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Title: History of the United States of America, Volume 6 (of 9) : During the first administration of James Madison, 1809-1813
Author: Adams, Henry
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "History of the United States of America, Volume 6 (of 9) : During the first administration of James Madison, 1809-1813" ***
THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1809-1813
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY
HENRY ADAMS.
VOLS. I. AND II.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1801–1805.
VOLS. III. AND IV.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1805–1809.
VOLS. V. AND VI.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF MADISON. 1809–1813.
VOLS. VII., VIII., AND IX.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
MADISON. 1813–1817. WITH AN INDEX TO THE ENTIRE WORK. (_In
Press._)
HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON
BY HENRY ADAMS
VOL. II.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1890
_Copyright, 1890_
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PINKNEY’S INAMICABLE LEAVE 1
II. THE “LITTLE BELT” 25
III. MADISON TRIUMPHANT 46
IV. HARRISON AND TECUMTHE 67
V. TIPPECANOE 90
VI. MEETING OF THE TWELFTH CONGRESS 113
VII. WAR DEBATES 133
VIII. WAR LEGISLATION 154
IX. MADISON AS MINERVA 176
X. HESITATIONS 199
XI. WAR 220
XII. JOEL BARLOW 245
XIII. REPEAL OF THE ORDERS IN COUNCIL 267
XIV. INVASION OF CANADA 289
XV. HULL’S SURRENDER 312
XVI. THE NIAGARA CAMPAIGN 336
XVII. NAVAL BATTLES 362
XVIII. DISCORD 388
XIX. EXECUTIVE EMBARRASSMENTS 412
XX. WAR LEGISLATION 435
INDEX 459
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER I.
RARELY had a great nation approached nearer than England to
ruin without showing consciousness of danger. Napoleon’s boast to
his Chamber of Commerce, that within ten years he would subject his
rival, was not ill-founded. The conquest of Russia, which Napoleon
meant to make certain, combined with a war between the United States
and Great Britain, coming immediately upon the destruction of private
credit and enterprise in 1810, could hardly fail to shake the British
empire to its foundation; and perhaps the worst sign of danger was the
absence of popular alarm. The intelligence of all England with feelings
equally strong, whether mute or vociferous, was united in contempt for
the stolid incompetence of the Tory faction beyond anything known in
England since the Stuarts; but both Houses of Parliament, as well as
the Crown, were conscious of needing no better representatives than
Perceval and Eldon, and convulsions that shook the world never stirred
the composure of these men. The capital and credit on which England’s
power rested were swept away; the poorer classes were thrown out of
employment; the price of wheat,[1] which averaged in 1807 seventy-eight
shillings per quarter of eight bushels, in 1808 eighty-five shillings,
and in 1809 one hundred and six shillings, in 1810 rose to one hundred
and twelve shillings, or about three dollars and a half a bushel, and
remained at or above this rate until the autumn of 1813; while abroad,
the Spanish peninsula was subdued by Napoleon, whose armies occupied
every part of Spain and Portugal except Cadiz and Lisbon. Sweden, the
last neutral in Europe, elected a French general of Bonaparte’s family
as king, and immediately afterward declared war on England; and the
United States closed their ports to British commerce, and menaced a
declaration of war. The exports of Great Britain fell off one third in
the year 1811. The sources of England’s strength showed exhaustion.
Neither these arguments nor even the supreme argument of war shook the
steadfast mind of Spencer Perceval. Responsibilities that might have
driven him to insanity took the form of religious duties; and with the
support of religious or patriotic formulas statesmen could sleep in
peace amidst the wreck of nations. After the insanity of King George
was admitted, at the beginning of November, 1810, Spencer Perceval
became for a time the King of England, but a king without title. The
Prince of Wales, the future regent, was obliged to wait for an Act of
Parliament authorizing him to assume power. The Prince of Wales had all
his life detested the Tory influence that surrounded the throne, and
had associated with Whigs and liberals, like Sheridan and Fox. Perceval
expected to retire; the prince could not yet take control, and this
dead-lock put a stop to serious government. Nothing but business of
routine could be undertaken.
If the United States could wait till spring, their friends were likely
to be once more in power, or the Tory influence would be so far shaken
that the danger of war might pass. For this possible revolution both
Madison and Pinkney twelve months before would have waited with
confidence and pleasure; but repeated disappointments had convinced
them that their patience was useless. Pinkney had asked and received
instructions to require a decision or to quit England. When November
arrived, the day on which Napoleon’s Decrees stood revoked according to
the Duc de Cadore, Pinkney acted in London on his own responsibility,
as Madison acted at Washington, and sent to Lord Wellesley a note,
dated November 3, asking for an immediate repeal of the British Orders
in Council, on the ground that Napoleon’s revocation had taken effect.
“That it has taken effect cannot be doubted,” he said;[2] but he
offered no evidence to support his assertion. He also assumed that
England was bound to withdraw Fox’s blockade of the French coast from
Brest to the Elbe, as well as Spencer Perceval’s subsequent measures
which were called into existence by Napoleon’s Continental system,
and were to cease with it. Both these demands were made without
instructions founded on the knowledge of Cadore’s letter.
At that moment Lord Wellesley was full of hope that at last he should
remove Spencer Perceval from his path. Every one supposed, and had good
ground for believing, that the Prince of Wales would at once form a
new Government, with Wellesley and the Whigs for its support. At such
a crisis Wellesley could not expect or indeed wish to effect a partial
and sudden change of foreign policy. He waited a month before taking
official notice of Pinkney’s letter, and when he replied,[3] December
4, said only that “after the most accurate inquiry” he had been unable
to obtain any authentic intelligence of the French repeal, and begged
the American minister to furnish whatever information he possessed on
the subject.
The American minister possessed no information on the subject, but he
received, December 11, news of the President’s proclamation founded on
the French repeal, and was the more decided to insist on his ground.
Finding that conversations produced no effect, Pinkney took his pen
once more,--and then began another of the diplomatic duels which had
occurred so often in the course of the last six years; but for the
first time the American champion with weak arguments and indifferent
temper used the kind of logic likely to produce conviction in the end.
Pinkney maintained that the French Decrees were revoked and that
Fox’s blockade was illegal. Neither position was beyond attack. The
American doctrine of blockade was by no means clear. The British
government never attempted to defend its sweeping Orders of 1807 and
1809 on the ground of legality; these were admittedly illegal, and
a proper _casus belli_ if America chose to make war on their
account. England claimed only that the United States were bound to
make war on France for the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, before
making war on England for her retaliatory Orders of 1807. In order to
evade this difficulty, France declared that her Decree of November,
1806, was retaliatory on Fox’s blockade of May, 1806. America began by
maintaining that as far as concerned neutral commerce both belligerents
used retaliation for illegitimate objects, and that the United States
might rightfully declare war against either or both. The position was
easily understood, and had the advantage of being historically true;
but the United States stood on less certain ground when they were drawn
into discussion of the legal theory involved in Fox’s blockade.
England held[4] that Fox’s blockade of May, 1806, covering the French
coast from the Elbe to Brest, was a lawful blockade, supported by a
particular naval force detached for that special purpose and sufficient
for its object, until the blockade itself was merged in the avowedly
extra-legal paper-blockades of 1809; and that if the paper-blockades
were withdrawn, Great Britain had the right to re-establish Fox’s
blockade with an efficient naval force to execute it.
President Madison held a different opinion. He insisted,[5] and
ordered Pinkney to insist, that a particular port must be invested by
a particular naval force; and that Great Britain ought not to contend
that her naval force was adequate to blockade a coast a thousand miles
long. On this ground the President, July 5, 1810,[6] instructed Pinkney
to require the annulment of Fox’s blockade as “palpably at variance
with the law of nations.” In order to prove the impartiality of this
demand, the President promised to insist that the repeal required from
France as its counterpart should “embrace every part of the French
Decrees which violate the neutral rights guaranteed to us by the law of
nations.”
No worse ground could have been found for Pinkney to stand upon. He was
obliged to begin by asserting, what every public man in Europe knew
to be untrue, that “every part of the French Decrees which violated
the neutral rights” of America had been repealed by Cadore’s letter
of August 5. His next contention, that coasts could not be blockaded,
was at least open to dispute when the coast was that of the British
Channel. Pinkney’s arguments became necessarily technical, and although
technical reasoning might be easily understood in a Court of Admiralty,
the attempt to treat politics as a branch of the profession of the
law had the disadvantage of refining issues to a point which no large
society could comprehend. When Wellesley, Dec. 4, 1810, asked for
evidence that Napoleon’s Decrees were repealed, Pinkney replied, in a
long note dated December 10,[7] that Cadore’s letter of August 5 stated
two disjunctive conditions of repeal,--the first depending on Great
Britain, the last on the United States; that although Great Britain had
not satisfied the first condition, the United States would undoubtedly
satisfy the last; therefore the French Decrees stood repealed. This
proposition, not even easy to understand, was supported by a long
argument showing that Cadore could not without absurdity have meant
anything else. As for further proof, not only had Pinkney none to
offer, but he gravely offered his want of evidence as evidence:--
“On such an occasion it is no paradox to say that the want of
evidence is itself evidence. That certain decrees are not in
force is proved by the absence of such facts as would appear
if they were in force. Every motive which can be conjectured
to have led to the repeal of the edicts invites to the full
execution of that repeal, and no motive can be imagined for a
different course. These considerations are alone conclusive.”
The argument might have escaped ridicule had not Jonathan Russell been
engaged at the same moment[8] in remonstrating with the Duc de Cadore
because the “New Orleans Packet” had been seized at Bordeaux under the
Berlin and Milan Decrees; and had not the “Moniteur,” within a week,
published Cadore’s official Report, declaring that the decrees would
never be repealed as long as England maintained her blockades; and had
not the Comte de Semonville, within another week, announced in the
French Senate that the decrees were the palladium of the seas.
Wellesley answered Pinkney, December 29, in a note[9] comparatively
short, and more courteous than any important State paper that had come
from the British government since Fox’s death.
“If nothing more had been required from Great Britain than the
repeal of our Orders in Council,” he said, “I should not have
hesitated to declare the perfect readiness of this Government
to fulfil that condition. On these terms the Government has
always been sincerely disposed to repeal the Orders in Council.
It appears, however, not only by the letter of the French
minister, but by your explanation, that the repeal of the Orders
in Council will not satisfy either the French or the American
government. The British government is further required by the
letter of the French minister to renounce those principles of
blockade which the French government alleges to be new.... On
the part of the American government, I understand you to require
that Great Britain shall revoke her Order of Blockade of May,
1806.”
Wellesley declined to entertain this demand. He appealed to the justice
of America not to force an issue on such ground, and he protested that
the Government retained an anxious solicitude to revoke the Orders in
Council as soon as the Berlin and Milan Decrees should be effectually
repealed, without conditions injurious to the maritime rights of Great
Britain.
To this declaration Pinkney replied, Jan. 14, 1811, in a letter[10]
defending his own position and attacking the good faith of the
British government. He began by defending the temper of his late
remonstrances:--
“It would not have been very surprising nor very culpable,
perhaps, if I had wholly forgotten to address myself to a
spirit of conciliation which had met the most equitable claims
with steady and unceasing repulsion; which had yielded nothing
that could be denied, and had answered complaints of injury by
multiplying their causes. With this forgetfulness, however, I am
not chargeable; for against all the discouragements suggested
by the past, I have acted still upon a presumption that the
disposition to conciliate, so often professed, would finally be
proved by some better evidence than a perseverance in oppressive
novelties, as obviously incompatible with such a disposition in
those who enforce them as in those whose patience they continue
to exercise.”
America, continued Pinkney, was not a party, either openly or covertly,
to the French requisition. “What I have to request of your Lordship
is that you will take our views and principles from our own mouths.”
The rejoinder was not so convincing as it would have been had Pinkney
wholly discarded French views; but on the point of Fox’s blockade, the
American and the French demand was the same. Pinkney was obliged to
show that the two identical conditions rested on different grounds. At
some length he laid down the law as the United States understood it.
“It is by no means clear,” he began, “that it may not be fairly
contended, on principle and early usage, that a maritime
blockade is incomplete with regard to States at peace unless the
place which it would affect is invested by land as well as by
sea. The United States, however, have called for the recognition
of no such rule. They appear to have contented themselves with
urging in substance that ports not actually blockaded by a
present, adequate, stationary force employed by the Power which
attacks them shall not be considered as shut to neutral trade
in articles not contraband of war; ... that a vessel cleared or
bound to a blockaded port shall not be considered as violating
in any manner the blockade unless on her approach to such port
she shall have been previously warned not to enter it; ... that
whole coasts and countries shall not be declared (for they
can never be more than _declared_) to be in a state of
blockade; ... and lastly, that every blockade shall be impartial
in its operation.”
On these definitions of law, and not to satisfy Napoleon’s requirement,
the President insisted on the abandonment of Fox’s blockade.
The withdrawal of the Orders in Council, on the other hand, was
required on the ground that England had pledged her faith to withdraw
them whenever France revoked her decrees. France had revoked her
decrees, and England could not honorably refuse to withdraw the orders.
“As to the Orders in Council which professed to be a reluctant
departure from all ordinary rules, and to be justified only as
a system of retaliation for a pre-existing measure of France,
their foundation, such as it was, is gone the moment that
measure is no longer in operation. But the Berlin Decree is
repealed, and even the Milan Decree, the successor of your
Orders in Council, is repealed also. Why is it, then, that your
orders have outlived those edicts?”
In both instances the American position lost character by connection
with Napoleon’s acts. Pinkney repudiated such a connection in the
first case, and his argument would have been stronger could he have
repudiated it in the second. Unable or unwilling to do this, he had no
resource but to lose his temper, which he did with proper self-control.
The correctness of his reasoning or of his facts became less important
from the moment he showed himself in earnest; for then the controversy
entered a new phase.
In making an issue of war, President Madison needed to exercise
extreme caution not to shock the sentiment of New England, but he
needed to observe no such delicacy in regard to the feelings of the
British Tories. In respect to the British government, the nature of
the issue mattered little, provided an issue were made; and Pinkney
might reasonably think that the more paradoxical his arguments the
more impression they would produce. Centuries of study at Oxford
and Edinburgh, and generations devoted to the logic or rhetoric of
Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, had left the most educated classes
of Great Britain still in the stage of culture where reasoning, in
order to convince, must cease to be reasonable. As Pinkney became
positive and arrogant, Wellesley became conciliatory and almost
yielding. The American note of January 14, written in a tone that had
not hitherto been taken in London, was coupled with a notice that
brought the two governments in presence of the long-threatened rupture.
Pinkney informed Lord Wellesley that as the British government, after
a lapse of many months, had taken no steps to carry out the assurance
of sending a new minister to Washington, the United States government
could not retain a minister at London. Therewith Pinkney requested an
audience of leave.
Although Wellesley had never avowed a political motive for his
systematic delays, no one could doubt that he intentionally postponed
not only concession on the Orders in Council, but also a settlement
of the “Chesapeake” affair and the appointment of a new minister at
Washington, because his colleagues, as he hinted[11] to Pinkney, were
persuaded “that the British interest in America would be completely
destroyed by sending thither at this time a minister plenipotentiary,”
and of course by any other frank advance. The influence of F. J.
Jackson with the Government was perhaps strong enough to check action
that would have amounted to a censure on his own conduct; and although
the American elections showed that Jackson had for the time so much
reduced British influence in America as to make some change of policy
necessary if it were to be revived, Jackson, in daily intercourse
with the Foreign Office and with ministers, was exerting every effort
to maintain his credit. Nothing less than Pinkney’s request for an
audience of leave was likely to end these ministerial hesitations.
For the moment, as Pinkney knew, his request could not be granted,
because the King was insane and could give audience to no one. Since
Nov. 1, 1810, Parliament had done no other business than such as
related to the regency; yet on Jan. 14, 1811, when Pinkney’s two notes
were written, the Regency Bill had not been brought before the Commons.
Introduced on the following day, Parliament showed extraordinary
energy by making it law in little more than a fortnight; yet the Prince
Regent, who took the oaths February 6, still required time to settle
his government.
Everything depended on the Prince Regent’s action. Had he followed the
expected course,--had he dismissed Spencer Perceval, and put himself in
the hands of Wellesley, Grenville, Grey, and Holland,--the danger of an
American war might possibly have vanished. The Orders in Council might
have been withdrawn, the “Chesapeake” affair might have been settled,
a friendly minister would have been sent to Washington, and the war
party in the Twelfth Congress would have been thrown into a minority.
After much manœuvring, the Prince of Wales at last avowed his decision.
February 4 he wrote to Spencer Perceval, announcing the wish, wholly in
deference to the King’s feelings, that the late ministers should remain
in charge of the government. The Whigs were once more prostrated by
this desertion, and the Marquess Wellesley abandoned his last hope of
saving the government from Perceval’s control.
The effect of the Prince Regent’s course was instantly felt. His
letter to Perceval was written February 4; he assumed the royal office
February 6; and February 11 Wellesley was able to answer[12] Pinkney’s
note on blockades.
“France requires,” said he, “that Great Britain shall not only
repeal the Orders in Council, but renounce those principles of
blockade which are alleged in the same letter to be new,--an
allegation which must be understood to refer to the introductory
part of the Berlin Decree. If Great Britain shall not submit to
those terms, it is plainly intimated in the same letter that
France requires America to enforce them. To these conditions
his Royal Highness, on behalf of his Majesty, cannot accede.
No principles of blockade have been promulgated or acted upon
by Great Britain previously to the Berlin Decree which are not
strictly conformable to the rights of civilized war and to the
approved usages and laws of nations.... I am commanded to inform
you that his Royal Highness cannot consent to blend the question
which has arisen upon the Orders in Council with any discussion
of the general principles of blockade.”
In a note of two lines, Pinkney replied[13] that he had no inducement
to trouble his Lordship further on the subject. The same day he
received a notice that the Prince Regent would hold his first
diplomatic levee February 19; but instead of accepting the invitation,
Pinkney wrote with the same brevity to ask at what time the Prince
Regent would do him the honor to give his audience of leave.[14]
This abrupt course brought the Government partially to reason. Within
forty-eight hours Wellesley wrote to Pinkney a private letter[15] of
apology for the delay in appointing a minister to Washington, and of
regret that this delay should have been misunderstood; he announced
that Augustus J. Foster, late British minister in Sweden, would be
immediately gazetted as minister to the United States; and his letter
closed by a remark which came as near deprecation as Pinkney’s temper
would allow: “You will, of course, exercise your own judgment, under
these circumstances, respecting the propriety of requiring an audience
of leave on the grounds which you have stated.” With this private
letter, Lord Wellesley sent an official notice that the Prince Regent
would receive Mr. Pinkney February 19, by his desire, for an audience
of leave.
The responsibility thus thrown upon Pinkney was more serious than had
ever before, or has ever since, fallen to the share of a minister of
the United States in England. The policy of withdrawing the United
States minister from London might be doubted, not so much because it
was violent, as because it was likely to embarrass the President more
than it embarrassed England. If the President was indeed bent on war,
and wished to hasten its declaration, the recall of his minister in
London might be proper; but if he still expected to negotiate, London
was the spot where he needed to keep his strongest diplomatist, and, if
possible, more than one. Yet the worst possible mistake was to recede
once more,--to repeat the comedy of American errors, and to let the
British government assume that its policy was still safe.
Pinkney hesitated, and consulted his instructions.[16] These were
dated Nov. 15, 1810, and ordered Pinkney, in case no successor to F.
J. Jackson should then have been appointed, to take leave of absence,
entrusting the legation to a _chargé d’affaires_; but this
positive order was practically revoked in the concluding sentence:
“Considering the season at which this instruction may have its effect,
and the possibility of a satisfactory change in the posture of our
relations with Great Britain, the time of your return to the United
States is left to your discretion and convenience.”
These instructions did not warrant Pinkney in demanding leave of
absence on any other ground than that of failure to appoint a minister
at Washington. They did not warrant him in returning to America at all
if he saw the possibility of such an appointment. Pinkney was obliged
to put a free construction on the President’s language. Abandoning the
ground that his departure was a necessary result of the absence of a
British minister at Washington, he asked Lord Wellesley, in an official
note, dated February 17, what Mr. Foster was to do when he arrived
there?[17] “I presume that for the restoration of harmony between the
two countries, the Orders in Council will be relinquished without
delay; that the blockade of 1806 will be annulled; that the case of
the ‘Chesapeake’ will be arranged in the manner heretofore intended;
and in general that all such just and reasonable acts will be done as
are necessary to make us friends.” So important a letter was probably
never written by any other American diplomatist without instructions
from his Government,--for it was in effect an ultimatum, preliminary to
the rupture of relations and ultimate war; yet even in this final list
of American demands made by the American minister in withdrawing from
London, impressment was not expressly mentioned.
Wellesley replied in a private letter[18] dated February 23, with
the formal avowal that “it would be neither candid toward you, nor
just toward this Government, to countenance any interpretation which
might favor a supposition that it was intended by this Government to
relinquish any of the principles which I have so often endeavored to
explain to you.” Nothing in Wellesley’s letter showed a desire to
irritate, and his refusals left less sting than was left by Canning’s
concessions; but the issue was fairly joined, and America was at
liberty to act upon it as she pleased.
In order to leave no doubt of his meaning, Pinkney instantly[19]
claimed his audience of leave for February 28, declining, in the mean
time, to attend the diplomatic levee which by postponement took place
only February 26. His conduct was noticed and understood, as he meant
it should be; and as his audience still remains the only occasion
when an American minister at London has broken relations in a hostile
manner, with resulting war, it has an interest peculiar to itself.
Several accounts were preserved of what passed at the interview.
Pinkney’s official report recorded the words used by him:[20]--
“I stated to the Prince Regent the grounds upon which it had
become my duty to take my leave and to commit the business of
the legation to a _chargé d’affaires_; and I concluded by
expressing my regret that my humble efforts in the execution
of the instructions of my Government to set to rights the
embarrassed and disjointed relations of the two countries had
wholly failed; and that I saw no reason to expect that the great
work of their reconciliation was likely to be accomplished
through any other agency.”
According to Pinkney, and according to the official report of Lord
Wellesley,[21] the Prince Regent replied in terms of the utmost amity
toward the United States. Another account of the interview gave the
impression that the Prince Regent had not shown himself so gracious
toward the departing minister as the official reports implied.
Francis James Jackson, who dogged Pinkney’s footsteps with the
personal malevolence he had almost a right to feel, and who haunted
the Court and Foreign Office in the hope of obtaining--what he never
received--some public mark of approval, wrote to Timothy Pickering a
long letter on Pinkney’s departure:[22]--
“It has occasioned much surprise here that exactly at the moment
of Pinkney’s demand being complied with he should nevertheless
take what he calls an inamicable leave.... It was not expected
that he would depart so far from his usual urbanity as to
decline the invitation that was sent him in common with the
rest of the foreign ministers to attend the Regent’s levee. It
was not probable after this that the audience of leave which he
claimed should answer his expectation. It was very short. Mr.
Pinkney was told that the Regent was desirous of cultivating a
good understanding with the United States; that he had given
a proof of it in the appointment of a minister as soon as his
acceptance of the Regency enabled him to appoint one; that the
Orders in Council would have been repealed, but that his Royal
Highness never could or would surrender the maritime rights
of his country. Mr. Pinkney then made some profession of his
personal sentiments, to which he was answered: ‘Sir, I cannot
look into men’s minds; I can only judge of men’s motives by
their conduct.’ And then the audience ended.”
So closed Pinkney’s residence in London. He had passed there nearly
five years of such violent national hostility as no other American
minister ever faced during an equal length of time, or defied at last
with equal sternness; but his extraordinary abilities and character
made him greatly respected and admired while he stayed, and silenced
remonstrance when he left. For many years afterward, his successors
were mortified by comparisons between his table-oratory and theirs.
As a writer he was not less distinguished. Canning’s impenetrable
self-confidence met in him powers that did not yield, even in
self-confidence, to his own; and Lord Wellesley’s oriental dignity was
not a little ruffled by Pinkney’s handling. As occasion required, he
was patient under irritation that seemed intolerable, as aggressive as
Canning himself, or as stately and urbane as Wellesley; and even when
he lost his temper, he did so in cold blood, because he saw no other
way to break through the obstacles put in his path. America never sent
an abler representative to the Court of London.
Pinkney sailed from England a few weeks afterward, leaving in charge of
the legation John Spear Smith, a son of Senator Samuel Smith, who had
been for a time attached to the Legation at St. Petersburg; had thence
travelled to Vienna and Paris, where he received Pinkney’s summons to
London,--the most difficult and important diplomatic post in the world.
Simultaneously, Lord Wellesley hurried Foster to the United States. The
new British minister was personally acceptable. By birth a son of the
actual Duchess of Devonshire by her first husband, he had the advantage
of social and political backing, while he was already familiar with
America, where he had served as Secretary of Legation. Just dismissed
from Sweden by Bernadotte’s election and the declaration of war
against England which followed it, Foster would hardly have sought or
taken the mission to Washington had not Europe been closed to English
diplomacy. Even F. J. Jackson, who spoke kindly of few people, gave a
pleasant account of his successor.[23] “Foster is a very gentlemanlike
young man, quite equal to do nothing at his post, which is now the best
possible policy to follow;” but in the same breath, “that most clumsy
and ill-conditioned minister,” as Pinkney described Jackson,[24] added
that the police office was the proper place to train officials for
service at Washington. “One of the best magistrates as minister, and a
good sharp thief-taker for secretary, would put us in all respects much
upon a level with their Yankeeships.” The phrase implied that Jackson
felt his own career at Washington to have been mortifying, and that
he had not been on a level with his opponents. Possibly the sense of
mortification hurried the decline which ended in his death, three years
afterward, in the midst of the war he did so much to cause.
Wellesley’s instructions to Foster were dated April 10,[25] and marked
another slight step toward concession. Once more he discussed the
Orders in Council, but on the ground taken by Pinkney could come to no
other conclusion than that the President was mistaken in thinking the
French Decrees repealed, and extravagant in requiring the blockade of
1806 to be repealed in consequence; yet as long as any hope remained
of prevailing with the President to correct his error, American ships,
captured while acting in pursuance of it, should not be condemned.
Even under the challenge expressly proclaimed by the non-importation,
the British government anxiously desired to avoid a positive rupture.
As for the “Chesapeake” affair, Foster was ordered to settle it to
suit the American government, guarding only against the admission of
insulting expressions. He was to remonstrate and protest against the
seizure of the Floridas,[26] but was not to commit his Government
further. Finally, a secret instruction[27] notified Foster that in
case America should persist in her non-importation, England would
retaliate,--probably by increasing her import duties, and excluding
American commerce from the East Indies.
These instructions conformed with the general attitude of English
society. Though sobered by the disasters that attended Tory government,
England had not yet passed beyond the stage when annoyances created
only the wish to ignore them. No one would admit serious danger from
America. In Parliament, Pinkney’s abrupt and hostile departure was
barely mentioned, and ministers denied it importance. The “London
Times,” of March 1, complained that no one could be induced to feel an
interest in the American question. “There is certainly great apathy
in the public mind generally upon the questions now at issue between
us and our quondam colonies, which it is difficult to arouse, and
perhaps useless to attempt.” Here and there the old wish for a war
with the United States was still felt;[28] but the public asked only
to hear no more on American subjects. Even the “Times” refused, April
13, to continue discussion on matters “upon which the feelings of the
great bulk of the nation are peculiarly blunt.” Wellesley’s course
and Foster’s instructions reflected only the lassitude and torpor of
the day; but within eighteen months Wellesley, in open Parliament,
criticised what he charged as the policy, not of himself, but of his
colleagues, in language which implied that the public apathy was
assumed rather than real. “The disposition of the American government
was quite evident,” he said, Nov. 30, 1812;[29] “and therefore
common policy should have urged ministers to prepare fully for the
event; and they should have made adequate exertion either to pacify,
to intimidate, or to punish America.” Knowing this, they sent out
Foster, powerless either for defence or attack, to waste his time at
Washington, where for ten years his predecessors had found the grave of
their ambitions.
CHAPTER II.
THE diplomatic insolvency inherited from Merry, Rose, Erskine, and
Jackson became more complete with every year that passed; and even
while Foster was on the ocean, a new incident occurred, which if it did
not prove a catastrophe to be inevitable, showed at least how small was
his chance of averting it.
On the renewal of trade between America and France, the British navy
renewed its blockade of New York. If nothing more had happened, the
recurrence of this vexation would alone have gone far to destroy the
hopes of diplomacy; but this was not all.
The “Melampus” reappeared, having for a companion the “Guerriere,”
commanded by Captain Dacres, and supposed to be one of the best British
frigates of her class. Early in May, when Foster sailed from England,
these cruisers, lying off Sandy Hook, began to capture American vessels
bound for France, and to impress American sailors at will. No sooner
did these complaints reach Washington than Secretary Hamilton, May
6,[30] ordered Commodore John Rodgers, whose flag-ship, the 44-gun
frigate “President,” was lying at Annapolis, to sail at once to
protect American commerce from unlawful interference by British and
French cruisers. Rodgers sailed from Annapolis May 10, and May 14
passed the capes. The scene of the “Chesapeake’s” unredressed outrage
lay some fifteen or twenty miles to the southward, and the officers and
crew of the “President” had reason to think themselves expected to lose
no fair opportunity of taking into their own hands the redress which
the British government denied. For the past year Rodgers had carried
orders “to vindicate the injured honor of our navy and revive the
drooping spirits of the nation; ... to maintain and support at any risk
and cost the honor” of his flag; and these orders were founded chiefly
on “the inhuman and dastardly attack on our frigate ‘Chesapeake,’--an
outrage which prostrated the flag of our country, and has imposed on
the American people cause of ceaseless mourning.”[31]
Rodgers was bound for New York, but on the morning of May 16 was still
about thirty miles from Cape Charles and eighteen miles from the coast,
when toward noon he saw a ship to the eastward standing toward him
under a press of canvas. As the vessel came near, he could make her out
from the shape of her upper sails to be a man-of-war; he knew of no
man-of-war except the “Guerriere” on the coast; the new-comer appeared
from the quarter where that frigate would be looked for, and Rodgers
reasoned that in all probability she was the “Guerriere.” He decided
to approach her, with the object of ascertaining whether a man named
Diggio, said to have been impressed a few days before by Captain Dacres
from an American brig, was on board. The spirit of this inquiry was
new.
Until quarter before two o’clock in the afternoon the ships stood
toward each other. The stranger showed no colors, but made signals,
until finding them unanswered, she changed her course and stood to the
southward. Rodgers then made sail in chase, his colors and pennant
flying. At half-past three, the stranger’s hull began to be visible
from the “President’s” deck, but as the wind failed the American
frigate gained less rapidly. In latitude 37° the sun, May 16, sets
at seven o’clock, and dusk comes quickly on. At quarter-past seven
the unknown ship again changed her course, and lay to, presenting
her broadside to the “President,” and showing colors, which in the
gathering twilight were not clearly seen. The ship had the look of a
frigate.
At quarter before eight, Rodgers ordered his acting commandant to bring
the “President” to windward of the supposed frigate within speaking
distance,--a manœuvre which naturally caused the stranger uneasiness,
so that she wore three times to prevent the “President” from getting
under her stern. At half-past eight, according to the American
account,--at quarter-past eight, according to the British story,--the
“President” rounded to, within pistol-shot. On both ships every gun in
the broadside was run out and trained on the opposite vessel, and out
of every port a dozen eyes were strained to catch sight, through the
dusk, of what passed in the stranger.
By the dim light Rodgers saw the supposed “Guerriere,” her
main-top-sail to the mast, waiting with apparent confidence the next
act of the audacious American frigate which had chased a British
man-of-war all day, and had at last run up close to windward,--a
manœuvre which British frigates were disposed to resent. To this
point the reports showed no great disagreement; but in regard to what
followed, one story was told by Rodgers and all his ship’s company,
while a wholly different story was told by the British captain and his
officers.
Rodgers reported that while rounding to, he hailed the unknown vessel
through his trumpet, calling out: “What ship is that?” The question,
“What ship is that?” was immediately echoed back. Rodgers had time
to tell his acting captain that the “President” was forging too fast
ahead, before he hailed again: “What ship is that, I say?” Instantly
a flash was seen from the dark where the stranger’s hull lay, and a
double report told that the ball had struck the “President,” lodging
in the mainmast. Taken by surprise, Rodgers turned to his commandant
of marines and asked, “What the devil was that?” but before he gave an
order his third lieutenant, Alexander James Dallas, who was watching
at the first port forward of the gangway and saw the flash, leaped to
one of the guns in his division and discharged it. The “Chesapeake’s”
disaster had done away with the old-fashioned logger-heads and matches;
the “President’s” guns were fitted with locks, and were discharged in
an instant. Immediately afterward three guns were fired by the enemy,
and the report of muskets was heard. Then Rodgers gave the order to
fire, and the “President” opened with a whole broadside, followed
by another. In about five minutes the enemy seemed to be silenced,
and Rodgers gave the order to cease firing; but some three minutes
afterward the stranger opened again, and the “President” resumed fire
until she desisted. From the “President’s” deck enough could be seen
of the enemy’s behavior to prove that whoever she might be, she was
not the “Guerriere;” and Rodgers then made the remark that either she
had received some unfortunate shot at the outset, or she was a vessel
of force very inferior to what he had taken her for,--although she was
still supposed to be nothing less than a 36-gun frigate. Disabled she
certainly was, for she lay ungovernable, with her bow directly under
the “President’s” broadside.
Rodgers hailed once more, and understood the stranger to answer that
she was a British ship-of-war in great distress. At nine o’clock at
night the “President” began to repair damages, and beat about within
reach, on different tacks, with lights displayed, until daybreak, when
she ran down to the British vessel, and sent a boat on board. Then at
last Rodgers learned, certainly to his great disappointment, that he
had been fighting a single-decked vessel of less than half his force.
His mistake was not so surprising as it seemed. The British cruiser
might easily at a distance, or in the dark, be taken for a frigate. Her
great length; her poop, top-gallants, forecastle; her deep bulwarks;
the manner of stowing her hammocks; and room on each side to mount
three more guns than she actually carried,--were decisive to any one
who could not see that she carried but one tier of guns.[32]
Captain Bingham of the “Little Belt,” a British corvette, rated at
twenty guns, gave a very different account of the affair. He had been
ordered from Bermuda to carry despatches to the “Guerriere;” had run
north toward New York without finding her; and on his return southward,
at eleven o’clock on the morning of May 16, had seen a strange sail, to
which he gave chase. At two o’clock in the afternoon, concluding that
she was an American frigate, he abandoned the chase, and resumed his
course. The rest of his story is to be told in his own words:[33]--
“Hoisted the colors, and made all sail south, ... the stranger
edging away, but not making any more sail. At 3.30 he made sail
in chase.... At 6.30, finding he gained so considerably on us
as not to be able to elude him during the night, being within
gunshot, and clearly discerning the stars in his broad pennant,
I imagined the most prudent method was to bring to, and hoist
the colors, that no mistake might arise, and that he might see
what we were. The ship was therefore brought to, her colors
hoisted, her guns double-shotted, and every preparation made in
case of a surprise. By his manner of steering down, he evidently
wished to lay his ship in a position for raking, which I
frustrated by wearing three times. At about 8.15 he came within
hail. I hailed and asked what ship it was. He again repeated my
words and fired a broadside, which I instantly returned. The
action then became general, and continued so for three quarters
of an hour, when he ceased firing, and appeared to be on fire
about the main hatchway. He then filled, ... hailed, and asked
what ship this was. He fired no more guns, but stood from us,
giving no reason for his most extraordinary conduct.”
Bingham’s report was afterward supported by the evidence of his two
lieutenants, his boatswain, purser, and surgeon, at the official
inquiry made May 29, at Halifax.[34] Rodgers’s report was sustained
by the searching inquiry made by the American government to ascertain
the truth of Bingham’s assertions.[35] The American investigation was
naturally much more thorough in consequence of Bingham’s charges, so
that not only every officer, but also every seaman of the “President’s”
company gave evidence under oath. All agreed in swearing to the facts
as they have been related in the American story.
About a month after the action, two sailors claiming to be deserters
from the “President” arrived at Halifax and made affidavits,[36] which
gave a third account quite different from the other two. One of these
men, an Englishman, swore that he had been stationed in the second
division, on the gun-deck of the “President;” that a gun in that
division went off, as he thought, by accident, four or five men leaning
on it; that he had turned to acquaint Lieutenant Belden, who commanded
that division, of the fact, but before he could do this, though the
lieutenant was only three guns from him, the whole broadside of the
“President” was discharged. This story was the least probable of the
three. The evidence of a deserter, under every motive to ingratiate
himself with his future officers, would be suspicious, even if he were
proved to have been in the “President’s” crew, which was not the case;
but it became valueless when the rolls showed no Lieutenant Belden on
board the “President,” but that the second division on the gun-deck was
commanded by Lieut. A. J. Dallas,--and Lieutenant Dallas swore that he
himself fired the first gun from the “President,” without orders, in
answer to the “Little Belt’s” discharge. The evidence of every other
officer and man at the guns supported his assertion.
When the contradictory reports of Rodgers and Bingham were published,
a controversy arose between the newspapers which sympathized with the
different captains. Rodgers was vehemently attacked by the English
and Federalist press; Bingham was as hotly scouted by the American
newspapers friendly to Madison. The dispute was never settled. Perhaps
this was the only instance where the honor of the services was so
deeply involved on both sides as to make the controversy important; for
if Rodgers, all his officers, and his whole crew behaved as Bingham
alleged, and perjured themselves afterward to conceal it, they were not
the men they were supposed to be; and if Bingham swore falsely, he went
far to establish the worst American charges against the character of
the British navy.
For this reason some little effort to form an opinion on the subject
deserves to be made, even at the risk of diffuseness. The elaborate
investigation by the United States government settled the weight of
testimony in favor of Rodgers. Other evidence raised doubts of the
accuracy of Bingham’s report.
This report was dated May 21, five days after the battle, in “lat. 36°
53´ N.; long. 71° 49´ W. Cape Charles bearing W. 48 miles,”--which,
according to the senior lieutenant’s evidence, May 29, was about
the spot of the action, from fifty to fifty-four miles east of Cape
Charles. Yet a glance at the map showed that these bearings marked
a point more than two hundred miles east of Cape Charles. This
carelessness could not be set to the account of a misprint.
The date proved only inaccuracy; other parts of Bingham’s report showed
a willingness to confuse the facts. He claimed to have hoisted his
colors at two o’clock in the afternoon, after making out the American
commodore’s pennant and resuming a southerly course. Rodgers averred
that the “Little Belt” obstinately refused to show colors till darkness
concealed them; and Bingham’s report itself admitted that at 6.30 he
decided to hoist his colors, “that no mistake might arise.” During the
five hours’ chase his colors were not flying. His assertion, too, that
at 6.30 the American frigate was within gunshot, and that the “Little
Belt” was brought to because she could not escape, agreed ill with
his next admission, that the “President” consumed nearly two hours in
getting within hailing distance.
The most evident error was at the close of the British story. Bingham
declared that the general action lasted three quarters of an hour,
and that then the enemy ceased firing; appeared to be on fire about
the main hatchway, and “stood from us,” firing no more guns. The two
lieutenants, boatswain, and purser of the “Little Belt” swore that
the action lasted “about an hour;” the surgeon said “about forty-five
minutes.” Every American officer declared under oath that the entire
action, including the cessation of firing for three minutes, did not
exceed a quarter of an hour, or eighteen minutes at most. On this
point the American story was certainly correct. Indeed, two years
later, after the “Constitution” had silenced the “Guerriere” in
thirty-five minutes, and the “United States” had, in a rough sea and
at comparatively long range, left the “Macedonian” a wreck in less
than two hours of action, no officer in the British service would
have sacrificed his reputation for veracity by suggesting that a
British corvette of eighteen guns could have lain nearly an hour
within pistol-shot, in calm weather, under the hot fire of an American
“line-of-battle ship in disguise.” The idea of forcing her to “stand
from us” would have seemed then mere gasconade. Some fifteen months
afterward, the British sloop-of-war “Alert,” of twenty guns, imitated
the “Little Belt” by attacking Commodore Porter’s 32-gun frigate
“Essex,” and in eight minutes struck her colors in a sinking condition.
If the “President” had been no heavier than the “Essex,” she should
still have silenced the “Little Belt” in a quarter of an hour.
The “Little Belt” escaped destruction, but she suffered severely.
Bingham reported: “I was obliged to desist from firing, as, the ship
falling off, no gun would bear, and had no after-sail to help her to;
all the rigging and sails cut to pieces; not a brace nor a bowline
left.... I have to lament the loss of thirty-two men killed and
wounded, among whom is the master. His Majesty’s ship is much damaged
in masts, rigging, and hull; ... many shot through between wind and
water, and many shots still remain inside, and upper works all shot
away; starboard pump also.” He did not know his good fortune. Two
years afterward he would have been well content to escape from the
“President” on any terms, even though the “Little Belt” had been twice
the size she was. The “President’s” loss consisted of one boy wounded,
and some slight damage to the rigging.
Bingham’s report was accepted by the British government and navy with
blind confidence, and caused no small part of the miscalculation which
ended in disasters to British pride. “No one act of the little navy of
the United States,” said the British historian five years afterward,
“had been at all calculated to gain the respect of the British. First
was seen the ‘Chesapeake’ allowing herself to be beaten with impunity
by a British ship only nominally superior to her. Then the huge frigate
‘President’ attacks and fights for nearly three quarters of an hour the
British sloop ‘Little Belt.’”[37] So self-confident was the British
navy that Bingham was believed to have fought the “President” with
credit and success; while, on the American side, Rodgers and his ship’s
company believed that the British captain deliberately delayed the
meeting until dark, with the view of taking advantage of the night to
punish what he thought the insolence of the chase.
Whatever opinion might be formed as to the conduct of the two captains,
the vehemence of feeling on each side was only to be compared with the
“Chesapeake” affair; but in this instance the grievance belonged to
the British navy, and Dacres and the “Guerriere” felt the full passion
and duty of revenge. The news met Foster on his arrival at Norfolk,
a few weeks afterward, and took away his only hope of a cordial
reception. His instructions intended him to conciliate good-will by
settling the “Chesapeake” outrage, while they obliged him to take a
tone of refusal or remonstrance on every other subject; but he found,
on arriving, that the Americans cared nothing for reparation of the
“Chesapeake” outrage, since Commodore Rodgers had set off against it
an outrage of his own, and had killed four men for every one killed
by Captain Humphries. Instead of giving redress, Foster found himself
obliged to claim it.
July 2 Foster was formally received by the President; and the same day,
as though he had no other hope but to take the offensive, he began his
official correspondence by a letter on the seizure of West Florida,
closing with a formal notice that if the United States persevered in
their course, his orders required him to present the solemn protest of
his Government “against an attempt so contrary to every principle of
public justice, faith, and national honor.”
The language was strong; but unfortunately for Foster’s influence,
the world at the moment showed so little regard for justice, faith,
or honor, that the United States had no reason to be singular in
Quixotism; and although in logic the _tu quoque_ was an argument
hardly deserving notice, in politics it was only less decisive than
cannon. The policy of Foster’s remonstrance was doubtful in another
respect. In proportion as men exposed themselves to reprimands,
they resented the reprimand itself. Madison and Monroe had each his
sensitive point. Madison resented the suggestion that Napoleon’s
decrees were still in force, regarding the matter as involving his
veracity. Monroe equally resented the assertion that West Florida
belonged to Spain, for his character as a man of sense, if not of
truth, was involved in the assertion that he had himself bought West
Florida in his Louisiana purchase. Yet the mildness of his reply to
Foster’s severe protest proved his earnest wish to conciliate England.
In a note[38] of July 8 he justified the seizure of West Florida by the
arguments already used, and offered what he called a “frank and candid
explanation” to satisfy the British government. In private he talked
with more freedom, and--if Foster could be believed--showed himself in
a character more lively if not more moral than any the American people
would have recognized as his. July 5 Foster wrote to Wellesley:[39]--
“It was with real pain, my Lord, that I was forced to listen
to arguments of the most profligate nature, such as that other
nations were not so scrupulous; that the United States showed
sufficient forbearance in not assisting the insurgents of South
America and looking to their own interests in the present
situation of that country.”
Foster was obliged to ignore the meaning of this pointed retort;
while his inquiries how far the American government meant to carry
its seizures of Spanish territory drew from Monroe no answer but a
laugh. The Secretary of State seemed a transformed man. Not only did he
show no dread of interference from England in Florida, but he took an
equally indifferent air on every other matter except one. He said not a
word about impressments; he betrayed no wish to trouble himself about
the “Chesapeake” affair; he made no haste in apologizing for the attack
on the “Little Belt;” but the Orders in Council--these, and nothing
else--formed the issue on which a change of policy was to depend.
Precisely on the Orders in Council Foster could offer no hope of
concession or compromise. So far from withdrawing the orders, he was
instructed to require that the United States should withdraw the
Non-intercourse Act, under threat of retaliation; and he carried out
his instructions to the letter. After protesting, July 2, against the
seizure of West Florida, he wrote, July 3, a long protest against the
non-importation.[40] His demand savored of Canning’s and Jackson’s
diplomacy; but his arguments in its support were better calculated for
effect, and his cry for justice claimed no little sympathy among men
who shared in the opinion of Europe that France was the true object of
attack, and that Napoleon’s overthrow, not the overthrow of England,
was the necessary condition of restoring public order. Foster’s
protest against including Fox’s blockade among the admittedly illegal
Orders in Council, brought the argument to a delicate issue of law and
fact.
“In point of date,” he said, “the blockade of May, 1806,
preceded the Berlin Decree; but it was a just and legal
blockade, according to the established law of nations, because
it was intended to be maintained, and was actually maintained,
by an adequate force appointed to guard the whole coast
described in the notification, and consequently to enforce the
blockade.”
In effect this argument conceded Madison’s principle; for the
further difference between blockading a coast and blockading by
name the several ports on a coast, was hardly worth a war; and the
question whether an estuary, like the British Channel, the Baltic
Sea, or Chesapeake Bay, could be best blockaded by a cruising or by
a stationary squadron, or by both, called rather for naval than for
legal opinion. Foster repudiated the principle of paper-blockades; and
after showing that Fox’s blockade was defended only as far as it was
meant to be legal, he made the further concession of admitting that
since it had been merged in the Orders in Council, it existed only as
a part of the orders; so that if the orders were repealed, England
must either make Fox’s blockade effective, or abandon it. By this
expedient, the issue was narrowed to the Orders in Council retaliatory
on Bonaparte’s decrees, and intended to last only as long as those
decrees lasted. Foster appealed to Napoleon’s public and official
language to prove that those decrees were still in force, and therefore
that the United States government could not, without making itself a
party to Napoleon’s acts and principles, demand a withdrawal of the
British Orders. If the orders were not to be withdrawn because they
were illegal, they ought not to be withdrawn on the false excuse that
Napoleon had withdrawn his decrees. Against such a demand England might
reasonably protest:--
“Great Britain has a right to complain that ... not only
has America suffered her trade to be moulded into the means
of annoyance to Great Britain under the provisions of the
French Decrees, but construing those decrees as extinct,
upon a deceitful declaration of the French Cabinet, she has
enforced her Non-importation Act against England. Under these
circumstances I am instructed by my Government to urge to that
of the United States the injustice of thus enforcing that Act
against his Majesty’s dominions; and I cannot but hope that a
spirit of justice will induce the United States government to
reconsider the line of conduct they have pursued, and at least
to re-establish their former state of strict neutrality.”
President Madison had put himself, little by little, in a position
where he had reason to fear the popular effect of such appeals; but
awkward as Madison’s position was, that of Monroe was many degrees
worse. He had accepted office in April as the representative of
Republicans who believed that Napoleon’s decrees were not repealed,
and the objects of his ambition seemed to depend on reversing
Madison’s course. In July he found himself in painful straits. Obliged
to maintain that Napoleon’s decrees were repealed, he was reduced to
sacrifice his own official agent in the effort. Foster reported, as a
matter of surprise to himself, remarks of Monroe still more surprising
to history.
“I have urged,” reported Foster, July 7,[41] “with every
argument I could think of, the injustice of the Non-importation
Act which was passed in the last session of Congress, while
there were doubts entertained even here as to the repeal of
the Berlin and Milan Decrees; but to my surprise I find it
now maintained that there existed no doubt on the subject
at the time of passing the Act, and Mr. Russell is censured
by his Government for publicly averring that the ship ‘New
Orleans Packet’ was seized under their operation,--not that
it is denied, however, that she was seized under them by our
construction. Mr. Monroe, indeed, though he qualified his blame
of Mr. Russell by praising his zeal, yet allowed to me that much
of their present embarrassment was owing to his statement.”
“It would be fatiguing to your Lordship,” continued Foster,
“were I to describe the various shadows of argument to which the
American minister had recourse in order to prove his statement
of the decrees having been repealed in as far as America had a
right to expect.”
These shadows of argument, however elaborately described, could be
reduced to the compass of a few lines; for they all resulted in a
doctrine which became thenceforward a dogma. Napoleon’s decrees, so
viewed, had two characters,--an international, and a municipal. The
international character alone could give the right of international
retaliation; and the Emperor, since November 1, had ceased to enforce
his edicts in this character. The municipal character, whether enforced
or not, in no way concerned England.
