se Madison preferred even a
foreign war to the loss of popularity; but Madison, although he accepted
the necessity of war, was wholly incompetent to conduct it efficiently.
The inadequacy of our national organization and our lack of national
cohesion was immediately and painfully exhibited. The Republican
superstition about militarism had prevented the formation of a regular
army at all adequate to the demands of our national policy, and the
American navy, while efficient so far as it went, was very much too
small to constitute an effective engine of naval warfare. Moreover, the
very Congress that clearly announced an intention of declaring war on
Great Britain failed to make any sufficient provision for its energetic
prosecution. The consequence of this short-sighted view of our national
responsibilities is that the history of the War of 1812 makes painful
reading for a patriotic American. The little American navy earned
distinction, but it was so small that its successes did not prevent it
from being shut off eventually from the high seas. The military
operations were a succession of blunders both in strategy and in
performance. On the northern frontier a series of incompetent generals
led little armies of half-hearted soldiers to unnecessary defeats or at
best to ineffectual victories; and the most conspicuous military success
was won at New Orleans by the Western pioneers, who had no
constitutional scruples about fighting outside of their own states, and
who were animated by lively patriotic feelings. On the whole, however,
the story makes humiliating reading, not because the national Capital
was captured almost without resistance, or because we were so frequently
beaten, but because our disorganization, the incompetence of the
national government, and the disloyalty of so many Americans made us
deserve both a less successful war and a more humiliating peace.

The chief interest of the second English war for the purpose of this
book is, however, its clear indication of the abiding-place at that time
of the American national spirit. That spirit was not found along the
Atlantic coast, whose inhabitants were embittered and blinded by party
and sectional prejudices. It was resident in the newer states of the
West and the Southwest. A genuine American national democracy was coming
into existence in that part of the country--a democracy which was as
democratic as it knew how to be, while at the same time loyal and
devoted