At this eventful moment a new political party, consisting almost wholly of Southern men, sprung into being.  What added to its importance was, that, though ridiculously small in respect of the numbers who composed it, the members possessed great parliamentary eloquence and tact, and had previously been regarded as among the firmest friends of the administration.  Its numbers were indeed so small both in Congress and out of it, as to exercise no weight in the call of the ayes and noes, or at the polls; but its members mingled in every debate, wrote plausible essays in the papers, and used all justifiable means as well as some that were questionable, in attaining their ends.  Of this party, Mr. Tazewell, though never a member, and only a casual coadjutor, was considered to belong; but there was no evidence to show that he approved the vile scheme of its leaders of embroiling the country in a war with Spain.  On the contrary, he held that the true remedy of existing grievances in the first instance was an immediate declaration of war against both belligerents, which, now that the curtain is lifted, we see was the true remedy of the hour; but that, if from prudence a declaration of war was withheld, it was unwise, by a total cessation of our most gainful commerce, to inflict upon our own people all the injuries which war would produce without any of the advantages that might accrue from a successful prosecution of hostilities; that the commercial regulations of England and France, though bearing disastrously on us, were chiefly designed to injure each other during actual war; and that, being war measures, they would determine on a restoration of peace, when we could obtain from the respective powers full redress for all our grievances.

He accordingly opposed the election of Mr. Madison to the presidency, whom he regarded as the impersonation of the restrictive policy which he had defended in his diplomatic writings, and from the press; and which was deemed the pledge of its continuance; and, in the spring of 1809, voted for the federal candidate for Congress, in opposition to Newton, who, though coming from a sea-port, had gallantly upheld the commercial policy of Jefferson, and who was returned by a decisive majority.

That epoch was the most mortifying in the annals of our country; and posterity must decide whether any action of ours could have averted the difficulty, and on whose shoulders the responsibility shall rest.  When I reflect upon the incidents of that day; when I recount the millions of American capital sacrificed by the remorseless rapacity of England and France; when I call up from their graves the hundreds and thousands of American sailors, the sons of the men who had fought at Bunker Hill, who had led the forlorn hope at Stony Point, who had bled on the sweltering field of Eutaw, and who had stormed the outworks at York; when I reflect that such men were forcibly taken from their ships, and were compelled to fight the battles of England,