s; the
common sailor was paid four pounds bounty and eighteen pounds a year,
which might have been trebled at half the cost of an American war.

WHAT THE WAR OF 1812 DEMONSTRATED

From 'History of the United States': copyright 1890, by Charles
Scribner's Sons.

A people whose chief trait was antipathy to war, and to any system
organized with military energy, could scarcely develop great results in
national administration; yet the Americans prided themselves chiefly on
their political capacity. Even the war did not undeceive them, although
the incapacity brought into evidence by the war was undisputed, and was
most remarkable among the communities which believed themselves to be
most gifted with political sagacity. Virginia and Massachusetts by turns
admitted failure in dealing with issues so simple that the newest
societies, like Tennessee and Ohio, understood them by instinct. That
incapacity in national politics should appear as a leading trait in
American character was unexpected by Americans, but might naturally
result from their conditions. The better test of American character was
not political but social, and was to be found not in the government but
in the people.

The sixteen years of Jefferson and Madison's rule furnished
international tests of popular intelligence upon which Americans could
depend. The ocean was the only open field for competition among nations.
Americans enjoyed there no natural or artificial advantages over
Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Spaniards; indeed, all these countries
possessed navies, resources, and experience greater than were to be
found in the United States. Yet the Americans developed, in the course
of twenty years, a surprising degree of skill in naval affairs. The
evidence of their success was to be found nowhere so complete as in the
avowals of Englishmen who knew best the history of naval progress. The
American invention of the fast-sailing schooner or clipper was the more
remarkable because, of all American inventions, this alone sprang from
direct competition with Europe. During ten centuries of struggle the
nations of Europe had labored to obtain superiority over each other in
ship-construction; yet Americans instantly made improvements which gave
them superiority, and which Europeans were unable immediately to imitate
even after seeing them. Not only were American vessels better in model,
faster in sailing, easier and quicker in handling, and more economical
in wo