pecially their clergy, were nearly all
stout Federalists, opposing Jefferson, Madison, and the war, the
Methodists and Baptists almost to a man stood up for the administration
and its war policy with the utmost vigor, rebuking the peace party as
traitors. [Footnote: The writer's grandfather, a Baptist minister, was
as good as driven from his pulpit and charge at Templeton, Mass.,
because of his federalist sympathies in this war.] Timothy Merritt, a
mighty Methodist preacher on the Connecticut circuit, has left us from
these critical times a stirring sermon on the text, Judges v. 23, "Curse
ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof; because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help
of the Lord against the mighty." Meroz was the federalist party and
England's ministry and army were "the mighty."

Czar Alexander, regarding our hostility as dangerous to England, with
whom he then stood allied against Napoleon, sought to end the war. The
Russian campaign of 1812 practically finished Napoleon's career, so
leaving England free to press operations in America. In April, 1814,
Paris was captured. The United States therefore accepted Alexander's
offices. Our commissioners, Adams, Clay, Gallatin, Marshall, Bayard, and
Russell met the English envoys at Ghent, and after long discussions, in
which more than once it seemed as if the war must proceed, the treaty of
Ghent was executed, December 24, 1814, a fortnight before the battle of
New Orleans.

It was an honorable peace. If we gained no territory we yielded none.
The questions of Mississippi navigation and the fisheries were expressly
reserved for future negotiations. Upon impressment and the abuse of
neutrals, exactly the grievances over which we had gone to war, the
treaty was silent, and peace men laughed at the war party on this
account, calling the war a failure. The ridicule was unjust. Had
Napoleon been still on high, or the negotiations been subsequent to the
New Orleans victory, England would doubtless have been called upon to
renounce these practices. But experience has proved that such a demand
would have been unnecessary. No outrage of these kinds has occurred
since, nor can anyone doubt that it was our spirit as demonstrated in
the war of 1812 which changed England's temper. Hence, in spite of our
military inexperience, financial distress, internal dissensions, and the
fall of Napoleon, which unexpectedly turned the od