[13] The most serious difficulty in the way of the final suppression of the African slave trade in the present century was, that it could be carried on without molestation in American bottoms, under the American flag. The ruling power in the United States, from 1787 to 1860, was never willing that their own cruisers should meddle with the slavers, and resented as an insult to the flag the search, by the cruisers of other powers, of any vessel under the American flag, though it might be absolutely certain that she had come straight from the coast of Africa, and that her "between-decks" was crowded full of negroes to be sold as slaves in Cuba.
[14] "I reverence the Constitution," said Fisher Ames in debate, "and I readily admit that the frequent appeal to that as a standard proceeds from a respectful attachment to it. So far it is a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little importance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in point of dignity."
[15] Paul Jennings, who was a slave and the body servant of Mr. Madison, says in his Reminiscences: "It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there) and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment. John Suse (a Frenchman, then doorkeeper, and still [1865] living), and Magraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as could hastily be got hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, etc., that I had prepared for the President's party." On a previous page he had related that: "Mrs. Madison ordered dinner to be ready at three as usual; I set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed them in the coolers, as all the cabinet and several military gentlemen and strangers were expected."