Difficulties which finally led to the outbreak of war had been growing for several years; and the Government, as I have said, had all this time done little or nothing in the way of preparation for defence either on land or at sea. The navy was opposed as bitterly as ever, and the money that was needed for its support was given grudgingly. After the war with Tripoli, in which gunboats had been found of so much use, the Administration had begun to build great numbers of vessels of this class. This was a great mistake. Gunboats were useful and even necessary for operations in bays and rivers and shoal waters, but they could not take the place of frigates in making war. But it seemed to be a pet scheme with the President to transform the navy into an immense gunboat flotilla, and one hundred and seventy-six of these little craft were built, which turned out to be of no more service in war than so many mud-scows. The money which was wasted by this mistaken policy would have built eight frigates of the largest class, and would have added immeasurably to our power upon the sea. When the war broke out, there were in the navy, besides the gunboats, only eighteen vessels, of which three--the "Chesapeake," "Constellation," and "Adams"--were repairing, and one was on Lake Ontario. Of the other fourteen there were those three fine frigates of forty-four guns,--the "Constitution," the "United States," and the "President;" and three smaller frigates,--the "Congress," of thirty-eight guns, the "Essex," of thirty-two, and the "John Adams," of twenty-eight. The rest were sloops, brigs, and schooners carrying from ten to twenty guns apiece. To make war on this puny force, the British Navy possessed two hundred and thirty line-of-battle ships, of from sixty to one hundred and twenty guns each, and over six hundred frigates and smaller vessels.