In the minds of the Americans, buoyed up by the victory at Plattsburg, there was not the shadow of doubt as to what their answer should be; they declined for an instant to consider any other basis for peace than the restoration of gains on both sides. Their note was prompt, emphatic, even blunt, and it nearly shattered the nerves of the gentlemen in Downing Street. Had these stiffnecked Yankees no sense? Could they not perceive the studied moderation of the terms proposed—an island or two and a small strip of Maine—when half of Maine and the south bank of the St. Lawrence from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor might have been demanded as the price of peace?
The prospect of another year of war simply to secure a frontier which nine out of ten Englishmen could not have identified was most disquieting, especially in view of the prodigious cost of military operations in North America. The Ministry was both hot and cold. At one moment it favored continued war; at another it shrank from the consequences; and in the end it confessed its own want of decision by appealing to the Duke of Wellington and trying to shift the responsibility to his broad shoulders. Would the Duke take command of the forces in Canada? He should be invested with full diplomatic and military powers to bring the war to an honorable conclusion.
The reply of the Iron Duke gave the Ministry another shock. He would go to America, but he did not promise himself much success there, and he was reluctant to leave Europe at this critical time. To speak frankly, he had no high opinion of the diplomatic game which the Ministry was playing at Ghent. "I confess," said he, "that I think you have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession from America... You have not been able to carry it into the enemy's territory, notwithstanding your military success, and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the point of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power.... Then if this reasoning be true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory; indeed, the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any."
As Lord Liverpool perused this dispatch, the will to conquer oozed away. "I think we have determined," he wrote a few days later to Castlereagh, "if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory." He set forth his reasons for this decision succinctly: the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, the alarming condition of France, the deplorable financial outlook in England. But Lord Liverpool omitted to mention a still more potent factor in his calculations—the growing impatience of the country. The American war had ceased to be popular; it had become the graveyard of military reputations; it promised no glory to either sailor or soldier. Now that the correspondence of the negotiators at Ghent was made public, the reading public might very easily draw the conclusion that the Ministry was prolonging the war by setting up pretensions which it could not sustain. No Ministry could afford to continue a war out of mere stubbornness.
Meantime, wholly in the dark as to the forces which were working in their favor, the American commissioners set to work upon a draft of a treaty which should be their answer to the British offer of peace on the basis of uti possidetis. Almost at once dissensions occurred. Protracted negotiations and enforced idleness had set their nerves on edge, and old personal and sectional differences appeared. The two matters which caused most trouble were the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. Adams could not forget how stubbornly his father had fought for that article in the treaty of 1783 which had conceded to New England fishermen, as a natural right, freedom to fish in British waters. To a certain extent this concession had been offset by yielding to the British the right of navigation of the Mississippi, but the latter right seemed unimportant in the days when the Alleghanies marked the limit of western settlement. In the quarter of a century which had elapsed, however, the West had come into its own. It was now a powerful section with an intensely alert consciousness of its rights and wrongs; and among its rights it counted the exclusive control of the Father of Waters. Feeling himself as much the champion of Western interests as Adams did of New England fisheries, Clay refused indignantly to consent to a renewal of the treaty provisions of 1783. But when the matter came to a vote, he found himself with Russell in a minority. Very reluctantly he then agreed to Gallatin's proposal, to insert in a note, rather than in the draft itself, a paragraph to the effect that the commissioners were not instructed to discuss the rights hitherto enjoyed in the fisheries, since no further stipulation was deemed necessary to entitle them to rights which were recognized by the treaty of 1783.
When the British reply to the American project was read, Adams noted with quiet satisfaction that the reservation as to the fisheries was passed over in silence—silence, he thought, gave consent—but Clay flew into a towering passion when he learned that the old right of navigating the Mississippi was reasserted. Adams was prepared to accept the British proposals; Clay refused point blank; and Gallatin sided this time with Clay. Could a compromise be effected between these stubborn representatives of East and West? Gallatin tried once more. Why not accept the British right of navigation—surely an unimportant point after all—and ask for an express affirmation of fishery rights? Clay replied hotly that if they were going to sacrifice the West to Massachusetts, he would not sign the treaty. With infinite patience Gallatin continued to play the role of peacemaker and finally brought both these self-willed men to agree to offer a renewal of both rights.
Instead of accepting this eminently fair adjustment, the British representatives proposed that the two disputed rights be left to future negotiation. The suggestion caused another explosion in the ranks of the Americans. Adams would not admit even by implication that the rights for which his sire fought could be forfeited by war and become the subject of negotiation. But all save Adams were ready to yield. Again Gallatin came to the rescue. He penned a note rejecting the British offer, because it seemed to imply the abandonment of a right; but in turn he offered to omit in the treaty all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi or to include a general reference to further negotiation of all matters still in dispute, in such a way as not to relinquish any rights. To this solution of the difficulty all agreed, though Adams was still torn by doubts and Clay believed that the treaty was bound to be "damned bad" anyway.
An anxious week of waiting followed. On the 22d of December came the British reply—a grudging acceptance of Gallatin's first proposal to omit all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi. Two days later the treaty was signed in the refectory of the Carthusian monastery where the British commissioners were quartered. Let the tired seventeen-year-old boy who had been his father's scribe through these long weary months describe the events of Christmas Day, 1814. "The British delegates very civilly asked us to dinner," wrote James Gallatin in his diary. "The roast beef and plum pudding was from England, and everybody drank everybody else's health. The band played first God Save the King, to the toast of the King, and Yankee Doodle, to the toast of the President. Congratulations on all sides and a general atmosphere of serenity; it was a scene to be remembered. God grant there may be always peace between the two nations. I never saw father so cheerful; he was in high spirits, and his witty conversation was much appreciated." *
* "A Great Peace Maker: The Dairy of James Gallatin" (1914).
p. 36.
Peace! That was the outstanding achievement of the American commissioners at Ghent. Measured by the purposes of the war-hawks of 1812, measured by the more temperate purposes of President Madison, the Treaty of Ghent was a confession of national weakness and humiliating failure. Clay, whose voice had been loudest for war and whose kindling fancy had pictured American armies dictating terms of surrender at Quebec, set his signature to a document which redressed not a single grievance and added not a foot of territory to the United States. Adams, who had denounced Great Britain for the crime of "man-stealing," accepted a treaty of peace which contained not a syllable about impressment. President Madison, who had reluctantly accepted war as the last means of escape from the blockade of American ports and the ruin of neutral trade, recommended the ratification of a convention which did not so much as mention maritime questions and the rights of neutrals.