The combatants were worthy of each other.

Of the same original stock--of the same stern, unyielding material--their contests were bloody and destructive in the extreme.

But the younger nation, inspirited by a sense of wrongs endured, and of the justness of its cause, bore away the palm, and plucked from the brow of its more aged competitor many a laurel yet green from the ensanguined fields of Europe.

In scores of hotly-contested battles, the British lion, unused as it was to cower before a foe, was compelled to "lick the dust" in defeat.

At York, at Chippewa, at Fort Erie, at Lundy's Lane, at New Orleans, on Lake Champlain, on Lake Erie, on the broad ocean, Great Britain and the world were taught lessons of American valor, skill, and energy, which ages will not obliterate.
This war, though prosecuted at the expense of many valuable lives, and of a vast public debt, was, unquestionably, highly beneficial to the United States.