1812-1814.]

Peace of Ghent.

219

for which they had gone to war; and the British had now no other enemy, and were incensed at the temerity of the little nation which had attempted to invade Canada and had so humiliated England at sea. Gradually, the com missioners began to find common ground. Impressment. Gallatin reported to the home government that in his judgment no article could be secured renouncing the right to impress British subjects wherever found. With a heavy heart, Madison consented that that point should be omitted from the treaty.

The war unpopular in England.

During 1814 great pressure was put upon the British government to make peace, on account of the loss inflicted by American privateers. The war was costing England about ten million pounds sterling a year, and no definite result had been gained except the capture of a part of Maine and of the American post of Astoria in Oregon. The Americans were unable to make headway in Canada; the English were equally unable to penetrate into the United States. Wellington was consulted, and reported that in his judgment the British could hope for no success without naval superiority on the lakes. The brave resistance of the Americans at Fort Erie and Plattsburg had won the respect of the great military commander. The ministry, therefore, resolved upon peace.

Effect of American defence.

The first question to settle was that of territory. The British consented to restore the territory as it had been before the war; some attempt was made to Territory, create a belt of frontier neutral territory for the Indians who had been allies of the British, but that point was also abandoned. Next came the question of the fisheries: the British held that the American rights had been lost by the war; Clay insisted that the British right of navigation of

Fisheries.

the Mississippi had also been forfeited, and that the fisheries might therefore be sacrificed as a "matter of trifling moment." Adams stood out for the fisheries, and the result was that neither question was mentioned in the treaty. In 1818 a special convention was negotiated, defining the fishery rights of the United States. Upon these general lines agreement was at last reached, and the treaty was signed Dec. 24, 1814, several weeks before the battle of New Orleans.

The treaty signed.

the war.

117. Political Effects of the War (1815).

After nearly three years of war, the expenditure of one hundred millions of dollars, the loss of about thirty No gain from thousand lives, the destruction of property, and ruinous losses of American vessels, the country stood where it had stood in 1812, its boundary unchanged, its international rights still undefined, the people still divided. Yet peace brought a kind of national exaltation. The naval victories had been won by officers

National pride.

and men from all parts of the Union, and belonged to the nation. The last struggle on land, the battle of New Orleans, was an American victory, and obliterated the memory of many defeats. President Madison, in his annual message of 1815, congratulated the country that the treaty "terminated with peculiar felicity a campaign signalized by the most brilliant successes."

One noteworthy effect of the war had been the development of a body of excellent young soldiers. Winfield Training of Scott distinguished himself in the Niagara soldiers. campaigns, and rose eventually to be commander-in-chief of the American army. William Henry Harrison's military reputation was based chiefly on the Indian battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, but it made him

1815.]

Political Effects of the War.

221

President in 1840. Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans brought him before the people, and caused his choice as President in 1828. The national pride was elated by the successes of American engineers, American naval architects, American commodores, and volunteer officers like Jacob Brown, who had finally come to the front.

Extrication

The end of the war marks also the withdrawal of the United States from the complications of European politics. From 1775 to 1815 the country had been from European compelled, against its will, to take sides, to ask politics. favors, and to suffer rebuffs abroad. During the long interval of European peace, from 1815 to 1853, the United States grew up without knowing this influence. Furthermore, the field was now clear for a new organization of American industries. The profits of the shipping trade had not been due so much to American enterprise as to the greater safety of foreign cargoes in neutral bottoms. When this advantage was swept away, American shipping languished, and its place was taken by manufacturing.

The most marked result of the war was the absorption of the Federalist Party, which at once began, and in five Decay of or six years was complete. In the election of the Feder- 1812 eighty-nine votes had been cast for the alist party. Federalist candidate (§ 109); in 1816 there were but thirty-four (§ 123); in 1820 there was not one. This did not mean that Federalist principles had decayed or been overborne; the real reason for the extinction of that party was that it lived in the ranks of the Republican party. When Jefferson in 1801 said, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," he expressed what had come to be true in 1815. The great principles for which the Federalists had striven were the right of the federal government to exercise adequate powers, and its

Persistence

duty to maintain the national dignity: those principles had been adopted by the Republicans. John Randolph was almost the only leader who continued to of Federalist stand by the Republican doctrine enunciated principles. by Jefferson when he became President. Jefferson himself had not scrupled to annex Louisiana, to lay the embargo, and to enforce it with a severity such as Hamilton would hardly have ventured on. Madison had twice received and used the power to discriminate between the commerce of England and of France; and during the war the nation had reimposed federal taxes and adopted Federalist principles of coercion. James Monroe, Secretary of State at the end of Madison's administration, and candidate for the Presidency in 1816, was in his political beliefs not to be distinguished from moderGain in na- ate Federalists like James A. Bayard in 1800. tional spirit. The Union arose from the disasters of the War of 1812 stronger than ever before, because the people had a larger national tradition and greater experience of national government, and because they had accepted the conception of government which Washington and Hamilton had sought to create.

1815.]

Reorganization.

223

CHAPTER XI.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REORGANIZATION

Bibliographies.

(1815-1824).

118. References.

W. E. Foster's References to Presidential Administrations, pp. 15-19; Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vii. 344, 345, 437-439; J. F. Jameson's Bibliography of Monroe (Ap pendix to Gilman's Monroe).

Historical Maps. - Nos. 1 and 5, this volume, and No. 1, Wilson's Division and Reunion (Epoch Maps, Nos. 7, 8, and 10); Labberton's Atlas, lxvii.; MacCoun's Historical Geography; Scribner's Statistical Atlas, Plate 14.

General Accounts.. Von Holst's Constitutional History, i. 273408 Hildreth's History of the United States, vi. 575-713 (to 1821); Schouler's History of the United States, ii. 444-463; iii. 1-335; Bryant and Gay's Popular History of the United States, iv. 244-281; Tucker's History of the United States, iii. 146-408; Morse's John Quincy Adams, pp. 102-164; Ormsby's History of the Whig Party, pp. 129-172,

Special Histories.-C. Schurz's Henry Clay, i. 137-202; N. Gilman's Monroe, pp. 125-174; F. W. Taussig's Tariff History of the United States; J. L. Bishop's History of American Manufactures, ii. 146-298; G. F. Tucker's Monroe Doctrine.

Contemporary Accounts.-J. Q. Adams's Memoirs, vols. iv.vi.; Niles's Register; T. H. Benton's Thirty Years' View, i. 1-44; N. Sargent's Public Men and Events, i. 17-56; R. Rush's Residence at the Court of London; J. Flint's Recollections of the last Ten Years (1826); R. Walsh's Appeal from the Judgment of Great Britain (1819); D. Warden's Statistical, Political, and Historical Account of the United States (1819); S. G. Goodrich's Recollections, ii. 393-436; The National Intelligencer.

119. Conditions of National Growth (1815).

THE population of the United States at the end of the war was about eight million five hundred thousand, and