a present, were no longer to be tolerated; and these the Revolutionary soldier killed for all time in America.

The new American nation was a republic, but the American army was a true democracy and in and through it democracy came to the world and freedom lives.

THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812.

BY FRANCIS W. SHEPARDSON.

[Francis Wayland Shepardson, associate professor of American history, Chicago university; born Cheviot, Ohio, October 15, 1862; graduated from Denison university, 1882; instructor Young Ladies' institute, Granville, Ohio, 1883-7; editor Granville Times, 1887-90; graduate student Yale university, 1890-2; docent University of Chicago, 1892-3; university extension assistant in history, 1893-5; instructor in American history and secretary of the lecture-study department of the university extension division, 1895-7; acting recorder 1897-8; assistant professor American history, 1897-1901; secretary to the president, 1897-1904; dean of the senior colleges, 1904.]

The second war between the United States and England, sometimes called the second war for independence, and usually referred to as the war of 1812, was a strange affair. The more carefully it is studied the more peculiar it appears. The factors entering into it were many and varied. There was the commercial greed of France and England and their rivalry in European politics; there was the ambition of Napoleon; there was the economic situation among the laboring classes of England; there were the differences of opinion in America, where the interests of the commercial element in the east came into conflict with the theories of the agricultural regions of the west; there were the wrongs of the Indians and the clamors of the border folk against them. Such were some of the elements which were to be reckoned with, and which shaped one feature of the war or another. It is a remarkable fact, too, that the principal avowed cause of the war was actually removed several days before the declaration of war, and another equally interesting fact, that what has been accepted as the greatest battle of the war was fought after the treaty of peace had been signed. In these two last mentioned matters the trouble was with the lack of speedy means of communication. Had the Atlantic cable been in existence in 1812, there might have been no declaration of war, and there certainly would have been no battle of New Orleans to make Andrew Jackson a great hero and a future president of the United States. The American people were hopelessly divided upon the wisdom of making war. The people of the east resisted with more and more

vehemence as the years went by, coming close to the verge of treason, while those of other parts of the country seemed to push matters farther than was desirable to keep the new nation harmonious. Planned as an offensive war with the capture of Canada as the definite object, it became a war of defense in which our capital city was captured, our public buildings burned, our territory seized, and from which we were glad enough to escape in the status quo ante-the condition before the war-leaving the annexation of Canada forgotten in our desire to get out whole.

The United States was not prepared for war. In fact the United States has never once been prepared for war. Our policy of peace and freedom from entangling alliances, our isolation from the powers of the old world, and our lack of a standing army have combined to make us careless of these details which are scrupulously attended to by warlike nations. No war ever illustrated this so well as the second war. In the first place we were young and undeveloped. Our territory was vast and our population had been growing and spreading far faster than our financial condition would permit us to keep pace with. There was a marked lack of means of communication. The era of canals and railroads was a score

of years in the future. There were few roads or bridges or ferries. There were main lines of travel, to be sure, but when the traveler turned a little way inland from the coast it was apparent that travel was difficult, dangerous and extremely tedious. Detroit was a far distant outpost. New Orleans was a remote port, not to be visited overland, but available by water only. The east had little conception of geographical conditions in the west; the west felt isolated and ignored by the east. This lack of unity was natural. It is not to be wondered at at all. It would have been a miracle had the various sections of the country been welded together into a homogeneous mass, when every possible influence except that of blood relationship and perhaps a small sort of pride in the achievements of the Revolution, tended inevitably to separate east from west, north from south. When, now, to this geographical separation there was added the clearly defined difference of opinion regarding the advisability of en

gaging in war, the foolishness of the struggle seems apparent. From the standpoint of a cool consideration the thing to be done undoubtedly was to look after our own growth, husband our strength, make our preparations, and then, when all ready, attack the giants of Europe who were injuring us daily for their own selfish ends.

In the second place our fiscal system was sadly deranged. If it was a questionable act of wisdom to engage in a war against one of the great powers of the world, when our people were loosely joined together, scattered over a wide range of territory having poor means of intercommunication, and divided upon the main question, it was even more foolish to declare war, when our finances were in bad condition, our machinery for borrowing and administering rusty, and the money of the country in the hands of those who were opposed to the war as hostile to their commercial interests. Since 1791 the government's finances had been handled by the Bank of the United States, an institution founded by Alexander Hamilton as part of his comprehensive plan for the centralization of the powers of the government. During the twenty years for which it was chartered it had met with much opposition from the states' rights, strict construction party which had been in power since Jefferson's accession in 1801. When the time came for a recharter this opposition made its power manifest, and by an exceedingly close vote congress in 1811 refused to extend the charter and the bank went into liquidation. This deranged the finances of the country which were in poor condition at the time of declaration of war the next year.

In the third place the organization of the military forces was woefully inefficient. The secretary of war, William Eustis of Massachusetts, made a conspicuous failure of administration and was succeeded in the middle of the war by John Armstrong of New York, who had equally poor success for a year and a half, when he was followed by James Monroe, the secretary of state, who held both offices until the close of the war. At the outbreak of the war the generals were mostly old men, schooled in the Revolutionary war and living on reputations made in the past. Their ideas were old fashioned,

they themselves were sluggish because of age, and in more than one case they were incapacitated for active duty because of too much indulgence in strong drink. They delighted in high sounding proclamations calling upon men to dare and do, but there never was a case when anything was dared or done. The army they commanded was small and poorly equipped, less than seven thousand men being enrolled, and scattered all over the country, doing garrison duty, fighting Indians, and in no way prepared for war with the trained battalions of England. In the absence of a standing army the country was dependent upon the militia and the volunteers. But, under the constitution, the militia can be called out only to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. The best equipped and organized militia were in the older states of the east, and as the people of these were bitterly opposed to the war their governors refused to permit the national authorities to make use of their troops. Some folks called this treason, but there was more than a question whether the militia should be used in what was plainly an offensive war. This was the condition of things from the military standpoint. There was nothing to be done by the advocates of the war except to show that it was a just one, in which every patriot should join, and one which no self respecting nation could avoid. That brings us to consider the causes of the war.

To understand the situation there must be a review of the history since Washington's day. Although England recognized our independence in 1783, she did not send a minister to us until two years after the constitution had gone into operation, that is, until 1791. Though she agreed in the treaty to give up all military establishments within our territory, she held a number of western posts until 1796, and there was just ground for thinking that she used these points of vantage to stir up the Indians against the pioneer settlers, largely in the interests of her own trade. Sometimes, even, "Indians" were seen whose faces and necks were stained with pokeberry juice but whose white skins, uncovered in the stress of battle, revealed their true identity. The whole attitude of England was domineering, bullying, and mortifying to our pride. Her