OPPOSING FORCES
An armed mob must be very big indeed before it has the
slightest chance against a small but disciplined army.
So very obvious a statement might well be taken for
granted in the history of any ordinary war. But '1812'
was not an ordinary war. It was a sprawling and sporadic
war; and it was waged over a vast territory by widely
scattered and singularly heterogeneous forces on both
sides. For this reason it is extremely difficult to view
and understand as one connected whole. Partisan
misrepresentation has never had a better chance. Americans
have dwelt with justifiable pride on the frigate duels
out at sea and the two flotilla battles on the Lakes.
But they have usually forgotten that, though they won
the naval battles, the British won the purely naval war.
The mother-country British, on the other hand, have made
too much of their one important victory at sea, have
passed too lightly over the lessons of the other duels
there, and have forgotten how long it took to sweep the
Stars and Stripes away from the Atlantic. Canadians have,
of course, devoted most attention to the British victories
won in the frontier campaigns on land, which the other
British have heeded too little and Americans have been
only too anxious to forget. Finally, neither the Canadians,
nor the mother-country British, nor yet the Americans,
have often tried to take a comprehensive view of all the
operations by land and sea together.
The character and numbers of the opposing forces have
been even less considered and even more misunderstood.
Militia victories have been freely claimed by both sides,
in defiance of the fact that the regulars were the really
decisive factor in every single victory won by either
side, afloat or ashore. The popular notions about the
numbers concerned are equally wrong. The totals were far
greater than is generally known. Counting every man who
ever appeared on either side, by land or sea, within the
actual theatre of war, the united grand total reaches
seven hundred thousand. This was most unevenly divided
between the two opponents. The Americans had about 575,000,
the British about 125,000. But such a striking difference
in numbers was matched by an equally striking difference
in discipline and training. The Americans had more than
four times as many men. The British had more than four
times as much discipline and training.
The forces on the American side were a small navy and a
swarm of privateers, a small regular army, a few
'volunteers,' still fewer 'rangers,' and a vast
conglomeration of raw militia. The British had a detachment
from the greatest navy in the world, a very small
'Provincial Marine' on the Lakes and the St Lawrence,
besides various little subsidiary services afloat,
including privateers. Their army consisted of a very
small but latterly much increased contingent of Imperial
regulars, a few Canadian regulars, more Canadian militia,
and a very few Indians. Let us pass all these forces in
review.
_The American Navy_. During the Revolution the infant
Navy had begun a career of brilliant promise; and Paul
Jones had been a name to conjure with. British belittlement
deprived him of his proper place in history; but he was
really the founder of the regular Navy that fought so
gallantly in '1812.' A tradition had been created and a
service had been formed. Political opinion, however,
discouraged proper growth. President Jefferson laid down
the Democratic party's idea of naval policy in his first
Inaugural. 'Beyond the small force which will probably
be wanted for actual service in the Mediterranean, whatever
annual sum you may think proper to appropriate to naval
preparations would perhaps be better employed in providing
those articles which may be kept without waste or
consumption, and be in readiness when any exigence calls
them into use. Progress has been made in providing
materials for 74-gun ships.' [Footnote: A ship-of
the-line, meaning a battleship or man-of war strong enough
to take a position in the line of battle, was of a
different minimum size at different periods. The tendency
towards increase of size existed a century ago as well
as to-day. 'Fourth-rates,' of 50 and 60 guns, dropped
out of the line at the beginning of the Seven Years' War.
In 1812 the 74-gun three-decker was the smallest man-of-war
regularly used in the line of battle.] This 'progress'
had been made in 1801. But in 1812, when Jefferson's
disciple, Madison, formally declared war, not a single
keel had been laid. Meanwhile, another idea of naval
policy had been worked out into the ridiculous gunboat
system. In 1807, during the crisis which followed the
Berlin Decree, the Orders-in-Council, and the _Chesapeake_
affair, Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine: 'Believing,
myself; that gunboats are the only water defence which
can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous
folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which
promises to improve them.' Whether 'improved' or not,
these gunboats were found worse than useless as a substitute
for 'the ruinous folly of a navy.' They failed egregiously
to stop Jefferson's own countrymen from breaking his
Embargo Act of 1808; and their weatherly qualities were
so contemptible that they did not dare to lose sight of
land without putting their guns in the hold. No wonder
the practical men of the Navy called them 'Jeffs.'
