Source: Henry Clay Endorses War [1811]

What are we to gain by war, has been emphatically asked? In reply, he would ask, what are we not to lose by peace?-commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor! If pecuniary considerations alone are to govern, there is sufficient motive for the war. Our revenue is reduced, by the operation of the belligerent edicts, to about six million of dollars, according to the Secretary of the Treasury's report. The year preceding the embargo, it was sixteen. Take away the Orders in Council it will again mount up to sixteen millions. By continuing, therefore, in peace, if the mongrel state in which we are deserve that denomination, we lose annually, in revenue only, ten millions of dollars....

Not content with seizing upon all our property, which falls within her rapacious grasp, the personal rights of our countrymen-rights which forever ought to be sacred, are trampled upon and violated. The Orders in Council were pretended to have been reluctantly adopted as a measure of retaliation. The French decrees, their alleged basis, are revoked. England resorts to the expedient of denying the fact of the revocation .... We are invited, conjured to drink the potion of British poison actually presented to our lips, that we may avoid the imperial dose prepared by perturbed imaginations. We are called upon to submit to debasement, dishonor, and disgrace-to bow the neck to royal insolence, as a course of preparation for manly resistance to Gallic invasion! ... We were but yesterday contending for the indirect trade-the right to export to Europe the coffee and sugar of the West Indies. To-day we are asserting our claim to the direct trade-the right to export our cotton, tobacco, and other domestic produce to market. Yield this point, and to-morrow intercourse between New Orleans and New York-between the planters on James river and Richmond, will be interdicted. For, sit, the career of encroachment is never arrested by submission. It will advance while there remains a single privilege on which it can operate. Gentlemen say that this Government is unfit for any war, but a war of invasion. What, is it not equivalent to invasion, if the mouths of our harbors and outlets are blocked up, and we are denied egress from our own waters? Or, when the burglar is at our door, shall we bravely sally forth and repel his felonious entrance, or meanly skulk within the cells of the castle? ...

[Y]ou must look for an explanation of [England's] conduct in the jealousies of a rival. She sickens at your prosperity, and beholds in your growth your sails spread on every ocean, and your numerous seamen-the foundations of a Power which, at no very distant day, is to make her tremble for naval superiority....

What! shall it be said that our amor patrice is located at these desks-that we pusillanimously cling to our seats here, rather than boldly vindicate the most inestimable rights of the country? Whilst the heroic Daviess and his gallant associates, exposed to all the perils of treacherous savage warfare, are sacrificing themselves for the good of their country, shall we shrink from our duty?