The treaty--not one very honorable to us--was indeed made some months later, and the frigates long remained unfinished.
It has been the fashion of late years to sneer at our second war with England as unnecessary and inconclusive.

But no one who studies the records of the life, industry, and material interests of our people during the years between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of that war can fail to wonder that it did not come sooner, and that it was not a war with France as well as England.

For our people were then essentially a maritime people.

Their greatest single manufacturing industry was ship-building.

The fisheries--whale, herring, and cod--employed thousands of their men and supported more than one considerable town.