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HAD there been an Atlantic cable, or even a transatlantic
steamer, with land telegraphs, in those days, the slaughter before New
Orleans might have been prevented; for a treaty of peace had
been signed at Ghent on the 24th of December 1814. It made the usual
stipulations for the exchange of prisoners and the return of property,
guaranteed peace to the Indians, and provided for a settlement by commissioners
of questions as to boundary and the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, and it
provided for little else. The negotiations had been going on for five
months, and more than once were in danger of being broken off on account of
the insolent and supercilious bearing of the English Commissioners. So
says Adams in his diary.
At the outset, the British Commissioners had insisted that
the Indians should have a territory set off to them, as neutral ground
between the British and the American possessions, and that the United States
should have no armament on the great lakes and no fortifications on their
shores, while Canada was not to be restricted. On the other hand, the
American Commissioners had insisted on formal abrogation of the right of
search and impressment. But all these points were ultimately given up.
As early as June the American Commissioners had been
instructed by the President that they might omit any stipulation on the
subject of impressment, if it was found indispensably necessary to do so in
order to terminate the war; and acting under this instruction they yielded to
the argument that, as Europe was now at peace, there was no longer any
occasion for exercising the right, and therefore no practical necessity for mentioning
it.
The treaty was severely criticized and mercilessly
ridiculed as a meaningless document. It might have been answered that
the Federalists at least had no right to complain, since they had clamored
only for peace, and the treaty brought peace. Better than this, it
might have been answered that when a point has been practically settled by
war, it is of little consequence whether it is conceded on paper; since every
nation is likely to heed a lesson taught by force of arms, and equally likely,
when interest dictates, to abrogate a treaty; and, whatever might be said of
the campaigns on land, it could not be denied that American mariners had
abundantly vindicated their right to an unmolested navigation of the high
seas a right which British cruisers have never since interfered with.
There had been no exchange of prisoners during the war,
though many had been paroled, and there were bitter complaints of the
treatment received by Americans in British prisons. This was especially
true of those confined at Dartmoor, the most un-healthful spot in the dreary
highlands of Devonshire. These men were not only not released, but were
not even informed that peace had been concluded, till three months after the
treaty was signed. There seemed to be a special spite against them
because they were mostly American sailors, who had audaciously and
successfully disputed England's sovereignty of the seas.
If it be a matter of pride, as an English poetess appears
to think, for a nation to strew its dead over the face of the globe [Wave may
not foam, nor wild wind sweep, Where rest not England's deadMrs. Hemans],
then Great Britain certainly won fresh laurels in this war; for her soldiers
who fell in it found graves six thousand miles apart: in the depths of Lake
Erie, about the great falls of Niagara, and along the Thames and St.
Lawrence; in the Atlantic, both near the American coast and almost within
sight of their own shores; in Long Island Sound, in the Chesapeake, and
beyond the western edge of civilization; before the defenses of Baltimore and
New Orleans, and in the waters of the South Pacific.
And her expeditions had been especially fatal to their
commanders: Gen. Brock had fallen at Queenstown, Gen. Tecumseh at the Thames,
Ross and Sir Peter Parker before Baltimore, Pakenham and Gibbs at New
Orleans, with many of lower rank but hardly less responsibility; while seven
commanders of her men-of-war Lambert, Downie, Dickenson, Manners, Peake,
Barrette, and Blythe had all died on their bloody decks. But by her
sacrifice of life and property she had gained absolutely nothing. She
had not acquired an inch of territory, or established any principle of
international law, or purchased for herself any new privilege, or secured any
old one. The war had cost the United States a hundred million dollars
in money, and thirty thousand lives; and a large portion of both the money
and the lives had been squandered, when with ordinary skill and care they
might have been saved. But she had something to show for it. If
she had not fully relieved her frontier of the atrocities of the Indians, she
had at least cut off their supplies from British sources, and possessed
herself of all the western posts; she had put an end to the systematic
violation of her rights on the ocean, and in so doing had demonstrated the
superiority of American seamanship; she had completely established her
national independence.
It is to be hoped that no American youth who reads this
little history will cherish any feeling of resentment or hatred toward the
people whose fathers were so grievously unjust to ours. The day for
that if ever there was a day for it has gone completely by. England
has evidently passed the zenith of her power and glory; America is still
rising toward hers, and how great she shall ultimately become, will be
measured mainly by the breadth and generosity of the American mind. In
the past sixty years we have lived down the most celebrated sneer in history.
