THE WAR OF 1812
When hostilities began in North America, the war establishment of the
United States stood officially at 36,700 men. Actually the army
consisted of ten regiments with ranks half filled, scattered in
garrisons from Mackinac to Lake Champlain,--a force of less than 10,000
men, of whom 4000 were raw recruits. The staff was made up of old and
incompetent officers; and from a military point of view the new
appointments left much to be desired. The navy which was to contest the
supremacy of the seas with the victor at Trafalgar consisted of twelve
sea-going vessels and some two hundred gunboats, which were useless
except for coast defense. There was bitter truth in the manifesto issued
by the Federalist members of Congress when it said: "Our enemy is the
greatest maritime power that has ever been on earth, and to her we offer
the most tempting prizes. Our merchantmen are on every sea. Our rich
cities lie along the Atlantic seaboard close to the water's edge. And to
defend these from the cruisers of Great Britain we are to have an army
of raw recruits yet to be raised and a navy of gunboats now stranded on
the beaches and frigates that have long been rotting in the slime of the
Potomac."
The worst aspect of the war was its sectional character. New England was
in opposition. From the outset the activity of the National
Administration was weakened by the indubitable fact that the United
States, as the Federalists were never tired of repeating, began the war
"as a divided people." When General Dearborn made requisition upon the
governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut for militia to defend the
coast, Governor Strong ignored the summons. Pressed for a reply, he
finally stated to the Secretary of War that the judges of the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts had advised him that the commanders-in-chief of
the militia in the several States, rather than the President, had the
right to determine whether any of the exigencies contemplated by the
Constitution existed so as to require them to place the militia in the
service of the United States. The judges also advised the governor that
the militia, when in the service of the United States, could not
lawfully be commanded by any federal officers below the President, but
only by state officers. The general assembly of Connecticut sustained
Governor Griswold in a similar attitude toward the federal authorities,
holding that the war was an offensive war to which the provisions of the
Constitution respecting the militia did not apply.
From the first the war-hawks had cried, "On to Canada," for their hope
of conquest was undisguised. "Agrarian cupidity," declared Randolph,
"not maritime right, urges the war. Ever since the report of the
Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House, we have heard but
one word,--like the whippoorwill, but one eternal monotonous
tone,--Canada, Canada, Canada!" Military considerations, however,
probably determined the campaign of 1812,--so far, indeed, as any
well-considered plans were worked out. A general advance was to be made
along the route by Lake Champlain to Montreal. Three expeditions were
also to be sent against Sackett's Harbor, Niagara, and Malden. All were
strategic points on the Lakes; but Malden was particularly important as
the center of British influence among the Indians of the Northwest.
The expedition against Malden, which was entrusted to General William
Hull, not only failed to accomplish its purpose, but terminated in the
most humiliating reverse of the war. For reasons that have never been
adequately explained, Hull laid siege to Malden instead of attacking it
at once with his superior force; and when British reenforcements
appeared, he not only abandoned the siege, but on August 15, surrendered
Fort Detroit without firing a shot. The army, the fort, and the
undisputed control of the Michigan country passed into the hands of the
British. On the same day occurred the surrender of Fort Dearborn and the
massacre of its garrison by the Indians.
The other military operations on the northern frontier were scarcely
less inglorious. The failure of the attack upon Queenston, October 13,
was due largely to the incompetence of the commanding general. Nowhere
did the American troops pierce the Niagara or Lake Champlain frontier.
The Duke of Wellington was well within the truth when he declared the
American campaign of 1812 "beneath criticism."
The smart of these humiliating failures was only relieved by the series
of stirring naval victories which began with the duel between the
Constitution and the Guerriere. The frigates met on August 19, some
three hundred miles off Cape Race. "In less than thirty minutes from the
time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Captain Hull of the
Constitution, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to
pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above
water." The effect of this victory was electric. When the Constitution
reached Boston Harbor, even Federalists broke into exultation. The cry
in every New England home was, "Thank God for Hull's victory!" Nothing
could have been better timed and more dramatic. The papers which
announced the humiliating surrender of General Hull contained the news
of his nephew's victory.
