only points touched upon by this document. Of
the many subjects mooted between the negotiators scarcely any had
survived the fierce contests which had been waged concerning them. The
whole matter of the navigation of the Mississippi, access to that
river, and a road through American territory, had been dropped by the
British; while the Americans had been well content to say nothing of
the Northeastern fisheries, which they regarded as still their own.
The disarmament on the lakes and along the Canadian border, and the
neutralization of a strip of Indian territory, were yielded by the (p. 095)
English. The Americans were content to have nothing said about
impressment; nor was any one of the many illegal rights exercised by
England formally abandoned. The Americans satisfied themselves with
the reflection that circumstances had rendered these points now only
matters of abstract principle, since the pacification of Europe had
removed all opportunities and temptations for England to persist in
her previous objectionable courses. For the future it was hardly to be
feared that she would again undertake to pursue a policy against which
it was evident that the United States were willing to conduct a
serious war. There was, however, no provision for indemnification.

Upon a fair consideration, it must be admitted that though the treaty
was silent upon all the points which the United States had made war
for the purpose of enforcing, yet the country had every reason to be
gratified with the result of the negotiation. The five Commissioners
had done themselves ample credit. They had succeeded in agreeing with
each other; they had avoided any fracture of a negotiation which, up
to the very end, seemed almost daily on the verge of being broken off
in anger; they had managed really to lose nothing, in spite of the
fact that their side had had decidedly the worst of the struggle. (p. 096)
They had negotiated much more successfully than the armies of their
countrymen had fought. The Marquis of Wellesley said, in the House of
Lords, that "in his opinion the American Commissioners had shown a
most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole of the
correspondence." One cannot help wishing that the battle of New Orleans
had taken place a little earlier, or that the negotiation had fallen a
little later, so that news of that brilliant event could have reached
the ears of the insolent Englishmen at Ghent, who had for three month