When President Madison summoned Congress in 1811 war was
the main topic of debate. Yet all he had to say about
the Navy was contained in twenty-seven lukewarm words.
Congress followed the presidential lead. The momentous
naval vote of 1812 provided for an expenditure of six
hundred thousand dollars, which was to be spread over
three consecutive years and strictly limited to buying
timber. Then, on the outbreak of war, the government,
consistent to the last, decided to lay up the whole of
their sea-going navy lest it should be captured by the
British.
But this final indignity was more than the Navy could
stand in silence. Some senior officers spoke their minds,
and the party politicians gave way. The result was a
series of victories which, of their own peculiar kind,
have never been eclipsed. Not one American ship-of-the-line
was ever afloat during the war; and only twenty-two
frigates or smaller naval craft put out to sea. In
addition, there were the three little flotillas on Lakes
Erie, Ontario, and Champlain; and a few minor vessels
elsewhere. All the crews together did not exceed ten
thousand men, replacements included. Yet, even with these
niggard means, the American Navy won the command of two
lakes completely, held the command of the third in
suspense, won every important duel out at sea, except
the famous fight against the _Shannon_, inflicted serious
loss on British sea-borne trade, and kept a greatly
superior British naval force employed on constant and
harassing duty.
_The American Privateers_. Besides the little Navy, there
were 526 privately owned vessels which were officially
authorized to prey on the enemy's trade. These were manned
by forty thousand excellent seamen and had the chance of
plundering the richest sea-borne commerce in the world.
They certainly harassed British commerce, even in its
own home waters; and during the course of the war they
captured no less than 1344 prizes. But they did practically
nothing towards reducing the British fighting force
afloat; and even at their own work of commerce-destroying
they did less than one-third as much as the Navy in
proportion to their numbers.
_The American Army_. The Army had competed with the Navy
for the lowest place in Jefferson's Inaugural of 1801.
'This is the only government where every man will meet
invasions of the public order as his own personal
concern... A well-disciplined militia is our best reliance
for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve
them.' The Army was then reduced to three thousand men.
'Such were the results of Mr Jefferson's low estimate
of, or rather contempt for, the military character,' said
General Winfield Scott, the best officer the United States
produced between '1812' and the Civil War. In 1808 'an
additional military force' was authorized. In January
1812, after war had been virtually decided on, the
establishment was raised to thirty-five thousand. But in
June, when war had been declared, less than a quarter of
this total could be called effectives, and more than half
were still wanting to complete.' The grand total of all
American regulars, including those present with the
colours on the outbreak of hostilities as well as those
raised during the war, amounted to fifty-six thousand.
Yet no general had six thousand actually in the firing
line of any one engagement.
_The United States Volunteers_. Ten thousand volunteers
were raised, from first to last. They differed from the
regulars in being enlisted for shorter terms of service
and in being generally allowed to elect their own regimental
officers. Theoretically they were furnished in fixed
quotas by the different States, according to population.
They resembled the regulars in other respects, especially
in being directly under Federal, not State, authority.
_The Rangers_. Three thousand men with a real or supposed
knowledge of backwoods life served in the war. They
operated in groups and formed a very unequal force--good,
bad, and indifferent. Some were under the Federal authority.
Others belonged to the different States. As a distinct
class they had no appreciable influence on the major
results of the war.
_The Militia_. The vast bulk of the American forces, more
than three-quarters of the grand total by land and sea,
was made up of the militia belonging to the different
States of the Union. These militiamen could not be moved
outside of their respective States without State authority;
and individual consent was also necessary to prolong a
term of enlistment, even if the term should come to an
end in the middle of a battle. Some enlisted for several
months; others for no more than one. Very few had any
military knowledge whatever; and most of the officers
were no better trained than the men. The totals from all
the different States amounted to 456,463. Not half of
these ever got near the front; and not nearly half of
those who did get there ever came into action at all.