If the victory of the Constitution was won on unequal terms,--the
Guerriere was undoubtedly inferior,--the British Admiralty could not
excuse a second naval defeat on this score. On October 17, the American
sloop-of-war Wasp encountered the brig Frolic convoying merchantmen six
hundred miles east of Norfolk. There was little to choose between the
vessels either in size or equipment, yet the marksmanship of the
American gunners was so far superior that in forty-three minutes the
crew of the Wasp had boarded the Frolic. Not even the subsequent capture
of both vessels by a British ship-of-the-line could dim the glory of
this victory. A week later the frigate United States under Captain
Decatur captured the Macedonia and brought her into New London--"the
only British frigate ever brought as a prize into an American port." In
December the Constitution, now commanded by Captain Bainbridge, added to
her laurels by overpowering the powerful frigate Java.
The effect of these disasters upon the British public was out of all
proportion to the actual value of the vessels lost. Canning afterward
declared that the loss of the Guerriere and the Macedonia produced a
sensation scarcely to be equaled by the most violent convulsion of
nature. "The sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was
broken by those unfortunate captures."
In the midst of the war occurred a presidential election. Madison had
been the unanimous choice of the congressional caucus held in May; but
only eighty-three out of one hundred and thirty-three Republicans had
attended, and the discontent of New York Republicans was well known. The
nomination of De Witt Clinton by the New York legislative caucus opened
wide the breach in the party. In September a convention of Federalists
repeated the error of 1804 and indorsed Clinton's nomination, naming as
his partner Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania. Elbridge Gerry, of
Massachusetts, was finally nominated for Vice-President by the
Republicans. The alternatives presented to the people seemed to be
Madison and continued war ineffectively conducted, or Clinton and still
more humiliating peace. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and all the New
England States but Vermont, preferred Clinton. The South and West
supported Madison; but without the vote of Pennsylvania Madison would
have been defeated.
To retrieve Hull's disaster, General William Henry Harrison, the hero of
Tippecanoe, was placed in command of the Western army in the fall of
1812; but a succession of mishaps overtook his expedition into the
Northwest. He not only failed to reach Detroit, but lost most of his
available troops by disease, desertion, and the onset of British
detachments from Fort Malden.
It was now clear that the control of the Lakes was indispensable for a
successful invasion of Canada. At the close of the year 1812, there was
not a war-vessel flying the American flag on Lake Erie. To create a
fleet was the task set for Oliver Hazard Perry, a young naval officer,
who was sent from Newport to Presqu' Isle. Of the needful supplies only
timber was abundant; the rest had to be brought overland from
Philadelphia by way of Pittsburg. Surmounting all obstacles,
nevertheless, the energetic Perry finally got together a flotilla of
vessels which was quite equal to the British squadron. The two fleets
met in battle off Sandusky on September 10, 1813. The American boat
Lawrence, Perry's flagship, was obliged to strike her colors, but Perry
boarded another vessel of his fleet and succeeded in turning defeat into
a brilliant victory. "We have met the enemy and they are ours," was his
triumphant dispatch to General Harrison.
The way was now open to the invasion of Canada. Under the protection of
Perry's fleet, Harrison was able to transport his army to the Canadian
shore below Fort Malden. The British troops were already in full
retreat. On October 5, 1813, the American army overtook them and in a
short but decisive battle on the river Thames revenged the loss of
Detroit. Among the dead on the British side was found the body of
Tecumseh. In point of numbers, the battle of the Thames is
insignificant; but it has an important place in the annals of the war
because it destroyed the British military power in the Northwest and
recovered control of the Michigan Territory.
No such success attended the movement of American troops on the Niagara
and St. Lawrence frontier. The control of Lake Ontario was in doubt
throughout the year 1813. The military operations, first under Dearborn,
and then under Wilkinson and Hampton, were indecisive. Indeed, the
events of the year served only one good purpose: they revealed the
incompetence of the older generals and the ability of the younger
officers.
