ABSTRACT
Britain's Orders-in-Council that had hobbled American commerce remained in place. Rumors circulated that further restrictions were forthcoming. Young Republicans in Congress who hailed mostly from the South and West such as thirty-four-year-old Henry Clay of Kentucky and South Carolina's twenty-nine-year-old John C. Calhoun, were Madison's voice for the pro-war cause. A favorable outcome of a war with Britain, they argued, would not only strengthen American identity but by invading and acquiring Canada, the Indian threat would be neutralized, with the added bonus that British commerce would suffer from lack of Canadian timber, fish, and wheat. Fortified by the War Hawk rhetoric streaming out of Washington, Elbridge Gerry and his supporters, including his mordant critic Daniel Lincoln, were only convinced that another war meant ultimate deliverance from British oppression, but that Federalists in Massachusetts were on the run. Daniel followed the prosecution of the war through correspondence with his twelve-year-old brother, William.
