Decatur’s victory, following so closely upon others equally brilliant, produced the most profound sensations in the United States and in England. In the former they were impressions of encouragement and joy; in the latter, of disappointment and sorrow. The victor was highly applauded for his soldierly qualities and generosity by each service; and he was spoken of with the greatest enthusiasm by his countrymen. Public bodies, and the Legislatures of Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia gave him thanks, and to these each of the two latter added a sword. The same kind of weapon was presented to him by the city of Philadelphia; and the city of New York voted [December 17.] him the freedom of the city in addition to the honor of a banquet jointly with Hull and Jones, and requested his portrait for the picture gallery in the City Hall. The Corporation of New York also gave the gallant crew of the United States a banquet at the City Hotel. 8

The national Congress, by unanimous vote, thanked Decatur, and gave him a splendid gold medal, with appropriate devices and inscriptions. 9 From that time until now that commander’s name is the synonym of honor and gallantry in the estimation of his countrymen. His subsequent career added lustre to his renown as the conqueror of the Macedonian.

Bainbridge 10 sailed from Boston with the Constitution and Hornet on the 26th of October [1812.]. He touched at the appointed rendezvous, 11 and arrived off Bahia, or San Salvador, Brazil, 12 on the 13th of December. He immediately sent in Captain Lawrence, with the Hornet, to communicate with the American consul there, when that commander discovered in the port the English sloop-of-war Bonne Citoyenne, 18, Captain Greene, about to sail for England with a very large amount of specie. Lawrence invited Greene to go out upon the open sea with his vessel and fight, pledging himself that the Constitution should take no part in the combat, but the British commander prudently declined the invitation. The Hornet then took a position to blockade the English sloop, and the Constitution departed [December 26.] for a cruise down the coast of Brazil, keeping the land aboard. Three days afterward, at about nine o’clock in the morning, when in latitude 13° 6’ south and longitude 38° west, or about thirty miles from shore, southeasterly of San Salvador, Bainbridge discovered two vessels in shore and to the windward. The larger one was seen to alter her course, with an evident desire for a meeting with the Constitution. The latter was willing to gratify her, and for that purpose tacked and stood toward the stranger. At meridian they both showed their colors and displayed signals, but the latter were mutually unintelligible. The stranger was seen to be an English frigate. Bainbridge at once prepared for action, when the Englishman hauled down his colors, but left a jack flying. Both ships ran upon the same tack, about a mile apart, when, at almost two o’clock, the British frigate bore down upon the Constitution with the intention of raking her. The latter wore and avoided the calamity, and at two o’clock, both ships being on the same tack, the Constitution fired a single gun across the enemy’s bow to draw out her ensign again. A general cannonade from both vessels immediately ensued, and a furious battle was commenced. When it had raged half an hour the wheel of the Constitution was shot away, and her antagonist, being the better sailer, had a great advantage for a time. But Bainbridge managed his crippled ship with such skill that she was the first in coming to the wind on the other tack, and speedily obtained a position for giving her opponent a terrible raking fire. The combatants now ran free with the wind on their quarter, the stranger being to the windward of the Constitution. At about three o’clock the stranger attempted to close by running down on the Constitution’s quarter. Her jib-boom penetrated the latter’s mizzen rigging, but suffered most severely without receiving the least advantage. She lost her jib-boom and the head of her bowsprit by shots from the Constitution, and in a few minutes the latter poured a heavy raking broadside into the stern of her antagonist. This was followed by another, when the fore-mast of the English frigate went by the board, crashing through the forecastle and main deck in its passage. At that moment the Constitution shot ahead, keeping away to avoid being raked, and finally, after manœuvring for the greater part of an hour, she forereached her antagonist, wore, passed her, and luffed up under her quarter. Then the two vessels lay broadside to broadside, engaged in deadly conflict, yard-arm to yard-arm. Very soon the enemy’s mizzen-mast was shot away, leaving nothing standing but the main-mast, whose yard had been carried away near the slings. The stranger’s fire now ceased, and the Constitution passed out of the combat of almost two hours’ duration at a few minutes past four o’clock, with the impression on the mind of her commander that the colors of the English frigate had been struck. Being in a favorable weatherly position, Bainbridge occupied an hour in repairing damages and securing his masts, when he observed an ensign still fluttering on board of his antagonist, He immediately ordered the Constitution to wear round and renew the conflict. Perceiving this movement, the Englishman hauled down his colors, and at six o’clock in the evening First Lieutenant George Parker 13 was sent on board to inquire her name and to take possession of her as a prize. 14 She proved to be the Java, 38, Captain Henry Lambert, and one of the finest frigates in the British navy. She was bearing, as passenger to the East Indies, Lieutenant General Hyslop (just appointed governor general of Bombay), and his staff, Captain Marshall and Lieutenant Saunders, of the Royal Navy, and more than one hundred other officers and men destined for service in the East Indies.

