Penned November 9, the day before the American negotiators at Ghent handed in their requested projet, this letter may be regarded as decisive. November 13, Liverpool replied that the ministry was waiting anxiously for the American projet, ... and, "without entering into particulars, I can assure you that we shall be disposed to meet your views upon the points on which the negotiation appears to turn at present;" the points being the uti possidetis, with the several details of possession put forward by Bathurst. The American paper was in London before the 18th, when Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, "I think we have determined, if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining, or securing, any acquisition of territory. We have been led to this determination by the consideration of the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, and by that of the alarming situation of the interior of France." "Under such circumstances, it has appeared to us desirable to bring the American war, if possible, to a conclusion."[520] The basis of the status quo ante bellum, sustained all along by the American commission, was thus definitely accepted, and so stated formally by Bathurst.[521]
This fundamental agreement having been reached, the negotiations ran rapidly to a settlement without further serious hitch; a conclusion to which contributed powerfully the increasing anxiety of the British ministry over the menacing aspect of the Continent. The American projet,[522] besides the customary formal stipulations as to procedure for bringing hostilities to a close, consisted of articles embodying the American positions on the subjects of impressment and blockade, with claims for indemnity for losses sustained by irregular captures and seizures during the late hostilities between France and Great Britain; a provision aimed at the Orders in Council. These demands, which covered the motives of the war, and may be regarded as the offensive side of the American negotiation, were pronounced inadmissible at once by the British, and were immediately abandoned. Their presentation had been merely formal; the United States Government, within its own council chamber, had already recognized that they could not be enforced. The projet included the agreement previously framed concerning the Indians; who were thus provided for in the treaty, though excluded from any recognition as parties to it, or as independent political communities. This was the only demand which Great Britain can be said fairly to have carried, and it was so far a reduction from her original requirement as to be unrecognizable. An American proposition, pledging each of the contracting parties not again to employ Indians in war, was rejected.
The remaining articles of the projet, although entirely suitable to a treaty of peace, were not essentially connected with the war. The treaty merely gave a suitable occasion for presenting them. They provided for fixing, by mixed commissions, the boundary lines between the British possessions and the United States. These the Treaty of 1783 had stated in terms which had as yet received no proper topographical determination. From the mouth of the St. Croix River, and the islands within it and in the adjacent sea, around, north and west, as far as the head of Lake Superior, the precise course of the bounding line needed definition by surveyors. These propositions were agreed to; but when it came to similar provision for settling the boundary of the new territories acquired by the Louisiana purchase, as far as the Rocky Mountains, difficulties arose. In the result it was agreed that the determination of the boundary should be carried as far as the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, "in conformity with the true intent of the said Treaty of Peace of one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three." The treaty was silent on the subject of boundary westward of the Lake of the Woods, and this article of the projet was dropped. It differed indeed from its associates, in providing the settlement for a new question, and not the definition of an old settlement. In conclusion, the British commissioners obtained the adoption of an agreement that both parties "would use their best endeavors to promote the entire abolition of the slave trade." In Great Britain the agitation for this measure had reached proportions which were not the least among the embarrassments of the ministry; and at this critical juncture the practical politicians conducting affairs found themselves constrained by a popular demand to press the subject upon the less sympathetic statesmen of the Cabinet.