Except at New Orleans, where the conditions were quite
abnormal, the militia never really helped to decide the
issue of any battle, except, indeed, against their own
army. 'The militia thereupon broke and fled' recurs with
tiresome frequency in numberless dispatches. Yet the
consequent charges of cowardice are nearly all unjust.
The fellow-countrymen of those sailors who fought the
American frigates so magnificently were no special kind
of cowards. But, as a raw militia, they simply were to
well-trained regulars what children are to men.
_American Non-Combatant Services_. There were more than
fifty thousand deaths reported on the American side; yet
not ten thousand men were killed or mortally wounded in
all the battles put together. The medical department,
like the commissariat and transport, was only organized
at the very last minute, even among the regulars, and
then in a most haphazard way. Among the militia these
indispensable branches of the service were never really
organized at all.
Such disastrous shortcomings were not caused by any lack
of national resources. The population o the United States
was about eight millions, as against eighteen millions
in the British Isles. Prosperity was general; at all
events, up to the time that it was checked by Jefferson's
Embargo Act. The finances were also thought to be most
satisfactory. On the very eve of war the Secretary of
the Treasury reported that the national debt had been
reduced by forty-six million dollars since his party had
come into power. Had this 'war party' spent those millions
on its Army and Navy, the war itself might have had an
ending more satisfactory to the United States.
Let us now review the forces on the British side.
The eighteen million people in the British Isles were
naturally anxious to avoid war with the eight millions
in the United States. They had enough on their hands as
it was. The British Navy was being kept at a greater
strength than ever before; though it was none too strong
for the vast amount of work it had to do. The British
Army was waging its greatest Peninsular campaign. All
the other naval and military services of what was already
a world-wide empire had to be maintained. One of the most
momentous crises in the world's history was fast
approaching; for Napoleon, arch-enemy of England and
mightiest of modern conquerors, was marching on Russia
with five hundred thousand men. Nor was this all. There
were troubles at home as well as dangers abroad. The king
had gone mad the year before. The prime minister had
recently been assassinated. The strain of nearly twenty
years of war was telling severely on the nation. It was
no time to take on a new enemy, eight millions strong,
especially one who supplied so many staple products during
peace and threatened both the sea flank of the mother
country and the land flank of Canada during war.
Canada was then little more than a long, weak line of
settlements on the northern frontier of the United States.
Counting in the Maritime Provinces, the population hardly
exceeded five hundred thousand--as many people, altogether,
as there were soldiers in one of Napoleon's armies, or
Americans enlisted for service in this very war. Nearly
two-thirds of this half-million were French Canadians in
Lower Canada, now the province of Quebec. They were loyal
to the British cause, knowing they could not live a
French-Canadian life except within the British Empire.
The population of Upper Canada, now Ontario, was less
than a hundred thousand. The Anglo-Canadians in it were
of two kinds: British immigrants and United Empire
Loyalists, with sons and grandsons of each. Both kinds
were loyal. But the 'U.E.L.'s' were anti-American through
and through, especially in regard to the war-and-Democratic
party then in power. They could therefore be depended on
to fight to the last against an enemy who, having driven
them into exile once, was now coming to wrest their second
New-World home from its allegiance to the British crown.
They and their descendants in all parts of Canada numbered
more than half the Anglo-Canadian population in 1812.
The few thousand Indians near the scene of action naturally
sided with the British, who treated them better and
dispossessed them less than the Americans did. The only
detrimental part of the population was the twenty-five
thousand Americans, who simply used Canada as a good
ground for exploitation, and who would have preferred to
see it under the Stars and Stripes, provided that the
change put no restriction on their business opportunities.
_The British Navy_. About thirty thousand men of the
British Navy, only a fifth of the whole service, appeared
within the American theatre of war from first to last.
