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1813.

Fight of Chesapeake and Shannon.

323

ive. After a few broadsides, the ships came into contact. The Shannon continued to fire grape-shot from two of her guns. The Chesapeake could now reply feebly, and only with musketry. Captain Broke prepared to board. Over decks heaped with slain and slippery with blood the Englishmen sprang upon the yielding foe. The American flag was pulled down, and resistance ceased.

The fight lasted but a quarter of an hour. So few minutes ago the two ships, peopled by seven hundred men in the pride of youth and strength, sailed proudly over seas which smiled in the peaceful sunlight of that summer evening! Now their rigging lies in ruins upon the cumbered decks; their sides are riven by shot; seventy-one dead bodies wait to be thrown overboard; one hundred and fifty-seven men lie wounded and in anguish, some of them to die, some to recover and live out cheerless lives, till the grave opens for their mutilated and disfigured forms. Did these men hate each other with a hatred so intense that they could do no less than inflict these evils upon each other? They had no hatred at all. Their governments differed, and this was their method of ascertaining who was in the right! Surely men will one day be wise enough to adopt some process for the adjustment of differences less wild in its inaccuracy, less brutish in its cruelty, than this.

This victory, so quickly won and so decisive, restored the confidence of England in her naval superiority. The war went on with varying fortune. The Americans, awakening to the greatness of the necessity, put forth vigorous efforts to increase both army and navy. Frequent encounters between single ships occurred. Sometimes the American ship captured or destroyed the British. More frequently now the British ship captured or destroyed the American. The superb fighting capabilities of the race

were splendidly illustrated, but no results of a more solid character can be enumerated.

But meanwhile momentous changes had occurred in Europe. Napoleon had been overthrown, and England was enjoying the brief repose which his residence in Elba afforded. She could bestow some attention now upon her American quarrel. Several regiments of Wellington's soldiers were sent to America, under the command of General Ross, and an attack upon Washington was determined. The force at General Ross's disposal was only three thousand five hundred men. With means so inconsiderable, it seemed rash to attack the capital of a great nation. But the result proved that General Ross had not underestimated the difficulties of the enterprise.

Only seven thousand men could be drawn together to resist the advance of the English. These took post at Bladensburg, where there was a bridge over the Potomac. The English were less numerous, but they were veterans who had fought under Wellington in many battles. To them it was play to rout the undisciplined levies. They dashed upon the enemy, who, scarcely waiting to fire a shot, broke and fled towards Washington in hopeless confusion.

That same evening the British marched quietly into Washington. General Ross had orders to destroy or hold to ransom all public buildings. He offered to spare the national property, if a certain sum of money were paid to him. The authorities declined his proposal. Next day a great and most unjustifiable ruin was wrought. The Capitol, the President's residence, the government offices, even the bridge over the Potomac, all were destroyed. The navy yard and arsenal, with some ships in course of building, were set on fire by the Americans themselves. The President's house was pillaged by the soldiers before it was burned. These devastations were effected in obedience to

1814.

The Treaty of Ghent.

325

peremptory orders from the British Government, on whom rests the shame of proceedings so reprehensible and so unusual in the annals of civilized war. On the same day the British withdrew from the ruins of the burning capital, and retired towards the coast.

The Americans were becoming weary of the war. There was small hope of success, now that Britain had no other enemy to engage her attention. America had no longer a ship-of-war to protect her coasts from insult. Her trade was nearly extinct. Her exports, which were seventy millions of dollars before the war, had sunk to one-tenth of that amount. Two-thirds of the trading classes were insolvent. The revenue hitherto derived from customs had ceased. The credit of the country was not good. Taxation became very oppressive, and thus enhanced extremely the unpopularity of the war. Some of the New England States refused to furnish men or money, and indicated a disposition to make peace for themselves, if they could not obtain it otherwise.

Peace was urgently needed, and happily was near at hand. Late one Saturday night a British sloop-of-war arrived at New York, bearing a treaty of peace, already ratified by the British Government. The cry of "Peace! peace!" rang through the gladdened streets. The city burst into spontaneous illumination. The news reached Boston on Monday morning. Boston was almost beside herself with joy. A multitude of idle ships had long lain at her wharves. Before night carpenters were at work making them ready to go to sea. Sailors were engaged; cargoes were being passed on board. Boston returned without an hour's delay to her natural condition of commercial activity.

British and American commissioners had met at Ghent, and had agreed upon terms of peace. The fruitlessness of

war is a familiar discovery when men have calmness to review its losses and its gains. Both countries had endured much during these three years of hostilities; and now the peace left as they had been before the questions whose settlement was the object of the war.

The treaty was concluded on the 24th December. Could the news have been flashed by telegraph across the Atlantic, much brave life would have been saved. But seven weeks elapsed before it was known in the southern parts of America that the two countries were at peace. And meanwhile one of the bloodiest fights of the war had been fought.

New Orleans, a town of nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, was then, as it is now, one of the great centres of the cotton trade, and commanded the navigation of the Mississippi. The capture of a city so important could not fail to prove a heavy blow to America. An expedition for this purpose was organized. Just when the commissioners at Ghent were felicitating themselves upon the peace they had made, the British army, in storm and intolerable cold, was being rowed on shore within a few miles of New Orleans.

Sir Edward Pakenham, one of the heroes of the Peninsula, commanded the English. The defence of New Orleans was intrusted to General Jackson. Jackson had been a soldier from his thirteenth year. He had spent a youth of extraordinary hardship. He was now a strongwilled, experienced, and skilful leader, in whom his soldiers. had boundless confidence. Pakenham, fresh from the triumphs of the Peninsula, looked with mistaken contempt upon his formidable enemy.

Jackson's line of defence was something over half a mile in length. The Mississippi covered his right flank, an impassable swamp and jungle secured his left. Along his front ran a deep broad ditch, topped by a rampart com

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