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he particular feature which differentiated the campaign of 1814 from those of the two preceding years was that through the downfall of Napoleon the British Government was enabled to send a large body of veteran troops to America. Formal peace with France under the restored Bourbons was signed May 30th. On June 2d a division intended for operations in the Chesapeake sailed from Bordeaux, reaching Bermuda July 25th. In the same month reënforcements began to arrive in Canada; the effective strength under Sir George Prevost rising, by the official returns, from 16,117 in June to 29,437 in August.

There was at the opening of the season still a period of opportunity for the American arms, had the Government been efficient. Instead of gaining, however, it appeared rather to have lost, through discouragement,such small portions of military vigor and sagacity as had at any time belonged to it. Circumstances, indeed, were not promising. The enemy’s numbers had not materially increased up to July 1, 1814, but its own also had received no sensible augmentation; and the British position on the Niagara frontier was decisively better than it had been, through the possession of the forts on both sides of the river’s mouth. By this they not only had safer anchorage for the fleet, but, still more important, the power of passing reënforcements at will, and secretly, from one shore to the other. An American general operating on the Niagara peninsula was thus in continual danger of having his landwise communications impaired, by sudden attack, concentrated for the purpose at Fort Niagara; while, to make the situation worse, Yeo during the winter had succeeded in out-building Chauncey, so that the control of the water passed to the British from May 1st to August 1st. On Lake Champlain conditions were no better. It will suffice to quote the words of General Izard, who relieved Wilkinson on May 4th: “I cannot, on this (New York) side of Lake Champlain, produce an aggregate force of more than two thousand effectives, and these raw, ill-clad, and worse disciplined. The brigade in Vermont is not proportionally stronger.”

On the seacoast also, conditions from the defensive point of view remained essentially as they had been. The news of approaching British reënforcements, and the reports of operations projected against the principal seaports, stirred up the people to take local precautions for defence; the General Government having neither the means nor the energy to accomplish the work of protection assigned to it by the Constitution. In an hour of emergency, private enterprise and individual contributions of money and labor were evoked to effect, under the guidance of committees of defence, that which the responsible government of the nation through a dozen years had neglected to do. One good result was produced by the universal uneasiness and apprehension. The sense of national danger, of the projects of territorial acquisition entertained by the British Government, aroused the latent feeling of patriotism, which hitherto had been suppressed through discontent with the measures of the government, and lack of respect for its capacity, as shown in the conduct of the war and of the preceding negotiations.