Ohio History Journal

The Centennial of Perry's Victory.        63

 

an approximation of the same moral responsibility for nations

in dealing with each other that both good form and law impose

upon individuals dealing with each other in society. It will

always be a source of regret to me that when England and

France were willing to enter into general and unlimited arbi-

tration treaties with us, and the treaties were signed, they failed

for lack of ratification by the Senate.  They would not have

made war any less probable between us and either England or

France than it is today, perhaps, because it does not seem pos-

sible in any event, but they would have put in substantial form

the actual spirit of our friendship for these countries and would

have held up an example of inestimable value to the civilized

world. Just so the century of natural good will and trust evi-

denced in our undefended boundary reaching from ocean to

ocean makes an object lesson to the nations that grows more

powerful as the decades pass.

And so we are here today to mark the rearing of this beacon

light of perpetual peace upon this unsalted sea that serves the

commerce of two great peoples. Little could Perry have thought

in the struggle that he had in building his puny fleet, in the stress

he was under in the height of the battle, in the victory that he

announced in his famous words to General Harrison, that his

work would be remembered for one hundred years as the har-

binger of a perpetual peace; and while we venerate the energy,

the integrity, the skill, the patriotism, the self-sacrifice that

brought him and his men their great triumph, today we cherish

not so much its evidence of American manhood and love of

country as the teaching that its memory brings to the world of

the practical possibility of unending love and peace between

international neighbors.

 

 

ADDRESS OF HON. JAMES A. MCDONALD.

Dr. James A. McDonald of Toronto, Canada, followed ev-

President Taft, with the following address:

One hundred years ago today, within sight of the spot where

we now stand, and at this very hour, was being fought the battle

of Lake Erie.

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64        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications. In the light of modern naval warfare, judged by the standard of the super-dreadnought and the submarine, of the airship and the fourteen-inch gun, that battle was a small affair. Nine small sailing vessels on one side, six on the other, not more than three out of the fifteen being of any account even in that day, and not a thousand men all told, of whom the major part were not seamen at all-such were the forces that met in the battle of Lake Erie. One gun from a modern man-of-war would throw

more metal in one charge than their entire broadsides, and would shatter both fleets in the twinkling of an eye. As a struggle between man and man, and as an incident in the war of which it formed a part, the battle of Lake Erie has its own interest and its own importance. It deserves to be re- membered. In the heroism displayed, heroism on both sides, heroism in the seasoned sailors, heroism among the raw men from the shore, it is worthy of a place of high honor in these centennial celebrations. Like the equally decisive battles in which the Canadians were victorious, the battles of Chrysler's Farm and of Chateauguay, this battle of Lake Erie, which gave

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victory to the Americans, had in it incidents of valor and en-

durance on both sides of which neither country needs to be

ashamed.

In the light of the hundred years through which we of to-day

read the story of that one battle, and of that whole war, the

lesson, the supreme and abiding lesson, for the United States

and for Canada, is this: the utter futility and inconsequence of

war as a means for the just settlement of disputes between these

two nations. That lesson we both have learned. That war was

our last war. It will remain our last. Never again will the

armored troops of the United States and Canada meet except in

friendly review, or, if the day ever comes, to stand side by side

and shoulder to shoulder in the Armageddon of the nations.

Witness these great lakes for nigh a hundred years swept clean

of every battleship, and this transcontinental boundary line for

four thousand miles undefended save by the civilized instincts

and the intelligent good-will of both nations. And having

learned that great lesson, having proved its worth through a hun-

dred years, the United States and Canada, these two English-

speaking peoples of America, have earned the right to stand up

and teach the nations. International peace and good-will is

America's message to all the world.

Go back to the battle of Lake Erie. Read the impartial

story of that war. Mark how futile it was, how inconsequent,

even how inglorious. See how it left unsettled the points alleged

to be in dispute between Britain and the United States-rights

of neutrals in war, the right of search, the unfixed boundary-

points which were settled after the war was over by agreement

and treaty, and not by brute force.

What lay behind the War of 1812? That war was declared

by the United States against Britain. Its primal cause, however,

was not American at all, but European. The United States was

involved only indirectly and Canada not at all. The vital issue

lay rather in the struggle, in the age-long European struggle, of

free nationhood against the barbaric notion of world-empire.

