And not only did Webster disappoint, but he mortified Whig friends. Texas had been an independent state as early as 1840, he said; our annexing it gave Mexico no just ground of complaint; she was "entirely unreasonable and senseless" in rejecting our offer to treat; if she preferred war to peace we could but fight; and now the war must be vigorously prosecuted. He squarely refused to call the invasion of her territory unjust. He seemed to approve of his son's going to the field in the "unholy" cause of his country. He admitted that Whig policy in Massachusetts was in some respects "quite narrow." "I am tired--and disgusted--as much as you possibly can be, with the fanaticism and narrowness of some of our People," he wrote; and no doubt it made him still more tired to hear Lowell's captivating but wayward muse advise young fellows, on grounds of personal advantage, to keep out of the army, and suggest that, should they get seduced by some "strutting" sergeant into taking up arms for the country, insubordination and even desertion would become them. "Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn,-- 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle That is ketched with mouldy corn."[34.19] While such were the troubles of waking hours, the bedchamber, too, of many Whigs had its troubled moments. Ghosts walked. John Jay, a sincere opponent of our second war against England, came back, holding out a scroll that bore these words of his, "As the war has been _constitutionally_ declared, the people are evidently bound to support it." Came back the Rev. David Osgood, D.D., of Medford, Massachusetts, with his sermon of June 27, 1812: "My mind has been in a constant agony, not so much at the inevitable loss of our temporal prosperity and happiness, and the complicated miseries of war, as at its guilt, its outrage against heaven, against all truth, honesty, justice, goodness, against all the principles of social happiness." Came back another Federalist, the Rev. Elijah Parish, D.D., with a sermon recommending treason as a pious duty: "New England, if invaded, would be obliged to defend herself. Do you not then owe it to your children, and owe it to your God, to make peace for yourselves?" Unlike Jay, these men appeared to be unhappy; and then certain patriots of the Hartford Convention filed by with averted eyes, each dragging after him a blasted reputation.[34.20]