America never denied, but there was both then and later much
public confusion in both countries as to the question at issue since,
once at war, Great Britain frequently exercised a legal belligerent
right of search and followed it up by the seizure of sailors alleged to
be British subjects. Nor were British naval captains especially careful
to make sure that no American-born sailors were included in their
impressment seizures, and as the accounts spread of victim after victim,
the American irritation steadily increased. True, France was also an
offender, but as the weaker naval power her offence was lost sight of in
view of the, literally, thousands of _bona fide_ Americans seized by
Great Britain. Here, then, was a third cause of irritation connected
with impressment, though not a point of governmental dispute as to
right, for Great Britain professed her earnest desire to restore
promptly any American-born sailors whom her naval officers had seized
through error. In fact many such sailors were soon liberated, but a
large number either continued to serve on British ships or to languish
in British prisons until the end of the Napoleonic Wars[6].

There were other, possibly greater, causes of the War of 1812, most of
them arising out of the conflicting interests of the chief maritime
neutral and the chief naval belligerent. The pacific presidential
administration of Jefferson sought by trade restrictions, using embargo
and non-intercourse acts, to bring pressure on both England and France,
hoping to force a better treatment of neutrals. The United States,
divided in sympathy between the belligerents, came near to disorder and
disruption at home, over the question of foreign policy. But through all
American factions there ran the feeling of growing animosity to Great
Britain because of impressment. At last, war was declared by America in
1812 and though at the moment bitterly opposed by one section, New
England, that war later came to be regarded as of great national value
as one of the factors which welded the discordant states into a national
unity. Naturally also, the war once ended, its commercial causes were
quickly forgotten, whereas the individual, personal offence involved in
impressment and right of search, with its insult to national pride,
became a patriotic theme for politicians and for the press. To deny, in
fact, a British "right of search" became a national point of honour,
upon which no American statesman w