With this battle the year ended. Bainbridge was obliged to blow up his prize, and after landing and paroling his prisoners at San Salvador sailed for Boston, where he arrived in safety, February 27, 1813. During the six months the war had lasted the little United States navy captured three British frigates, besides the 20-gun “Alert” and the 18-gun “Frolic;” privateers by scores had ravaged British commerce, while the immense British force on the ocean had succeeded only in capturing the little “Nautilus,” the 12-gun brig “Vixen,” and the “Wasp.” The commerce of America had indeed suffered almost total destruction; but the dispute was to be decided not so much by the loss which England could inflict upon America, as by that which America could inflict upon England. CHAPTER XVIII. IN such a war the people of the United States had only themselves to fear; but their dangers were all the more formidable. Had the war deeply disturbed the conditions of society, or brought general and immediate distress, government and Union might easily have fallen to pieces; but in the midst of military disaster and in plain sight of the Government’s incompetence, the general public neither felt nor had reason to fear much change in the routine of life. Commerce had long accustomed itself to embargoes, confiscations, and blockades, and ample supplies of foreign goods continued to arrive. The people made no serious exertions; among a population exceeding seven millions, not ten thousand men entered the military service. The militia, liable to calls to the limit of one hundred thousand, served for the most part only a few weeks in the autumn, went home in whole regiments when they pleased,[338] and in the East refused to go out at all. The scarcity of men was so great that even among the sea-goingclass, for whose rights the war was waged, only with the utmost difficulty and long delays, in spite of bounties and glory, could sailors be found to man half-a-dozen frigates for a three-months cruise, although the number of privateers was never great. The nation as a whole saw nothing of actual warfare. While scarcely a city in Europe had escaped capture, and hardly a province of that continent was so remote as not to be familiar with invading armies or to have suffered in proportion to its resources, no American city saw or greatly feared an enemy. The rich farms of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia produced their usual harvests, and except on exposed parts of the coast the farmers never feared that their crops might be wasted by manœuvring armies, or their cattle, pigs, and poultry be disturbed by marauders. The country was vast, and quiet reigned throughout the whole United States. Except at the little point of Niagara, occupied by a few hundred scattered farmers, and on the extreme outskirts of Ohio and Indiana, the occupations and industries of life followed in the main their daily course.