[Footnote 40:  Miami affair.]

[Footnote 41:  Doubtless the afterwards celebrated Tecumseh, or his brother.]

[Footnote 42:  An American fort on the river St. Lawrence, about seventy miles from Kingston, and one hundred and twenty-five miles from Montreal.]

CHAPTER VI.

Our memoir having now reached the year 1812, in which the United States of America declared war against Great Britain, we proceed to give a brief review of the causes which led to that event; and in doing so it will be necessary to go back to the commencement of the century.

The first president of America, the immortal Washington,[43] and his successor, Adams, entertained friendly sentiments towards the British government and people; but early in 1801, Jefferson succeeded the latter functionary as president, being elected by ten of the sixteen states then constituting the Union.  Jefferson was as inimical to England as he was favorable to France, so was his secretary of state, and successor in the presidential chair, Madison.  Although there were many intervenient heart-burnings, it was not until the year 1807, when Jefferson was a second time president, that the government of the United States assumed a decidedly hostile attitude towards Great Britain.  The Berlin decree, in which the French ruler ventured to declare the British islands in a state of blockade, and to interdict all neutrals from trading with the British ports in any commodities whatever, produced fresh retaliatory orders in council, intended to support England’s maritime rights and commerce, and to counteract Bonaparte’s continental system.  The Berlin decree was a gross infringement of the law of nations and an outrage on neutral rights, which especially called for resistance from the Americans, a neutral and trading people; but they neither resisted nor seriously remonstrated against it.  Other causes of dispute arose from the determination of the British government to exclude the Americans from the blockaded ports of France, and from that inexhaustible source of quarrel, the impressment of British seamen from American vessels, especially as the difficulty of distinguishing British from American seamen led occasionally to the impressment of American native born citizens.  In June, 1807, occurred the rencontre between his majesty’s ship Leopard and the Chesapeake, which terminated in the forcible extraction from the American frigate of four deserters from British ships of war.  The British government instantly disavowed this act, and recalled Vice-Admiral Berkeley, who had given the order to search the Chesapeake.  Jefferson, however, not only issued a proclamation interdicting all British ships of war from entering the ports of the United States, but proposed to congress to lay an embargo on American vessels, and to compel the trading ships of every other nation to quit the American harbours.  This proposition was warmly