turns in making sea trips, those left behind more eager if possible than the fortunate ones permitted to go. There were four good fights with the British on the sea in 1812, in all of which the Americans won the victory. On August 19th the Constitution, under Captain Isaac Hull, a relative of the general who figured in the disaster at Detroit, three days before, captured the British frigate Guerriere after a two hours' fight off the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On October 18th the Wasp captured the British vessel Frolic, both being taken soon by a British seventy four pounder and carried into Bermuda. On October 25th the United States under Captain Decatur compelled the commander of the British Macedonian to strike his colors, and on December 29th the Constitution, now under Captain Bainbridge, destroyed the British Java, thus giving Old Ironsides the credit of two victories within five months and ending a year of triumph on the ocean. For the flag of England had never been taken in humiliation from a British frigate since the days of John Paul Jones. Now the idea that England was invincible upon the ocean was gone forever, and a neutral nation had asserted its own rights there. Our privateers, too, had been active, over three hundred prizes having been taken during 1812. These naval victories did more to establish our prestige than anything in our history. No one knew or cared about the geography or the conditions of the small land engagements. These naval victories stirred the world. In 1813 there were four important naval duels in which honors were even, each side getting two victories. But one of the American victories was a specially notable one. On June 1st Lawrence had been killed in the fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, his dying words, "Don't give up the ship", being taken as a motto by Oliver Hazard Perry who undertook to create a fleet for the control of Lake Erie. He captured a British brig, bought such American boats as he could, and then built five more vessels out of green timber cut from the shores of the lake. On September 10 he attacked the British squadron and after a hard fight, during which he changed his flagship, crossing from one vessel to another in the midst of a fierce fire, he compelled its surrender, this being the first time in England's history that a whole fleet had been surrender

ed. Perry's laconic dispatch to General Harrison has become one of the famous messages of the western hemisphere: "We have met the enemy and they are ours, two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop." This victory was followed by a land movement into western Canada, where the British were defeated at the battle of the Thames, the great Indian Tecumseh being slain. As a result Detroit was recovered, and the British menace in the west was removed, while the Indians hastened to smoke the pipe of peace and declare submission to the United States. In 1814, just about a year after Perry's victory, Captain Macdonough on Lake Champlain won another great triumph over a British force which had more ships, more men and more guns.

One other campaign of the war is to be mentioned, a campaign of comparative unimportance from the standpoint of the war department, but one fruitful from that of the political history of the United States. After the close of the Napoleonic war with the retirement of the great Frenchman to Elba in 1814, the English planned to send more troops to America, and some of the trained soldiers from the battlefields of the continent started for New Orleans, no doubt planning to force from the United States some concessions of territory as indemnity. Some of the officers took their families along, intending to settle in Louisiana, and there were many evidences of determination to take possession of the country permanently. The war department had no resources at command to enable it to meet such a crisis. There was no adequate army for the relief of the southwest. There was no money left for equipment. There was bitterness of feeling throughout the country, the people of New England calling a convention at Hartford to consider some of the matters growing out of the war. No one hoped or dreamed of any success at New Orleans. But Andrew Jackson gathered together a motley army of Louisiana militia, volunteers from Tennessee and Kentucky, pirates under the notorious Lafitte, free negroes, and a small number of regulars. These took up a strong position behind a canal which had the additional protection of a rampart behind it and an impassable cypress swamp just to the east. Here they awaited the ten thousand

