning to New York he did express a deprecatory opinion of it. He commenced by declaring that the uproar of the Southerners over this “treasonable” gathering was as hypocritical as it was groundless. Who were these canting Virginians who inveighed against separatism and State Rights? The North had not forgotten that when Jay’s treaty arrived, the newspapers of Virginia unanimously began to discuss secession. It had not forgotten that Senator Giles, author of the detestable Conscription bill which had just failed, had then openly advocated a dissolution of the Union. Had not Madison maintained, in the Virginia Assembly, the abstract right of secession? But Coleman then proceeded to speak a word of reassurance, and another of warning:
What precisely the Convention will do, it would be presumption in any one to predict.... But from our personal knowledge of the gentlemen composing the Convention, it will not be difficult to pronounce with certainty what they will not do. They have been selected from the most respectable men in New England, distinguished for their prudence, for their wisdom, for their firmness.... We may be justified in saying this respectable body, with such a president [George Cabot] at their head, will not do anything rash or precipitate or violent; they will not take any step but what every man of sound principles, every friend to social order throughout the Union, will approve.... While they are bent on preserving the rights that are reserved to the States or the people, from usurpation and abuse, they will take care not to trench upon those powers which are delegated to the United States by the Constitution. The vessel at present wears well, and while there is room to believe that she will go safe about, and there is sea-room enough to do it in, why should they attempt to throw her in stays?
The vessel did come safe about. When six weeks later the news of the treaty of Ghent reached New York late at night, the city was thrown into such jubilation by the mere ending of the conflict that no one stopped to inquire the terms. But Coleman and the other local Federalist leaders, as they watched the crowds surging up and down Broadway crying—“A peace! A peace!” knew that the Democrats had nothing to boast. After a calm Sunday, the editor presented his views on Monday morning. He would stake his reputation that when the terms became known, “it will be found that the government have not by the negotiation obtained one single avowed object, for which they involved the country in this bloody and expensive war.” He enumerated these objects—the stoppage of impressments, the conquest of Canada, and the abolition of commercial restrictions. He catalogued the loss of life, the suffering on every frontier, and the waste of $150,000,000 in treasure. The one gain that Mr. Madison had obtained was a second term at $25,000 a year in a marble executive mansion, gorgeously refurnished. But, he concluded, “let the nation rejoice—we have escaped ruin.”
A part of Coleman’s disloyalty in the war, as opposition journals called it, lay in his vindictive pleasure over every disaster that befell French arms. Editorials on foreign affairs were rare, and usually ill-informed. But three months after war was declared the Evening Post based upon Wellington’s victories in Spain the sound prediction that the French forces would soon be compelled to evacuate the Peninsula altogether. “Bonaparte will never be emperor of the world,” wrote Coleman, with an eye also upon Russia’s hostility; “it will require all his talents to maintain himself even on the throne of France.” On Dec. 12, 1812, when news had just reached New York of the burning of Moscow (Sept. 16–20), leaving Napoleon stranded on an ashheap, a really shrewd statement of his peril appeared:
We have conversed with an intelligent gentleman who resided a long time in Russia, and about seven years of the time in the city of Moscow. He informs us that the weather in that country is generally pleasant till after the first of October, when the frost sets in, and excessive storms of rain and sleet are experienced, and continue with very little intermission until about the middle of December. All the time the roads are so overwhelmed with water and ice, that traveling is extremely uncomfortable, and many times quite impracticable. After the middle of December the snows begin to fall in such quantities that all traveling is entirely at an end; and the usual communication from town to town is interrupted for several weeks, the snows sometimes falling to the depth of eight or ten feet. He thinks, if Bonaparte did not commence his retreat from Moscow by the middle of October, that he will be obliged to winter there; for after that time it will be impossible for him to get out of Russia.... If he is obliged to winter there, the Russians have nothing to do but to cut off his supplies until about the middle of December, after which time all travel ceases until spring, and the great army of the north will be annihilated.
Indeed, it is plain from all the accounts we can collect from ... the French papers ... that the Russians have nothing to do but to hold out this winter, and their country will be relieved from its invaders. That they are determined to persevere appears to be certain; the destruction of such a city as Moscow is a proof of that determination, and a sure pledge that they will never surrender while they can hold a foot of ground.
Although the defeat of Napoleon at Leipsic meant that England would thenceforth be able to turn Wellington’s veteran armies against us, Federalist editors rejoiced as if it had been an American victory. They forgot for the moment the implications of the event for the war on this side; they thought only of the triumph of freedom over a military despot. “It is the morning dawn of liberty in Europe after a long, a dark, and a dismal night,” wrote Coleman. “This is the first ray of light which has visited the eyes of an oppressed people for many years past. For while Bonaparte remained in power even hope was dead—nothing but tyranny and oppression could be expected. And so firm had he fixed himself in his usurped seat, that it appeared almost out of the power of human exertions to shake him.... New prospects are opening up on the thinking mind; humanity appears to be near the end of her sufferings.”
The wars in Europe and America over, the old rancors forgotten, Coleman gladly accepted the era of good feeling. In the spring of 1816 the Evening Post supported Rufus King in his losing fight for the Governorship. But from the beginning of the year it had made up its mind that the Democrats, headed by Monroe, would gain the Presidency that fall, and it went through the motions of sustaining King for the higher office—he received only 34 electoral votes against Monroe’s 183—listlessly. Monroe’s success made of the Federalist party a mere corpse, over which factions in State politics fought like hyenas. Coleman showed no reluctance in admitting the demise, though he conventionally explained it as resulting from the Democratic adoption of Federalist principles. When in 1819 the Aurora attacked Monroe, the Evening Post actually flew out in the President’s defense. It was satisfied, wrote the editor, “that, take it all in all, the administration of James Monroe is, at this day, more generally acceptable to all classes of society in the United States, than that of any other man has ever been, since the days of Washington.” Coleman was entertained in 1819 by Vice-President Tompkins at the latter’s Staten Island home, and confessed later that he fell quite under the sway of Tompkins’s “great affability” and “his winning and familiar manner.” In short, by 1820 no one would have been surprised if some prophet had foretold that the journal of the “Federalist Field-Marshal” would shortly become the leading Democratic organ in the city.
But while it became half-Democratic, the Evening Post never ceased to be the spokesman of the best commercial sentiment in the city. As such, it opposed, with a bitter show of sectional feeling, the Missouri Compromise in 1820. The question at issue, said Coleman, was nothing more or less than “whether they shall or shall not be allowed to establish a new market for the sale of human flesh.” When the Virginia Legislature made a veiled threat of secession unless Missouri were admitted, Coleman rated the South angrily. They were hypocrites to talk about the Hartford Convention; they had been cowards when Washington was burned; on John Randolph’s own statement, they were in constant fear of a slave insurrection—these and other “bitter taunts,” as the Richmond Enquirer called them, proved the force of Jefferson’s statement that the Missouri controversy was like a firebell in the dark.