Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/122

110 a proud thing to do, but better, he thought, than to go on with such a war.

When the British accepted this basis, and the Americans gave up their contention for definite stipulations concerning the principles of blockade and the impressment question, the peace was virtually assured. Only matters of detail had to be agreed upon, which, if both parties sincerely desired peace, would not be difficult. But confused and apparently interminable wrangles sprang up concerning the definition of the status ante bellum, mainly with regard to the British right to the navigation of the Mississippi and the American right to fish in British waters, which had been coupled together in the first treaty of peace, in 1783, between the United States and Great Britain. The British commissioners now insisted upon the British right to navigate the Mississippi, but proposed to put an end to the American right to the fisheries. It is needless to recount in detail the propositions and counter-propositions which passed between the two parties upon this point, as well as the furious altercations in the American commission between Clay and Adams, taxing to the utmost Gallatin's resources as a peacemaker; Clay insisting that a renewal of the right of the British to navigate the Mississippi, which had been conceded in the treaty of 1783, and again in Jay's treaty of 1794, when Spain held the whole of the right bank of the Mississippi, with part of the left, and the British dominions were erroneously sup-