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people, armed to maintain their just rights. We understand that the English have again been defeated in Upper Canada. The flower of the British troops, who were to inundate the United States, without meeting any resistance, have yielded to a republican militia, and will bring back to Europe only tarnished laurels. The report seems to be confirmed, that the English ministers have renounced their pretensions, and will accept peace on terms most honorable to the United States. Such a result was inevitable."

The treaty was approved and peace cordially welcomed almost unanimously throughout the United States. Both were unexpected, and consecrated by brilliant victories to grace the end of war with the most formidable power in the world, waged till honorable peace, with no loss of territory, union of the States strengthened, national character greatly enhanced, and respectful amity between kindred nations for the first time established. "The attitude taken by the State of Massachusetts, and the appearances in some of the neighboring States,' Mr. Gallatin stated, in his before-mentioned letter, "had a most unfavorable effect." Retribution for that disloyalty has been such, that Massachusetts, with uncommon means to be, never since that war has been, as theretofore, a leading State of the confederacy; nor able, notwithstanding annual efforts by her members in Congress, to prevail on that body to vote her payment as other States have received for their militia. It was the State of Massachusetts, as well expressed by Mr. Gallatin, the State, by constituted authorities, which by virtual rebellion and sedition thwarted the national government, and encouraged the enemy. Even after the peace, the Legislature of that State still strove in vain to disparage the war and the treaty by publishing a pamphlet, prepared by resolution of that body, containing all the treaties between the United States and Great Britain, to show that the war effected nothing, inasmuch as Canada was not conquered, and the treaty of Ghent obtained from England less than the treaty of 1807, negotiated by Monroe and Pinkney, which President Jefferson would not permit to be laid before the Senate.

Some few faint denials, also, issued from the press of the

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merits of the treaty and the advantages of the war, but they were very generally applauded. For the contest proved that republican government, with more popular liberty and less executive authority than elsewhere, is not inconsistent with war and its exigencies. A war, not declared by any executive authority, in passion, by intrigue, to enrich or promote individuals, or further any private end, but after public deliberation by those really representing a people to bear its burdens, outrageously denounced and opposed, was nevertheless strenuously waged, and successfully, by not exceeding two-thirds of the nation, without one-half its pecuniary means and probably not more than that proportion of its cultivated intelligence; all the rest opposing it. Begun and concluded by the same administration, there were no executive changes, except two in each of the departments of the Navy, War, and Treasury; whereas one American minister in England has corresponded with as many as five different ministries in two years, and an American minister in France with still more. All taxes were promptly and economically realized, without resistance, and little litigation: the people everywhere, of all parties, paying them cheerfully, though their representatives in Congress failed to lay them soon enough and heavy enough, and, sometime after the war, repealed them hastily, when some of them should have been continued permanently. With extreme freedom of speech and the press, there was no prosecution for libel or for treason, no violent commotion, and excessive and often factious contention was overruled by means of free suffrage. During the first sixteen months, though tried by severe reverses, the people remained constant in adherence to their government, and its stability was unshaken. In less than two campaigns, the art of war was acquired, which it took the people of Great Britain seventeen of their twenty years of the last war with France to learn. The United States began hostilities with less than thirty experienced officers to marshal their forces. If there had been a third campaign, Brown, Jackson, Scott, Macomb, Gaines, with troops of other tried young officers, would have led from forty to fifty thousand men, at least one-third of

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them regular troops, into Canada, to carry the American standard to Halifax; when the British armies in America, indispensable in Europe, were nearly all transported thither. Our financial atrophy had probably been cured. Taxes were actually laid by Congress to secure a considerable revenue, and our public credit was not as low as that of England had been; nor near so low as that of France during some of her most successful years of war. If hostilities had continued another year, there was no reason for apprehension. The popular elasticity of a free, intelligent nation is amazingly recuperative. Armament, discipline, enterprise, fortitude, achievement, seem natural to them. War had just begun, when it ended. Such at least was then, and yet is, my humble opinion. By the editor of the National Intelligencer, Mr. Gales, one of its supporters, whose position enabled him to judge correctly, in that paper of the 25th of August, 1849, the welcome tidings of peace are thus graphically described :

"Never, from the beginning of this government to the present, has a more gloomy day dawned upon it than the thirteenth day of February, in the year 1815.

"Some time about noon of that memorable day mysteriously arose a rumor, faint at first as the earliest whisper of the western breeze on a summer's morn, but freshening and gathering strength as it spread, until, later in the day, it burst forth in a general acclaim of PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! Startled by a sound so unexpected and so joyful, men flocked into the streets, eagerly inquiring of one another whence and how came the news, and, receiving no answer, looking up into the Heavens with straining eyes, as though expecting a visible sign of it from the seat of that Omnipotence by whose interposition alone they could, but a short moment before, have even hoped for so great a blessing.

"When, at length. the rumor assumed a more definite shape, the story ran than a private express had passed through the city at some time during the day, bearing to merchants in the South the glad tidings that a treaty of peace had actually reached the shores of the United States. It was still but a rumor, however, and wanted that consistency which was necessary to justify full confidence in it.

