37 DANIEL WEBSTER 



in a speech before the Washington Benevolent Society 

 at Portsmouth, he summarized the objections of the 

 New England people to the war just declared against 

 Great Britain. He was immediately afterward chosen 

 delegate to a convention of the people of Rockingham 

 County, and drew up the so-called " Rockingham 

 Memorial," addressed to President Madison, which 

 contained a formal protest against the war. In the 

 following autumn he was elected to Congress, and on 

 taking his seat, in May, 1813, he was placed on the 

 Committee on Foreign Relations. His first step in 

 Congress was the introduction of a series of resolutions 

 aimed at the President, and calling for a statement 

 of the time and manner in which Napoleon's pretended 

 revocation of his decrees against American shipping 

 had been announced to the United States. His first 

 great speech, January 14, 1814, was in opposition to the 

 bill for encouraging enlistments, and at the close of 

 that year he opposed Secretary Monroe's measures for 

 enforcing what was known as the "draft of 1814." 

 But while Mr. Webster's attitude toward the adminis- 

 tration was that of the Federalist party to which he 

 belonged, he did not go so far as the leaders of that 

 party in New England. He condemned the embargo 

 as more harmful to ourselves than to the enemy, as 

 there is no doubt it was ; he disapproved the policy of 

 invading Canada, and maintained that our wisest 

 course was to increase the strength of the navy; and 

 on these points history will probably judge him to 

 have been correct. But in his opinion that the war 

 itself was unnecessary and injurious to the country, he 

 was probably, like most New Englanders of that time, 

 mistaken. Could he have foreseen and taken into the 