Five years after this war, the Rev. Sydney Smith wrote in
the Edinburgh Review: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an
American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an
American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American
physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists
discovered, or what old ones have they analyzed? What new
constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans?
What have they done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses,
or eats from American plates, or wears American coats or gowns, or sleeps in
American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical
governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow citizens
may buy and sell and torture?"
If Mr. Smith were now living, he might be answered if it
were worth while to answer him at all that the most widely circulated of
all novels was written by an American woman; that the poet most read in
England was an American; that our two standard dictionaries of the English
language are both American; that several American magazines count their
subscribers in Great Britain by tens of thousands; that the world owes its
use of anesthetics to an American physician; that American sculptors,
painters, and actors hold their own with those of other nations; that America
has the largest telescopes, and the most successful astronomers; that
American reapers cut the world's harvests, and American sewing machines make
its garments; that the telegraph and the telephone are American inventions;
that the first steamboat was built in America, and it was an American
steamship that first crossed the Atlantic, while our country contains more
miles of railway than all Europe; that those who eat from American plates,
eat the largest and best dinners in the world; and as for American glasses,
altogether too many people drink out of them. Unless we mercifully left
his final question unanswered, we should be obliged to say that the United
States had gotten rid of slavery, while to-day five million British subjects,
all within two days' journey of the throne, tell us they find themselves
virtually slaves.
Yet with all our material and intellectual progress, we
have hardly a right to be proud. For we have enjoyed peculiar
advantages. The Mayflower did not land her pilgrims on a narrow island,
but on the edge of a great continent. Of that continent we have the
most productive zone, stretching from ocean to ocean, and a thousand miles in
breadth; while within that zone our Government has given us, for the support
of educational institutions, as much land as the entire area of Great Britain
and Ireland. At the same time, we have not been loaded down with a
standing army, an established church, a vast landed aristocracy, and all the
rubbish of royalty. In America labor receives its highest wages, and
pauperism finds its least excuse. It will be no special credit to us if
we become in the next half-century the most powerful and prosperous and
generous of nations; but it will be a great shame to us if we do not.
As we read the history of bur country's early struggles, it
may help us to avoid any unworthy feeling of resentment if we bear in mind
the fact that there is a wide and peculiar discrepancy of character between
the English people and the English Government. That people, perhaps at
present the most enlightened on earth, are justly noted for their innate love
of fair play, for their continual struggles toward liberty, and their
development of the great principles of jurisprudence; but that Government, in
its dealings with other powers, has been for centuries arbitrary, selfish,
barbarous, and inconsistent to the last degree. Priding itself upon
legitimacy, it has befriended a bloody usurpation in France, because it hated
the alternative of French republicanism. It has opened the ports of
China with its cannon, for the purpose of selling there a narcotic drug of
which it holds the monopoly.
It boasted its abolition of the slave trade; yet when our
country was at war over the slavery question, its sympathies were all with
the slaveholders. Seventy years ago, as we have seen, its cruisers
cared nothing for the neutrality of any harbor in which a hostile ship of
fewer guns was riding at anchor; but twenty years ago it could not offer its
neutral hospitalities too lavishly to privateers that had not a port of their
own to hail from or sail to, and were burning all their prizes at sea without
adjudication. It witnessed the dismemberment of Denmark with scarcely a
protest, but has sacrificed thousands of English lives to maintain the Turk
in Europe.
It has stood for years at the head of a great conspiracy to
keep Russia shut up in the center of a continent long after her industrial
growth and commercial importance have entitled her to a broad and
unobstructed outlet to the highway of nations. It has eaten India into
famine, and is now laying its kleptic fingers on the great island of Borneo,
and apparently making ready to consume the continent of Africa.
We must blush for these things while we execrate them; for
we ourselves are Englishmen. That famous little island, with its green
lanes and waving woodlands, its busy towns and historical hamlets, was the
home of our ancestors, and must ever have for us the highest romantic
interest of any spot on earth; and we cannot too warmly sympathize with those
who are still bearing burdens of feudal days, when the bravery of feudal
leadership has long since passed away. Let us never forget how near of
kin we are to the English people; but God forbid that we should inherit the
vices of the English Government, or copy its crimes!
If the story of a war like that we have been reading of
teaches anything, it teaches the broad wisdom of dealing justly, and the
ultimate folly of all chicanery, violence, and wrong.
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