xIntroduction



amusement while inflicting dire injuries on other nations,
and especially the Americans.
   Had it not been for these hostile acts of the British
there would have been no War of i8I2. Had they con-
tinued to treat the young republic with the justice and
liberality to which they agreed in fixing its western bound-
ary in the treaty of I783, no matter what their motive
may have been, there would have been no cause for war
between the two countries. The Americans had hardly
recovered from the wounds inflicted in the Revolutionary
War. They were too few and too weak and too poor to
go to war with such a power as England, and moreover
wanted a continuance of the peace by which they were
adding to the population and wealth of their country.
What they had acquired in the quarter of a century since
the end of the Revolutionary War was but little in com-
parison with the accumulations of England during long
centuries, and they were not anxious to risk their all in
a conflict with such a power; but young and weak and few
as they were, they belonged to that order of human
beings who hold their rights and their honor in such high
regard that they can not continuously be insulted and
injured without retaliation. The time came when they
resolved to bear the burdens of war rather than submit
to unjustice and dishonor.



x