xpected
that a few months would find large portions of the United States in
British possession, as was in fact the sea-coast of Maine, east of
Penobscot Bay, after September first.

The instructions to the British peace commissioners were based on the
_uti possedetis_, {239} as the British government intended it to be by
the end of the year, when they expected to hold half of Maine, the
northern parts of New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, the
north-western post of Mackinnac, and possibly New Orleans and Mobile.
In addition, there was to be an Indian territory established under
British guarantee west of the old treaty line of 1795, and all American
fishing rights were to be terminated. On the other side, the American
instructions, while hinting that England would do well to cede Canada,
made the abandonment of the alleged right of impressments by England a
_sine qua non_. Clearly no agreement between such points of view was
possible; and the outcome of the negotiation was bound to depend on the
course of events in the United States. The first interviews resulted
in revealing that part of the British instructions related to the
Indian territory with intimations of coming demands for territorial
cessions. This the Americans instantly rejected on August 25, and the
negotiation came to a standstill for several weeks.

The three British negotiators, Admiral Gambier, Henry Goulburn, and
Doctor Adams were men of slight political or personal authority, and
their part consisted chiefly in repeating their instructions and
referring American replies back to Lord Castlereagh, {240} the Foreign
Secretary, or to Lord Bathurst, who acted as his substitute while he
attended the Congress of Vienna. The American commissioners, including
the three original ones, Adams, Bayard, and Gallatin, to whom Clay and
Russell of Massachusetts were now added, clearly understood the
situation, and had already warned Madison that an insistence on the
abandonment of impressments would result in the failure to secure any
treaty. In October, 1814, a despatch yielded this point and left the
negotiators to make the best fight they could, unhampered by positive
instructions. Undoubtedly they would have been compelled to submit to
hard terms, in spite of their personal ability, which stood exceedingly
high, had not news of the repulse at Baltimore, of the treaty of July,
1814, by which the north-western Indians agreed to fight the English,
and, on O