The Embargo had had one result: it deferred the war with Great Britain to the next administration. That conflict of 1812-15 was not a glorious war for America except on the ocean. It was not entered upon by the British with any hope of the conquest of the country, but to do all the harm they could to the people who had achieved their independence. On the part of the United States it was simply a choice between insult, insolence, and injury on the one hand, and on the other the expenditure of money and loss of life, which would bear as hard on England as on the United States. Both parties at last wearied of a contest which promised no permanent settlement of interests or principles. The Federalists deprecated it from the beginning. The Republican-Democracy sustained it from the instinct of national honor. Probably it could not have been avoided without the surrender of national dignity. It was the last of our wars with Great Britain. Future difficulties will doubtless be settled by arbitration, or not settled at all, in spite of mutual ill-will. England and America cannot afford to fight. Our late Civil War demonstrated this,--when, with all the ill-feeling between the two nations, war was averted. The interests of trade may mollify and soften international jealousies, but only forbearance and the cultivation of mutual and common interests can eradicate the sentiments of mutual dislike.
However, it was not the Embargo, nor the meditated treason of Aaron Burr, nor the purchase of Louisiana, important as these were, which gives chief interest to the eight years of Jefferson's administration, and made it a political epoch. It was the firm growth and establishment of the Democratic party, of which Jefferson was the father and leader, as Hamilton was the great chieftain of the Federalist. With the accession of Jefferson to power, a new policy was inaugurated, which from his day has been the policy of the government, except in great financial emergencies when men of brain have had the direction of public affairs. Democratic leaders like Jackson and Van Buren, representing the passions or interests or prejudices of the masses, it would seem, have been generally unfortunate enough to lead the country into financial difficulties, because they have conformed to the unenlightened instincts of the people rather than to the opinions of the enlightened few,--great merchants, capitalists, and statesmen, that is, men of experience and ability. And when these men of brain have extricated the country from the financial distress which men inexperienced in finance and ignorant of the principles of political economy have brought about, the democratic leaders have regained their political ascendency, since they appealed, more than their antagonists, to those watchwords so dear to the American heart, the abolition of monopolies, unequal taxation, the exaltation of the laboring classes,--whatever promises to aggrandize the nation in a material point of view, or professes to bring about the reign of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," and the abolition of social distinctions.