Great Britain stood for the rights of free nationhood. The

dream of world-empire found its last tragic expression in the

vaulting ambition and matchless brain of the great Napoleon.

Vol. XXIII-5.

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In that struggle Britain stood alone. Italy, Holland, Austria.

Prussia, Spain, one after another all bowed low to Bonaparte's

masterful will on bloody fields of war. Even Russia, apart and

impregnable among her snows, came to terms. All the nations

of Europe yielded up their strength for the service of Napoleon,

and, obedient to his decree, at Berlin and Milan they refused

commercial relations with the one nation which defied the

Colossus that bestrode the world. Had he won, had his despot's

dream come true, then the glory of free nationhood, not for

Europe alone, but for Britain and perhaps for the world, had

passed, and, it may be, had passed forever.

That struggle meant life or death for Britain. Had Napo-

leon succeeded in throwing all of Britain's foreign trade into

neutral hands it could mean only death. In that struggle, as the

statesmen of England then saw it, there was no room for neutral

trading nations. Neutral rights, as manipulated by Napoleon,

meant the immediate destruction of Britain's commercial inde-

pendence. In the end it meant, not the prosperity of the

neutrals, but Napoleon's domination of the world.

The War of 1812 was declared by the United States for the

purpose of asserting her trading rights as a neutral in the war

that involved Europe. When the European situation was solved

by the overthrow of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba, the

alleged causes of the war between Britain and the United States

became purely academic, and in the treaty of peace, signed in

1814, those points in dispute were not even mentioned. Indeed,

it was not until 1856, in the Declaration of Paris, that the rights,

the just rights, of neutrals were established among the nations.

This last war between the two great English-speaking world-

powers was proved, proved in itself, proved by the history of its

issues, to be fruitless for good to either nation, unless it be

taken as convincing evidence of war's incurable futility.

Not only is war ineffectual as a means for the just settle-

ment of disputes between civilized nations, but by the very irony

of fate, most wars have reactions quite the opposite of their

original intention. The undesigned reactions of war are the

surprises of history.

In the 13th century and after, the Dukes of Austria tried,

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by sheer brute power, to tighten their feudal grasp on the free

peasantry of the Alpine valleys. The result of their wars was

Austria's humiliation and shame. Out of the struggle for liberty

was born a new Switzerland, united, free, invincible.

The Battle of Bannockburn, in the 1₄th century, tells the

same story. England's feudal king sought to lord it as sovereign

over what had hitherto been the wild and divided North.

Proud Edward's power was broken. Scotland was united. Out

of "oppression's woes and pains" comes a new and sturdy nation

with its deathless slogan, "Scots wha hae."

In the 18th century the aggressive war party in Britain,

against the better judgment and the finer instincts of the nation,

and in the teeth of the eloquent protests of Pitt and Burke, in

the blindness of the mere bureaucrat determined, by the sword if

needs be, to coerce to their own policy the free-born colonies in

America. Their folly went wide of the mark. They failed, as

they were bound to fail. Instead of a larger domain and more

efficient power, Britain lost her first empire. Out of the storm

and stress, the American Colonies, North and South, just because

they were sons of the British breed, arose, a welded nation,

holding on high their Declaration of Independence.

Similarly in 1812 the dominant war-party in this new-born

Republic, blind to the real genius of the nation, deaf to the warn-

ings of its highest instincts, and in defiance of the recorded

protests of some of the greatest of its States, cherished the hope

of shifting its northern boundary from the Great Lakes to the

Arctic and making the Republic coterminous with the continent.

They also failed. The Fates were against them, too. The

Canadian pioneers, they, also, were men of British blood. The

undesigned reaction of the war of 1812 is the Canada of to-day.

Let there be no mistake. The readings of history are plain.

In the pangs of 1812 the soul of Canadian nationality began to be

born. That war was indeed Canada's national war. In it the

United States was divided, Britain was reluctant, but Canada

was in grim and deadly earnest. All Canadians-the French-

Canadians in the valley of the St. Lawrence, the colonists from

Britain, and the Loyalists from New England and the South-

all these for the first time made common cause. To the French-

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Canadian, who cared nothing about the cry, "free trade and

sailors' rights," the American appeared as an invader, the

despoiler of his home, the enemy of his people, and under De

Salaberry, at the Battle of Chateauguay, the French-Canadian

militiamen, fighting under the British flag, defeated the most

extensive strategic movement of the whole war. From the St.

