Public houses in Washington were
not numerous then, yet there were a few good hotels, and he put up at
the old Continental House. Terrence, with all his reckless impetuosity,
proceeded carefully to his point. Where boldness won success, he was
bold; where caution and prudence were essential to win, he was cautious
and prudent.
He noticed a door opening into a room from the main corridor, over which
was tacked a strip of white canvas bearing in large black letters
the words:
"HEADQUARTERS OF THE PEACE PARTY."
Men were coming and going from this apartment with grave and serious
faces and corrugated brows, as if they had the weight of all the world
on their shoulders. Terrence watched the comers and goers awhile and
then halted a colored chambermaid, and, in an awe-inspiring whisper,
asked who was sick in the room "ferninst." He was told no one. He
thought some one must be dangerously ill, people went in and out so
softly and talked in such low tones; but she assured him it was the room
where the "peace party" met to discuss means to prevent President
Madison and congress from declaring or prosecuting war against Great
Britain. That those men were congressmen or merchants from Boston and
other New England towns, who opposed war.
Terrence was opposed to peace, and he knew no better way to declare war
than to begin it on the peace party.
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