ower necessary for waging
war. They were quite right in their feeling of hostility to England, and
one of the fundamental and fatal weaknesses of the Federalists was the
Federalist willingness to submit to England's aggressions without
retaliation; but the Jeffersonians had no gift for government, and were
singularly deficient in masterful statesmen of the kind imperatively
needed by any nation which wishes to hold an honorable place among other
nations. They showed their governmental ineptitude clearly enough later
on when they came into power, for they at once stopped building the
fleet which the Federalists had begun, and allowed the military forces
of the nation to fall into utter disorganization, with, as a
consequence, the shameful humiliations of the War of 1812. This war was
in itself eminently necessary and proper, and was excellent in its
results, but it was attended by incidents of shame and disgrace to
America for which Jefferson and Madison and their political friends and
supporters among the politicians and the people have never received a
sufficiently severe condemnation.

Benefits of Jay's Treaty to the West.

Jay's treaty was signed late in 1794 and was ratified in 1795.
[Footnote: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, I., pp. 479, 484,
489, 502, 519, etc.] The indignation of the Kentuckians almost amounted
to mania. They denounced the treaty with frantic intemperance, and even
threatened violence to those of their own number, headed by Humphrey
Marshall, who supported it; yet they benefited much by it, for it got
them what they would have been absolutely powerless to obtain for
themselves, that is, the possession of the British posts on the Lakes.
In 1796 the Americans took formal possession of these posts, and the
boundary line in the Northwest as nominally established by the treaty
of Versailles became in fact the actual line of demarcation between
the American and the British possessions. The work of Jay capped the
work of Wayne. Federal garrisons were established at Detroit and
elsewhere, and the Indians, who had already entered into the treaty of
Greeneville, were prevented from breaking it by this intervention of the
American military posts between themselves and their British allies.
Peace was firmly established for the time being in the Northwest, and our
boundaries in that direction took the fixed form they still retain.
[Footnote: American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I., p. 573; Fo