This Treaty when the same shall have been ratified on both sides without alteration by either of the contracting parties, and the Ratifications mutually exchanged, shall be binding on both parties, and the Ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington in the space of four months from this day or sooner if practicable. In faith whereof, We the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed this Treaty, and have hereunto affixed our Seals. Done in triplicate at Ghent the twenty fourth day of December one thousand eight hundred and fourteen. (XI.1-3)

Triplicate. Some paperwork things never change.

There's a super-important idea lurking in all the restatements in Article Eleven, buried in all the official talk.

All the obvious other stuff is there. The last lines give a note on the time and place that the treaty happened: Ghent, Belgium, in 1814. The conclusion also states that the treaty will be binding on both parties (seems pretty obvious) and should be ratified as soon as possible.

But here's the key idea: once the treaty is ratified by both sides, it can't be altered in any way. No amending, tweaking, rewording, or changing the font (actually the original document was handwritten, but you get the idea). This provision was an attempt to speed the process along without letting domestic debates prolong the ratification process.

In other words, by the end of negotiations this war just needed to be put out of its misery. Instead of pushing for demands or leaving open the possibility of future disagreements, both sides just said, "let's get a ceasefire, with no ifs ands or buts."