MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCE, DOCUMENTS, ETC., OF THE* 



UNITED STATES. 



Extracts from President Madison's message of June 1, 1812. 



WASHINGTON, June 1, 



To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States : 

 ******* 



Without going back beyond the renewal in 1803 of the war in 

 which Great Britain is engaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of 

 inferior magnitude, the conduct of her Government presents a series 

 of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral 

 nation. 



British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating 

 the Ajnerican flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing 

 and carrying off persons sailing under it, not in the exercise of a 

 belligerent right founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but 

 of a municipal prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdic- 

 tion is thus extended to neutral vessels in a situation where no laws 

 can operate by the law of nations and the laws of the country to 

 which the vessels belong, and a self-redress is assumed which, if 

 British subjects were wrongfully detained and alone concerned, is 

 that substitution of force for a resort to the responsible sovereign 

 which falls within the definition of war. * * * 



The practice, hence, is so far from affecting British subjects alone 

 that, under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of Ameri- 

 can citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national 

 flag, have been torn from their country and from everything dear 

 to them; have been dragged on board ships of war of a foreign 

 nation and exposed, under the severities of their discipline, to be 

 exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the 

 battles of their oppressors, and to be the melancholy instruments of 

 taking away those of their own brethren. 



-Against this crying enormity, which Great Britain would be so 

 prompt to avenge if committed against herself, the United States 

 have in vain exhausted remonstrances and expostulations, and that 

 no proof might be wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no 

 pretext left for a continuance of the practice, the British Govern- 

 ment was formally assured of the readiness of the United States to 

 enter into arrangements such as could not be rejected if the recovery 

 of British subjects were the real and sole object. The communica- 

 tion passed without effect. 



British cruisers have been in the practice also of violating the 

 rights and the peace of our coasts. They hover over and harass our 

 entering and departing commerce. To the most insulting preten- 

 sions they have added the most lawless proceedings in our very har- 

 bors, and have wantonly spilt American blood within the sanctuary 

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