54 Naval War of 1812 



boats, our men could have done nothing; had we 

 not possessed good men, the heavy frigates would 

 have availed us little. Poor ships and impotent 

 artillery had lost the Dutch almost their entire 

 navy; fine ships and heavy cannon had not saved 

 the French and Spanish from the like fate. We 

 owed our success to putting sailors even better 

 than the Dutch on ships even finer than those built 

 by the two Latin seaboard powers. 



The first point to be remembered in order to 

 write a fair account of this war is that the difference 

 in fighting skill, which certainly existed between the 

 two parties, was due mainly to training, and not to 

 the nature of the men. It seems certain that the 

 American had in the beginning somewhat the ad 

 vantage, because his surroundings, partly physical 

 and partly social and political, had forced him into 

 habits of greater self-reliance. Therefore, on the 

 average, he offered rather the best material to start 

 with ; but the difference was very slight, and totally 

 disappeared under good training. The combatants 

 were men of the same race, differing but little from 

 one another. On the New England coast the En 

 glish blood was as pure as in any part of Britain; 

 in New York and New Jersey it was mixed with 

 that of the Dutch settlers and the Dutch are by 

 race nearer to the true old English of Alfred and 

 Harold than are, for example, the thoroughly Angli 

 cized Welsh of Cornwall. Otherwise, the infusion 

 of new blood into the English race on this side of the 

 Atlantic has been chiefly from three sources Ger- 