The Java was a wreck. Her main-mast had gone overboard during the hour that Bainbridge was repairing. Tier mizzen-mast was shot out of the ship close by the deck, and the fore-mast was carried away about twenty-five feet above it. The bowsprit was cut off near the cap, and she was found to be leaking badly on account of wounds in her hull by round shot. The Constitution was very much cut in her sails and rigging. Many of her spars were injured, but not one was lost. She went into the action with her royal yards across, and came out of it with all three of them in their proper places. There are conflicting accounts concerning the loss of the Java in men. Her commander, Captain Lambert, was mortally wounded, and her other officers were cautious about the number of her men and her casualties. According to a muster-roll found on board of her, made out five days after she sailed, her officers and crew numbered four hundred and forty-six. These were exclusive of the more than one hundred passengers, many of whom assisted in the engagement, and of whom thirteen were killed. The British published account states the loss of men on the Java to have been twenty-two killed, and one hundred and one wounded, while Bainbridge reported her loss, as nearly as he could ascertain from the British officers at the time, at sixty killed, and one hundred and one wounded. This was, doubtless, below the real number. Indeed, Bainbridge inclosed to the Secretary of the Navy evidences of a much larger loss in wounded. It was a letter, written by one of the officers of the Java to a friend, and accidentally dropped on the deck of the Constitution, where it was found and handed to Bainbridge. The writer, who had no motive of public policy for concealing any thing from his friend, stated the loss to be sixty-five killed, and one hundred and seventy wounded. 15 The Constitution lost only nine killed and twenty-five wounded. Bainbridge was slightly hurt in the hip by a musket-ball; and the shot that carried away the wheel of the Constitution drove a small copper bolt into his thigh, which inflicted a dangerous wound, but did not cause him to leave the deck before midnight.

The Java, as has been observed, was a superior frigate of her class. She was rated at thirty-eight, but carried forty-nine. The Constitution carried at that time forty-five guns, and had one man less at each than the Java. On the whole, the preponderance of strength was with the latter. Bainbridge might have saved the hull of his prize by taking it into San Salvador, but, having proof that the Brazilian government was favorable to that of Great Britain, he would not trust the captured frigate there. He was too far from home to think of conducting her to an American port; so, after lying by the Java for two days, until the wounded and prisoners, with their baggage, could all be transferred to the Constitution, he ordered the battered frigate to be fired. She blew up on the 31st, when Bainbridge proceeded to San Salvador with his prisoners, and found the Bonne Citoyenne about to attempt passing the Hornet and putting to sea. His arrival frustrated the plan. Having landed and paroled his prisoners [January 3, 1813.], Bainbridge sailed for the United States on the 6th of January, 1813. 16

The Constitution arrived at Boston on Monday, the 15th of February, and Bainbridge immediately dispatched Lieutenant Ludlow with a letter to the Secretary of the Navy. When Bainbridge landed he was greeted with the roar of artillery and the acclamations of thousands of citizens. A procession was formed, and he was escorted to the Exchange Coffee-house, the bands playing Yankee Doodle, and the throngs in the streets, balconies, and windows cheering loudly, the ladies waving their handkerchiefs. The streets were strung with banners and streamers, and Commodores Rodgers and Hull, who walked with Bainbridge in the procession, received a share of the popular honors. The victory was announced at the theatre that night, and produced the wildest enthusiasm. The Legislature of Massachusetts being in session, they passed a resolution of thanks to Bainbridge and his officers and crew, 17 and on the 2d of March a splendid banquet was given at the Exchange Coffee-house to Bainbridge and the officers of the Constitution. 18

The capture of the Java, the fourth brilliant naval victory in a brief space of time, caused great exultation throughout the United States, and the Constitution was popularly called from that time Old Ironsides. Orators and rhymers, the pulpit and the press, made the gallant exploits of Bainbridge the theme of many words in verse and prose. 19

The Common Council of New York presented to him the freedom of the city in a gold box, 20 and ordered his portrait painted for the picture-gallery in the City Hall. 21

The city of Albany did the same; 22 and the citizens of Philadelphia presented him with an elegant service of silver plate, the most costly piece of which was a massive urn, elegantly wrought. 23 The Congress of the United States voted their thanks to Bainbridge and his companions in arms, and also fifty thousand dollars in money, because of the necessary destruction of their prize. They also ordered a gold medal to be struck in honor of the commander, 24 and silver ones for each of his officers, in token of the national approbation of their conduct.

