It is interesting to remember that while the United States contended that Britain had no right to search the ships of other nations, she actually allowed her own officials, in the case of an American sailor who had become a citizen of France and an officer in the French navy, to search the foreign vessel upon which he served and arrest him as a deserter.  A more flagrant violation of the principles she professed is difficult to imagine.  She insisted that this officer was still a citizen of the United States, for he could not become a citizen of another country without the consent of the government of his native country.  So, when it suited her purpose, and in direct defiance of her own proclamation, she did not hesitate to accept England’s contention and adopt the “obnoxious doctrine”—­thus practising the identical principle against which she had declared war.  Truly glaring inconsistency.

While these were the chief of the alleged reasons for war, the whole world knew that the real cause was the jealousy and hatred felt for England by a certain class of United States citizens who “were bound to pick a quarrel with John Bull, excuse or no excuse.”  That there were many and irritating faults on the part of England cannot be denied.  In the light of subsequent events it is not difficult to realize that both governments were in the wrong.  The wisdom born of bitter experience and the sincere friendship of the two nations to-day, sensibly founded on mutual respect, happily renders a repetition of such regrettable scenes outside the pale of possibility.

Strange to say, England had revoked the objectionable Order-in-Council authorizing right of search of American ships for deserters by British men-of-war the very day before war was declared by the United States.  There was no ocean cable in those days.  Had there been, this story might never have been written.  The removal, however, of this one reason for war was not—­when letters duly arrived from England announcing the fact—­accepted by the United States as a reason for an immediate declaration of peace.  This proves that the reasons advanced by the United States for going to war were from first to last not genuine, but mere excuses.  Canada was as Naboth’s vineyard, and Ahab, in the person of the United States, coveted it.  England hesitated to draw the sword on a people “speaking a common tongue, with institutions based upon her own,” but she could not always be expected to “turn the other cheek to the smiter.”

The United States called out an army of 15,000 men for purposes of attack on the Niagara frontier, and commanded General Wadsworth—­of course, on paper—­“to feed and cherish them.”  How well he executed this command remains to be seen.

What of Canada?  Her yeomen forsook ploughshare and broadaxe, seized sword and musket, and rallied to the standard of Brock.  In Upper Canada there was an active force of 950 regulars and marines and 550 militia.  This little army had to defend the seven forts of Kingston, York, George, Erie, Chippewa, Amherstburg, and St. Joseph, not one of which was a fortress of strength, to patrol the lakes and protect a most vulnerable frontier.  It was the opinion of leading military authorities that Canada could never be held against such an enemy.