“Of the five members of the American mission, the Chevalier [Bayard] has the most perfect control of his temper, the most deliberate coolness; and it is the more meritorious because it is real self-command. His feelings are as quick and his spirits as high as those of any one among us, but he certainly has them more under government. I can scarcely express to you how much both he and Mr. Gallatin have risen in my esteem since we have been here living together. Gallatin has not quite so constant a supremacy over his own emotions; yet he seldom yields to an ebullition of temper, and recovers from it immediately. He has a faculty, when discussion grows too warm, of turning off its edge by a joke, which I envy him more than all his other talents; and he has in his character one of the most extraordinary combinations of stubbornness and of flexibility that I ever met with in man. His greatest fault I think to be an ingenuity sometimes trenching upon ingenuousness.”
Gallatin’s opinion of Adams was not so enthusiastic as Adams’s admiration for him. He thought Adams’s chief fault to be that he lacked judgment “to a deplorable degree.”[72] Of Clay, whether in his merits or his faults, only one opinion was possible. Clay’s character belonged to the simple Southern or Virginia type, somewhat affected, but not rendered more complex, by Western influence,—and transparent beyond need of description or criticism.
The extraordinary patience and judgment of Gallatin, aided by the steady support of Bayard, carried all the American points without sacrificing either Adams or Clay, and with no quarrel of serious importance on any side. When Lord Bathurst received the American note of December 14, he replied December 19, yielding the last advantage he possessed:[73] “The Prince Regent regrets to find that there does not appear any prospect of being able to arrive at such an arrangement with regard to the fisheries as would have the effect of coming to a full and satisfactory explanation on that subject;” but since this was the case, the disputed article might be altogether omitted.
Thus the treaty became simply a cessation of hostilities, leaving every claim on either side open for future settlement. The formality of signature was completed December 24, and closed an era of American history. In substance, the treaty sacrificed much on both sides for peace. The Americans lost their claims for British spoliations, and were obliged to admit question of their right to Eastport and their fisheries in British waters; the British failed to establish their principles of impressment and blockade, and admitted question of their right to navigate the Mississippi and trade with the Indians. Perhaps at the moment the Americans were the chief losers; but they gained their greatest triumph in referring all their disputes to be settled by time, the final negotiator, whose decision they could safely trust.
CHAPTER III.
England received the Treaty of Ghent with feelings of mixed anger and satisfaction. The “Morning Chronicle” seemed surprised at the extreme interest which the news excited. As early as November 24, when ministers made their decision to concede the American terms, the “Morning Chronicle” announced that “a most extraordinary sensation was produced yesterday” by news from Ghent, and by reports that ministers had abandoned their ground. When the treaty arrived, December 26, the same Whig newspaper, the next morning, while asserting that ministers had “humbled themselves in the dust and thereby brought discredit on the country,” heartily approved what they had done; and added that “the city was in a complete state of hurricane during the whole of yesterday, but the storm did not attain its utmost height until toward the evening.... Purchases were made to the extent of many hundred thousand pounds.” The importance of the United States to England was made more apparent by the act of peace than by the pressure of war. “At Birmingham,” said the “Courier,” “an immense assemblage witnessed the arrival of the mail, and immediately took the horses out, and drew the mail to the post-office with the loudest acclamations,”—acclamations over a treaty universally regarded as discreditable.
The “Times” admitted the general joy, and denied only that it was universal. If the “Times” in any degree represented public opinion, the popular satisfaction at the peace was an extraordinary political symptom, for in its opinion the Government had accepted terms such as “might have been expected from an indulgent and liberal conqueror.... We have retired from the combat,” it said, December 30, “with the stripes yet bleeding on our back,—with the recent defeats at Plattsburg and on Lake Champlain unavenged.” During several succeeding weeks the “Times” continued its extravagant complaints, which served only to give the Americans a new idea of the triumph they had won.
In truth, no one familiar with English opinion during the past ten years attempted to deny that the government of England must admit one or the other of two conclusions,—either it had ruinously mismanaged its American policy before the war, or it had disgraced itself by the peace. The “Morning Chronicle,” while approving the treaty, declared that the Tories were on this point at odds with their own leaders:[74] “Their attachment to the ministers, though strong, cannot reconcile them to this one step, though surely if they would look back with an impartial eye on the imbecility and error with which their idols conducted the war, they must acknowledge their prudence in putting an end to it. One of them very honestly said, two days ago, that if they had not put an end to the war, the war would have put an end to their Ministry.” Whatever doubts existed about the temper of England before that time, no one doubted after the peace of Ghent that war with the United States was an unpopular measure with the British people.
Nevertheless the “Times” and the Tories continued their complaints until March 9, when two simultaneous pieces of news silenced criticism of the American treaty. The severe defeat at New Orleans became known at the moment when Napoleon, having quitted Elba, began his triumphal return to Paris. These news, coming in the midst of Corn Riots, silenced further discussion of American relations, and left ministers free to redeem at Waterloo the failures they had experienced in America.
In the United States news of peace was slow to arrive. The British sloop-of-war “Favorite” bore the despatches, and was still at sea when the month of February began. The commissioners from Massachusetts and Connecticut, bearing the demands of the Hartford Convention, started for Washington. Every one was intent on the situation of New Orleans, where a disaster was feared. Congress seemed to have abandoned the attempt to provide means of defence, although it began another effort to create a bank on Dallas’s plan. A large number of the most intelligent citizens believed that two announcements would soon be made,—one, that New Orleans was lost; the other, that the negotiation at Ghent had ended in rupture. Under this double shock, the collapse of the national government seemed to its enemies inevitable.