With this battle ended the year 1812, the most memorable that ever occurred in the history of our navy. For though gallant things had been done before this time, during the Revolution and the war with Tripoli, and though in the later wars, as well as in the later years of this same war, the record of naval achievements showed no falling off in brilliancy, there was a splendor so full, so dazzling, and so unexpected about this uninterrupted succession of triumphs on the ocean, that it would be hard to describe in words the depths to which it stirred the nation. That despised and belittled navy,--despised alike at home and abroad,--which the Government had proposed at the outbreak of war to lay up, that it might be kept out of harm's way as a plaything and an ornament fit only for peaceful use, had shown itself a most terrible engine of offensive war. Those much-abused frigates, of which we had but half a dozen for the nation's defence, had met the frigates of Great Britain in battle, and had conquered,--conquered the victors of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent, of Aboukir and Trafalgar; beaten them on their own ground in honest hard fighting, beaten them thrice over, and beaten them as they had never been beaten before. The bitter strife of political parties, the truckling to this or that foreign State, which had vexed the councils of the nation for twenty years, and lowered the self-respect of Americans, was cast aside in united rejoicings at the success with which Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge had asserted and maintained American independence and the rights of American citizens; and the country at last began to look upon the navy as its best protection, and as the stanchest supporter of the national honor.