Introduction                    ix

of ships until he had become an expert climber, nailed
new cleats to the flagstaff and climbed to its summit,
bearing with him the flag of the new republic. When
he reached the top he cut down the British flag and sus-
pended that of the United States. This greasy trick
may have been the act of some wag of the retiring fleet,
and might have been taken for a joke had it not been
followed by hostile acts which indicated that this was
the initial step in a long course of hostility and meanness.
   But it was soon followed by the retention of the lake
forts which fell into British hands during the Revolution-
ary War, and which, by the terms of the treaty, were to
be surrendered. Instead of surrendering them according
to the stipulations of the treaty, they held them, and not
only occupied them for thirteen years, but used them as
storehouses and magazines from which the Indians were
fed and clothed and armed and encouraged to tomahawk
and scalp Americans without regard to age or sex. And
then followed a series of orders in council, by which the
commerce of the United States was almost swept from
the seas, and their sailors forcibly taken from American
ships to serve on British. These orders in council were
so frequent that it seemed as if the French on one side
of the British Channel and the English on the other were
hurling decrees and orders at one another for their own