together with artisans of all the allied industries that were called upon in the fitting out of ships and cargoes, enjoyed two years of prosperity. The period was given over to money-getting, and the ordinary rules of national or commercial honesty were flung to the winds. Napoleon sold licenses to British vessels to supply his famishing soldiers stationed in continental ports, while forged American and British papers were openly sold in London. So enormous were the profits of a successful voyage that the possibility of capture only added zest to the American ventures and contributed not a little to the daring of the privateers in the years of the war. So enriched was the state that by May, 1811, Connecticut had so far recovered from her late financial distress that the "state owed no debt and every tax was paid," while her exports were: domestic, $994,216; foreign, $38,138, or a total of $1,032,354. The ninety days' embargo of 1812, the declaration of war (June 18,1812), and the patrolling of Long Island Sound by a British fleet, brought such desolation to Connecticut that ships again lay rotting at the wharves, ropewalks and warehouses were deserted, cargoes were without carriers, and seamen were either scattered or idling about, a constant menace to the public peace. National taxes to support a detested war were laid upon the people at a time when their incomes were ceasing, and their homes and property were laid bare to a plundering enemy. "A nation without fleets, without armies, with an impoverished treasury, with a frontier by sea and land extending many hundreds of miles, feebly defended" by fortifications old and neglected, had rushed headlong into war with the strongest nation of the earth without "counting the cost." Such was the opinion of the Federalists everywhere and, at first, of the large wing of the Republican party who preferred peace. The Federalists of Connecticut, when they saw a small majority sweep the nation into the conflict with Great Britain, believed the war threatened liberty of speech. They feared military despotism, when the general government demanded the control of the militia; and that the war would prostrate" their civil and religious institutions by increasing taxation and loss of income." [c] They feared "national dismemberment" when the war measures, together with the presence of the British fleet blockading the coast, alternately angered the people almost to rebellion against an apparently indifferent central government, or drove them into plans for self-defense. Much of the opposition in New England is in part accounted for by the rebound towards Federalism which the declaration of the war caused, and by the belief that the national election of 1812 would be a Federal victory. Though it turned out to be a defeat, it consolidated and so strengthened that party in New England that before the close of 1813 all the state executives were Federalists and were arrayed against the administration.