al Jackson, that the Treaty of Ghent,
which had been signed fifteen days before the decisive battle,
provided for the restoration of all territory, places and
possessions, taken by either nation from the other, during the war,
with certain unimportant exceptions.

"'Yes, of course, Jackson replied, but the minutes of the conference
at Ghent, as kept by Mr. Gallatin, represent the British
commissioners as declaring in exact words: "We do not admit
Bonaparte's construction of the law of nations; we can not accept it
in relation to any subject-matter before us."

"'At that moment, pursued General Jackson, none of our commissioners
knew what the real meaning of those words was. When they were uttered
the British commissioners knew that Pakenham's expedition had been
decided on; our commissioners did not know it. Now, since I have been
Chief Magistrate, I have learned, from diplomatic sources of the most
unquestionable authority, that the British ministry did not intend
the Treaty of Ghent to apply to the Louisiana Purchase at all. The
whole corporation of them,--Pitt, the Duke of Portland, Grenville,
Perceval, Lord Liverpool, and Castlereagh, denied in toto the legal
right of Napoleon to sell Louisiana to us. They held, therefore, that
we had no right to that Territory. So you see, Allen, that the words
of Mr. Gouldburn, on behalf of the British commissioners, which I
have quoted to you from Albert Gallatin's minutes of the conference,
had a far deeper significance than our commissioners could penetrate.
These words were meant to lay the foundation for a claim on the
Louisiana Purchase, entirely external to the provisions of the Treaty
of Ghent. And in that way, the British government was signing a
treaty with one hand in front, whilst the other hand, behind its
back, was dispatching Pakenham's army to seize the fairest of our
possessions.

"'You can also see, my dear Allen, said the old General, waxing
warmer, you can also see what an awful mess such a situation would
have been, if the British programme had been carried out in full. But
Providence willed otherwise. All the tangled web that the cunning of
English diplomacy could weave around our unsuspecting commissioners
at Ghent was torn to pieces, and soaked with British blood, in half
an hour, at New Orleans, by the never-missing rifles of my Tennessee
and K