[1814-1815 A.D.] did the same by the British officers in their power. The British government went so far as to order its commanders, in case any retaliation was inflicted upon the prisoners in American hands, to destroy the towns and their inhabitants upon the coast. It was at this juncture that Massachusetts, as already alluded to, appeared in the lines of nullification. All along there had been very little sympathy, among the opposition, for the humane professions of defending the sailor and the stranger, upon which the administration party were apt to discourse rather than to act. The federalist majority in Massachusetts, caring little for the fate of the Irish prisoners, forbade the use of the state prisons for the British officers now ordered to be confined (February, 1814). The matter was set at rest by the retraction of the British government, who consented to treat the Irishmen as prisoners of war. Proclamation was made pardoning all past offences of the sort, but threatening future ones with the penalties of treason-a threat that was never attempted to be fulfilled (July). So the Americans gained their point, a point for which the early settlers had laboured, and for which the true men of the revolution had struggled the protection of foreigners. Some months after the Treaty of Ghent, a treaty was made with the Indians of the Northwest. Such as had been at war agreed to bury the tomahawk, and to join with such as had been at peace in new relations with the United States (September).

Another treaty had been made by this time. It was with the dey of Algiers, who had gone to war with the United States in the same year that Great Britain did. The United States, however, had paid no attention to the inferior enemy until relieved of the superior. Then was war declared, and a fleet despatched, under Commodore Decatur, by which captures were made, and terms dictated to the Algerine. The treaty not only surrendered all American prisoners, and indemnified all American losses in the war, but renounced the claim of tribute on the part of Algiers (June). Tunis and Tripoli being brought to terms, the United States were no longer tributary to pirates.

There had been strength enough to deal the blow against Algiers. But the nation was in a state of nearly complete exhaustion. This remark is not meant to apply to individual cases of embarrassment and destitution produced by the war; for while many had lost, as many more had gained a competence or a fortune. But the nation, as a whole, was, for the moment, exhausted. Madison had been re-elected president, with Elbridge Gerry as vice-president, in the first year of the war with Great Britain. If he really consented to war as the price of his re-election, he had had his reward. The difficulties of his second term weighed upon him, crushed him. He welcomed peace, as his party welcomed it-in fact, as the whole nation welcomed it-with the same sensations of relief that men would feel in an earthquake, when the earth, yawning at their feet, suddenly closed. To see from what the government and the nation were saved, it is sufficient to read that systems of conscription for the army and of impressment for the navy were amongst the projects pending at the close of a war which had increased the public debt by $120000,000. The war of 1812 settled two great questions within the United States. For the first time in its history the American people in 1815 realised its nationality. The party favourable to England lost credit even in its stronghold. After 1815 the Federalist party steadily declined, until in 1820 it cast not one electoral vote. Since 1815 the United States has held resolutely aloof from foreign complications. The American people ceased to be provincial and viewed affairs thenceforward from a national stand-point. The War of 1812, therefore, has been often and correctly called the Second War of Independence, hh

[1812-1815 A.D.]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT ON THE RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 18121

Neither side succeeded in doing what it intended. Americans declared that Canada must and should be conquered, but the conquering came quite as near being the other way. British writers insisted that the American navy should be swept from the seas; and during the sweeping process it increased fourfold.

When the United States declared war, Great Britain was straining every nerve and muscle in a death-struggle with the most formidable military despotism of modern times, and was obliged to intrust the defence of her Canadian colonies to a mere handful of regulars, aided by the local fencibles. But congress had provided even fewer trained soldiers, and relied on militia. The latter chiefly exercised their fighting abilities upon one another in duelling, and, as a rule, were afflicted with conscientious scruples whenever it was necessary to cross the frontier and attack the enemy. Accordingly, the campaign opened with the bloodless surrender of an American general to a much inferior British force, and the war continued much as it had begun; we suffered disgrace after disgrace, while the losses we inflicted, in turn, on Great Britain were so slight as hardly to attract her attention. At last, having crushed her greater foe, she turned to crush the lesser, and, in her turn, suffered ignominious defeat. By this time events had gradually developed a small number of soldiers on our northern frontier, who, commanded by Scott and Brown, were able to contend on equal terms with the veteran troops to whom they were opposed, though these formed part of what was then undoubtedly the most formidable fighting infantry any European nation possessed. The battles at this period of the struggle were remarkable for the skill and stubborn courage with which they were waged, as well as for the heavy loss involved; but the number of combatants was so small that in Europe they would have been regarded as mere outpost skirmishes, and they wholly failed to attract any attention abroad in that period of colossal armies.

In summing up the results of the struggle on the ocean it is to be noticed that very little was attempted, and nothing done, by the American navy that could materially affect the result of the war. Commodore Rodgers' expedition after the Jamaica Plate fleet failed; both the efforts to get a small squadron into the East Indian waters also miscarried; and otherwise the whole history of the struggle on the ocean is, as regards the Americans, only the record of individual cruises and fights. The material results were not very great, at least in their effect on Great Britain, whose enormous navy did not feel in the slightest degree the loss of a few frigates and sloops. But morally the result was of inestimable benefit to the United States. The victories kept up the spirits of the people, cast down by the defeats on land; practically decided in favour of the Americans the chief question in dispute Great Britain's right of search and impressment-and gave the navy and thereby the country a world-wide reputation. I doubt if ever before a nation gained so much honour by a few single-ship duels; for there can be no question which side came out of the war with the greatest credit. The damage inflicted by each on the other was not very equal in amount, but the balance was certainly in favour of the United States, as can be seen

['Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1882, by G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

[1812-1815 A.D.]

by the following tables, for the details of which reference can be made to the various years:

