Negotiations for Peace Concluded on the 24th of December, 1814.
The small victory at Mobile Bay was barren of any gain to the British cause; for, on the fourteenth, two days after the surrender, intelligence came from England to General Lambert that articles of peace had been signed by the plenipotentiaries of the belligerent nations, in session at Ghent. Gleig remarks, in his "Narrative": "With the reduction of this trifling work ended all hostilities in this quarter of America; for the army had scarcely reassembled, when intelligence arrived from England of peace. The news reached us on the fourteenth, and I shall not deny that it was received with much satisfaction."
On the nineteenth, General Jackson issued an address from headquarters, from which we reproduce as follows: "The flag-vessel, which was sent to the enemy's fleet at Mobile, has returned, and brings with it intelligence, extracted from a London paper, that on the twenty-fourth of December articles of peace were signed by the commissioners of the two nations."
Thus, on the day after the first landing of the British army on Louisiana soil, and after the first battle was fought at night, terms of peace were agreed on. It was fifteen days after that auspicious event until the battles on the eighth occurred, causing such disaster and loss of valuable lives to the English army and nation; and fifty-two days from the signing of articles until a message of the good news was received by the commander-in-chief of the British forces. There was no alternative but to await the slow passage of the ship across the wide Atlantic, with sails set to breeze and calm, and sometimes tossed and delayed by adverse storm. To-day, the news of such an event would be flashed over the great cables under the sea and the network of electric wires throughout the land, in the twinkling of an eye after its occurrence. Such an advantage at the time would have been worth to England the entire cost of the telegraph system of the world.