The federalist leaders saw that, while their party strength was confined
to a continually decreasing territory, the opposing democracy not only
had gained the mass of the original United States, but was swarming
toward and beyond the Mississippi. They dropped to the level of a mere
party of opposition; they went further until the only article of their
political creed was State sovereignty; some of them went one step
further, and dabbled in hopeless projects for secession and the formation
of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive
any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal
party, except that, by impelling the democratic leaders to really
national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly aided in the development of
nationality from democracy.

If the essential characteristic of colonialism is the sense of
dependence and the desire to imitate, democracy, at least in its earlier
phases, begets the opposite qualities. The Congressional elections of
1810-11 showed that the people had gone further in democracy than their
leaders. "Submission men" were generally defeated in the election; new
leaders, like Clay, Calhoun, and Crawford, made the dominant party a war
party, and forced the President into their policy; and the war of 1812
was begun. Its early defeats on land, its startling successes at sea,
its financial straits, the desperation of the contest after the fall of
Napoleon, and the brilliant victory which crowned its close, all
combined to raise the national feeling to the highest pitch; and the
federalists, whose stock object of denunciation was "Mr. Madison's war,"
though Mr. Madison was about the most unwilling participant in it, came
out of it under the ban of every national sympathy.

The speech of Mr. Quincy, in many points one of the most eloquent of our
political history, will show the brightest phase of federalism at its