This oldest and greatest of all navies had recently
emerged triumphant from an age-long struggle for the
command of the sea. But, partly because of its very
numbers and vast heritage of fame, it was suffering
acutely from several forms of weakness. Almost twenty
years of continuous war, with dull blockades during the
last seven, was enough to make any service 'go stale.'
Owing to the enormous losses recruiting had become
exceedingly and increasingly difficult, even compulsory
recruiting by press-gang. At the same time, Nelson's
victories had filled the ordinary run of naval men with
an over-weening confidence in their own invincibility;
and this over-confidence had become more than usually
dangerous because of neglected gunnery and defective
shipbuilding. The Admiralty had cut down the supply of
practice ammunition and had allowed British ships to lag
far behind those of other nations in material and design.
The general inferiority of British shipbuilding was such
an unwelcome truth to the British people that they would
not believe it till the American frigates drove it home
with shattering broadsides. But it was a very old truth,
for all that. Nelson's captains, and those of still
earlier wars, had always competed eagerly for the command
of the better built French prizes, which they managed to
take only because the superiority of their crews was
great enough to overcome the inferiority of their ships.
There was a different tale to tell when inferior British
vessels with 'run-down' crews met superior American
vessels with first-rate crews. In those days training
and discipline were better in the American mercantile
marine than in the British; and the American Navy, of
course, shared in the national efficiency at sea. Thus,
with cheap materials, good designs, and excellent seamen,
the Americans started with great advantages over the
British for single-ship actions; and it was some time
before their small collection of ships succumbed to the
grinding pressure of the regularly organized British
fleet.
_The Provincial Marine_. Canada had a little local navy
on the Lakes called the Provincial Marine. It dated from
the Conquest, and had done good service again during the
Revolution, especially in Carleton's victory over Arnold
on Lake Champlain in 1776. It had not, however, been kept
up as a proper naval force, but had been placed under
the quartermaster-general's department of the Army, where
it had been mostly degraded into a mere branch of the
transport service. At one time the effective force had
been reduced to 132 men; though many more were hurriedly
added just before the war. Most of its senior officers
were too old; and none of the juniors had enjoyed any
real training for combatant duties. Still, many of the
ships and men did well in the war, though they never
formed a single properly organized squadron.
_British Privateers_. Privateering was not a flourishing
business in the mother country in 1812. Prime seamen were
scarce, owing to the great number needed in the Navy and
in the mercantile marine. Many, too, had deserted to get
the higher wages paid in 'Yankees'--'dollars for shillings,'
as the saying went. Besides, there was little foreign
trade left to prey on. Canadian privateers did better.
They were nearly all 'Bluenoses;' that is, they hailed
from the Maritime Provinces. During the three campaigns
the Court of Vice-Admiralty at Halifax issued letters of
marque to forty-four privateers, which employed, including
replacements, about three thousand men and reported over
two hundred prizes.
_British Commissariat and Transport_. Transport, of
course, went chiefly by water. Reinforcements and supplies
from the mother country came out under convoy, mostly in
summer, to Quebec, where bulk was broken, and whence both
men and goods were sent to the front. There were plenty
of experts in Canada to move goods west in ordinary times.
The best of all were the French-Canadian voyageurs who
manned the boats of the Hudson's Bay and North-West
Companies. But there were not enough of them to carry on
the work of peace and war together. Great and skilful
efforts, however, were made. Schooners, bateaux, boats,
and canoes were all turned to good account. But the inland
line of communications was desperately long and difficult to
work. It was more than twelve hundred miles from Quebec to
Amherstburg on the river Detroit, even by the shortest route.
_The British Army_. The British Army, like the Navy, had
to maintain an exacting world-wide service, besides large
contingents in the field, on resources which had been
severely strained by twenty years of war. It was represented
in Canada by only a little over four thousand effective
men when the war began. Reinforcements at first came
slowly and in small numbers. In 1813 some foreign corps
in British pay, like the Watteville and the Meuron
regiments, came out. But in 1814 more than sixteen thousand
men, mostly Peninsular veterans, arrived. Altogether,
including every man present in any part of Canada during
the whole war, there were over twenty-five thousand
British regulars. In addition to these there were the
troops invading the United States at Washington and
Baltimore, with the reinforcements that joined them for
the attack on New Orleans--in all, nearly nine thousand
men. The grand total within the theatre of war was
therefore about thirty-four thousand.