"Unable to procure any information which should even confirm the report that an express of any kind had actually passed through the city (so vague was the rumor), one of the editors of this paper waited upon the President to obtain from him, who must be certainly informed, such information as he might possess on the subject. Mr. Madison, however, knew little more of the matter than the public: he had been, of course, among the first apprized

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of the rumor, and was inclined to believe it true, but deemed it prudent to suspend opinion upon the subject until it should be authentically confirmed; and, in the National Intelligencer of the following morning, that advice was accordingly given to the public. Having thus had occasion to allude to this interview with Mr. Madison, it may not be foreign to the subject of this article to state, that we found that great man sitting alone, in the dusk of the evening, ruminating, probably, upon the prodigious changes which the news, if true (as he believed it to be), would make in the face of public affairs. Affable, as he always was, he conversed freely upon the probabilities of the news which had reached us, and showed a natural interest in its being confirmed. But it could not escape remark, at the same time, that any one not familiar with that calm fortitude which, in the most trying scenes, had ever sustained him, and that equality of temper which on no occasion ever deserted him, might have deemed, from the unruffled composure of his countenance, his manner, and his discourse, that he was the person in the city who had the least concern in the reported event, though certainly, could personal considerations have been suffered to influence him at such a moment, no man living could have a greater.

"Steam conveyances and electric telegraphs had not then been invented, to realize the lover's prayer to the gods to annihilate both time and space;' and all classes in Washington had, with the President, no choice but to await the comparatively slow process of travel by horses and carriages from New York to Washington, for confirmation or contradiction of the report. The interval of suspense, it may well be imagined, was sufficiently tedious, though it was brought to an end as early as could have been reasonably expected. Late in the afternoon of Thursday, the 14th of February, came thundering down the Pennsylvania avenue a coach and four foaming steeds, in which was Mr. Henry Carroll (one of the secretaries at Ghent), the bearer, as was at once ascertained, of the Treaty of Peace concluded at Ghent between the American and British commissioners. Cheers and congratulations followed the carriage, as it sped its way to the office of the Secretary of State, and, directly thence, with the acting Secretary of State, to the residence of the President.

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"The reader, who has followed our narrative thus far, will begin to wonder how the demise of Mrs. Madison could have brought all this so vividly to mind. The relation which she bore to Mr. Madison, and her entire identification with him in all the memories of the past, would be sufficient to account for it. But the particular incident in the inauguration of the treaty of peace, the memory of which dwelt upon our minds, comes now to be told, in its place.

"The other members of the Cabinet having joined the Secretary of State at the President's residence, the treaty was of course taken into immediate consideration by the President and the Cabinet.

"Soon after night-fall, members of Congress and others, deeply interested

PEACE AT HOME.

65 in the event, presented themselves at the President's house, the doors of which stood open. When the writer of this entered the drawing-room, at about 8 o'clock, it was crowded to its full capacity, Mrs. Madison (the President being with the Cabinet) doing the honors of the occasion. And what a happy scene it was! Among the large proportion present of the members of both Houses of Congress, were gentlemen of most opposite politics, but lately arrayed against one another in continual conflict and fierce debate, now with elated spirits thanking God, and with softened hearts cordially felicitating one another, upon the joyful intelligence which (should the terms of the treaty be acceptable) re-established peace, and opened a certain prospect of a great prosperity to their country. But the most conspicuous object in the room, the observed of all observers, was Mrs. Madison herself, then in the meridian of life and queenly beauty. She was, in her person, for the moment, the representative of the feelings of him who was, at this moment, in grave consultation with his official advisers. No one could doubt, who beheld the radiance of joy which lighted up her countenance and diffused its beams around, that all uncertainty was at an end, and that the government of the country had, in very truth (to use an expression of Mr. Adams on a very different occasion), 'passed from gloom to glory.' With a grace all her own, to her visitors she reciprocated heartfelt congratulations upon the glorious and happy change in the aspect of public affairs; dispensing, with liberal hand, to every individual in the large assembly the proverbial hospitalities of that house.

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The Cabinet being still in session, the writer of this article was presently invited into the apartment in which it was sitting. There were, beside the President himself, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Crowninshield, and Mr. Rush; that is to say, the Secretaries of the Departments of the Treasury, of War, of the Navy, and the Attorney-General. [The Department of State being vacant, its duties were at that time discharged by Mr. Monroe, as Acting Secretary: the Postmaster-General was not at that day a cabinet minister.] Subdued joy sat upon the face of every one of them. The President, after kindly stating the result of their deliberations, addressed himself to the Secretary of the Treasury, in a sportive tone, saying to him, Come, Mr. Dallas, you, with your knowledge of the contents of the treaty, derived from the careful perusal of it, and who write with so much ease, take the pen, and indite for this gentleman a paragraph for the paper of tomorrow, to announce the reception and probable acceptance of the treaty.'

"Mr. Dallas cheerfully complied, and, whilst we sat by in converse, in a few minutes produced and read the following paragraph, which, being approved by all present, appeared in the National Intelligencer the next morning:

"We have the pleasure to announce that the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, as signed by all the commissioners of both parties at Ghent, on the 24th of December, 1814, was last evening VOL. IV. -5

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