The War with the United States | Page 2

point out that Napoleon stood for tyranny, while the British stood for
freedom. But the adherents of the war party reminded each other, as
well as the British and the French, that Britain had wrested Canada
from France, while France had helped to wrest the Thirteen Colonies
from the British Empire.
As usual in all modern wars, there was much official verbiage about the
national claims and only unofficial talk about the national desires. But,
again as usual, the claims became the more insistent because of the
desires, and the desires became the more patriotically respectable
because of the claims of right. 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights' was the
popular catchword that best describes the two strong claims of the
United States. 'Down with the British' and 'On to Canada' were the
phrases that best reveal the two impelling national desires.
Both the claims and the desires seem quite simple in themselves. But,
in their connection with American politics, international affairs, and
opposing British claims, they are complex to the last degree. Their
complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous that they
baffle description within the limits of the present book. Yet, since
nothing can be understood without some reference to its antecedents,
we must take at least a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement
which finally resulted in the War of 1812.
The relations of the British Empire with the United States passed
through four gradually darkening phases between 1783 and 1812--the
phases of Accommodation, Unfriendliness, Hostility, and War.
Accommodation lasted from the recognition of Independence till the
end of the century. Unfriendliness then began with President Jefferson
and the Democrats. Hostility followed in 1807, during Jefferson's
second term, when Napoleon's Berlin Decree and the British.
Orders-in-Council brought American foreign relations into the
five-year crisis which ended with the three-year war.
William Pitt, for the British, and John Jay, the first chief justice of the
United States, are the two principal figures in the Accommodation

period. In 1783 Pitt, who, like his father, the great Earl of Chatham,
was favourably disposed towards the Americans, introduced a
temporary measure in the British House of Commons to regulate trade
with what was now a foreign country 'on the most enlarged principles
of reciprocal benefit' as well as 'on terms of most perfect amity with the
United States of America.' This bill, which showed the influence of
Adam Smith's principles on Pitt's receptive mind, favoured American
more than any other foreign trade in the mother country, and favoured
it to a still greater extent in the West Indies. Alone among foreigners
the Americans were to be granted the privilege of trading between their
own ports and the West Indies, in their own vessels and with their own
goods, on exactly the same terms as the British themselves. The bill
was rejected. But in 1794, when the French Revolution was running its
course of wild excesses, and the British government was even less
inclined to trust republics, Jay succeeded in negotiating a temporary
treaty which improved the position of American sea-borne trade with
the West Indies. His government urged him to get explicit statements of
principle inserted, more especially anything that would make cargoes
neutral when under neutral flags. This, however, was not possible, as
Jay himself pointed out. 'That Britain,' he said, 'at this period, and
involved in war, should not admit principles which would impeach the
propriety of her conduct in seizing provisions bound to France, and
enemy's property on board neutral vessels, does not appear to me
extraordinary.' On the whole, Jay did very well to get any treaty
through at such a time; and this mere fact shows that the general
attitude of the mother country towards her independent children was far
from being unfriendly.
Unfriendliness began with the new century, when Jefferson first came
into power. He treated the British navigation laws as if they had been
invented on purpose to wrong Americans, though they had been in
force for a hundred and fifty years, and though they had been originally
passed, at the zenith of Cromwell's career, by the only republican
government that ever held sway in England. Jefferson said that British
policy was so perverse, that when he wished to forecast the British line
of action on any particular point he would first consider what it ought
to be and then infer the opposite. His official opinion was written in the

following words: 'It is not to the moderation or justice of others we are
to trust for fair and equal access to market with our productions, or for
our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of
independence, and the firm will to use them.' On the subject of
impressment, or 'Sailors' Rights,' he was clearer still: 'The simplest rule
will