veterans under Sir Edward Pakenham, the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington. There were about half as many Americans, but each was a dead shot and each got his man. When the battle ended in victory for the Americans with only seven killed and six wounded, as General Jackson reported, the English leader had fallen and with him over two thousand of his men. The deadly accuracy of the western army was attested by the discovery that more than a thousand of these were shot between the eyes. It took just twenty five minutes to put the enemy to rout in this main engagement, so terrible was the fire from behind the barricade where the tactics so successful at Bunker Hill were repeated by Jackson's men. It was not a great battle as the world views battles, but it was so unexpected, so complete a victory, and came at such a peculiar time that the rejoicing was tremendous. The war on land had been a dismal failure, the management of the war department had been open to continued criticism. There had been bad feeling among the army men, with backbiting and tale bearing on every hand. The administration generally had been condemned by the people, and now, right at the time of the conclusion of the peace there came the news of the great victory at New Orleans, and every official was glad to sing the praises of Andrew Jackson and swell the paean of victory, hoping thus to make the country forget the mistakes of the Their immediate object was accomplished, and with it another not then expected, in that Andrew Jackson was made a presidential candidate and the battle of New Orleans was made one of the great battles of our history.

And so the second war came to an end with its accompaniment of glorious victory. The United States gained nothing in territory or rights. The great question of impressment of American seamen remained unmentioned in the treaty. The close of the European wars with the banishment of Napoleon put an end to the invasion of neutral rights on the ocean. So far as our country was concerned these were dead questions forever. Probably the same result would have been reached without war, in the natural course of European events. At any rate the treaty did not cover that for which we had contended. But while we gained nothing of much value from the

treaty we did gain so much from the war that it has justly been called the second war for independence. For we cut loose from Europe and began to work out our own destiny. Up to this time our politicians had been divided in interest between English and French sympathizers. No action was ever taken without a thought of its bearing upon European nations. The questions before the people had been questions of external interest, now they became distinctly internal. The triumphs of our navy and the achievement at New Orleans had awakened the national pride. The Indians had been humbled by Harrison at Tippecanoe and on other fields. The Revolutionary heroes were passing from the stage and a new company of younger men were pressing to the front pledged to internal improvement, protective tariff, better financial machinery. With new leaders and new interests the United States started upon a period of great activity. Its population began to move westward. New states soon came into the Union-Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama. Those who had favored the war were the controlling powers; those who had opposed it lost their influence. Political parties changed, and for five years there was everywhere substantial harmony as all people, everywhere, joined to plan and work for the upbuilding of the country, the era of good feeling which came with Monroe's presidency giving strength for the next struggle, this time to be one over the great domestic problem of human slavery.

THE ARMY IN THE MEXICAN WAR.

BY CHARLES M. HARVEY.

[Charles M. Harvey, editor; born Boston, Mass., 1848; has done editorial work for New York, Chicago and St. Louis papers and since 1886 has been associate editor and chief political writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and reviews, writing chiefly on political and sociological topics; author of History of the Republican Party, Handbook of American Politics, History of Missouri, etc.]

The demands of physical geography which necessitated the annexation of Florida forced the acquisition of Texas. The conditions prevailing at the time made the acquisition of Texas bring war. By gaining Florida-the western extension of the region of that name as well as the present state of Florida-the territory of the United States on its southern as well as its southwestern side was rounded out to the boundaries which nature prescribed. The United States obtained command of the border of the Atlantic down to Key West and the control of the shores of the gulf of Mexico from that point to the mouth of the Mississippi (and by the purchase of Louisiana sixteen years earlier the shore westward to the mouth of the Sabine). The accession of Texas extended the country's control of the north and west shore of that body of water from the mouth of the Sabine onward to the mouth of the Rio Grande, made the gulf of Mexico a United States lake and gave the country a southwestern extension to its natural line, or near it. The war which this accession of territory brought carried the country's western boundary to the Pacific

ocean

Ethnical considerations reinforced the geographical influences in making Texas an object of much interest to the United States before the close of the first third of the last century. A few Americans had drifted to Texas even before the annexation of Louisiana in 1803. The conquest of Texas was one of the objects of the Burr conspiracy in 1806. Burr undoubtedly relied on the aid of the Americans in Texas in the accomplishment of his plans. Moses Austin, a native of Connecticut, but a resident of Missouri at that time and engaged in lead