A History of the American People

one, drawn up at the end of his life, consisted of thirteen men, including Jackson, Clay, John C.
Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, who had conspired together [and] used up their faculties in base and dirty tricks to thwart my progress in life.' Adams got on badly with all his colleagues, who, he claimed, kept late hours and gambled all night, having been corrupted by Clay, whom Adams also accused of making a pass at a chambermaid. They disagreed on most of the peace-issues in dispute, representing as they did quite different regional interests. Happily, the British, having secured Canada, were not too concerned at driving a hard bargain. After their assault on Washington hadtaught the
Americans a lesson,' they were all for a quick settlement. The Washington disaster also spurred
Madison and Monroe to hurry up the talks. Even before it, the banks in Philadelphia and
Baltimore had gone bankrupt. The actual sack of Washington detonated a long-smoldering
financial crisis, and the big banks in New York went under. The Treasury was empty, as Gallatin
well knew. But in New England the federalists, their own banks sound, watched the ruin of the
pro-war states and the confusion of the ruling Republicans with complacency. They held a
convention of the New England states at Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814. Contrary to
rumor, they did not actively discuss secession, but they drew up plans to oppose any further war
measures, including conscription and further restraints on trade.'
In October a weary Madison instructed a still wearier Monroe, who was looking after the War
Department as well as his own-'for an entire month I never went to bed,' he complained-to try to
get a settlement as quickly as possible with the status quo ante bellum as the basis of negotiations.' The Duke of Wellington too thought there was nothing more to be gained by fighting and Lord Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary, was equally anxious to bereleased
from the millstone of the American war.’ In fact the status quo formula was the simplest solution
to a war both sides now silently admitted should never have been started. So it was accepted.
Such matters as Newfoundland fishery rights and navigation on the Mississippi were dropped.
The actual issues of the war were ignored. All the Treaty of Ghent did was to provide for the
cessation of hostilities immediately it was ratified; the release of prisoners; surrender of virtually
all territory occupied by either side; the pacification of the Indians, and the more accurate
drawing of boundaries, to be handed over to commissioners.
More by accident than design, the Treaty of Ghent proved one of history's great acts of
statesmanship. After the signing, Adams remarked to one of the English delegates: `I hope this
will be the last treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States." It was. The very
fact that both sides withdrew to their prewar positions, that neither could describe the war as a
success or a defeat, and that the terms could not be presented, then or later, as a triumph or a
robbery-all worked for permanency and helped to erase from the national memory of both
countries a struggle which had been bitter enough at the time. And the absence of crowing or
recrimination meant that the treaty could serve as a plinth on which to build a friendly,
commonsense relationship between the two great English-speaking peoples.
The fact that Jackson's victory at New Orleans came too late to influence the treaty does not
mean it was of no consequence. Quite the reverse. It too was decisive in its way for, though the
treaty made no mention of the fact, it involved major strategic, indeed historic, concessions on
both sides. Castlereagh was the first British statesman of consequence who accepted the
existence of the United States not just in theory but in practice as a legitimate national entity to
be treated as a fellow-player in the world game. This acceptance was marked by the element of
unspoken trust which lay behind the treaty's provisions. America, for its part, likewise accepted
the existence of Canada as a permanent, legitimate entity, not just an unresolved problem left