What would have been the issue of these anxieties, and of the measures to which they gave rise, had not the French Revolution intervened to aggravate the distresses of Great Britain, and to constrain her to violent methods, is bootless to discuss. It remains true that, both before and during the conflict with the French Republic and Empire, the general character of her actions, to which the United States took exception, was determined by the conditions and ideas that have been stated, and can be understood only through reference to them. No sooner had peace been signed, in 1783, than disagreements sprang up again from the old roots of colonial systems and ideals. To these essentially was due the detailed sequence of events which, influenced by such traditions of opinion and policy as have been indicated, brought on the War of 1812, which has not inaptly been styled the second War of Independence. Madison, who was contemporary with the entire controversy, and officially connected with it from 1801 to the end of the war, first as Secretary of State, and later as President, justly summed up his experience of the whole in these words: "To have shrunk from resistance, under such circumstances, would have acknowledged that, on the element which forms three-fourths of the globe which we inhabit, and where all independent nations have equal and common rights, the American People were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals. With such an alternative war was chosen."[53] The second war was closely related to the first in fact, though separated by a generation in time.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Order in Council was a general term applied to all orders touching affairs, internal as well as external, issued by the King in Council. The particular orders here in question, by their extraordinary character and wide application, came to have a kind of sole title to the expression in the diplomatic correspondence between the two countries.
[2] Instructions of Madison, Secretary of State, to Monroe, Minister to Great Britain, January 5, 1804. Article I. American State Papers, vol. iii. p. 82.
[3] Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. ii. pp. 508, 546.
[4] Annals of Congress. Thirteenth Congress, vol. ii. pp. 1563; 1555-1558.
[5] Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 234. Author's italics.
[6] Diary and Letters, vol. ii. p. 553.
[7] Ibid., p. 560. Those unfamiliar with the subject should be cautioned that the expression "right of search" is confined here, not quite accurately, to searching for British subjects liable to impressment. This right the United States denied. The "right of search" to determine the nationality of the vessel, and the character of the voyage, was admitted to belligerents then, as it is now, by all neutrals.