TIE FISHERIES, 281 
of the Commissioners to secure in that treaty recog- 
nition of the fishery rights of the United States. But 
it is due to the memory of the American Commission- 
ers, and especially to Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Adams, and 
Mr. Bayard, to say that, in all the negotiation at Ghent, 
they and their associates were hampered by the dis- 
couraged state of mind of the American Government, 
embarrassed, as it was, by political difficulties at 
home, and alarmed, if not terrified, by the triumph of 
Great Britain in Spain and France, and the total over- 
throw of Napoleon, which seemed to leave the Brit- 
ish Government free to dispatch overwhelming forces, ° 
of sea and Jand against the United States. 
The autumn subsequent to those events was the 
darkest period in the history of the country. Noth- 
ing but the shock produced by the great change in 
the whole face of affairs in Europe could have extort- 
ed from the American Government those final instruc- 
tions to our Commissioners, which authorized them 
to agree to the status quo ante bellum as the basis of 
negotiation,—which spoke of our right to the fisheries, 
and of our foreign commerce, in equivocdl terms,— 
and which, indeed, left the Commissioners free to con- 
clude such a treaty as their own judgment should 
approve under existing circumstances, provided only 
they saved the rights of the United States as an inde- 
pendent nation. 
How different might and would have been those 
instructions, had the Government but struggled on a 
little longer against the adverse circumstances of the 
hour! Courage and procrastination would have made 