In addition we lost four revenue-cutters, mounting twenty-four guns, and, in the aggregate, of three hundred and eighty-seven tons, and also twentyfive gunboats, with seventy-one guns, and, in the aggregate, of nearly two thousand tons. This would swell our loss to twelve thousand one hundred and five tons and five hundred and twenty-six guns; but the loss of the revenue-cutters and gunboats can fairly be considered to be counterbalanced by the capture or destruction of the various British royal packets (all armed with from two to ten guns), tenders, barges, etc., which would be in the aggregate of at least as great tonnage and gun force, and with more numerous crews. But the comparative material loss gives no idea of the comparative honour gained. The British navy, numbering at the outset a thousand cruisers,

1 This differs greatly from the figures given by James in his Naval Occurrences. He makes the American loss 14,844 tons and 660 guns. His list includes, for example, the "Growler and the Hamilton, upset in carrying sail to avoid Sir James' fleet"; it would be quite as reasonable to put down the loss of the Royal George to the credit of the French. Then he mentions the Julia and the Growler, which were recaptured; the Asp, which was also recaptured; the "New York, 46, destroyed at Washington," which was not destroyed or harmed in any way, and which, moreover, was a condemned hulk; the " Boston, 42 [in reality 32], destroyed at Washington," which had been a condemned hulk for ten years, and had no guns or anything else in her, and was as much a loss to our navy as the fishing up and burning of an old wreck would have been; and eight gunboats whose destruction was either mythical, or else which were not national vessels. By deducting all these we reduce James' total by 120 guns and 2,600 tons; and a few alterations (such as excluding the swivels in the President's tops, which he counts, etc.) brings his number down to that given above-and also affords a good idea of the value to be attached to his figures and tables. The British loss he gives at but 530 guns and 10,273 tons. He omits the 24-gun ship burned by Chauncey at York, although including the frigate and corvette burned by Ross at Washington; if the former is excluded the two latter should be, which would make the balance still more in favour of the Americans. He omits the guns of the Gloucester, because they had been taken out of her and placed in battery on the shore, but he includes those of the Adams, which had been served in precisely the same way. He omits all reference to the British 14-gun schooner burned on Ontario, and to all 3- and 4-gun sloops and schooners captured there, although including the corresponding American vessels. The reason that he so much underestimates the tonnage, especially on the lakes, I have elsewhere discussed. His tables of the relative loss in men are even more erroneous, exaggerating that of the Americans and greatly underestimating that of the British; but I have not tabulated this, on account of the impossibility of getting fair estimates of the killed and wounded in the cutting-out expeditions and the difficulty of enumerating the prisoners taken in descents, etc. Roughly, about 2,700 Americans and 3,800 British were captured; the comparative loss in killed and wounded stood much more in our favour. I have excluded from the British loss the brigs Detroit and Caledonia and schooner Nancy (aggregating ten guns and about 500 tons) destroyed on the upper lakes, because I hardly know whether they could be considered national vessels; the schooner Highflyer, of eight guns, forty men, and 209 tons, taken by Rodgers, because she seems to have been merely a tender; and the Dominica, 15, of seventy-seven men and 270 tons, because her captor, the privateer Decatur, though nominally an American, was really a French vessel. Of course both tables are only approximately exact; but at any rate the balance of damage and loss was over four to three in our favour.

[1812-1815 A.D.] had accomplished less than the American, which numbered but a dozen. Moreover, most of the loss suffered by the former was in single fight, while this had been but twice the case with the Americans, who had generally been overwhelmed by numbers. Of the twelve single-ship actions, two (those of the Argus and the Chesapeake) undoubtedly redounded most to the credit of the British, in two (that of the Wasp with the Reindeer, and that of the Enterprise with the Boxer) the honours were nearly even, and in the other eight the superiority of the Americans was very manifest.

"

In the American navy, unlike the British, there was no impressment; the sailor was a volunteer, and he shipped in whatever craft his fancy selected. Throughout the war there were no picked crews" on the American side, excepting on the last two cruises of the Constitution, James' statement to the contrary being in every case utterly without foundation. One of the standard statements made by the British historians about the war is that our ships were mainly or largely manned by British sailors. This, if true, would not interfere with the lessons which it teaches; and, besides that, it is not true.bb

Ar last, after a period of five-and-twenty years, the people of the United States were free to attend to their own concerns in their own way, unmolested by foreign nations. From 1793 to 1815 the questions which occupied the public mind were neutral rights, orders in council, French decrees, impressment, embargoes, treaties, non-intercourse acts, admiralty decisions, blockades, the conduct of England, the conduct of France, the insolence of the French Directory, the triumphs, the ambition, and the treachery of Napoleon. Henceforth for many years to come, the questions of the day were to be the state of the currency, the national bank, manufactures, the tariff, internal improvements, interstate commerce, the public lands, the astonishing growth of the West, the rights of the states, extension of slavery, and the true place of the supreme court in the system of government. On the day, therefore, when Madison issued his proclamation announcing peace, a new era in the national history was opened.-JOHN BACH MCMASTER.

THE idea that the United States emerged from the contest with Great Britain with its citizens self-satisfied, and strangers applauding, is certainly a grateful one. But it is difficult to find the authority upon which it rests. To begin with foreign powers, and with the one most likely to be impressed with American grandeur-Great Britain-she appears absorbed in other interests of much larger importance in her eyes. A commercial convention was framed in the summer following the peace; but it left many matters undetermined, many unsatisfactorily determined. As for the negotiations ordered by the Treaty of Ghent, they were begun upon, yet so idly that conclusions were not reached for years and years. Other nations showed even less inclination to come to terms. France, Spain, Naples, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden were all in arrears on the score of indemnities for spolia