The loss of the Chesapeake in a duel with the Shannon, on June 1, 1813,
outside of Boston Harbor, left the United States with an available
sea-going navy of just two frigates and a few small sloops. All the
other frigates were shut up in various ports by the British blockade,
which extended from Cape Cod to Florida. The burden of offense during
the rest of the war fell upon privateers. During the war more than five
hundred fitted out in American ports. In the year 1813 they took over
three hundred prizes, while the frigates took but seventy-nine. While
British cruisers were blockading the coast of the United States, these
craft, with their beautiful lines and wonderful spread of canvas,
carried consternation to all British shippers in the English Channel and
in the Irish Sea. They "seize prizes in sight of those that should
afford protection," complained the London _Times_, "and if pursued put
on their sea-wings and laugh at the clumsy English pursuers." No
exploits of the regular navy contributed so much to dispose the British
governing class to peace as the depredations of these privateers.
In the remote Southwest, the war assumed a different character. There
the enemy on the border was not Great Britain but Spain. The people of
the Carolinas and Georgia fully expected to acquire the Floridas while
the North was wresting Canada from British control. Had President
Madison been given his way, this wish would have been gratified; but
Congress refused to countenance the seizure of East Florida, and in May,
1813, Madison very reluctantly ordered the troops to evacuate Amelia
Island. No scruples deterred Congress from authorizing the occupation of
West Florida. In the spring of 1813, General Wilkinson forced the
surrender of the only Spanish fort on Mobile Bay and took possession of
the country as far as the Perdido--"the only permanent gain of territory
made during the war."
During the first year of the war the younger warriors of the Western
Creeks, in what is now Alabama, had been incited to hostilities by
Tecumseh, and in the following spring began depredations which
culminated in the capture of Fort Mims and the massacre of its
inhabitants on August 30, 1813. The horrors of an Indian war brought
every able-bodied settler in the adjoining States to arms. Before the
end of the year seven thousand whites had invaded the Indian territory
and had killed about one fifth of the Creek warriors. The hero of the
war was General Andrew Jackson, who at the head of an army of Tennessee
militiamen won a decisive battle at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa
River. On August 9, 1814, he forced the chieftains who had not fled
across the Florida border to sign a treaty of capitulation at Fort
Jackson and to cede nearly two thirds of their lands in southern Georgia
and in what afterward became central Alabama. This phase of the war
opened up a vast territory to settlement and made the military
reputation of Andrew Jackson.
Operations on the Niagara frontier were resumed by the American troops
in 1814; but they were now directed by one of the new major-generals,
Jacob Brown, who infused a new spirit into his soldiers. On July 5,
General Winfield Scott's brigade won a signal victory at Chippewa. Three
weeks later, on July 25, the entire army fought a desperate battle at
Lundy's Lane, which lasted from sunset to midnight. The Americans
claimed a victory, but the losses were about even and the British
remained in possession of the field. At the close of the year, despite
the valiant fighting of Brown's army, the situation on the Niagara had
not changed materially. The invasion of Canada and a peace dictated from
Quebec seemed as remote as ever.
The British plans for the campaign of 1814 called for "a diversion on
the coasts of the United States, in favor of the army employed in the
defense of Upper and Lower Canada." For the first time since the
opening of hostilities, British military authorities could concentrate
their attention on the war in North America. The defeat of Napoleon on
the plains of Leipzig had thrown his shattered columns back upon France.
Thither the allied armies had followed him and forced his capitulation.
With the end of European wars in sight, Wellington could release his
veteran troops for service in America. In early summer eleven thousand
seasoned troops were sent to Canada. Four thousand more were dispatched
under Major-General Ross, of the Peninsular army, to cooperate with the
navy under Admiral Cochrane on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Later in
the year Major-General Pakenham, also a veteran of the Peninsular
campaign, was sent with ten thousand troops to seize the mouth of the
Mississippi and to force the capitulation of the West by closing the
ports on the Gulf.