Such was, indeed, Napoleon’s object in substituting customs regulations
for the rules of his decrees in his own ports. After that change, he
applied the decrees themselves to every other part of Europe, but made
an apparent exception for American commerce with France, which was
forced to conform to his objects by municipal licenses and prohibitory
duties. Monroe took the ground that since November 2 the decrees
stood repealed, and the “New Orleans Packet” had been seized under
a “municipal operation” with which England had nothing to do. The
argument, though perhaps casuistic, seemed to offer a sufficient excuse
for England, in case she should wish to abandon her own system as she
saw danger approaching; but it brought Monroe, who used it profusely,
into daily mortification, and caused the President, who invented
and believed it, a world of annoyance,--for Napoleon, as Monroe had
personal reason to remember, never failed to sacrifice his allies, and
was certain to fail in supporting a theory so infirm as this.
For the moment, Monroe made no written reply to Foster’s letter of July
3; he was tormented by the crisis of his career, and Foster ceased
to be important from the moment he could do nothing toward a repeal
of the orders. With the usual misfortune of British diplomatists,
Foster became aggressive as he lost ground, and pushed the secretary
vigorously into Napoleon’s arms. July 14 Foster wrote again, in a
threatening tone, that measures of retaliation for the Act of March
2 were already before his Government, and if America persisted in
her injurious course of conduct, the most unfriendly situation would
result. While this threat was all that England offered for Monroe’s
friendship, news arrived on the same day that Napoleon, May 4, had
opened his ports to American commerce. Not till then did Monroe give
way, and turn his back upon England and his old political friends. The
course taken by Foster left no apparent choice; and for that reason
chiefly Monroe, probably with many misgivings, abandoned the theory
of foreign affairs which had for five years led him into so many
mortifications at home and abroad.
July 23 Monroe sent his answer[42] to the British minister’s
argument. In substance this note, though long, contained nothing
new; but in effect it was an ultimatum which left England to choose
between concession and war. As an ultimatum, it was weakened by the
speciousness of its long argument to prove that the French Decrees
were repealed. The weakness of the ground required double boldness
of assertion, and Monroe accepted the whole task. He showed further
willingness to accept an issue on any point England might select.
Foster’s remonstrance in regard to the “Little Belt” called from
Monroe a tart reference to the affair of the “Chesapeake,” and a
refusal to order an inquiry, as a matter of right, into the conduct of
Commodore Rodgers. He showed equally little disposition to press for
a settlement of the “Chesapeake” affair. Foster had been barely two
weeks at Washington when he summed up the result of his efforts in a
few words,[43] which told the situation, as Monroe then understood it,
a year before war was declared:--
“On the whole, their view in this business [of the ‘Little
Belt’] is to settle this, with every other difference, in the
most amicable manner, provided his Majesty’s Orders in Council
are revoked; otherwise, to make use of it, together with all
other topics of irritation, for the purpose of fomenting a
spirit of hatred toward England, and thereby strengthening their
party. Your Lordship cannot expect to hear of any change till
Congress meet.”
CHAPTER III.
BEFORE the familiar figure of Robert Smith quite fades from the story
of his time, the mystery which he succeeded in throwing around his true
sympathies needs explanation. When dismissed from the Cabinet in March,
he was supposed to be a friend of France and of the President’s French
policy. In June he appeared before the public as an opponent of Madison
and of French influence. Perhaps in reality he neither supported nor
opposed either policy; but he deserves such credit as friendly hands
gave him at the moment of his disgrace, and on no one had he made a
happier impression than on Serurier, the new French minister. After
six weeks’ experience, Serurier, who looked upon Gallatin as little
better than an enemy, regarded Robert Smith as a friend. March 5, while
Gallatin was writing his resignation, Serurier wrote a despatch to
Cadore giving his estimates of the two Cabinet officers:[44]--
“Mr. Gallatin, perhaps the most capable man in the Republic,
under an exterior rigidly Republican hides his ambitious
designs, his feelings of superiority, which torment him without
his being able to satisfy them. People maintain that all his
system as a financier is English,--a thing simple enough; and
that, on another side, he thinks himself obliged to expiate the
sin of being a stranger and born on our frontiers, by separating
himself from us in his political principles. I am told also that
he has seen with annoyance the occupation by France of Geneva,
his country,--whither he expected to withdraw himself with his
riches, if his ambition should be crossed here by events. I have
as yet no cause for complaint in regard to him, but this is the
way he is talked about by the Frenchmen here, and by the party
most nearly in sympathy with us (_le parti qui se rapproche le
plus de nous_).”
The fable of Gallatin’s _richesses_ revealed the source of
Serurier’s information. The party most nearly in sympathy with
France was the “Aurora” faction, which spread stories of Gallatin’s
speculations and treated him with vindictive enmity, but regarded
Robert Smith as a friend. Serurier’s description of Gallatin’s
character contrasted darkly with his portrait of Robert Smith:--
“Mr. Smith shows certainly a character equally decided, but more
open. His system seems more Continental; at least he wishes me
to think so. With perhaps less breadth of mind, he has more
elevation. I know that he nourishes a secret admiration of the
Emperor, which he very wisely hides. I dined with him three
days ago; it was my first dinner. On leaving the table he sent
for a bust and an engraving of his Majesty, and on this subject
said to me things full of politeness. In the conversation which
followed, he became more expansive: ‘The nation’ (it is he
who is speaking) ‘is bold and enterprising at sea; and if war
should break out with England, supposing this rupture to be
accompanied by a full reconciliation with France, the commerce
between Europe and America might become more active than ever.
The Americans possess a sort of vessels called schooners, the
swiftest sailers in the world, and for that reason beyond insult
and capture; while their sailors are full of confidence in the
advantage given them by this sort of vessel in time of war.’
He affirmed to me that the great majority of the nation, if
satisfied on the side of France, will be much inclined to war
with her rival; but that the mild, prudent, and perhaps too
timid administration of Mr. Jefferson heretofore, and now that
of Mr. Madison, had thus far repressed the national enthusiasm;
but he was convinced that under the administration, for example,
of the Vice-President General Clinton, or of any other statesman
of his character, war would have already broken out.”
This was not the only occasion when Robert Smith showed himself to the
French minister as restive under restraint.
“I asked him,” reported Serurier at another time,[45] “what the
Government expected to do if the English resented its pretension
to the independence of its flag? ‘War,’ he replied with perfect
frankness, ‘is the inevitable result of our position toward
the English if they refuse to recognize our rights.’ Mr. Smith
then admitted to me that his Government certainly had the best
founded hope that the establishment of the regency in England
would bring about a change of ministry and probably of system,
and that the Orders in Council would be repealed; that in this
case, neutral rights being re-established, the motive for all
this discussion would cease. But he repeated to me that in
the contrary case war would, in his eyes, be inevitable, and
that the Americans, in deciding on this course, had perfectly
foreseen where it would lead them, without being, on that
account, deterred from a decision dictated by their honor or
their interest.”
These remarks were made February 17, the day when the President decided
to accept Napoleon’s conditions; and they helped to convince Serurier
that Robert Smith was more “continental,” or Napoleonic, than Gallatin.
For this reason, when he heard that Gallatin had prevailed, and Smith
was to take the Russian Mission, he wrote to his Government with
regret:[46]--
“The Secretary of State has taken his resolution like a man
of courage. Instead of sulking and going to intrigue in his
province, he has preferred to remain attached to the government
of his country, and to go for some time to enjoy the air of our
Europe, whither his tastes lead him, and to reserve himself for
more favorable circumstances. His frank and open character makes
him generally regretted. I think he must have had a share at the
time in the fit of energy which his Government has shown. His
language was measured; but very certainly his system drew him
much nearer to France than to England.”
Perhaps Serurier was misled by Robert Smith’s habit of taking tone from
the person nearest him; but as the French minister learned more of
Monroe, his regrets for Smith became acute. “I regard as an evil,” he
wrote, April 5,[47] “the removal of a man whose elevated views,--noble
in foreign policy at least,--and whose decided character, might have
given to affairs a direction which must be at least counteracted by his
absence, and especially by the way in which his place is filled.”
Monroe took charge of the State Department April 1, and within a few
days Serurier became unpleasantly conscious of the change. He still
met with civility, but he felt new hesitation. Joel Barlow had been
appointed minister to France, and should have started instantly for
his post. Yet Barlow lingered at Washington; and when Serurier asked
the reason of the delay, Monroe merely said he was waiting for the
arrival of the frigate “Essex” with despatches from France and England
to the middle of April. The expected despatches did not arrive until
July; and in the interval Serurier passed a season of discomfort. The
new Secretary of State, unlike his predecessor, showed no admiration
for Napoleon. Toward the end of June, the French consuls in the United
States made known that they were still authorized and required by the
Emperor to issue permits or certificates to American vessels destined
for France. Monroe sent at once for Serurier, and admonished him
in language that seemed to the French minister altogether out of
place:[48]--
“Mr. Monroe’s countenance was absolutely distorted
(_tout-à-fait décomposeé_). I could not conceive how an
object, apparently so unimportant, could affect him so keenly.
He continued thus: ‘You are witness, sir, to the candor of our
motives, to the loyalty of our principles, to our immovable
fidelity to our engagements. In spite of party clamor and the
extreme difficulty of the circumstances, we persevere in our
system; but your Government abandons us to the attacks of its
enemies and ours, by not fulfilling on its side the conditions
set forth in the President’s proclamation. We are daily accused
of a culpable partiality for France. These cries were at
first feeble, and we flattered ourselves every day to be able
to silence them by announcing the Emperor’s arrangements in
conformity with ours; but they become louder by our silence. The
Administration finds itself in the most extreme embarrassment
(_dans le plus extrême embarras_); it knows neither what to
expect from you, nor what to say to its constituents. Ah, sir!’
cried Mr. Monroe, ‘if your sovereign had deigned to imitate the
promptness (_empressement_) which our President showed
in publishing his proclamation; if he had re-opened, with the
necessary precautions, concerted with us, his ports and his
vessels,--all the commerce of America was won for France. A
thousand ships would have sailed at all risks to your ports,
where they would have sought the products of your manufactures
which are so much liked in this country. The English would
have certainly opposed such a useful exchange between the two
peoples; our honor and interest would have united to resist
them; and the result, for which you are doubtless more desirous
than you admit, could not have failed to happen at last.’”
Serurier tried, in vain to soothe the secretary; Monroe was not to
be appeased. Oratory so impassioned was not meant for mere show; and
as causes of grievance multiplied, the secretary gathered one after
another, evidently to be used for a rupture with France. Each stage
toward his end he marked by the regular shade of increasing displeasure
that he had himself, as a victim, so often watched. Enjoying the
pleasure of doing to others what Cevallos and Harrowby, Talleyrand and
Canning had done to him, Monroe, familiar with the accents of the most
famous school in European diplomacy, ran no risk of throwing away a
single tone.
When the secretary told Serurier that Joel Barlow’s departure depended
on the news to be brought by the “Essex,” he did not add that he was
himself waiting for the arrival of Foster, the new British minister;
but as it happened, Foster reached Washington July 1, at the same
instant with the despatches brought by the “Essex.” The crisis of
Serurier’s diplomatic fortune came with the arrival of Foster, and
during the next two weeks the French minister passed through many
uncomfortable scenes. He knew too little of American affairs to
foresee that not himself, but Monroe, must in the end be the victim.
As soon as the “Essex” was announced, bringing William Pinkney from
London and Jonathan Russell’s despatches from Paris,--including his
report of Napoleon’s tirade to the Paris merchants, but no sign
that his decrees were repealed,--Serurier called at the Department
to learn what Monroe had to say. “I found him icy; he told me that,
contrary to all the hopes of the Government, the ‘Essex’ had brought
nothing decisive, and asked if I was more fortunate.”[49] Serurier
had despatches, but as the story has shown[50] they were emphatic in
forbidding him to pledge himself in regard to the Emperor’s course.
Obliged to evade Monroe’s inquiry, he could only suggest hopes of more
decisive news by the next arrival, and then turned the subject to
Napoleon’s zeal in revolutionizing Spanish America:--
“I was heard with politeness, but coldly. Then I talked of the
abrupt and improper tone of Mr. Russell’s correspondence. I
said that it did not offend, because Mr. Russell was not of
enough consequence to give offence; but that it was considered
altogether indecorous. I made him aware, on this occasion, of
the necessity that the Republic should have a minister at Paris.
Mr. Monroe answered that the Government had already made that
remark; he repeated to me that he had intended, long before,
to send away Mr. Barlow, but that the daily expectation of
despatches from France had made him always delay. Here he
stopped himself, and returned for the tenth time upon the
difficult position of the Government; upon the universal outcry
of commerce, which would become a kind of revolt in the North if
the Government could offer nothing to counteract it. He recalled
to me the effect produced by the announcement of new licenses
issued at Boston and Baltimore, and the equally annoying effect
of a pamphlet by the ex-Secretary of State, Mr. Smith, which
revealed to the public the declaration made by me on my arrival,
that the old confiscations made by way of reprisals, could not
be matter of discussion,--‘information,’ said he, ‘which had
at the time profoundly afflicted the Administration, and which
it had counted on publishing only at the moment when it could
simultaneously announce a better outlook, and the absolute
restoration of commercial relations.’ He ended, at last, this
conference by telling me that he had not yet finished reading
all his papers; that the Government was that moment deliberating
on its course, and that in a few days we would have a new
conference.”
Serurier felt his danger, and expected to be sacrificed. Society turned
against him. Even Duane became abusive of France.
“Already, within a few days, I notice a change in the manners
of every one about me. The general attention of which I was the
object during the first five months has been suddenly followed
by a general reserve; people are civil, but under a thousand
pretexts they avoid being seen in conversation with me. The
journals hitherto most favorable to France begin to say that
since we will not keep our engagements, a rupture must take
place.”
Thinking that he had nothing to lose, the French minister took a high
tone, and July 3, through a private channel, conveyed to the President
a warning that the course threatened might lead too far.
“The person in question having answered that I might depend on
the Government’s fidelity to its engagements, I replied that
I would believe it all if the new American minister should be
despatched to Paris, and that I would believe nothing if this
departure were again postponed.”
Everything depended on Foster, who had been received by the President
July 2, the day before Serurier’s message was sent. Apparently,
the first impression made by Foster’s letters and conversation was
decisive, for Monroe told the French minister at the public dinner of
July 4, that Barlow was to start at once on his mission.
“This news,” reported Serurier, “caused me great pleasure. This
success, though doubtless inconsiderable, made all my ambition
for the moment; it delays for several months the crisis that
the English party was trying to force, in the hope of making it
decisive against us; it neutralizes the effect of the arrival of
the British minister, whose want of influence down to this point
it reveals; it withdraws the initiative from the President and
restores to his Majesty the decision of our great affairs.”
No sooner had this decision been made, than Monroe seemed to repent
it. The conduct of France had been of late more outrageous than that
of England; and Monroe, who found his worst expectations fulfilled,
could not easily resign himself to accepting a yoke against which he
had for five years protested. The departure of Barlow, ordered July
4, was countermanded July 5; and this proof of Monroe’s discontent
led to a striking interview, July 9, in which the Secretary of State
became more impassioned than ever.[51] Serurier began by asking what he
was to think of the Government’s conduct. Monroe replied by recalling
what had happened since the appointment of Barlow as minister to
France, a fortnight after Serurier’s arrival. Then the Proclamation of
November 2 had been supposed sufficient to satisfy the Emperor; the
Non-intercourse Act followed,--yet the President was still waiting for
the assurance that the French Decrees were repealed, without which
knowledge Barlow’s instructions could not be written.
“So we reached the day when the ‘Essex’ arrived,” continued
Monroe. “Not an officer of the government, not a citizen in
the Republic, but was convinced that this frigate brought the
most satisfactory and the most decisive news. Yet to our great
astonishment--even to our confusion--she has brought nothing.
In spite of a deception so afflicting, the President had still
decided to make a last attempt, and this was to send off Mr.
Barlow. I had the honor to announce it to you; but on the news
of our frigate’s arrival without satisfactory information from
France, a general cry of discontent rose all over the Republic,
and public opinion pronounced itself so strongly against Mr.
Barlow’s departure that the Government can to-day no longer
give the order without raising from all parts of the Union the
cry of treason. I am myself a daily witness of the general
effervescence that this silence of your Government excites. I
cannot walk from my house to this office without being accosted
by twenty citizens, who say to me: ‘What, sir! shall you send
off a minister to France, when the Imperial government shows
itself unwilling to carry out its’ engagements; when it treats
our citizens with so much injustice, and you yourself with so
much contempt? No! the honor of the Republic will not permit you
to send your ambassador under such circumstances, and you will
be responsible for it to the country.’”
Monroe’s objection seemed reasonable. The sending a new minister to
France was in no way necessary for making an issue with England.
Indeed, if only a simple issue with England had been wanted, the
permanent presence of British frigates off Sandy Hook, capturing
American vessels and impressing American seamen, was sufficient. No
further protest against it needed to be made, seeing that it had been
the subject of innumerable protests. If President Madison wanted an
issue that should oblige Great Britain to declare war, or to take
measures equivalent to war, he could obtain it in a moment by ordering
Rodgers and Decatur to drive the British frigates away and rescue their
victims. For such a purpose he needed no minister in France, and had
no occasion to make himself a party to fraud. Monroe’s language implied
that he would have preferred some such issue.
“‘Believe me,’ said Mr. Monroe in finishing, and as we were
about to separate, ‘the American government will not be
inconsequent; but its patience is exhausted, and as regards
foreign Powers it is determined to make itself respected. People
in Europe suppose us to be merchants, occupied exclusively
with pepper and ginger. They are much deceived, and I hope we
shall prove it. The immense majority of citizens do not belong
to this class, and are, as much as your Europeans, controlled
by principles of honor and dignity. I never knew what trade
was. The President is as much of a stranger to it as I; and we
accord to commerce only the protection that we owe it, as every
government owes it to an interesting class of its citizens.’”
Commerce would have listened with more amusement than conviction to
Monroe’s ideas on the “principles of honor and dignity” which led a
government of Virginia and Pennsylvania farmers to accord protection
in the form of embargoes and non-intercourses to commerce which it
distrusted and despised; but Monroe meant only that France, as well as
England, must reckon on a new national spirit in Virginia,--a spirit
which they had themselves roused, and for whose bad qualities they had
only themselves to blame.
Yet Monroe found himself in an attitude not flattering to his
pride. All his life a representative of the Virginia school,--more
conservative than Jefferson, and only to be compared with John
Randolph, and John Taylor of Caroline,--he had come to the State
Department to enforce his own principles and overrule the President;
but he found himself helpless in the President’s hands. That the
contest was in reality between Monroe’s will and Madison’s became clear
to Serurier; and that Monroe’s pliable nature must succumb to Madison’s
pertinacity, backed as it was by authority, could not be doubtful. Six
months seemed to Virginians a short time for Monroe’s submission, but
in truth Monroe had submitted long before; his rebellion itself had
been due to William Pinkney and John Randolph rather than to impulses
of his own; he regretted it almost as soon as it was made, and he
suffered little in allowing Madison to control the course of events.
Yet he would certainly have preferred another result, and his interview
with Serurier, July 9, recorded the policy he had meant to impose,
while preparing for its abandonment.
The secretary waited only for a pretext to accept Madison’s dogma that
the French Decrees were withdrawn, although his conversations with
Serurier proved his conviction to the contrary. A few days later, a
vessel arrived from England bringing unofficial news from France,
to May 24, that the Emperor had released the American vessels kept
in sequestration since November 1, and had admitted their cargoes
for sale. Without the form of further struggle, Monroe followed the
footsteps of his predecessor.
“The Secretary of State sent for me three days ago to his office,”
wrote Serurier, July 20.[52] “After having congratulated me on this
decision [of the Emperor], he told me that he had no doubt of its
producing on the public the same excellent impression it had made on
the Government; but he added that as it was not official, the President
would like to have me write a letter as confirmative as possible, in
the absence of instructions, both of these events and of his Majesty’s
good intentions; and that if I could write him this letter, Mr. Barlow
should immediately depart.”
The only instructions possessed by Serurier on the subject of the
decrees warned him against doing what Monroe asked; but the temptation
to win a success was strong, and he wrote a cautious letter,[53] dated
July 19, saying that he had no official knowledge on the subject, but
that “it is with reason, sir, that you reject the idea of a doubt on
the fidelity of France in fulfilling her engagements; for to justify
such a doubt one must have some contradictory facts to cite,--one must
show that judgments have been rendered in France on the principle
of maintaining the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, or that a series
of American ships coming from England to America, or from America
to England, have been captured by our privateers in virtue of the
blockade of the British Isles. Nothing of the sort has become known to
any of us, and, on the contrary,” all advices showed that the decrees
in France and on the ocean had ceased to affect American commerce.
Probably this letter disappointed the President, for it was never
published, nor was any allusion made to it in the correspondence that
followed. Without even such cover, Monroe ordered Barlow to depart, and
made the decision public. Serurier, puzzled though delighted by his
success, groped in the dark to discover how the Government had reached
its decision. Foster’s attitude failed to enlighten him; and he could
see no explanation, except that the result was a personal victory of
Madison over Monroe and the Cabinet.
“The joy is general among the authorities,” he wrote July
20,[54] “except among some friends of Mr. Foster; but more
than any one else, Mr. Madison seems enchanted to see himself
confirmed (_raffermi_) in a system which is wholly his
own, but which he began to see no means of maintaining. I do
him the justice to say that if he had a movement of hesitation
on the point of Mr. Barlow’s departure, it was more the effect
of public clamor than of his own sentiments,--a movement
of spite (_dépit_) and discouragement, rather than of
inclination toward England, which he frankly detests, as does
his friend Mr. Jefferson,--and that he has not been for a moment
unfaithful to his engagements with us. I have never seen him
more triumphant. The Secretaries of State, of the Treasury,
and of War are doubtful, perhaps, and conduct themselves more
according to events; but happily the President, superior to them
in enlightenment as in position, governs entirely by himself,
and there is no reason to fear his being crossed by them.”
Serurier knew Madison and Jefferson only as a Frenchman might, and his
ideas of their feelings toward England were such as a Frenchman could
understand. In truth, Madison did not want a distinct issue of peace
or war with England. Had he wished for such an issue, he would have
made it. Disbelieving in war, as war approached, he clung to the last
chances of peaceful coercion. The fiction that Napoleon’s decrees were
repealed enabled him to enforce his peaceful coercive measures to avoid
war. Not because he wanted war, but because he wanted peace, Madison
insisted that the decrees were withdrawn. As he carried each point,
he stood more and more alone; he was misunderstood by his enemies
and overborne by his friends; he failed in his policy of peace, and
knew himself unfit to administer a policy of war. Yet he held to his
principle, that commercial restrictions were the true safeguards of an
American system.
A man of keen intelligence, Madison knew, quite as well as Monroe,
Serurier, or Foster, that the French Decrees were not repealed. His
alleged reason for despatching Barlow was unsatisfactory to himself
as to Monroe, and doubly worthless because unofficial. Even while he
insisted on his measures, he made no secret of his discontent. When
official despatches arrived a few days later, Serurier was puzzled at
finding Madison well aware that the Emperor had not withdrawn and did
not mean to withdraw his decrees. July 23 Serurier communicated[55] to
Monroe the substance of the despatches from France. The next day he
called at the Department and at the White House to watch the effect of
his letter, which announced the admission of American merchandise into
French ports.
“Mr. Monroe showed himself less satisfied than I had hoped,
either because the President had so directed, in order to
reserve the right of raising new pretensions, or because,
already advised by Mr. Russell, he had been at the same time
informed that the prizes made since November by our privateers
were not restored; and these restrictions had been represented
in an unfavorable light by the _chargé d’affaires_. He
confined himself to telling me that certainly there were
things agreeable to the American government in the Emperor’s
arrangements, but that there were others wholly contrary to
expectation, and that before his departure he would send me a
list of the complaints left unsatisfied.. .. As the President
is to start to-morrow for his estate in Virginia, I called
this morning to bid him good-by. I had on this occasion with
Mr. Madison an interview which put the last stroke to my
suspicions. When I told him that I was glad to see him a last
time under auspices so happy as the news I had officially
given him the evening before, he answered me that he had
learned with pleasure, though without surprise, the release
of the sequestered ships and the Emperor’s decision to admit
American products; but that one thing pained him profoundly.
This was that the American ships captured since last November,
under pretext of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, had not been
released with those which voluntarily entered French ports;
and he pretended that this failure to execute the chief of our
engagements destroyed the effect of all the rest.”[56]
The opinion scarcely admitted dispute. Reversing Madison’s theory,
Napoleon had relieved American vessels from the “municipal operation”
of his decrees in France, while he enforced that international
operation on the high seas which alone Madison declared himself bound
by the law of nations to resist. The blockade thus enforced by Napoleon
against England was more extravagant than any blockade England had
ever declared. Of his acts in Denmark and on the Baltic Madison took
no notice at all, though these, more than the detention of American
prizes in France, “destroyed the effect of all the rest.” If, then, the
decrees were still enforced on the ocean,--as Madison insisted they
were,--they could not have been repealed; and Madison, by submitting
to their enforcement on the ocean, not only recognized their legality,
but also required England to make the same submission, under penalty
of a declaration of war from the United States. This dilemma threatened
to overthrow Madison’s Administration, or even to break up the Union.
Serurier saw its dangers, and did his utmost to influence Napoleon
toward concessions:
“The revocation of the Decrees of Milan and Berlin has
become a personal affair with Mr. Madison. He announced it
by proclamation, and has constantly maintained it since. The
English party never stops worrying him on this point, and saying
that he has been made a tool of France,--that the decrees have
not been repealed. He fears the effect of this suspension,
and foresees that it will cause great discussions in the next
Congress, and that it alone may compromise the Administration,
triumphant on all other points.”
Under such circumstances, Monroe needed more than common powers in
order to play his part. Talleyrand himself would have found his
impassive countenance tried by assuring Foster in the morning that the
decrees were repealed, and rating Serurier in the afternoon because
they were in force. Such conversations, extended over a length of time,
might in the end raise doubts of a statesman’s veracity; yet this was
what Monroe undertook. On the day when Serurier communicated the news
that disturbed the President, Monroe sent to the British minister the
note maintaining broadly that France had revoked her decrees. Three
days later, after the President had told Serurier that “the failure to
execute the chief of our engagements destroyed the effect of all the
rest,” Monroe gave to Barlow his instructions founded on the revocation
of the decrees. Doubtless this double-dealing exasperated all the
actors concerned in it. Madison and Monroe at heart were more angry
with France than with England, if indeed degrees in anger could be felt
where the outrages of both parties were incessant and intolerable. Yet
Barlow took his instructions and set sail for France; a proclamation
appeared in the “National Intelligencer” calling Congress together
for November 1; and the President and his Secretary of State left
Washington for their summer vacation in Virginia, having accepted, once
for all, the conditions imposed by Napoleon.
For some years afterward Monroe said no more about old Republican
principles; but twelve months later he wrote to Colonel Taylor a
letter[57] which began with a candid confession:--
“I have been afraid to write to you for some time past, because
I knew that you expected better things from me than I have been
able to perform. You thought that I might contribute to promote
a compromise with Great Britain, and thereby prevent a war
between that country and the United States; that we might also
get rid of our restrictive system. I own to you that I had some
hope, though less than some of my friends entertained, that I
might aid in promoting that desirable result. This hope has been
disappointed.”
[Illustration:
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY,
J. W. POWELL, DIRECTOR.
MAP OF
THE
STATE OF INDIANA
Exhibiting the Lands ceded by the
Indian Tribes
TO THE
UNITED STATES
BY
C. C. ROYCE]
CESSIONS OF INDIAN TERRITORY IN INDIANA,
1795–1810.
_1. Tract ceded by Treaty of Greenville, August 3rd, 1795._
_2. Tract about Fort Wayne, ceded by the same Treaty._
_3. Two miles square on the Miami portage, ceded by the same
Treaty._
_4. Six miles square at Old Wea Town on the Wabash, ceded by
the same Treaty._
_5. Clark’s Grant on the Ohio, reserved by the same Treaty._
_6. Vincennes tract, reserved by the same Treaty._
_7. Tract ceded by Treaties of August 18th and 27th, 1804._
_8. Tract ceded by Treaty of August 21st, 1805._
_9, 10, 11. Tracts ceded by Treaty of September 30th, 1809._
_12. Tract ceded by Treaty of December 9th, 1809._
CHAPTER IV.
ALTHOUGH no one doubted that the year 1812 was to witness a new
convulsion of society, if signs of panic occurred they were less marked
in crowded countries where vast interests were at stake, than in
remote regions which might have been thought as safe from Napoleon’s
wars as from those of Genghis Khan. As in the year 1754 a petty fight
between two French and English scouting parties on the banks of the
Youghiogheny River, far in the American wilderness, began a war that
changed the balance of the world, so in 1811 an encounter in the Indian
country, on the banks of the Wabash, began a fresh convulsion which
ended only with the fall of Napoleon. The battle of Tippecanoe was a
premature outbreak of the great wars of 1812.
Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory, often said
he could tell by the conduct of his Indians, as by a thermometer,
the chances of war and peace for the United States as estimated in
the Cabinet at London. The remark was curious, but not surprising.
Uneasiness would naturally be greatest where least control and most
irritation existed. Such a region was the Northwestern Territory. Even
the spot where violence would break out might be predicted as somewhere
on the waterline of the Maumee and the Wabash, between Detroit at one
extremity and Vincennes at the other. If a guess had been ventured that
the most probable point would be found on that line, about half way
between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, the map would have shown that
Tippecanoe Creek, where it flowed into the Wabash, corresponded with
the rough suggestion.
The Indiana Territory was created in 1800; and the former delegate of
the whole Northwestern Territory, William Henry Harrison, was then
appointed governor of the new division. Until the year 1809, Illinois
formed part of the Indiana Territory; but its single settlement at
Kaskaskia was remote. The Indiana settlement consisted mainly of two
tracts,--one on the Ohio, opposite Louisville in Kentucky, at the
falls, consisting of about one hundred and fifty thousand acres, called
Clark’s Grant; the other, at Vincennes on the Wabash, where the French
had held a post, without a definite grant of lands, under an old
Indian treaty, and where the Americans took whatever rights the French
enjoyed. One hundred miles of wilderness separated these two tracts. In
1800, their population numbered about twenty-five hundred persons; in
1810, nearly twenty-five thousand.
Northward and westward, from the bounds of these districts the Indian
country stretched to the Lakes and the Mississippi, unbroken except
by military posts at Fort Wayne and Fort Dearborn, or Chicago, and a
considerable settlement of white people in the neighborhood of the
fortress at Detroit. Some five thousand Indian warriors held this vast
region, and were abundantly able to expel every white man from Indiana
if their organization had been as strong as their numbers. The whites
were equally eager to expel the Indians, and showed the wish openly.
Governor Harrison was the highest authority on matters connected with
the northwestern Indians. During eight years of Harrison’s government
Jefferson guided the Indian policy; and as long as Jefferson insisted
on the philanthropic principles which were his pride, Harrison, whose
genius lay in ready adaptation, took his tone from the President, and
wrote in a different spirit from that which he would have taken had he
represented an aggressive chief. His account of Indian affairs offered
an illustration of the law accepted by all historians in theory,
but adopted by none in practice; which former ages called “fate,”
and metaphysicians called “necessity,” but which modern science has
refined into the “survival of the fittest.” No acid ever worked more
mechanically on a vegetable fibre than the white man acted on the
Indian. As the line of American settlements approached, the nearest
Indian tribes withered away.
Harrison reported conscientiously the incurable evils which attended
the contact of the two hostile forms of society. The first, but not
the most serious, was that the white man, though not allowed to settle
beyond the Indian border, could not be prevented from trespassing far
and wide on Indian territory in search of game. The practice of hunting
on Indian lands, in violation of law and existing treaties, had grown
into a monstrous abuse. The Kentucky settlers crossed the Ohio River
every autumn to kill deer, bear, and buffalo for their skins, which
they had no more right to take than they had to cross the Alleghanies,
and shoot or trap the cows and sheep in the farm-yards of Bucks County.
Many parts of the Northwestern Territory which as late as 1795 abounded
in game, ten years afterward contained not game enough to support the
small Indian parties passing through them, and had become worthless for
Indian purposes except as a barrier to further encroachment.[58]
The tribes that owned these lands were forced either to remove
elsewhere, or to sell their old hunting-grounds to the government for
supplies or for an annuity. The tribes that sold, remaining near the
settlements to enjoy their annuity, were more to be pitied than those
that removed, which were destined to destruction by war. Harrison
reported that contact with white settlements never failed to ruin them.
“I can tell at once,” he wrote in 1801,[59] “upon looking at an Indian
whom I may chance to meet, whether he belongs to a neighboring or to a
more distant tribe. The latter is generally well-clothed, healthy, and
vigorous; the former half-naked, filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication,
and many of them without arms excepting a knife, which they carry for
the most villanous purposes.” Harrison estimated the number of Indian
warriors then in the whole valley of the Wabash as not exceeding six
hundred; the sale of whiskey was unlawful, yet they were supposed to
consume six thousand gallons of whiskey a year, and their drunkenness
so often ended in murder that among three of the tribes scarcely a
chief survived.
“I have had much difficulty,” wrote Harrison in the same letter
from Vincennes, “with the small tribes in this immediate
neighborhood; namely the Piankeshaws, the Weas, and the Eel
River Miamis. These three tribes form a body of the most
depraved wretches on earth. They are daily in this town in
considerable numbers, and are frequently intoxicated to the
number of thirty or forty at once, when they commit the greatest
disorders, drawing their knives and stabbing every one they meet
with; breaking open the houses of the citizens, killing their
cattle and hogs, and breaking down their fences. But in all
their frolics they generally suffer the most themselves. They
kill each other without mercy. Some years ago as many as four
were found dead in a morning; and although those murders were
actually committed in the streets of the town, yet no attempt to
punish them has ever been made.”
The Piankeshaws were reduced to twenty-five or thirty warriors; the
Weas and Eel River Indians were mere remnants. The more powerful tribes
at a distance saw with growing alarm the steady destruction of the
border warriors; and the intelligent Indians everywhere forbade the
introduction of whiskey, and tried to create a central authority to
control the degraded tribes.
A third evil was much noticed by Harrison. By treaty, if an Indian
killed a white man the tribe was bound to surrender the murderer for
trial by American law; while if a white man killed an Indian, the
murderer was also to be tried by a white jury. The Indians surrendered
their murderers, and white juries at Vincennes hung them without
scruple; but no jury in the territory ever convicted a white man of
murdering an Indian. Harrison complained to the President of the wanton
and atrocious murders committed by white men on Indians, and the
impossibility of punishing them in a society where witnesses would not
appear, criminals broke jail, and juries refused to convict. Throughout
the territory the people avowed the opinion that a white man ought not
in justice to suffer for killing an Indian;[60] and many of them, like
the uncle of Abraham Lincoln,[61] thought it a virtuous act to shoot an
Indian at sight. Harrison could combat this code of popular law only by
proclamations offering rewards for the arrest of murderers, who were
never punished when arrested. In 1801 the Delawares alone complained
of six unatoned murders committed on their tribe since the Treaty of
Greenville, and every year increased the score.
“All these injuries,” reported Harrison in 1801, “the Indians
have hitherto borne with astonishing patience; but though they
discover no disposition to make war on the United States at
present, I am confident that most of the tribes would eagerly
seize any favorable opportunity for that purpose; and should the
United States be at war with any of the European nations who are
known to the Indians, there would probably be a combination of
more than nine tenths of the Northern tribes against us, unless
some means are used to conciliate them.”
So warmly were the French remembered by the Indians, that if Napoleon
had carried out his Louisiana scheme of 1802 he could have counted on
the active support of nearly every Indian tribe on the Mississippi and
the Lakes; from Pensacola to Detroit his orders would have been obeyed.
Toward England the Indians felt no such sentimental attachment; but
interest took the place of sentiment. Their natural line of trade was
with the Lakes, and their relations with the British trading-post at
Malden, opposite Detroit, became more and more close with every new
quarrel between Washington and London.
President Jefferson earnestly urged the Indians to become industrious
cultivators of the soil; but even for that reform one condition was
indispensable. The Indians must be protected from contact with the
whites; and during the change in their mode of life, they must not
be drugged, murdered, or defrauded. Trespasses on Indian land and
purchases of tribal territory must for a time cease, until the Indian
tribes should all be induced to adopt a new system. Even then the
reform would be difficult, for Indian warriors thought death less
irksome than daily labor; and men who did not fear death were not
easily driven to toil.
There President Jefferson’s philanthropy stopped. His greed for land
equalled that of any settler on the border, and his humanity to the
Indian suffered the suspicion of having among its motives the purpose
of gaining the Indian lands for the whites. Jefferson’s policy in
practice offered a reward for Indian extinction, since he not only
claimed the territory of every extinct tribe on the doctrine of
paramount sovereignty, but deliberately ordered[62] his Indian agents
to tempt the tribal chiefs into debt in order to oblige them to sell
the tribal lands, which did not belong to them, but to their tribes:--
“To promote this disposition to exchange lands which they have
to spare and we want, for necessaries which we have to spare and
they want, we shall push our trading-houses, and be glad to see
the good and influential individuals among them in debt; because
we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals
can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of
lands.”
No one would have felt more astonishment than Jefferson had some friend
told him that this policy, which he believed to be virtuous, was a
conspiracy to induce trustees to betray their trusts; and that in
morals it was as improper as though it were not virtuously intended.
Shocked as he would have been at such a method of obtaining the
neighboring estate of any Virginia family, he not only suggested but
vigorously carried out the system toward the Indians.
In 1804 and 1805, Governor Harrison made treaties with the Miamis,
Eel Rivers, Weas, Piankeshaws, and Delawares,--chiefly the tribes he
called “a body of the most depraved wretches upon earth,”--by which he
obtained the strip of country, fifty miles wide, between the Ohio and
the White rivers, thus carrying the boundary back toward the Wabash.
The treaty excited deep feeling among the better Indians throughout
the territory, who held long debates on their means of preventing its
execution.
Among the settlers in Indiana, an internal dispute mingled with the
dangers of Indian relations. For this misfortune Harrison himself
was partially to blame. A Virginian by birth, naturally inclined
toward Southern influences, he shared the feelings of the Kentucky
and Virginia slave-owners who wanted the right of bringing their
slaves with them into the Territory, contrary to the Ordinance of
1787. The men who stood nearest the governor were earnest and active
in the effort to repeal or evade the prohibition of slavery, and
they received from Harrison all the support he could give them. With
his approval, successive appeals were made to Congress. Perhaps the
weightiest act of John Randolph’s career as leader of the Republican
majority in the House was to report, March 2, 1803, that the extension
of slavery into Indiana was “highly dangerous and inexpedient,”
and that the people of Indiana “would at no distant day find ample
remuneration for a temporary privation of labor and immigration” in the
beneficence of a free society. Cæsar Rodney, of Delaware, in March,
1804, made a report to a contrary effect, recommending a suspension for
ten years of the anti-slavery clause in the Ordinance; but the House
did not act upon it.
The advocates of a slave system, with Harrison’s co-operation, then
decided that the Territory should pass into the second grade, which
under the Ordinance of 1787 could be done when the population should
number five thousand male whites of full age. The change was effected
in the winter of 1804–1805, by means open to grave objection.[63]
Thenceforward Harrison shared his power with a Legislative Council and
a House of Representatives; while the legislature chose a territorial
delegate to Congress. The first territorial legislature, in 1805, which
was wholly under Harrison’s influence, passed an Act, subsequently
revised and approved Sept. 17, 1807, permitting owners of slaves to
bring them into the Territory and keep them there for a number of
days, during which time the slave might be emancipated on condition of
binding himself to service for a term of years to which the law set no
limit.[64]
The overpowering influence and energy of the governor and his
Southern friends gave them during these years undisputed control.
Yet the anti-slavery sentiment was so strong as to make the governor
uncomfortable, and almost to endanger his personal safety; until at
last, in 1808, the issue was fairly brought before the people in the
elections. Both in that and in the following year the opponents of
slavery outvoted and defeated the governor’s party. Feelings became
exceedingly bitter, and the Territory was distracted by feuds which
had no small influence on matters of administration, and on the Indian
troubles most of all. Between the difficulties of introducing negroes
and expelling Indians, Harrison found that his popularity had been
lessened, if not lost.[65] He could not fail to see that a military
exploit was perhaps his only hope of recovering it; and for such an
exploit he had excuses enough.
The treaties of 1804–1805, which threatened the Indians with immediate
loss of their hunting-grounds in the Wabash valley, caused a
fermentation peculiarly alarming because altogether new. Early in 1806
Harrison learned that a Shawanee Indian, claiming to be a prophet, had
gathered a number of warriors about him at Greenville, in Ohio, and
was preaching doctrines that threatened trouble. Harrison attributed
the mischief to the Prophet; but he learned in time that the Prophet’s
brother Tecumseh--or more properly Tecumthe--gave the movement its
chief strength.
Indians and whites soon recognized Tecumthe as a phenomenon. His father
was a Shawanee warrior, in no way distinguished; his mother, a Creek or
Cherokee Indian, captured and adopted by the Shawanee,--and of these
parents three children at one birth were born about the year 1780, a
few miles from Springfield, Ohio. The third brother lived and died
obscure; Tecumthe and the Prophet became famous, although they were
not chiefs of their tribe, and had no authority of office or birth.
Such of the chiefs as were in the pay or under the power of the United
States government were jealous of their influence, and had every reason
for wishing to suppress the leaders of a movement avowedly designed to
overthrow the system of tribal independence. From the first, Tecumthe
aimed at limiting the authority of the tribes and their chiefs in order
to build up an Indian confederacy, embracing not the chiefs but the
warriors of all the tribes, who should act as an Indian Congress and
assume joint ownership of Indian lands.
This scheme was hostile to the plans though not to the professions of
President Jefferson. Its object was to prevent the piecemeal sale
of Indian lands by petty tribal chiefs, under pressure of government
agents. No one could honestly deny that the object was lawful and even
regular; for in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which was the only
decisive authority or precedent, the United States had admitted and
acted on the principle for which Tecumthe contended,--of accepting
its cessions of land, not from single tribes, but from the whole body
of northwestern Indians, without entering on the subject of local
ownership.[66] Governor Harrison and President Jefferson were of course
aware of the precedent, and decided to disregard it[67] in order to act
on the rule better suited to their purposes; but their decision was in
no way binding on Tecumthe or the tribes who were parties to the treaty
of Greenville.
During the year 1807 Tecumthe’s influence was increased by the
“Chesapeake” excitement, which caused the Governor-general of Canada
to intrigue among the Indians for aid in case of war. Probably their
increase of influence led the Prophet and his brother, in May or June,
1808, to establish themselves on Tippecanoe Creek, the central point of
Indian strategy and politics. Vincennes lay one hundred and fifty miles
below, barely four-and-twenty hours down the stream of the Wabash;
Fort Dearborn, or Chicago, was a hundred miles to the northwest;
Fort Wayne the same distance to the northeast; and excepting a short
portage, the Tippecanoe Indians could paddle their canoes to Malden
and Detroit in one direction, or to any part of the waters of the Ohio
and Mississippi in the other. At the mouth of Tippecanoe Creek the
reformers laid out a village that realized Jefferson’s wish, for the
Indians there drank no whiskey, and avowed themselves to be tillers of
the soil. Their professions seemed honest. In August, 1808, the Prophet
came to Vincennes and passed two weeks with Governor Harrison, who was
surprised to find that no temptation could overcome the temperance of
the Prophet’s followers. The speech then made in the public talk with
the governor remains the only record of the Prophet’s words, and of the
character he wished to pretend, if not to adopt.
“I told all the redskins,” he said to Harrison, “that the way
they were in was not good, and that they ought to abandon it;
that we ought to consider ourselves as one man, but we ought to
live agreeable to our several customs,--the red people after
their mode, and the white people after theirs; particularly that
they should not drink whiskey; that it was not made for them,
but the white people, who alone know how to use it; and that it
is the cause of all the mischiefs which the Indians suffer....
Determine to listen to nothing that is had; do not take up
the tomahawk, should it be offered by the British or by the
Long-knives; do not meddle with anything that does not belong
to you, but mind your own business, and cultivate the ground,
that your women and your children may have enough to live on. I
now inform you that it is our intention to live in peace with
our father and his children forever.”
Whatever want of confidence Harrison felt in these professions of
peace, he recorded his great surprise at finding the temperance to
be real; and every one who visited the settlement at Tippecanoe bore
witness to the tillage, which seemed to guarantee a peaceful intent;
for if war had been in Tecumthe’s mind, he would not have placed town,
crops, and stock within easy reach of destruction.
Nothing could be more embarrassing to Jefferson than to see the Indians
follow his advice; for however well-disposed he might be, he could not
want the Indians to become civilized, educated, or competent to protect
themselves,--yet he was powerless to protect them. The Prophet asked
that the sale of liquor should be stopped; but the President could no
more prevent white settlers from selling liquor to the Indians than
he could prevent the Wabash from flowing. The tribes asked that white
men who murdered Indians should be punished; but the President could
no more execute such malefactors than he could execute the smugglers
who defied his embargo. The Indians had rights recognized by law, by
treaty, and by custom, on which their existence depended; but these
rights required force to maintain them, and on the Wabash President
Jefferson had less police power than the Prophet himself controlled.
Wide separation could alone protect the Indians from the whites, and
Tecumthe’s scheme depended for its only chance of success on holding
the white settlements at a distance. The Prophet said nothing to
Harrison on that point, but his silence covered no secret. So notorious
was the Indian hostility to land-cessions, that when Governor Hull of
Michigan Territory, in November, 1807, negotiated another such cession
at Detroit,[68] the Indian agent at Fort Wayne not only doubted its
policy, but insinuated that it might have been dictated by the British
in order to irritate the Indians; and he reported that the Northern
Indians talked of punishing with death the chiefs who signed it.[69]
Aware of the danger, Harrison decided to challenge it. The people of
his Territory wanted the lands of the Wabash, even at the risk of
war. The settlement at Tippecanoe was supposed to contain no more
than eighty or a hundred warriors, with four or five times that
number within a radius of fifty miles. No immediate outbreak was to
be feared; and Harrison, “conceiving that a favorable opportunity
then offered”[70] for carrying the boundary from the White River to
the Wabash, asked authority to make a new purchase. Secretary Eustis,
July 15, 1809, wrote him a cautious letter,[71] giving the required
permission, but insisting that, “to prevent any future dissatisfaction,
the chiefs of all the nations who had or pretended right to these
lands” were to be present as consenting parties to the treaty. On this
authority Harrison once more summoned together “the most depraved
wretches upon earth,”--Miamis, Eel Rivers, Delawares, Pottawatomies,
and Kickapoos,--and obtained from them, Sept. 30, 1809, several
enormous cessions of territory which cut into the heart of the Indian
country for nearly a hundred miles up both banks of the Wabash valley.
These transfers included about three million acres.
Harrison knew that this transaction would carry despair to the heart of
every Indian in his Territory. The Wabash valley alone still contained
game. Deprived of their last resource, these Indians must fall back to
perish in the country of the Chippewas and Sioux, their enemies.[72]
Already impoverished by the decrees of Napoleon, the Orders in Council,
and the embargo, which combined to render their peltry valueless,
so that they could scarcely buy the powder and shot to kill their
game,[73] the Indians had thenceforward no choice but to depend on
British assistance. Harrison’s treaty immediately strengthened the
influence of Tecumthe and the Prophet. The Wyandots, or Hurons,
regarded by all the Indian tribes in the Territory as first in dignity
and influence, joined Tecumthe’s league, and united in a declaration
that the late cessions were void, and would not be recognized by the
tribes. The winter of 1809–1810 passed quietly; but toward May, 1810,
alarming reports reached Vincennes of gatherings at the Prophet’s
town, and of violence to be expected. When the salt, which was part of
the usual annuity, reached Tippecanoe, Tecumthe refused to accept it,
and drove the boatmen away. He charged the American government with
deceiving the Indians; and he insisted, as the foundation of future
peace, that the cessions of 1809 should be annulled, and no future
cession should be good unless made by all the tribes.
Harrison knew that his treaties of 1809 opened an aggressive policy,
which must naturally end in an Indian war. Some of the best citizens
in the Territory thought that the blame for the consequences ought
not to rest on the Indians.[74] Since the election of Madison to the
Presidency in November, 1808, war with England had been so imminent,
and its effect on the Indians so marked, that Harrison could not help
seeing the opportunity of a military career, and he had given much
study to military matters.[75] His plans, if they accorded with his
acts, included an Indian war, in which he should take the initiative.
His treaties of 1809 left him no choice, for after making such a war
inevitable, his only safety lay in crushing the Indians before the
British could openly aid them. Unfortunately, neither Madison nor
Eustis understood his purpose, or would have liked it. They approved
his land-purchases, which no Administration and no citizen would have
dared reject; but they were very unwilling to be drawn into an Indian
war, however natural might be such a consequence of the purchases.
So it happened that as early as the summer of 1810 war was imminent
in the Wabash and Maumee valleys, and perhaps only British influence
delayed it. British interests imperatively required that Tecumthe’s
confederacy should be made strong, and should not be wrecked
prematurely in an unequal war. From Malden, opposite Detroit, the
British traders loaded the American Indians with gifts and weapons;
urged Tecumthe to widen his confederacy, to unite all the tribes, but
not to begin war till he received the signal from Canada. All this was
duly reported at Washington.[76] On the other hand, Harrison sent for
Tecumthe; and August 12, 1810, the Indian chief came for a conference
to Vincennes. Indians and whites, in considerable numbers, armed and
alert, fearing treachery on both sides, witnessed the interview.
Tecumthe took, as his right, the position he felt himself to occupy
as the most powerful American then living,--who, a warrior himself,
with five thousand warriors behind him, held in one hand an alliance
with Great Britain, in the other an alliance with the Indians of the
southwest. Representatives of the Wyandots, Kickapoos, Pottawatomies,
Ottawas, and Winnebagoes announced the adhesion of their tribes to
the Shawanee Confederacy and the election of Tecumthe as their chief.
In this character he avowed to Harrison, in the broadest and boldest
language, the scope of his policy:[77]--
“Brother, since the peace was made in 1795 you have killed some
of the Shawanee, Winnebagoes, Delawares, and Miamis, and you
have taken our land from us; and I do not see how we can remain
at peace with you if you continue to do so.... You try to force
the red people to do some injury; it is you that are pushing
them on to do mischief. You endeavor to make distinctions; you
wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them,--from
uniting and considering their land as the common property of
the whole. You take tribes aside and advise them not to come
into this measure.... The reason, I tell you, is this: You want,
by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a
particular tract of land, to make them to war with each other.
You never see an Indian come and endeavor to make the white
people do so. You are continually driving the red people; and at
last you will drive them into the great lake, where they cannot
either stand or work.
Since my residence at Tippecanoe we have endeavored to level all
distinctions, to destroy village chiefs by whom all mischief is
done: it is they who sell our lands to the Americans. Our object
is to let all our affairs be transacted by warriors. This land
that was sold, and the goods that were given for it, was only
done by a few. The treaty was afterward brought here, and the
Weas were induced to give their consent because of their small
numbers.... In future we are prepared to punish those chiefs who
may come forward to propose to sell their land. If you continue
to purchase of them, it will produce war among the different
tribes, and at last I do not know what will be the consequence
to the white people.”
Earnestly denying the intention of making war, Tecumthe still declared
that any attempt on Harrison’s part to enter into possession of the
land lately ceded would be resisted by force. In the vehemence of
discussion he used language in regard to the United States which caused
great excitement, and broke up the meeting for that day; but he lost no
time in correcting the mistake. After the conference closed, he had a
private interview with Harrison, and repeated his official ultimatum.
He should only with great reluctance make war on the United States,
against whom he had no other complaint than their land-purchases; he
was extremely anxious to be their friend, and if the governor would
prevail upon the President to give up the lands lately purchased,
and agree never to make another treaty without the consent of all
the tribes, Tecumthe pledged himself to be a faithful ally to the
United States, and to assist them in all their wars with the English;
otherwise he would be obliged to enter into an English alliance.
Harrison told him that no such condition had the least chance of
finding favor with the Government. “Well,” rejoined Tecumthe, as though
he had expected the answer, “as the great chief is to decide the
matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put sense enough into his head to
induce him to direct you to give up this land. It is true, he is so far
off he will not be injured by the war; he may sit still in his town and
drink his wine, while you and I will have to fight it out.”
Therewith Tecumthe and Harrison parted, each to carry on his
preparations for the conflict. The Secretary of War wrote to Harrison
in November instructing him to defer the military occupation of the new
purchase on the Wabash, but giving no orders as to the policy intended
to be taken by the Government. Wanting peace, he threw on Harrison the
responsibility for war.[78]
“It has indeed occurred to me,” wrote the secretary, “that the
surest means of securing good behavior from this conspicuous
personage [Tecumthe] and his brother, would be to make them
prisoners; but at this time more particularly, it is desirable
that peace with all the Indian tribes should be preserved; and
I am instructed by the President to express to your Excellency
his expectation and confidence that in all your arrangements
this may be considered (as I am confident it ever has been) a
primary object with you.”
CHAPTER V.
NOTWITHSTANDING the hostile spirit on both sides, the winter of
1810–1811 passed without serious disturbance on the Wabash, and the
summer of 1811 arrived before Harrison thought proper to take the next
step. Then, June 24, he sent to Tecumthe and the Prophet a letter, or
speech, intended to force an issue.
“Brothers,” he wrote,[79] “this is the third year that all
the white people in this country have been alarmed at your
proceedings. You threaten us with war; you invite all the tribes
to the north and west of us to join against us. Brothers,
your warriors who have lately been here deny this, but I have
received the information from every direction. The tribes on the
Mississippi have sent me word that you intended to murder me,
and then to commence a war upon our people. I have also received
the speech that you sent to the Pottawatomies and others to join
you for that purpose; but if I had no other evidence of your
hostility to us, your seizing the salt which I lately sent up
the Wabash is sufficient.”
Except the seizure of five barrels of salt intended for other Indians,
in June, 1811, no overt act yet showed the intention to begin a war,
and certainly no such immediate intention existed; but two white men
were at that moment murdered in the Illinois Territory, a drunken
Indian was murdered at Vincennes, and these acts of violence, together
with the general sense of insecurity, caused the government officials
to write from all quarters to the War Department that Tecumthe must be
suppressed. Tecumthe himself seemed disposed to avoid cause for attack.
July 4 he sent word that he would come to Vincennes; and to Harrison’s
alarm he appeared there, July 27, with two or three hundred warriors
for an interview with the governor. The act proved courage, if not
rashness. Harrison’s instructions hinted advice to seize the two Indian
leaders, if it could be done without producing a war, and Harrison had
ample time to prepare his measures.
Tecumthe came and remained two days at Vincennes, explaining, with
childlike candor, his plans and wishes. As soon as the council was
over, he said, he should visit the Southern tribes to unite them with
those of the North in a peaceful confederacy; and he hoped no attempt
would be made to settle the disputed territory till his return in the
spring. A great number of Indians were to come in the autumn to live at
Tippecanoe; they must use the disputed region for hunting-ground. He
wished everything to remain in its present situation till his return;
he would then go and see the President and settle everything with him.
The affairs of all the tribes in that quarter were in his own hands,
and he would despatch messengers in every direction to prevent the
Indians from doing further mischief.
Tecumthe seemed to think that his wish would prevent Harrison from
further aggression for the time. A few days afterward he passed down
the Wabash, with some twenty warriors, on his diplomatic errand to the
Creeks; but before he was fairly out of sight, July 31, a number of
citizens met at Vincennes, and adopted resolutions demanding that the
settlement at Tippecanoe should be broken up. Immediate action, before
Tecumthe should return, was urged by Harrison’s party, and by many
frightened settlers. Harrison’s personal wish could not be doubted.
The Secretary of War had already ordered the Fourth Regiment of U.
S. Infantry, under Colonel Boyd, with a company of riflemen,--making
in the whole a force of five hundred regular troops,--to descend the
Ohio from Pittsburg as rapidly as possible, and place themselves under
Harrison’s orders; but Eustis added instructions not easily followed or
understood. July 17 he wrote to Harrison,[80]--
“In case circumstances shall occur which may render it necessary
or expedient to attack the Prophet and his followers, the force
should be such as to insure the most complete success. This
force will consist of the militia and regular troops.... If the
Prophet should commence or seriously threaten hostilities, he
ought to be attacked.”
Under these instructions, Harrison was warranted in doing what he
pleased. Not even Tecumthe denied the seriousness of his hostile
threats, and Harrison had every reason to begin the war at once, if war
must be; but although Eustis spoke his own mind clearly, he failed to
reckon upon the President, and this neglect was the cause of another
letter to Harrison, written three days later:[81]--
“Since my letter of the 17th instant, I have been particularly
instructed by the President to communicate to your Excellency
his earnest desire that peace may, if possible, be preserved
with the Indians, and that to this end every proper means may be
adopted.... Circumstances conspire at this particular juncture
to render it peculiarly desirable that hostilities of any kind
or to any degree, not indispensably required, should be avoided.
The force under Colonel Boyd has been ordered to descend the
Ohio, ... and although the force is at the disposal of your
Excellency, I am instructed to inform you that the President
indulges the hope and expectation that your exertions and
measures with the Indians will be such as may render their march
to the Indian Territory unnecessary, and that they may remain
liable to another disposition.”
Without paying attention to the President’s wishes emphatically
expressed in these orders of July 20, Harrison passed the next month in
raising forces for an expedition to satisfy the wishes of the Western
people. No doubt was felt on the Ohio that Harrison meant to attack
the Indians at Tippecanoe; and so serious a campaign was expected that
Kentucky became eager to share it. Among other Kentuckians, Joseph H.
Daveiss, Aaron Burr’s persecutor, wrote,[82] August 24, to Harrison,
offering himself as a volunteer: “Under all the privacy of a letter,”
said he, “I make free to tell you that I have imagined there were two
men in the West who had military talents; and you, sir, were the first
of the two. It is thus an opportunity of service much valued by me.”
Daveiss doubted only whether the army was to attack at once, or to
provoke attack.
Harrison accepted Daveiss’s services, and gave him command of the
dragoons, a mounted force of about one hundred and thirty men from
Indiana and Kentucky. The Fourth U. S. Infantry, three hundred
strong according to Colonel Boyd who commanded it,[83] arrived in
the Territory at the beginning of September. As rapidly as possible
Harrison collected his forces, and sent them up the river to a point
in the new purchase about sixty-five miles above Vincennes. The exact
force was afterward much disputed.[84] Harrison reported his effectives
as a few more than nine hundred men. Some sixty Kentucky volunteers
were of the number.
The last instructions from the Department, dated August 29,[85] made no
change in the tenor of the President’s orders. When Harrison joined his
army, October 6, at the camp above Vincennes, he wrote to Eustis,[86]--
“I sincerely wish that my instructions were such as to authorize
me to march up immediately to the Prophet’s town. The troops
which I command are a fine body of men, and the proportion of
regulars, irregulars, infantry, and dragoons such as I could
wish it. I have no reason to doubt the issue of a contest with
the savages, and I am much deceived if the greater part of both
officers and men are not desirous of coming in contact with
them.”
In doubt what to do next, Harrison waited while his army built a small
wooden fort, to which he gave his own name, and which was intended to
establish formal possession of the new purchase. While the army was
engaged in this work, one of the sentinels was fired at and wounded in
the night of October 10 by some person or persons unseen and unknown.
Harrison regarded this as a beginning of hostilities by the Prophet,
and decided to act as though war was declared. October 12 he received
from Secretary Eustis a letter dated September 18, never published
though often referred to,[87] which is not found in the records of the
government. Harrison replied the next day:[88]--
“Your letter of the 18th ult. I had the honor to receive
yesterday. My views have hitherto been limited to the erection
of the fort which we are now building, and to a march, by way of
feint, in the direction of the Prophet’s town, as high, perhaps,
as the Vermilion River. But the powers given me in your last
letter, and circumstances which have occurred here at the very
moment on which it was received, call for measures of a more
energetic kind.”
With this despatch Harrison enclosed a return of the soldiers present
under his command. “You will observe,” he said, “that our effectives
are but little over nine hundred.” The rank-and-file consisted of seven
hundred and forty-two men fit for duty. Harrison thought this force
too small, and sent back to Vincennes for four companies of mounted
riflemen. Two of the four companies joined him,[89] but their strength
was not reported. These returns showed that the army, with the two
additional companies, numbered at least one thousand effectives. One of
the officers of the Fourth U. S. Infantry, writing November 21, said
that the force was a little upward of eleven hundred men.[90]
While the Americans were determined not to return without a battle,
the Indians had been strictly ordered by Tecumthe to keep the peace,
and showed the intention to avoid Harrison’s attack. As early as
September 25, the Prophet sent a number of Indians to Vincennes to
protest his peaceful intentions, and to promise that Harrison’s demands
should be complied with.[91] Harrison returned no answer and sent
no demands. October 28 he broke up his camp at Fort Harrison, and
the army began its march up the river. The governor remained one day
longer at the fort, and from there, October 29, sent some friendly
Indians to the Prophet with a message requiring that the Winnebagoes,
Pottawatomies, and Kickapoos, at Tippecanoe, should return to their
tribes; that all stolen horses should be given up, and that murderers
should be surrendered. He intended at a later time to add a demand for
hostages,[92] in case the Prophet should accede to these preliminary
terms.
Harrison did not inform the friendly Indians where they would find
him, or where they were to bring their answer.[93] Crossing to the
west bank of the Wabash to avoid the woods, the troops marched over a
level prairie to the mouth of the Vermilion River, where they erected
a blockhouse to protect their boats. The Vermilion River was the
extreme boundary of the recent land-cession; and to cross it, under
such circumstances, was war. Harrison looked for resistance; but not
an Indian was seen, and November 3 the army resumed its march, keeping
in the open country, until on the evening of November 5 it arrived,
still unmolested, within eleven miles of the Prophet’s town. From the
Vermilion River to Tippecanoe was fifty miles.
The next morning, November 6, the army advanced toward the town, and
as the column approached, Indians were frequently seen in front and on
the flanks. Interpreters tried to parley with them, but they returned
no answer except insulting or threatening gestures. Two miles from the
town the army unexpectedly entered a difficult country, thick with wood
and cut by deep ravines, where Harrison was greatly alarmed, seeing
himself at the mercy of an attack; but no attack was made. When clear
of the woods, within a mile and a half of the town, he halted his
troops and declared his intention to encamp. Daveiss and all the other
officers urged him to attack the town at once; but he replied that his
instructions would not justify his attacking the Indians unless they
refused his demands, and he still hoped to hear something in the course
of the evening from the friendly Indians sent from Fort Harrison.
Daveiss remonstrated, and every officer in the army supported him.
Harrison then pleaded the danger of further advance. “The experience of
the last two days,” he said,[94] “ought to convince every officer that
no reliance ought to be placed upon the guides as to the topography of
the country; that, relying on their information, the troops had been
led into a situation so unfavorable that but for the celerity with
which they changed their position a few Indians might have destroyed
them; he was therefore determined not to advance to the town until he
had previously reconnoitred.”
The candor of this admission did not prove the military advantages
of the halt; and neither of Harrison’s reasons was strengthened by a
third, which he gave a month afterward in a letter to the Governor
of Kentucky. “The success of an attack upon the town by day,” he
said,[95] “was very problematical. I expected that they would have
met me the next day to hear my terms; but I did not believe that they
would accede to them, and it was my determination to attack and burn
the town the following night.” Daveiss and the other officers, looking
at the matter only as soldiers, became more urgent, until Harrison
at last yielded, and resolving no longer to hesitate in treating the
Indians as enemies,[96] ordered an advance, with the determination
to attack. “I yielded to what appeared the general wish,” he said in
his official report,[97] “and directed the troops to advance.” They
advanced about four hundred yards, when three Indians sent by the
Prophet came to meet them, bringing a pacific message, and urging that
hostilities should if possible be avoided. Harrison’s conscience,
already heavy-ladened, again gave way at this entreaty.[98] “I answered
that I had no intention of attacking them until I discovered that they
would not comply with the demands that I had made; that I would go on
and encamp at the Wabash, and in the morning would have an interview
with the Prophet and his chiefs, and explain to them the determination
of the President; that in the mean time no hostilities should be
committed.”
Had Harrison’s vacillation been due to consciousness of strength,
his officers would have had no just reason for remonstrance; but he
estimated his force at about eight hundred effective men, and the
Indians at more than six hundred.[99] He knew that no victory over the
Northern Indians had ever been won where the numbers were anything like
equal.[100] Before him was an unknown wilderness; behind him was a line
of retreat, one hundred and fifty miles long, and he had supplies for
very few days. He could not trust the Indians; and certainly they could
not trust him, for he meant in any case to surprise their town the next
night. Delay was dangerous only to the whites,--advantageous only to
the Indians. Daveiss felt so strongly the governor’s hesitation that
he made no secret of his discontent, and said openly not only that the
army ought to attack,[101] but also that it would be attacked before
morning, or would march home with nothing accomplished.[102] Indeed, if
Harrison had not come there to destroy the town, he had no sufficient
military reason for being there at all.
Having decided to wait, Harrison had next to choose a camping-ground.
The army marched on, looking for some spot on the river where wood as
well as water could be obtained, until they came within one hundred and
fifty yards of the town, when the Indians, becoming alarmed, called on
them to stop. Harrison halted his men and asked the Indians to show
him a place suitable for his purpose, which they did;[103] and the
troops filed off in front of the town, at right angles to the Wabash,
till they reached a creek less than a mile to the northwest. Next to
the town was a marshy prairie; beyond the marsh the ground rose about
ten feet to a level covered with oaks; and then about a hundred yards
farther it suddenly dropped to the creek behind, where the banks were
thick with willow and brushwood. No spot in the neighborhood was
better suited for a camp than this saddle-back between the marsh and
the brook, but Harrison saw that it offered serious disadvantages.
“I found the ground destined for the encampment,” he reported,
“not altogether such as I could wish it. It was, indeed, admirably
calculated for regular troops that were opposed to regulars, but it
afforded great facility to the approach of the savages.”
There Harrison camped. The troops were stationed in a sort of triangle,
following the shape of the high land,[104]--the base toward the
northeast, the blunt apex toward the southwest; but at no part of
the line was any attempt made to intrench, or palisade, or in any
way to cover the troops. Harrison afterward explained that he had
barely axes enough to procure firewood. The want of axes had been
discovered at Fort Harrison, and hardly excused the neglect to intrench
at Tippecanoe, for it had not prevented building the fort. The army
pitched its tents and lighted its fires for the night, with no other
protection than a single line of sentries, although the creek in the
rear gave cover to an attack within a few yards of the camp.
The night was dark, with light rain at intervals; the troops slept on
their arms, and their rest was disturbed by no sound. Many accounts
have been given of what passed in the Prophet’s town,[105] but none
of them deserve attention. During the night neither Harrison nor his
sentinels heard or saw anything that roused their suspicions. Harrison,
in a brief report of the next day,[106] said that the first alarm
was given at half-past four o’clock in the morning. His full report
of November 18 corrected the time to a few minutes before four. Still
another account, on the day after the battle, named five o’clock as
the moment.[107] Harrison himself was about to leave his tent, before
calling the men to parade, when a sentinel at the farthest angle of the
camp above the creek fired a shot. In an instant the Indian yell was
raised, and before the soldiers at that end of the camp could leave
their tents, the Indians had pierced the line, and were shooting the
men by the light of the camp-fires. Within a few moments, firing began
along the whole line, until the camp, except for a space next the
creek, was encircled by it. Fortunately for Harrison, the attacking
party at the broken angle had not strength to follow up its advantage,
and the American line was soon reformed in the rear. Harrison rode to
the point, and at the northeast angle met Daveiss and his dismounted
dragoons. Daveiss reported that the Indians, under cover of the trees,
were annoying the troops severely, and asked leave to dislodge them.
The order was given; and Daveiss, followed by only a few men, rushed
forward among the trees, where he soon fell, mortally wounded. The
troops, after forming, held their position without further disaster
till daybreak, when they advanced and drove the Indians into the swamp.
With this success the battle ended, having lasted two hours.
For the moment the army was saved, but only at great cost. Daveiss,
who held an anomalous position almost as prominent as that of Harrison
himself, died in the afternoon. Captain Baen, acting major of the
Fourth Regiment, two lieutenants, and an ensign of the same regiment,
were killed or wounded; two lieutenant-colonels, four captains, and
several lieutenants of the Indiana militia were on the same list,
and the general’s aid-de-camp was killed. One hundred and fifty-four
privates were returned among the casualties, fifty-two of whom were
killed or mortally wounded. The total loss was one hundred and
eighty-eight, of whom sixty-one were killed or mortally wounded.[108]
The bodies of thirty-eight Indians were found on the field.
If the army had cause for anxiety before the battle, it had double
reason for alarm when it realized its position on November 7. If
Harrison’s own account was correct, he had with him only eight hundred
men. Sixty-one had been killed or mortally wounded, and he had near
a hundred and fifty wounded to carry with him in his retreat. His
effective force was diminished more than one fourth, according to his
biographer;[109] his camp contained very little flour and no meat,
for the few beeves brought with the army were either driven away by
the Indians or stampeded by the noise of the battle; and his only base
of supplies was at Vincennes, one hundred and seventy miles away.
The Indians could return in greater numbers, but his own force must
steadily grow weaker. Harrison was naturally a cautious man; he felt
strongly the dangers that surrounded him, and his army felt them not
less.[110]
The number of Indian warriors engaged in the night attack was estimated
by Harrison at six hundred.[111] The law of exaggeration, almost
invariable in battle, warrants belief that not more than four hundred
Indians were concerned in the attack. The Prophet’s Indians were few.
Tecumthe afterward spoke of the attack as an “unfortunate transaction
that took place between the white people and a few of our young men
at our village,”[112]--as though it was an affair in which the young
warriors had engaged against the will of the older chiefs. Tecumthe
commonly told the truth, even with indiscretion; and nothing in the
American account contradicted his version of the affair at Tippecanoe.
Harrison’s ablest military manœuvre had been the availing himself of
Tecumthe’s over-confidence in quitting the country at so critical a
moment.
Although Harrison did not venture to send out a scout for twenty-four
hours, but remained in camp waiting attack, no further sign of
hostilities was given. “Night,” said one of the army,[113] “found every
man mounting guard, without food, fire, or light, and in a drizzling
rain. The Indian dogs, during the dark hours, produced frequent
alarms by prowling in search of carrion about the sentinels.” On the
morning of November 8, the dragoons and mounted riflemen approached
the town and found it deserted. Apparently the Indians had fled in
haste, leaving everything, even a few new English guns and powder.
The army took what supplies were needed, and set fire to the village.
Meanwhile every preparation had been made for rapid retreat. The wagons
could scarcely carry all the wounded, and Harrison abandoned the camp
furniture and private baggage. “We managed, however, to bring off the
public property,” he reported. At noon of November 9 the train started,
and by night-fall had passed the dangerous woods and broken country
where a few enemies could have stopped it. No Indians appeared; the
march was undisturbed; and after leaving a company of the U. S. Fourth
Regiment at Fort Harrison, the rest of the force arrived, November 18,
at Vincennes.
The battle of Tippecanoe at once became a point of pride throughout
the Western country, and Harrison received the official applause and
thanks of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; but Harrison’s account of
his victory was not received without criticism, and the battle was
fought again in the press and in private. The Fourth Regiment more than
hinted that had it not been for their steadiness the whole party would
have been massacred. At Vincennes, Harrison was severely attacked.
In Kentucky criticism was open, for the family and friends of Joseph
Daveiss were old Federalists, who had no interest in the military
triumphs of a Republican official. Humphrey Marshall, Daveiss’s
brother-in-law, published a sharp review of Harrison’s report, and
hinted plainly that Daveiss had fallen a victim to the General’s
blunders. With characteristic vigor of language, Marshall called
Harrison “a little, selfish, intriguing busybody,” and charged him with
having made the war without just cause, for personal objects.[114]
These attacks caused the Western Republicans to sustain with the more
ardor their faith in Harrison’s military genius, and their enthusiasm
for the victory of Tippecanoe; but President Madison and Secretary
Eustis guarded themselves with some care from expressing an opinion on
the subject.
Whatever his critics might say, Harrison gained his object, and
established himself in the West as the necessary leader of any future
campaign. That result, as far as it was good, seemed to be the only
advantage gained at Tippecanoe. Harrison believed that the battle had
broken the Prophet’s influence, and saved the frontier from further
alarm; he thought that in the event of a British war, the Indians
would remain neutral having “witnessed the inefficacy of British
assistance;”[115] he expected the tribes to seek peace as a consequence
of what he considered the severest defeat they had ever received since
their acquaintance with the white people;[116] and the expectation
was general that they would deliver the Prophet and Tecumthe into the
hands of the American government. For a time these impressions seemed
reasonable. The Prophet lost influence, and the peace was not further
disturbed; but presently the Western people learned that the Prophet
had returned to Tippecanoe, and that all things had resumed their old
aspect, except that no one could foresee when the Indians would choose
to retaliate for Harrison’s invasion.
Toward January, Tecumthe returned from the South, and sent word that
he was ready to go to Washington. March 1, 1812, a deputation of some
eighty Indians visited Vincennes, and told Harrison that the whole
winter had been passed in sending messages to the different villages to
consult on their future course, and that all agreed to ask for peace.
They blamed the Prophet for the affair at Tippecanoe, and asked leave
to visit Washington to obtain peace from the President. Harrison gladly
assented, for a delegation of Indians sent to Washington was a guaranty
of peace during the time of their absence. He expected them to appear
at Fort Wayne in April, ready for the journey.
The Indian hesitation was probably due to doubt whether war would take
place between the United States and England. The whole influence of the
British agents was exerted to unite the Indians and to arm them, but to
prevent a premature outbreak. The British Indian agent at Amherstburg
sent Tecumthe a message blaming the attack on Harrison. Tecumthe
replied:[117]--
“You tell us to retreat or turn to one side should the Big
Knives come against us. Had I been at home in the late
unfortunate affair I should have done so; but those I left at
home were (I cannot call them men) a poor set of people, and
their scuffle with the Big Knives I compared to a struggle
between little children who only scratch each other’s faces. The
Kickapoos, Winnebagoes have since been at Post Vincennes and
settled the matter amicably.”
The situation was well understood. “If we have a British war, we shall
have an Indian war,” wrote the commandant from Fort Wayne.[118] “From
the best information I can get, I have every reason to believe we shall
have an Indian war this spring, whether we have a British war or not.”
Harrison must himself have felt that the campaign to Tippecanoe could
only add to his dangers unless it was followed up. After April 1,
1812, illusions vanished; for Indian hostilities began all along the
border. April 6 two settlers were murdered within three miles of Fort
Dearborn, at Chicago; several murders were committed near Fort Madison,
above St. Louis, on the Mississippi; but the warning which spread wild
alarm throughout Indiana was the murder of a whole family early in
April within five miles of Vincennes, and April 14 that of a settler
within a few miles of the Ohio River. Another murder a few weeks
afterward, on the White River, completed the work of terror.
Then a general panic seized the people. The militia dared not turn out;
for while they collected at one spot, the Indians might attack their
isolated cabins. Even Vincennes was thought to be in danger, and the
stream of fugitives passed through it as rapidly as possible on their
way southward, until depopulation threatened the Territory.[119] “Most
of the citizens in this country,” reported Harrison, May 6,[120] “have
abandoned their farms, and taken refuge in such temporary forts as
they have been able to construct. Nothing can exhibit more distress
than those wretched people crowded together in places almost destitute
of every necessary accommodation.” Misled by the previous peaceful
reports, the Government had sent the Fourth Regiment to Detroit; not
even a company of militia could be procured nearer than the falls of
the Ohio; and Harrison called for help in vain.
Fortunately, Tecumthe was not yet ready for war. Six weeks after
the hostilities began he appeared at a grand council, May 16, at
Massassinway on the Wabash, between Tippecanoe and Fort Wayne. His
speech to the tribes assembled there was more temperate than ever.[121]
“Governor Harrison made war on my people in my absence,” he
said. “It was the will of God that he should do so. We hope it
will please God that the white people may let us live in peace;
we will not disturb them, neither have we done it, except when
they came to our village with the intention of destroying us. We
are happy to state to our brothers present that the unfortunate
transaction that took place between the white people and a few
of our young men at our village has been settled between us and
Governor Harrison; and I will further state, had I been at home
there would have been no bloodshed at that time.”
He added that the recent murders had been committed by Pottawatomies
not under his control, and he offered no excuse for them.
“Should the bad acts of our brothers the Pottawatomies draw on
us the ill-will of our white brothers, and they should come
again and make an unprovoked attack on us at our village, we
will die like men; but we will never strike the first blow....
We defy a living creature to say we ever advised any one,
directly or indirectly, to make war on our white brothers.
It has constantly been our misfortune to have our views
misrepresented to our white brethren. This has been done by
pretended chiefs of the Pottawatomies and others that have been
in the habit of selling land to the white people that did not
belong to them.”
This was the situation on the Wabash in May and June, 1812. Not only
was Tecumthe unwilling to strike the first blow, but he would not even
retaliate Harrison’s invasion and seizure of the disputed territory. He
waited for Congress to act, but every one knew that whenever Congress
should declare war against England, war must also be waged with the
Indians; and no one could doubt that after provoking the Indian war,
Americans ought to be prepared to wage it with effect, and without
complaint of its horrors.
CHAPTER VI.
The war fever of 1811 swept far and wide over the country, but even at
its height seemed somewhat intermittent and imaginary. A passion that
needed to be nursed for five years before it acquired strength to break
into act, could not seem genuine to men who did not share it. A nation
which had submitted to robbery and violence in 1805, in 1807, in 1809,
could not readily lash itself into rage in 1811 when it had no new
grievance to allege; nor could the public feel earnest in maintaining
national honor, for every one admitted that the nation had sacrificed
its honor, and must fight to regain it. Yet what honor was to be hoped
from a war which required continued submission to one robber as the
price of resistance to another? President Madison submitted to Napoleon
in order to resist England; the New England Federalists preferred
submitting to England in order to resist Napoleon; but not one American
expected the United States to uphold their national rights against the
world.
Politicians of the old school looked coldly on the war spirit. Nations
like individuals, when driven to choose between desperate courses,
might at times be compelled to take the chances of destruction,
often destroying themselves, or suffering irreparable harm. Yet the
opponents of war could argue that Americans were not placed between
desperate alternatives. They had persevered hitherto, in spite of
their leaders, in the policy of peace; had suffered much injury and
acute mortification, but had won Louisiana and West Florida, had given
democracy all it asked, and had remained in reasonable harmony with the
liberal movement of the world. They were reaping the fruit of their
patient and obstinate husbandry; for Russia and Sweden were about to
fight their battles without reward. Napoleon offered them favors more
or less real, and even England could not long resist the pressure of
her interests. Jefferson’s policy had wrought all the evil it could
cause,--perhaps it had cost the highest price the nation could pay; but
after the nation had suffered the evil and paid the price, it had a
right to the profit. With more force than in 1798, the old Republicans
pleaded that if they should throw aside their principles and plunge
into hostilities with England, they would not only sacrifice the
results of six years’ humiliation, but would throw the United States
athwart the liberal movement of Europe, destroy the hopes of pure
government at home, and with more eagerness than they had shown for
the past ten years in stripping government of its power, must devote
themselves to the task of rebuilding a sovereignty as terrible in peace
as in war.
The moment for fighting, conservatives argued, had come in 1807,
had passed in 1809; and henceforward good policy called only for
perseverance in the course that had been so persistently preferred. Not
merely old Republicans, but an actual majority of the people probably
held these opinions; yet the youthful energy of the nation, which had
at last come to its strength under the shelter of Jefferson’s peaceful
rule, cried out against the cowardice of further submission, and
insisted on fighting if only to restore its own self-respect.
The course of Massachusetts had much to do with changing the current
of opinion. Hitherto this State had barred the way to a British war.
Although the Republican party in Massachusetts several times elected
their candidate for governor by majorities more or less decisive, they
failed to gain full control of the State legislature before 1811. In
1810 they elected Elbridge Gerry and a majority of the representatives,
but they still lacked one vote to give them control of the Senate. In
April, 1811, Gerry succeeded once more, defeating Christopher Gore,
the Federalist candidate, by a majority of three thousand votes; while
the House, which consisted of some six hundred and fifty members,
chose a Republican speaker by a majority of thirty-one. For the first
time the Republicans controlled also a majority, though only of one
vote, in the State Senate. This success, gained in spite of the
unpopular Non-importation Act, gave extraordinary confidence to the
Government, and left the Federalists powerless. Timothy Pickering
lost his seat in the United States Senate, and Speaker Varnum received
it. The Republicans hastened to introduce, and to carry through the
Massachusetts legislature, measures that threatened to upturn the
foundation of Federalist society. Other measures still more radical
were expected. Jefferson’s hopes of reforming Massachusetts were almost
fulfilled; but the success which gave reality to them removed the last
obstacle to war with England.
As the autumn advanced, the Republican newspapers broke into a general
cry for war. The British minister’s refusal to withdraw the Orders in
Council, the return of Pinkney from London, the affair of the “Little
Belt,” the notorious relations between the northwestern Indians and
the British traders,--all served to increase the ill-temper of a
public trying to lash itself into an act it feared. Even the battle
at Tippecanoe, although evidently contrary to British interest, was
charged to British influence. As though England had not already given
cause for a score of wars, the press invented new grievances; and
became as eager to denounce imaginary crimes as to correct flagrant and
chronic wrongs.
The matter of impressments then began to receive the attention which
had never yet been given it. Hitherto neither Government nor people
had thought necessary to make a _casus belli_ of impressments.
Orders in Council and other measures of Great Britain which affected
American property had been treated as matters of vital consequence;
but as late as the close of 1811, neither the President, the Secretary
of State, nor Congress had yet insisted that the person of an American
citizen was as sacred as his property. Impressments occurred daily.
No one knew how many native-born Americans had been taken by force
from the protection of the American flag; but whether the number was
small or great, neither Republican nor Federalist had ventured to say
that the country must at all hazards protect them, or that whatever
rules of blockade or contraband the belligerents might adopt against
property, they must at least keep their hands off the persons of
peaceable Americans whether afloat or ashore. President Madison had
repeated, until the world laughed in his face, that Napoleon no longer
enforced his decrees, and that therefore if England did not withdraw
her blockade, war would result; but he had never suggested that America
would fight for her sailors. When he and his supporters in earnest
took up the grievances of the seamen, they seemed to do so as an
afterthought, to make out a cause of war against England, after finding
the public unwilling to accept the cause at first suggested. However
unjust the suspicion might be, so much truth existed in this Federalist
view of Madison’s course as warranted the belief that if England in
July, 1811, had yielded to the demand for commercial freedom, the
Government would have become deaf to the outcry of the imprisoned
seamen. Only by slow degrees, and in the doubtful form of a political
manœuvre, did this, the worst of all American grievances, take its
proper place at the head of the causes for war.
Winter drew near, finding the public restless, irritable, more than
half afraid of its own boldness, but outspoken at last. British
frigates once more blockaded New York, seizing ships and impressing
men without mercy, while the British prize-courts, after a moment’s
hesitation, declared that the French Decrees were not repealed, and
that American vessels sailing to France were good prize. Under these
irritations the temper of the American press became rapidly worse,
until war was declared to be imminent, and the conquest of Canada
became the favorite topic of newspaper discussion.
Yet the true intentions of the President and his Cabinet were as
uncertain as those of the Twelfth Congress, which had not yet met. A
very large part of the public could not believe war to be possible,
and the Government itself shared so far in the doubt as to wait for
Congress to give the impulse so often refused. When the President and
his Cabinet met in Washington to prepare for the session of Congress
called for November 4, a month earlier than usual, neither the Cabinet
nor the congressmen felt a certainty of the future; and so little did
the outside world believe in war, that Madison, Monroe, and Gallatin
were supposed to be aiming at a diplomatic rather than at a military
victory. In truth they had no well-defined plan. The process by which
a scattered democracy decided its own will, in a matter so serious as
a great and perhaps fatal war, was new to the world; bystanders were
surprised and amused at the simplicity with which the people disputed
plans of war and peace, giving many months of warning and exact
information to the enemy, while they showed no sign of leadership,
discipline, or union, or even a consciousness that such qualities were
needed. Men like Josiah Quincy, Rufus King, John Randolph, and even
Madison and Gallatin, seeing that the people themselves, like the
machine of government they had invented, were incompetent to the work
of war, waited with varied emotions, but equally believing or fearing
that at last a fatal crisis was at hand.
Monroe was far from easy; but he had accepted, as was his wont, the
nearest dominating will, and he drifted without an effort, although
his old friends had already parted company with him. Though obliged to
support the President in holding that Napoleon’s decrees were withdrawn
so that they had ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United
States, he showed that he did so, not so much because he thought it the
truth, as because England gave him no choice. To Serurier, the French
minister, Monroe made little concealment of his real wishes; and when
Serurier first called at the Department after Monroe’s return from
Virginia, he heard nothing that greatly pleased him.
“I found the Secretary of State,” wrote Serurier, October
23,[122] “nearly in the same state of mind in which I left him
at his departure for Virginia. He told me at the outset that
although the information received by the President during the
last two months had added to his hopes, it had not yet completed
his conviction on the decrees; that he could not believe them
entirely repealed so long as there remained in our ports a
single vessel captured by our privateers since November.... He
pretended that very recent advices from Naples announced an
order sent lately from Paris to sell the American prizes, and
this news had been very disagreeable to the Executive, and had
thrown it into new uncertainties.... He returned again to our
customs-tariff, and the indispensability of its reduction.”
Serurier exerted himself to infuse what he called proper spirit into
the secretary’s temper, complaining that England was actually engaged
in making war on American commerce with France while enjoying all the
advantages of American trade,--
“A very dangerous situation for an alliance, I added, where
all the advantage is for your enemies, and all the loss is for
your friends. Mr. Monroe agreed to all this; but he pretended
that this false position could be viewed only as a transition
to a more decided state of things; that the present situation
was equally burdensome and intolerable to the citizens, and
little suited to the dignity of the Government; that it was
necessary to wait for despatches from Mr. Barlow. Then he fell
back once more on his theme,--that whenever they should be
perfectly satisfied on the side of France, and also of the
Emperor’s friendship, they would certainly adopt very energetic
measures toward England.... ‘We shall not go backward,’ said
Mr. Monroe to me; ‘we shall be inflexible about the repeal of
the Orders in Council. But in order to go further, to bring
us to great resolutions, the Emperor must aid us; private and
public interest must make the same demand. The President does
indeed hold the rudder of the Ship of State; he guides, but it
is public opinion which makes the vessel move. On France depends
the winning of public opinion; and we wish for it, as you can
well conceive that in our position we should.’”
Serurier knew no more than this, which was no more than all the world
could see. The British minister was not so well informed. After an
exchange of notes with Monroe, which left matters where they were,
Foster learned from Monroe, October 30, that the Government was waiting
for Barlow’s despatches, and if these should prove unsatisfactory, some
restriction of French commerce would be imposed by way of retaliation
on the restrictions imposed by Napoleon.[123] Foster hoped for a turn
in affairs favorable to himself, and tried to bring it about, not
only by suggesting to Lord Wellesley the wisdom of concessions from
England, but also by offering a frank and fair reparation for the
“Chesapeake” outrage. He wrote, November 1, to the Secretary of State
renewing the formal disavowal of Berkeley’s unauthorized act, and
offering to restore the men to the vessel from which they had been
taken, with compensation to themselves and families. Somewhat coldly
Monroe accepted the offer. The two surviving seamen were in due time
brought from their prison at Halifax and restored to the deck of the
“Chesapeake” in Boston harbor; the redress was made as complete as such
tardy justice could ever be, but the time had passed when it could
atone for the wrong.
Both Foster and Serurier felt that the people were further advanced
than the Government in hostility to England, and that this was
especially true in the matter of impressments; but no one, even at
the White House, knew certainly what to expect from the new Congress
assembling at Washington Nov. 4, 1811. That this body differed greatly
from any previous Congress was clear, if only because it contained some
seventy new members; but another difference, less easily measured,
was more serious. The active leaders were young men. Henry Clay of
Kentucky, William Lowndes, John Caldwell Calhoun, David R. Williams,
Langdon Cheves of South Carolina, Felix Grundy of Tennessee, Peter
Buell Porter of New York, Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, had
none of them reached his fortieth year; while Madison and his Cabinet
belonged to a different generation. None of the new leaders could
remember the colonial epoch, or had taken a share in public life except
under the Constitution of 1789, or had been old enough to feel and
understand the lessons taught by opposition to the Federalist rule.
They knew the Federalists only as a faction, more or less given to
treasonable talk, controlling some thirty or forty votes in the House,
and proclaiming with tedious iteration opinions no one cared to hear.
The young war Republicans, as they were called, felt only contempt for
such a party; while, as their acts showed, they were filled with no
respect for the technicalities of their Executive head, and regarded
Gallatin with distrust. Of statesmanship, in the old sense, they took
little thought. Bent on war with England, they were willing to face
debt and probable bankruptcy on the chance of creating a nation, of
conquering Canada, and carrying the American flag to Mobile and Key
West.
After ten years devoted to weakening national energies, such freshness
of youth and recklessness of fear had wonderful popular charm. The
reaction from Jefferson’s system threatened to be more violent than
its adoption. Experience seemed to show that a period of about twelve
years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of
Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient
Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against
the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending
in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could
calculate the result of a few more such returns.
Had the majority of the House been in a gentler mood, its choice for
Speaker should have fallen on Macon, once more a sound party man
prepared to support war; but Macon was set aside. Bibb of Georgia, a
candidate of the minority, received only thirty-eight voices, while
seventy-five were given for Henry Clay. Clay was barely thirty-four
years of age, and was a new member of the House; but he was the boldest
and most active leader of the war Republicans. He immediately organized
the committees for war. That on Foreign Relations, the most immediately
important, was put into the hands of Porter, Calhoun, and Grundy.
Military affairs were placed in charge of David R. Williams. Langdon
Cheves became chairman of the Naval Committee. Ezekiel Bacon and Cheves
stood at the head of the Ways and Means.
November 5 the President’s Message was read, and its account of the
situation seemed to offer hardly the chance of peace. England, it
said, had refused the “reasonable step” of repealing its Orders in
return for the extinction of the French Decrees; while the new British
minister had made “an indispensable condition of the repeal of the
British Orders, that commerce should be restored to a footing that
would admit the productions and manufactures of Great Britain, when
owned by neutrals, into markets shut against them by her enemies,--the
United States being given to understand that in the mean time a
continuation of their Non-importation Act would lead to measures of
retaliation.” Instead of repealing the orders, the British government,
“at a moment when least to have been expected,” put them into more
rigorous execution; “indemnity and redress for other wrongs have
continued to be withheld; and our coasts and the mouths of our harbors
have again witnessed scenes not less derogatory to the dearest of our
national rights than vexatious to the regular course of our trade.”
In some respects Madison’s statement of grievances sounded almost
needlessly quarrelsome; yet even in this list of causes which were to
warrant a declaration of war, the President did not expressly mention
impressments, in comparison with which his other grievances sank, in
the afterthought, to insignificance.
Of France, also, the President spoke in language far from friendly.
Although the decrees were revoked, “no proof is yet given,” he said,
“of an intention to repair the other wrongs done to the United States,
and particularly to restore the great amount of American property
seized and condemned under edicts ... founded in such unjust principles
that the reparation ought to have been prompt and ample.” In addition
to this, the United States had much reason to be dissatisfied with
“the rigorous and unexpected restrictions” imposed on their trade with
France, which if continued would lead to retaliation. Not a word did
the Message contain of friendly or even civil regard for the French
government.
Then followed the sentences which could be read only in the sense of an
invitation to war:--
“I must now add that the period has arrived which claims from
the legislative guardians of the national rights a system of
more ample provisions for maintaining them. Notwithstanding
the scrupulous justice, the protracted moderation, and the
multiplied efforts on the part of the United States to
substitute for the accumulating dangers to the peace of the two
countries all the mutual advantages of re-established friendship
and confidence, we have seen that the British Cabinet perseveres
not only in withholding a remedy for other wrongs so long and
so loudly calling for it, but in the execution, brought home
to the threshold of our territory, of measures which, under
existing circumstances, have the character as well as the effect
of war on our lawful commerce. With this evidence of hostile
inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent
nation can relinquish, Congress will feel the duty of putting
the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by
the crisis, and corresponding with the national spirit and
expectations.”
The report of Secretary Gallatin, sent to the House November 22, bore
also a warlike character. For the past year Gallatin told a cheerful
story. In spite of the non-importation, the receipts from customs and
other revenue exceeded $13,500,000, while the current expenses had not
reached $8,000,000. If war should be declared, the secretary asked only
for an increase of fifty per cent in the duties, in order to make sure
of a fixed revenue of nine million dollars; and should this increase of
duty be insufficient for the purpose, the deficiency could be supplied
without difficulty by a further increase of duties, by a restoration
of the impost on salt, and by “a proper selection of moderate internal
taxes.” With a revenue of nine million dollars secured, the Treasury
could rely on loans to defray extraordinary expenses, and a few years
of peace would supply the means of discharging the debt incurred.
If this was different finance from that which Gallatin had taught in
other days, and by which he had risen to popularity and power, it was
at least as simple as all that Gallatin did; but the simplicity of
his methods, which was their chief professional merit, caused also
their chief reproach. History showed the financial charlatan to be
popular, not so much because he was dishonest as because he gratified
an instinct for gambling as deep as the instinct of selfishness; and
a common notion of a financier was that of a man whose merit lay in
the discovery of new sources of wealth, or in inventing means of
borrowing without repayment. Gallatin professed to do neither. He did
not recommend the issue of paper money; he saw no secret hoards buried
in the unsold public lands; he would listen to no tricks or devices for
raising money. If money was needed he would borrow it, and would pay
whatever it was worth; but he would not suggest that any device could
relieve the public from taxing itself to pay whatever the public chose
to spend.
“The ability and will of the United States faithfully to perform
their engagements are universally known; and the terms of loans
will in no shape whatever be affected by want of confidence in
either. They must, however, depend not only upon the state of
public credit, and on the ability to lend, but also on the
existing demand for capital required for other objects. Whatever
this may be, the money wanted by the public must be purchased
at its market price.... The most simple and direct is also the
cheapest and safest mode.”
Gallatin instanced, as an extreme case, the borrowing of forty
millions at eight instead of the legal rate of six per cent, which he
declared an inconsiderable difference if compared with the effects of
other modes of raising money. No one whose judgment deserved respect
doubted the correctness of his opinion; but Republican congressmen
had for twelve years denounced the Federalist loan of 1798, when five
millions had been borrowed at eight per cent, and they hardly dared
face their constituents when their own Secretary of the Treasury talked
of borrowing forty millions at the same exorbitant rate. Gently as
Gallatin hinted at “a proper selection of moderate internal taxes,”
they remembered that these internal taxes had broken the Federalist
party to pieces. They were angry with Gallatin for not providing other
means for the war than loans and taxes, and they regarded him as not
unwilling to check and chill the military ardor of the nation.
The President’s Message, as far as it regarded foreign affairs, was
referred in the House, November 11, to a select committee, the chairman
of which was Peter B. Porter, with Calhoun and Grundy to support his
well-known opinions. Although the nature of their report could hardly
be doubted, no one seemed confident that it would be taken seriously.
Macon wrote privately, November 21, to his old friend Joseph Nicholson,
that he was still ignorant of the leaders’ intentions:[124]--
“At this place we are nearly all too wise or too mysterious to
form hasty conclusions; it is, however, probable that there are
not more than five or six opinions among us, varying from open
war to repealing the present restrictive system. I have had but
little communication with the knowing ones, and have in some
degree guessed at the number of different opinions. I am almost
certain that no plan is yet adopted by the leaders in the House.”
Within a week Macon found that a plan was made, but it seemed to come
wholly from the White House. The Secretary of War appeared before
the Committee of Foreign Relations and explained what the President
wanted;[125] at the same time Secretary Monroe communicated to the
French minister the nature of the Executive plan.[126]
“Mr. Monroe added;” wrote Serurier, November 28, “... that
the situation of affairs should leave me no doubt as to his
Excellency’s [the President’s] disposition; that the Government
had lost every illusion as to the repeal of the Orders in
Council, and was decided in adopting measures of rigor; that
we might be assured it would not retreat; that ten thousand
regulars were to be raised and placed at the disposition
of the Executive, with a great number of volunteers; that
the posts would be put in a state of defence, the navy
increased, and merchants authorized to arm for the protection
of their commerce; that this measure, now that our decrees
were withdrawn, could strike at England alone; that the
Administration in taking this resolution had perfectly seen
where it led; that evidently this situation would not last three
months, and would inevitably lead to a decision for which the
country was prepared; that the Committee of Foreign Relations
in the House of Representatives would report within a few days,
and he had no doubt that these measures would pass by a great
majority.”
A few days later Serurier had conversations with Monroe and Madison on
the subject of the Spanish American colonies, whose independence they
agreed to assist not only by moral but also by material aid. The French
minister closed his despatch by adding that Congress was at the moment
listening to the report of the Committee of Foreign Relations. “Mr.
Monroe repeated to me that he considered war as pretty nearly decided.”
If the British minister knew less exactly what was happening behind
the scenes, he still knew enough to alarm him. He reported that
the Government was actively organizing its party in Congress; that
different sets of members met every evening in caucus, and were
instilled with the ideas of the Administration;[127] but that while
the members of the Government were to all appearance still undecided
themselves, it would be rash for other persons to express a decided
opinion. A few days after writing in this doubtful sense, Foster was
electrified by an outburst of temper from Monroe, who told him that
the Government would send no new minister to England, and that it “had
reason to believe Great Britain really wished for war with the United
States.”[128] Monroe added that he felt some difficulty in talking
openly about the views of the Government, as some of his disclosures
might be regarded as menaces. The President, though less warm than the
Secretary, talked not less decidedly:
“He owned to me that the situation of America was very
embarrassing; that anything was better than remaining in such a
state; and though he very strongly asserted the impossibility of
America receding from the grounds she had taken, ... said that
he would ask no sacrifice of principle in Great Britain, and
would have no objection to some conventional arrangement between
the two countries if it should be judged necessary in the event
of the Orders in Council being withdrawn. This was, however,
an indispensable preliminary, for he must consider the French
Decrees as revoked so far as Great Britain had a right to expect
America should require their revocation.”
Although Foster became more nervous from day to day, and showed strong
symptoms of a wish that the Orders in Council might be modified
or withdrawn, neither he nor the President informed the British
government that any other cause of war existed, or that the United
States meant to insist on further concessions. In secret, diplomacy
flattered itself that war would still be avoided; but it reckoned
without taking into account the temper of Congress.
CHAPTER VII.
THE leaders of the war party next performed in Congress a scene in some
respects new in the drama of history.
November 29, Peter B. Porter of New York, from the Committee of Foreign
Relations, presented to the House his report, in part.
“Your committee will not incumber your journals,” it began, “and
waste your patience with a detailed history of all the various
matters growing out of our foreign relations. The cold recital
of wrongs, of injuries, and aggressions known and felt by every
member of this Union could have no other effect than to deaden
the national sensibility, and render the public mind callous to
injuries with which it is already too familiar.”
Admission of weakness in the national sensibility gave the key-note of
the report, and of the speeches that supported it. Even the allusion to
the repeal of the French Decrees showed fear lest the truth might make
the public mind callous to shame:--
“France at length ... announced the repeal ... of the Decrees
of Berlin and Milan; and it affords a subject of sincere
congratulation to be informed, through the official organs of
the Government, that those decrees are, so far at least as our
rights are concerned, really and practically at an end.”
Porter had not studied the correspondence of the Department of State so
thoroughly as to learn that Russia and Sweden were in the act of making
war to protect American rights from the operation of those decrees
which, as he was informed, were “really and practically at an end.” His
report ignored these difficulties, but added that England affected to
deny the practical extinction of the French Decrees. In truth, England
not affectedly but positively denied the extinction of those decrees;
the United States offered no sufficient evidence to satisfy even
themselves; and a declaration of war founded on England’s “affected”
denial was in a high degree likely to deaden the national sensibility.
With more reason and effect, the committee dwelt on the severity with
which England enforced her blockades as far as the American coast; and
last of all, added, almost in a tone of apology, an allusion to the
practice of impressments:--
“Your committee are not, however, of that sect whose worship
is at the shrine of a calculating avarice; and while we are
laying before you the just complaints of our merchants against
the plunder of their ships and cargoes, we cannot refrain from
presenting to the justice and humanity of our country the
unhappy case of our impressed seamen. Although the groans of
these victims of barbarity for the loss of (what should be
dearer to Americans than life) their liberty; although the cries
of their wives and children, in the privation of protectors and
parents, have of late been drowned in the louder clamors at the
loss of property,--yet is the practice of forcing our mariners
into the British navy, in violation of the rights of our flag,
carried on with unabated rigor and severity. If it be our duty
to encourage the fair and legitimate commerce of this country by
protecting the property of the merchant, then indeed, by as much
as life and liberty are more estimable than ships and goods, so
much more impressive is the duty to shield the persons of our
seamen, whose hard and honest services are employed equally with
those of the merchants in advancing under the mantle of its laws
the interests of their country.”
Truisms like these, matters of course in the oldest despotisms of
Europe, and the foundation of even Roman society, sounded altogether
new in the mouth of a democratic Legislature, which uttered them
as though their force were not universally admitted. The weakness
of the report in its premises was not strengthened by vigor in the
self-excuses that followed, more apologetic than convincing:--
“If we have not rushed to the field of battle, like the nations
who are led by the mad ambition of a single chief or the avarice
of a corrupted court, it has not proceeded from a fear of war,
but from our love of justice and humanity.”
As the sway of Jefferson’s philosophy ceased, these formulas, never
altogether pleasing, became peculiarly repulsive. Indeed, the only
sentence in the committee’s report that commanded respect was its
concluding appeal to the people to abandon the policy which had
proceeded, as it claimed, from their love of justice and humanity:--
“The period has arrived when in the opinion of your committee
it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth the patriotism
and resources of the country. By the aid of these, and with the
blessing of God, we confidently trust we shall be enabled to
procure that redress which has been sought for by justice, by
remonstrance, and forbearance in vain.”
The report closed with six Resolutions, recommending an increase of ten
thousand men to the regular army; a levy of fifty thousand volunteers;
the outfit of all the vessels of war not in actual service; and the
arming of merchant vessels.
In opening the debate on the report, Porter spoke in language more
candid than the report itself. “It was the determination of the
committee,” he said, “to recommend open and decided war,--a war as
vigorous and effective as the resources of the country and the relative
situation of ourselves and our enemy would enable us to prosecute.”
He went so far as to point out the intended military operations,--the
destruction of British fisheries, and of British commerce with America
and the West Indies, and the conquest of Canada. “By carrying on such a
war at the public expense on land, and by individual enterprise at sea,
we should be able in a short time to remunerate ourselves ten-fold for
all the spoliations she had committed on our commerce.”
Such ideas were not unbecoming to Porter, who began life as a
Federalist, and had no philosophical theories or recorded principles to
explain or defend; but what Porter might advise without a qualm, was
much less simple for Republicans from the South; and while his speech
had its value for the public as a straightforward declaration, it had
little or none for individuals who were conscious that it advised what
they had always condemned. The true spokesman of the committee was not
Porter, but Felix Grundy of Tennessee.
Grundy, like Henry Clay a Virginian by birth and born the same year,
1777, like Clay began his career in Kentucky, where he rose to be
chief-justice of the State before he was thirty years old. In 1807 he
removed from Kentucky to Tennessee, and was next elected to the Twelfth
Congress expressly to advocate war. As a new member, whose duty, like
that of all new members, required him to exchange some controversial
hostilities with John Randolph, he could not afford to miss his mark;
and when Randolph called upon him by a sneering request to tell what
were the constitutional resources of the committee and its talents,
Grundy spoke. He apologized for his remarks as embarrassed, and indeed
his speech showed less fluency than the subject and occasion seemed to
warrant; but though it made no pretence of wit or rhetoric, it went to
the heart of the subject, and dealt seriously with the difficulties
which Grundy and his party felt.
“What cost me more reflection than anything else,” he admitted,
“was the new test to which we are to put this government. We are
about to ascertain by actual experiment how far our republican
institutions are calculated to stand the shock of war; and
whether, after foreign danger has disappeared, we can again
assume our peaceful attitude without endangering the liberties
of the people.”
At the outset, Grundy stumbled upon the difficulty which checked every
movement of his party. Obliged to reconcile his present action with
the attitude taken by his friends in opposition to the Federalist
armaments of 1798, he could only charge that the armaments of 1798
were made not for war, but to provide Executive patronage and affect
domestic politics,--a charge which, whether true or not, did not meet
the objection.
“If your minds are resolved on war,” continued the speaker,
“you are consistent, you are right, you are still Republican;
but if you are not resolved, pause and reflect, for should this
Resolution pass and you then become faint-hearted, remember that
you have abandoned your old principles and trod in the paths of
your predecessors.”
Thus, according to Grundy, from the moment a party intended in earnest
to make war against a foreign enemy, armies, loans, patronage, taxes,
and every following corruption, with all the perils of European
practice, became Republican. Only when armies were to be raised for
domestic purposes were they unrepublican. The Administration of 1798
would gladly have accepted this test, had the Republicans then been
willing to permit armaments on any terms.
Grundy weakened the argument further by attempting to show that in the
present case, unlike that of 1798, sufficient cause for war existed:
“It is the right of exporting the productions of our own soil and
industry to foreign markets.” The statement, considering Grundy’s
reputation, was not skilfully made. The blockades maintained by England
in 1811 were less hostile to American products and industry than
were the decrees of Napoleon, or the French Decrees of 1798, which
confiscated every American ship laden in whole or in part with goods of
English origin, and closed France to every American ship that entered
an English port. Grundy still maintained that the decrees of 1798 had
not justified the Federalist armaments; he could hardly maintain that
the British blockades of 1811 alone gave cause for armaments of the
same kind,--yet this he did. “What are we now called on to decide?”
he asked. “It is whether we will resist by force the attempt ... to
subject our maritime rights to the arbitrary and capricious rule of her
will.”
Grundy spoke of impressments as an outrage which called loudly for
the interposition of the government, but he did not allege them as in
themselves a sufficient cause for war. He laid more weight on the
influence of England in turning the minds of the northwestern Indians
toward hostilities. “War is not to commence by land or sea; it is
already begun,” he said, alluding to the battle of Tippecanoe, fought
a month before; yet if ever a war was aggressive, it was the war which
Harrison had begun for no other object than to win the valley of the
Wabash, and England had interfered neither directly nor indirectly to
produce the outbreak of these hostilities.
Grundy’s next argument was still less convincing. The pledge given
to France, he said, made necessary the Non-importation Law against
England; but this act was an intolerable burden to the United States:--
“Ask the Northern man, and he will tell you that any state of
things is better than the present. Inquire of the Western people
why their crops are not equal to what they were in former years,
they will answer that industry has no stimulus left, since
their surplus products have no markets. Notwithstanding these
objections to the present restrictive system, we are bound to
retain it; this, and our plighted faith to the French government
have tied the Gordian knot. We cannot untie it. We can cut it
with the sword.”
Reasoning like this was dear to John Randolph, never so happy as
when he had such a slip to expose. In defiance of remonstrance, the
President and Congress had insisted upon imposing the non-importation,
on the ground that they had entered into a contract with France; and
no sooner had they done so, than, in order to free themselves from
their contract with France, they insisted upon war with England. On the
same reasoning their only means of rendering the contract void was by
annexing themselves to the empire of Napoleon.
Finally Grundy appealed to an argument wholly new:--
“This war, if carried on successfully, will have its advantages.
We shall drive the British from our continent.... I am willing
to receive the Canadians as adopted brethren. It will have
beneficial political effects; it will preserve the equilibrium
of the government. When Louisiana shall be fully peopled, the
Northern States will lose their power; they will be at the
discretion of others; they can be depressed at pleasure, and
then this Union might be endangered. I therefore feel anxious
not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to
the North of this empire.”
Grundy was the first of Southern statesmen to express publicly the
Southern belief that when Louisiana and Florida should be peopled,
the Northern States would lose their power and be at the discretion
of others, to be depressed at pleasure. Such was the theory of the
time, and the political history of the United States seemed to support
it; but the Republican party in 1798 would have looked on any of its
representatives as insane who had proposed to make war on England in
order to give more power to the Northern States.
To this speech John Randolph replied in his usual keen and desultory
style; but Randolph’s arguments had lost historical interest, for the
question was not so much whether war should be made, as upon what new
ground the United States should stand. The Federalists, conscious of
the change, held their peace. The Republicans, laboring to convince
not their opponents but themselves, argued day after day that cause
for war existed, as though they doubted their own assertion; but no
sooner did they reach delicate ground than they became confused. Many
of the speakers avoided argument, and resorted to declamation. The
best representative of this class was R. M. Johnson of Kentucky, who,
after five years of national submission to both European belligerents,
declared that a sixth year would prove fatal: “We must now oppose the
further encroachments of Great Britain by war, or formally annul the
Declaration of Independence.” On this doubtful foundation he imagined
visionary conquests. “I should not wish to extend the boundary of the
United States by war if Great Britain would leave us to the quiet
enjoyment of independence; but considering her deadly and implacable
enmity, and her continued hostilities, I shall never die contented
until I see her expulsion from North America, and her territories
incorporated with the United States.” Probably these appeals carried
weight with the Western people; but even earnest supporters of war
might doubt whether men of sense could be conciliated or persuaded by
such oratory, or by descriptions of Harrison’s troops at Tippecanoe,
“in the silent watches of the night, relieved from the fatigues of
valor, and slumbering under the perfidious promises of the savages, who
were infuriated and made drunk by British traders,” and so massacred
unawares.
Among the Republican speakers was J. C. Calhoun, who had lately taken
his seat as a member for South Carolina. Of all the new men, Calhoun
was the youngest. He had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday, and
his experience in life was slight even for his years; but his speech
of December 12 much excelled that of Grundy in merit, showing more
clearness of statement, and fairly meeting each successive point that
had been made by Randolph. Little could be added to what Calhoun said,
and no objection could be justly made against it, except that as an
expression of principles it had no place in the past history of the
Republican party.
“Sir,” exclaimed Calhoun, “I know of but one principle to make
a nation great, to produce in this country not the form but the
real spirit of union; and that is to protect every citizen in
the lawful pursuit of his business.... Protection and patriotism
are reciprocal. This is the road that all great nations have
trod.”
Of the tenets held by the Virginia school, none had been more often
or more earnestly taught than that the United States ought not to be
made a great nation by pursuing the road that all great nations had
trod. Had Calhoun held such language in 1798, he would have been
branded as a monocrat by Jefferson, and would not long have represented
a Republican district; but so great was the revolution in 1811 that
Calhoun, thinking little of his party and much of the nation, hardly
condescended to treat with decent respect the “calculating avarice”
which, though he alluded to its authors only in vague words, had been
the pride of his party.
“It is only fit for shops and counting-houses,” he said, “and
ought not to disgrace the seat of sovereignty by its squalid
and vile appearance. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the
nation is ruined. It is too shortsighted to defend itself.
It is an unpromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to
save the balance. It is too timid to have in itself the laws
of self-preservation. It is never safe but under the shield of
honor.”
Not without reason did Stanford of North Carolina retort that he very
well recollected to have heard precisely the same doctrines in a strain
of declamation at least equally handsome, upon the same subject, and
from the same State; but the time was in 1799, and the speaker was the
Federalist leader of the House,--Robert Goodloe Harper.
Troup of Georgia presently followed with a criticism that seemed more
sensible than any yet made. He was ready to vote, but he begged for
some discretion in debate. He threatened to call for the previous
question if idle verbiage and empty vociferations were to take the
place of energetic conduct. “Of what avail is argument, of what avail
is eloquence, to convince, to persuade--whom? Ourselves? The people?
Sir, if the people are to be reasoned into a war now, it is too soon,
much too soon, to begin it; if their representatives here are to be led
into it by the flowers of rhetoric, it is too soon, much too soon, to
begin it.” The House, he said, had chosen to debate in public a subject
which should have been discussed with closed doors, to announce that
its measures were intended as measures of offensive hostilities, that
its army was to attack Canada; and what was all this but a declaration
of war, contrary to all warlike custom,--a magnanimous notice to the
enemy when, where, and how the blow would fall? Troup protested against
this novel strategy, and pointed out the folly of attacking Canada if
England were given such liberal notice to reinforce it; but sensible
as the warning was, the debate, which was meant to affect public
opinion both in America and in England rather than to prepare for
hostilities, went on as before. Even Macon insisted on the wisdom of
talking, and pledged himself to support war in order to maintain “the
right to export our native produce;” while old William Findley, who
had sat in almost every Congress since 1790, voted for the Resolutions
on the unrepublican principle that the best means to prevent war was
to prepare for it. No concealment was affected of conquests to be made
in the Canadas. “Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign
Relations came into the House,” said Randolph on the last day of the
debate, “we have heard but one word,--like the whippoorwill, but one
monotonous tone,--Canada, Canada, Canada!”
Stanford of North Carolina made one of the peculiar speeches in which
he delighted, but which had ceased to irritate his party, even though
he went so far as to aver that the Federalists in 1798 had more cause
for war with France than existed in 1811 with England, and though he
declared the Sedition Law of 1798 to be no more direct an attack on
free discussion than was the “previous question” of 1810. He showed
little mercy to Grundy and Calhoun, and he proved to the delight of the
Federalists the inconsistency of his party; while Randolph, in another
speech, redoubled his bitter comments on the changes of political faith
which left no one but Stanford and himself true to the principles for
which they had taken office. They talked to deaf ears. The Republican
party no longer cared for principles. Under the beneficent pressure of
England, the theories of Virginia were, for the time, laid aside.
The Resolutions proposed by the Committee on Foreign Relations were
adopted, December 16, by what was in effect a unanimous vote. Only
twenty-two members recorded their names against the increase of the
regular army, and only fifteen voted against fitting out the navy.
A still stronger proof of political revolution was the vote of
ninety-seven to twenty-two in favor of the Resolution which authorized
merchant vessels to arm. This measure had the effect of a declaration
of war. In former years it had been always rejected as improper,
because it created a private war, taking from the Government and giving
to private citizens the control over war and peace; but December 19
the House adopted this last and decisive measure, and while many
Republicans would not vote at all, and even Lowndes and Macon voted
against it, Josiah Quincy, Timothy Pitkin, and most of the extreme
Federalists recorded their votes in its favor.
Meanwhile the Senate had acted. In the want of reports, no record
remains of what passed in debate before December 17; but the Journal
shows that William B. Giles was made chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, with Crawford and five other senators as his
associates; and that Giles reported December 9 a bill for raising, not
ten thousand regular troops, as the President recommended, but ten
regiments of infantry, two of artillery, and one of cavalry,--in all
twenty-five thousand men for five years, in addition to an existing
army nominally ten thousand strong. Each regiment was to number two
thousand men, and whether its ranks were filled or not, required a full
complement of officers. Rumor reported, and Giles admitted, that his
bill was not an Administration measure, but on the contrary annoyed
the Administration, which had asked for all the regular force it could
raise or organize within a year. The public, though unwilling to side
with Giles against the President, could not but admit that the conquest
of Canada by ten thousand men was uncertain, even with the assistance
of volunteers and militia, while the entire scheme of war would become
a subject of ridicule if Congress avowed the intention of vanquishing
all the forces of Great Britain with only ten thousand raw troops.
Perhaps a better economy would have covered the ocean with cruisers,
and have used the army only for defence; but although in any case the
military result would probably have been what it was, the party which
undertook to wage a great war by a government not at all equipped for
the purpose, without experience and with narrow resources, proved
wisdom in proportion as it showed caution. The President evidently
held this opinion. Senator Anderson of Tennessee, acting probably on
Executive advice, moved to amend the bill with a view of returning to
the original plan of ten or twelve thousand additional troops; and
on this motion, December 17, Giles made a speech that could not have
been more mischievous had he aimed only to destroy public trust in the
Government. He avowed the difference between himself and the Secretary
of War in regard to the number of troops needed, and he showed only too
easily that the force he proposed was not more than competent to the
objects of the Government; but not content with proving himself wiser
than the President and the Secretary of War, he went out of his way to
attack the Secretary of the Treasury with virulence that surprised the
Federalists themselves.
The decrepit state of the Treasury, said Giles, was the tenderest
part of the discussion; but instead of dealing tenderly with it, he
denounced Gallatin, whose financial reputation, he declared, was
made to his hand by others, and was founded less on facts than on
anticipation. “If reliance can be placed on his splendid financial
talents, only give them scope for action, apply them to the national
ability and will, let them perform the simple task of pointing out
the true _modus operandi_, and what reason have we to despair of
the republic? What reason have we to doubt of the abundance of the
Treasury supplies? Until now the honorable secretary has had no scope
for the demonstration of his splendid financial talents.” He went so
far as to assert that during the last three years all the measures
that had dishonored the nation were, in a great degree, attributable
to the unwillingness of Jefferson and Madison to disturb Gallatin’s
popularity and repose; that the repeal of the salt tax, the failure of
the embargo, the refusal to issue letters of marque, were all due to
Gallatin’s influence; and that it would have been infinitely better to
leave the national debt untouched, than to pay it by surrendering the
smallest attribute of national sovereignty.
Giles had long been in open opposition to the President, he had
intrigued with every other factious spirit to embarrass the Government,
and had scandalized his own State by the bitterness of his personal
hatreds; but he had not before shown himself ready to sacrifice the
nation to his animosities. Every one knew that had he expected to give
the Administration the splendid success of a military triumph, he would
never have thrust upon it an army competent to the purpose. Every
one believed that he hoped to ruin President Madison by the war that
was threatened, and wished to hasten the ruin before the next autumn
election. Those who had watched Giles closely knew how successfully he
had exerted himself to cripple the Treasury,--how he had guided the
attacks on its resources; had by his single vote destroyed Gallatin’s
only efficient instrument, the Bank; had again by his single vote
repealed the salt tax against Gallatin’s wishes; and how he had himself
introduced and supported that repeal of the embargo which broke the
influence of Gallatin and went far to ruin Madison’s Administration
before it was fairly in office. So notorious was his conduct that
Senator Anderson of Tennessee and his colleague G. W. Campbell, in
replying, went to the verge of the rules in charging Giles with motives
of the blackest kind. Campbell pointed out that Giles’s army would
frustrate its own objects; would be unable to act against Canada as
quickly as would be necessary, and would cause needless financial
difficulty. “I trust,” continued Campbell, “it is not the intention
of any one by raising so large a regular force, thereby incurring
so great an expenditure beyond what it is believed is necessary, to
drain your treasury, embarrass your fiscal concerns, and paralyze
the best concerted measures of government. If, however, such are the
objects intended, a more effectual mode to accomplish them could
not be adopted.” Giles’s speech offered an example, unparalleled in
American history, of what Campbell described as “the malignity of the
human mind;” but although his object was evident, only twelve senators
supported Madison, while twenty-one voted for Giles’s army. As though
to prove the true motive of the decision, every Federalist senator
voted with Giles, and their votes gave him a majority.
Giles’s bill passed the Senate December 19, and was referred at
once to the House Committee on Foreign Relations, which amended it
by cutting down the number of troops from twenty-five thousand to
fifteen thousand men; but when this amendment was proposed to the
House, it met, in the words of Peter B. Porter, with a gust of zeal
and passion. Henry Clay and the ardent war democrats combined with
the Federalists to force the larger army on the President, although
more than one sound Democrat invoked past experience and ordinary
common-sense to prove that twenty-five thousand men--or even half that
number--could not be found in the United States willing to enlist in
the regular army and submit for five years to the arbitrary will of
officers whom they did not know and with whom they had nothing in
common. The House voted to raise Giles’s army, but still took the
precaution of requiring that the officers of six regiments only should
be commissioned, until three fourths of the privates for these six
regiments should have been enlisted. Another amendment was proposed
giving the President discretion to raise only these six regiments, if
he thought circumstances rendered the larger force unnecessary; but
Grundy defeated this effort of caution by the argument that too much
power had formerly been given to the Executive, and therefore Congress
must insist on leaving him no discretion, but obliging him to take
twice the army and double the patronage he had asked or could use. More
than twenty Federalists supported Grundy, and gave him a majority of
sixty-six to fifty-seven. Calhoun came to Grundy’s assistance with a
more reasonable argument. Delay was becoming dangerous; the New Year
had arrived; the public began to doubt whether Congress meant to act;
he would vote to prevent delay.
At length, January 6, the bill passed the House by a vote of
ninety-four to thirty-four. Six or eight Federalists, including
Josiah Quincy, voted with the majority; six or eight Republicans,
including Macon, Randolph, and Stanford, voted with the minority. The
bill returned to the Senate, where the amendments were immediately
and almost unanimously struck out. The House, in no kind temper,
was obliged to discuss the subject once more. Even the most zealous
advocates of war were staggered at the thought that all the officers of
thirteen new regiments in the regular army must be at once appointed,
when no one felt confident that the ranks of these regiments could ever
be filled. The support given by the Federalists to every extravagant
measure increased the uneasiness of Republicans; and John Randolph’s
ridicule, founded as it was on truth, did not tend to calm it.
“After you have raised these twenty-five thousand men,” said
Randolph, “if I may reason on an impossibility,--for it has, I
think, been demonstrated that these men cannot be raised, it
will be an army on paper only,--shall we form a Committee of
Public Safety, or shall we depute the power to the Speaker--I
should not wish it in safer hands--to carry on the war? Shall
we declare that the Executive, not being capable of discerning
the public interest, or not having spirit to pursue it, we have
appointed a committee to take the President and Cabinet into
custody?... You have an agent to execute certain business; he
asks from you a certain amount for effecting the business on
hand; you give him double,--you force it upon him, you compel
him to waste it!”
Again the Federalists decided the result. Half of the Federalist
members voted with the extreme war Republicans. The House, by
sixty-seven votes to sixty, abandoned its amendments; the bill passed,
as Giles had framed it, and January 11 received the President’s
signature.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Army Bill was understood to decide not so much the war as the
change in domestic politics. That the party of Jefferson, Madison,
Gallatin, and Monroe should establish a standing army of thirty-five
thousand troops in time of peace, when no foreign nation threatened
attack, and should do this avowedly for purposes of conquest, passed
the bounds of inconsistency and proclaimed a revolution. This radical
change was no longer disguised. Clay, Calhoun, Grundy, Lowndes, and
Cheves made only a bare pretence of respecting the traditions of their
party; while Giles, with a quality peculiar to himself, excused his
assaults on Madison by doing public penance for his ancient errors in
maligning Washington. “Further information and reflection,” he said,
“and practical experience of more than twenty years, have completely
convinced me of the superiority of the talent of this great man as
a statesman as well as a soldier, and have also admonished me of my
former errors.” If in America any politician could be found to whose
public character such an admission was fatal, Giles might be regarded
as the person; but conduct that ruined Giles’s character only raised
the reputations of Clay, Lowndes, and Calhoun. These younger men
were not responsible for what had been said and done ten or fifteen
years before; they had been concerned in no conspiracy to nullify
the laws, or to offer armed resistance to the government; they had
never rested their characters as statesmen on the chance of success
in governing without armaments, and in coercing Napoleon and Pitt by
peaceable means; they had no past to defend or excuse, and as yet no
philosophical theories to preach,--but they were obliged to remove from
their path the system their party had established, and they worked
at this task with more energy and with much more success than they
showed in conducting foreign war. Even a return to Washington’s system
would not answer their purpose, for they were obliged to restore the
extreme practices of 1798, and to re-enact the laws which had then been
denounced and discarded as the essence of monarchy.
Bitterly as all good Republicans regretted to create a standing army,
that vote was easy compared with other votes it made necessary.
Doubtless an army was an evil, but the effects of the evil were
likely to appear chiefly in the form of taxes; and the stanchest war
Republicans flinched at taxation. The British minister, who saw so much
of these difficulties that he could not believe in the possibility
of war, reported to his Government a story which showed how uneasily
the Administration balanced itself between the two bodies of its
supporters. In December, during the debate on the Army Bill, the
Committee of Ways and Means was repeatedly urged to produce a scheme of
war-finance, but failed to do so. Foster reported, on what he called
good authority, that when the chairman of that committee went to
Gallatin for information to meet questions in the House, the secretary
declined giving estimates until the Army Bill should be disposed of;
and he explained that if he submitted a plan of taxes, the Government
would be charged with wanting to damp the ardor of Congress.[129] Every
one knew that the ardor of Congress feared nothing so much as damping;
but every one who knew Gallatin was persuaded that as long as he
remained Secretary of the Treasury, taxes must proportionally increase
with debt.
Foster’s story was probably true; for although Ezekiel Bacon, chairman
of the Ways and Means Committee, wrote as early as Dec. 9, 1811, to the
secretary for advice, the secretary delayed his answer until January
10, the day when Congress agreed to pass the Army Bill. The letter
was read to the House January 20, and proved, as had been foreseen,
a serious discouragement to the war spirit. Yet Gallatin made an
under-estimate of financial difficulties; for while he assumed the
fixed charges at $9,600,000, and estimated the receipts from customs
under the existing duties at only $2,500,000 during war, he assumed
also the committee’s estimate of $10,000,000 as the annual loan that
would be required to meet the expense of war. In order to pay the
fixed charges of government, the customs revenue must be raised to
$6,000,000; and for this purpose he asked Congress not only to double
the existing duties, but also to reimpose the old duty on salt. To meet
the remaining charge of $3,600,000 and the accruing interest on new
loans, he asked for internal taxes to the amount of $5,000,000.
Unfortunately Gallatin had carelessly said, in his annual report of
November, that a revenue of nine millions would, with the aid of loans,
answer the purposes of war; while his letter of January 10 required, as
was proper, that the interest of each new loan should be added annually
to the nine millions. The difference amounted to $600,000 for the first
year alone, and in each successive year increased taxation by at least
an equal sum. Gallatin himself was in a defiant mood, as he well might
be, since he saw Congress in a position where it must either submit
or take the responsibility of bankrupting the Treasury; and he did
not content himself with demanding unpopular taxes, but read Congress
a lecture on its own conduct that had made these taxes necessary. He
recalled his promise of 1808 that “no internal taxes, either direct or
indirect, were contemplated even in the case of hostilities carried on
against the two great belligerent powers;” and he showed that since
1808 Congress had thrown away his actual or expected balance of twenty
millions, had refused to accept twenty millions that might have been
obtained from the Bank, and had thus made internal taxes necessary,
while making loans more difficult to obtain even on harder terms.
The sting of this reproof came at the end of the secretary’s letter,
where he named the objects of internal taxation. These were spirits,
refined sugar, licenses to retailers, auctions, stamps, and carriages
for conveyance of persons. Here was the whole armory of Federalism,
that had once already roused rebellion, and after causing the
grievances which brought the Republicans into power, appeared again
threatening to ruin them as it had ruined their predecessors. Standing
army of thirty-five thousand men, loans, protective duties, stamps,
tax on distillation,--nothing but a Sedition Law was wanting; and the
previous question, as a means of suppressing discussion, was not an
unfair equivalent for the Sedition Law.
Gallatin’s letter caused no little excitement in the House. Congress
recoiled, and for more than a month left the subject untouched.
The chance that England might still give way, or that something
might at the last prevent actual war, made every member anxious
to avoid committing himself on matters of taxation. The number of
representatives who favored war was supposed not to exceed forty or
fifty in a House of one hundred and forty-one,--as many more would
vote for war only in case they must; but the war men and the peace
men united in private to fall upon Gallatin,--the first, because he
had chilled the national spirit by saying that taxes must be laid;
the last, because he had not said it earlier, and had not chilled the
national spirit once for all.
Laying aside the question of taxes, Congress took up two other subjects
of pressing importance. Every one doubted the possibility of raising
a regular army, and those persons who knew best the character of the
people were convinced that the war must be waged by militia on land,
and by privateers on the ocean.
The House began with the militia. December 26 Porter brought in a
bill authorizing the President “to accept of any company or companies
of volunteers, either of artillery, cavalry, or infantry, who may
associate and offer themselves for the service, not exceeding fifty
thousand,” officered according to the law of the State to which the
companies belonged, and liable to service for one year, with the pay
of regular troops. Evidently these volunteers were State militia, and
were subject to be used only for purposes defined in the Constitution.
In 1798 the attempt to raise such a corps had been denounced as
unconstitutional, a device to separate a part of the State militia
in order to put it under the President’s power in a manner expressly
forbidden by the Constitution and peculiarly dangerous to the public
liberties; and although the device of 1798 was made more evident, as
its efficiency was made more certain, by the provision that these corps
should be officered by the President, the device of 1812 was not
less offensive to men who held that Congress had no power to call out
the State militia except “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress
insurrections, and repel invasions,” of course only within the limits
of the United States. The chief service desired from these volunteer
corps was the conquest of Canada and the occupation of Florida; but
every principle of the Republican party would be outraged by placing
the militia at the President’s orders, to serve on foreign soil.
Porter, who wanted express legislation to overcome this difficulty,
stated his dilemma to the House; and the debate began quietly on the
assumption that these volunteers were not to serve in Canada or Florida
without their own consent, when, January 11, Langdon Cheves, with much
seriousness and even solemnity of manner and language, informed the
House that the Republican party had hitherto taken a wrong view of the
subject. The distinguished South Carolinian affirmed doctrines that had
never before been heard from Republican lips:--
“The power of declaring and making war is a great sovereign
power, whose limits and extent have long been understood and
well established. It has its attributes and incidental powers,
which are in the same degree less equivocal than those of other
powers as it excels those powers in its importance. Do you ask
then for the right of Congress to employ the militia in war?
It is found among the attributes of the sovereign power which
Congress has to make war. Do you ask for the limits to which
this employment may extend? They are coextensive with the
objects of the war.”
The President himself, added Cheves, was understood to hold this
opinion, and ought to be left to act under the high responsibility
attached to his office. Anxious as the party was to support the
President, Cheves’s speech met with protest after protest, until
Henry Clay came to his support and adopted his argument. On the other
hand, the Federalists, although consistency required them to take
the same view, and even war Republicans, like Porter and Grundy,
rejected the idea of an unlimited war power, and declared that the
volunteers must be retained within the national boundaries. The point
was left unsettled; January 17 the House passed the bill by a vote of
eighty-seven to twenty-three, leaving the decision in the President’s
hands, or, what was worst of all, in the hands of the volunteers. In
the Senate, Giles made an interesting speech against the bill, avoiding
the constitutional question, but arguing that the volunteer force
would prove inefficient, and that a regular army could alone serve the
purposes of war. He had no difficulty in proving the correctness of
his view and the fatal folly of short enlistments; but he could not
explain how the ranks of the regular army were to be filled, and his
objections took no practical form. The bill passed without a division,
and February 6 was approved by the President.
In this matter Congress, without absolutely rejecting Cheves’s
doctrine, evaded a decision; but another subject remained which was
not so gently treated. From the first, the Republican party had opposed
a navy. The United States owned five or six frigates, but not one
ship-of-the-line; New York or Philadelphia might be blockaded, perhaps
ransomed, at any time by a single seventy-four with a frigate or two in
company. To seafaring men, the idea of fighting England without ships
seemed absurd, but the Republican party was pledged by every line of
its history not to create a navy. The dilemma was singular. Either the
Republican party must recant its deepest convictions, or the war must
be fought without ships except privateers, and England must be left
with no anxiety but the defence of Canada.
Once more Langdon Cheves took the lead. January 17, after the House
voted on the Volunteer Bill, Cheves as chairman of the Naval Committee
asked an appropriation to build twelve seventy-fours and twenty
frigates at a cost of seven and a half million dollars.
“I know,” he began, “how many and how strong are the prejudices,
how numerous and how deeply laid are the errors which I have
to encounter in the discussion of this question,--errors and
prejudices the more formidable as they come recommended by the
virtues and shielded by the estimable motives of those who
indulge them. I have been told that this subject is unpopular,
and it has been not indistinctly hinted that those who become
the zealous advocates of the bill will not advance by their
exertions the personal estimation in which they may be held by
their political associates.”
In few words Cheves avowed that while he preferred to act with the
Republican party, he was in truth independent, and he warned his
friends that on the subject of a navy they must in the end either
conquer their prejudices or quit office.
After this preamble, Cheves struck once more at the foundations of his
party. His argument, as a matter of expediency, was convincing; for
every American ship-of-war, even when blockaded in port, would oblige
the British to employ three ships of equal or greater size to relieve
each other in blockading and watching it. The blockading service of
the American station was peculiarly severe. England had no port nearer
than Halifax for equipments or repairs; in general all her equipments
must be made in Europe, and for only three months’ service; in winter
she must for months at a time abandon the blockade, and leave the coast
free. No method could be devised by which, with so small risk and so
little waste of money and life, the resources of England could be so
rapidly drained as by the construction of heavy war-vessels. Once at
sea, an American seventy-four had nothing to fear except a squadron;
and even when dismantled in port, she required the attention of a
hostile fleet.
The House had submitted with slowly rising ill-temper to each
successive demand of the war it would have preferred to avoid; but this
last requirement threw it into open revolt. Cheves found himself for
a time almost alone. Even Richard M. Johnson, always ardent for war,
became mournful with prophecies of the evils that Cheves was about to
bring upon the country. “I will refer to Tyre and Sidon, Crete and
Rhodes, to Athens and to Carthage.” Plunder, piracy, perpetual war,
followed the creation of every navy known to history. Armies might
be temporary, but navies were permanent, and even more dangerous
to freedom. “Navies have been and always will be engines of power,
employed in projects of ambition and war.”
These were the old and respected Republican doctrines, still dear to a
large majority of the party. William Lowndes came to the support of his
colleague, and ridiculed Johnson’s lessons from ancient history; Henry
Clay protested against the unreasonable prejudice which refused naval
assistance, and which left New York and the commerce of the Mississippi
at the mercy of single British ships; but when the committee of the
whole House came to a vote, Cheves found a majority opposed to him on
every motion for the building additional ships of any sort whatever.
The House continued the debate for several days, but ended, January
27, by refusing to build frigates. The division was close. Fifty-nine
members voted for the frigates; sixty-two voted against them. While
Cheves, Lowndes, Calhoun, Troup, Porter, and the Federalists voted for
the ships, Ezekiel Bacon, Grundy, R. M. Johnson, D. R. Williams, and
the friends of the Administration in general voted against them.
By the middle of February, Congress reached a point of disorganization
that threatened disaster. The most ardent urged immediate war, while
not a practical step had yet been taken toward fighting. Such was the
chaos that Peter B. Porter, who had himself reported the Army and
Volunteer bills, asked for a committee to raise another provisional
army of twenty thousand men, for the reason that the two armies
already provided were useless,--the regular force, because it could
not be put into the field within the year; the volunteers, because
they could not lawfully be used for offensive war. “What force have
we given the President?” asked Porter. “We have made a parade in
passing laws to raise twenty-five thousand regular troops, and fifty
thousand volunteers; but in truth and in fact we have not given him a
single man.” The House refused to follow Porter’s advice; but as usual
the war Republicans were obliged to coalesce with the Federalists
in order to maintain themselves against these Executive reproaches.
What Porter said was mainly true. With the exception of the peace
establishment consisting of nominally ten thousand men, and the vessels
of war actually afloat, the President had not yet been given means of
defending the coasts and frontiers from hostile forces which, in the
case of the northwestern Indians, were already actually attacking them.
In the midst of this general discouragement, February 17, Ezekiel Bacon
brought in fourteen Resolutions embodying a scheme for raising money.
Gallatin’s measures were expected to be harsh, but those proposed
by Bacon seemed more severe than had been expected. The customs
duties were to be doubled; twenty cents a bushel were laid on salt,
fifty cents a gallon on the capacity of stills; licenses and stamps
in proportion; and a direct tax of three million dollars was to be
apportioned among the States. A loan bill for eleven millions at six
per cent was easily passed, but all the force of the war feeling could
not overcome the antipathy to taxation. The Resolution for doubling
the customs duties met little resistance; but February 28 the House
refused, by sixty to fifty-seven, to impose a duty on imported salt,
and for the moment this vote threatened to ruin the whole scheme. The
House adjourned for reflection; and on the following Monday a member
from Virginia moved to reconsider the vote. “It now seems,” he said,
“that if the article of salt is excluded, the whole system of taxation
will be endangered. We are told in conversation, since the vote on the
salt tax, that the system which has been presented by the Committee of
Ways and Means is a system of compromise and concession, and that it
must be taken altogether, the bad with the good; that if we pay the
salt tax, the eastern and the western country will suffer peculiarly by
an increase of the impost, and by the land tax.” In short, he thought
it better to take the whole draught even if it were hemlock.
This view of the case did not find easy acceptance. Nelson of Virginia
exhorted the majority not under any circumstances to accept the
impost on salt; and Wright of Maryland, a man best known for his
extravagances, took the occasion to express against Gallatin the anger
which the friends of the Smiths, Giles, and Duane had stored. Gallatin,
he said, was trying to fix the odium of these taxes on Congress in
order to disgust the people and chill the war spirit; he was treading
in the muddy footsteps of his official predecessors, in attempting to
strap around the necks of the people this odious system of taxation,
for which the Federalists had been condemned and dismissed from power.
The salt tax would destroy the present as it had destroyed the old
Administration; the true course was to lay taxes directly on property.
Probably most of the Republican members sympathized in private with the
feelings of Wright, but Gallatin had at last gained the advantage of
position; the House voted to reconsider, and by a majority of sixty-six
to fifty-four accepted the duty of twenty cents on imported salt.
The salt duty distressed the South, and in revenge many Southerners
wished to impose a tax of twenty-five cents a gallon on whiskey, which
would be felt chiefly in the West; but this was no part of the Treasury
scheme. Grundy and R. M. Johnson succeeded in defeating the motion; and
after deciding this contest, the House found no difficulty in adopting
all the other Resolutions. March 4 the committee was instructed to
report by bill; Bacon sent the Resolutions to the Treasury, and the
secretary waited for events. Every one admitted that while war was
still uncertain, the financial policy undecided, and a Presidential
election approaching, only the prospect of immediate bankruptcy would
outweigh the dangers of oppressive taxation.
Four months of continuous session had passed, and spring was opening,
when the Legislature reached this point. The result of the winter’s
labor showed that the young vigor of this remarkable Congress had
succeeded only in a small part of the work required to give Jefferson’s
peaceful system a military shape. Although the nominal regular army had
been raised from ten thousand to thirty-five thousand men, the Act of
Congress which ordered these men to be enlisted could not show where
they were to be found; and meanwhile the sudden strain broke down the
War Department. Rumor pointed at Secretary Eustis as incompetent, and
the chances were great that any secretary, though sufficiently good
for peace, would prove unequal to the task of creating an army without
men or material to draw from. Whether the secretary was competent
or not, his situation exposed him to ridicule. He had hitherto
discharged the duties of Secretary of War, of Quartermaster-General,
Commissary-General, Indian Commissioner, Commissioner of Pensions,
and Commissioner of Public Lands; and although Congress promised to
create a quartermaster’s department, and had the bill already in hand,
the task of organizing this department, as well as all the other new
machinery of war, fell on the secretary and eight clerks, not one of
whom had been twelve months in office. Any respectable counting-house
would have allowed some distribution of authority and power of
expansion; but the secretary could neither admit a partner nor had he
the right to employ assistance. Adapted by Jefferson, in 1801, to a
peace establishment of three or four regiments, the Department required
reorganization throughout, or Congress would be likely to find the
operations of war brought to a quick end.
Had Congress undertaken to wage war on the ocean, the same difficulty
would have been felt in the navy; but this danger was evaded by the
refusal to attempt naval operations. At all times the Republicans had
avowed their willingness to part with the five frigates, and these
were perhaps to be sent to sea with no great hope in the majority for
their success; but the Navy Department was required to make no other
exertion. Secretary Hamilton, like Secretary Eustis, was supposed to be
unequal to his post; but his immediate burden amounted only to fitting
out three frigates in addition to those in actual service, and the
expenditure of two hundred thousand dollars annually for three years
toward the purchase of ship-timber.
To meet the expenses thus incurred for military purposes, in the
absence of taxes which, if imposed, could not be made immediately
productive, Congress authorized a loan of eleven million dollars at six
per cent, redeemable in twelve years.
An army of thirty-five thousand regulars which could not be raised
within a year, if at all, and of fifty thousand volunteers who were
at liberty to refuse service beyond the frontier, promised no rapid
or extensive conquests. A navy of half-a-dozen frigates and a few
smaller craft could not be expected to keep the ports open, much
less to carry the war across the ocean. Privateers must be the chief
means of annoyance, not so much to British pride or power as to
British commerce, and this kind of warfare was popular because it
cost the government nothing; but even the privateers were at a great
disadvantage if the ports were to be closed to their prizes by hostile
squadrons. Such means of offence were so evidently insufficient that
many sensible persons could not believe in the threatened war; but
these were only the most conspicuous weaknesses. Armies required
equipment, and the United States depended on Europe, chiefly on
England, for their most necessary supplies. The soldier in Canada
was likely to need blankets; but no blankets were to be had, and
the Non-importation Act prevented them from coming into the market,
whatever price might be offered.
Not only was the machinery of government unsuited to energetic use,
but the Government itself was not in earnest. Hardly one third
of the members of Congress believed war to be their best policy.
Almost another third were Federalists, who wished to overthrow the
Administration; the rest were honest and perhaps shrewd men, brought
up in the school of Virginia and Pennsylvania politics, who saw more
clearly the evils that war must bring than the good it might cause,
and who dreaded the reaction upon their constituents. They could not
understand the need of carrying into every detail a revolution in their
favorite system of government. Clay and Calhoun, Cheves and Lowndes
asked them to do in a single session what required half a century or
more of time and experience,--to create a new government, and invest it
with the attributes of old-world sovereignty under pretext of the war
power. The older Republicans had no liking for such statesmanship, and
would gladly have set the young Southerners in their right place.
By force of will and intellect the group of war members held their own,
and dragged Congress forward in spite of itself; but the movement was
slow and the waste of energy exhausting. Perhaps they failed to carry
their points more often than they succeeded. Energetic as their efforts
were, after four months of struggle they had settled nothing, and found
themselves in March no further advanced than in November. War should
already have been declared; but Congress was still trying to avoid it.
Federalists had much to do with causing the confusion of Republicans.
Their conduct could seldom be explained on rational grounds, but
in January, 1812, they seemed to lose reason. Their behavior,
contradicting their own principles, embarrassed their friends still
more than it confused their enemies. The British minister wrote to his
Government constant complaints of the dangerous course his Federalist
allies were pursuing.
“The Federal leaders,” Foster wrote Dec. 11, 1811,[130] “make
no scruple of telling me that they mean to give their votes
for war, although they will remain silent in the debates; they
add that it will be a short war of six or nine months. To my
observations on the strange and dangerous nature of such a
policy, they shrug their shoulders, telling me that they see no
end to restrictions and non-importation laws but in war; that
war will turn out the Administration, and then they will have
their own way, and make a solid peace with Great Britain.”
To this policy Federalist leaders adhered. As the weeks passed,
Foster’s situation grew more difficult. Disgusted equally by the
obstinacy of his Government and by the vacillations of Congress, he
found his worst annoyances in the intrigues of his friends. Toward the
close of the year he wrote:[131]--
“The situation that I find myself thus unexpectedly placed in
is, I must confess, exceedingly embarrassing. I am aware that
H. R. H. the Prince Regent wishes to avoid a rupture with this
country, and yet I see that the efforts of a party, hitherto
the most adverse to a war with Great Britain, are united with
those of another, which till now has been supposed the most
considerable in point of numbers, for the purpose of bringing it
on; while Government, although wishing for delay, are yet so
weak and little to be depended on that it is to be feared if the
two Houses were to decide on hostilities, they would not have
resolution enough to oppose the measure.”
January 16, 1812, he wrote again.[132] Somewhat encouraged by the
evident difficulties of the war party in Congress, he was then disposed
to look less severely at Federalist tactics:--
“The opposition know the embarrassment of the President, and
endeavor to take advantage of it by pushing for measures so
decisive as to leave him no retreat. It has been told me in
confidence more than once by different leaders, that if the
Orders in Council are not revoked he must eventually be ruined
in the opinion of the nation. Some individuals have even gone
so far as to reproach us for not concerting measures with them
for that purpose, observing that the French have managed this
country by concert with a party; and that unless Great Britain
do the same, the French party will always be predominant. I
should mention to your Lordship that the Federalists are by no
means united. From twelve to sixteen vote for peace measures,
while eight only, though of the leaders, vote the contrary way.”
February 1, a fortnight after this letter was written, two Federalist
leaders, whose names Foster wisely suppressed, called on the British
minister to give him their advice as to the best course his Government
could take “in order to produce a thorough amalgamation of interests
between America and Great Britain.” Their conversation, which seems
to have been in no way invited by Foster, was reported by him to Lord
Wellesley without comment of any kind.[133] Had the two Federalists
foreseen the scandal to be caused, six weeks later, by the publication
of John Henry’s papers, they would hardly have dared approach the
British minister at all; and they would at least have been reminded
that such advice as they gave him was not only forbidden by law, but
bordered closely upon treason.
“The sum of these suggestions was that we should neither
revoke our Orders in Council nor modify them in any manner.
They said this Government would, if we conceded, look upon our
concessions as being the effect of their own measures, and
plume themselves thereon; that they only wanted to get out of
their present difficulties, and if we made a partial concession
they would make use of it to escape fulfilling their pledge to
go to war, still however continuing the restrictory system;
whereas if we pushed them to the edge of the precipice by an
unbending attitude, that then they must be lost, either by
the disgrace of having nearly ruined the trade of the United
States and yet failed to reduce Great Britain by their system of
commercial restrictions, or else by their incapacity to conduct
the government during war. These gentlemen declared they were
for war rather than for the continuance of the restrictory
system, even if the war should last four years. They thought no
expense too great which would lead to the termination of the
irritating, fretful feelings which had so long existed between
the two countries. They animadverted on the peevish nature of
the answers given in the affairs of the ‘Chesapeake’ and to my
note on the Indians, and whenever any spirit of conciliation was
shown by Great Britain, and told me it would ever be so until
the people felt the weight of taxes; that nothing would bring
them to a right sense of their interests but touching their
purses; and that if we did go to war for a time, we should be
better friends afterward. In short, they seemed to think that
Great Britain could by management bring the United States into
any connection with her that she pleased.”
The President, as his office required, stood midway between the masses
of his followers, but never failed to approve the acts and meet the
wishes of the war members. Early in March, at a moment when they were
greatly embarrassed, he came to their aid by a manœuvre which excited
much feeling on all sides, but especially among the Federalists engaged
in abetting the war policy. He seemed to have fallen on the track of
a conspiracy such as had overthrown the liberties and independence
of classic republics, and which left no alternative but war or
self-destruction; but the true story proved more modern, if not less
amusing, than the conspiracies of Greece and Rome.
