Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/98

86 had been fought the year before on its soil. The regular army had scarcely 10,000 effective men. Volunteer and militia levies had to be mainly depended upon, and to command these the number of experienced officers, aside from superannuated “Revolutionary veterans,” was extremely small. The naval force consisted of a few old frigates and some smaller vessels. These were all the means at hand, when war was declared, to force Great Britain, through a rapid conquest of Canada, to respect the maritime rights of the United States.

All this looked unpromising enough. But Clay believed in the power of enthusiasm. His voice resounded through the land. His eloquence filled volunteer regiments and sent them off full of fighting spirit and hope of victory. From place to place he went, reassuring the doubters, arousing the sluggards, encouraging the patriots, — in one word, “firing the national heart.” But, after all, his enthusiasm could not beat the enemy. His conquest of Canada turned out to be a much more serious affair than he had anticipated. Active operations began. The first attempt at invasion, made by General Hull on the Western frontier, resulted in the ignominious surrender of that commander, with his whole force, to the British, at Detroit. Other attempts on the Niagara River and on Lake Champlain ended but little less ingloriously. These failures were not only military disasters, but were calculated to bury in ridicule the advocates of the war with their glowing pre-