On the 5th of January, 1815, the Convention adjourned, and published a long report, wherein were set forth the difficulties that the country labored under, and methods proposed by the Convention for adjusting them. These were first discussed at length, and then summarized in a series of resolutions: That unconstitutional drafts of militia should be prevented; that the New England States should be empowered to defend their own territory against the enemy; that representatives and direct taxes should be apportioned among the States according to the number of their free inhabitants; that a two-third vote of Congress should be required to admit a new State; that embargoes for more than sixty days should be forbidden; that a two-third Congressional vote should be required for the interdiction of commercial intercourse, or for the declaration of offensive war; that naturalized citizens should not be eligible to Federal offices; that the President should be ineligible for a second term, and should not be chosen from the same State twice in succession; and, finally, that if these ends were not attained, and peace not concluded, another convention should be held in Boston in the following June. {330}This ought to have been plain enough for anybody to understand; and yet allusions to "the old blue-lights of the Hartford Convention," as a synonym for treason, have come down to our own day. Its popularity as a bugbear has never been exceeded. So great was its influence in this regard, that it caused General Scott to remember something which had never taken place. In his account of the battle of Chippewa he says: "And now the New England States were preparing to hold a convention--it met at Hartford--perhaps to secede from the Union --possibly to take up arms against it. Scott's brigade, nearly all New England men, were most indignant, and this was the subject of the second of the three pithy remarks made to them by Scott just before the final conflict of Chippewa. Calling aloud to the gallant Major Hindman, he said, 'Let us put down the Federal Convention by beating the enemy in front. There's nothing in the Constitution against that.'" * There can be no question as to the intrinsic pithiness of this remark; but if Scott made it, he must have been somewhat of a prophet, for the battle of Chippewa was fought on the 5th of July, and the call for the Convention was not issued till October. This shows the danger of writing * Scott's Memoirs, vol. i., page 133. {331}memoirs half a century after the events of which they treat. The great news from the South, and the tidings of peace, followed so quickly upon the adjournment of the Convention that its labors went for nought, its members were subjected to merciless ridicule, and the new convention proposed for June was never held. CHAPTER XX. THE CAMPAIGN ON THE GULF COAST. {332}