Magnificent but useless, after all, excepting as a proud heritage for later generations and a vindication of American valor against odds, was this battle of New Orleans which was fought while the Salem ship, _Astrea_, Captain John Derby, was driving home to the westward with the news that a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. With a sense of mutual relief the United States and England had concluded a war in which neither nation had definitely achieved its aims. The treaty failed to mention such vital issues as the impressment of seamen and the injury to commerce by means of paper blockades, while on the other hand England relinquished its conquest of the Maine coast and its claim to military domination of the Great Lakes. English statesmen were heartily tired of a war in which they could see neither profit nor glory, and even the Duke of Wellington had announced it as his opinion "that no military advantage can be expected if the war goes on, and I would have great reluctance in undertaking the command unless we made a serious effort first to obtain peace without insisting upon keeping any part of our conquests." The reverses of first-class British armies at Plattsburg, Baltimore, and New Orleans had been a bitter blow to English pride. Moreover, British commerce on the seas had been largely destroyed by a host of Yankee privateers, and the common people in England were suffering from scarcity of food and raw materials and from high prices to a degree comparable with the distress inflicted by the German submarine campaign a century later. And although the terms of peace were unsatisfactory to many Americans, it was implied and understood that the flag and the nation had won a respect and recognition which should prevent a recurrence of such wrongs as had caused the War of 1812. One of the Peace Commissioners, Albert Gallatin, a man of large experience, unquestioned patriotism, and lucid intelligence, set it down as his deliberate verdict: The war has been productive of evil and of good, but I think the good preponderates. Independent of the loss of lives, and of the property of individuals, the war has laid the foundation of permanent taxes and military establishments which the Republicans had deemed unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of our country. But under our former system we were becoming too selfish, too much attached exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war has renewed and reinstated the national feeling and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured.