Part 10 (1/2)
continued the message, ”the Cabinet of Great Britain resorted, at length, to the sweeping system of blockades, under the name of Orders in Council.” Finally, the President did not refrain from the plain intimation that the Indian hostilities on the frontier were due to the influence of British traders and British garrisons.
Three days later the House of Representatives pa.s.sed a bill declaring war by a vote of 79 to 49. The opposition came largely from the Northeast. The representatives from Connecticut and Rhode Island were to a man against war, and they were supported by Federalists from Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. In the Senate the vote stood 19 for war and 13 against it. ”Except Pennsylvania, the entire representation of no Northern State declared itself for the war; except Kentucky, every State south of the Potomac and Ohio voted for the declaration.”
While Congress was debating the alternatives of peace or war, the British Government took a step which under modern conditions would have averted hostilities. Taking advantage of a decree of Napoleon dating from 1810, which declared his edicts revoked so far as American vessels were concerned, the Ministry announced on June 23 that the British orders would be withdrawn. But just five days earlier, President Madison had proclaimed a state of war between the United States and Great Britain.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A brief account of the events which formed the prelude to the War of 1812 may be found in K. C. Babc.o.c.k, _The Rise of American Nationality_ (in _The American Nation_, vol. 13, 1906). The diplomatic and military antecedents of the war are set forth at greater length in A. T. Mahan, _Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812_ (2 vols., 1905). Biographies contribute much that is of interest. Carl Schurz, _Henry Clay_ (2 vols., 1887), is one of the best. J. T. Morse, _John Quincy Adams_ (1882), and Edmund Quincy, _Life of Josiah Quincy of Ma.s.sachusetts_ (1867), also contain interesting information. M. P. Follett, _The Speaker of the House of Representatives_ (1896); Edward Stanwood, _History of the Presidency_ (1898); and M. L. Hinsdale, _History of the President's Cabinet_ (1911), touch upon important aspects of politics. The volume ent.i.tled _Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison_ (1886) gives many charming glimpses of social life at the capital. The discomforts and hazards of travel in the West are described with great vivacity by Margaret Van Horn, _A Journey to Ohio in 1810_ (1912).
CHAPTER XII
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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Const.i.tution 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 a.s.sembly of Connecticut sustained Governor Griswold in a similar att.i.tude toward the federal authorities, holding that the war was an offensive war to which the provisions of the Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed into the hands of the British. On the same day occurred the surrender of Fort Dearborn and the ma.s.sacre 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 Const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution, ”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 Const.i.tution reached Boston Harbor, even Federalists broke into exultation. The cry in every New England home was, ”Thank G.o.d 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 Const.i.tution 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 marksmans.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p-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 Const.i.tution, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 flags.h.i.+p, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Tec.u.mseh. 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 s.h.i.+ppers 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 cla.s.s to peace as the depredations of these privateers.
In the remote Southwest, the war a.s.sumed 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 Tec.u.mseh, and in the following spring began depredations which culminated in the capture of Fort Mims and the ma.s.sacre 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 sh.o.r.es 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.