Such, briefly, was the political condition of the several provinces of British North America when events occurred to stifle discontent and develop a broader patriotism on all sides. The War of 1812 was to prove the fidelity of the Canadian people to the British Crown and stimulate a new spirit of self-reliance among French as well as English Canadians, who were to win victories which are among the most brilliant episodes of Canadian history. {316} XXIII. THE WAR OF 1812-1815--PATRIOTISM OF THE CANADIANS. At the outbreak of the unfortunate War of 1812 the United States embraced an immense territory extending from the St. Lawrence valley to Mexico, excepting Florida--which remained in the possession of Spain until 1819--and from the Atlantic indefinitely westward to the Spanish possessions on the Pacific coast, afterwards acquired by the United States. The total population of the Union was upwards of eight million souls, of whom a million and a half were negro slaves in the south. Large wastes of wild land lay between the Canadian settlements and the thickly populated sections of New England, New York, and Ohio. It was only with great difficulty and expense that men, munitions of war, and provisions could be brought to the frontier during the contest. The principal causes of the war are quite intelligible to the historical student. Great Britain was engaged in a great conflict not only for her own national security but also for the integrity of {317} Europe, then dominated by the insatiable ambition of Bonaparte. It was on the sea that her strength mainly lay. To ensure her maritime supremacy, she found it necessary, in the course of events, to seize and condemn neutral American vessels whenever there was conclusive evidence that their cargoes were not the produce of the United States, but had been actually bought in an enemy's colony and were on their way to the mother country. But such an interruption of a commerce, which had been carried on for years at a great profit by American merchants, was by no means so serious an affair as the stoppage of American vessels on the high seas, and the forcible abduction and impressment, by British naval officers, of sailors who were claimed as British subjects, even when they had been naturalised in the United States. To such an extent did Great Britain assert her pretensions, that one of her frigates, the _Leopard_, actually fired into the American cruiser _Chesapeake_, off the coast of the bay of the same name, and made prisoners of several men who were claimed as deserters from an English man-of-war--a national outrage for which Great Britain subsequently made an apology and gave a measure of reparation. Then came the British orders in council which forbade American trade with any country from which the British flag was excluded, allowed direct trade from the United States to Sweden only in American products, and permitted