De Witt Clinton, the ambitious mayor, who was courting the help of King, John Wells, and the _Evening Post_ in his aspirations for the Federalist nomination against Madison that summer, told Coleman that he believed ninety-nine men in every hundred in the city really were opposed to the war. The editor was highly sarcastic in his references to the local Democrats as “fellow subjects of our loving Emperor Napoleon,” and in those to “Monsieurs Gallatin and Madison.” For a few weeks, while an alliance with France was thought a possibility, the _Evening Post_ steadily declaimed against it. A war with Great Britain, fought single-handed, “will be neither a predatory war nor a bloody war,” it said; but if France sends her squadrons to the American coast, British fleets will follow, and the seaport towns will suffer. When Daniel Webster, a young man of thirty almost unknown outside New Hampshire, delivered a Fourth of July oration denouncing any coöperation with France, he was fervently praised. New Yorkers were fearful of two perils: a British invasion across the St. Lawrence or Niagara Rivers, and bombardments by sea. “We are fighting the world’s greatest Power,” protested Coleman, “without the means of annoyance or even defense.” He told his readers, incorrectly, that the frigate _Constitution_ was sent from Norfolk to Boston with only two rounds of cannonballs; and correctly, that Fort Niagara, on an “exposed and utterly defenseless frontier,” had scarcely powder enough for a Fourth of July salute. For armaments at sea the _Evening Post_ was always eloquent, but it took a different attitude toward the bustle of preparations to invade Canada. When President Madison requested the Governors to place the militia at his disposal, Coleman applauded the New England executives who refused. Conjuring up a vision of a harsh military despotism, he pronounced the President’s action one “highly dangerous to the liberties of the people, and to our republican form of government.” In editorial after editorial, moreover, he discouraged recruiting for Federal regiments. Are you willing, he asked volunteers, “to attempt foreign conquests while your wives and little ones are left exposed to an exasperated and unfeeling foe?” As autumn came on, he made the most of the reports of suffering among underclad troops. He wished no one to forget that their misery had been caused by “a wretched, incapable, mob-courting administration, less concerned to provide supplies for their army than to secure by low intrigue the places they so unworthily fill.”