CHAPTER IX.
JOHN HENRY, whose reports from Boston to Sir James Craig at Quebec
had been received with favor in 1808 and 1809 both in Canada and
in London, not satisfied with such reward as he received from the
governor-general, went to England and applied, as was said, for not
less than thirty-two thousand pounds, or one hundred and sixty thousand
dollars, as the price he thought suitable for his services and his
silence.[134] Whatever was the sum he demanded, he failed to obtain it,
and left England in ill humor on his return to Canada, carrying his
papers with him and an official recommendation to the governor-general.
On the same ship was a Frenchman who bore the title of Count Edward de
Crillon. His connections, he said, embraced the noblest and highest
families of France; among his ancestors was the “brave Crillon,” who
for centuries had been known to every French child as the Bayard
of his time. The Count Edward’s father was the Duc de Crillon; by
marriage he was closely connected with Bessières, the Maréchal Duc
d’Istrie, Napoleon’s favorite. Count Edward de Crillon had fallen
into disfavor with the Emperor, and for that reason had for a time
quitted France, while waiting a restoration to the army. His manners
were easy and noble; he wore the decoration of the Legion of Honor,
received and showed letters from his family and from the Duc d’Istrie,
and talked much of his personal affairs, especially of his estate
called St. Martial, “in Lebeur near the Spanish border,” and, he took
pride in saying, near also to the Château de Crillon, the home of his
ancestors. He had met John Henry in London society. When he appeared
on the Boston packet, a friendship arose between these two men so
hardly treated by fortune. Henry confided his troubles to the count,
and Crillon gave himself much concern in the affair, urging Henry to
have no more to do with an ungrateful government, but to obtain from
the United States the money that England refused. The count offered to
act as negotiator, and use his influence with Serurier, his minister,
to approach the Secretary of State. The count even offered to provide
for Henry’s subsequent welfare by conveying to him the valuable estate
at St. Martial in consideration of the money to be obtained for Henry’s
documents. At St. Martial, under the protection of the Crillons, John
Henry would at last find, together with every charm of climate and
scenery, the case of life and the social refinement so dear to him.
Henry entered into a partnership with the Frenchman, and on their
arrival at Boston Crillon wrote to Serurier, introducing himself,
and narrating the situation of Henry, whose papers, he said, were in
his own control.[135] Serurier made no reply; but Crillon came alone
to Washington, where he called on the minister, who after hearing
his story sent him to Monroe, to whom he offered Henry’s papers for
a consideration of $125,000. Serurier liked Crillon, and after some
months of acquaintance liked him still more:--
“His conduct and language during six weeks’ residence here have
been constantly sustained; the attention shown him by this
Government, the repentance he displayed for having incurred
the displeasure of his sovereign, the constant enthusiasm with
which he spoke of the Emperor, the name he bore, the letters he
showed from his sister and from the Maréchal Duc d’Istrie, the
decoration of the Legion he carried, and finally the persecution
he suffered from the British minister and the party hostile to
France,--all this could not but win my regard for him.”[136]
Yet Crillon did not owe to Serurier his introduction into society, or
his success in winning the confidence of Madison and Monroe. Indeed,
the French minister could not openly recommend a man who admitted
himself to be banished from France by the Emperor’s displeasure. On the
contrary, the favor that Crillon rapidly won at the White House served
rather to establish his credit with his legation. The President and
Cabinet ministers were civil to the count, who became a frequent guest
at the President’s table; and the services he promised to Serurier’s
great object were so considerable as to make the French minister glad
to assist him. No French comedy was suited with a happier situation or
with more skilful actors. During several weeks in January and February,
1812, Count Edward de Crillon was the centre of social interest or
hostility at the White House, the State Department, and the French and
the British Legations.
The negotiation through Serurier was successful. Henry was secretly
summoned to Washington, and consented to desist from his demand for
$125,000. Secretary Monroe agreed to give him $50,000, and to promise
that the papers should not be made public until Henry himself was
actually at sea, while Crillon received the money, delivering to Henry
the title-deeds to the estate of St. Martial. The money was paid,
February 10, out of the contingent fund for foreign intercourse. Henry
left Washington the next day to sail from New York for France in a
national ship-of-war, but the Count Edward de Crillon remained. March 2
Serurier reported,[137]--
“The Administration has decided to publish Henry’s documents.
The order has been sent to New York that in case the ship which
was to give him passage has not arrived, he is to be embarked
on a merchant-vessel; and then all the papers are to be sent
to Congress by special message. Much is expected from this
exposition. The conduct of M. Crillon since his arrival here
has never ceased to be consistent and thoroughly French. It
has drawn on him the hatred of the British minister and of
all the British party; but he bears up against it with the
noblest firmness, and sometimes even with an intrepidity that
I am obliged to restrain. He keeps me informed of everything
that he thinks of service to the Emperor; and his loyalty of
conduct attaches the members of the Administration to him. I
have personally every motive to be satisfied with him, and I
hope that the service he has just rendered, the sentiments he
professes on all occasions, his so enthusiastic admiration for
the Emperor, his devotion, his love of his country and his
family, will create for him a title to the indulgence of his
sovereign and the return of his favor. He will wait for them
here, and I pray your Excellency to invoke them on my part.”
The President waited only for the news that Henry had sailed, before
sending to Congress the evidence of British intrigues and of Federalist
treason; but as soon as this news arrived, Saturday, March 7, Monroe
sent for Serurier:[138]--
“The Secretary of State asked me to come to his office to inform
me of the determination. He asked me if I did not agree with him
that it was better not to mention me in the Message, as such
mention might injure its effect by giving it a French color.
I told Mr. Monroe that I should leave the President entirely
free to follow the course he thought best in the matter. He
might say that the documents had come into my possession, and
that I had at once sent them to him as interesting the Republic
exclusively; or he might restrict himself to the communication
of the papers without detail as to the route they had followed.
That I had taken no credit, as he could remember, in regard
to the service I had been so fortunate as to render the
Administration; and that I had on my own account no need of
newspaper notoriety or of public gratitude.”
Monday, March 9, the President sent Henry’s papers to Congress, with
a message which said nothing as to the manner of acquiring them, but
charged the British government with employing a secret agent “in
fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the nation,
and in intrigues with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about
resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British
force, of destroying the Union and forming the eastern part thereof
into a political connection with Great Britain.” Serurier reported that
the Administration had great hopes through this discovery of deciding
the result, inflaming the nation, and throwing it enthusiastically into
the war:--
“The American people recalls to me the son of Ulysses on the
rock of Calypso’s isle; uncertain, irresolute, he knows not to
which of his passions to yield, when Minerva, flinging him into
the sea, fixes his fate, leaving him no other choice than to
overcome by his courage and strength the terrible elements she
gives him for an enemy.”
When John Henry’s letters were read in Congress, March 9, 1812, the
Federalists for a moment felt real alarm, for they knew not what Henry
might have reported; but a few minutes of examination showed them that,
as far as they were concerned, Henry had taken care to report nothing
of consequence. That he came to Boston as a British agent was hitherto
unknown to the Federalists themselves, and the papers showed that he
never revealed his secret character to them. His letters were hardly
more compromising than letters, essays, and leading articles, sermons,
orations, and addresses that had been printed again and again in every
Federalist paper in Boston and New York. Here and there they contained
rows of mysterious asterisks, but no other sign of acquaintance with
facts worth concealing. The Federalists naturally suspected, what
is evident on comparison of the papers bought by Madison with the
originals in the Record Office at London, that Henry intended to
sell as little as possible at the highest price he could exact. His
revelations told nothing of his first visit to Boston in 1808, nor
was one of the letters published which had been written in that year,
although his documents incidentally alluded to information then sent;
but what was more singular and fatal to his credit, the letters which
he sold as his own were not copies but paraphrases of the originals;
the mysterious asterisks were introduced merely to excite curiosity;
and except the original instructions of Sir James Craig and the
recent letter from Lord Liverpool’s secretary, showing that in view of
an expected war Henry had been employed as a secret agent to obtain
political information by the governor-general, and that his reports had
been sent to the Colonial Office, nothing in these papers compromised
any one except Henry himself. As for the British government, since war
was to be waged with it in any case for other reasons, these papers
distracted attention from the true issue.
After a night’s reflection the Federalists returned to the Capitol
convinced that the President had done a foolish act in throwing away
fifty thousand dollars for papers that proved the Federalist party to
be ignorant of British intrigues that never existed. Fifty thousand
dollars was a large sum; and having been spent without authority from
Congress, it seemed to the Federalists chiefly their own money which
had been unlawfully used by Madison for the purpose of publishing a
spiteful libel on themselves. With every sign of passion they took
up the President’s personal challenge. A committee of investigation
was ordered by the House, and found that Henry, with the Government’s
privity, had already sailed for Europe. Nothing remained but to examine
Crillon, who gave evidence tending to prove only such facts as he
thought it best that Congress should believe. In the Senate, March 10,
Lloyd of Massachusetts moved a Resolution calling on the President
for the names of any persons “who have in any way or manner whatever
entered into, or most remotely countenanced,” the projects of Sir James
Craig. Monroe could only reply that, as John Henry had mentioned no
names, the Department was not possessed of the information required.
The reply made the Federalists only more angry; they were eager for
revenge, and fortune did not wholly refuse it. They never learned that
Henry’s disclosure was the result of French intrigue, but they learned
enough to make them suspect and exult over some mortification of the
President.
Soon after Count Edward de Crillon gave his evidence to the
investigating committee, news arrived that France was about to make war
with Russia, and although Crillon had decided to wait in Washington
for his recall to the Emperor’s favor, he became suddenly earnest to
depart. March 22, Serurier wrote:[139]--
“At the news of a possible rupture with Russia, the blood of M.
de Crillon, always so boiling, has become hotter than ever, and
he has decided to return to France without waiting an answer
from your Excellency; he wants to throw himself at the Emperor’s
feet, tell him what he has done, invoke pardon for his errors,
and go to expiate them in the advance guard of his armies.”
April 1 Crillon left Washington bearing despatches from Monroe to
Barlow, and from Serurier to Bassano. Neither he nor John Henry is
known to have ever again visited the United States, and their names
would have been forgotten had not stories soon arrived that caused
the Federalists great amusement, and made President Madison very
uncomfortable. Barlow wrote to the President that Count Edward de
Crillon was an impostor; that no such person was known to the Crillon
family or to the French service. Private letters confirmed the report,
and added that the estate of St. Martial had no existence, and that
Crillon’s draughts in Henry’s favor were drawn on a person who had been
five years dead.
“The President, with whom he has often dined,” continued
Serurier,[140] “and all the secretaries, whose reception, joined
with the political considerations known to your Excellency,
decided his admittance to my house, are a little ashamed of the
eagerness (_empressement_) they showed him, and all the
money they gave him. For my own part, Monseigneur, I have little
to regret. I have constantly refused to connect myself with his
affairs; I sent him to the Secretary of State for his documents;
the papers have been published, and have produced an effect
injurious to England without my having bought this good fortune
by a single _denier_ from the Imperial treasury; and I have
escaped at the cost of some civilities, preceded by those of the
President, the motive of which I declared from the first to be
the services which the Administration told me had been rendered
it by this traveller.”
Serurier continued to declare that he had honestly believed Crillon
to be “something like what he represented himself;” but he could not
reasonably expect the world to accept these protestations. He had aided
this person to obtain fifty thousand dollars from the United States
Treasury for papers not his own, and instead of warning the President
against an adventurer whose true character he admitted himself to have
suspected, the French minister abetted the impostor. Although the
truth was revealed only at a much later time that Crillon was an agent
of Napoleon’s secret police,[141] no Frenchman, who had enjoyed the
advantages of a diplomatic education, could have been wholly deceived
in regard to the character of a person so evidently suspicious.
That the President should be mortified was natural, but still more
natural that he should be angry. He could not resent the introduction
of a foreign impostor to his confidence, since he was himself chiefly
responsible for the social success of the Count Edward de Crillon; but
deception was a part of the French system, and Madison felt the Crillon
affair sink into insignificance beside the other deceptions practised
upon him by the government of France. He was as nearly furious as his
temperament allowed, at the manner in which the Emperor treated him.
Before Crillon appeared on the scene, Madison used language to Serurier
that betrayed his extreme dissatisfaction at being paraded before the
public as a dupe or tool of France. At Savannah a riot took place
between French privateersmen and American or English sailors; several
men on both sides were killed; the privateers were burned; and Serurier
complained in language such as Napoleon might be supposed to expect
from his minister in regard to a violent outrage on the French flag. At
the White House on New Year’s day, 1812, the French minister renewed
his complaints, and the President lost patience.
“The President,” wrote Serurier,[142] “answered me with
vivacity, that doubtless such indignities were subject for
much regret; but it was not less distressing to learn what was
passing every day in the Baltic and on the routes from America
to England, where some American ships were burned, while others
were captured and taken into European ports under French
influence and condemned; that such proceedings were in his eyes
hostilities as pronounced as were those of England, against whom
the Republic was at that moment taking up arms.... Mr. Madison
ended by telling me that he wished always to flatter himself
that Mr. Barlow would send immediate explanation of these
strange measures, and notice that they had ceased; but that for
the moment, very certainly, matters could not be in a worse
situation.”
Disconcerted by this sharp rebuff from the President, Serurier went
to Monroe, who was usually good-humored when Madison was irritable,
and irritable when Madison became mild. This process of alternate
coaxing and scolding seemed to affect Serurier more than it affected
his master. Monroe made no reproaches, but defended the President’s
position by an argument which the Republican party did not use in
public:--
“He urged that the captures of these ships, though perhaps
inconsiderable in themselves, had the unfortunate effect of
giving arms to the English party, which obstinately maintains
that the repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees has not taken
place; ‘that repeal,’ he added, ‘on which nevertheless the whole
actual system of the Administration is founded, and which, if it
be not really absolute, would render the war we are undertaking
with England very imprudent and without reasonable object.’”
This admission, although made in private, seemed humiliating enough;
but as weeks passed, Monroe’s complaints became stronger. March 2
Serurier reported him as avowing that he considered Barlow’s mission
fruitless;[143]--
“After delays that have lasted three months beyond what we
feared, we have as yet received only projects of arrangements,
but nothing finished that we can publish.... You are witness to
our embarrassment. Our position is painful. We will treat with
England on no other ground than that of withdrawing the Orders
in Council, and nothing promises this withdrawal. We are then
decided for war. You see us every day making our preparations.
If these meet with obstacles, if they suffer some delay, if
Congress seems to grow weak and to hesitate, this slackening is
due to the fact that we come to no conclusion with France.”
Ships were still captured on their way to England. “If your decrees are
in fact repealed,” asked Monroe, “why this sequestration?” Serurier
strove in vain to satisfy Monroe that the decrees, though repealed
in principle, might be still enforced in fact. He failed to calm the
secretary or the President, whose temper became worse as he saw more
clearly that he had been overreached by Napoleon, and that his word
as President of the United States had been made a means of deceiving
Congress and the people.
Had the British government at that moment offered the single concession
asked of it, no war could have taken place, unless it were a war with
France; but the British government had not yet recovered its reason.
Foster came to Washington with instructions to yield nothing, yet
to maintain peace; to threaten, but still conciliate. This mixture
of policy, half Canning and half Fox, feeble and mischievous as it
was, could not be altered by Foster; his instructions were positive.
“Nor can we ever deem the repeal of the French hostile decrees to be
effectual,” wrote Wellesley in April, 1811, “until neutral commerce
shall be restored to the condition in which it stood previously to the
commencement of the French system of commercial warfare.” Wellesley
hinted that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan were no longer important;
they were in effect superseded by Napoleon’s tariff of prohibitions
and prohibitive duties; and until this system of war was abandoned,
and neutral rights of trade were respected, Great Britain could not
withdraw her blockades. In obedience to these instructions, Foster
was obliged to tell Monroe in July, and again in October, 1811, that
even if the repeal of the decrees were genuine, it would not satisfy
the British government. Not the decrees, but their principle, roused
British retaliation.
When the President in his Annual Message represented Foster as
requiring that the United States should force British produce and
manufactures into France, Foster protested, explained, and remonstrated
in vain; he found himself reduced to threats of commercial retaliation
which no one regarded, and his position became mortifying beyond
any in the experience of his unfortunate predecessors. Compelled to
witness constant insults to his country, he was still ordered to
maintain peace. As early as Dec. 11, 1811, he notified his Government
that unless its system were changed, war was likely to follow. The
suggestions offered by the Federalist congressmen, February 1, could
hardly fail to show the British government that at last it must choose
between war and concession. Feb. 26, 1812, Foster wrote again that war
might be declared within a fortnight. March 9 the revelations of John
Henry gave the minister another anxiety, and called from him another
lame disavowal. Yet throughout these trying months Foster remained on
friendly and almost intimate terms with Monroe, whom he described as “a
very mild, moderate man.”[144]
Matters stood thus till March 21, 1812, when Washington was excited by
news that Foster had received recent instructions from his Government,
and the crisis of war and peace was at hand. “The anxiety and curiosity
of both Houses of Congress,” reported Foster, April 1,[145] “to know
the real nature of the despatches was so great that some of the
members on committees told me they could not get the common routine of
business at all attended to. The Department of State was crowded with
individuals endeavoring to obtain information from Mr. Monroe, while
I was questioned by all those with whom I happened to be acquainted.”
A report spread through Washington that the Orders in Council were
repealed, and that an immediate accommodation of all differences
between England and the United States might be expected.
Foster would have been glad to find his new instructions composed
in such a sense; but he hardly expected to find them so positive as
they were in an opposite spirit. Lord Wellesley’s despatch of Jan.
28, 1812,[146] which may be said to have decided the declaration of
war, was afterward published, and need not be quoted in detail. He
remonstrated against the arming of merchant vessels, and ordered Foster
to speak earnestly on the subject “for the purpose of preventing a
state of affairs which might probably lead to acts of force.” The
pretended revocation of the French Decrees, said Lord Wellesley, was
in fact a fresh enactment of them, while the measures of America tended
to occasion such acts of violence as might “produce the calamity of
war between the two countries.” This usual formula, by which diplomacy
announced an expected rupture, was reinforced by secret instructions
warning Foster cautiously to “avoid employing any suggestions of
compromise to the American government which might induce them to
doubt the sincerity or firmness of his Majesty’s government in their
determination, already announced, of maintaining steadfastly the
system of defence adopted by them until the enemy shall relinquish his
unwarrantable mode of attack upon our interests through the violation
of neutral rights.”
Foster regarded this order as a rebuke, for he had talked freely, both
to his own Government and in Washington, of the possibility that the
Orders in Council might be withdrawn. The warning gave him a manner
more formal than usual when he went, March 21, to assure Monroe that
the Prince Regent would never give way. Monroe listened with great
attention; “then merely said, with however considerable mildness of
tone, that he had hoped his conversations with me at the early part
of the session would have produced a different result.” Foster left
him without further discussion, and announced everywhere in public
that, “far from being awed and alarmed at the threatening attitude
and language” of Congress, his Government would maintain its system
unimpaired.[147]
The President looked upon this declaration as final. Already every
preparation had been made to meet it. Only a fortnight before, the
papers of John Henry had been sent to Congress, and the halls of
Congress, as well as the columns of every Republican newspaper in the
country, were filled with denunciations of England’s conduct, while the
President prepared a message recommending an embargo for sixty days,--a
measure preliminary to the declaration of war,--when March 23, two
days after Foster’s interview, news arrived that a French squadron,
under open orders, had begun to burn and sink American commerce on the
ocean. The American brig “Thames” reached New York March 9, and her
captain, Samuel Chew, deposed before a magistrate that February 2, in
the middle of the Atlantic, his brig on the return voyage from Portugal
was seized by a French squadron which had sailed from Nantes early in
January, and which had already seized and burned the American ship
“Asia” and the brig “Gershom.” The French commodore declared that he
had orders to burn all American vessels sailing to or from an enemy’s
port. The American newspapers were soon deluged with affidavits to the
same effect from the captains and seamen of vessels burned by these
French frigates, and the news, arriving in Washington at a moment when
the Federalists were most eager to retaliate the insult of the Henry
letters, caused extreme sensation. In face of these piratical acts no
one longer pretended that the French Decrees were repealed. Republicans
were angrier than Federalists. Madison and Monroe were angriest of
all. Serurier was in despair. “I am just from Mr. Monroe’s office,” he
wrote March 23;[148] “I have never yet seen him more agitated, more
discomposed. He addressed me abruptly: ‘Well, sir, it is then decided
that we are to receive nothing but outrages from France! And at what
a moment too! At the very instant when we were going to war with her
enemies.’” When the French minister tried to check his vehemence of
reproach, Monroe broke out again:--
“Remember where we were two days ago. You know what warlike
measures have been taken for three months past; adopted slowly,
they have been progressively followed up. We have made use of
Henry’s documents as a last means of exciting (_pour achever
d’exalter_) the nation and Congress; you have seen by all
the use we have made of them whither we were aiming; within a
week we were going to propose the embargo, and the declaration
of war was the immediate consequence of it. A ship has arrived
from London, bringing us despatches to February 5, which contain
nothing offering a hope of repeal of the orders; this was all
that was needed to carry the declaration of war, which would
have passed almost unanimously. It is at such a moment that your
frigates come and burn our ships, destroy all our work, and put
the Administration in the falsest and most terrible position in
which a government can find itself placed.”
For the hundredth time Monroe repeated the old story that the repeal
of the French Decrees was the foundation of the whole American system;
“that should the Executive now propose the embargo or the declaration
of war, the whole Federal party--reinforced by the Clinton party, the
Smith party, and the discontented Republicans--would rise in mass and
demand why we persist in making war on England for maintaining her
Orders in Council when we have proofs so recent and terrible that the
French Decrees are not withdrawn.” He added that if the question were
put at such a moment, he did not doubt that the Government would lose
its majority.
Foster also attempted to interfere in this complicated quarrel:--
“I took an occasion to wait on Mr. Monroe,” wrote Foster April
1, “to hear what he would say relative to this outrage. He
seemed much struck with the enormity of it, and ... admitted
that there were some circumstances in this particular instance
of peculiar violence, and calling for the highest expressions of
resentment on the part of this government. He told me that M.
Serurier in an interview he had with him on the subject stated
his disbelief in the fact.”
Foster wrote an official note to Monroe, using the recent French
outrages as new ground for demanding to see the instrument by which the
decrees were said to be repealed.
Serurier himself was little pleased with the Emperor’s conduct, and
expressed his annoyance frankly to his Government; but he consoled
himself with the conviction that President Madison could no longer
recede, even if serious in wishing to do so. Congress was equally
helpless. Nothing could exceed the anger of congressmen with France.
As Macon wrote to Nicholson, March 24,[149] after Captain Chew’s
deposition had been read in the House, “the Devil himself could not
tell which government, England or France, is the most wicked.” The cry
for a double war with France as well as with England became strong
enough to create uneasiness; and although such a triangular war might
be a military mistake, no one could explain the reasoning which led to
a declaration of war with England, on the grounds selected by Madison,
without a simultaneous declaration against France. The responsibility
Madison had incurred would have broken the courage of any man less
pertinacious. With difficulty could the best Republican conceive how
the issue with England could have been worse managed.
At this moment, according to a Federalist legend, Madison was believed
to hesitate, and Clay and Grundy coerced him into the recommendation of
war by threats of opposing his renomination for the Presidency.[150] In
reality, some of the moderate Republicans urged him to send a special
mission to England as a last chance of peace.[151] Perhaps Clay and
Grundy opposed this suggestion with the warmth ascribed to them, but
certainly no sign of hesitation could be detected in Madison’s conduct
between the meeting of Congress in November and the declaration of war
in June.[152] Whatever were his private feelings, he acted in constant
agreement with the majority of his party, and at most asked only time
for some slight armaments. As to the unprepared state of the country,
he said that he did not feel himself bound to take more than his share
of the responsibility.[153] Even under the exasperation caused by the
conduct of France, he waited only for his party to recover composure.
March 31 Monroe held a conference with the House Committee of Foreign
Relations, and told them that the President thought war should be
declared before Congress adjourned, and that he would send an Embargo
Message if he could be assured it would be agreeable to the House.[154]
On the same day Foster called at the State Department for an answer to
the note in which he had just asked for proof that the French Decrees
were repealed. Monroe made him a reply of which Foster seemed hardly to
appreciate the gravity.[155]
“He told me, a good deal to my disappointment I confess, that
the President did not think it would lead to any utility to
order an answer to be written to either of my last notes; that
he could not now entertain the question as to whether the
French Decrees were repealed, having already been convinced and
declared that they were so. He said that the case of the two
American ships which were burned could not be said to come under
the Berlin and Milan Decrees, however objectionable the act was
to this Government; that the declaration of the French commodore
of his having orders to burn all ships bound to or from an
enemy’s port was given only verbally, and might not have been
well understood by the American captain, who did not very well
understand French; while the declaration in writing only alluded
to ships bound to or from Lisbon and Cadiz.”
Nothing could be more humiliating to Monroe than the resort to
subterfuge like this; but the President left no outlet of escape. The
Committee of Foreign Relations decided in favor of an embargo; and
April 1, the day after this interview, Madison sent to Congress a
secret Message, which was read with closed doors:--
“Considering it as expedient, under existing circumstances and
prospects, that a general embargo be laid on all vessels now
in port or hereafter arriving for the period of sixty days, I
recommend the immediate passage of a law to that effect.”
CHAPTER X.
WHEN news of this decisive step became public, the British minister
hastened to Monroe for explanations.[156] Monroe “deprecated its
being considered as a war measure. He even seemed to affect to
consider it as an impartial measure toward the two belligerents, and
as thereby complying with one of our demands; namely, putting them
on an equality.... He used an expression which I had some difficulty
in comprehending,--that it was the wish of the Government to keep
their policy in their own hands.” In truth Monroe seemed, to the
last, inclined to leave open a door by which the anger of America
might, in case of reconciliation with England, be diverted against
France. Madison had no such delusion. Foster went to the President,
and repeated to him Monroe’s remark that the embargo was not a war
measure.[157] “Oh, no!” said Madison, “embargo is not war;” but he
added that in his opinion the United States would be amply justified in
war, whatever might be its expediency, for Great Britain was actually
waging war on them, and within a month had captured eighteen ships of
the estimated value of fifteen hundred thousand dollars. He said he
should be glad still to receive any propositions England might have to
make, and that Congress would be in session at the period fixed for
terminating the embargo. Neither Madison nor Monroe could properly say
more to the British minister, for they could not undertake to forestall
the action of Congress; but the rumor that France might be included
in the declaration of war as in the embargo, made the French minister
uneasy, and he too asked explanation. To him the secretary talked more
plainly.[158]
“Mr. Monroe answered me,” wrote Serurier April 9, “that the
embargo had been adopted in view of stopping the losses of
commerce, and of preparing for the imminent war with England; he
protested to me his perfect conviction that war was inevitable
if the news expected from France answered to the hopes they
had formed. He gave me his word of honor that in the secret
deliberations of Congress no measure had been taken against
France. He admitted that in fact the affair of the frigates had
produced a very deep impression on that body; that it had, even
in Republican eyes, seemed manifest proof that the Imperial
Decrees were not repealed, and that this unfortunate accident
had shaken (_ébranlé_) the whole base of the Administration
system; that the Executive, by inclination as much as by system,
had always wished to believe in this repeal, without which
it was impossible to make issue (_engager la querelle_)
with England; that its interest in this respect was perfectly
in accord with that of France, but that he had found it wholly
impossible to justify the inconceivable conduct of the commander
of the frigates.... Mr. Monroe insisted here on his former
declarations, that if the Administration was abandoned by France
it would infallibly succumb, or would be obliged to propose war
against both Powers, which would be against its interests as
much as against its inclination.”
The Embargo Message surprised no one. The Committee of Foreign
Relations made no secret of its decision. Calhoun warned Josiah Quincy
and other representatives of commercial cities; and on the afternoon
of March 31 these members sent an express, giving notice to their
constituents that the embargo would be proposed on the following day.
Every ship-owner on the seaboard and every merchant in the great cities
hurried ships and merchandise to sea, showing that they feared war
less than they feared embargo, at the moment when Congress, April 1,
went into secret session to discuss the measure intended to protect
ship-owners and merchants by keeping their property at home. Porter
introduced the bill laying an embargo for sixty days;[159] Grundy
declared it to be intended as a measure leading directly to war; Henry
Clay made a vehement speech approving the measure on that ground. On
the other side Randolph declared war to be impossible; the President
dared not be guilty of treason so gross and unparalleled as that of
plunging an unprepared nation into such a conflict. Randolph even read
memoranda of Monroe’s remarks to the Committee of Foreign Relations:
“The embargo would leave the policy as respected France, and indeed
of both countries, in our hands;” and from this he tried to convince
the House that the embargo was not honestly intended as a war measure.
The debate ran till evening, when by a vote of sixty-six to forty the
previous question was ordered. Without listening to the minority the
House then hurried the bill through all its stages, and at nine o’clock
passed it by a vote of seventy to forty-one.
The majority numbered less than half the members. In 1807 the House
imposed the embargo by a vote of eighty-two to forty-four, yet the
country failed to support it. The experience of 1807 boded ill for that
of 1812. In the Senate the outlook was worse. The motion to extend
the embargo from sixty to ninety days was adopted without opposition,
changing the character of the bill at a single stroke from a strong war
measure into a weak measure of negotiation; but even in this weaker
form it received only twenty votes against thirteen in opposition. The
President could not depend on a bare majority in the Senate. The New
England Democrats shrank from the embargo even more than from war.
Giles and Samuel Smith stood in open opposition. The Clintons had
become candidates of every discontented faction in the country. Had
the vote in the Senate been counted by States, only six would have
been thrown for the embargo, and of these only Pennsylvania from the
North. In face of such distraction, war with England seemed worse than
a gambler’s risk.
Madison, watching with that apparent neutrality which irritated both
his friends and his enemies, reported to Jefferson the progress of
events.[160] He was not pleased with the Senate’s treatment of his
recommendations, or with “that invariable opposition, open with some
and covert with others, which has perplexed and impeded the whole
course of our public measures.” He explained the motives of senators in
extending the embargo from sixty to ninety days. Some wished to make
it a peace measure, some to postpone war, some to allow time for the
return of their constituents’ ships; some intended it as a ruse against
the enemy. For his own part he had regarded a short embargo as a
rational and provident measure, which would be relished by the greater
part of the nation; but he looked upon it as a step to immediate war,
and he waited only for the Senate to make the declaration.
The President asked too much. Congress seemed exhausted by the efforts
it had made, and the country showed signs of greater exhaustion before
having made any efforts at all. The complaints against France, against
the non-importation, against the embargo, and against the proposed war
were bitter and general. April 6 Massachusetts held the usual State
election. Gerry was again the Republican candidate for governor, and
the Federalists had little hope of defeating him; but the Republican
Administration had proved so unpopular, the famous Gerrymander by
which the State had been divided into districts in party interests
had so irritated the conservative feeling, that the new embargo and
the expected war were hardly needed to throw the State again into
opposition. Not even the revelations of John Henry restored the
balance. More than one hundred and four thousand votes were cast, and a
majority of about twelve hundred appeared on the Federalist side. Caleb
Strong became governor once more at a moment when the change paralyzed
national authority in New England; and meanwhile throughout the country
the enlistments for the new army produced barely one thousand men.
The month of April passed without legislation that could strengthen
Government, except an Act, approved April 10, authorizing the President
to call out one hundred thousand militia for six months’ service.
Congress showed so strong a wish to adjourn that the Administration
was obliged to exert its whole influence to prevent the House from
imitating the Senate, which by a vote of sixteen to fifteen adopted a
Resolution for a recess until June 8. Secretary Gallatin ventured to
bring no tax bills before Congress; Lowndes and Cheves made a vigorous
effort to suspend the Non-importation Act; and a general belief
prevailed that the Government wished to admit English goods in order to
evade, by increase of customs-revenue, the necessity of taxation.
Serurier, much discomposed by these signs of vacillation, busied
himself in the matter, declaring to his friends in Congress that he
should look on any suspension of the Non-importation Act as a formal
infraction of the compact with France. When he pressed Monroe with
remonstrances,[161] Monroe told him, April 22, that the President
and Cabinet had positively and unanimously declared to the Committee
of Foreign Relations against the suspension, because it would seem
to indicate indecision and inconsequence in their foreign policy;
that this remonstrance had caused the plan to be given up, but that
the Administration might still be obliged to consent to a short
adjournment, so great was the wish of members to look after their
private affairs. In fact, Congress showed no other wish than to escape,
and leave the President to struggle with his difficulties alone.
If the war party hesitated in its allegiance to Madison, its doubts
regarded his abilities rather than his zeal. Whatever might be
Madison’s genius, no one supposed it to be that of administration.
His health was delicate; he looked worn and feeble; for many years
he had shown none of the energy of youth; he was likely to succumb
under the burden of war; and, worst of all, he showed no consciousness
of needing support. The party was unanimous in believing Secretary
Eustis unequal to his post, but Madison made no sign of removing him.
So general was the impression of Eustis’s incapacity that when, April
24, the President sent to Congress a message asking for two Assistant
Secretaries of War to aid in conducting the Department, the request
was commonly regarded as an evasion of the public demand for a new
Secretary of War, and as such was unfavorably received. In the House,
where the subject was openly discussed, Randolph defended Eustis in the
style of which he was master: “I will say this much of the Secretary
of War,--that I do verily believe, and I have grounds to believe it
to be the opinion of a majority of this House, that he is at least as
competent to the exercise of his duties as his colleague who presides
over the Marine.” The Senate, wishing perhaps to force the President
into reconstructing his Cabinet, laid aside the bill creating two
Assistant Secretaries of War; and with this action, May 6, ended the
last chance of efficiency in that Department.
While Eustis ransacked the country for generals, colonels, and the
whole staff of officers, as well as the clothing, arms, and blankets
for an army of twenty-five thousand men who could not be found,
Gallatin labored to provide means for meeting the first year’s
expenses. Having no longer the Bank to help him, he dealt separately
with the State Banks through whose agency private subscriptions were
to be received. The subscriptions were to be opened on the first and
second days of May. The Republican newspapers, led by the “National
Intelligencer,”[162] expressed the hope and the expectation that
twice the amount of the loan would be instantly subscribed. Their
disappointment was very great. Federalist New England refused to
subscribe at all; and as the Federalists controlled most of the
capital in the country, the effect of their abstention was alarming.
In all New England not one million dollars were obtained. New York and
Philadelphia took each about one and a half million. Baltimore and
Washington took about as much more. The whole Southern country, from
the Potomac to Charleston, subscribed seven hundred thousand dollars.
Of the entire loan, amounting to eleven million dollars, a little more
than six millions were taken; and considering the terms, the result was
not surprising. At a time when the old six-per-cent loans, with ten or
twelve years to run, stood barely at par, any new six-per-cent loan to
a large amount, with a vast war in prospect, could hardly be taken at
the same rate.
The Federalists, delighted with this failure, said, with some show
of reason, that if the Southern States wanted the war they ought to
supply the means, and had no right to expect that men who thought the
war unjust and unnecessary should speculate to make money from it.
Gallatin put a good face on his failure, and proposed soon to reopen
subscriptions; but the disappointment was real.
“Whatever the result may be,” wrote Serurier to his
Government,[163] “they had counted on more national energy on
the opening of a first loan for a war so just. This cooling
of the national pulse, the resistance which the Northern
States seem once more willing to offer the Administration, the
defection it meets every day in Congress,--all this, joined
to its irritation at our measures which make its own system
unpopular, adds to its embarrassment and hesitation.”
Gallatin made no complaints, but he knew only too well what lay before
him. No resource remained except treasury notes bearing interest.
Neither Gallatin, nor any other party leader, cared to suggest
legal-tender notes, which were supposed to be not only an admission of
national bankruptcy at the start, but also forbidden by the spirit of
the Constitution; yet the government could hardly fail to experience
the same form of bankruptcy in a less convenient shape. After the
destruction of the United States Bank, a banking mania seized the
public. Everywhere new banks were organized or planned, until the
legislature of New York, no longer contented with small corporations
controlling capital of one or two hundred thousand dollars, prepared to
incorporate the old Bank of the United States under a new form, with
a capital of six millions. Governor Tompkins stopped the project by
proroguing the legislature; but his message gave the astonishing reason
that the legislature was in danger of yielding to bribery.[164] The
majority protested against the charge, and denounced it as a breach of
privilege; but whether it was well or ill founded, the influence of the
banking mania on State legislatures could not fail to be corrupting.
The evil, inherent in the origin of the new banks, was aggravated by
their management. Competition and want of experience or of supervision,
inevitably led to over-issue, inflation of credit, suspension of specie
payments, and paper-money of the worst character. Between a debased
currency of private corporations and a debased currency of government
paper, the former was the most expensive and the least convenient; yet
it was the only support on which the Treasury could depend.
Early in May a double election took place, which gave more cause of
alarm. New York chose a Federalist Assembly, and Massachusetts chose
a General Court more strongly Federalist than any one had ventured to
expect. In the face of such a revolution in two of the greatest and
richest States in the Union, President, Cabinet, and legislators had
reason to hesitate; they had even reason to fear that the existence
of the Union might hang on their decision. They knew the Executive
Department to be incompetent for war; they had before their eyes
the spectacle of an incompetent Congress; and they saw the people
declaring, as emphatically as their democratic forms of government
permitted, their unwillingness to undertake the burden. Even bold men
might pause before a situation so desperate.
Thus the month of May passed, full of discouragement. Congress did not
adjourn, but the members went home on leave, with the understanding
that no further action should be taken until June. At home they found
chaos. Under the coercion of embargo, commerce ceased. Men would do
little but talk politics, and very few professed themselves satisfied
with the condition into which their affairs had been brought. The press
cried for war or for peace, according to its fancy; but although each
of the old parties could readily prove the other’s course to be absurd,
unpatriotic, and ruinous, the war men, who were in truth a new party,
powerless to restore order by legitimate methods, shut their ears to
the outcry, and waited until actual war should enforce a discipline
never to be imposed in peace.
The experiment of thrusting the country into war to inflame it, as
crude ore might be thrown into a furnace, was avowed by the party
leaders, from President Madison downward, and was in truth the only
excuse for a course otherwise resembling an attempt at suicide. Many
nations have gone to war in pure gayety of heart; but perhaps the
United States were first to force themselves into a war they dreaded,
in the hope that the war itself might create the spirit they lacked.
One of the liveliest and most instructive discussions of the session,
May 6, threw light upon the scheme by which the youthful nation was
to reverse the process of Medea, and pass through the caldron of war
in confidence of gaining the vigor of age. Mr. Bleecker of New York,
in offering petitions for the repeal of the embargo, argued that the
embargo could not be honestly intended. “Where are your armies; your
navy? Have you money? No, sir! Rely upon it, there will be, there
can be, no war--active, offensive war--within sixty days.” War would
be little short of treason; would bring shame, disgrace, defeat;
and meanwhile the embargo alienated the people of States which must
necessarily bear much of the burden. These arguments were supported by
John Randolph.
“I am myself,” he said, “in a situation similar to what would
have been that of one of the unfortunate people of Caracas, if
preadvised of the danger which overhung his country. I know
that we are on the brink of some dreadful scourge, some great
desolation, some awful visitation from that Power whom, I am
afraid, we have as yet in our national capacity taken no pains
to conciliate.... Go to war without money, without men, without
a navy! Go to war when we have not the courage, while your
lips utter war, to lay war taxes! when your whole courage is
exhibited in passing Resolutions! The people will not believe
it!”
Richard M. Johnson undertook first to meet these criticisms. Johnson
possessed courage and abilities, but he had not, more than other
Kentuckians of his day, the caution convenient in the face of
opponents. He met by threats the opposition he would not answer. “It
was a Tory opposition, in the cities and seaports; and an opposition
which would not be quite so bold and powerful in a time of war; and
he trusted in that Heaven to which the gentleman from Virginia had
appealed, that sixty days would not elapse before all the traitorous
combinations and opposition to the laws and the acts of the general
government would in a great measure cease, or change, and moderate
their tone.” Calhoun, who followed Johnson, expressed the same idea in
less offensive form, and added opinions of his own which showed the
mental condition in which the young war leaders exulted: “So far from
being unprepared, sir, I believe that in four weeks from the time that
a declaration of war is heard on our frontiers the whole of Upper and a
part of Lower Canada will be in our possession.”
Grundy, following in the debate, used neither threats like Johnson,
nor prophecies like Calhoun; but his argument was not more convincing.
“It is only while the public mind is held in suspense,” he said; “it
is only while there is doubt as to what will be the result of our
deliberations,--it is only while we linger in this Hall that any
manifestations of uneasiness will show themselves. Whenever war is
declared, the people will put forth their strength to support their
rights.” He went so far as to add that when war should be once begun,
the distinction between Federalists and Republicans would cease.
Finally, Wright of Maryland, whose words fortunately carried little
weight, concluded the debate by saying that if signs of treason and
civil war should discover themselves in any part of the American
empire, he had no doubt the evil would soon be radically cured by hemp
and confiscation; and his own exertions should not be spared to employ
the remedy.
The President himself had no other plan than to “throw forward the flag
of the country, sure that the people would press onward and defend
it.”[165] The example he had himself given to the people in 1798
tended to cast doubt on the correctness of his judgment,[166] but his
candidacy for the Presidency also shook confidence in his good faith.
So deep was the conviction of his dislike for the policy he supported
as to lead the British minister, May 3, to inform his Government that
the jealousies between the younger and older members of Congress
threatened an open schism, in which the President was supposed likely
to be involved.[167]
“The reason why there has been no nomination made in caucus yet,
by the Democratic members, of Mr. Madison as candidate for the
Presidency is, as I am assured in confidence, because the war
party have suspected him not to have been serious in his late
hostile measures, and wish previously to ascertain his real
sentiments. I have been endeavoring to put the Federalists upon
insinuating that they will support him, if he will agree to give
up the advocates for war.”
This intrigue was stopped by the positive refusal of the eastern
Federalists to support Madison on any terms,--they preferred coalition
with DeWitt Clinton and the Republican malcontents; but the time had
come when some nomination must be made, and when it arrived, all
serious thought of an open Republican schism at Washington vanished.
The usual Congressional caucus was called May 18, and was attended
by eighty-three members and senators, who unanimously renominated
Madison. Seventeen senators, just one half the Senate, and sixty-six
members, almost one half the House, joined in the nomination; but only
three New York members took part, and neither Giles nor Samuel Smith
was present,--they had ceased to act with the Republican party. Only
a few weeks before, Vice-President Clinton had died in office, and
whatever respect the Administration may have felt for his great name
and Revolutionary services, the party was relieved at the prospect of
placing in the chair of the Senate some man upon whom it could better
depend. The caucus named John Langdon of New Hampshire; and when he
declined, Elbridge Gerry, the defeated Governor of Massachusetts, was
selected as candidate for the Vice-presidency.
So little cordiality was felt for President Madison by his party that
only the want of a strong rival reconciled a majority to the choice;
but although Clay, Crawford, and Calhoun accepted the necessity, the
State of New York flatly rebelled. At Albany, when the news arrived
that the Washington caucus had named Madison for the Presidency, the
Republican members of the State legislature called for May 29 a caucus
of their own. Their whole number was ninety-five; of these, all but
four attended, and eighty-seven voted that it was expedient to name
a candidate for the Presidency. Ninety members then voted to support
DeWitt Clinton against Madison, and Clinton formally accepted the
nomination. This unusual unanimity among the New York Republicans
raised the movement somewhat above the level of ordinary New York
politics, and pointed to a growing jealousy of Virginia, which
threatened to end in revival of the old alliance between New York
and New England. Even in quiet times this prospect would have been
alarming; in face of war, it threatened to be fatal.
During the entire month of May Congress passed, with only one
exception, no Act for war purposes. While the absent members attended
to their private affairs, Government waited for the last despatches
from abroad. The sloop-of-war “Hornet,” after long delay, arrived at
New York, May 19, and three days afterward the despatches reached
Washington. Once more, but for the last time, the town roused itself to
learn what hope of peace they contained.
As far as concerned Great Britain, the news would at any previous time
have checked hostile action, for it showed that the British government
had taken alarm, and that for the first time a real change of policy
was possible; but this news came from unofficial sources, and could
not be laid before Congress. Officially, the British government still
stoutly maintained that it could not yield. Lord Wellesley had given
place to Lord Castlereagh. In a very long despatch,[168] dated April
10, the new Foreign Minister pleaded earnestly that England could not
submit herself to the mercy of France. The argument of Lord Castlereagh
rested on an official report made by the Duc de Bassano to the Emperor,
March 10, in which Napoleon reasserted his rules regarding neutrals
in language quite as strong as that of his decrees, and reasserted
the validity of those decrees, without exception, in regard to every
neutral that did not recognize their provisions. Certainly, no proof
could be imagined competent to show the continued existence of the
decrees if Bassano’s report failed to do so; and Castlereagh, with some
reason, relied on this evidence to convince not so much the American
government as the American people that a deception had been practised,
and that England could not act as America required without submitting
to Napoleon’s principles as well as to his arms.
Embarrassing as this despatch was to President Madison, it was not all,
or the worst; but Serurier himself described the other annoyance in
terms as lively as his feelings:[169]--
“The ‘Hornet’ has at last arrived. On the rumor of this news,
the avenues of the State Department were thronged by a crowd
of members of both Houses of Congress, as well as by strangers
and citizens, impatient to know what this long-expected vessel
had brought. Soon it was learned that the ‘Hornet’ had brought
nothing favorable, and that Mr. Barlow had as yet concluded
nothing with your Excellency. On this news, the furious
declamations of the Federalists, of the commercial interests,
and of the numerous friends of England were redoubled; the
Republicans, deceived in their hopes, joined in the outcry,
and for three days nothing was heard but a general cry for war
against France and England at once.... I met Mr. Monroe at
the Speaker’s house; he came to me with an air of affliction
and discouragement; addressed me with his old reproach that
decidedly we abandoned the Administration, and that he did not
know henceforward how they could extricate themselves from the
difficult position into which their confidence in our friendship
had drawn them.”
Serurier had no reason for uneasiness on his own account. The President
and his party could not go backward in their path; yet no enemy
could have devised a worse issue than that on which the President
had placed the intended war with England. Every Act of Congress and
every official expression of Madison’s policy had been founded
on the withdrawal of the French Decrees as they affected American
commerce. This withdrawal could no longer be maintained, and Madison
merely shook confidence in his own good faith by asserting it; yet
he could do nothing else. “It is understood,” he wrote to Jefferson
at this crisis,[170] “that the Berlin and Milan Decrees are not in
force against the United States, and no contravention of them can be
established against her. On the contrary, positive cases rebut the
allegation.” Yet he said that “the business has become more than ever
puzzling;” he was withheld only by political and military expediency
from favoring war with France. He wrote to Joel Barlow,[171] after full
knowledge of Napoleon’s conduct, that “in the event of a pacification
with Great Britain the full tide of indignation with which the public
mind here is boiling will be directed against France, if not obviated
by a due reparation of her wrongs; war will be called for by the nation
almost _unâ voce_.”
A position so inconsistent with itself could not be understood by the
people. Every one knew that if the decrees were not avowedly enforced
in France against the United States, they were relaxed only because
Madison had submitted to their previous enforcement, and had, in
Napoleon’s opinion, recognized their legality. The Republican press,
which supported Madison most energetically, made no concealment of its
active sympathies with Napoleon, even in Spain. What wonder if large
numbers of good citizens who believed Napoleon to be anti-Christ should
be disposed to resist, even to the verge of treason, the attempt to use
their lives and fortunes in a service they regarded with horror!
CHAPTER XI.
CASTLEREAGH’S long note of April 10, communicated by Foster to the
American government, contained a paragraph defining the British
doctrine of retaliation:--
“What Great Britain always avowed was her readiness to rescind
her orders as soon as France rescinded, absolutely and
unconditionally, her decrees. She never engaged to repeal those
orders as affecting America alone, leaving them in force against
other States, upon condition that France would except, singly
and especially, America from the operation of her decrees. She
could not do so without the grossest injustice to her allies,
as well as all other neutral nations; much less could she do
so upon the supposition that the special exception in favor of
America was to be expressly granted by France, as it has been
hitherto tacitly accepted by America, upon conditions utterly
subversive of the most important and indisputable maritime
rights of the British empire.”
Long afterward Madison objected[172] to the common accounts of the war,
that they brought too little into view “the more immediate impulse
to it” given by this formal notice communicated to him officially
by Foster, which left no choice between war and degradation. He
regarded this notice as making further discussion impossible. His idea
was perhaps too strongly asserted, for Foster offered, under other
instructions, a new and important concession,--that England should
give up altogether her system of licensing trade with the Continent,
and in its place should enforce a rigorous blockade;[173] but Madison
and Monroe declined listening to any offer that did not admit in
principle the right of the United States to trade with every European
country.[174] Thus at the last moment the dispute seemed to narrow
itself to the single point of belligerent right to blockade a coast.
Acting at once on the theory that Castlereagh’s instructions of April
10 gave the last formal notice intended by the British government,
President Madison prepared a Message recommending an immediate
declaration of war. This Message was sent to Congress June 1; the two
Houses instantly went into secret session, and the Message was read.