_The Canadian Regulars_. The Canadian regulars were about
four thousand strong. Another two thousand took the place
of men who were lost to the service, making the total
six thousand, from first to last. There were six corps
raised for permanent service: the Royal Newfoundland
Regiment, the New Brunswick Regiment, the Canadian
Fencibles, the Royal Veterans, the Canadian Voltigeurs,
and the Glengarry Light Infantry. The Glengarries were
mostly Highland Roman Catholics who had settled Glengarry
county on the Ottawa, where Ontario marches with Quebec.
The Voltigeurs were French Canadians under a French-Canadian
officer in the Imperial Army. In the other corps there
were many United Empire Loyalists from the different
provinces, including a good stiffening of old soldiers
and their sons.
_The Canadian Embodied Militia_. The Canadian militia by
law comprised every able-bodied man except the few
specially exempt, like the clergy and the judges. A
hundred thousand adult males were liable for service.
Various causes, however, combined to prevent half of
these from getting under arms. Those who actually did
duty were divided into 'Embodied' and 'Sedentary' corps.
The embodied militia consisted of picked men, drafted
for special service; and they often approximated so
closely to the regulars in discipline and training that
they may be classed, at the very least, as semi-regulars.
Counting all those who passed into the special reserve
during the war, as well as those who went to fill up the
ranks after losses, there were nearly ten thousand of
these highly trained, semi-regular militiamen engaged in
the war.
_The Canadian Sedentary Militia_. The 'Sedentaries'
comprised the rest of the militia. The number under arms
fluctuated greatly; so did the length of time on duty.
There were never ten thousand employed at any one time
all over the country. As a rule, the 'Sedentaries' did
duty at the base, thus releasing the better trained men
for service at the front. Many had the blood of soldiers
in their veins; and nearly all had the priceless advantage
of being kept in constant touch with regulars. A passionate
devotion to the cause also helped them to acquire, sooner
than most other men, both military knowledge and that
true spirit of discipline which, after all, is nothing
but self-sacrifice in its finest patriotic form.
_The Indians_. Nearly all the Indians sided with the
British or else remained neutral. They were, however, a
very uncertain force; and the total number that actually
served at the front throughout the war certainly fell
short of five thousand.
This completes the estimate of the opposing forces-of
the more than half a million Americans against the hundred
and twenty-five thousand British; with these great odds
entirely reversed whenever the comparison is made not
between mere quantities of men but between their respective
degrees of discipline and training.
But it does not complete the comparison between the
available resources of the two opponents in one most
important particular--finance. The Army Bill Act, passed
at Quebec on August 1, 1812, was the greatest single
financial event in the history of Canada. It was also
full of political significance; for the parliament of
Lower Canada was overwhelmingly French-Canadian. The
million dollars authorized for issue, together with
interest at six per cent, pledged that province to the
equivalent of four years' revenue. The risk was no light
one. But it was nobly run and well rewarded. These Army
Bills were the first paper money in the whole New World
that never lost face value for a day, that paid all their
statutory interest, and that were finally redeemed at
par. The denominations ran from one dollar up to four
hundred dollars. Bills of one, two, three, and four
dollars could always be cashed at the Army Bill Office
in Quebec. After due notice the whole issue was redeemed
in November 1816. A special feature well worth noting is
the fact that Army Bills sometimes commanded a premium
of five per cent over gold itself, because, being
convertible into government bills of exchange on London,
they were secure against any fluctuations in the price
of bullion. A special comparison well worth making is
that between their own remarkable stability and the
equally remarkable instability of similar instruments of
finance in the United States, where, after vainly trying
to help the government through its difficulties, every
bank outside of New England was forced to suspend specie
payments in 1814, the year of the Great Blockade.