Finally Grundy appealed to an argument wholly new:-- “This war, if carried on successfully, will have its advantages. We shall drive the British from our continent.... I am willing to receive the Canadians as adopted brethren. It will have beneficial political effects; it will preserve the equilibrium of the government. When Louisiana shall be fully peopled, the Northern States will lose their power; they will be at the discretion of others; they can be depressed at pleasure, and then this Union might be endangered. I therefore feel anxious not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to the North of this empire.” Grundy was the first of Southern statesmen to express publicly the Southern belief that when Louisiana and Florida should be peopled, the Northern States would lose their power and be at the discretion of others, to be depressed at pleasure. Such was the theory of the time, and the political history of the United States seemed to support it; but the Republican party in 1798 would have looked on any of its representatives as insane who had proposed to make war on England in order to give more power to the Northern States. To this speech John Randolph replied in his usual keen and desultory style; but Randolph’s arguments had lost historical interest, for the question was not so much whether war should be made, as upon what new ground the United States should stand. The Federalists, conscious of the change, held their peace. The Republicans, laboring to convince not their opponents but themselves, argued day after day that cause for war existed, as though they doubted their own assertion; but no sooner did they reach delicate ground than they became confused. Many of the speakers avoided argument, and resorted to declamation. The best representative of this class was R. M. Johnson of Kentucky, who, after five years of national submission to both European belligerents, declared that a sixth year would prove fatal: “We must now oppose the further encroachments of Great Britain by war, or formally annul the Declaration of Independence.” On this doubtful foundation he imagined visionary conquests. “I should not wish to extend the boundary of the United States by war if Great Britain would leave us to the quiet enjoyment of independence; but considering her deadly and implacable enmity, and her continued hostilities, I shall never die contented until I see her expulsion from North America, and her territories incorporated with the United States.” Probably these appeals carried weight with the Western people; but even earnest supporters of war might doubt whether men of sense could be conciliated or persuaded by such oratory, or by descriptions of Harrison’s troops at Tippecanoe, “in the silent watches of the night, relieved from the fatigues of valor, and slumbering under the perfidious promises of the savages, who were infuriated and made drunk by British traders,” and so massacred unawares.