The American claims of ‘Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights’ were opposed by the British counter-claims of the Orders-in-Council and the Right of Search.  But ’Down with the British’ and ‘On to Canada’ were without exact equivalents on the other side.  The British at home were a good deal irritated by so much unfriendliness and hostility behind them while they were engaged with Napoleon in front.  Yet they could hardly be described as anti-American; and they certainly had no wish to fight, still less to conquer, the United States.  Canada did contain an anti-American element in the United Empire Loyalists, whom the American Revolution had driven from their homes.  But her general wish was to be left in peace.  Failing that, she was prepared for defence.

Anti-British feeling probably animated at least two-thirds of the American people on every question that caused international friction; and the Jeffersonian Democrats, who were in power, were anti-British to a man.  So strong was this feeling among them that they continued to side with France even when she was under the military despotism of Napoleon.  He was the arch-enemy of England in Europe.  They were the arch-enemy of England in America.  This alone was enough to overcome their natural repugnance to his autocratic ways.  Their position towards the British was such that they could not draw back from France, whose change of government had made her a more efficient anti-British friend.  ’Let us unite with France and stand or fall together’ was the cry the Democratic press repeated for years in different forms.  It was strangely prophetic.  Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1808 began its self-injurious career at the same time that the Peninsular War began to make the first injurious breach in Napoleon’s Continental System.  Madison’s declaration of war in 1812 coincided with the opening of Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia.

The Federalists, the party in favour of peace with the British, included many of the men who had done most for Independence; and they were all, of course, above suspicion as patriotic Americans.  But they were not unlike transatlantic, self-governing Englishmen.  They had been alienated by the excesses of the French Revolution; and they could not condone the tyranny of Napoleon.  They preferred American statesmen of the type of Washington and Hamilton to those of the type of Jefferson and Madison.  And they were not inclined to be more anti-British than the occasion required.  They were strongest in New England and New York.  The Democrats were strongest throughout the South and in what was then the West.  The Federalists had been in power during the Accommodation period.  The Democrats began with Unfriendliness, continued with Hostility, and ended with War.