them from these mysterious engines of destruction. While our blockaded coast was thus filling Congress with alarm, and the whole land with gloom and dread, the bold and hostile attitude which Massachusetts was assuming, both deepened the general indignation and added to the embarrassments under which the administration struggled. Owing, doubtless, to the failures which marked the close of the previous year, the elections in the New England states during the early spring had terminated very satisfactorily to the Federalists. Strong was elected Governor of Massachusetts by a large majority, while both branches of the Legislature were under the control of the Federalists. In Connecticut and New Hampshire they had also triumphed, and Vermont, although her state government and delegation to Congress were Democratic, was still claimed as Federalist in the popular majority. On the other side, New York and Pennsylvania spoke loudly for the Administration, the latter by offering to loan a million of dollars to the government, as an offset to the efforts of the Federalists to prevent the loan proposed by government being taken. [Sidenote: May 20.] During the summer, acting under a hostile message received from the governor, the Massachusetts Legislature drew up a remonstrance, denouncing the war as wrong and unwise, prompted by desire of conquest and love of France, rather than the wish to maintain the rights of the people. The report of a committee against the incorporation into the Union of Louisiana, as the commencement of western annexation, destined, if not arrested, to destroy the preponderance of the Eastern states, was also sustained in this remonstrance, which closed with a solemn appeal to the Searcher of all hearts for the purity of the motives which prompted it. Quincy in the House, and Otis and Loyd in the Senate, were the Federalist leaders. Not content with taking this hostile attitude to the General Government, the Legislature soon after refused to pass resolutions complimentary to Captain Lawrence for his gallant conduct in capturing the Peacock, and passed instead, the following resolution introduced by a preamble, declaring that such commendations encouraged the continuance of the war. "_Resolved_, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner showing that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits, which are not immediately connected with the defence of our sea-coast and soil." This was not a mere expression of feeling, but the utterance of a principle acted on from that time to the end of the war. This proud assumption of state rights and denunciation of the war when our coasts were blockaded by British cruisers and our frontiers drenched in blood, met the stern condemnation of the people