_THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE ATTEMPTED CONQUEST OF CANADA._
When the Revolutionary War had ended came the long twenty-three years'
war in which Great Britain, for the most part, single-handed, fought for
the freedom of Europe against the most colossal tyranny ever devised by
a victorious general. No nation in the history of the world carried on a
war so stubborn, so desperate, so costly, so vital. Had Great Britain
failed, what would now be the position of the world? At the very time
when Britain's need was the sorest, when every ship, every soldier and
sailor that she could find was needed to break down the power of the man
who had subjugated all Europe except Russia and Great Britain, the
United States, the land of boasted liberty, did her best to cripple the
liberating armies by proclaiming war against Britain in the hour of her
sorest need.
Napoleon was at the height of his power, with an army collected at
Boulogne for the invasion of England. England was growing exhausted by
the contest. Her great Prime Minister, Pitt, had died broken hearted.
Every indication was favorable to the conquest of Canada by the United
States and therewith the extinction of all British interests on the
western continent.
In the motherland it seemed, to the popular imagination, that on the
other side of the Atlantic lived an implacable enemy, whose rancor was
greater than their boasted love of liberty. Fisher Ames, who was
regarded by his party as its wisest counsellor and chief ornament,
expresses this general feeling on their part in a letter to Mr. Quincy,
dated Dedham, Dec. 6, 1807, in which he says: "Our cabinet takes council
of the mob, and it is now a question whether hatred of Great Britain and
the reproach fixed even upon violent men, if they will not proceed in
their violence, will not overcome the fears of the maritime states, and
of the planters in Congress. The usual levity of a democracy has not
appeared in regard to Great Britain. We have been steady in our hatred
of her, and when popular passions are not worn out by time, but
argument, they must, I should think, explode in war."[89]
[89] Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 119.
The action of the United States in declaring war against Great Britain
when she was most sorely pressed in righting for the liberty of mankind
is best set forth in the famous speech of Josiah Quincy, delivered
before Congress on the 5th of January, 1813. It was, as he himself says
of it, "most direct, pointed and searching as to the motive and conduct
of our rulers. It exposed openly and without reserve or fear the
iniquity of the proposed invasion of Canada. I was sparing of neither
language nor illustration." Its author, on reading it over in his old
age, might well say that "he shrunk not from the judgment of after
times." Its invective is keen, its sarcasm bitter, its denunciations
heavy and severe, but the facts from which they derive their sting or
their weight are clearly stated and sustained.
As a means of carrying on the war, he denounces the invasion of Canada
as "cruel, wanton, senseless, and wicked--an attempt to compel the
mother country to our terms by laying waste an innocent province which
had never injured us, but had long been connected with us by habits of
good neighborhood and mutual good offices." He said "that the
embarrassment of our relations with Great Britain and the keeping alive
between this country and that of a root of bitterness has been, is, and
will continue to be, a main principle of the policy of this American
Cabinet."
The Democratic Party having attained power by fostering the old grudge
against England, and having maintained itself in power by force of that
antipathy, a consent to the declaration of war had been extorted from
the reluctant Madison as the condition precedent of his nomination for a
second term of office.
When war against Great Britain was proposed at the last session, there
were thousands in these United States, and I confess to you I was myself
among the number, who believed not one word of the matter, I put my
trust in the old-fashioned notions of common sense and common prudence.
That a people which had been more than twenty years at peace should
enter upon hostilities against a people which had been twenty years at
war, the idea seemed so absurd that I never once entertained it as
possible. It is easy enough to make an excuse for any purpose. When a
victim is destined to be immolated, every hedge presents sticks for the
sacrifice. The lamb that stands at the mouth of the stream will always
trouble the water if you take the account of the wolf who stands at the
source of it. We have heard great lamentation about the disgrace of our
arms on the frontier. Why, sir, the disgrace of our arms on the frontier
is terrestrial glory in comparison with the disgrace of the attempt. Mr.
Speaker, when I contemplate the character and consequences of this
invasion of Canada, when I reflect on its criminality and its danger to
the peace and liberty of this once happy country, I thank the great
Author and Source of all virtue that, through His grace, that section of
country in which I have the happiness to reside, is in so great a degree
free from the iniquity of this transgression. I speak it with pride. The
people of that section have done what they could to vindicate themselves
and their children from the burden of their sin.
