to their wharves, was a group of American
warships, full of life and eager preparation.

On Sunday the twenty-first of June the
strongest naval force which the country could
muster, a squadron consisting of four ships, the
President, the Congress, the Hornet, and the
Argus, heaved anchor, and with the United
States flag flying at the mast-head of every
vessel, put out to sea in search of British cruis-
ers. War had begun.

War! For the first time in her life Dolly
Madison was now to learn the meaning of the
word. As a little child she had, it is true,
lived in an invaded country, but the raiders
had passed by at a distance, and the echoes of
the guns at Williamsburg and Yorktown were
faint and far from the peaceful Hanover
County plantation, and youth recks little of
everything that passes beyond the grasp of its
touch and sight and hearing. In the twenty-
nine years of peace which had followed the
close of the Revolution, she like the rest of the
world had had time to forget, and the peace
and prosperity of the nation had come to be
taken for granted and as a matter of course.
Mighty changes these twenty-nine years had
wrought. The steamboat had appeared, and
the press had grown into an enormous power.
The population of the country had nearly

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