Nor did the _Evening Post_ fail to take a vigorously patriotic attitude upon the questions raised by the Hartford Convention. The year 1814 drew to a close with the entire coast tightly blockaded by the British, the invasions of Canada all failures, the capitol at Washington in ashes, the British in possession of northern Maine, and their hands at last free in Europe. Mr. Madison’s war had ceased to be an offensive war, and had become defensive. The national government, almost without an army, almost without money, seemed on the point of collapse. On Dec. 15 there met at Hartford a convention of delegates from all the New England States, who for three weeks deliberated in secret; some believed that they were laying plans to declare all New England--as Nantucket had already declared herself--neutral, and to throw open its ports to the British, while others said that they were plotting secession, and the erection of a Yankee republic. Coleman at the time had been called to Middletown, Conn., on business, and proceeded to Hartford to see some friends. Theodore Dwight, the secretary of the convention, later stated that the editor tried to gain informal entrance, but this Coleman denied. He never, even when years afterward the Hartford Convention had become an object of deep reproach, condemned it. But upon returning to New York he did express a deprecatory opinion of it. He commenced by declaring that the uproar of the Southerners over this “treasonable” gathering was as hypocritical as it was groundless. Who were these canting Virginians who inveighed against separatism and State Rights? The North had not forgotten that when Jay’s treaty arrived, the newspapers of Virginia unanimously began to discuss secession. It had not forgotten that Senator Giles, author of the detestable Conscription bill which had just failed, had then openly advocated a dissolution of the Union. Had not Madison maintained, in the Virginia Assembly, the abstract right of secession? But Coleman then proceeded to speak a word of reassurance, and another of warning: