member of Congress, Josiah Quincy, roundly threatened that New England would secede if Louisiana were made a state, thus increasing the power of the South. As a protest against the war, part of the Republicans under De Witt Clinton made common cause with the Federalist opposition in the election of 1812, and the coalition got 89 electoral votes to 128 for Madison. This personal and party opposition was carried into official form. When the President of the United States called upon all the states for a certain number of militia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont refused to send them. There was some reason for protest and indignation. Congress neglected to provide either men or money enough to keep the war going. No proper tax laws were passed till 1813, when the hated Federalist excise and direct taxes were revived. The government borrowed $98,000,000 during the war, but the bonds had to be sold at a depreciation of from 5 per cent to 30 per cent; large amounts of "treasury notes" promises to pay in the future had to be issued for supplies; and legal tender paper money was openly suggested.

The critical time came when New England began to feel the blockade and the war taxes. In December, 1814, a convention of official delegates from several New England states met at Hartford. We know little of the secret debates of the convention, but its official report proposed that Congress should give up its power to prohibit foreign commerce, and should leave the proceeds of federal taxes to the states in which they were paid. Such demands could not be granted without giving up the federal Constitution; and they amounted to saying that unless the war were speedily stopped, the New England states would withdraw from the Union.

173. FAVORABLE PEACE (1814)

One reason for the delusion that the War of 1812 was highly successful, was the favorable peace which was made at Ghent (December 24, 1814), before the report of the Hartford Conven

tion, and before the battle of New Orleans. Negotiations began within a few months after the war broke out, and the commissioners sent to Ghent by the British government were unexpectedly willing to stop the war. The European struggle now seemed to be over, and when the great Duke of Wellington was consulted about the American war, he expressed the opinion that it would take a large force to drive the American militia out of their trenches. At sea, the devastations of the American privateers caused the British shipmasters to clamor for relief. Hence, the British commissioners at last gave way on one point after another:

(1) They agreed to give up all their territorial conquests, and to go back to the boundaries of 1812.

(2) They again promised not to take away slaves or other private property (§ 108) when they evacuated those territories.

(3) Since the war had put an end to all outstanding treaties, for a time the fisheries and conditions of commerce were left at loose ends, but after a few months they were both settled by separate treaties favorable to the United States.

The only subject on which satisfaction could not be had was impressments the main cause of the war; but as soon as the European war was over, impressments ceased of themselves and, as a matter of fact, never began again.

174. REVIEW

From 1809 on, Congress tried various remedies short of war, but could not bring Great Britain or France to terms, by any form of restriction of commerce. An attack in the frontier country of Indiana by the Indians, erroneously supposed to be urged on by the British, aroused public sentiment. In 1812 war was declared by the United States against Great Britain. At the last moment the British withdrew a part of the offensive Orders in Council; but nothing could be done to stop impressments, which was the chief remaining grievance when war broke

out.

From one point of view the war was a great humiliation to the United States. All the efforts to invade Canada from Detroit, Niagara, and the St. Lawrence River were distressing failures, notwithstanding the great superiority of numbers of the United States troops. The only creditable operations on the northern frontier were the battles of Lake Erie, the Thames, Lundys Lane, and Plattsburg; and the British finally succeeded in occupying a great part of Maine, and Astoria on the Pacific, and captured and burned Washington.

On the other side, the little navy of the United States won a great success by beating the English in repeated duels and by capturing hundreds of British merchantmen. The Americans won victories on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain. After peace was made came the battle of New Orleans, which was a notable victory for the Americans.

The war was very unpopular in the middle states and especially in New England. Several states refused to allow their militia to take part. In 1814, at the Hartford Convention, suggestions were made that New England ought to secede. The favorable Peace of Ghent (1814) not only put an end to the war, but silenced the sectional jealousies; and the war left a feeling of national pride.

References Bearing on the Text and Topics

Geography and Maps. See maps, pp. 242, 254. — Babcock, Rise of Am. Nationality, 6, 88, 136, 276. Fish, Am. Nationality, 114. Johnson, Union and Democracy, 208. — Lucas, Canadian War. Shepherd, Hist. Atlas, 200.

Secondary. Adams, U.S., V-VIII, IX. 1–103. Babcock, Rise of Am. Nationality, chs. i-x. Bassett, Andrew Jackson, I. chs. vi-xiii. Brady, Stephen Decatur, 62-137. - Brown, Andrew Jackson, 25-248. Clark, U. S. Navy, chs. vi-xii. — Eggleston and Seeley, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. - Fish, Am. Diplomacy, chs. xiv, xv; Am. Nationality, ch. viii. Hollis, Frigate Constitution. Hunt, James Madison, chs. xxx-xxxiv. — Johnson, Union and Democracy, chs. xi, xii. Lucas, Canadian War of 1812. McMaster, U.S., III. 339-458, 528-560, IV. 1-279. Maclay, U.S. Navy, I. 305-658,

II. 3-22.

Mahan, Sea Power in Rel. to War of 1812, I. 215-423, II.

- Morison, H. G. Otis, II. chs. xix-xxviii. Roosevelt, Naval War of 1812. Schouler, U.S., II. 279-447. Smith, Wars, 203-250.

Updyke, Dipl. of the War of 1812.

Sources. Ames, State Docs. on Fed. Rels., 45-88. - Bogart and Thompson, Readings, 217, 490. Caldwell and Persinger, Source Hist., 323-334. Harding, Select Orations, no. 13. - Hart, Contemporaries, III. §§ 123–129; Patriots and Statesmen, III. 215-317; Source Book, §§ 82-87. - Johnson, Readings, §§ 81-86. — Johnston, Am. Orations, I. 164-215. MacDonald, Select Docs., nos. 28-32. See New Engl. Hist. Teachers' Assoc., Hist. Sources, § 82; Syllabus, 340.

Illustrative. Altsheler, Herald of the West (Washington and New Orleans). Crowley, Love thrives in War.-E. Eggleston, Roxy (Tippe·G. C. Eggleston, Am. War Ballads, I. 113–145.

canoe).
Poems of Am. Patriotism, 83-107.

Matthews,

Munroe, Midshipman Stuart.

Read, By the Eternal

Pictures. Lossing, Field Book of the War of 1812.-Mentor, serial no. 103. Wilson, Am. People, III.

Topics Answerable from the References Above

(1) Influence of Tecumseh. [§ 167] (2) Battle at Tippecanoe. [8 167] (3) Henry Clay, or John C. Calhoun, as a boy and young man. [§ 167] (4) The capture of one of the following ships: Guerrière; Frolic; Macedonian; Java. [§ 168] — (5) The capture of one of the following American ships: Wasp; Chesapeake; Essex; President. [§ 169] (6) Contemporary accounts of the battle of Put-in-Bay. [§ 169] (7) British occupation of the coast of Maine. [§ 170] - (8) Jackson's New Orleans campaign. [§ 170] — (9) Adventures of Winfield Scott in the War of 1812. [§171] — (10) Public services of De Witt Clinton. [§ 172]

Topics for Further Search

(11) James Madison in Congress; or as Secretary of State; or as President. [§ 166] —(12) What was the “Macon Bill No. 2"? [§ 166](13) Was there sufficient reason for the War of 1812? [§ 167] (14) Why did the campaigns fail on the Niagara frontier? [§ 168] – (15) Why were the Americans so successful at sea? [§ 168] — (16) Why was Washington captured by the British? [§ 170] — (17) Account of the Hartford Convention. [§ 172] (18) Why was the peace of Ghent so favorable? [§ 173]

CHAPTER XVI

SETTLING THE WEST (1800-1820)

175. THE WEST AS A FACTOR IN THE NATION

EVER since the early years of the Revolution, the West had been active in national affairs: first, by the part played by the westerners in the war (§§ 94, 104); then by the demand that the national Congress should provide for new western states (102); and then by the admission of the three western states Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio (§ 142), and the part played by their senators and representatives and by their state legislatures in national affairs.

In 1810 about 1,250,000 out of 7,000,000 people in the United States were living west of the summits of the Appalachians. Pioneer conditions could still be found in the northern woods of New England and New York, and in considerable parts of Pennsylvania and the southern states; but the people of those regions joined in the political life of the seacoast. The West was different; it was a region in which practically everybody was a pioneer. The western people had a sense of belonging to a section of their own, and of looking upon national questions from their own standpoint.

In 1802 Jefferson predicted that the Mississippi valley "will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half of our inhabitants." Two decades later the West contained one fourth of the inhabitants of the Union, and had revealed many elements of its own natural wealth, among them the following: (1) The soil was deep and fertile; the