TO THE SOCIETY OF TAMMANY, OR COLUMBIAN ORDER, NO. 1, OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
February 29, 1808.
I have received your address, fellow citizens, and, thankful for the expressions so personally gratifying to myself, I contemplate with high satisfaction the ardent spirit it breathes of love to our country, and of devotion to its liberty and independence. The crisis in which it is placed, cannot but be unwelcome to those who love peace, yet spurn at a tame submission to wrong. So fortunately remote from the theatre of European contests, and carefully avoiding to implicate ourselves in them, we had a right to hope for an exemption from the calamities which have afflicted the contending nations, and to be permitted unoffendingly to pursue paths of industry and peace.
But the ocean, which, like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind, is arbitrarily wrested from us, and maxims consecrated by time, by usage, and by an universal sense of right, are trampled on by superior force. To give time for this demoralizing tempest to pass over, one measure only remained which might cover our beloved country from its overwhelming fury: an appeal to the deliberate understanding of our fellow citizens in a cessation of all intercourse with the belligerent nations, until it can be resumed under the protection of a returning sense of the moral obligations which constitute a law for nations as well as individuals. There can be no question, in a mind truly American, whether it is best to send our citizens and property into certain captivity, and then wage war for their recovery, or to keep them at home, and to turn seriously to that policy which plants the manufacturer and the husbandman side by side, and establishes at the door of every one that exchange of mutual labors and comforts, which we have hitherto sought in distant regions, and under perpetual risk of broils with them. Between these alternatives your address has soundly decided, and I doubt not your aid, and that of every real and faithful citizen, towards carrying into effect the measures of your country, and enforcing the sacred principle, that in opposing foreign wrong there must be but one mind.
I receive with sensibility your kind prayers for my future happiness, and I supplicate a protecting providence to watch over your own and our country's freedom and welfare.
TO THE DELEGATES OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA IN GENERAL WARD COMMITTEE ASSEMBLED.
May 25, 1808.
The epoch, fellow citizens, into which our lot has fallen, has indeed been fruitful of events, which require vigilance, and embarrass deliberation. That during such a period of difficulty, and amidst the perils surrounding us, the public measures which have been pursued should meet your approbation, is a source of great satisfaction. It was not expected in this age, that nations so honorably distinguished by their advances in science and civilization, would suddenly cast away the esteem they had merited from the world, and, revolting from the empire of morality, assume a character in history, which all the tears of their posterity will never wash from its pages. But during this delirium of the warring powers, the ocean having become a field of lawless violence, a suspension of our navigation for a time was equally necessary to avoid contest, or enter it with advantage. This measure will, indeed, produce some temporary inconvenience; but promises lasting good by promoting among ourselves the establishment of manufactures hitherto sought abroad, at the risk of collisions no longer regulated by the laws of reason or morality.
It is to be lamented that any of our citizens, not thinking with the mass of the nation as to the principles of our government, or of its administration, and seeing all its proceedings with a prejudiced eye, should so misconceive and misrepresent our situation as to encourage aggressions from foreign nations. Our expectation is, that their distempered views will be understood by others as they are by ourselves; but should wars be the consequence of these delusions, and the errors of our dissatisfied citizens find atonement only in the blood of their sounder brethren, we must meet it as an evil necessarily flowing from that liberty of speaking and writing which guards our other liberties; and I have entire confidence in the assurances that your ardor will be animated, in the conflicts brought on, by considerations of the necessity, honor, and justice of our cause.
I sincerely thank you, fellow citizens, for the concern you so kindly express for my future happiness. It is a high and abundant reward for endeavors to be useful; and I supplicate the care of Providence over the well-being of yourselves and our beloved country.