Those whose memories went back thirty-seven years may well have recalled
Burgoyne's expedition, for it was by the old Lake Champlain route that
Sir George Prevost began his invasion of New York in September, 1814.
His objective was Plattsburg, where an American army of not more than
two thousand men was stationed. Accompanying his army, to insure its
line of communication with Canada, was a fleet consisting of a frigate,
a brig, and a dozen smaller vessels. To this fleet, Captain Thomas
Macdonough could oppose only a corvette and a dozen small craft. The
fleets met in a battle for the control of the lake on September 11. The
resourcefulness of the young American officer saved the day. By winding
his corvette, the Saratoga, about, so as to bring her unused guns to
bear just when the fight seemed lost, he forced the formidable Confiance
to strike her colors. The surrender of the smaller British boats
followed. The battle of Plattsburg was decisive of the invasion. Fearing
greater disasters if he pressed on without the control of the waterway
at his rear, Prevost at once ordered a retreat.
The expedition directed toward Chesapeake Bay was well under way before
Prevost's ill-starred invasion began. On August 19, General Ross landed
his forces on the banks of Patuxent River, within striking distance of
Washington. Marching leisurely across country toward the capital, the
British finally met at Bladensburg a motley array of some seven thousand
Americans, hastily summoned from the countryside. What followed is not
easily described. Some show of resistance was made by the marines from
the American gunboats in the Patuxent; but for the most part the
Americans were seized with a panic and fled in wild disorder. The
President and his Cabinet took to the Virginia woods, leaving the enemy
to wreak their vengeance on the government buildings. Having fired the
Capitol, the White House, and other edifices, the British forces
returned to their fleet and reembarked. The historian can take no
pleasure in dwelling upon details which are discreditable to all
concerned; for if the British committed acts of vandalism, the Americans
had provoked retaliation when they burned the parliament houses at York
in the campaign of 1813.
An attack upon Baltimore which might have resulted in further outrages
was frustrated by the measures of defense which the government of the
city had already wisely undertaken. After a skirmish in which General
Ross was killed, and an ineffective bombardment of the harbor defenses,
the British withdrew.
A visitor to the national capital after its capture described the
President as "miserably shattered and woe-begone," and heart-broken at
the defection of New England. To prosecute the war, money and men were
needed; but both were wanting. The Administration hoped, but hoped in
vain, that the victories at Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, and Plattsburg would
stimulate enlistments; but recruits were not likely to be lured by
promises which every one knew the Government could not redeem. It became
clearer every day that unless Congress was disposed to adopt Monroe's
plan of conscription, the National Government would have to put its
dependence upon state armies. In September, after Castine and the
eastern part of Maine to the Penobscot had been occupied by the British,
Governor Strong consented to call out the militia of Massachusetts, but
he was careful to place the troops under the command of state officers.
At the same time he made inquiry of the Secretary of War whether the
expenses of the militia would be assumed by the National Government.
Monroe replied rather sharply that so long as Massachusetts refused to
put her troops under the command of national officers, she need not
expect the United States to maintain them. The Governor of Connecticut
had already withdrawn the militia of that State from national service.
At the moment when Prevost was beginning his invasion, the Governor of
Vermont declined to call out the state militia because he doubted his
authority to order the militia out of the State. The Union seemed on the
point of disintegrating into its original elements.
The anxieties of the Administration were further increased by the action
of the Massachusetts General Court, which called a convention of those
States "the affinity of whose interests is closest," with the avowed
purpose of devising some mode of common defense and of securing a
convention of delegates from all the States to revise the National
Constitution. In spite of vigorous opposition, delegates were chosen, to
meet on December 15 with "such as may be chosen by any or all of the
other New England States." The legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode
Island responded promptly; but the legislature of Vermont unanimously
declined the invitation, and New Hampshire failed to reply. The movement
seemed all the more ominous after the fall elections, which resulted in
the choice of thirty-nine Federalist Congressmen from New England and of
only two Republicans. In the preceding Congress there had been thirty
Federalists and eleven Republicans.
