and feeling. Nobody asked, that happy night, what were the terms of the treaty: we had got peace-that was enough! I moved about for hours in the ebbing and flowing tide of people, not being aware that I had opened my lips. The next morning I found that I was hoarse from having joined in the exulting cry of peace, peace!

The next day, Sunday, all the churches sent up hymns of thanksgiving for the joyous tidings. I set out in the stage-coach on Monday morning for Connecticut. All along the road, the people saluted us with swinging of hats and cries of rejoicing. At one place, in rather a lonesome part of the road, a schoolmaster came out with the whole school at his heels to ask us if the news was true. We told him it was whereupon he tied his bandanna pockethandkerchief to a broom, swung it aloft, and the whole school hosannaed-" Peace! peace!" At all our stopping places, the people were gathered to rejoice in the good tidings. At one little tavern, I looked into a room, by chance, the door being open, and there I saw the good wife, with a chubby boy in her lap-both in a perfect gale of merriment-the child crying out, "Peath! peath!" Oh, ye makers of war, reflect upon this heartfelt verdict of the people in behalf of peace!

We arrived at New Haven in the evening, and found it illuminated: the next day I reached Hartford, and there was a grand illumination there. The news

spread over the country, carrying with it a wave of shouts and rejoicings. Boston became clamorous with pealing bells; the schools had a jubilee; the blockaded shipping, rotting at the dilapidated wharves, got out their dusty buntings, and these-ragged and forlorn-now flapped merrily in the breeze. At night the city flamed far and wide-from Beacon-street down the bay, telling the glorious tale even unto Cape Cod. So spread the news over the country, everywhere carrying joy to every heart-with, perhaps, a single exception. At Washington, the authors of the war peeped into the dispatches, and found that the treaty had no stipulations against Orders in Council, Paper Blockades, or Impressments! All that could be maintained was, that we had made war, charging the enemy with very gross enormities, and we had made peace, saying not one word about them! Madison and his party had in fact swallowed the declaration of war whole, and it naturally caused some uneasy qualms in the regions of digestion. "Let us, however," said they, "put a good face upon it: we can hide our shame for the moment in the smoke of Jackson's victory; as to the rest, why we can brag the country into a belief that it has been a glorious war!" Madison set the example in a boasting message, and his party organs took up the tune, and have played it bravely till the present day.

But what saith history-not partisan history, not

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history addressed to Buncombe, not history written in subservient demagogism to national vanity-but history, speaking the truth and fearing not? What saith the record ?* Assuredly this, that the war had its origin in partisan interests, and was carried on in a similar spirit; that it was the war of the Administration, and not of the nation, and so far was disastrous and disgraceful. It was begun without preparation, it was carried on in weakness; it was characterized by failure, it was terminated by a treaty which left us where we began-save only that a hundred millions of dollars and thirty thousand lives had been expend

* I commend to the reader the following observations from a calm and sober writer:

"An inquiry here naturally suggests itself-as, after the revocation of the British Orders in Council, Impressment was the only grievance to be redressed by war; and as that question was subsequently waived by our government in the negotiation, what was gained by the war? It has been considered as no small point gained, that ample evidence has been given to Great Britain of our capacity successfully to resist her power, especially upon the ocean, where she had long claimed a vast superiority; and that a guarantee had thus been furnished against future aggression. It is questionable, however, if the result could have been known, or if the unbiased counsels of our older statesmen had prerailed, whether war would have been declared. Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, Macon, and others, were of a pacific disposition. The leading men of the administration were known to have given a reluctant sanction to the war project; but they found themselves under a kind of necessity to yield to the impulsive young politicians-Calhoun, Clay, and a number of others who, it was suspected, were striving to turn the popular prejudices against Great Britain to their own political advantage. Whether the nation has ever obtained an equivalent for the thirty thousand lives, and the hundred millions of money expended; for the loss of property and of several years of prosperous commerce; for the depravation of the public morals, and the train of other evils inseparable from a state of war, is a question which at least admits of a reasonable doubt.”— Young's American Statesman.