War of 1812 Bicentennial

XV

The Great British Influx

The Peace Preliminaries were signed at Ghent on December 24. The Americans had fought and suffered in vain. They had failed to make a "fourteenth State" of Canada, while the original points in dispute were not even mentioned in the Treaty. The whole business made for disintegration rather than unity among themselves, and half a century later broke out the Civil War. Even Jefferson's planting and slave-owning friends had had enough of it and had painfully realised what Sea-power meant. The British blockade of the coast had temporarily ruined American trade. Three years' produce of the bellicose planting States were rotting in the warehousees. They were heartily sick of the war, and it was small comfort that England, to whom it was a side-issue, had suffered only less than themselves and was thoroughly sick of it also. Of the British Provinces, only Upper Canada had suffered at all; but as it was still in great part an undeveloped country, the injuries were partial and but skin deep. Lower Canada, on the other hand, had prospered greatly by war-prices; the Maritime Provinces still more so, as the focus of North American British trade and lucrative privateering. By an irony of fate the intended victims of this foolish war alone profited by it; while the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada, reaped in addition the inspiring prestige of victory.

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