Surely if any nation had a claim for liberal treatment from another, it
was the British nation from the American. After the discovery of the
error of the American government in relation to the repeal of the Berlin
and Milan Decrees in November, 1810, they had declared war against her
on the supposition that she had refused to repeal her orders in council
after the French Decrees were in fact revoked, whereas it now appears
that they were in fact not revoked. Surely the knowledge of this error
was followed by an instant and anxious desire to redress the resulting
injury. No, sir, nothing occurred. On the contrary the question of
impressment is made the basis of continuing the war. They renewed
hostilities. They rushed upon Canada. Nothing would satisfy them but
blood.
I know, Mr. Speaker, that while I utter these things, a thousand tongues
and a thousand pens are preparing without doors to overwhelm me, if
possible, by their pestiferous gall. Already I hear in the air the sound
of "Traitor," "British Agent," "British Gold!" and all those changes of
calumny by which the imagination of the mass of men are affected and by
which they are prevented from listening to what is true and receiving
what is reasonable.[90]
[90] Life of Josiah Quincy, pp. 256, 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288,
289, 291.
As will be noticed in the foregoing extract from Josiah Quincy's
celebrated speech, New England refused to take any part in the war. In
fact, it must be said in their favor that they refused absolutely to
send any troops to aid in the invasion of Canada. They regarded the
pretexts on which the war had been declared with contemptuous
incredulity, believing them to be but thin disguises of its real object.
That object they believed to be the gratification of the malignant
hatred the slave-holding states bore toward communities of free and
intelligent labor, by the destruction of their wealth and prosperity.
A town meeting was held in Boston at Faneuil Hall on June 11, 1812, at
which it was "Resolved: That in the opinion of this town, it is of the
last importance to the interest of this country to avert the threatened
calamity of war with Great Britain," etc. A committee of twelve was
appointed to take into consideration the present alarming state of our
public affairs, and report what measures, in their opinion, it is proper
for the town to adopt at this momentous crisis.
The committee reported in part as follows: "While the temper and views
of the national administration are intent upon war, an expression of the
sense of this town, will of itself be quite ineffectual either to avert
this deplorable calamity or to accelerate a return of peace, but
believing as we do that an immense majority of the people are invincibly
averse from conflict equally unnecessary and menacing ruin to themselves
and their posterity, convinced as we are that the event will overwhelm
them with astonishment and dismay, we cannot but trust that a general
expression of the voice of the people would satisfy Congress that those
of their representatives who had voted in favor of war, have not truly
represented the wishes of their constituents, and thus arrest the
tendency of their measures to this extremity."
Had the policy of government been inclined towards resistance to the
pretentions of the belligerants by open war, there could be neither
policy, reason or justice in singling out Great Britain as the
exclusive object of hostility. If the object of war is merely to
vindicate our honor, why is it not declared against the first aggressor?
If the object is defense and success, why is it to be waged against the
adversary most able to annoy and least likely to yield? Why, at the
moment when England explicitly declares her order in council repealed
whenever France shall rescind her decrees, is the one selected for an
enemy and the other courted as a conqueror? "Under present circumstances
there will be no scope for valor, no field for enterprise, no chance for
success, no hope of national glory, no prospect but of a war against
Great Britain, in aid of the common enemy of the human race, and in the
end an inglorious peace."
The resolution recommended by the committee was adopted and it was voted
that the selectmen be requested to transmit a copy thereof to each town
in this commonwealth.
At a town meeting held August 6, 1812, the following resolutions were
passed: "That the inhabitants of the town of Boston have learned with
heartfelt concern that in the City of Baltimore a most outrageous
attack, the result of deliberate combinations has been made upon the
freedom of opinion and the liberty of the press. An infuriated mob has
succeeded in accomplishing its sanguinary purpose by the destruction of
printing presses and other property, by violating the sanctuary of
dwelling houses, breaking open the public prison and dragging forth from
the protection of civil authority the victims of their ferocious
pursuit, guilty of no crime but the expression of their opinions and
completing the tissue of their enormities by curses, wounds and murders,
accompanied by the most barbarous and shocking indignities."
