Yet, at this very time, there were American and French emissaries in both the Canadas (as the proclamations of the Governors show), with a view of exciting disaffection to the British Canadian Government, in order to wrest the Canadas from England and subject them to France and the United States.
"The Americans had been declaring, for several years, that they would take the provinces. They had even boasted of the ease with which the intended conquest could be made by them whenever they pleased. They believed, or pretended to believe, that the majority of the people, owing to dissensions and a desire to be free from the mother country, would not take part against them in this contest with Great Britain." (Dr. Miles' History of Canada, Part III., Chap. iii., p. 201.)
CHAPTER XLIX.
Declaration of War by the United States against Great Britain, and Preparations for the Invasion of Canada.
The Bill for declaring war against Britain passed the Congress June 18th, 1812, after protracted discussions: by the House of Congress, by a majority of forty—seventy-nine to thirty-nine—by the Senate, by a majority of six.[184] The vote for the declaration of war was a purely party vote; the war itself was a purely partizan war—the carrying out of intrigue between the American Democratic President and the French despoiler of Europe—a war against the intelligence and patriotism of the American people, as well as against the independence and liberties of nations; a war in which the very selection of generals and officers were, as a general rule, partizan appointments.[185]
The war party consisted largely of the mob or refuse of the nation—of those who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by such a war—facts which will go far to account, with three or four exceptions, for the inferior character of the American generals and officers in the war; men appointed to offices for which they had no qualifications, and to situations in which they could, without stint, rob their country of its money, if not of its reputation.
In New York, a Convention of delegates from several counties of the State was held at Albany, on the 17th and 18th days of September, 1812, in which the war was denounced as unjustifiable, unprincipled, and unpatriotic, and as subservient, simply subservient to the cause of the French Emperor against England.[186]
The address of the House of Representatives of the State of Massachusetts presented in a still stronger light and with unanswerable argument the causes of this unjust and cruel war, as wanton and unprovoked, and the climax of the various outrages committed against Great Britain.
Yet even the English Orders in Council—made the pretext for the war by President Madison and his partizans—impolitic as those Orders were on the part of England, being founded not on sound national policy, but dictated by revenge on Napoleon on account of his Berlin and Milan decrees for the destruction of British commerce—even these British Orders in Council were actually a source of profit to American merchants from the indulgent way in which they were administered by the British authorities. The American historian, Hildreth, says: