sure that [the home government] would now gladly take
the state before the war as the general basis of the peace, that
I was prepared to take on me the responsibility of trespassing
upon their instructions thus far. Not only so, but I would at
this moment cheerfully give my life for a peace on this basis. If
peace was possible, it would be on no other. I had indeed no hope
that the proposal would be accepted."

Mr. Clay thought that the British would laugh at this: "They would say,
Ay, ay! pretty fellows you, to think of getting out of the war as well
as you got into it." This was not consoling for the representatives of
that side which had declared war for the purpose of curing grievances
and vindicating alleged rights. But that Mr. Adams correctly read the
wishes of the government was proved within a very few days by the
receipt of express authority from home "to conclude the peace on the
basis of the _status ante bellum_." Three days afterwards, on November
27, three and a half months after the vexatious haggling had been
begun, we encounter in the Diary the first real gleam of hope of a
successful termination: "All the difficulties to the conclusion of a
peace appear to be now so nearly removed, that my colleagues all (p. 088)
consider it as certain. I myself think it probable."

There were, however, some three weeks more of negotiation to be gone
through before the consummation was actually achieved, and the ill
blood seemed to increase as the end was approached. The differences
between the American Commissioners waxed especially serious concerning
the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. Mr. Adams
insisted that if the treaty of peace had been so far abrogated by the
war as to render necessary a re-affirmance of the British right of
navigating the Mississippi, then a re-affirmance of the American
rights in the Northeastern fisheries was equally necessary. This the
English Commissioners denied. Mr. Adams said it was only an exchange
of privileges presumably equivalent. Mr. Clay, however, was firmly
resolved to prevent all stipulations admitting such a right of
navigation, and the better to do so he was quite willing to let the
fisheries go. The navigation privilege he considered "much too
important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a
desert," as he was pleased to describe a right for which the United
States has often been ready to go to war and may