=299. War Advocated.=—Madison, who was prudent like Jefferson, and who was more of a student of politics than a vigorous man of affairs, did not desire war with either Great Britain or France any more than Jefferson had done, but he was forced into hostilities with the former power before the close of his first administration. The temper of the American people had been sorely tried by the Embargo and the non-intercourse policy as well as by British arrogance throughout the whole controversy. British statesmen spoke ill of Americans when they should have tried to enlist their sympathies in the war Great Britain was waging against despotism personified in Napoleon. The British were also thought to have stirred up the Western Indians, who were crushed on Tippecanoe River by General William Henry Harrison in 1811. The Western people were thus greatly embittered against Great Britain, and Henry Clay of Kentucky represented their feelings when, as Speaker of the new House of Representatives, he helped to force Madison into consenting to war. With Clay were joined many young, high-spirited men, some of whom, like John C. Calhoun[126] of South Carolina, while adhering to the Jefferson-Madison school of politics, were inclined to be impatient with their more cautious elders. It is said that they threatened Madison with loss of a second term if he would not agree to war with Great Britain.[127] Their policy eventually proved beneficial to the country, since it strengthened the national spirit and showed that the new generation contained men too strong to be bound by the traditions of the Revolutionary period; but it was tardy and lacking in cosmopolitan breadth of view.