Lawrence to the St. Clair the Canadian pioneers were the

Loyalists of 1776. For them the war of 1812 meant a fight for

their new homes against their oldtime enemies. The impact of

that war drove into one camp French-speaking and English-

speaking, and out of that community of sympathies and interests

emerged in due time Canadian nationality.

That war did more. It not only welded together French-

speaking and English-speaking, but it bound all Canada with ties

stronger than steel to the motherland of Britain. Within one

generation Canadians, having defended their country side by side

with British regulars against invasion from without, demanded

from Britain self-government within; and they won not only

representative institutions such as the United States inherited,

but Britain's latest achievement, responsible government as well.

When the scattered Provinces of Canada gathered themselves

together under one responsible Canadian Government there ap-

peared an absolutely new thing in the political achievements of

the world: a new nation that had not severed its historic ties or

sacrificed its historic background. That new nation, loyal to the

old flag, awakened in Britain a new conception of Empire, and

led the way for Newfoundland and Australia and New Zealand

and South Africa into that civilized "imperium" which constitutes

the British Empire of to-day.

Come back now to the war of 1812. Come back to the

battle of Lake Erie. Call up the men whose blood reddened

these waters, and whose valor gave that struggle all it has of

glory. Let them all look up and see what we now behold. Let

the Canadians rise, the men in whose hearts the fires of hate and

fear burned hot. Let them look southward across the lake, far

as the Gulf and wide as from sea to sea. Let them multiply the

eight million Americans of that day into the hundred millions of

to-day, and count every man a friend. Let them see this great

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nation, greatest among the world's Republics, with power to

achieve what it has greatly planned, standing four-square among

the nations, pledged, irretrievably pledged, to the world's free-

dom, good-will and peace.    What a glad surprise for the

Canadians of a hundred years ago!

Let the Americans rise, too. Let them come, officers and

men, from Ohio, from Rhode Island, from Kentucky, who in the

hour of victory, for them the hour of death, saw in vision their

Republic stretch far as the northern sea. Let them look up and

see the boundary line where it was a hundred years ago, but

north of it a new nation, filling half a continent with people of

proud resolve, self-dependent, resolute, free. Let them under-

stand how that through this century of peace there have arisen in

America two English-speaking nations, both sovereign, self-

respecting, unafraid, and each with the other forming that mar-

velous unity of American civilization and standing for its in-

tegrity, prestige and power. What a surprise, what a glad

surprise, to the Americans of a hundred years ago!

Greatest surprise of all to those men from Britain, from

Canada and from the United States, who here greatly fought

and bravely died, were they to see that fights like theirs are now

not only deemed impolitic, but are absolutely impossible between

these nations. That impossibility is not merely a matter of

policy, but is a fundamental principle. That principle is the

rights of nationhood. All responsible statesmen in Britain, in

the United States and in Canada agree in this, that, not for

themselves alone, but for all peoples, the rights of nationality

are sacred and inviolate. Any and every people that desires to

be free, and is fit to be free, ought to be free, and must be free.

Britain learned that principle out of the war of American

independence. The United States and Canada learned it in the

struggle of 1812. In loyalty to that principle Britain withstood

the despotic aggressions of Napoleon, and after him the not less

despotic schemes of the concerted monarchs of Europe against

the rising democracies. When the concert of Europe planned

war against the new Spanish democracy, Canning, the Foreign

Secretary of Britain, asserted that principle in these words:

"Our business is to preserve the peace of the world, and there-

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fore the independence of the several nations that compose it";

and, again, in these words: "Every nation for itself and God

for us all." When those plans of the autocratic monarchs of

Europe threatened the Spanish colonies in America, Canning

proposed to American Ambassador Rush that Britain and the

United States issue a joint declaration that "while neither power

desired the colonies of Spain for herself, it was impossible to

look with indifference on European intervention in their affairs."

Immediately after that proposal President Monroe, giving voice

to the instinct and true policy of the United States, used these

historic words to Congress: "With the existing colonies or de-

pendencies of any European power we have not interfered, and

shall not interfere. But with the governments who have de-

clared their independence and maintained it . . . we could

not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them,

or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European

power in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly

disposition toward the United States."

