One can hardly believe that it was party
fealty and political hatred of the democratic party alone which made
these formerly patriotic colonies and States hot-beds of sedition and
treason. It looks as if those States, having built up a flourishing
trade with Great Britain, cared little about the impressment of sailors,
or the enslaving of their countrymen, so long as they filled their own
pockets. The men seized were usually poor, and their happiness, liberty
and life were lightly regarded in comparison with the prosperity of the
"Peace Party" merchant. If patriotism were dormant in the East, however,
in the growing West, and the generous South it was strong. From those
sections came the hardy sons of liberty, who taught Johnny Bull anew to
respect the rights of the common people. Though the treaty of peace was
not satisfactory in many particulars, it more clearly defined the lines
between the United States and British possessions in America, leaving
the fishery question and the right to search and impressment in an
unsettled condition, giving the "Peace Party" an opportunity to say, "I
told you so."
An attempt is made in this story to cover the whole period of the war
and the causes leading up to it, treating it from the standpoint of an
individual of the time. The pioneers of seventy-five years ago were a
hardy race, long since disappeared.
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