our thousand to aid in
harrying the Atlantic coast, and later nine thousand to seize the mouth
of the Mississippi. Yet, strangely, these hosts fared worse, because
of hard fortune and poor leadership, than the handful of militia and
regulars who had borne the brunt of the war in the first two years.
Under Ross they captured Washington and burned the official buildings;
but under Prevost they failed at Plattsburg; and under Pakenham, in
January, 1815, they failed against Andrew Jackson's sharpshooters at New
Orleans.

Before the last-named fight occurred, peace had been made. Both sides
were weary of the war, which had now, by the seeming end of the struggle
between England and Napoleon in which it was an incident, lost whatever
it formerly had of reason. Though Napoleon was still in Elba, Europe
was far from being at rest, and the British Ministers, backed by
Wellington's advice, were keen to end the war. They showed their
contempt for the issues at stake by sending to the peace conference at
Ghent three commissioners as incompetent as ever represented a great
power, Gambier, Goulburn, and Adams. To face these the United States had
sent John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, James Bayard, and
Jonathan Russell, as able and astute a group of players for great stakes
as ever gathered round a table. In these circumstances the British
representatives were lucky to secure peace on the basis of the status
quo ante. Canada had hoped that sufficient of the unsettled Maine
wilderness would be retained to link up New Brunswick with the inland
colony of Quebec, but this proposal was soon abandoned. In the treaty
not one of the ostensible causes of the war was even mentioned.

The war had the effect of unifying Canadian feeling. Once more it had
been determined that Canada was not to lose her identity in the nation
to the south. In Upper Canada, especially in the west, there were many
recent American settlers who sympathized openly with their kinsmen, but
of these some departed, some were jailed, and others had a change of
heart. Lower Canada was a unit against the invader, and French-Canadian
troops on every occasion covered themselves with glory. To the
Canadians, as the smaller people, and as the people whose country had
been the chief battle ground, the war in later years naturally bulked
larger than to their neighbors. It left behind it unfortunate legacies
of hostility to the United States and, among the governing cl