Both the claims and the desires seem quite simple in
themselves. But, in their connection with American
politics, international affairs, and opposing British
claims, they are complex to the last degree. Their
complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous
that they baffle description within the limits of the
present book. Yet, since nothing can be understood without
some reference to its antecedents, we must take at least
a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which
finally resulted in the War of 1812.

The relations of the British Empire with the United States
passed through four gradually darkening phases between
1783 and 1812--the phases of Accommodation, Unfriendliness,
Hostility, and War. Accommodation lasted from the
recognition of Independence till the end of the century.
Unfriendliness then began with President Jefferson and
the Democrats. Hostility followed in 1807, during
Jefferson's second term, when Napoleon's Berlin Decree
and the British. Orders-in-Council brought American
foreign relations into the five-year crisis which ended
with the three-year war.

William Pitt, for the British, and John Jay, the first
chief justice of the United States, are the two principal
figures in the Accommodation period. In 1783 Pitt, who,
like his father, the great Earl of Chatham, was favourably
disposed towards the Americans, introduced a temporary
measure in the British House of Commons to regulate trade
with what was now a foreign country 'on the most enlarged