No one could dispute the force of Madison’s long recital of British
outrages. For five years, the task of finding excuses for peace had
been more difficult than that of proving a _casus belli_; but some
interest still attached to the arrangement and relative weight of the
many American complaints.
Madison, inverting the order of complaints previously alleged, began
by charging that British cruisers had been “in the continued practice
of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and
of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it.” The charge was
amply proved, was not denied, and warranted war; but this was the
first time that the Government had alleged impressment as its chief
grievance, or had announced, either to England or to America, the
intention to fight for redress,--and England might fairly complain
that she had received no notice of intended war on such ground. The
second complaint alleged that British cruisers also violated the peace
of the coasts, and harassed entering and departing commerce. This
charge was equally true and equally warranted war, but it was open
to the same comment as that made upon the first. The third grievance
on which the President had hitherto founded his coercive measures
consisted in “pretended blockades, without the presence of an adequate
force and sometimes without the practicability of applying one,” by
means of which American commerce had been plundered on every sea,--a
practice which had come to its highest possible development in the
fourth grievance, the sweeping system of blockades known as the Orders
in Council. These four main heads of complaint covered numbers of
irritating consequences, but no other separate charge was alleged,
beyond an insinuation that the hostile spirit of the Indians was
connected with their neighborhood to Canada.
On the four great grievances thus defined every American could in
theory agree; but these admitted wrongs had hitherto been endured as
a matter of expediency, rather than resort to war; and the opposition
still stood on the ground that had been so obstinately held by
Jefferson,--that war, however just, was inexpedient. If union in
the war policy was to be hoped, the President must rather prove its
expediency than its justice. Even from his own point of view, two
doubts of expediency required fresh attention. For the first time,
England showed distinct signs of giving way; while on the other hand
France showed only the monomania of insisting on her decrees, even to
the point of conquering Russia. In the face of two such movements, the
expediency of war with England became more than ever doubtful; and if
the President wished for harmony, he must remove these doubts. This he
did not attempt, further than by alluding to the sense of Castlereagh’s
late despatch, as yet not in his possession. What was still more
remarkable, he said nothing in regard to the contract with France,
which since November, 1809, he had made the ground for every measure of
compulsion against England. Indeed, not only was the contract ignored,
but if any meaning could be placed on his allusions to France, the
theory of contract seemed at last to be formally abandoned.
“Having presented this view of the relations of the United
States with Great Britain, and of the solemn alternative growing
out of them, I proceed to remark that the communications last
made to Congress on the subject of our relations with France
will have shown that since the revocation of her decrees, as
they violated the neutral rights of the United States, her
government has authorized illegal captures by its privateers
and public ships; and that other outrages have been practised
on our vessels and our citizens. It will have been seen, also,
that no indemnity had been provided, or satisfactorily pledged,
for the extensive spoliations committed under the violent
and retrospective orders of the French government against
the property of our citizens, seized within the jurisdiction
of France. I abstain at this time from recommending to the
consideration of Congress definite measures with respect to that
nation.”
The war of 1812 was chiefly remarkable for the vehemence with which,
from beginning to end, it was resisted and thwarted by a very large
number of citizens who were commonly considered, and who considered
themselves, by no means the least respectable, intelligent, or
patriotic part of the nation. That the war was as just and necessary
as any war ever waged, seemed so evident to Americans of another
generation that only with an effort could modern readers grasp the
reasons for the bitter opposition of large and respectable communities
which left the government bankrupt, and nearly severed the Union; but
if students of national history can bear with patience the labor of
retaining in mind the threads of negotiation which President Madison
so thoroughly tangled before breaking, they can partially enter into
the feelings of citizens who held themselves aloof from Madison’s war.
In June, 1812, the reasons for declaring war on Great Britain, though
strong enough, were weaker than they had been in June, 1808, or in
January, 1809. In the interval the British government had laid aside
the arrogant and defiant tones of Canning’s diplomacy; had greatly
modified the Orders in Council; had offered further modifications;
and had atoned for the “Chesapeake” outrage. In 1807 England would
have welcomed a war with the United States; in 1812 she wanted peace,
and yielded much to secure it. In 1808 America was almost unanimous,
her government still efficient, well supplied with money, and little
likely to suffer from war; in 1812 the people were greatly divided,
the government had been weakened, and the Treasury was empty. Even
Gallatin, who in 1809 had been most decided for war, was believed in
1812 to wish and to think that it might be avoided. Probably four
fifths of the American people held the same opinion. Not merely had the
situation in every other respect changed for the worse, but the moral
convictions of the country were outraged by the assertion of a contract
with Napoleon--in which no one believed--as the reason for forcing
religious and peaceful citizens into what they regarded as the service
of France.
The war Message of June 1 rather strengthened than removed grounds
of opposition. The President alleged but one reason for thinking war
expedient at that moment rather than at another; but when in after
years he insisted that Castlereagh’s instructions were the immediate
cause which precluded further negotiation, he admitted his own mistake,
and presumed that had Congress known what was then passing in England
the declaration of war would have been suspended and negotiations
renewed.[175] Such a succession of mistakes, admitted one after another
almost as soon as they were made, might well give to Madison’s conduct
the air so often attributed to it, of systematic favor to Napoleon and
equally systematic hostility to England.
The House went at once into secret session; the Message was referred
to the Committee of Foreign Relations; and two days afterward, June
3, Calhoun brought in a report recommending an immediate appeal to
arms. As a history of the causes which led to this result, Calhoun’s
report was admirable, and its clearness of style and statement forced
comparisons not flattering to the President’s Message; but as an
argument for the immediate necessity of war, the report like the
Message contented itself with bare assertions. “The United States must
support their character and station among the nations of the earth, or
submit to the most shameful degradation.” Calhoun’s arguments were
commonly close in logic, and avoided declamation; but in the actual
instance neither he nor his followers seemed confident in the strength
of their reasoning.
After the House had listened in secret session, June 3, to the reading
of this report, Josiah Quincy moved that the debate should be public.
The demand seemed reasonable. That preliminary debates should be
secret might be proper, but that war with any Power, and most of all
with England, should be declared in secret could not be sound policy,
while apart from any question of policy the secrecy contradicted the
professions of the party in power. Perhaps no single act, in a hundred
years of American history, showed less regard for personal and party
consistency than the refusal by the Republicans of 1812 to allow
society either rights or privileges in regard to the declaration of
war upon England. Quite apart from military advantages to be hoped
from secrecy, Henry Clay and his friends were weary of debate and
afraid of defeat. Only a few days before, May 29, Clay forced Randolph
from the floor by tactics which showed that no more discussion was to
be allowed. The secret session gave the Speaker absolute power, and
annihilated opposition. By seventy-six votes to forty-six, the House
rejected Quincy’s motion; and a similar motion by Randolph shared the
same fate.
This demand being refused, the minority declined further discussion.
They said that any act of theirs which admitted the validity of what
they held to be a flagrant abuse of power could do no good, and might
create a dangerous precedent. Henceforward they contented themselves
with voting. On the same day Calhoun presented the bill declaring war
against England, and on the second reading the opposition swelled to
forty-five votes; while of the Republican majority, numbering about
one hundred and five members, only seventy-six could be brought to the
test. June 4 the third reading was carried by a vote of seventy-eight
to forty-five, and the same day the bill passed by a vote of
seventy-nine to forty-nine.
Proverbially wars are popular at their beginning; commonly, in
representative governments, they are declared by aid of some part of
the opposition. In the case of the War of 1812 the party in power,
instead of gaining strength by the declaration, lost about one fourth
of its votes, and the opposition actually gained nearly one fifth
of the Administration’s strength. In the Senate the loss was still
greater. There too the President’s Message was debated in secret, but
the proceedings were very deliberate. A select committee, with Senator
Anderson of Tennessee at its head, took charge of the Message, and
consumed a week in studying it. June 8 the committee reported the House
bill with amendments. June 11 the Senate, by a vote of seventeen to
thirteen, returned the bill to the committee for further amendment.
June 12 the committee reported the amendments as instructed. The Senate
discussed them, was equally divided, and accordingly threw out its own
amendments. June 15 the Senate voted the third reading of the House
bill by a vote of nineteen to thirteen. June 16, after a strong speech
for delay from Senator James A. Bayard, the Senate again adjourned
without action; and only June 18, after two weeks of secret discussion,
did the bill pass. Nineteen senators voted in its favor; thirteen
in opposition. Samuel Smith, Giles, and Leib, the three Republican
senators most openly hostile to Madison, voted with the majority.
Except Pennsylvania, the entire representation of no Northern State
declared itself for the war; except Kentucky, every State south of the
Potomac and the Ohio voted for the declaration. Not only was the war
to be a party measure, but it was also sectional; while the Republican
majority, formerly so large, was reduced to dependence on the factious
support of Smith, Giles, and Leib.
The bill with its amendments was at once returned to the House and
passed. Without a moment’s delay the President signed it, and the same
day, June 18, 1812, the war began.
“The President’s proclamation was issued yesterday,” wrote
Richard Rush, the comptroller, to his father, June 20;[176]
... “he visited in person--a thing never known before--all the
offices of the departments of war and the navy, stimulating
everything in a manner worthy of a little commander-in-chief,
with his little round hat and huge cockade.”
In resorting to old-fashioned methods of violence, Congress had also
to decide whether to retain or to throw away its weapons of peaceful
coercion. The Non-importation Act stopped importations from England.
If war should be considered as taking the place of non-importation,
it would have the curious result of restoring trade with England.
Opinions were almost as hotly divided on the question of war with,
or war without, non-importation as on the question of war and peace
itself; while even this detail of policy was distorted by the too
familiar interference of Napoleon,--for the non-importation was a part
of his system, and its retention implied alliance with him, while the
admission of English merchandise would be considered by him almost an
act of war. The non-importation was known to press severely on the
industries of England, but it threatened to paralyze America. In the
absence of taxation, nothing but the admission of British goods into
the United States could so increase the receipts of the Treasury as to
supply the government with its necessary resources. Thus, two paths lay
open. Congress might admit British goods, and by doing so dispense with
internal taxes, relieve the commercial States, and offend France; or
might shut out British goods, disgust the commercial States, double the
burden of the war to America, but distress England and please Napoleon.
War having been declared June 18, on June 19 Langdon Cheves introduced,
from the Committee of Ways and Means, a bill partially suspending the
Non-importation Act. He supported his motion by a letter from Gallatin,
accepting this bill as an alternative to the tax bills. On the same day
news arrived of more American vessels burned by French frigates. Chaos
seemed beyond control. War with England was about to restore commerce
with her; alliance with France was a state of war with her. The war
party proposed to depend on peace taxes at the cost of France their
ally, in the interests of England their enemy; the peace party called
for war taxes to discredit the war; both parties wanted trade with
England with whom they were at war; while every one was displeased with
the necessity of assisting France, the only ally that America possessed
in the world. Serurier went to the Secretary of State to discuss this
extraordinary situation, but found Monroe in no happy temper.[177]
“He began by complaining to me of what, for that matter, I
knew already,--that a considerable number of new American
ships, going to Spain and Portugal and returning, had been
very recently burned by our frigates, and that others had been
destroyed on the voyage even to England. The Secretary of
State on this occasion, and with bitterness, renewed to me his
complaints and those of the Government and of Congress, whose
discontent he represented as having reached its height. I am,
Monseigneur, as weary of hearing these eternal grumblings as of
having to trouble you with them; but I think myself obliged
to transmit to you whatever is said of an official character.
Mr. Monroe averred that for his part, as Secretary of State,
since he had never ceased down to this moment to maintain the
repeal of our decrees, he found himself suddenly compromised in
the face of his friends and of the public, and he must admit
he had almost lost the hope of an arrangement with us. Such
were, Monseigneur, his expressions; after which he retraced
to me the system that the Administration had never ceased
pursuing with constancy and firmness for eighteen months, and
the last act of which had at length been what I had seen, a
formal declaration of war against England by the republic,--‘at
a moment,’ he added, ‘when it feels ill-assured of France, and
is so ill-treated by her.’ He finished at last by saying to me,
with a sort of political coquetry, that he was among his friends
obliged to admit that they had been too weak toward France, and
that perhaps they had been too quick in regard to England.”
Serurier wrote that the bitterness against France was really such
as would have caused a declaration of war against her as well as
against England, if the Administration had not stopped the movement
in Congress; nothing prevented the double war except the military
difficulties in its way. At the moment when, June 23, the French
minister was writing in these terms to the Duc de Bassano, the House
of Representatives was considering the action he feared. Cheves had
proposed to modify the non-importation,--the Federalists moved to
repeal it altogether; and although they were defeated that day in
committee, when Cheves’s bill came before the House no less a champion
than Calhoun rose to advocate the reopening of trade.
Whatever Calhoun in those days did, was boldly and well done; but his
speech of June 24, 1812, against commercial restrictions, was perhaps
the boldest and the best of his early efforts. Neither great courage
nor much intelligence was needed to support war, from the moment war
became a party measure; but an attack on the system of commercial
restriction was a blow at Madison, which belittled Jefferson, and threw
something like contempt on the Republican party from its beginning
twenty years before, down to the actual moment. How gently Calhoun
did this, and yet how firmly he laid his hands on the rein that was
to guide his party into an opposite path, could be seen in his short
speech.
“The restrictive system, as a mode of resistance,” he said,
“and a means of obtaining a redress of our wrongs, has never
been a favorite one with me. I wish not to censure the motives
which dictated it, or to attribute weakness to those who first
resorted to it for a restoration of our rights.... I object to
the restrictive system, and for the following reasons,--because
it does not suit the genius of our people, or that of our
government, or the geographical character of our country.”
With a single gesture, this young statesman of the new school swept
away the statesmanship of Jefferson and Madison, and waved aside
the strongest convictions of his party; but he did it with such
temperate statement, and with so serious a manner, that although he
said in effect little less than had been said for years by Federalists
and enemies, he seemed rather to lead than to oppose. “We have had
a peace like a war: in the name of heaven let us not have the only
thing that is worse,--a war like a peace.” That his voice should be
at once obeyed was not to be expected; but so many Republican members
followed Calhoun, Cheves, and Lowndes, that the Federalists came within
three votes of carrying their point; and so equally divided was the
House that, June 25, when the Federalists returned to the attack and
asked for a committee to report a bill repealing the non-importation,
the House divided sixty against sixty, and the Speaker’s vote alone
defeated the motion.
Greatly to the French minister’s relief the storm passed over; but
the heroic decision of Congress not only to punish England, but to
punish itself by deprivation of everything English,--not only to fight
Napoleon’s battles, but also to fight them under every disadvantage
that Napoleon chose to exact,--could not but increase the vehemence of
Northern hatred against the war, as it was certain to increase Southern
hatred against taxes. Gallatin knew not what to expect. June 26 he
wrote to a friend,[178]--
“We have not money enough to last till January 1 next, and
General Smith is using every endeavor to run us aground by
opposing everything,--treasury notes, double duties, etc. The
Senate is so nearly divided, and the division so increased by
that on the war question, that we can hardly rely on carrying
anything.”
Although Gallatin caused the necessary bills for the war taxes to be
reported to the House June 26, he had no idea of passing them, and was
not surprised when by a vote of seventy-two to forty-six the House
postponed them to the next session, Calhoun and Cheves voting with the
Federalists against postponement. This chronic helplessness could not
last in face of war without stopping government itself; and Congress,
with a bad grace, yielded at last to necessity. Even while Gallatin
was complaining, the Senate passed the bill for issuing five millions
in treasury notes. June 30 it passed the bill doubling the duties on
imports. In rapid succession, such other bills as were most needed
by Government were put upon their passage; and July 6 the exhausted
Congress adjourned, glad to escape its struggle with the novel problems
of war.
In American history few sessions of Congress left a deeper mark than
that of 1811–12; but in the midst of the war excitement several Acts
of high importance almost escaped public notice. As far-reaching as
the declaration of war itself was the Act, approved April 8, 1812,
declaring the State of Louisiana to be admitted into the Union.
Representatives of the Eastern States once more protested against the
admission of new territory without consulting the States themselves;
but Congress followed up the act by one more open to question.
West Florida had remained hitherto in the condition of its military
occupation a year before. Congress had then found the problem too
hard to solve on any theory of treaty or popular rights; but in the
excitement of the war fever Government acted on the new principle
that West Florida, which had been seized because it was a part of
Louisiana, should be treated as though it were a conquered territory.
An Act of Congress, approved April 14, divided the district in halves
at the Pearl River, and annexed the western half--against the expressed
wishes of its citizens[179]--to the new State of Louisiana; the eastern
portion was incorporated in the Mississippi Territory by an Act
approved May 14, 1812.
To the territory of West Florida the United States had no right. Their
ownership of the country between the Iberville and the Perdido was
a usurpation which no other country was bound to regard; indeed, at
the moment when Congress subjected the shores of Mobile Bay to the
Mississippi Territorial government, Mobile was still garrisoned by
a Spanish force and ruled by the Spanish people. The case of West
Florida was the more curious, because in after years the United States
government, in order to obtain a title good beyond its own borders,
accepted the territory as a formal grant from the King of Spain.
Ferdinand VII., the grantor and only rightful interpreter of his own
grant,[180] inserted an article into the treaty of 1819 which was
intended by him to discredit, and did in fact ignore, the usurpations
of the United States: “His Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States,
in full property and sovereignty, all the territories which belong to
him situated to the eastward of the Mississippi, known by the names
of East and West Florida.”[181] According to the Acts of Congress, no
territory known as West Florida belonged to the King of Spain, but had
been ceded to the United States as a part of Louisiana. The admission
by treaty in 1819 that Ferdinand VII. was still sovereign over any
territory known by the name of West Florida, threw discredit on the
previous acts of President and Congress, and following the confusion
due to the contradictory systems they had pursued, created a chaos
which neither proclamations, Acts of Congress, treaties, nor decisions
of the courts, numerous and positive as they might be, could reduce to
order. History cannot tell by what single title the United States hold
West Florida.
East Florida threatened to become a worse annoyance. In January, 1811,
as the story has told, the President, under authority of a secret Act
of Congress, sent George Matthews and John McKee to take possession,
under certain circumstances, of Mobile and Fernandina. Their written
instructions were singularly loose.[182] In general they were to take
possession of East Florida only in case the Spanish authorities or
“the existing local authority” should wish it, or in case of actual
British interference; but their conduct was to be “regulated by the
dictates of their own judgments, on a close view and accurate knowledge
of the precise state of things there, and of the real disposition of
the Spanish government.” Besides these written instructions, Matthews
professed to be guided by verbal explanations of a stronger character.
With the precedent of Baton Rouge before his eyes, Matthews could not
but assume that he was sent to St. Mary’s for a practical object; and
he found there a condition of affairs that seemed to warrant him in
acting with energy. St. Mary’s River was filled with British vessels
engaged in smuggling British merchandise into the United States in
defiance of the Non-importation Act; while Amelia Island, on which
the town of Fernandina stood, was a smuggling depot, and the Spanish
authority an empty form, useful only for the protection of illicit
trade.
Matthews’s official reports assumed as a matter of course an intention
in his Government to possess itself of East Florida. His letters made
no disguise of his own acts or intentions. After six months of inquiry,
he wrote to Secretary Monroe, Aug. 3, 1811, a plain account of the
measures necessary to be taken:[183]--
“I ascertained that the quiet possession of East Florida could
not be obtained by an amicable negotiation with the powers
that exist there; ... that the inhabitants of the province are
ripe for revolt. They are, however, incompetent to effect a
thorough revolution without external aid. If two hundred stand
of arms and fifty horsemen’s swords were in their possession, I
am confident they would commence the business, and with a fair
prospect of success. These could be put into their hands by
consigning them to the commanding officer at this post, subject
to my order. I shall use the most discreet management to prevent
the United States being committed; and although I cannot vouch
for the event, I think there would be but little danger.”
In October, Matthews communicated freely his plans and wishes to
Senator Crawford, and commissioned him to explain them to the
Government.[184] The President was fully acquainted with them, and
during six months offered no objection, but waited in silence for
Matthews to effect the revolution thus prepared.
Matthews carried out his mission by following the West Florida
precedent as he understood it. March 16, 1812, some two hundred
self-styled insurgents crossed the river, landed on Amelia Island, and
summoned the garrison of Fernandina to surrender. At the same time the
American gunboats, stationed on the river, took a position to watch the
movement. The Spanish commandant sent to inquire whether the American
gunboats meant to assist the insurgents, and receiving an answer
in the affirmative, he capitulated to the so-called patriots.[185]
Independence was declared; an independent flag was raised; and when
this formality ended, the patriots summoned General Matthews, who
crossed the river with a company of the regular army, and March 19 took
possession of Amelia Island, subject to the President’s approval.
Matthews supposed his measures to be warranted by his instructions, and
thought the Government bound to sustain him; but the Government took
an opposite course. April 4 Monroe wrote to Matthews[186] disavowing
the seizure of Amelia Island, and referring to the precedent of Baton
Rouge as the proper course to have followed. “The United States did not
take possession until after the Spanish authority had been subverted
by a revolutionary proceeding, and the contingency of the country
being thrown into foreign hands had forced itself into view.” Matthews
failed to see why one “revolutionary proceeding” was not as good as
another, or why the fiction of foreign interference might not serve as
well at Fernandina as at Baton Rouge. He was excessively indignant,
and believed his disavowal to be due to the publication of John
Henry’s letters, which had made the President suddenly sensitive to
the awkwardness of doing openly acts which he imputed as a crime in
the governor-general of Canada to imagine. Senator Crawford afterward
wrote to Monroe[187] that this impression was by no means confined to
Matthews; indeed, Crawford himself seemed to share it. Yet governments
were not bound to make explanations to their instruments; and Matthews
was told only that he had mistaken the President’s wishes, and that his
instructions were meant in good faith to require that the Spaniards
should of their own accord ask to surrender their territory to the
United States.
April 24 Madison wrote to Jefferson:[188] “In East Florida Matthews
has been playing a strange comedy in the face of common-sense as
well as of his instructions. His extravagances place us in the most
distressing dilemma.” The dilemma consisted in the President’s wish to
maintain possession of Amelia Island, and the difficulty of doing it.
In explaining the matter to the French minister, Monroe made no secret
of the President’s wishes:[189]--
“Mr. Monroe, in communicating the facts to me at one of our
last conversations, told me that General Matthews had gone
beyond his orders; that he was told to observe only; and in
case a third Power, which could be only England, should present
itself to occupy the island, he was to prevent it if possible,
and in case of necessity repulse the disembarking troops. He
added that nevertheless, now that things had reached their
present condition, there would be more danger in retreating
than in advancing; and so, while disavowing the General’s too
precipitate conduct, they would maintain the occupation.”
This decision required some double dealing. April 10 Monroe wrote[190]
to the governor of Georgia, requesting him to take Matthews’s place and
to restore Amelia Island to the Spanish authorities; but this order was
for public use only, and not meant to be carried into effect. May 27
Monroe wrote again,[191] saying:--
“In consequence of the compromitment of the United States to the
inhabitants, you have been already instructed not to withdraw
the troops unless you find that it may be done consistently with
their safety, and to report to the Government the result of your
conferences with the Spanish authorities, with your opinion of
their views, holding in the mean time the ground occupied.”
Governor Mitchell would have been a poor governor and still poorer
politician, had he not read such instructions as an order to hold
Amelia Island as long as possible. Instead of re-establishing the
Spanish authority at Fernandina, he maintained the occupation effected
by Matthews.[192] June 19, the day after declaring war against England,
the House took up the subject on the motion of Troup of Georgia, and in
secret session debated a bill authorizing the President not to withdraw
the troops, but to extend his possession over the whole country of
East and West Florida, and to establish a government there.[193] June
25, by a vote of seventy to forty-eight, the House passed this bill,
which in due time went successfully through all its stages in the
Senate until July 3, when the vote was taken on its passage. Only
then three Northern Republicans,--Bradley of Vermont, Howell of Rhode
Island, and Leib of Pennsylvania,--joining Giles, Samuel Smith, and
the Federalists, defeated, by a vote of sixteen to fourteen, this
bill which all the President’s friends in both Houses supported as an
Administration measure, and upon which the President promised to act
with decision; but even after its failure the President maintained
possession of Fernandina, with no other authority than the secret Act
of Congress which had been improperly made by Matthews the ground of
usurping possession.
From the pacific theories of 1801 to the military methods of 1812 was
a vast stride. When Congress rose, July 6, 1812, the whole national
frontier and coast from Prairie du Chien to Eastport, from Eastport
to St. Mary’s, from St. Mary’s to New Orleans,--three thousand miles,
incapable of defence,--was open to the attacks of powerful enemies;
while the Government at Washington had taken measures for the military
occupation of the vast foreign territories northward of the Lakes and
southward to the Gulf of Mexico.
CHAPTER XII.
WHILE the Twelfth Congress at Washington from November, 1811, until
July, 1812, struggled with the declaration which was to spread war
westward to the Mississippi River, Napoleon at Paris prepared the
numberless details of the coming campaign that was to ravage Europe
eastward as far as Moscow; and in this fury for destruction, no part
remained for argument or diplomacy. Yet Joel Barlow, full of hope that
he should succeed in solving the problem which had thus far baffled his
Government, reached Paris, Sept. 19, 1811, and began a new experience,
ended a year later at Zarnovitch in Poland by a tragedy in keeping with
the military campaign to which Barlow was in a fashion attached.
Joel Barlow felt himself at home in Paris. In 1788, at the age of
thirty-four, he had first come abroad, and during seventeen exciting
years had been rather French than American. In 1792 the National
Convention conferred on him the privileges of French citizenship,--an
honor then shared only by Washington and Hamilton among Americans.
He felt himself to be best understood and appreciated by Frenchmen.
His return to France in 1812 was, he said, attended by a reception
much more cordial and friendly than that which he had received in
America, in 1805, on his return to his native country after seventeen
years of absence. He settled with delight into his old society, even
into his old house in the Rue Vaugirard, and relished the pleasure
of recovering, with the highest dignity of office, the atmosphere of
refinement which he always keenly enjoyed. Yet when these associations
lost their freshness, and he turned to his diplomatic task, he found
that few lots in life were harder than that of the man who bound
himself to the destinies of Napoleon.
On the success of Barlow’s mission the fate of President Madison might
depend. As long as France maintained her attitude of hostility to the
United States, war against England would be regarded by a majority of
the Northern people with distrust and dislike. On that point Madison
was justly timid. The opposition of New England and New York must be
quieted, and in order to quiet it Madison must prove France to be
honest in respecting American rights; he must show that the decrees
had been really repealed as he had so often and still so obstinately
asserted, and that the vast confiscations of American property under
the authority of those decrees would receive indemnity. The public had
commonly supposed France to be comparatively a slight aggressor; but
to the general surprise, when Congress, before the declaration of war
against England, called for a return of captures under the belligerent
edicts, Monroe’s report showed that the seizures by France and by the
countries under her influence in pursuance of the decrees were not
less numerous than those made by England under the Orders in Council.
The precise values were never known. The confiscations ordered by
Napoleon in Spain, Naples, Holland, Denmark, Hamburg, and on the Baltic
outnumbered those made in his empire; but all these taken together
probably exceeded the actual condemnations in British prize-courts.
This result, hardly expected by the American government, added to its
embarrassment, but was only a part of its grievances against Napoleon.
Not only had France since 1807 surpassed England in her outrages on
American property, but while England encouraged American commerce
with her own possessions, Napoleon systematically prohibited American
commerce with his empire. He forbade American vessels to import sugar
or other colonial produce except by special license; he imposed a duty
of sixty cents a pound on Georgia cotton worth twenty or twenty-five
cents; he refused to take tobacco except in small quantities as a part
of the government monopoly; and he obliged every American ship to carry
for its return cargo two thirds in silks and the other third in wines,
liquors, and such other articles of French produce as he might direct.
The official returns made to Congress showed that in 1811 the United
States exported domestic produce to the amount of $45,294,000, of which
France and Italy took only $1,164,275.
Barlow’s instructions required him to reform these evils, but they
especially insisted upon indemnity for seizures under the decrees.
Haste was required; for Congress could not be expected to adopt
extreme measures against England until France should have made such
concessions as would warrant the American government in drawing a
distinction between the two belligerents. Barlow arrived in Paris
September 19, only to learn that on the same day the Emperor set out
for Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Duc de Bassano received him kindly,
assured him of the Emperor’s order to begin upon business at once, and
listened courteously to the American complaints and demands. Then he
too departed for Holland, whence he returned only November 9, when at
Washington Congress had been already a week in session.
Nothing showed this delay to be intentional; but Napoleon never allowed
delay when he meant to act, and in the present instance he was not
inclined to act. Although the Duc de Bassano made no reply to Barlow,
he found time at Amsterdam to write instructions to Serurier.[194] In
these he declared that all American vessels captured since November,
1810, had been released, except those coming by way of England, which
were not yet condemned, but only sequestered.
“The French government would like to know, before making a
decision, how England would act toward American ships bound for
France. If I return once more on the motives for this delay,
it is only for your personal instruction and without making
it a subject of an official declaration on your part. On this
question you should speak as for yourself; appear ignorant what
are the true motives for still detaining some American ships
which have had communication with England; restrict yourself
to receiving the representations sent you, and to declaring
that you will render an account of them; in short, give no
explanation that would imply that the Decrees of Berlin and
Milan are not entirely revoked.”
While the Emperor was thus secretly determined to enforce his decrees,
he was equally determined to pay no indemnities. Against sacrifices of
money Napoleon always made unconquerable resistance.
In due time Barlow had his audience of reception, and made to the
Emperor a speech, not without flattery. He ventured to mention his
commercial objects, in the hope of calling out an answer that would
suit his purpose. Napoleon’s reply proved for the hundredth time the
danger of risking such experiments:--
“As to the commerce between the two Powers, I desire to
favor it. I am great enough to be just. But on your part you
must defend your dignity against my enemies and those of the
Continent. Have a flag, and I will do for you all that you can
desire.”
In reporting the interview to Monroe, Barlow added that the ambiguity
of the Emperor’s reply made it unfit for publication.[195] Ambiguity
was not the quality that a more sensitive man would have ascribed to a
rebuff so sharp; but whatever the President may have thought, he took
Barlow’s advice. The interview was never made known to Congress.
During the month of November Napoleon busied himself in commercial
questions only in order to show liberality to England at the expense
of America. He extended his system of licenses to the exchange of
French wines for sugar in large quantities, and even to the importation
of coffee, indigo, tea, wool, dyewoods, and other articles, all to
be obtained from England by license.[196] He discovered that his
exchanges would benefit France more than England in the proportion of
three to one. “It is therefore the perfected system that has produced
this result, which had not been expected for several years. Evidently
the system thus established is a permanent system, which can be
made perpetual.”[197] The motive for this discovery might be traced
throughout all his economical experiments. He needed money.
Never had Napoleon’s ministers a harder task to give his acts a color
of consistency. During the months of November and December Barlow
held many interviews with Bassano, and made earnest efforts to obtain
some written pledge in favor of American interests, but without
success. December 19 he wrote that he was almost discouraged by the
unexpected and unreasonable delay.[198] Napoleon made no more seizures,
and released such American vessels as were held for violation of
the decrees; but he conceded nothing in principle, and was far from
abandoning his fiscal system against the United States. In order to
meet Barlow’s complaints, Bassano gathered together every token of
evidence that the decrees were not in force; but while he was asking
the American minister how these facts could be doubted, a French
squadron, Jan. 8, 1812, sailed from Nantes with orders to destroy all
neutral ships bound to or from an enemy’s port. For several months
American commerce was ravaged by these ships under the Emperor’s order,
in pursuance of his decrees. January 19 Napoleon issued another order
of the gravest character. His quarrel with Bernadotte the new king of
Sweden had reached a rupture, and he carried out his threat of seizing
the Swedish provinces south of the Baltic; but his orders to Marshal
Davoust were almost as hostile to the United States as to Sweden:[199]
“As soon as you shall be sure of seizing a great quantity of colonial
merchandise in Swedish Pomerania, you will take possession of that
province; and you will cause to be seized both at Stralsund and Anklam,
in short at all points in Pomerania, whatever colonial merchandise may
be found.” January 28 he wrote again:[200] “I wait with impatience your
report on the colonial merchandise you shall have found in Pomerania.”
He made no exceptions in favor of American property, for his need of
money was greater than ever.
While Bassano amused Joel Barlow with conversations that resulted in
nothing, he drew up a report to the Emperor, to be laid before the
conservative Senate, dealing wholly with the question of neutrals.
Circumstances made the appearance of this report peculiarly mortifying
to Barlow. Jonathan Russell, who had been sent to act as American
_chargé_ at London, wrote to Barlow asking for additional proofs
to satisfy Lord Castlereagh that the decrees were repealed. Barlow
replied, March 2, by a letter to Russell, recounting seven cases of
ships which had been admitted to French ports contrary to the decrees,
while in no case had the decrees been enforced.[201] “It is difficult
to conceive,” he added, “probably impossible to procure, and certainly
insulting to require, a mass of evidence more positive than this or
more conclusive to every unprejudiced mind.” Hardly had he written this
letter when news arrived that French frigates were burning American
vessels on the ocean for infringing the decrees. March 12 he wrote to
Bassano a letter of strong protest against these depredations, and
a demand for redress. His letter received no answer. Had this been
all, gross as the outrage was, nothing need have become public; but
on the heels of this scandal came another more flagrant. March 16 the
“Moniteur” published Bassano’s official report to the Emperor, which
had the character of an Imperial message to the conservative Senate.
This document began by defining neutral rights as claimed by France;
and while one of these claims required that the flag should cover
all goods except arms and other munitions of war, another declared
that no blockade was real except of a port “invested, besieged, in
the presumption of being taken;” and until these principles should be
restored to force by England, “the Decrees of Berlin and Milan must
be enforced toward Powers that let their flags be denationalized; the
ports of the Continent are not to be opened to denationalized flags or
to English merchandise.” Barlow could imagine no way of reconciling
this language with Bassano’s assertions that the decrees were
withdrawn, and he enclosed the report to Monroe in a letter speculating
upon the reason of this contradiction:[202]--
“You will notice that the minister in his report says nothing
particular of the United States, and nothing more precise than
heretofore on the revocation of the decrees.... I am afraid he
is forbidden to designate the United States as out of the gripe
of those decrees, because the Emperor did not like the bill we
have seen before Congress for admitting English goods contracted
for before the Non-importation Law went into operation.”
Barlow could not but maintain that the decrees were repealed; yet the
British government could hardly be required to hold the same opinion.
Taking Bassano’s report as proof that the United States would no longer
maintain the repeal, the Prince Regent issued, April 21, 1812, a formal
declaration, that in case those decrees should at any future time by
an authentic act publicly promulgated be expressly and unconditionally
repealed, then the Orders in Council should be wholly and absolutely
revoked. This step brought matters to a crisis. As soon as the Prince
Regent’s declaration reached Paris, May 1, 1812, Barlow wrote to the
French government a letter declaring that, between Bassano’s report and
the Prince Regent’s declaration, proof that the decrees were repealed
had become absolutely necessary for the United States, and he followed
up his notes by a conversation in which he pressed on the French
minister the danger of further trifling.[203]
Then came the climax of Imperial diplomacy. Neither Talleyrand nor
Champagny had shown repugnance to falsehood; whatever end they wished,
they used naturally and without hesitation the most convenient means.
Yet free as they were from scruples, one might doubt whether Talleyrand
or Champagny would have done what Bassano did; for when the American
minister impatiently demanded some authentic evidence that the decrees
were repealed, Bassano complained that such a demand should be made
when the American government possessed the repealing decree itself.
Barlow was struck dumb with astonishment when the French minister then
passed to him a decree signed by Napoleon at St. Cloud, April 28, 1811,
declaring his previous decrees non-existent for American vessels after
Nov. 1, 1810.[204]
That the American minister should have lost self-possession in the
face of an act so surprising and so unexpected was natural, for
Talleyrand himself could hardly have controlled his features on seeing
this document, which for an entire year had been sought by the whole
world in vain, and which suddenly appeared as a paper so well known
as to need only an allusion. In his embarrassment Barlow asked the
vacant question whether this decree had been published, as though his
surprise could be no greater had the document been printed in the
“Moniteur” and the “National Intelligencer,” or been sent to Congress
with the President’s Annual Message. Bassano replied that it had not
been published, but had been communicated at the time to Jonathan
Russell and sent to Serurier with orders to communicate it to the
Secretary of State. These assertions increased the American minister’s
embarrassment, for they implied a reflection on the American
government which he could not resent without in his turn implying that
Napoleon had invented the story so gravely told. Barlow said no more,
but asked for a copy of the repealing decree, which was sent to him May
10.
If evidence were necessary to show that no such decree was issued April
28, 1811, Napoleon’s correspondence proves that the Emperor did not
consider the subject until April 29, and his note to the Council dated
that day is proof that no such decree had then been adopted.[205] Yet
such a decree might naturally have been afterward ante-dated without
objection. Had the Emperor signed it within the year 1811 he might
have set what date upon it he liked, and need have made no mystery of
the delay. The interest of Bassano’s conduct lay not so much in his
producing an ante-dated paper as in his averring that the paper was
not ante-dated, but had been communicated to the American government
at the time. The flagrancy of the falsehood relieved it from the usual
reproach of an attempt to deceive; but if it did not embarrass Bassano
in the telling, it embarrassed President Madison beyond calculation in
admitting.
Still more characteristic than the calmness with which Bassano made
these announcements to the American minister at Paris, was the
circumstantial gravity with which he repeated them to his own minister
at Washington. Writing the same day, May 10, 1812, he enclosed a copy
of the decree, explaining his reasons for doing so:[206]--
“I have learned from Mr. Barlow that he is not acquainted with
the Decree of April 28, 1811, ... and I have addressed a copy to
him. You yourself, sir, have never acknowledged its reception;
you have never mentioned it in any of your despatches; you
have never dwelt upon it in any of your interviews with the
American Secretary of State. This silence makes me fear that the
communication made of it to you under date of May 2, 1811, did
not reach you, and I think it proper to enclose herewith a new
copy.”
He explained at some length why he had ignored this decree in his
report to the conservative Senate:
“It had become useless to recall in this report a measure in
respect to which no one could longer raise a doubt; it would
have been even improper to specify the Americans by name; it
would have entailed other citations; it would have required too
much prominence to be given to the true motives of the Senatus
Consultum which was to be proposed. The Emperor had reason to
complain of the numerous infractions made by Russia in the
Continental system, in spite of her engagement to co-operate
with and maintain it. Therefore against Russia were directed the
provisions of that report; but although various circumstances
rendered war inevitable, it was still necessary to avoid naming
her while preparing forces against her.”
Bold and often rash a diplomatist as Napoleon was, he still felt that
at the moment of going to war with Russia he could not entirely
disregard the wishes of the United States. In appearance he gave way,
and sacrificed the system so long and so tenaciously defended; but in
yielding, he chose means that involved the United States government in
common responsibility for his previous acts.
Even had the Emperor’s deception stopped there, it would have offered
the most interesting example in American experience of one peculiarity
of his genius; but this was not all. He seemed to grudge the success
which Barlow had wrung from him. One is tempted to think that this
victory cost Barlow his life. The decree he had gained was flung at him
like a missile. Bassano’s letter was dated May 10; the Emperor already,
the day before, had left Paris to take command of his Grand Army on the
Russian frontier, and as yet the negotiation had not advanced a step.
Meanwhile Barlow took a course of his own. Monroe and Madison cared
little for a commercial treaty, but insisted upon indemnities. Barlow,
finding that indemnity was for the present out of the question, showed
great earnestness to make a commercial treaty, and admitted suggestions
altogether displeasing to his Government. Thus June arrived, producing
no change in the attitude of France other than the new decree, which
was as grave an offence to the President’s dignity as though it had
been couched in terms of the lie direct.
Deceived and deserted, Madison was driven without an ally into a war
that required the strongest alliances. Mortified at the figure he had
been made to present, he wrote to Barlow that the shameful conduct
of the French government would be an everlasting reproach to it, and
that if peace were made with England, “the full tide of indignation
with which the public mind here is boiling” would be directed against
France. His anger was the more bitter because of his personal outrage.
The repealing Decree of April, 1811, spared no kind of humiliation,
for it proved, even to himself, his error in asserting that Napoleon
imposed no condition precedent on the original promise to withdraw his
decrees.[207] On that point the Federalists were shown to be right, and
Madison could offer no defence against their charge that he had made
himself a tool of Napoleon.
When Bassano left Paris to follow Napoleon into Russia he intrusted
the negotiation with Barlow to the Duc Dalberg, by birth a German,
who was in the Imperial service. While Dalberg listened to Barlow and
wrote long reports to Bassano, Napoleon, entering Russia June 23, five
days after Congress declared war against Great Britain, advanced to
Wilna in Poland, where he remained until July 17, and then with five
hundred thousand men plunged into the heart of Russia, leaving Bassano
at Wilna with general charge of matters of state. These events made
Barlow conscious that his negotiation was hopeless. His communications
with Dalberg must be sent from Paris to Wilna, and thence to Napoleon
on the road to Moscow, with the certainty of receiving no attention
during the active campaign; while even if Napoleon had been able
to give them ample attention, he would soon have taken offence at
the increasing ill-temper of their tone, and would have been more
likely to show anger than to grant favors. Under new instructions
from Monroe, which were almost a reprimand, Barlow said less and less
about a commercial treaty, and pressed harder for indemnities. Under
instructions from Bassano, dated August 10,[208] Dalberg was obliged to
avoid the discussion of indemnities and to talk only about commerce.
Barlow insisted upon explanations in regard to seventeen American
vessels recently burned at sea under the Decrees of Berlin and Milan;
but no explanation could be obtained from Bassano. When the news
arrived that Congress had declared war against England, Bassano, August
10, renewed his instructions to Dalberg without essential change:[209]--
“As for the commercial advantages that his Majesty may be
disposed to grant the Americans, particularly since the last
measures their Government has taken, communicate to the Minister
of Commerce the different demands of Mr. Barlow; consult with
him to what points and in what proportion these advantages might
be granted, and communicate the result of these interviews to me
before concluding anything in that respect with Mr. Barlow. You
are to encourage his hopes and his confidence in the benevolent
views of his Majesty toward the United States; explain, on the
score of his Majesty’s distance and the importance of his actual
occupations, the kind of languor of the negotiation which has
been begun, and the failure to decide some of the questions
proposed by that minister; and you can point him to the American
declaration of war against England as a motive the more for
removing from their proposed arrangements with France whatever
would tend to complicate them and too long delay their adoption.”
These instructions showed no change in the Imperial policy even in
consequence of the war declared by the United States against England.
The Decrees of Berlin and Milan were no more repealed by the Decree
of 1811, so unexpectedly produced by Bassano, than they had been by
Champagny’s famous letter of August 5, 1810; no order was ever given
to any official of the empire that carried the revocation into effect.
While Bassano protested to Barlow against implications of the Emperor’s
good faith, Bassano’s colleagues equally protested to Barlow that they
had no authority to exempt American ships from the operation of the
decrees. Decrès, the Minister of Marine, gave orders to his cruisers
to destroy all vessels infringing the decrees, and not even an apology
could be wrung from him for the act. If Barlow lost patience at this
conduct, the Duc Dalberg, with German simple-mindedness, felt even more
acutely the odium of his part, and sent to Bassano remonstrances as
strong as those he received from Barlow. August 11, only one day after
Bassano wrote from Wilna the instruction just quoted, Dalberg wrote
from Paris in language such as had been of late seldom used in the
Emperor’s service:[210]--
“If we wish to inspire any confidence in the American
government, of what use is an isolated proof of revocation if
a little while afterward another proof overthrows it, and if
Mr. Barlow, by his means of information at the Department of
Commerce, at that of the Marine, at the Council of Prizes,
learns that they are ignorant of it; that nothing is changed
in that legislation, and that it may at any instant be again
enforced? Under such circumstances, I pray you, Monsieur le
Duc, to consider what is the good of all the fine phrases
and fair words that I may use to Mr. Barlow when he is every
moment receiving news that our privateers in the Baltic and
on the coast permit themselves the most reckless (_les plus
fortes_) violations against the property of Americans. In
such circumstances the art of diplomacy becomes insufficient, a
sorry game (_triste métier_) of which no one is long the
dupe.”
Dalberg seemed to suspect that Bassano himself knew little of the true
situation:--
“Your Excellency is perhaps not informed of the complaints made
by Americans to Mr. Barlow. If you believe that, while nothing
is settled in regard to American navigation, the Americans
enjoy the favor of navigating freely, of being well treated in
our ports, and of being exposed to no annoyance, you deceive
yourself. What with the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, whose
revocation is not yet known to the authorities; what with our
forms of custom-house examinations; what with the multiplied
obstacles to all commercial movement,--this is impossible.”
Plain as such language was, it could have no effect; for Bassano could
do nothing without Napoleon’s approval, and Napoleon was already beyond
reach. September 7 he fought the battle of Borodino; September 15 he
entered Moscow.
During all these months Barlow received by every packet despatches
more and more decided from Monroe, letters more and more threatening
from Madison. He told Dalberg in substance that these orders left
no choice except between indemnities and war. Dalberg reported his
language faithfully to Bassano; and Bassano, struggling with the
increasing difficulties of his position, invented a new expedient for
gaining time. While Napoleon remained at Moscow, unable to advance
and unwilling to retreat, Bassano wrote, October 11, from Wilna a
letter to Barlow saying that the Emperor, regretting the delay which
attended negotiation conducted at so great a distance, had put an end
to the Duc Dalberg’s authority and requested Barlow to come in person
to Wilna. The request itself was an outrage, for its motive could not
be mistaken. For an entire year Barlow had seen the French government
elude every demand he made, and he could not fail to understand that
the journey to Wilna caused indefinite further delay, when a letter
of ten lines to Dalberg might remove every obstacle; but however
futile the invitation might be, refusal would have excused the French
government’s inaction. Throughout life Barlow exulted in activity; a
famous traveller, no fatigue or exposure checked his restlessness,
and although approaching his sixtieth year he feared no journey. He
accepted Bassano’s invitation, and October 25 wrote that he should
set out the following day for Wilna. A week earlier, Napoleon quitted
Moscow, and began his retreat to Poland.
Ten days brought Barlow to Berlin, and already Napoleon’s army was
in full flight and in danger of destruction, although the winter had
hardly begun. November 11 Barlow reached Königsberg and plunged into
the wastes of Poland. Everywhere on the road he saw the devastation
of war, and when he reached Wilna, November 18, he found only
confusion. Every one knew that Napoleon was defeated, but no one yet
knew the tragedy that had reduced his army of half a million men
to a desperate remnant numbering some fifty thousand. While Barlow
waited for Napoleon’s arrival, Napoleon struggled through one obstacle
after another until the fatal passage of the Beresina, November 27,
which dissolved his army and caused him to abandon it. December 5, at
midnight, he started for Paris, having sent a courier in advance to
warn the Duc de Bassano, who lost no time in dismissing his guests from
Wilna, where they were no longer safe. Barlow quitted Wilna for Paris
the day before Napoleon left his army; but Napoleon soon passed him on
the road. The weather was very cold, the thermometer thirteen degrees
below zero of Fahrenheit; but Barlow travelled night and day, and after
passing through Warsaw, reached a small village called Zarnovitch near
Cracow. There he was obliged to stop. Fatigue and exposure caused an
acute inflammation of the lungs, which ended his life Dec. 24, 1812. A
week earlier Napoleon had reached Paris.
Barlow’s death passed almost unnoticed in the general catastrophe of
which it was so small a part. Not until March, 1813, was it known
in America; and the news had the less effect because circumstances
were greatly changed. Madison’s earnestness in demanding satisfaction
from France expressed not so much his own feelings as fear of his
domestic opponents. The triumph of Russia and England strengthened the
domestic opposition beyond hope of harmony, and left the President in a
desperate strait. No treaty, either with or without indemnities, could
longer benefit greatly the Administration, while Napoleon’s overthrow
threatened to carry down Madison himself in the general ruin. In his
own words,[211]--
“Had the French emperor not been broken down, as he was to a
degree at variance with all probability and which no human
sagacity could anticipate, can it be doubted that Great Britain
would have been constrained by her own situation and the
demands of her allies to listen to our reasonable terms of
reconciliation? The moment chosen for war would therefore have
been well chosen, if chosen with a reference to the French
expedition against Russia; and although not so chosen, the
coincidence between the war and the expedition promised at the
time to be as favorable as it was fortuitous.”
Thus the year 1812 closed American relations with France in
disappointment and mortification. Whatever hopes Madison might still
cherish, he could not repeat the happy diplomacy of 1778 or of 1803.
From France he could gain nothing. He had challenged a danger more
serious than he ever imagined; for he stood alone in the world in the
face of victorious England.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHILE Napoleon thus tried the temper of America, the Government of
England slowly and with infinite reluctance yielded to American
demands. Not for the first time experience showed that any English
minister whose policy rested on jealousy of America must sooner or
later come to ruin and disgrace.