But this impotent rage soon subsided, and British writers and speakers, compelled to acknowledge the equality of the American people in all that constitutes the true greatness of a nation, labored hard to show that in all cases the American vessels, in force of men and metal, were greatly superior to those of the British encountered. They even went so far as to assert that the American frigates were all "seventy-fours in disguise!" These assertions were iterated and reiterated long after the war had ceased, to the amusement of thoughtful men, who clearly perceived the truth when the smoke had cleared away. The most notable exhibition of this folly is seen in three volumes, one on the naval and two on the military occurrences of that war, written by William James. These, as we have observed, were among the earliest of the elaborate writings concerning that war, and have, ever since their appearance, been the most frequently quoted by those British and British-American writers and speakers who delight in abusing the government and people of the United States. The spirit manifested on every page bears evidence of the poverty of the author in all that constitutes a candid and veracious historian. 25

The second session of the Twelfth Congress commenced on the 2d day of November [1812.]. It was the eve of the popular election of Presidential electors. President Madison had been nominated for the office for a second term by a Congressional caucus, as we have already observed, 26 as the Democratic candidate; and the Legislature of New York had nominated De Witt Clinton, a nephew of the late Vice-president, and of the same political faith, for the same office. The Federalists, conscious of their inability to elect a candidate of their own, coalesced with the Clintonian Democrats. This course was decided upon in a Convention of Federalist leaders from all the states north of the Potomac, held in secret session, in the city of New York, in September [1812.]. If the war must go on, they regarded Clinton as the possessor of greater executive ability than Madison, and better able to conduct it vigorously; but their chief desire and hope was to bring about an early peace by the defeat of Madison, the repeal of the British Orders in Council 27 having opened a door for that consummation so devoutly wished for. Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, a moderate Federalist, was nominated by the Convention for Vice-president. George Clinton having died, Elbridge Gerry, as we have seen, 28 was nominated for Vice-president by the Madisonians.

When the elections occurred, nearly all the Federalists and a fraction of the Democratic party voted for the Clintonian electors. All of the New England States, excepting Vermont, chose such electors. 29 New York did the same, in consequence of the adroit management of Martin Van Buren, a politician thirty years of age, who then appeared prominently for the first time. 30 There was a similar result in New Jersey, and for a time the re-election of Madison appeared doubtful. But before Congress had been in session six weeks it was definitely ascertained, from the official canvass, that Madison had one hundred and twenty-eight out of the two hundred and eighteen electors chosen, and that a large majority of the Congressmen elect were friends of the administration. This result was regarded, under the circumstances, as a very strong expression of the public in favor of the war; and the war-party in and out of Congress were greatly strengthened. They were also encouraged by the aspect of affairs abroad. Intelligence of apparent disasters to the English in Spain, the triumph of Bonaparte in the terrible battle of Borodino, and his victorious march upon Moscow, filled them with the hope that England, struggling with all Europe against her, must speedily be compelled to withdraw her soldiers and seamen from America, and give up the contest here, or else fall a prey to the conquering Corsican. But they were doomed to an early disappointment of their hopes by disasters that fell thick and fast upon the French army, exposed to Russian snows and Russian cohorts. It was evident, too, from the returns of the late elections, that the Opposition were growing stronger every day.

Among the earliest national measures proposed in Congress was a plan for increasing the army twenty thousand men, making the whole establishment fifty-six thousand. The President, in his fourth annual message [November 4, 1812.], after giving a general statement of the position of affairs in relation to the war, called the attention of the national Legislature to the necessity of measures for the vigorous prosecution of it. A bill was introduced into the House of Representatives to raise the pay of private soldiers from six to eight dollars a month, to guarantee recruits against arrest for debt, and to give them their option to enlist for five years or for the war. In the same bill was a clause allowing the enlistment of minors without the consent of their parents or masters. This elicited a very spirited debate, in which Josiah Quincy engaged with his usual vigor. He declared it to be an interference with the rights of parents and masters, and warned the House that if the bill passed with that "atrocious principle" contained in it, it would be met in New England by the state laws against kidnapping and man-stealing. He opposed it as bearing particularly hard upon the North, where the laborers are the yeomanry and the minors, while at the South the laborers were slaves, and exempted by law from military duty. The planter of the South, he said, can look around upon his fifty, his hundred, and his thousand human beings, and say, "These are my property" – property tilling the land, and enriching the owner in war as well as in peace; while the farmer of the North has "only one or two ewe lambs – his children, of which he can say, and say with pride, like the Roman matron, ‘These are my ornaments.’ " These, by the proposed law, might be taken from him, and his land must remain untilled. 31

