with Great Britain and would injure American business. Campaign of 1808 The Embargo Act and the ensuing 1808 campaign drew Cabot and many other Federalists back into politics. Cabot published and distributed a letter on behalf of Timothy Pickering, now representing Massachusetts in the Senate and the most prominent Federalist in public life. This pamphlet was widely read and revitalized support for the Federalists. Cabot, however, feared that Pickering's approach could revitalize accusations the Federalists were a "British faction" and wrote to him urging caution. When Pickering persisted, Cabot suppressed several anti-Jeffersonian diatribes from the Senator. Nonetheless, Cabot could not remain withdrawn from public life. Though Federalists did not win a resounding victory in Massachusetts, the party won sufficient seats in the General Court to elect Cabot to a one-year term on the Governor's Council. In the concurrent presidential election, Cabot advised against a union with the Clintonian faction of the Republican Party and any strategy that might suggest that Federalists supported dissolution of the Union or regional separatism, including Pickering's proposal to hire a French engineer to fortify the port of Boston, traditionally a duty of the national government. Though the Federalists were unsuccessful in electing a President, the party did succeed in forcing repeal of the Embargo Act, after which Cabot withdrew from public life again. He withdrew further after the death of his eldest son, Charles, in 1811. War of 1812 Cabot opposed the War of 1812 from the outset as unjust and wicked and publicly determined to refrain from aiding its prosecution in any way. However, he refrained from political commentary until 1814. Hartford Convention Cabot was elected as a delegate to the Hartford Convention, organized in 1814 by Federalist politicians of New England who were unhappy with the conduct of the War of 1812, in particular the conscription of state militias into national service. On his journey to Hartford, Cabot was joined by Dr. James Jackson. Cabot reportedly told Jackson he was going to Hartford to "keep you young hot-heads from getting into mischief." Cabot chaired the secretive meeting and later certified the official proceedings and platform of the convention, which called for constitutional reforms but stopped short of calling for secession. In his role, Cabot remained reticent regarding his own views, drawing the ire of more radically anti-war Federalists like Pickering and John Lowell Jr. After the war ended, the convention was widely viewed