That members of the Essex Junto would gladly have seized this
opportunity to remake the Federal Union by excluding the Western States
appears clearly enough in the correspondence of men like Timothy
Pickering. A new Union of the "good old thirteen States" on terms set by
New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility.
Radical newspapers referred with enthusiasm to the erection of a new
federal edifice. Little wonder that the harassed President was obsessed
with the idea that New England was on the verge of secession.
From the first, however, this movement in New England was kept well in
hand by men like Harrison Gray Otis, who always insisted that the object
of a convention was to defend New England against the common enemy and
to prevent radical action under the stress of popular excitement. If
this be true, it was unfortunate, to say the least, that these patriots
chose just this moment, when the Federal Government was about to succumb
to the common enemy, to propose alterations in the Constitution; and it
was equally unfortunate for the reputations of all concerned that they
should have held their deliberations in secret, giving an air of
conspiracy to their proceedings. The official journal of the Convention
at Hartford was not published until 1823. When the Convention adjourned
on January 5, 1815, all that the general public was permitted to know of
its deliberations was contained in its famous report.
The Convention was at no little pains to reassure a waiting world that
it did not contemplate or countenance secession. It was not yet ready to
concede that the defects in the Constitution were incurable nor that
multiplied abuses justified a severance of the Union, "especially in a
time of war." "If the Union be destined to dissolution, ... it should,
if possible, be the work of peaceable times, and deliberate consent."
But these philosophical considerations did not deter the author of the
report from a vicious and partisan attack upon "the multiplied abuses of
bad administrations."
President Madison must have read this document with mingled feelings,
for the Convention held, almost in the words of his Resolutions of 1798,
that the infractions of the Constitution were so "deliberate, dangerous,
and palpable" as to put the liberties of the people in jeopardy and to
make it the duty of a State "to interpose its authority for their
protection." The legislatures of the several States were recommended to
adopt measures for protecting their citizens against all
unconstitutional acts of Congress which should subject the militia or
other citizens to forcible drafts, conscriptions, or impressments. They
were also urged to apply to the Federal Government for consent to some
arrangement whereby the States, separately or in concert, could
undertake their own defense and retain a reasonable proportion of the
national taxes for the purpose. Finally, seven amendments to the
Constitution were proposed, to prevent a recurrence of the grievances
from which the New England States suffered. Four of these proposed
amendments put limitations upon Congress: a two-thirds vote of both
houses was to be required to admit a new State, to interdict commerce,
to lay an embargo, and to declare war. In future, representation and
direct taxes were to be apportioned according to the respective numbers
of free persons. Naturalized citizens were to be excluded from all
federal civil offices; and finally--a blow at the Virginia
dynasty--"the same person shall not be elected President of the United
States a second time; nor shall the President be elected from the same
State two terms in succession."
The General Court of Massachusetts acted promptly. Three commissioners
were dispatched at once to Washington, to work out an amicable
arrangement for the defense of the State. On February 3, 1815, the
"three ambassadors," as they styled themselves, set out for the capital.
Ten days later, _en route_, they learned that General Andrew Jackson had
decisively repulsed an attack of the British upon New Orleans on January
8. On reaching Washington the commissioners were met with the news that
a treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Their cause had met with the
most unlucky fate which can befall any cause in the United States: it
had become ridiculous. The tension of war-times relaxed in a roar of
laughter at their expense.
Early in the year 1813, Russia had endeavored to mediate between her
ally and the United States. President Madison had at once, and as it
appeared somewhat precipitately, sent Albert Gallatin and James A.
Bayard as peace commissioners to St. Petersburg; but Great Britain
declined the Czar's good offices. The American envoys, however, remained
in Europe. When, then, in October, the British Ministry intimated that
it was prepared to begin direct negotiations, President Madison created
a new commission by sending John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Jonathan
Russell to join Gallatin and Bayard. In the last week in June, the
commissioners repaired to Ghent, which had been chosen as the place of
meeting. Thither the British negotiators followed them in leisurely
fashion. The first joint conference was not held until August 8, 1814.