The American commissioners had made a good fight, and shown complete appreciation of the factors working continuously in their behalf. To the end, and even more evidently at the end, was apparent the increasing anxiety of the British Government, the reasonable cause for it in European conditions, and the immense difficulty under such circumstances of accomplishing any substantial military successes in America. The Duke of Wellington wrote that "all the American armies of which I ever read would not beat out of a field of battle the troops that went from Bordeaux last summer;"[523] but still, "his opinion is that no military advantage can be expected if the war goes on, and he would have great reluctance in undertaking the command unless we made a serious effort first to obtain peace, without insisting upon keeping any part of our conquests."[524] On December 23, Liverpool sent a long and anxious letter to Castlereagh, in reply to his late despatches. The fear of a renewal of war on the Continent is prominent in his consideration, and it was recognized that the size of the European armaments, combined with the pecuniary burden of maintaining them, tended of itself to precipitate an outbreak. Should that occur, France could scarcely fail to be drawn in; and France, if involved, might direct her efforts towards the Low Countries, "the only object on the continent which would be regarded as a distinct British interest of sufficient magnitude to reconcile the country to war," with its renewed burden of taxation. "We are decidedly and unanimously of opinion that all your efforts should be directed to the continuance of peace. There is no mode in which the arrangements in Poland, Germany, and Italy, can be settled, consistently with the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris, which is not to be preferred, under present circumstances, to a renewal of hostilities between the Continental Powers." Coincidently with this, in another letter of the same day, he mentions the meetings which have taken place on account of the property tax, and the spirit which had arisen on the subject. "This, as well as other considerations, make us most anxious to get rid of the American war."[525]
The Treaty of Ghent was signed December 24, 1814, by the eight commissioners. The last article provided for its ratification, without alteration, at Washington, within four months from the signature. A chargé d'affaires to the United States was appointed, and directed to proceed at once in a British ship of war to America, with the Prince Regent's ratification, to be exchanged against that of the President; but he was especially instructed that the exchange should not be made unless the ratification by the United States was without alteration, addition, or exclusion, in any form whatsoever. Hostilities were not to cease until such action had taken place. The British Government were apparently determined that concessions wrung from them, by considerations foreign to the immediate struggle, should not be subjected to further modification in the Senate.
Mr. Baker, the British chargé, sailed in the British sloop of war "Favorite," accompanied by Mr. Carroll bearing the despatches of the American commissioners. The "Favorite" arrived in New York on Saturday, February 11. The treaty was ratified by the President, as it stood, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the 17th of February, 1815.
A year after the conclusion of peace, a weighty opinion as to the effect of the War of 1812 upon the national history was expressed by one of the commissioners, Mr. Albert Gallatin. For fifteen years past, no man had been in closer touch with the springs of national life, national policy, and national action; as representative in Congress, and as intimate adviser of two consecutive Presidents, in his position as Secretary of the Treasury. His experience, the perspicuity of his intellect, and his lucidity of thought and expression, give particular value to his conclusions; the more so that to some extent they are the condemnation, regretfully uttered, of a scheme of political conduct with the main ideas of which he had been closely identified. He wrote: "The war has been productive of evil and of good, but I think the good preponderates. Independent of the loss of lives, and of the property of individuals, the war has laid the foundations of permanent taxes and military establishments, which the Republicans[526] had deemed unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of the country. But under our former system we were becoming too selfish, too much attached exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured."[527]
Such, even at so early a date, could be seen to be the meaning of the War of 1812 in the progress of the national history. The people, born by war to independence, had by war again been transformed from childhood, absorbed in the visible objects immediately surrounding it, to youth with its dawning vision and opening enthusiasms. They issued from the contest, battered by adversity, but through it at last fairly possessed by the conception of a national unity, which during days of material prosperity had struggled in vain against the predominance of immediate interests and local prepossessions. The conflict, indeed, was not yet over. Two generations of civic strife were still to signalize the slow and painful growth of the love for "The Union"; that personification of national being, upon which can safely fasten the instinct of human nature to centre devotion upon a person and a name. But, through these years of fluctuating affections, the work of the War of 1812 was continuously felt. Men had been forced out of themselves. More and more of the people became more Americans; they felt and acted more as a nation; and when the moment came that the unity of the state was threatened from within, the passion for the Union, conceived in 1812, and nurtured silently for years in homes and hearts, asserted itself. The price to be paid was heavy. Again war desolated the land; but through war the permanency of the Union was secured. Since then, relieved from internal weakness, strong now in the maturity of manhood, and in a common motive, the nation has taken its place among the Powers of the earth.