"In the circumstances attending the origin, the progress, and the
catastrophe of this bloody scene, we discern with painful emotion, not
merely an aggravation of the calamities of the present unjust and
ruinous war, but a prelude to the dissolution of all free government,
and the establishing of a reign of terror. Mobs, by reducing men to a
state of nature, defeat the object of every social compact. The sober
citizen who trembles in beholding the fury of the mob, seeks refuge from
its dangers by joining in its acclamations. The laws are silenced. New
objects of violence are discovered. The government of the nation and the
mob government change places with each other. The mob erects its horrid
crest over the ruins of liberty, of property, of the domestic relations
of life and of civil institutions."[91]
[91] Boston Town Records, City Document No. 115, pp. 317, 318, 319, 320,
321, 322.
The foregoing is a fair example of the feelings shown in New England
towards this unjustifiable war, and which culminated in the famous
Hartford convention which was accused of designing an organized
resistance to the general government, and a separation of the New
England states from the Union if the war was not stopped. The
resolutions condemning the Baltimore mob also show the change in public
opinion that had taken place in Boston during the thirty-seven years
that had elapsed since the commencement of the Revolution in Boston,
which was inaugurated by mob violence, participated in by many who, by
the strange irony of fate, by these resolutions condemned their own
actions.
Mr. Quincy did not stand alone among his countrymen of that day in a
general championship of Great Britain in the hour of her extremity. The
Reverend John Sylvester, John Gardner, rector of Trinity church, Boston,
a man of great scholarship, among others lifted up his voice in protest
against unfair treatment of Great Britain by the government and people
of the United States.
In a sermon at this time he said: "Though submissive and even servile to
France, to Great Britain we are eager to display our hatred and hurl our
defiance. Every petty dispute which may happen between an American
captain and a British officer is magnified into a national insult. The
land of our fathers, whence is derived the best blood of the nation, the
country to which we are chiefly indebted for our laws and knowledge is
stigmatized as a nest of pirates, plunderers and assassins. We entice
away her seamen, the very sinews of her power.
"We refuse to restore them on application; we issue hostile
proclamations; we interdict her ships of war from the common rights to
hospitality; we have non-importation acts; we lay embargoes; we refuse
to ratify a treaty in which she has made great concessions to us; we
dismiss her envoy of peace who came purposely to apologize for an act
unauthorized by her government; we commit every act of hostility against
her in proportion to our means and station. Observe the conduct of the
two nations and our strange conduct. France robs us and we love her;
Britain courts us and we hate her."
It was during the summer of 1812, when Jefferson truly stated that every
continental power of importance, except Russia, was allied with
Napoleon, and Great Britain stood alone to oppose them, for Russia could
not aid her if she would--her commerce paralyzed, her factories closed,
commerce and her people threatened with famine. It was at this moment of
dire extremity that Madison chose to launch his war message. His action
was eagerly supported by Jefferson, Clay and Calhoun, and the younger
members of his party.
Jefferson wrote to Duane: "The acquisition of Canada this year (1812) as
far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching,
and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and the
final expulsion of England from the American continent. Perhaps they
will burn New York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the city of
London, not by expensive fleets of Congreve rockets, but by employing a
hundred or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness, famine, desperation
and hardened vice will abundantly furnish from among themselves."[92]
[92] "Jack-the-painter" was a miscreant employed by Silas Deane, one of
the U. S. Commissioners to France and the colleague of Dr. Franklin, to
burn the docks at Bristol. He partially succeeded and was hanged for the
crime, a far less infamous one than that advocated by Jefferson, the
champion of the rights of man.
[Illustration: BURNING OF NEWARK, CANADA, BY UNITED STATES TROOPS.
In retaliation for the destruction of the Public landing at Toronto and
Newark, and other villages, the public building at Washington was
burned.]
Three months after making this prediction, the surrender of the United
States invading force to the British General Brock, or as Jefferson
preferred to style it, "the detestable treason of Hull," "excited," he
writes, "a deep anxiety in all breasts." A few months later we find him
lamenting that "our war on the land was commenced most inauspiciously."
This has resulted, he thinks, from the employment of generals before it
is known whether they will "stand fire" and has cost us thousands of
good men and deplorable degradation of reputation.(*) "The treachery,
cowardice, and imbecility of the men in command has sunk our spirits at
home and our character abroad."[93]
[93] Jefferson's Works, Vol. VI., pp. 99, 193, 104.
At the commencement of the war of 1812, the whole number of British
troops in Canada was 4450, supplemented by about four thousand Canadian
militia. With this corporal guard it was necessary to protect a frontier
of over 1600 miles in length. Any part of this line was liable to an
invasion of United States troops whose lines of communication were far
superior. Moreover Great Britain was unable to send reinforcements until
after the fall of Napoleon in June, 1814, when the war was nearly fought
out.
