Mr. Clay had the pleasure of seeing the bill, as advocated by him, pass the house, on the fourteenth of January, 1813, by a vote of seventy-seven to forty-two. On the sixteenth (having passed the senate,) it received the signature of the president; and thus was taken another and very important step in carrying out that system of manly and bold resistance devised and introduced by him, and which was destined to redress all our grievances and restore our violated rights.
On the eighteenth of February, congress proceeded to ascertain the result of an election for president and vice president, which was as follows. For president, James Madison, one hundred and twenty-eight, De Witt Clinton, eighty-nine. For vice president, Elbridge Gerry, one hundred and thirty-one, Jared Ingersoll, eighty-six. Thus the re-election of Mr. Madison furnished undoubted evidence that the people, from whom there is no appeal, sustained the measures of war.
On the twenty-fourth of May, Mr. Clay was elected speaker to the house again, over Mr. Pitkin, by a majority of thirty-five, and whenever an opportunity was afforded him, he mingled in the discussions that were almost constantly agitating the house, in reference to prosecuting the war. At the commencement of this, the first session of the thirteenth congress, he called the attention of the house to that portion of the president’s message which describes the manner in which the British had been waging war: which characterized it as ‘adding to the savage fury of it on one frontier, a system of plunder and conflagration on the other, equally forbidden by respect for national character, and by the established rules of civilized warfare.’ In a few pertinent remarks, he adverted to this description embodied by the message, censuring somewhat severely the nation guilty of such enormities, and said, ‘if they should be found to be as public report had stated them, they called for the indignation of all christendom, and ought to be embodied in an authentic document which might perpetuate them on the page of history.’ An investigation instituted on a motion of Mr. Clay, in reference to these, developed the astounding fact that the most barbaric outrages were committed repeatedly, on American prisoners, by the savage allies of the British, with their approval. The indignation of the house was aroused to a high pitch, on learning the truth of the report, which took immediate measures for causing to be laid before it every instance of such flagrant violation of the rules of warfare recognized by all civilized nations.