|When a destructive war had been carried on for two years, when recruiting was slow, and the Government heavily in debt, and yet no way appeared but to fight it out, it might have been expected that harsh criticism of the policy of the Administration, coming from the party that had steadily opposed the war, would subject that party to the charge of being unpatriotic and untrue to the Union. It might also have been expected that an opposition which had become chronic could not but become in some respects unjust. So when the Federalists in 1814 were flooding the Legislatures of New England with memorials on the conduct of the war, they could hardly restrain themselves from overdrawing the picture of its failures, or from representing the condition of things before the war as rather more paradisiacal than anybody had suspected. And on the other hand, they were accused not only of {327}rejoicing in defeats of the national arms, but of plotting a separation of New England from the other States, with a view of ultimately making her again a part of the British Empire. That there were some Federalists who contemplated a dissolution of the Union as a possible remedy for certain difficulties, is quite probable, for such views were at that time not confined to either party. The contingency of disunion was frequently discussed by men of both parties. But that anybody seriously contemplated a reunion with England, there has never been any evidence worth considering. The story was gotten up by the Administration party, in order to cast odium upon the Federalists; and the occurrence most freely used to give color to it was the Hartford Convention, which unfortunately sat with closed doors, and thus was easily misrepresented as a treasonable gathering.