The task of the American commissioners was one of very great difficulty.
Confronted by the unexpected demand that the revision of the Canadian
boundary, the fisheries, and the establishment of an Indian state in the
Northwest should be included in the _pourparler_, they could only reply
that they had been instructed to discuss only matters of maritime
law--impressments, blockades, and neutral rights. There seemed so little
likelihood of agreement that the American commissioners prepared to
leave Ghent. But the British Ministry abated its extreme demands and
continued the negotiations. At the same time new instructions from
Washington advised the American representatives that they might drop the
subject of impressments if they found it an insuperable obstacle in the
way of peace.
The insistence of the British agents upon the principle of _uti
possidetis_--the state of possession at the close of the war--again
threatened to break off negotiations, for the Americans resolutely
insisted on the _status quo ante bellum_, a restoration of all places
taken during the war. It was at this juncture that tidings arrived of
the British repulse at Plattsburg. For a week the British Ministry
debated the feasibility of renewing the war; but the complications at
the Congress of Vienna, the "prodigious expense" of continued war, the
change in public opinion, and the emphatic conviction of Wellington that
the Ministry had "no right from the state of the war to demand any
cession of territory"--these and many lesser considerations disposed the
Cabinet to ask the American envoys to prepare a draft of a treaty.
Strong differences of opinion developed among the Americans when they
set to work upon their preliminary draft. As the representative of
Western interests, Clay set himself obstinately against any further
recognition of the British right--secured by the treaty of 1783--of free
navigation of the Mississippi. Adams was equally determined not to
sacrifice the correlative right to the Labrador and Newfoundland
fisheries, which his father had secured in the Treaty of Paris.
Gallatin, the peacemaker, was in favor of offering to renew both
privileges; and he finally succeeded in winning Clay's reluctant assent
to this plan. But when the British commissioners objected, both sides
agreed to omit all reference to these vexing questions.
The treaty which was signed on December 24, 1814, is remarkable for its
omissions. The reader will scan it in vain for any allusion to
impressments, blockades, and neutral rights. It is equally silent as to
the control of the Lakes, Indian territories, the fisheries, and the
navigation of the Mississippi. It was "simply a cessation of
hostilities, leaving every claim on either side open for future
settlement." Clay probably reflected the disappointment of Republicans
when he pronounced it "a damned bad treaty." Nevertheless, it brought
what was most desired by the exhausted Administration--peace. Moreover,
the treaty must be viewed in the light of events in Europe. The
overthrow of the Napoleonic Empire and the exile of Bonaparte gave
promise of a return to normal conditions so far as maritime rights were
concerned. The victories of American seamen in the war were after all
better guaranties of neutral rights than any declarations on parchment.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Besides the larger histories, which contain abundant information
about the war, mention should be made of B. J. Lossing's
_Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812_ (1868), written by one
who visited most of the battlefields of the war. A well-balanced
account of the military operations is contained in K. C. Babcock's
_The Rise of American Nationality_ (in _The American Nation_, vol.
XIII, 1906). Theodore Roosevelt, _The Naval War of 1812_ (various
editions); E. S. Maclay, _History of the United States Navy from
1775 to 1901_ (3 vols., 1901-02), and _History of American
Privateers_ (1899); J. R. Spears, _History of Our Navy_ (4 vols.,
1897); and C. O. Paullin, _Commodore John Rodgers_ (1910), give
the history of the maritime war. The most comprehensive study of
the naval operations of the war is the work by Admiral Mahan
already cited. The part of Jackson in the war is set forth in many
biographies. The most picturesque is James Parton, _Life of Andrew
Jackson_ (3 vols., 1860); the most recent is J. S. Bassett, _Life
of Andrew Jackson_ (2 vols., 1911). S. E. Morison, _Life and
Letters of Harrison Gray Otis_ (2 vols., 1913), gives a fresh
account of the disaffection in New England and of the Hartford
Convention. The peace negotiations at Ghent are set forth
circumstantially by Henry Adams in his _History of the United
States_ (9 vols., 1889-91).