American writers have always severely criticised the British for burning
the public buildings when they captured Washington. Ex-President
Jefferson, who proposed that the criminal classes of London should be
hired to burn that city, stigmatized the burning of Washington as
"vandalism," and declared it would "immortalize the infamy" of Great
Britain. He who could contemplate with equanimity the fearful horrors
that must have resulted from the putting in practice of his monstrous
proposition to burn a city crowded with peaceful citizens, professed to
be horrified at the destruction of a few public buildings by which no
man, woman or child, was injured in person or property. With equal
hypocrisy he professed to believe that no provocation for the act was
given by the United States commanders. Upon this point he was taken to
an account by an open letter from Dr. John Strachan, afterwards Bishop
of Toronto. This letter should be preserved as long as there lives a
British apologist for the acts of the United States in the War of 1812.
In part it was as follows:
"As you are not ignorant of the mode of carrying on the war adopted by
your friends, you must have known it was a small retaliation after
redress had been refused, for burnings and depredations not only of
public but private property, committed by them in Canada." In July, 1812,
General Hull invaded Upper Canada and threatened by proclamation to
exterminate the inhabitants if they made any resistance. He plundered
those with whom he had been in habits of intimacy for years before the
war. Their linen and plate were found in his possession after his
surrender to General Brock. He marked out the loyal subjects of the king
as objects of peculiar resentment, and consigned their property to
pillage and conflagration.
In April, 1813, the public buildings at York (now Toronto) the capital
of Upper Canada, were burned by the troops of the United States contrary
to the articles of capitulation. Much private property was plundered and
several homes left in a state of ruin. Can you tell me, sir, the reason
why the public buildings and library at Washington should be held more
sacred than those at our York?
In June, 1813, Newark came into possession of your army, and its
inhabitants were repeatedly promised protection to themselves and
property by General Dearborne and General Boyd. In the midst of their
professions the most respectable of them, almost all non-combatants,
were made prisoners and sent into the United States. The two churches
were burned to the ground; detachments were sent under the direction of
British traitors to pillage the loyal inhabitants in the neighborhood
and to carry them away captive. Many farm-houses were burned during the
summer and at length, to fill up the measure of iniquity, the whole of
the beautiful village of Newark was consigned to flames. The wretched
inhabitants had scarcely time to save themselves, much less any of their
property. More than four hundred women and children were exposed without
shelter on the night of the tenth of December, to the extreme cold of a
Canadian winter, and great numbers must have perished, had not the
flight of your troops, after perpetrating their ferocious act, enabled
the inhabitants of the country to come to their relief. General McClure
says he acted in conformity with the order of his government.
In November, 1813, your friend General Wilkinson committed great
depredations through the eastern district of Upper Canada. The third
campaign exhibits equal enormities. General Brown laid waste the country
between Chippewa and Fort Erie, burning mills and private houses. The
pleasant village of St. David was burned by his army when about to
retreat. On the 15th of May a detachment of the American army pillaged
and laid waste as much of the adjacent country as they could reach. They
burned the village of Dover with all the mills, stores, distillery, and
dwelling houses in the vicinity, carrying away such property as was
portable, and killing the cattle.
On the 16th of August, some American troops and Indians from Detroit
surprised the settlement of Port Talbot, where they committed the most
atrocious acts of violence, leaving upwards of 234 men, women and
children in a state of nakedness and want.
[Illustration: BURNING OF JAY IN EFFIGY.
For signing the Treaty of 1797 Jay was burned in effigy. Hamilton was
stoned and the British Minister at Philadelphia insulted.]
On the 20th of December, a second excursion was made by the garrison of
Detroit, spreading fire and pillage through the settlements of Upper
Canada. Early in November, General McArthur, with a large body of
mounted Kentuckians and Indians, made a rapid march through the western
part of the London districts, burning all the mills, destroying
provisions and living upon the inhabitants. Other atrocities committed
by the American troops, among them the wanton destruction of a tribe of
Indians, unarmed and helpless, are detailed by Dr. Strachan. He adds,
addressing Jefferson: "This brief account of the conduct of your
government and army will fill the world with astonishment at the
forbearance of Great Britain."
