The decisions of Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush to pursue wars in Vietnam and Iraq, respectively, stirred sharp political debates and protests. So, too, did President James Madison’s action in 1812 in leading the nation into war. Josiah Quincy and other antiwar Federalist congressmen challenged Madison’s justification for the war and the Republicans’ proposed military strategy. As the war ended in 1815, Hezekiah Niles, the Republican editor of Niles’ Weekly Register, came to Madison’s defense and blamed New England Federalists for American military reverses.

THE FEDERALIST MANIFESTO: How will war upon the land [an invasion of British Canada] protect commerce upon the ocean? …

But it is said that war is demanded by honor. … If honor demands a war with England, what opiate lulls that honor to sleep over the wrongs done us by France? On land, robberies, seizures, imprisonments, by French authority; at sea, pillage, sinkings, burnings, under French orders. These are notorious. Are they unfelt because they are French? …

There is … a headlong rushing into difficulties, with little calculation about the means, and little concern about the consequences. With a navy comparatively [small], we are about to enter into the lists against the greatest marine [power] on the globe. With a commerce unprotected and spread over every ocean, we propose to make a profit by privateering, and for this endanger the wealth of which we are honest proprietors. …

What are the United States to gain by this war? … Let us not be deceived. A war of invasion [of Canada] may invite a retort of invasion. When we visit the peaceable, and as to us innocent, colonies of Great Britain with the horrors of war, can we be assured that our own coast will not be visited with like horrors?

HEZEKIAH NILES’S REJOINDER: It is universally known that the causes for which we declared war are no obstruction to peace. The practice of blockade and impressment having ceased by the general pacification of Europe, our government is content to leave the principle as it was. …

We have no further business in hostility, than such as is purely defensive; while that of Great Britain is to humble or subdue us. …

I did think that in a defensive war — a struggle for all that is valuable — that all parties would have united. But it is not so — every measure calculated to replenish the treasury or raise men is opposed as though it were determined to strike the “star spangled banner” and exalt the bloody cross. Look at the votes and proceedings of congress — and mark the late spirit [to secede from the Union] … that existed in Massachusetts, and see with what unity of action every thing has been done [by New England Federalists] to harass and embarrass the government. Our loans have failed; and our soldiers have wanted their pay, because those [New England merchants] who had the greater part of the monied capital covenanted with each other to refuse its aid to the country. … History will shock posterity by detailing the length to which they went to bankrupt the republic.

SOURCES : Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 2, cols. 2219–2221; Niles’ Weekly Register, January 28, 1815.