The expensive volunteer system was taken up in Congress, and the law authorizing the employment of that species of soldiers was repealed. Another was substituted, which authorized the enlistment of twenty regiments of regulars to serve twelve months, to whom a bounty of sixteen dollars should be given. It also provided for the appointment of six major generals and six brigadier generals, and a corresponding increase of subordinate officers. Party spirit was aroused in the debate that ensued, and the discussion took a range so wide as to include the whole policy and conduct of the war. Mr. Quincy led off [January 5, 1813.] with great bitterness and the keenest sarcasm. "He denounced the invasion of Canada," says Hildreth, 32 "as a cruel, wanton, senseless, and wicked attack, in which neither plunder nor glory was to be gained, upon an unoffending people, bound to us by ties of blood and good neighborhood; undertaken for the punishment, over their shoulders, of another people three thousand miles off, by young politicians fluttering and cackling on the floor of that house, half hatched, the shell still on their heads, and their pin-feathers not yet shed – politicians to whom reason, justice, pity, were nothing, revenge every thing; bad policy, too, since the display of such a grasping spirit only tended to alienate from us that large minority of the British people anxious to compel their ministers to respect our maritime rights. So thought the people of New England, and hence the difficulty of getting recruits. The toad-eaters of the palace – party men in pursuit of commissions, fat contracts, judgeships, and offices for themselves, their fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, and cousins – might assert otherwise, but the people had spoken in the late elections. There were in New England multitudes of judicious, patriotic, honest, sober men, who, if their judgments and their consciences went with the war, would rush to the standard of their country at the winding of a horn, but to whom the present call sounded rather as a jewsharp or a banjo. . . . . . If the government would confine itself to a war of defense, it should have his support; but for a war of conquest and annexation, whether in East Florida 33 or Canada, he would not contribute a single dollar. Nor was he to be frightened from this ground by the old state cry of British connection, raised anew by a pack of mangy, mongrel blood-hounds, for the most part of very recent importation, their necks still marked with the collar, and their backs sore with the stripes of European castigation, kept in pay by the administration to hunt down all who opposed the court."

This contemptuous speech drew a most vigorous reply from Mr. Clay, the Speaker of the House, who felt himself specially aimed at by the expression "unfledged politicians." He charged the Federalists, says Hildreth, "with always, throughout the whole controversy with Great Britain, thwarting the plans of their own government; clamoring alike against the embargo, against the non-intercourse, against the non-importation; when the government were at peace, crying out for war; and, now the government were at war, crying out for peace; falsely charging the President with being under French influence; 34 heaping all kinds of abuse on Bonaparte; assailing Jefferson with impotent rage; spiriting up chimeras of Southern influence and Virginia dictation, as if the people did not choose their own presidents; going even so far as to plot the dissolution of the Union." Mr. Clay then presented a most pathetic picture of the wrongs inflicted upon, and miseries endured by, American seamen under the operations of the impressment system, to which Great Britain clung tenaciously. "As to the gentleman’s sentimental protest against the invasion of Canada," he said in substance," was Canada so innocent, after all? Was it not in Canada that the Indian tomahawks were whetted? Was it not from Malden and other Canadian magazines that the supplies had issued which had enabled the savage bands to butcher the garrison of Chicago? Was it not by a joint attack of Canadians and Indians that Michillimackinac had been reduced? What does a state of war present? The combined energies of one people arrayed against the combined energies of another, each aiming to inflict all the injury it can, whether by sea or land, upon the territories, property, and persons of the other, subject only to those mitigated usages practiced among civilized nations. The gentleman would not touch the British Continental possessions, nor, for the same reason, it was supposed, her West India islands. By the same rule, her innocent soldiers and sailors ought to be protected; and as, according to a well-known maxim, the king could do no wrong, there would seem to be nobody left whom, on the gentleman’s principles, we could attack, unless it were Mr. Stephen, 35 the reputed author of the Orders in Council, or the Board of Admiralty, under whose authority our seamen were impressed." . . . . Mr. Clay’s "plan was," he said, "to call out the ample resources of the country to the fullest extent, to strike wherever the enemy could be reached, by sea or land, and to negotiate a peace at Quebec or Halifax."