After two years and a half had been expended in vain and puerile attacks
on the "handful of soldiers" with which Great Britain was able to resist
its invasion, combined with such assistance as the patriotic Canadians
were able to afford, it was found that not only Canada could not be
conquered, but that much of the territory of the United States had
passed into the hands of the enemy, with not one foot of that enemy's
territory in their own hands to compensate for the loss.
When the arms of the United States had suffered many reverses and it
became plain that they must accept the best terms from Great Britain
that they could procure, John Adams declared that he "would continue the
war forever rather than surrender one iota of the fisheries as
established by the third article of the treaty of 1783." He boasted that
he had saved the fishermen in that year, and now in 1814 he learned with
dismay that they were again lost to his country, their relinquishment
being one of the terms insisted on by the British commission as the
price of peace.
The Federalists also were not easily satisfied. They admitted that peace
was a happy escape for a country with a bankrupt treasury, and all
resources dissipated. "But what," they asked, "have we gained by a war
provoked and entered into by you with such a flourish of trumpets? Where
are your 'sailors' rights?' Where is the indemnity for our impressed
seamen? How about the paper blockade? The advantages you promised us we
have not obtained. But we have lost nothing? Have we not? What about
Grand Manan and Moose Island and the fisheries and our West Indian
commerce?" So severely did Boston suffer that there were sixty vessels
captured at the entrance to the harbor by one small fishing smack of
Liverpool, Nova Scotia, cruising in Massachusetts Bay.
All who were concerned in the passage of the treaty were the subjects of
the popular wrath. Jay was declared to be an "arch traitor," a "Judas
who had betrayed his country with a kiss," and was burned in effigy in a
dozen cities. Hamilton was stoned; the name of Washington was hooted,
and the British flag dragged in the mud.
Edmund Quincy, in the life of his father, says, "The fall of Bonaparte,
although it occasioned as genuine joy to New England as to the mother
country herself, did not bring with it absolutely unalloyed
satisfaction." There was reason to apprehend that the English
administration, triumphant over its gigantic foe, its army and navy
released from the incessant service of so many years, might concentrate
the whole of the empire upon the power which it regarded as a volunteer
ally of its mighty enemy, and administer an exemplary chastisement. No
doubt many Englishmen felt, with Sir Walter Scott, that "it was their
business to give the Americans a fearful memento, that the babe unborn
should have remembered," and there is as little question that infinite
damage might have been done to our cities and seacoast and to the banks
of our great rivers, had Great Britain employed her entire naval and
military forces for that purpose. But happily the English people wisely
refrained from an expenditure of blood and gold which could have no
permanent good result, and which would only serve to exasperate passions
and to prolong animosities which it was far wiser to permit to die out.
It is not unlikely that the attention of English people had been so
absorbed by the mighty conflict going on at their very doors that they
had not much to spare for the distant and comparatively obscure fields
across the Atlantic, and indeed the sentiments of the English people and
the policy of English governments have never exhibited a spirit of
revengefulness. The American war was but a slight episode in the great
epic of the age. At any rate the English ministry were content to treat
with the American commissioners at Ghent and to make a peace which left
untouched the pretended occasion for the war, over in expressive
silence, and peace was concluded, leaving "sailors' rights" the great
watchword of the war party, substantially as they stood before
hostilities began, except that our fishermen were deprived of the
valuable privilege they enjoyed of catching and curing fish on the
shores of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.[94]
[94] Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 358.
The news of peace was received in Boston with great joy. It was a day
given up to rejoicing; salutes were fired; the bells rang out their
merriest peals; the volunteer companies with their bands filled the
streets; the school boys took a holiday; the wharves so long deserted
were thronged, and the melancholy ships that rotted along side them were
once more gay with flags and streamers. Thus rejoicing extended all
along the seaboard and far inland, making glad all hearts and none more
glad than those of the promoters of the war in high places and low.[95]
[95] Life of Josiah Quincy, pp. 360, 361.
And so the "war of 1812" ended amid a general joy, not for what it had
accomplished, for the American forces were defeated in their invasion of
Canada, and the United States did not acquire one foot of additional
territory, or the settlement of any of the questions which were the
pretext for the war.
Much that occurred during the war of 1812 has been conveniently
forgotten by American historians, and much that had not occurred,
remembered. By degrees failure was transformed into success. The new
generations were taught that in that war their fathers had won a great
victory over the whole power of Great Britain single handed and alone.
This amazing belief is still cherished among the people of the United
States, to the astonishment of well informed visitors who meet with
evidence of the fact.