In April, 1812, our French sister, Louisiana, brought her vivacity, gayety, and debts into the family. Her high spirits were needed to stimulate the action, and her sugar to sweeten the waters of strife, now effectually stirred between America and England, whose bottomless pretensions had become intolerable. Our public debt had become reduced to about $45,000,000, and our population augmented to seven and a half millions. It needed not the witch-hazel rods of the eloquent Clay, Calhoun, Langdon, Cheves, and others, to dip to and find the mines of national wealth and national feeling. Both were ready. At last, June 4, 1812, after the lapse of twenty-nine years, we found ourselves in a second wrestling-match with Great Britain. Our first grapple was near Detroit, and on the Canadian frontier, where a defeat, under Colonel Van Horne, and a success, under Colonel Miller, equalized losses and gains, through July and August. But the base Hull-sale surrender, without a blow, of Detroit, of an army of two thousand men, and the entire Territory of Michigan, by its cowardly or treacherous governor, caused our captain, officers, and entire crew to explode in very indignant terms. Colonel Lewis Cass, then commanding one of the regiments, snapped his sword in two pieces, rather than surrender it whole to the British General Brock. He took such an Anglo-phobia at this time, that the next fifty years could not cure it. Fortunately we had better hulls on the water than on the land. August 19, 1812, Captain Isaac Hull, in the frigate Constitution, fought the British Guerriere, and after knocking down every mast and spar and one third of her crew, compelled her to throw up the sponge. The mourning put on three days before for the loss, by General William Hull, of Michigan, and the army of the Northwest, was now put off for the bridal-wreath presented by Captain Isaac Hull to America, on her marriage to the sea. Like her spouse, the Ocean, the bride hastened to cast her weeds. The pallor of defeat gave place to the summoned roses of joy. Upon the crimson flushes the British bees now sought to light and to extract their carnation.