That sovereign principle has been the guiding star to the

nations of Britain and America over a troubled sea. It has

changed for Britain the old centralized notion of Empire into

the new idea of a world alliance of free nations, in which loyalty

is not of compulsion, but of love, and the ties, stronger than

selfish bonds, are imperceptible and light as air. It has ranged

the public opinion of Britain on the side of the struggling democ-

racies of the world-of Greece, of Italy, of Belgium, of Hungary,

and even of the nations of the Orient. It civilized the boundary

line between the United States and Canada, and inspires life in

America with a new ideal of internationalism. It determines

the policy of the United States in its relations with the Philip-

pines, with Cuba, with Mexico and the republics of South

America, with Japan of a generation ago and with the awakening

democracy of China to-day.

All this growth of nationhood, this sanctity of national

aspiration, the commonplace among us to-day, had its beginning

when through the smoke of battle Britain and America began

to see eye to eye. The distance that vision has brought these

two nations, the revolution it has wrought, may be measured by

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the difference between what happened on Lake Erie in 1813 and

what happened in 1898 on Manila Bay. The significance of the

change is expressed in to-day's celebration. At this place and on

this day our deepest concern is not with the wars of the past,

but with the peace of the future; not with the triumphs or the

defeats of yesterday, but with the responsibilities and obligations

of to-morrow; not with the glory that either nation achieved a

hundred years ago, but with the message which both nations,

speaking in the name of our common North American civiliza-

tion, shall give to the world through the hundred years to come.

That message, spoken by two voices, one from the United

States, the other from Canada, is one message. It is America's

message that on this continent, between two proud peoples, the

barbarism of brute force has long yielded to civilized inter-

nationalism. It is the assurance that Canada's national standing

on this continent binds the British Empire and the American

Republic in one world-spanning English-speaking fraternity.

On all continents and on all seas the power of America is the

combined power of the United States and Canada, plus the power

of Britain and of the British dominions on the South Atlantic

and beyond the Pacific.  These all are bound together, each with

all the others, for the maintenance of that principle of nation-

hood: any people that desires to be free and is fit to be free

ought to be free and must be free. That principle means peace

and freedom in the English-speaking world.

More than that. What this principle of nationhood has

done for America and for the English-speaking fraternity it yet

will do for the world. In the light of America's experience the

international boundary lines of Europe are barbaric. They can-

not long endure. In our own day war has begun to be seen not

merely as cruel, burdensome, brutal, but as too futile and too

foolish for sane and civilized peoples. The nations of civiliza-

tion will yet leave war behind, as civilized men have left behind

the street fight and the duel. As individual citizens have found

the only sure vindication of personal honor and the only true

protection of vital interest to be in respecting the personality and

the personal interests of others and in trusting for justice to the

law of their land, so are the nations learning that the only sure

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vindication of national honor and the only certain protection of

vital interests is in respecting the nationality of others and in

trusting for justice to the growing conscience of the race codified

in international law and expressing itself through international

arbitration.

On that, as on a sure foundation, rests the hope of the

world's peace. Once men dreamed of peace through the world

sovereignty of some master mind like Alexander or some ruling

race like the Romans. But that dream of peace, the peace not of

free men but of weaklings and slaves, was doomed forever when

Napoleon and his army staggered back through the snows of

Russia under the curse of God.

But a new day has dawned, dawned for the statesmen,

dawned for the nations. It is the day of national rights and

national responsibilities. The two nations of America have seen

the coming of that day, have seen it through these generations

of peace, have seen it and are glad. We of to-day, standing on

this historic boundary line, a boundary no longer of separation,

but of union, are pledged, we and our nations with us, pledged

to preach this gospel of freedom, good-will and peace. This is

America's vision; this America's message; this America's obliga-

tion to all the world.

 

ADDRESS OF HON. WALLING.

Hon. Emory A. Walling, presiding judge of Erie County,

Pa., spoke as follows:

The only excuse that I have for now coming before you is

that my home is in Erie, Pennsylvania, a place so linked with

the great national event, the anniversary of which we are here

celebrating, that as one of her citizens I would be less than an

American if I shrank from the performance of any duty to

which I might be here called by your committee.

The end of the year 1812 found the war going on with

the great territory of Michigan in full possession of the enemy,

who to extend the invasion into Ohio and possibly Pennsylvania,

must have control of Lake Erie and so must we to drive the

enemy out of Michigan and carry the war into Canada. This

lake was the key to the situation. The British saw it and pres-

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