|At the beginning of the third year of the war the prospects of the Americans were more discouraging than at any previous period. The European wars had come to an end for the time, Napoleon having been overthrown at Leipsic, and Great Britain, with an immense navy and an abundance of veteran troops, was at liberty to turn her entire attention upon the enemy across the Atlantic. Indeed, her fleet on our coast had been gradually increasing for several months, and Admirals Warren and Cockburn had shown a determination not to confine their operations to combats of vessel with vessel, but wherever practicable to send a force ashore to harass the people, burn their homes, and carry off their movable property. Harrison's victory was almost the only achievement of the American land forces worth mentioning. The little navy was as gallant as ever, and had suffered no defeat in { 224}anything like an equal fight, except in the case of the _Chesapeake_; but now it seemed likely to be overwhelmed by a power that could send against it a thousand war-ships. Two powerful ones had already been sent for the special purpose of capturing one of our cruisers, the _Essex_, with orders to follow her wherever she went, and take her at all hazards. The operations of the privateers had struck the English nation in its most tender spot, the pocket, and roused it to a furious determination for vengeance; while the London journals were boldly talking of schemes for using the opportunity to cut off various slices of our territory.
Though the Federal party had declined in popular strength, its leaders in Congress opposed the war as bitterly as ever; but after considerable debate an act was passed to increase the regular army to sixty thousand men, enlisted for five years. A bounty of a hundred and twenty-four dollars was voted for recruits, and eight dollars to each man who brought in one. Seven hundred men were added to the Marine Corps, half a million dollars appropriated for a floating battery, and a hundred dollars offered for every prisoner brought home by a privateer. There was a surplus of a million dollars in the treasury, and five millions were yet to be paid in from loans, while the revenue for the ensuing year was estimated { 225}at ten millions. The expenditures were estimated at forty-five millions, and Congress authorized a new loan of twenty-five millions, and a reissue of ten millions in treasury notes.