Measures were adopted for strengthening both the army and navy, and the more perfect organization of each. The President was authorized to cause the construction of four ships of seventy-four guns each, and six frigates and six sloops-of-war; 36 to issue treasury notes to the amount of five millions of dollars, and to create a new stock for a loan of sixteen millions of dollars. 37 A bill was also passed, chiefly through the untiring efforts of Langdon Cheves and John C. Calhoun, representatives from South Carolina, by which the bonds of merchants given for goods imported from Great Britain and Ireland after the declaration of war, and seized under the provisions of the Non-importation Act, were canceled. For six weeks after the news of war reached England exportations had been allowed to go on; 38 and the goods to which the law in question would apply were valued, at invoice prices, at more than eighteen millions of dollars, and were worth double that amount in the American market. This act conciliated the mercantile interest.

We have already observed that a retaliatory law, first suggested by Colonel Scott on account of some prisoners taken at Queenston, and who had been sent to England as deserters because they were Irishmen, was passed. 39 It was so framed as not only to meet the special case of those persons, but such Indian outrages under British sanction as had been committed at the River Raisin. 40 Happily, there was no occasion for enforcing the law.

Only four days before the presentation of their report [January 13.] by the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Prince Regent, acting sovereign of Great Britain, issued a manifesto [January 9.] concerning the causes of the war, and the subjects of blockade and impressment. He declared that the war was not the consequence of any fault of Great Britain, but that it had been brought on by the partial conduct of the American government in overlooking the aggressions of the French, and in their negotiations with them. He alleged that a quarrel with Great Britain had been sought because she had adopted measures solely as retaliative as toward France; and that, as those measures had been abandoned by a repeal of the Orders in Council, the war was now continued on the question of impressment and search. On this point the Prince Regent took such a decisive position, that the door for negotiation which the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Affairs proposed to open seemed irrevocably shut. "His royal highness," said the manifesto from his palace at Westminster, "can never admit that in the exercise of the undoubted and hitherto undisputed 41 right of searching neutral merchant vessels in time of war, and the impressment of British seamen when found therein, can be deemed any violation of a neutral flag, neither can he admit the taking of such seamen from on board such vessels can be considered by any neutral state as a hostile measure or a justifiable cause of war." After reaffirming the old English doctrine of the impossibility of self-expatriation of a British subject, the manifesto continued: "But if, to the practice of the United States to harbor British seamen, be added their assumed right to transfer the allegiance of British subjects, and thus to cancel the jurisdiction of their legitimate sovereign by acts of naturalization and certificates of citizenship, which they pretend to be as valid out of their own territory as within it, 42 it is obvious that to abandon this ancient right of Great Britain, and to admit these naval pretensions of the United States, would be to expose the very foundations of our maritime strength."

The manifesto charged the United States government with systematic efforts to inflame their people against Great Britain, of ungenerous conduct toward Spain, Great Britain’s ally, and of deserting the cause of neutrality. "This disposition of the government of the United States – this complete subserviency to the ruler of France – this hostile temper toward Great Britain," said the prince, "are evident in almost every page of the official correspondence of the American with the French government. Against this course of conduct, the real cause of the present war, the Prince Regent solemnly protests. While contending against France in defense not only of the liberties of Great Britain, but of the world, his Royal Highness was entitled to look for a far different result. From their common origin – from their common interest – from their professed principles of freedom and independence, the United States was the last power in which Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument and abettor of French tyranny." 43

The intelligence from Europe was disheartening to the war-party, for it was evident that the coalition of the great powers of Europe against the French would so relieve England that she might prosecute the war in America with great vigor. The President had been at all times anxious for peace on honorable terms. He perceived a chance for its accomplishment through Russian mediation, and he at once accepted the offer of M. Daschkoff. That acceptance was followed by the nomination of Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury, and James A. Bayard, a representative of Delaware in the Senate of the United States, as commissioners or envoys extraordinary, to act jointly with Mr. Adams to negotiate a treaty of peace with Great Britain at St. Petersburg. At the same time, William H. Crawford, of Georgia, a Peace Democrat, was appointed to succeed the lately deceased Joel Barlow 44 as minister at the French court. Of the result of the efforts for peace through Russian mediation I shall hereafter write.

The reverses of Napoleon, as we have observed, discouraged the war-party, and gave corresponding joy to the Federalists, especially to the wing of that organization known as the Peace-party, whose head-quarters were at Boston. There they celebrated the Russian triumphs with public rejoicings. 45 In other places, too, these victories were hailed with joy, and became the themes for song and oratory, 46 to the great disgust of the war-party and their newspaper organs, who censured the President for his haste in snatching at Russian mediation.