The causes and the background of the War of 1812 are presented elsewhere in this series of Chronicles.[1] Great Britain, at death grips with Napoleon, paid small heed to the rights and dignities of neutral nations. The harsh and selfish maritime policy of the age, expressed in the British Navigation Acts and intensified by the struggle with Napoleon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate indignity after indignity on the ships and sailors which were carrying American commerce around the world. The United States demanded a free sea, which Great Britain would not grant. Of necessity, then, such futile weapons as embargoes and non-intercourse acts had to give place to the musket, the bayonet, and the carronade. There could be no compromise between the clash of doctrines. It was for the United States to assert herself, regardless of the odds, or sink into a position of supine dependency upon the will of Great Britain and the wooden walls of her invincible navy. [Footnote 1: See _Jefferson and His Colleagues_, by Allen Johnson (in _The Chronicles of America_).] "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights!" was the American war cry. It expressed the two grievances which outweighed all others--the interference with American shipping and the ruthless impressment of seamen from beneath the Stars and Stripes. No less high-handed than Great Britain's were Napoleon's offenses against American commerce, and there was just cause for war with France. Yet Americans felt the greater enmity toward England, partly as an inheritance from the Revolution, but chiefly because of the greater injury which England had wrought, owing to her superior strength on the sea. There were, to be sure, other motives in the conflict. It is not to be supposed that the frontiersmen of the Northwest and Southwest, who hailed the war with enthusiasm, were ardently aroused to redress wrongs inflicted upon their seafaring countrymen. Their enmity towards Great Britain was compounded of quite different grievances. Behind the recent Indian wars on the frontier they saw, or thought they saw, British paymasters. The red trappers and hunters of the forest were bloodily defending their lands; and there was a long-standing bond of interest between them and the British in Canada. The British were known to the tribes generally as fur traders, not "land stealers"; and the great traffic carried on by the merchants of Montreal, not only in the Canadian wilderness but also in the American Northwest, naturally drew Canadians and Indians into the same camp. "On to Canada!" was the slogan of the frontiersmen. It expressed at once their desire to punish the hereditary foe and to rid themselves of an unfriendly power to the north.