After the departure of Pinkney and Foster in May, 1811, diplomatic
action was for a time transferred to Washington. The young American
_chargé_ in London, John Spear Smith, could only transmit news
that came officially to his hands. The Marquess Wellesley, still
struggling to reorganize the Ministry, found the Prince Regent less
and less inclined to assist him, until at last he despaired. American
affairs resumed their old position. In June, 1811, Sir William Scott,
after some months of hesitation, rendered final decision that the
French Decrees were still in force, and that in consequence all
American vessels falling within the range of the British Orders in
Council were liable to condemnation.[212] In the Cabinet, Wellesley
urged his colleagues either to negotiate with America or to show
themselves prepared for war; but his colleagues would do neither.[213]
Convinced that the United States would not and could not fight,
Perceval and Eldon, Bathurst and Liverpool, were indifferent to
Wellesley’s discomfort. In the autumn of 1811 nothing in the attitude
of the British government, except its previous hesitation, held out a
hope of change.
Yet many reasons combined to show that concessions were inevitable.
The sweeping ruin that overwhelmed British commerce and industry in
1810 sank deep among the laboring classes in 1811. The seasons doubled
the distress. The winter had been intense, the summer was unfavorable;
wheat rose in the autumn to one hundred and forty-five shillings, or
about thirty-six dollars the quarter, and as the winter of 1811 began,
disorders broke out in the manufacturing districts. The inland counties
reached a state of actual insurrection which no exercise of force
seemed to repress. The American non-importation aggravated the trouble,
and worked unceasingly to shake the authority of Spencer Perceval,
already one of the most unpopular ministers England had ever seen.
Popular distress alone could hardly have effected a change in
Perceval’s system; so great a result was not to be produced by means
hitherto so little regarded. The moment marked an era in English
history, for the new class of laborers, the mill-operatives and other
manufacturing workmen, took for the first time an active share in
shaping legislation. In their hostility to Perceval’s policy they were
backed by their employers; but the united efforts of employers and
workmen were not yet equal to controlling the Government, even though
they were aided by the American non-importation. They worried Perceval,
but did not break him down. At the close of 1811 he showed still no
signs of yielding; but news then arrived that the American Congress had
met, and that the President’s Message, the debates in the House, the
tone of the press, and the feelings of the American people announced
war. This was a new force with which Perceval could not deal.
No man of common-sense could charge England with want of courage, for
if ever a nation had fought its way, England had a right to claim
whatever credit such a career bestowed; but England lived in war, she
knew its exact cost, and at that moment she could not afford it. The
most bigoted Tory could see that if Napoleon succeeded in his coming
attack on Russia, as he had hitherto succeeded in every war he had
undertaken in Europe even when circumstances were less favorable,
he would need only the aid of America to ruin beyond redemption the
trade and finances of Great Britain. Little as Englishmen believed in
the military capacity of the United States, they needed too much the
markets and products of America to challenge war.
The gradual decline of the domineering tone which Canning had made
fashionable offered a curious study in politics. In 1807 the affair of
the “Little Belt” would have caused violent anger; in 1812 it created
hardly a flurry. The Tory “Courier” talked wildly, but the “Times” took
the matter with calmness; the Ministry showed no offence, and within
a few weeks the affair was forgotten. Even after this irritation,
the British public seemed pleased rather than angered to learn that
Lord Wellesley had yielded complete apology and redress to America
for the “Chesapeake” outrage. The commercial class for many months
expected energetic retaliation by their government against the American
Non-importation Act; but in September this idea was laid aside, and
no one complained. Little by little the press took a defensive tone.
In the place of threats the newspapers were filled with complaints.
America was unfair, unreasonable, unjust; she called on England to
admit that the French Decrees were repealed when in fact they were
still in force; she threatened war; she hectored and bullied,--but the
more dignified course required England to be temperate though firm.
Parliament met Jan. 7, 1812, and the Prince Regent’s speech was
studiously moderate in its reference to the United States. In the
Commons, January 8, Whitbread attacked ministers for their failure to
conciliate America; and Spencer Perceval replied in a manner that could
hardly have satisfied himself.
“He would allow,” he said,[214] “that a war with America would
be an evil to Great Britain, but he also knew that such a war
would be a greater evil to America. As an evil to America he
was anxious to avert it; he looked upon America as accessory to
the prosperity and welfare of Great Britain, and would be sorry
to see her impoverished, crushed, or destroyed.... Sure he was
that no one could construe those truly conciliatory dispositions
of England into fear; but he was of the opinion that England,
conscious of her own dignity, could bear more from America for
peace’s sake than from any other Power on earth.”
This sentiment was the more significant because the latest news showed
that England in the immediate future would be obliged to bear a great
deal from America. The news became every day more and more alarming,
and was reinforced by steadily increasing outcry from Birmingham,
Liverpool, Nottingham, Hull, ending in a general agitation organized
by active radicals, with Brougham at their head. So rapidly was one
attack followed by another, that Perceval and his lieutenants--George
Rose and James Stephen--could no longer carry their points by mere
weight of office. The Marquess Wellesley, refusing to serve longer
under Perceval, resigned from the Cabinet January 16, and no one felt
confident that Perceval could supply his place. During more than a
month negotiations continued without result, until, February 22, Lord
Castlereagh received the appointment of Foreign Secretary.
During this interval the movement against the Orders in Council gained
strength. In the Commons, February 13, another debate occurred when
Whitbread, in a strong American speech, moved for the diplomatic
correspondence with the United States, and was answered with some
temper by Stephen and Perceval. Stephen went so far as to declare,--and
whatever he declared he certainly believed,--that “nothing but the
utmost aversion to a quarrel with America would have enabled this
country to have borne so much. So far from having done anything to
provoke a rupture with America, the strongest, most persevering, and
almost even humiliating means had been employed to avoid it;”[215]
but he would not surrender to her the carrying and coasting trade
of Europe even to prevent a war. Perceval spoke more evasively than
usual, defending his commercial system as one that had been begun by
his Whig predecessors, and throwing the blame for its irregularities
on Napoleon’s decrees; but although that day he was supposed to be in
extreme peril of losing his majority, he closed his speech by declaring
that sooner than yield to the repeal of the Orders in Council he
would refuse share in any Administration. Alexander Baring answered
that in this case war could hardly be avoided, and made an earnest
appeal, founded on the distress of the manufacturing towns, in favor
of the direct interference of Parliament to overrule the minister.
Even William Wilberforce, whose speeches sometimes recalled those of
Polonius, and whose hesitations generally marked the decline rather
than the rise of a Ministry in power, felt himself constrained to say
that “there was not at all times a sufficient attention in this country
to the spirit of conciliation toward other countries, and particularly
toward America. It would be well if persons in high situations in
government had been more abundant in their civilities to that nation.”
Again, five days afterward, Baring attacked Perceval by an embarrassing
motion on the subject of licenses. No such scandal as the license
system had been known in England since the monopolies of the Tudors and
Stuarts. Most of the trade between Great Britain and the Continent was
conducted by the Board of Trade on one side and Napoleon on the other,
under special licenses issued for the carriage of specified articles.
In 1807 the number of such licenses amounted to sixteen hundred; in
1810 they reached eighteen thousand. Owing to practical difficulties
and to Napoleon’s dislike, American vessels took few licenses. A
nondescript class of so-called neutrals under the flags of Pappenberg,
Kniphausen, and Varel, carrying double licenses and double sets of
papers, served as the agents for this curious commerce which reeked
with fraud and perjury. In the case of the “Æolus,” Aug. 8, 1810, the
Court said: “It is a matter perfectly notorious that we are carrying on
the trade of the whole world under simulated and disguised papers. The
commerce of the world unavoidably assumes a disguise; these disguises
we ourselves are under the necessity of employing, with simulation and
dissimulation.” Dr. Joseph Phillimore, perhaps the highest authority
on civil law in England, in two strong pamphlets[216] declared that
ancient rules and practices had been rendered obsolete, so that the
Admiralty Courts were no longer occupied with the law of nations, but
only with the interpretation of licenses; and while the property of
enemies was as invariably restored as formerly it had been condemned,
the condemnation of true neutral property had become as much a matter
of course as had been its restitution a few years before. No one, even
among the sternest supporters of the Orders in Council, ventured to
defend the licenses on any other ground than that of their necessity.
Baring’s motion called up Perceval again. “The only principle on
which Government acted,” said he,[217] “was to secure to the natives
of England that trade by means of licenses, the profits of which
without them would devolve to the hands of aliens.” This admission, or
avowal, seemed to yield the whole ground of complaint which America
had taken; neither Perceval nor Rose ventured to defend the licenses
as in themselves deserving support; they stood only by the system.
Their attitude led to another and more famous debate, which added an
interesting chapter to the history of England.
In the Lords, February 28, the Marquess of Lansdowne moved for a
committee to consider the subject of the Orders in Council. Like
all that Lord Lansdowne did, his speech was temperate and able;
but his arguments were the same that have been so often repeated.
Lord Bathurst, President of the Board of Trade, replied. Bathurst’s
argument was singularly free from the faults of Perceval and Rose; and
he went to the verge of destroying his own case by avowing that in
the clamor raised about the Orders in Council no one could say what
those orders were, or what would be the consequences of yielding to
American demands. He was sure that France had suffered from the effect
of the system, but he was not so certain that England had been also
a sufferer, while he maintained that the licenses tended to diminish
the spirit of perjury, and that the abandonment of licenses would only
place an additional obstacle in the way of trade. “Were they to put
restraints on the freedom of British commerce for the simple purpose
of giving the trade of Europe to the Americans?” This avowal, like
those made by Perceval and Stephen, seemed to concede the justice of
American complaints; but perhaps it admitted only the reply made by
Lord Holland, who said in plain words that the choice lay between the
orders and war, and that he could not suppose the orders to be their
Lordships’ preference. Lansdowne’s motion was rejected by a vote of one
hundred and thirty-five to seventy-one.
In the Commons the great debate took place March 3, when Henry Brougham
repeated Lansdowne’s motion for a committee, after a speech showing
as much self-restraint as clearness and force. In reply, George Rose
offered a general denial of the facts which Brougham alleged. He denied
that the orders injured the British export trade; that the license
system injured British shipping or increased perjury; or that the
orders caused manufacturing distress. On all these points he arrayed
statistics in his support; but toward the close of his speech he made
a remark--such as had been made many times by every defender of the
system--surrendering in effect the point in diplomatic dispute between
England and the United States. “The honorable gentleman,” he said,[218]
“had not been correct in calling these orders a system of retaliation;
they were rather a system of self-defence, a plan to prevent the whole
trade of the world from being snatched away from her.” He was followed
by Alexander Baring, who condemned the policy which built up the
shipping of France at the cost of American shipping, and manufactures
in Massachusetts at the cost of British manufactures; and after
Baring came James Stephen, who repeated his old arguments without
essential change. Then toward midnight, after these four long, serious,
statistical speeches, such as usually emptied the House, George Canning
rose; and so keen was the interest and anxiety of the moment that
more than four hundred members crowded in, curious to learn by what
ingenuity Canning would defend a threatened vote against those Orders
in Council of which he had been so long the champion.[219]
“For these Orders in Council,” he said, “so far as he had been
connected with their adoption, he was ready to take his full
share of responsibility. What orders were truly meant? Why,
they were the Orders in Council which, until he had heard the
speech of the right honorable gentleman (Mr. Rose), he had
always looked upon as retaliatory upon the enemy; which had
been so understood in every instance, until the Vice-President
of the Board of Trade, in contradiction to every statement
which had hitherto been given to the public on the subject,--in
contradiction to every document in office respecting these
Orders,--in contradiction to every communication which he
(Mr. Canning) had made, and every despatch written in his
official character explanatory of their nature and spirit,--in
contradiction to every speech which had been made in Parliament
in defence of them,--had thought proper to represent them
not as measures retaliatory upon the enemy, but as measures
of self-defence. Self-defence, but not retaliatory!... If
they were to be in no larger a sense retaliatory than as
self-defensive,--if they were not to retaliate directly
against the enemy, but to be defensive against a rival in
trade,--if they were not to be belligerent measures, but purely
defensive,--then all the arguments by which they had hitherto
been supported would fail to apply.”
Again and again Canning returned to this slip of the tongue by which
Rose had given him pretext for turning against the Administration.
“If at any time it should appear that these orders did not
retort his aggression upon the enemy, but operated solely to
the injury of the neutrals; if even the British government
should appear to have interfered to relieve their pressure upon
the enemy,--they would stand upon far different principles
than those upon which he had supported them, and would in his
opinion be very proper objects for examination and revision....
Were he called upon to state his opinion of what he conceived
the Orders in Council should be, he could not do it more fully
than by saying that they were most perfect as they approached
toward a belligerent measure and receded from a commercial one.
Let them have for their object the pressure and distress of the
enemy, for the purpose of compelling him to listen to terms
of accommodation, and not for the narrow policy of wringing
temporary concessions from him with which they might go to his
own market.”
To the amazement of friend and foe Canning next attacked the license
system as one of which he had little knowledge, but whose details
required investigation. As for America, as he was the last man who
would lay the honor of the country at her feet, so would he be among
the first to go far in the work of honorable conciliation, and he
would not oppose the motion before the House because it might have
incidentally the effect of conciliating her. Finally, if the account
of Plumer Ward be true, “he concluded the first dull and flat speech I
ever heard him make, without the smallest support from the House, and
sat down without a cheer and almost without its being known that he had
finished.”
Plumer Ward was a passionate admirer of Spencer Perceval, and his anger
with Canning showed the soreness caused by Canning’s sudden change
of front. Perceval was obliged to rescue Rose, but in doing so made
the case worse rather than better as far as regarded America. Having
declared that the orders were strictly retaliatory, he added, in the
same breath, that “the object of Government was to protect and to force
the trade of this country.... The object of the Orders in Council was
not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent
to trade with us.” Had this assertion been made by Madison or Brougham
it would have been instantly contradicted; but Perceval’s silence was
still less creditable than his avowals. No one knew so well as Perceval
where to strike with effect at Canning; for not only could he show that
from the first Canning was privy to the system of forcing commerce upon
France, but he had preserved the letter in which Canning at the outset
advised him to keep out of sight the exceptions which gave the measure
the air of a commercial rather than a political transaction. Never had
a distinguished man exposed himself with less caution than Canning,
by declaring that in his opinion the orders required revision from the
moment the British government should appear to intervene to relax their
pressure upon the enemy; for during two years of his official life he
had given steady though silent support to the Board of Trade in its
persistent efforts to supply France, by means of licenses in thousands
and smuggling without limit, with every product known to commerce.
Such conduct challenged the severest retort, but Perceval made none.
He would have been superior to the statesmen of his time had he felt
the true nature of that sleight-of-hand which he and Canning practised,
and which, like the trick of blacklegs on the race-course, consisted
in shuffling together the two words, “Retaliation--Self-defence!
Self-defence--Retaliation!” but he could at least understand the
impossibility of exposing Canning without also exposing himself.
The debate ended in a division. One hundred and forty-four members,
including Canning and Wilberforce, went into the lobby with Brougham.
Only a majority of seventy-two remained to be overcome; and to
Brougham’s energetic nature such a majority offered an incentive to
exertion. Perceval’s friends, on the other hand, exulted because this
majority of seventy-two stood by him against the combined forces of
Wellesley, Canning, the Radicals, and the Whigs.[220] Except for one
danger, Perceval and his system were still secure; but the fear that
the Americans meant at last to fight gave him no rest,--it dogged his
steps, and galled him at every motion. Neither Rose nor James Stephen
could prove, by any statistics under the control of the Board of
Trade, that their system would benefit British commerce if it produced
an American war. Already the north and west of England, the inland
counties, the seaports, had risen in insurrection against the orders.
Stephen and Rose exhausted themselves and the House to prove that the
balance of profit was still in England’s favor; but what would become
of their balance-sheet if they were obliged to add the cost of an
American war to the debtor side of their account?
In the effort to strengthen his Ministry Perceval persuaded Lord
Sidmouth to enter the Cabinet, but only on condition that the orders
should be left an open question. Sidmouth plainly said that he would
rather give up the orders than face an American war.[221] He also asked
that the license system should be renounced. Perceval replied that
this would be a greater sacrifice than if the licenses had never been
granted.[222] Lord Sidmouth was not a great man,--Canning despised
his abilities, and the Prince of Wales called him a blockhead;[223]
but he was, except Lord Castlereagh, the only ally to be found, and
Perceval accepted him on his own terms. The new Cabinet at once
took the American question in hand, and Castlereagh then wrote his
instructions of April 10 to Foster, making use of Bassano’s report to
justify England’s persistence in the orders; but besides this despatch
Castlereagh wrote another of the same date, in which Sidmouth’s idea
took shape. If the United States would restore intercourse with
Great Britain, the British government would issue no more licenses
and would resort to rigorous blockades.[224] This great concession
showed how rapidly Perceval lost ground; but this was not yet all.
April 21 the Prince Regent issued his formal declaration that whenever
the French government should publish an authentic Act expressly and
unconditionally repealing the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the Orders
in Council, including that of Jan. 7, 1807, should be wholly and
absolutely revoked.
Had the United States at that moment been so fortunate as to enjoy
the services of Pinkney in London, or of any man whose position and
abilities raised him above the confusion of party politics, he might
have convinced them that war was unnecessary. The mere threat was
sufficient. Sidmouth’s entrance into the Cabinet showed the change
of current, and once Perceval began to give way, he could not stop.
Unfortunately the United States had no longer a minister in England. In
July, 1811, the President ordered Jonathan Russell to London to act
as _chargé_ until a minister should be appointed, which he added
would be done as soon as Congress met;[225] but he changed his mind and
appointed no minister, while Jonathan Russell, seeing that Perceval
commanded a majority and was determined to maintain his system,
reported the situation as hopeless.[226]
Brougham, without taking the precaution of giving Russell the daily
information he so much needed, devoted all his energies to pressing
the popular movement against the Orders in Council. Petition after
petition was hurried to Parliament, and almost every petition caused
a new debate. George Rose, who possessed an unhappy bluntness, in
conversation with a Birmingham committee said that the two countries
were like two men with their heads in buckets of water, whose struggle
was which of the two could hold out longest before suffocation. The
phrase was seized as a catchword, and helped agitation. April 28
Lord Stanley, in the House, renewed the motion for a committee on
the petitions against the orders. Perceval had been asked whether he
would consent to the committee, and had refused; but on consulting his
followers he found such symptoms of disaffection as obliged him to
yield rather than face a defeat. George Rose then announced, greatly
against his will, that as a matter of respect to the petitioners
he would no longer oppose their request; Castlereagh and Perceval,
cautioning the House that nothing need be expected from the
investigation, followed Rose; while Stephen, after denouncing as a
foul libel the charge that the orders had been invented to extend the
commerce of Great Britain, also yielded to the committee “as a negative
good, and to prevent misconstruction.”
Stimulated by the threatening news from America, Brougham pressed with
his utmost energy the victory he had won. The committee immediately
began its examination of witnesses, who appeared from every quarter to
prove that the Orders in Council and the subsequent non-importation had
ruined large branches of British trade, and had lopped away a market
that consumed British products to the value of more than ten million
pounds sterling a year. Perceval and Stephen did their best to stem the
tide, but were slowly overborne, and seemed soon to struggle only for
delay.
Then followed a melodramatic change. May 11, as the prime minister
entered the House to attend the investigation, persons about the
door heard the report of a pistol, and saw Spencer Perceval fall
forward shot through the heart. By the hand of a lunatic moved only
by imaginary personal motives, this minister, who seemed in no way
a tragical figure, became the victim of a tragedy without example
in modern English history; but although England had never been in a
situation more desperate, the true importance of Spencer Perceval was
far from great, and when he vanished in the flash of a pistol from the
stage where he seemed to fill the most considerable part, he stood
already on the verge of overthrow. His death relieved England of a
burden. Brougham would not allow his inquiry to be suspended, and the
premier’s assassination rather concealed than revealed the defeat his
system must have suffered.
During the negotiations which followed, in the midst of difficulties
in forming a new Ministry, Castlereagh received from Jonathan
Russell Napoleon’s clandestine Decree of Repeal. Brougham asked,
May 22, what construction was to be put by ministers on this paper.
Castlereagh replied that the decree was a trick disgraceful to any
civilized government, and contained nothing to satisfy the conditions
required by England. Apart from the subordinate detail that his view
of the decree was correct, his remarks meant nothing. The alarm
caused by news that Congress had imposed an embargo as the last
step before war, the annoyance created by John Henry’s revelations
and Castlereagh’s lame defence, the weight of evidence pressing on
Parliament against the Orders in Council, the absence of a strong or
permanent Ministry,--these influences, gaining from day to day, forced
the conviction that a change of system must take place. June 8 Lord
Liverpool announced that he had formed an Administration, and would
deal in due course with the Orders in Council. June 16 Brougham made
his motion for a repeal of the orders. When he began his speech he did
not know what part the new Ministry would take, but while he unfolded
his long and luminous argument he noticed that James Stephen failed
to appear in the House. This absence could mean only that Stephen had
been deserted by ministers; and doubt ceased when Brougham and Baring
ended, for then Lord Castlereagh--after Perceval’s death the leader of
the House--rose and awkwardly announced that the Government, though
till within three or four days unable to deliberate on the subject, had
decided to suspend immediately the Orders in Council.
Thus ended the long struggle waged for five years by the United States
against the most illiberal Government known in England within modern
times. Never since the Definitive Treaty of Peace had America won so
complete a triumph, for the surrender lacked on England’s part no
element of defeat. Canning never ceased taunting the new Ministry
with their want of courage in yielding without a struggle. The press
submitted with bad grace to the necessity of holding its tongue. Every
one knew that the danger, already almost a certainty, of an American
war chiefly caused the sudden and silent surrender, and that the
Ministry like the people shrank from facing the consequences of their
own folly. Every one cried that England should not suffer herself to
be provoked by the irritating conduct of America; and at a moment
when every word and act of the American government announced war in
the rudest terms, not a voice was heard in England for accepting the
challenge, nor was a musket made ready for defence. The new Ministry
thought the war likely to drive them from office, for they were even
weaker than when Spencer Perceval led them. The “Times” of June 17
declared that whatever might be the necessity of defending British
rights by an American war, yet it would be the most unpopular war ever
known, because every one would say that with happier talents it might
have been avoided. “Indeed,” it added, “every one is so declaring at
the present moment; so that we who have ever been the most strenuous
advocates of the British cause in this dispute are really overwhelmed
by the general clamor.” Bitter as the mortification was, the headlong
abandonment of the Orders in Council called out reproaches only against
the ministers who originally adopted them. “We are most surprised,”
said the “Times” of June 18, “that such acts could ever have received
the sanction of the Ministry when so little was urged in their defence.”
Such concessions were commonly the result rather than the prelude of
war; they were not unlike those by which Talleyrand succeeded, in 1799,
in restoring friendly relations between France and America. Three
months earlier they would have answered their purpose; but the English
were a slow and stubborn race. Perhaps that they should have repealed
the orders at all was more surprising than that they should have waited
five years; but although they acted more quickly and decidedly than was
their custom, Spencer Perceval lived three months too long. The Orders
in Council were abandoned at Westminster June 17; within twenty-four
hours at Washington war was declared; and forty-eight hours later
Napoleon, about to enter Russia, issued the first bulletin of his Grand
Army.
CHAPTER XIV.
FOR civil affairs Americans were more or less trained; but they had
ignored war, and had shown no capacity in their treatment of military
matters. Their little army was not well organized or equipped; its
civil administration was more imperfect than its military, and its
military condition could hardly have been worse. The ten old regiments,
with half-filled ranks, were scattered over an enormous country on
garrison service, from which they could not be safely withdrawn; they
had no experience, and no organization for a campaign, while thirteen
new regiments not yet raised were expected to conquer Canada.
If the army in rank and file was insufficient, its commanding
officers supplied none of its wants. The senior major-general
appointed by President Madison in February, 1812, was Henry Dearborn,
who had retired in 1809 from President Jefferson’s Cabinet into
the Custom-House of Boston. Born in 1751, Dearborn at the time
of his nomination as major-general was in his sixty-second year,
and had never held a higher grade in the army than that of deputy
quartermaster-general in 1781, and colonel of a New Hampshire regiment
after active service in the Revolutionary War had ended.
The other major-general appointed at the same time was Thomas Pinckney,
of South Carolina, who received command of the Southern Department.
Pinckney was a year older than Dearborn; his military service was
chiefly confined to the guerilla campaigns of Marion and Sumter, and to
staff duty as aide to General Gates in the Southern campaign of 1780;
he had been minister in England and Envoy Extraordinary to Spain, where
he negotiated the excellent treaty known by his name; he had been also
a Federalist member of Congress in the stormy sessions from 1797 to
1801,--but none of these services, distinguished as they were, seemed
to explain his appointment as major-general. Macon, whose opinions
commonly reflected those of the Southern people, was astonished at the
choice.
“The nomination of Thomas Pinckney for major-general,” he
wrote,[227] “is cause of grief to all men who wish proper
men appointed; not that he is a Federal or that he is not a
gentleman, but because he is thought not to possess the talents
necessary to his station. I imagine his nomination must have
been produced through the means of P. Hamilton, who is about as
fit for his place as the Indian Prophet would be for Emperor of
Europe. I never was more at a loss to account for any proceeding
than the nomination of Pinckney to be major-general.”
Even the private report that Pinckney had become a Republican did not
reconcile Macon, whose belief that the “fighting secretaries” would not
do for real war became stronger than ever, although he admitted that
some of the military appointments were supposed to be tolerably good.
Of the brigadier-generals the senior was James Wilkinson, born in 1757,
and fifty-five years old in 1812. Wilkinson had recently been tried by
court-martial on a variety of charges, beginning with that of having
been a pensioner of Spain and engaged in treasonable conspiracy; then
of being an accomplice of Aaron Burr; and finally, insubordination,
neglect of duty, wastefulness, and corruption. The court acquitted him,
and February 14 President Madison approved the decision, but added an
irritating reprimand. Yet in spite of acquittal Wilkinson stood in the
worst possible odor, and returned what he considered his wrongs by
bitter and contemptuous hatred for the President and the Secretary of
War.
The next brigadier was Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, who entered
the service in 1808, and was commissioned as brigadier in 1809. Born
in 1754, he was fifty-seven years old, and though understood to be a
good officer, he had as yet enjoyed no opportunity of distinguishing
himself. Next in order came Joseph Bloomfield of New Jersey, nominated
as brigadier-general of the regular army March 27, 1812; on the same
day James Winchester, of Tennessee, was named fourth brigadier; and
April 8 William Hull, of Massachusetts, was appointed fifth in rank.
Bloomfield, a major in the Revolutionary War, had been for the last ten
years Governor of New Jersey. Winchester, another old Revolutionary
officer, originally from Maryland, though mild, generous, and rich, was
not the best choice that might have been made from Tennessee. William
Hull, civil Governor of Michigan since 1805, was a third of the same
class. All were sixty years of age or thereabout, and none belonged to
the regular service, or had ever commanded a regiment in face of an
enemy.
Of the inferior appointments, almost as numerous as the enlistments,
little could be said. Among the officers of the regiment of Light
Artillery raised in 1808, after the “Chesapeake” alarm, was a young
captain named Winfield Scott, born near Petersburg, Virginia, in 1786,
and in the prime of his energies when at the age of twenty-six he saw
the chance of distinction before him. In after life Scott described the
condition of the service as he found it in 1808.
“The army of that day,” he said,[228] “including its general
staff, the three old and the nine new regiments, presented no
pleasing aspect. The old officers had very generally sunk into
either sloth, ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking....
Many of the appointments were positively bad, and a majority
of the remainder indifferent. Party spirit of that day knew no
bounds, and of course was blind to policy. Federalists were
almost entirely excluded from selection, though great numbers
were eager for the field, and in New England and some other
States there were but very few educated Republicans; hence the
selections from those communities consisted mostly of coarse and
ignorant men. In the other States, where there was no lack of
educated men in the dominant party, the appointments consisted
generally of swaggerers, dependants, decayed gentlemen, and
others, ‘fit for nothing else,’ which always turned out utterly
unfit for any military purpose whatever.”
This account of the army of 1808 applied equally, said Scott, to the
appointments of 1812. Perhaps the country would have fared as well
without a regular army, by depending wholly on volunteers, and allowing
the States to choose general officers. In such a case Andrew Jackson
would have taken the place of James Winchester, and William Hull would
never have received an appointment from Massachusetts.
No one in the government gave much thought to the military dangers
created by the war, yet these dangers seemed evident enough to warrant
keen anxiety. The sea-shore was nowhere capable of defence; the
Lakes were unguarded; the Indians of the Northwestern Territory were
already in arms, and known to be waiting only a word from the Canadian
governor-general; while the whole country beyond the Wabash and Maumee
rivers stood nearly defenceless. At Detroit one hundred and twenty
soldiers garrisoned the old British fort; eighty-five men on the
Maumee held Fort Wayne; some fifty men guarded the new stockade called
Fort Harrison, lately built on the Wabash; and fifty-three men, beyond
possibility of rescue, were stationed at Fort Dearborn, or Chicago;
finally, eighty-eight men occupied the Island of Michillimackinaw in
the straits between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. These were all the
military defences of a vast territory, which once lost would need
another war to regain; and these petty garrisons, with the settlers
about them, were certain, in the event of an ordinary mischance, to be
scalped as well as captured. The situation was little better in the
South and Southwest, where the Indians needed only the support of a
British army at New Orleans or Mobile to expel every American garrison
from the territory.
No serious preparations for war had yet been made when the war
began. In January, Congress voted ten new regiments of infantry, two
of artillery, and one of light dragoons; the recruiting began in
March, and in June the Secretary of War reported to Congress that
although no returns had been received from any of the recruiting
offices, yet considering the circumstances “the success which has
attended this service will be found to have equalled any reasonable
expectations.”[229] Eustis was in no way responsible for the failure
of the service, and had no need to volunteer an opinion as to the
reasonable expectations that Congress might entertain. Every one
knew that the enlistments fell far below expectation; but not the
enlistments alone showed torpor. In February, Congress authorized the
President to accept fifty thousand volunteers for one year’s service.
In June, the number of volunteers who had offered themselves was even
smaller than that of regular recruits. In April, Congress authorized
the President to call out one hundred thousand State militia. In
June, no one knew whether all the States would regard the call, and
still less whether the militia would serve beyond the frontier. One
week after declaring war, Congress fixed the war establishment at
twenty-five regiments of infantry, four of artillery, two of dragoons,
and one of riflemen,--making, with the engineers and artificers, an
army of thirty-six thousand seven hundred men; yet the actual force
under arms did not exceed ten thousand, of whom four thousand were
new recruits. Toward no part of the service did the people show a
sympathetic spirit before the war was declared; and even where the war
was most popular, as in Kentucky and Tennessee, men showed themselves
determined to fight in their own way or not at all.
However inexperienced the Government might be, it could not overlook
the necessity of providing for one vital point. Detroit claimed early
attention, and received it. The dangers surrounding Detroit were
evident to any one who searched the map for that remote settlement,
within gunshot of British territory and surrounded by hostile
Indian tribes. The Governor of Michigan, William Hull, a native of
Connecticut, had done good service in the Revolutionary War, but had
reached the age of sixty years without a wish to resume his military
career. He preferred to remain in his civil post, leaving to some
officer of the army the charge of military operations; but he came to
Washington in February, 1812, and urged the Government to take timely
measures for holding the Indians in check. He advised the President
and Cabinet to increase the naval force on Lake Erie, although he
already had at Detroit an armed brig ready to launch, which he thought
sufficient to control the upper lakes. The subject was discussed; but
the delay necessary to create a fleet must have risked, if it did not
insure, the loss of the whole Northwestern Territory, and the President
necessarily decided to march first a force to Detroit strong enough to
secure the frontier, and, if possible, to occupy the whole or part of
the neighboring and friendly British territory in Upper Canada. This
decision Hull seems to have suggested, for he wrote,[230] March 6, to
Secretary Eustis,--
“A part of your army now recruiting may be as well supported and
disciplined at Detroit as at any other place. A force adequate
to the defence of that vulnerable point would prevent a war
with the savages, and probably induce the enemy to abandon the
province of Upper Canada without opposition. The naval force on
the Lakes would in that event fall into our possession, and we
should obtain the command of the waters without the expense of
building such a force.”
This hazardous plan required energy in the American armies, timely
co-operation from Niagara if not from Lake Champlain, and, most of
all, assumed both incompetence and treason in the enemy. Assuming that
Hull would capture the British vessels on the Lakes, the President
made no further provision for a fleet; but, apparently to provide for
simultaneous measures against Lower Canada, the Secretary of War sent
to Boston for General Dearborn, who was to command operations on Lake
Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. Dearborn hastened to Washington
in February, where he remained until the last of April. He submitted
to the Secretary of War what was called a plan of campaign,[231]
recommending that a main army should advance by way of Lake Champlain
upon Montreal, while three corps, composed chiefly of militia, should
enter Canada from Detroit, Niagara, and Sackett’s Harbor. Neither
Dearborn, Hull, Eustis, nor Madison settled the details of the plan or
fixed the time of the combined movement. They could not readily decide
details before Congress acted, and before the ranks of the army were
filled.
While these matters were under discussion in March, the President,
unable to find an army officer fitted to command the force ordered
to Detroit, pressed Governor Hull to reconsider his refusal; and
Hull, yielding to the President’s wish, was appointed, April 8, 1812,
brigadier-general of the United States army, and soon afterward set out
for Ohio. No further understanding had then been reached between him
and Dearborn, or Secretary Eustis, in regard to the military movements
of the coming campaign.
The force destined for Detroit consisted of three regiments of Ohio
militia under Colonels McArthur, Findlay, and Cass, a troop of
Ohio dragoons, and the Fourth Regiment of United States Infantry
which fought at Tippecanoe,--in all about sixteen hundred effective
men, besides a few volunteers. April 1 the militia were ordered to
rendezvous at Dayton, and there, May 25, Hull took command. June
1 they marched, and June 10 were joined at Urbana by the Fourth
Regiment. Detroit was nearly two hundred miles away, and the army as
it advanced was obliged to cut a road through the forest, to bridge
streams and construct causeways; but for such work the militia were
well fitted, and they made good progress. The energy with which the
march was conducted excited the surprise of the British authorities in
Canada,[232] and contrasted well with other military movements of the
year; but vigorous as it was it still lagged behind events. Hull had
moved only some seventy-five miles, when, June 26,[233] he received
from Secretary Eustis a despatch, forwarded by special messenger from
the Department, to warn him that war was close at hand. “Circumstances
have recently occurred,” wrote Secretary Eustis, “which render it
necessary you should pursue your march to Detroit with all possible
expedition. The highest confidence is reposed in your discretion, zeal,
and perseverance.”
[Illustration: THE SEAT OF WAR ABOUT LAKE ERIE.
_Engraved from a Map Published by John Conrad._
Struthers & Co., Engr’s, N. Y.]
The despatch, dated June 18, was sent by the secretary on the morning
of that day in anticipation of the vote taken in Congress a few
hours later.[234] Hull had every reason to understand its meaning,
for he expected to lead his army against the enemy. “In the event of
hostilities,” he had written June 24,[235] “I feel a confidence that
the force under my command will be superior to any which can be opposed
to it. It now exceeds two thousand rank and file.” On receiving the
secretary’s pressing orders Hull left his heavy camp-equipage behind,
and hurried his troops to the Miami, or Maumee, River thirty-five miles
away. There he arrived June 30, and there, to save transportation,
loading a schooner with his personal baggage, his hospital stores,
entrenching tools, and even a trunk containing his instructions and
the muster-rolls of his army, he despatched it, July 1, up the Lake
toward Detroit. He took for granted that he should receive from his
own government the first notice of war; yet he knew that the steamboat
from New York to Albany and the road from Albany to Buffalo, which
carried news to the British forces at Malden, was also the regular mode
of conveyance for Detroit; and he had every reason to suspect that as
his distance in time from Washington was greater, he might learn of war
first from actual hostilities. Hull considered “there was no hazard”
in sending his most valuable papers past Malden;[236] but within
four-and-twenty hours he received a despatch from Secretary Eustis
announcing the declaration of war, and the same day his schooner was
seized by the British in passing Malden to Detroit.
This first disaster told the story of the campaign. The declaration
made at Washington June 18 was published by General Bloomfield at New
York June 20, and reached Montreal by express June 24; the same day
it reached the British Fort George on the Niagara River and was sent
forward to Malden, where it arrived June 30. The despatch to Hull
reached Buffalo two days later than the British express, for it went
by ordinary mail; from Cleveland it was forwarded by express, June
28, by way of Sandusky, to Hull, whom it reached at last, July 2, at
Frenchtown on the river Raisin, forty miles below Detroit.
The slowness of transportation was made conspicuous by another
incident. John Jacob Astor, being engaged in extensive trade with the
Northwestern Indians, for political reasons had been encouraged by
government. Anxious to save the large amount of property exposed to
capture, he not only obtained the earliest intelligence of war, and
warned his agents by expresses, but he also asked and received from
the Treasury orders[237] addressed to the Collectors on the Lakes,
directing them to accept and hold such goods as might be brought from
Astor’s trading-posts. The business of the Treasury as well as that of
Astor was better conducted than that of the War Department. Gallatin’s
letters reached Detroit before Eustis’s despatch reached Hull; and
this incident gave rise to a charge of misconduct and even of treason
against Gallatin himself.[238]
Hull reached Detroit July 5. At that time the town contained about
eight hundred inhabitants within gunshot of the British shore. The fort
was a square enclosure of about two acres, surrounded by an embankment,
a dry ditch, and a double row of pickets. Although capable of standing
a siege, it did not command the river; its supplies were insufficient
for many weeks; it was two hundred miles distant from support, and its
only road of communication ran for sixty miles along the edge of Lake
Erie, where a British fleet on one side and a horde of savages on the
other could always make it impassable. The widely scattered people
of the territory, numbering four or five thousand, promised to become
a serious burden in case of siege or investment. Hull knew in advance
that in a military sense Detroit was a trap.
July 9, four days after his arrival, Hull received orders from
Washington authorizing him to invade Canada:--
“Should the force under your command be equal to the enterprise,
consistent with the safety of your own post, you will take
possession of Malden, and extend your conquests as circumstances
may justify.”
He replied immediately the same day:[239]--
“I am preparing boats, and shall pass the river in a few days.
The British have established a post directly opposite this
place. I have confidence in dislodging them, and of being in
possession of the opposite bank.... The British command the
water and the savages. I do not think the force here equal to
the reduction of Amherstburg (Malden); you therefore must not be
too sanguine.”
Three days later, July 12, his army crossed the river. Not a gun was
fired. The British militia force retired behind the Canard River,
twelve miles below, while Hull and his army occupied Sandwich, and were
well received by the inhabitants.
Hull had many reasons for wishing to avoid a battle. From the first he
looked on the conquest of Canada as a result of his mere appearance.
He began by issuing a proclamation[240] intended to win a peaceful
conquest.
“You will be emancipated,” said the proclamation to the
Canadians, “from tyranny and oppression, and restored to the
dignified station of freemen.... I have a force which will break
down all opposition, and that force is but the vanguard of a
much greater.... The United States offer you peace, liberty, and
security,--your choice lies between these and war, slavery, or
destruction. Choose then; but choose wisely.”...
This proclamation, dated July 12, was spread throughout the province
with no small effect, although it contained an apparently unauthorized
threat, that “no white man found fighting by the side of an Indian
will be taken prisoner; instant death will be his lot.” The people of
the western province were strongly American, and soon to the number
of three hundred and sixty-seven, including deserters from the Malden
garrison, sought protection in the American lines.[241] July 19 Hull
described the situation in very hopeful terms:[242]--
“The army is encamped directly opposite to Detroit. The camp
is entrenched. I am mounting the 24-pounders and making every
preparation for the siege of Malden. The British force, which
in numbers was superior to the American, including militia and
Indians, is daily diminishing. Fifty or sixty (of the militia)
have deserted daily since the American standard was displayed,
and taken protection. They are now reduced to less than one
hundred. In a day or two I expect the whole will desert. The
Indian force is diminishing in the same proportion. I have now
a large council of ten or twelve nations sitting at Brownstown,
and I have no doubt but the result will be that they will remain
neutral. The brig ‘Adams’ was launched on the 4th of July. I
have removed her to Detroit under cover of the cannon, and shall
have her finished and armed as soon as possible. We shall then
have the command of the upper lakes.”
To these statements Hull added a warning, which carried at least equal
weight:--
“If you have not a force at Niagara, the whole force of the
province will be directed against this army.... It is all
important that Niagara should be invested. All our success will
depend upon it.”
While Hull reached this position, July 19, he had a right to presume
that the Secretary of War and Major-General Dearborn were straining
every nerve to support him; but in order to understand Hull’s
situation, readers must know what Dearborn and Eustis were doing.
Dearborn’s movements, compared day by day with those of Hull, show
that after both officers left Washington in April to take command of
their forces, Hull reached Cincinnati May 10, while Dearborn reached
Albany May 3, and wrote, May 8, to Eustis that he had fixed on a
site to be purchased for a military station. “I shall remain here
until the erection of buildings is commenced.... The recruiting seems
going on very well where it has been commenced. There are nearly
three hundred recruits in this State.”[243] If Dearborn was satisfied
with three hundred men as the result of six weeks’ recruiting in New
York State in immediate prospect of a desperate war, he was likely
to take his own duties easily; and in fact, after establishing his
headquarters at Albany for a campaign against Montreal, he wrote, May
21, to the Secretary announcing his departure for Boston: “As the
quartermaster-general arrived here this day I hope to be relieved from
my duties in that line, and shall set out for Pittsfield, Springfield,
and Boston; and shall return here as soon as possible after making the
necessary arrangements at those places.”
Dearborn reached Boston May 26, the day after Hull took command at
Dayton. May 29 he wrote again to Eustis: “I have been here three
days.... There are about three hundred recruits in and near this
town.... Shall return to Albany within a few days.” Dearborn found
business accumulate on his hands. The task of arranging the coast
defences absorbed his mind. He forgot the passage of time, and while
still struggling with questions of gunboats, garrisons, field-pieces,
and enlistments he was surprised, June 22, by receiving the declaration
of war. Actual war threw still more labor and anxiety upon him. The
State of Massachusetts behaved as ill as possible. “Nothing but their
fears,” he wrote,[244] “will prevent their going all lengths.” More
used to politics than to war, Dearborn for the time took no thought of
military movements.
Madison and Eustis seemed at first satisfied with this mode of
conducting the campaign. June 24 Eustis ordered Hull to invade West
Canada, and extend his conquests as far as practicable. Not until June
26 did he write to Dearborn,[245]--
“Having made the necessary arrangements for the defence of the
sea-coast, it is the wish of the President that you should
repair to Albany and prepare the force to be collected at that
place for actual service. It is understood that being possessed
of a full view of the intentions of Government, and being also
acquainted with the disposition of the force under your command,
you will take your own time and give the necessary orders to the
officers on the sea-coast. It is altogether uncertain at what
time General Hull may deem it expedient to commence offensive
operations. The preparations it is presumed will be made to move
in a direction for Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal. On your
arrival at Albany you will be able to form an opinion of the
time required to prepare the troops for action.”
Such orders as those of June 24 to Hull, and of June 26 to Dearborn,
passed beyond bounds of ordinary incapacity, and approached the line
of culpable neglect. Hull was to move when he liked, and Dearborn was
to take his own time at Boston before beginning to organize his army.
Yet the letter to Dearborn was less surprising than Dearborn’s reply.
The major-general in charge of operations against Montreal, Kingston,
and Niagara should have been able to warn his civil superior of the
risks incurred in allowing Hull to make an unsupported movement from
an isolated base such as he knew Detroit to be; but no thought of Hull
found place in Dearborn’s mind. July 1 he wrote:[246]--
“There has been nothing yet done in New England that indicates
an actual state of war, but every means that can be devised
by the Tories is in operation to depress the spirits of the
country. Hence the necessity of every exertion on the part
of the Government for carrying into effect the necessary
measures for defence or offence. We ought to have gunboats
in every harbor on the coast. Many places will have no other
protection, and all require their aid. I shall have doubts as
to the propriety of my leaving this place until I receive your
particular directions after you shall have received my letter.”
Dearborn complained with reason of the difficulties that surrounded
him. Had Congress acted promptly, a large body of volunteers would have
been already engaged, general officers would have been appointed and
ready for service, whereas no general officer except himself was yet
at any post north of New York city. Every day he received from every
quarter complaints of want of men, clothing, and supplies; but his
remaining at Boston to watch the conduct of the State government was
so little likely to overcome these difficulties that at last it made
an unfavorable impression on the Secretary, who wrote, July 9, a more
decided order from Washington:[247]--
“The period has arrived when your services are required at
Albany, and I am instructed by the President to direct, that,
having made arrangements for placing the works on the sea-coast
in the best state of defence your means will permit, ... you
will then order all the recruits not otherwise disposed of to
march immediately to Albany, or some station on Lake Champlain,
to be organized for the invasion of Canada.”
With this official letter Eustis sent a private letter[248] of the same
date, explaining the reason for his order:--
“If ... we divide, distribute, and render inefficient the force
authorized by law, we play the game of the enemy within and
without. District among the field-officers the seaboard!... Go
to Albany or the Lake! The troops shall come to you as fast as
the season will admit, and the blow must be struck. Congress
must not meet without a victory to announce to them.”
Dearborn at Boston replied to these orders, July 13,[249] a few hours
after Hull’s army, six hundred miles away, crossed the Detroit River
into Canada and challenged the whole British force on the lakes.
“For some time past I have been in a very unpleasant situation,
being at a loss to determine whether or not I ought to leave the
sea-coast. As soon as war was declared [June 18] I was desirous
of repairing to Albany, but was prevented by your letters of
May 20 and June 12, and since that time by the extraordinary
management of some of the governors in this quarter. On the
receipt of your letter of June 26 I concluded to set out in
three or four days for Albany, but the remarks in your letter of
the 1st inst. prevented me. But having waited for more explicit
directions until I begin to fear that I may be censured for not
moving, and having taken such measures as circumstances would
permit for the defence of the sea-coast, I have concluded to
leave this place for Albany before the end of the present week
unless I receive orders to remain.”
A general-in-chief unable to decide at the beginning of a campaign in
what part of his department his services were most needed was sure to
be taught the required lesson by the enemy. Even after these warnings
Dearborn made no haste. Another week passed before he announced, July
21, his intended departure for Albany the next day, but without an
army. “Such is the opposition in this State as to render it doubtful
whether much will be done to effect in raising any kind of troops.” The
two months he passed in Boston were thrown away; the enlistments were
so few as to promise nothing, and the governor of Massachusetts barely
condescended to acknowledge without obeying his request for militia to
defend the coast.
July 26, one week after Hull had written that all his success depended
on the movements at Niagara, Dearborn reached Albany and found there
some twelve hundred men not yet organized or equipped. He found also
a letter, dated July 20, from the Secretary of War, showing that the
Government had begun to feel the danger of its position.[250] “I have
been in daily expectation of hearing from General Hull, who probably
arrived in Detroit on the 8th inst.” In fact Hull arrived in Detroit
July 5, and crossed into Canada July 12; but when the secretary wrote,
July 20, he had not yet heard of either event. “You will make such
arrangements with Governor Tompkins,” continued Eustis, “as will
place the militia detached by him for Niagara and other posts on the
lakes under your control; and there should be a communication, and if
practicable a co-operation, throughout the whole frontier.”
The secretary as early as June 24 authorized Hull to invade Canada
West, and his delay in waiting till July 20 before sending similar
orders to the general commanding the force at Niagara was surprising;
but if Eustis’s letter seemed singular, Dearborn’s answer passed
belief. For the first time General Dearborn then asked a question in
regard to his own campaign,--a question so extraordinary that every
critic found it an enigma: “Who is to have command of the operations in
Upper Canada? I take it for granted that my command does not extend to
that distant quarter.”[251]
July 26, when Hull had been already a fortnight on British soil, a
week after he wrote that his success depended on co-operation from
Niagara, the only force at Niagara consisted of a few New York militia,
not co-operating with Hull or under the control of any United States
officer, while the major-general of the Department took it for granted
that Niagara was not included in his command. The Government therefore
expected General Hull, with a force which it knew did not at the
outset exceed two thousand effectives, to march two hundred miles,
constructing a road as he went; to garrison Detroit; to guard at least
sixty miles of road under the enemy’s guns; to face a force in the
field equal to his own, and another savage force of unknown numbers in
his rear; to sweep the Canadian peninsula of British troops; to capture
the fortress at Malden and the British fleet on Lake Erie,--and to
do all this without the aid of a man or a boat between Sandusky and
Quebec.
CHAPTER XV.
GENERAL HULL, two days after entering Canada, called a council
of war, which decided against storming Malden and advised delay. Their
reasons were sufficiently strong. After allowing for the sick-list and
garrison-duty, the four regiments could hardly supply more than three
hundred men each for active service, besides the Michigan militia, on
whom no one felt willing to depend. Hull afterward affirmed that he
had not a thousand effectives; the highest number given in evidence
two years later by Major Jesup was the vague estimate of sixteen or
eighteen hundred men. Probably the utmost exertion could not have
brought fifteen hundred effectives to the Canadian shore. The British
force opposed to them was not to be despised. Colonel St. George
commanding at Malden had with him two hundred men of the Forty-first
British line, fifty men of the Royal Newfoundland regiment, and
thirty men of the Royal Artillery.[252] Besides these two hundred and
eighty veteran troops with their officers, he had July 12 about six
hundred Canadian militia and two hundred and thirty Indians.[253]
The militia deserted rapidly; but after allowing for the desertions,
the garrison at Malden, including Indians, numbered nearly nine hundred
men. The British had also the advantage of position, and of a fleet
whose guns covered and supported their left. They were alarmed and
cautious, but though they exaggerated Hull’s force they meant to meet
him in front of their fortress.[254] Hull’s troops would have shown
superiority to other American forces engaged in the campaign of 1812
had they won a victory.
[Illustration:
MAP
OF
Detroit River
and
ADJACENT COUNTRY,
From an Original Drawing
by a British Eng’r.
Struthers & Co., Engr’s and Pr’s, N.Y.
_Philadelphia: Published by JOHN MELISH, Chestnut Street,
26 August, 1813._]
The Ohio militia, although their officers acquiesced in the opinion of
the council of war, were very unwilling to lose their advantage. If
nothing was to be gained by attack, everything was likely to be lost
by delay. Detachments scoured the country, meeting at first little
resistance, one detachment even crossing the Canard River, flanking and
driving away the guard at the bridge; but the army was not ready to
support the unforeseen success, and the bridge was abandoned. Probably
this moment was the last when an assault could have been made with a
chance of success. July 19 and 24 strong detachments were driven back
with loss, and the outlook became suddenly threatening.
Hull tried to persuade himself that he could take Malden by siege.
July 22 he wrote to Eustis that he was pressing the preparation of
siege guns:[255]--
“I find that entirely new carriages must be built for the
24-pounders and mortars. It will require at least two weeks to
make the necessary preparations. It is in the power of this army
to take Malden by storm, but it would be attended in my opinion
with too great a sacrifice under the present circumstances....
If Malden was in our possession, I could march this army to
Niagara or York (Toronto) in a very short time.”
This was Hull’s last expression of confidence or hope. Thenceforward
every day brought him fatal news. His army lost respect for him in
consequence of his failure to attack Malden; the British strengthened
the defences of Malden, and August 8 received sixty fresh men of the
Forty-first under Colonel Proctor from Niagara;[256] but worse than
mutiny or British reinforcement, news from the Northwest of the most
disastrous character reached Hull at a moment when his hopes of taking
Malden had already faded. August 3 the garrison of Michillimackinaw
arrived at Detroit as prisoners-of-war on parole, announcing that
Mackinaw had capitulated July 17 to a force of British and savages,
and that Hull must prepare to receive the attack of a horde of Indians
coming from the Northwest to fall upon Detroit in the rear.
Hull called another council of war August 5, which, notwithstanding
this news, decided to attack Malden August 8, when the heavy artillery
should be ready; but while they were debating this decision, a party
of Indians under Tecumthe crossing the river routed a detachment of
Findlay’s Ohio regiment on their way to protect a train of supplies
coming from Ohio. The army mail-bags fell into British hands. Hull then
realized that his line of communication between Detroit and the Maumee
River was in danger, if not closed. On the heels of this disaster he
received, August 7, letters from Niagara announcing the passage of
British reinforcements up Lake Ontario to Lake Erie and Malden. Thus
he was called to meet in his front an intrenched force nearly equal to
his own, while at least a thousand Indian warriors were descending on
his flank from Lake Huron, and in the rear his line of communication
and supply could be restored only by detaching half his army for the
purpose.
Hull decided at once to recross the river, and succeeded in effecting
this movement on the night of August 8 without interference from the
enemy; but his position at Detroit was only one degree better than it
had been at Sandwich. He wished to abandon Detroit and retreat behind
the Maumee, and August 9 proposed the measure to some of his principal
officers. Colonel Cass replied that if this were done every man of the
Ohio militia would refuse to obey, and would desert their general;[257]
that the army would fall to pieces if ordered to retreat. Hull
considered that this report obliged him to remain where he was.
This was the situation at Detroit August 9,--a date prominent in the
story; but Hull’s true position could be understood only after learning
what had been done in Canada since the declaration of war.
The difficulties of Canada were even greater than those of the United
States. Upper Canada, extending from Detroit River to the Ottawa within
forty miles of Montreal, contained not more than eighty thousand
persons. The political capital was York, afterward Toronto, on Lake
Ontario. The civil and military command of this vast territory was
in the hands of Brigadier-General Isaac Brock, a native of Guernsey,
forty-two years old, who had been colonel of the Forty-ninth regiment
of the British line, and had served since 1802 in Canada. The
appointment of Brock in October, 1811, to the chief command at the
point of greatest danger was for the British a piece of good fortune,
or good judgment, more rare than could have been appreciated at the
time, even though Dearborn, Hull, Winchester, Wilkinson, Sir George
Prevost himself, and Colonel Proctor were examples of the common
standard. Brock was not only a man of unusual powers, but his powers
were also in their prime. Neither physical nor mental fatigue such
as followed his rivals’ exertions paralyzed his plans. No scruples
about bloodshed stopped him midway to victory. He stood alone in his
superiority as a soldier. Yet his civil difficulties were as great as
his military, for he had to deal with a people better disposed toward
his enemies than toward himself; and he succeeded in both careers.
Under Brock’s direction, during the preceding winter vessels had been
armed on Lake Erie, and Malden had been strengthened by every means
in his power. These precautions gave him from the outset the command
of the lake, which in itself was almost equivalent to the command of
Detroit. Of regular troops he had but few. The entire regular force in
both Canadas at the outbreak of the war numbered six thousand three
hundred and sixty rank and file, or about seven thousand men including
officers. More than five thousand of these were stationed in Lower
Canada. To protect the St. Lawrence, the Niagara, and the Detroit,
Brock had only fourteen hundred and seventy-three rank and file, or
including his own regiment,--the Forty-ninth, then at Montreal,--two
thousand one hundred and thirty-seven men at the utmost.[258]
When the news of war reached him, not knowing where to expect the first
blow, Brock waited, moving between Niagara and Toronto, until Hull’s
passage of the Detroit River, July 12, marked the point of danger and
startled the province almost out of its dependence on England. Sir
George Prevost, the governor-general, reported with much mortification
the effect of Hull’s movement on Upper Canada:
“Immediately upon the invasion of the province,” wrote
Sir George, August 17,[259] “and upon the issuing of the
proclamation by General Hull, which I have the honor of herewith
transmitting, it was plainly perceived by General Brock that
little reliance could be placed upon the militia, and as little
dependence upon the active exertions of any considerable
proportion of the population of the country, unless he was
vested with full power to repress the disaffected spirit which
was daily beginning to show itself, and to restrain and punish
the disorders which threatened to dissolve the whole militia
force which he had assembled. He therefore called together the
provincial legislature on July 27 in the hope that they would
adopt prompt and efficient measures for strengthening the hands
of the Government at a period of such danger and difficulty....
In these reasonable expectations I am sorry to say General Brock
has been miserably disappointed; and a lukewarm and temporizing
spirit, evidently dictated either by the apprehension or the
wish that the enemy might soon be in complete possession of the
country, having prevented the Assembly from adopting any of
the measures proposed to them, they were prorogued on the 5th
instant.”
Brock himself wrote to Lord Liverpool a similar account of his trials:--
“The invasion of the western district by General Hull,” he
wrote August 29,[260] “was productive of very unfavorable
sensations among a large portion of the population, and so
completely were their minds subdued that the Norfolk militia
when ordered to march peremptorily refused. The state of the
country required prompt and vigorous measures. The majority
of the House of Assembly was likewise seized with the same
apprehensions, and may be justly accused of studying more to
avoid by their proceedings incurring the indignation of the
enemy than the honest fulfilment of their duty.... I cannot
hide from your Lordship that I considered my situation at that
time extremely perilous. Not only among the militia was evinced
a disposition to submit tamely, five hundred in the western
district having deserted their ranks, but likewise the Indians
of the Six Nations, who are placed in the heart of the country
on the Grand River, positively refused, with the exception of
a few individuals, taking up arms. They audaciously announced
their intention after the return of some of their chiefs from
General Hull to remain neutral, as if they wished to impose
upon the Government the belief that it was possible they could
sit quietly in the midst of war. This unexpected conduct of
the Indians deterred many good men from leaving their families
and joining the militia; they became more apprehensive of the
internal than of the external enemy, and would willingly have
compromised with the one to secure themselves from the other.”
Brock’s energy counterbalanced every American advantage. Although he
had but about fifteen hundred regular troops in his province, and was
expected to remain on the defensive, the moment war was declared, June
26, he sent to Amherstburg all the force he could control, and ordered
the commandant of the British post at the island of St. Joseph on
Lake Huron to seize the American fort at Michillimackinaw. When Hull
issued his proclamation of July 12, Brock replied by a proclamation of
July 22. To Hull’s threat that no quarter should be given to soldiers
fighting by the side of Indians, Brock responded by “the certain
assurance of retaliation;” and he justified the employment of his
Indian allies by arguments which would have been more conclusive had
he ventured to reveal his desperate situation. In truth the American
complaint that the British employed Indians in war meant nothing to
Brock, whose loss of his province by neglect of any resource at his
command might properly have been punished by the utmost penalty his
Government could inflict.
Brock’s proclamation partly restored confidence. When his legislature
showed backwardness in supporting him he peremptorily dismissed them,
August 5, after they had been only a week in session, and the same day
he left York for Burlington Bay and Lake Erie. Before quitting Lake
Ontario he could not fail to inquire what was the American force at
Niagara and what it was doing. Every one in the neighborhood must have
told him that on the American side five or six hundred militia-men,
commanded by no general officer, were engaged in patrolling thirty-six
miles of river front; that they were undisciplined, ill-clothed,
without tents, shoes, pay, or ammunition, and ready to retreat at any
sign of attack.[261] Secure at that point, Brock hurried toward Malden.
He had ordered reinforcements to collect at Long Point on Lake Erie;
and August 8, while Hull was withdrawing his army from Sandwich to
Detroit, Brock passed Long Point, taking up three hundred men whom he
found there, and coasted night and day to the Detroit River.
Meanwhile, at Washington, Eustis sent letter after letter to Dearborn,
pressing for a movement from Niagara. July 26 he repeated the order of
July 20.[262] August 1 he wrote, enclosing Hull’s despatch of July 19:
“You will make a diversion in his favor at Niagara and at Kingston as
soon as may be practicable, and by such operations as may be within
your control.”
Dearborn awoke August 3 to the consciousness of not having done all
that man could do. He began arrangements for sending a thousand militia
to Niagara, and requested Major-General Stephen Van Rensselaer of the
New York State militia to take command there in person. In a letter of
August 7 to the Secretary of War, he showed sense both of his mistakes
and of their results:[263]--
“It is said that a detachment [of British troops] has been sent
from Niagara by land to Detroit; if so, I should presume before
they can march two hundred and fifty miles General Hull will
receive notice of their approach, and in season to cut them off
before they reach Fort Malden. It is reported that no ordnance
or ammunition have reached Niagara this season, and that there
is great deficiency of these articles. Not having considered
any part of the borders of Upper Canada as within the command
intended for me, I have received no reports or returns from that
quarter, and did not until since my last arrival at this place
give any orders to the commanding officers of the respective
posts on that frontier.”
The consequences of such incapacity showed themselves without an
instant’s delay. While Dearborn was writing from Albany, August 7,
General Brock, as has been told, passed from Lake Ontario to Lake
Erie; and the next morning, when Brock reached his detachment at Long
Point, Hull evacuated Sandwich and retired to Detroit. Had he fallen
back on the Maumee or even to Urbana or Dayton, he would have done only
what Wellington had done more than once in circumstances hardly more
serious, and what Napoleon was about to do three months afterward in
leaving Moscow.
Desperate as Hull’s position was, Dearborn succeeded within
four-and-twenty hours by an extraordinary chance in almost extricating
him, without being conscious that his action more than his neglect
affected Hull’s prospects. This chance was due to the reluctance of the
British government to accept the war. Immediately after the repeal of
the Orders in Council the new Ministry of Lord Liverpool ordered their
minister, Foster, to conclude an armistice in case hostilities had
begun, and requested their governor-general to avoid all extraordinary
preparations. These orders given in good faith by the British
government were exceeded by Sir George Prevost, who had every reason
to wish for peace. Although he could not make an armistice without
leaving General Hull in possession of his conquests in Upper Canada,
which might be extensive, Prevost sent his adjutant-general, Colonel
Baynes, to Albany to ask a cessation of hostilities, and the same day,
August 2, wrote to General Brock warning him of the proposed step.[264]
Colonel Baynes reached headquarters at Albany August 9, and obtained
from Dearborn an agreement that his troops, including those at Niagara,
should act only on the defensive until further orders from Washington:--
“I consider the agreement as favorable at this period,” wrote
Dearborn to Eustis, “for we could not act offensively except at
Detroit for some time, and there it will not probably have any
effect on General Hull or his movements.”[265]
What effect the armistice would have on Hull might be a matter for
prolonged and serious doubt, but that it should have no effect at
all would have occurred to no ordinary commander. Dearborn had been
urgently ordered, August 1, to support Hull by a vigorous offensive
at Niagara, yet August 9 he agreed with the British general to act
only on the defensive at Niagara. Detroit was not under Dearborn’s
command, and therefore was not included in the armistice; but Dearborn
stipulated that the arrangement should include Hull if he wished it.
Orders were sent to Niagara August 9, directing the commanding officers
“to confine their respective operations to defensive measures,” and
with these orders Dearborn wrote to Hull proposing a concurrence
in the armistice. Had Brock moved less quickly, or had the British
government sent its instructions a week earlier, the armistice might
have saved Detroit. The chance was narrow, for even an armistice
unless greatly prolonged would only have weakened Hull, especially
as it could not include Indians other than those actually in British
service; but even the slight chance was lost by the delay until August
9 in sending advices to Niagara and Detroit, for Brock left Long Point
August 8, and was already within four days of Detroit when Dearborn
wrote from Albany. The last possibility of saving Hull was lost by
the inefficiency of American mail-service. The distance from Albany
to Buffalo was about three hundred miles. A letter written at Albany
August 9 should have reached Niagara by express August 13; Dearborn’s
letter to Hull arrived there only on the evening of August 17, and
was forwarded by General Van Rensselaer the next morning.[266] Even
through the British lines it could hardly reach Detroit before August
24.
Slowness such as this in the face of an enemy like Brock, who knew the
value of time, left Hull small chance of escape. Brock with his little
army of three hundred men leaving Long Point August 8 coasted the shore
of the lake, and sailing at night reached Malden late in the evening of
August 13, fully eight days in advance of the armistice.
Meanwhile Hull was besieged at Detroit. Immediately after returning
there, August 8, he sent nearly half his force--a picked body of six
hundred men, including the Fourth U. S. Regiment--to restore his
communications with Ohio. Toward afternoon of the next day, when this
detachment reached the Indian village of Maguaga fourteen miles south
of Detroit, it came upon the British force consisting of about one
hundred and fifty regulars of the Forty-first Regiment, with forty or
fifty militia and Tecumthe’s little band of twenty-five Indians,--about
two hundred and fifty men, all told.[267] After a sharp engagement
the British force was routed and took to its boats, with a loss of
thirteen men or more, while the Indians disappeared in the woods. For
some unsatisfactory reason the detachment did not then march to the
river Raisin to act as convoy for the supplies, and nothing but honor
was acquired by the victory. “It is a painful consideration,” reported
Hull,[268] “that the blood of seventy-five gallant men could only open
the communication as far as the points of their bayonets extended.”
On receiving a report of the battle Hull at first inclined to order
the detachment to the Raisin, but the condition of the weather and the
roads changed his mind, and August 10 he recalled the detachment to
Detroit.
The next four days were thrown away by the Americans. August 13 the
British began to establish a battery on the Canadian side of the
river to bombard Detroit. Within the American lines the army was in
secret mutiny. Hull’s vacillations and evident alarm disorganized his
force. The Ohio colonels were ready to remove him from his command,
which they offered to Lieutenant-Colonel Miller of the U. S. Fourth
Regiment; but Colonel Miller declined this manner of promotion, and
Hull retained control. August 12 the three colonels united in a letter
to the governor of Ohio, warning him that the existence of the army
depended on the immediate despatch of at least two thousand men to
keep open the line of communication. “Our supplies must come from our
State; this country does not furnish them.” A postscript added that
even a capitulation was talked of by the commander-in-chief.[269] In
truth Hull, who like most commanders-in-chief saw more of the situation
than was seen by his subordinates, made no concealment of his feelings.
Moody, abstracted, wavering in his decisions, and conscious of the low
respect in which he was held by his troops, he shut himself up and
brooded over his desperate situation.
Desperate the situation seemed to be; yet a good general would still
have saved Detroit for some weeks, if not altogether. Hull knew that
he must soon be starved into surrender;[270] but though already short
of supplies he might by vigorous preparations and by rigid economy
have maintained himself a month, and he had always the chance of a
successful battle. His effective force, by his own showing, still
exceeded a thousand men to defend the fort; his supplies of ammunition
were sufficient;[271] and even if surrender were inevitable, after the
mortifications he had suffered and those he foresaw, he would naturally
have welcomed a chance of dying in battle. Perhaps he might have chosen
this end, for he had once been a brave soldier; but the thought of
his daughter and the women and children of the settlement left to the
mercy of Indians overcame him. He shrank from it with evident horror,
exaggerating the numbers and brooding over the “greedy violence” of
the bands, “numerous beyond any former example,” who were descending
from the Northwest.[272] Doubtless his fears were well-founded, but a
general-in-chief whose mind was paralyzed by such thoughts could not
measure himself with Isaac Brock.
On the evening of August 14 Hull made one more effort. He ordered
two of the Ohio colonels, McArthur and Cass, to select the best men
from their regiments, and to open if possible a circuitous route of
fifty miles through the woods to the river Raisin. The operation was
difficult, fatiguing, and dangerous; but the supplies so long detained
at the Raisin, thirty-five miles away by the direct road, must be had
at any cost, and the two Ohio colonels aware of the necessity promptly
undertook the service. Their regiments in May contained nominally
about five hundred men each, all told. Two months of severe labor with
occasional fighting and much sickness had probably reduced the number
of effectives about one half. The report of Colonel Miller of the U. S.
Fourth Regiment in regard to the condition of his command showed this
proportion of effectives,[273] and the Fourth Regiment was probably
in better health than the militia. The two Ohio regiments of McArthur
and Cass numbered perhaps six or seven hundred effective men, and from
these the two colonels selected three hundred and fifty, probably the
best. By night-time they were already beyond the river Rouge, and the
next evening, August 15, were stopped by a swamp less than half way to
the river Raisin.
After their departure on the night of August 14 Hull learned that
Brock had reached Malden the night before with heavy reinforcements.
According to Hull’s later story, he immediately sent orders to
McArthur and Cass to return to Detroit, giving the reasons for doing
so;[274] in fact he did not send till the afternoon of the next
day,[275] and the orders reached the detachment four-and-twenty miles
distant only at sunset August 15. So it happened that on the early
morning of August 16 Hull was guarding the fort and town of Detroit
with about two hundred and fifty effective men of the Fourth Regiment,
about seven hundred men of the Ohio militia, and such of the Michigan
militia and Ohio volunteers as may have been present,--all told, about
a thousand effectives. Hull estimated his force as not exceeding eight
hundred men;[276] Major Jesup, the acting adjutant-general, reported
it as one thousand and sixty, including the Michigan militia.[277] If
the sickness and loss of strength at Detroit were in proportion to the
waste that soon afterward astonished the generals at Niagara, Hull’s
estimate was perhaps near the truth.
Meanwhile Brock acted with rapidity and decision. After reaching Malden
late at night August 13, he held a council the next day, said to have
been attended by a thousand Indian warriors.[278]
“Among the Indians whom I found at Amherstburg,” he reported to
Lord Liverpool,[279] “and who had arrived from distant parts
of the country, I found some extraordinary characters. He who
attracted most my attention was a Shawnee chief, Tecumset,
brother to the Prophet, who for the last two years has carried
on contrary to our remonstrances an active warfare against the
United States. A more sagacious or more gallant warrior does
not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of every one who
conversed with him.”
Brock consumed one day in making his arrangements with them, and
decided to move his army immediately across the Detroit River and throw
it against the fort.
“Some say that nothing could be more desperate than the
measure,”[280] he wrote soon afterward; “but I answer that the
state of the province admits only of desperate remedies. I
got possession of the letters my antagonist addressed to the
Secretary of War, and also the sentiments which hundreds of his
army uttered to their friends. Confidence in their general was
gone, and evident despondency prevailed throughout. I crossed
the river contrary to the opinion of Colonel Proctor, etc. It is
therefore no wonder that envy should attribute to good fortune
what, in justice to my own discernment, I must say proceeded
from a cool calculation of the _pours_ and _contres_.”
Probably Brock received then Sir George Prevost’s letter of August
2 warning him of the intended armistice, for Hull repeatedly and
earnestly asserted that Brock spoke to him of the armistice August
16; and although twelve days was a short time for an express to pass
between Montreal and Malden, yet it might have been accomplished at
the speed of about fifty miles a day. If Brock had reason to expect an
armistice, the wish to secure for his province the certainty of future
safety must have added a motive for hot haste.
At noon August 15 Brock sent a summons of surrender across the river to
Hull. “The force at my disposal,” he wrote, “authorizes me to require
of you the surrender of Detroit. It is far from my inclination to join
in a war of extermination, but you must be aware that the numerous body
of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond my
control the moment the contest commences.” The threat of massacre or
Indian captivity struck Hull’s most sensitive chord. After some delay
he replied, refusing to surrender, and then sent orders recalling
McArthur’s detachment; but the more he thought of his situation the
more certain he became that the last chance of escape had vanished. In
a few days or weeks want of provisions would oblige him to capitulate,
and the bloodshed that would intervene could serve no possible purpose.
Brock’s movements increased the general’s weakness. As soon as Hull’s
reply reached the British lines, two British armed vessels--the “Queen
Charlotte” of seventeen guns and the “Hunter” of ten guns--moved up the
river near Sandwich, while a battery of guns and mortars opened fire
from the Canadian shore and continued firing irregularly all night on
the town and fort. The fire was returned, but no energetic measures
were taken to prepare either for an assault or a siege.
During the night Tecumthe and six hundred Indians crossed the river
some two miles below and filled the woods, cutting communication
between McArthur’s detachment and the fort. A little before daylight
of August 16 Brock himself, with three hundred and thirty regulars
and four hundred militia, crossed the river carrying with them three
6-pound and two 3-pound guns. He had intended to take up a strong
position and force Hull to attack it; but learning from his Indians
that McArthur’s detachment, reported as five hundred strong, was only
a few miles in his rear he resolved on an assault, and moved in close
column within three quarters of a mile of the American 24-pound guns.
Had Hull prayed that the British might deliver themselves into his
hands, his prayers could not have been better answered. Even under
trial for his life, he never ventured to express a distinct belief that
Brock’s assault could have succeeded; and in case of failure the small
British force must have retreated at least a mile and a half under the
fire of the fort’s heavy guns, followed by a force equal to their own,
and attacked in flank and rear by McArthur’s detachment, which was
within hearing of the battle and marching directly toward it.
“Nothing but the boldness of the enterprise could have insured
its success,” said Richardson, one of Brock’s volunteers.[281]
“When within a mile and a half of the rising ground commanding
the approach to the town we distinctly saw two long, heavy guns,
afterward proved to be 24-pounders, planted in the road, and
around them the gunners with their fuses burning. At each moment
we expected that they would be fired, ... and fearful in such
case must have been the havoc; for moving as we were by the main
road, with the river close upon our right flank and a chain of
alternate houses and close fences on our left, there was not
the slightest possibility of deploying. In this manner and with
our eyes riveted on the guns, which became at each moment more
visible, we silently advanced until within about three quarters
of a mile of the formidable battery, when General Brock, having
found at this point a position favorable for the formation of
the columns of assault, caused the whole to be wheeled to the
left through an open field and orchard leading to a house about
three hundred yards off the road, which he selected as his
headquarters. In this position we were covered.”
All this time Hull was in extreme distress. The cannon-shot from the
enemy’s batteries across the river were falling in the fort. Uncertain
what to do, the General sat on an old tent on the ground with his
back against the rampart. “He apparently unconsciously filled his
mouth with tobacco, putting in quid after quid more than he generally
did; the spittle colored with tobacco-juice ran from his mouth on his
neckcloth, beard, cravat, and vest.”[282] He seemed preoccupied, his
voice trembled, he was greatly agitated, anxious, and fatigued. Knowing
that sooner or later the fort must fall, and dreading massacre for
the women and children; anxious for the safety of McArthur and Cass,
and treated with undisguised contempt by the militia officers,--he
hesitated, took no measure to impede the enemy’s advance, and at last
sent a flag across the river to negotiate. A cannon-ball from the
enemy’s batteries killed four men in the fort; two companies of the
Michigan militia deserted,--their behavior threatening to leave the
town exposed to the Indians,--and from that moment Hull determined to
surrender on the best terms he could get.
As Brock, after placing his troops under cover, ascended the brow
of the rising ground to reconnoitre the fort, a white flag advanced
from the battery before him, and within an hour the British troops,
to their own undisguised astonishment, found themselves in possession
of the fortress. The capitulation included McArthur’s detachment and
the small force covering the supplies at the river Raisin. The army,
already mutinous, submitted with what philosophy it could command to
the necessity it could not escape.
On the same day at the same hour Fort Dearborn at Chicago was in
flames. The Government provided neither for the defence nor for the
safe withdrawal of the little garrison, but Hull had sent an order to
evacuate the fort if practicable. In the process of evacuation, August
15, the garrison was attacked and massacred by an overwhelming body
of Indians. The next morning the fort was burned, and with it the
last vestige of American authority on the western lakes disappeared.
Thenceforward the line of the Wabash and the Maumee became the military
boundary of the United States in the Northwest, and the country felt
painful doubt whether even that line could be defended.
CHAPTER XVI.
ALTHOUGH the loss of Detroit caused the greatest loss of territory that
ever before or since befell the United States, the public at large
understood little of the causes that made it inevitable, and saw in
it only an accidental consequence of Hull’s cowardice. Against this
victim, who had no friend in the world, every voice was raised. He was
a coward, an imbecile, but above all unquestionably a traitor, who had,
probably for British gold, delivered an army and a province, without
military excuse, into the enemy’s hands. If any man in the United
States was more responsible than Hull for the result of the campaign it
was Ex-President Jefferson, whose system had shut military efficiency
from the scope of American government; but to Jefferson, Hull and
his surrender were not the natural products of a system, but objects
of hatred and examples of perfidy that had only one parallel. “The
treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot be a matter of blame to
our government,” he wrote[283] on learning the story of Lewis Cass and
the Ohio militia officers, who told with the usual bitterness
of betrayed men what they knew of the causes that had brought their
betrayal to pass. “The detestable treason of Hull,” as Jefferson
persisted in calling it, was the more exasperating to him because,
even as late as August 4, he had written with entire confidence to
the same correspondent that “the acquisition of Canada this year, as
far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching,
and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and
the final expulsion of England from the American continent.” Perhaps
the same expectation explained the conduct of Hull, Madison, Eustis,
and Dearborn; yet at the moment when Jefferson wrote thus, Madison
was beginning to doubt. August 8, the often-mentioned day when Brock
reached Long Point and Hull decided to retreat from Canada, Madison
wrote to Gallatin:[284]--
[Illustration: MAP
OF THE
_STRAITS OF_
NIAGARA
from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.
[_From “Memoirs of My Own Times,” By Gen. James Wilkinson,
Philadelphia, 1816._]
Struthers & Co., Engr’s and Pr’s, N.Y.]
[Illustration]
“Should he [Hull] be able to descend upon Niagara and an
adequate co-operation be there afforded, our prospect as to
Upper Canada may be good enough. But what is to be done with
respect to the expedition against Montreal? The enlistments for
the regular army fall short of the most moderate calculation;
the Volunteer Act is extremely unproductive; and even the
militia detachments are either obstructed by the disaffected
governors or chilled by the Federal spirit diffused throughout
the region most convenient to the theatre. I see nothing better
than to draw on this resource as far as the detachments consist
of volunteers, who, it may be presumed, will cross the line
without raising Constitutional or legal questions.”
In contrast with these admissions and their satirical “it may be
presumed,” the tone of the governor-general, Sir George Prevost, at the
same crisis was masterful.[285]
“The Eighth or King’s Regiment,” he wrote August 17 from
Montreal, “has arrived this morning from Quebec to relieve the
Forty-ninth Regiment. This fine and effective regiment of the
Eighth, together with a chain of troops established in the
vicinity of this place consisting of a regular and militia
force, the whole amounting to near four thousand five hundred
men, effectually serve to keep in check the enemy in this
quarter, where alone they are in any strength.”
The Canadian outnumbered the American forces at every point of
danger on the frontier. A week later Sir George claimed another just
credit:[286]--
“The decided superiority I have obtained on the Lakes in
consequence of the precautionary measures adopted during the
last winter has permitted me to move without interruption,
independently of the arrangement [armistice], both troops and
supplies of every description toward Amherstburg, while those
for General Hull, having several hundred miles of wilderness to
pass before they can reach Detroit, are exposed to be harassed
and destroyed by the Indians.”
Not only were the British forces equal or superior to the American
at Detroit, Niagara, and Montreal, but they could be more readily
concentrated and more quickly supplied.
The storm of public wrath which annihilated Hull and shook Eustis
passed harmless over the head of Dearborn. No one knew that Dearborn
was at fault, for he had done nothing; and a general who did nothing
had that advantage over his rivals whose activity or situation caused
them to act. Dearborn threw the whole responsibility on the War
Department. August 15 he wrote to President Madison:[287]
“The particular circumstances which have created the most
unfortunate embarrassments were my having no orders or
directions in relation to Upper Canada (which I had considered
as not attached to my command) until my last arrival at
this place, and my being detained so long at Boston _by
direction_. If I had been directed to take measures for
acting offensively on Niagara and Kingston, with authority
such as I now possess, for calling out the militia, we might
have been prepared to act on those points as early as General
Hull commenced his operations at Detroit; but unfortunately no
explicit orders had been received by me in relation to Upper
Canada until it was too late even to make an effectual diversion
in favor of General Hull. All that I could do was done without
any delay.”
For the moment, such pleas might serve; but after the capture of
Detroit, Dearborn’s turn came, and nothing could save him from a fate
as decided if not as fatal as that of Hull. His armistice indeed would
have answered the purpose of protection had the Government understood
its true bearing; but Dearborn’s letter announcing the armistice
reached Washington August 13, and the Secretary of War seeing the
dangers and not the advantages of a respite replied, August 15, in
language more decided than he had yet used:[288]--
“I am commanded by the President to inform you that there does
not appear to him any justifiable cause to vary or desist from
the arrangements which are in operation; and I am further
commanded to instruct you that from and after the receipt of
this letter and allowing a reasonable time in which you will
inform Sir George Prevost thereof, you will proceed with the
utmost vigor in your operations. How far the plan originally
suggested by you of attacking Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal at
the same time can be rendered practicable, you can best judge.
Presuming that not more than a feint, if that should be deemed
expedient, with the troops on Lake Champlain aided by volunteers
and militia can be immediately effected against Montreal, and
considering the urgency of a diversion in favor of General Hull
under the circumstances attending his situation, the President
thinks it proper that not a moment should be lost in gaining
possession of the British posts at Niagara and Kingston, or at
least the former, and proceeding in co-operation with General
Hull in securing Upper Canada.”
The same day, August 15, the eve of Hull’s surrender, Dearborn wrote to
the Secretary of War,[289]--
“If the troops are immediately pushed on from the southward, I
think we may calculate on being able to possess ourselves of
Montreal and Upper Canada before the winter sets in.... I am
pursuing measures with the view of being able to operate with
effect against Niagara and Kingston, at the same time that
I move toward Lower Canada. If the Governor of Pennsylvania
turns out two thousand good militia from the northwesterly
frontier of his State, as I have requested him to do, and the
quartermaster-general furnishes the means of transportation and
camp-equipage in season, I am persuaded we may act with effect
on the several points in the month of October at farthest.”
As yet nothing had been done. August 19 General Van Rensselaer
reported[290] from Lewiston that between Buffalo and Niagara he
commanded less than a thousand militia, without ordnance heavier
than 6-pounders and but few of these, without artillerists to serve
the few pieces he had, and the troops in a very indifferent state of
discipline. In pursuance of his orders he collected the force within
his reach, but August 18 received notice of Dearborn’s armistice and
immediately afterward of Hull’s surrender. August 23 Brock, moving
with his usual rapidity, reappeared at Fort George with Hull’s army as
captives.
Fortunately, not only were the Americans protected by the armistice,
but both Prevost and Brock were under orders, and held it good policy,
to avoid irritating the Americans by useless incursions. Prevost,
about the equal of Madison as a military leader, showed no wish to
secure the positions necessary for his safety. Had he at once seized
Sackett’s Harbor, as Brock seized Detroit, he would have been secure,
for Sackett’s Harbor was the only spot from which the Americans could
contest the control of Lake Ontario. Brock saw the opportunity,
and wanted to occupy the harbor, but Prevost did not encourage the
idea;[291] and Brock, prevented from making a correct movement, saw no
advantage in making an incorrect one. Nothing was to be gained by an
offensive movement at Niagara, and Brock at that point labored only to
strengthen his defence.
Van Rensselaer, knowing the whole American line to be at Brock’s mercy,
felt just anxiety. August 31 he wrote to Governor Tompkins,[292]--
“Alarm pervades the country, and distrust among the troops. They
are incessantly pressing for furloughs under every possible
pretence. Many are without shoes; all clamorous for pay; many
are sick.... While we are thus growing weaker our enemy is
growing stronger. They hold a very commanding position on the
high ground above Queenstown, and they are daily strengthening
themselves in it with men and ordnance. Indeed, they are
fortifying almost every prominent point from Fort Erie to Fort
George. At present we rest upon the armistice, but should
hostilities be recommenced I must immediately change my
position. I receive no reinforcements of men, no ordnance or
munitions of war.”
Dearborn replied to this letter September 2, and his alarm was
certainly not less than that of Van Rensselaer:[293]--
“From the number of troops which have left Montreal for Upper
Canada, I am not without fear that attempts will be speedily
made to reduce you and your forces to the mortifying situation
of General Hull and his army. If such an attempt of the enemy
should be made previous to the arrival of the principal part of
the troops destined to Niagara, it will be necessary for you to
be prepared for all events, and to be prepared to make good a
secure retreat as the last resort.”
To the Secretary of War, Dearborn wrote that he hoped there would be
nothing worse than retreat.[294] Under such circumstances the armistice
became an advantage, for the offensive had already passed into the
enemy’s hands. Detroit and Lake Erie were lost beyond salvation, but
on Lake Ontario supplies and cannon were brought to Niagara by water
from Oswego; the vessels at Ogdensburg were moved to Sackett’s Harbor
and became the nucleus of a fleet; while all the troops, regular
and militia, that could be gathered from New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania were hurried to the front. September 1 Dearborn wrote
to Eustis[295] that he had at Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, or under
marching orders there, five thousand troops, more than half of them
regulars, while six thousand, including three regular regiments from
the southward, were destined for Niagara.
“When the regular troops you have ordered for Niagara arrive at
that post,” he wrote to Eustis, September 1, “with the militia
and other troops there or on their march, they will be able
I presume to cross over into Canada, carry all the works in
Niagara, and proceed to the other posts in that province in
triumph.”
Yet the movement of troops was slow. September 15 Van Rensselaer had
only sixteen hundred militia.[296] Not till then did the reaction from
Hull’s disaster make itself felt. Commodore Chauncey came to Lake
Ontario with unbounded authority to create a fleet, and Lieutenant
Elliott of the navy was detached to Lake Erie for the same purpose;
ordnance and supplies were hurried to Buffalo, and Dearborn sent two
regiments from Albany with two companies of artillery.
“When they arrive,” he wrote September 17 to Van
Rensselaer,[297] “with the regular troops and militia from the
southward and such additional numbers of militia as I reckon
on from this State, the aggregate force will I presume amount
to upward of six thousand. It is intended to have a force
sufficient to enable you to act with effect, though late.”
The alarm still continued; and even a week afterward Dearborn wrote as
though he expected disaster:[298]
“A strange fatality seems to have pervaded the whole
arrangements. Ample reinforcements of troops and supplies of
stores are on their way, but I fear their arrival will be too
late to enable you to maintain your position.... By putting
on the best face that your situation admits, the enemy may be
induced to delay an attack until you will be able to meet him
and carry the war into Canada. At all events we must calculate
on possessing Upper Canada before winter sets in.”
In Dearborn’s letters nothing was said of the precise movement
intended, but through them all ran the understanding that as soon
as the force at Niagara should amount to six thousand men a forward
movement should be made. The conditions supposed to be needed for
the advance were more than fulfilled in the early days of October,
when some twenty-five hundred militia, with a regiment of Light
Artillery without guns, and the Thirteenth U. S. Infantry were in the
neighborhood of Lewiston; while a brigade of United States troops,
sixteen hundred and fifty strong, commanded by Brigadier-General
Alexander Smyth, were on the march to Buffalo. October 13 Dearborn
wrote to Van Rensselaer:[299] “I am confidently sure that you will
embrace the first practicable opportunity for effecting a forward
movement.” This opportunity had then already arrived. Smyth reached
Buffalo, September 29, and reported by letter to General Van
Rensselaer; but before seeing each other the two generals quarrelled.
Smyth held the opinion that the army should cross into Canada above
the Falls, and therefore camped his brigade at Buffalo. Van Rensselaer
had made his arrangements to cross below the Falls. October 5 Van
Rensselaer requested Smyth to fix a day for a council of war, but
Smyth paid no attention to the request; and as he was independent
of Van Rensselaer, and could not be compelled to obey the orders of
a major-general of New York militia, Van Rensselaer decided to act,
without regard to Smyth’s brigade or to his opinions. He knew that the
force under his immediate orders below the Falls was sufficient for his
purpose.[300]
Van Rensselaer’s decision was supported by many different motives,--the
lateness of the season, the weather, the sickness and the discontent of
the militia threatening actual disbandment, the jealousy of a militia
officer toward the regular service, and the additional jealousy of a
Federalist toward the Government; for Van Rensselaer was not only a
Federalist, but was also a rival candidate against Tompkins for the
governorship of New York, and the Republicans were eager to charge him
with intentional delay. A brilliant stroke by Lieutenant Elliott at
the same moment added to the restlessness of the army. On the night
of October 8 Elliott and Captain Towson of the Second Artillery, with
fifty sailors and fifty soldiers of Smyth’s brigade, cut out two
British vessels under the guns of Fort Erie.[301] One of these vessels
was the “Adams,” captured by Brock at Detroit, the other had belonged
to the Northwestern Fur Company, and both were of great value to the
British as a reinforcement to their fleet on Lake Erie. The larger was
destroyed; the smaller, named the “Caledonia,” was saved, and served
to increase the little American fleet. Brock felt keenly the loss of
these two vessels, which “may reduce us to incalculable distress,” he
wrote to Prevost, October 11. He watched the progress of Elliott’s
and Chauncey’s naval preparations with more anxiety than he showed in
regard to Dearborn’s military movements, although he spared no labor in
fortifying himself against these.
General Van Rensselaer conceived a plan for a double attack by throwing
one body of troops across the river to carry Queenston, while a strong
force of regulars should be conveyed in boats by way of the Lake and
landed on the Lake shore in the rear of Fort George to take the fort by
storm,--a movement afterward successfully made; but owing to Smyth’s
conduct the double attack was abandoned, and Van Rensselaer decided to
try only the simpler movement against Queenston. Brock with less than
two thousand men guarded nearly forty miles of front along the Niagara
River, holding at Queenston only two companies of the Forty-ninth
Regiment with a small body of militia,--in all about three hundred men.
Brock was himself at Fort George, some five miles below Queenston, with
the greater part of the Forty-first Regiment, which he had brought
back from Detroit, and a number of Indians. The rest of his force was
at Chippawa and Fort Erie, opposite Buffalo, where the real attack was
expected.
Van Rensselaer fixed the night of October 10 for his movement, and
marched the troops to the river at the appointed time; but the crossing
was prevented by some blunder in regard to boats, and the troops after
passing the night exposed to a furious storm returned to camp. After
this miscarriage Van Rensselaer would have waited for a council of war,
but the tone of his officers and men satisfied him that any sign of
hesitation would involve him in suspicion and injure the service.[302]
He postponed the movement until the night of October 12, giving the
command of the attack to Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer of the State
militia, whose force was to consist of three hundred volunteers and
three hundred regular troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Christie of the
Thirteenth Regiment.
At three o’clock on the morning of October 13 the first body of troops
embarked. Thirteen boats had been provided. Three of these lost their
way, or were forced by the current down stream until obliged to
return. Colonel Christie was in one of the boats that failed to land.
The command of his men fell to young Captain Wool of the Thirteenth
Regiment. The British were on the alert, and although after a volley
of musketry they withdrew toward Queenston they quickly returned
with reinforcements and began a sharp action, in which Colonel Van
Rensselaer was severely wounded and the advance on Queenston was
effectually stopped. Daylight appeared, and at a quarter before seven
Brock himself galloped up and mounted the hill above the river to watch
the contest from an 18-pounder battery on the hill-top.[303] At the
same moment Captain Wool with a few men of his regiment climbed up the
same heights from the riverside by a path which had been reported to
Brock as impassable, and was left unguarded. Reaching the summit, Wool
found himself about thirty yards in the rear of the battery from which
Brock was watching the contest below. By a rapid flight on foot Brock
escaped capture, and set himself immediately to the task of recovering
the heights. He had early sent for the Forty-first Regiment under
General Sheaffe from Fort George, but without waiting reinforcements
he collected a few men--about ninety, it is said--of the Forty-ninth
Regiment who could be spared below, and sent them to dislodge Wool. The
first British attack was beaten back. The second, in stronger force
with the York Volunteers, was led by Brock in person; but while he was
still at the foot of the hill, an American bullet struck him in the
breast and killed him on the spot.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Captain Wool, though painfully wounded,
held the heights with two hundred and fifty men; but the heights had
no value except to cover or assist the movement below, where the
main column of troops with artillery and intrenching tools should
have occupied Queenston, and advanced or fortified itself. When
Lieutenant-Colonel Christie, at about seven o’clock, having succeeded
in crossing the river, took command of the force on the river bank,
he could do nothing for want of men, artillery, and intrenching
tools.[304] He could not even dislodge the enemy from a stone house
whence two light pieces of artillery were greatly annoying the boats.
Unable to move without support he recrossed the river, found General
Van Rensselaer half a mile beyond, and described to him the situation.
Van Rensselaer sent orders to General Smyth to march his brigade to
Lewiston “with every possible despatch,” and ordered Captain Totten of
the Engineers across the river, with intrenching tools, to lay out a
fortified camp.
Toward noon General Van Rensselaer himself crossed with Christie to
Queenston and climbed the hill, where Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield
Scott had appeared as a volunteer and taken the command of Captain
Wool’s force. Toward three o’clock Lieutenant-Colonel Christie joined
the party on the hill. Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New
York militia was also on the ground, and some few men arrived, until
three hundred and fifty regulars and two hundred and fifty militia are
said to have been collected on the heights. From their position, at
two o’clock, Van Rensselaer and Scott made out the scarlet line of the
Forty-first Regiment advancing from Fort George. From Chippawa every
British soldier who could be spared hurried to join the Forty-first,
while a swarm of Indians swept close on the American line, covering
the junction of the British forces and the turning movement of General
Sheaffe round the foot of the hill. About one thousand men, chiefly
regulars, were concentrating against the six hundred Americans on the
heights.[305] General Van Rensselaer, alarmed at the sight, hastened to
recross the river to Lewiston for reinforcements.
“By this time,” concluded Van Rensselaer in his report of
the next day,[306] “I perceived my troops were embarking
very slowly. I passed immediately over to accelerate their
movements; but to my utter astonishment I found that at the
very moment when complete victory was in our hands the ardor
of the unengaged troops had entirely subsided. I rode in all
directions, urged the men by every consideration to pass over;
but in vain. Lieutenant-Colonel Bloom who had been wounded in
the action returned, mounted his horse, and rode through the
camp, as did also Judge Peck who happened to be here, exhorting
the companies to proceed; but all in vain.”
More unfortunate than Hull, Van Rensselaer stood on the American
heights and saw his six hundred gallant soldiers opposite slowly
enveloped, shot down, and at last crushed by about a thousand men who
could not have kept the field a moment against the whole American
force. Scott and his six hundred were pushed over the cliff down to the
bank of the river. The boatmen had all fled with the boats. Nothing
remained but to surrender; and under the Indian fire even surrender was
difficult. Scott succeeded only by going himself to the British line
through the Indians, who nearly killed him as he went.
In this day’s work ninety Americans were reported as killed. The
number of wounded can only be estimated. Not less than nine hundred
men surrendered, including skulkers and militia-men who never reached
the heights. Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New York
militia, Lieutenant-Colonel Fenwick of the U. S. Light Artillery,
Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott of the Second Artillery, and, among
officers of less rank, Captain Totten of the Engineers were among the
prisoners. Van Rensselaer’s campaign did not, like that of Hull, cost
a province, but it sacrificed nearly as many effective troops as were
surrendered by Hull.
General Van Rensselaer the next day sent his report of the affair to
General Dearborn, and added a request to be relieved of his command.
Dearborn, who knew little of the circumstances, ordered him to transfer
the command to General Smyth, and wrote to Washington a bitter
complaint of Van Rensselaer’s conduct, which he attributed to jealousy
of the regular service.[307]
Hitherto the military movements against Canada had been directed by
Eastern men. Alexander Smyth belonged to a different class. Born in
Ireland in 1765, his fortunes led him to Virginia, where he became a
respectable member of the Southwestern bar and served in the State
legislature. Appointed in 1808 by President Jefferson colonel of the
new rifle regiment, in 1812 he became inspector-general, with the rank
of brigadier. By his own request he received command of the brigade
ordered to Niagara, and his succession to Van Rensselaer followed of
course. Dearborn, knowing little of Smyth, was glad to intrust the
army to a regular officer in whom he felt confidence; yet an Irish
temperament with a Virginian education promised the possibility of a
campaign which if not more disastrous than that led by William Hull
of Massachusetts, or by Stephen Van Rensselaer of New York, might be
equally eccentric.
October 24 Smyth took command at Buffalo, and three weeks later the
public read in the newspapers an address issued by him to the “Men of
New York,” written in a style hitherto unusual in American warfare.
“For many years,” Smyth announced to the Men of New York,[308]
“you have seen your country oppressed with numerous wrongs.
Your government, although above all others devoted to peace,
has been forced to draw the sword, and rely for redress of
injuries on the valor of the American people. That valor has
been conspicuous. But the nation has been unfortunate in the
selection of some of those who have directed it. One army has
been disgracefully surrendered and lost. Another has been
sacrificed by a precipitate attempt to pass it over at the
strongest point of the enemy’s lines with most incompetent
means. The cause of these miscarriages is apparent. The
commanders were popular men, ‘destitute alike of theory and
experience’ in the art of war.”
Unmilitary as such remarks were, the address continued in a tone more
and more surprising, until at last it became burlesque.
“In a few days the troops under my command will plant the
American standard in Canada. They are men accustomed to
obedience, silence, and steadiness. They will conquer, or they
will die.
“Will you stand with your arms folded and look on this
interesting struggle? Are you not related to the men who fought
at Bennington and Saratoga? Has the race degenerated? Or have
you, under the baneful influence of contending factions, forgot
your country? Must I turn from you and ask the men of the Six
Nations to support the government of the United States? Shall
I imitate the officers of the British king, and suffer our
ungathered laurels to be tarnished by ruthless deeds? Shame,
where is thy blush! No!”
The respectable people of the neighborhood were not wholly discouraged
by this call or by a second proclamation, November 17, as little
military as the first; or even by an address of Peter B. Porter
offering to lead his neighbors into Canada under the command of the
“able and experienced officer” who within a few days could and would
“occupy all the British fortresses on the Niagara River.” A certain
number of volunteers offered themselves for the service, although
not only the attack but also its details were announced in advance.
The British responded by bombarding Black Rock and Fort Niagara; and
although their cannon did little harm, they were more effective than
the proclamations of the American generals.
November 25 General Smyth issued orders for the invasion, which were
also unusual in their character, and prescribed even the gestures
and attitudes of the attacking force:[309] “At twenty yards distance
the soldiers will be ordered to trail arms, advance with shouts,
fire at five paces distance, and charge bayonets. The soldiers will
be _silent_ above all things.” In obedience to these orders,
everything was prepared, November 27, for the crossing, and once more
orders were issued in an inspiring tone:[310]
“Friends of your country! ye who have ‘the will to do, the heart
to dare!’ the moment ye have wished for has arrived! Think on
your country’s honors torn! her rights trampled on! her sons
enslaved! her infants perishing by the hatchet! Be strong! be
brave! and let the ruffian power of the British king cease on
this continent!”
Two detachments were to cross the river from Black Rock before dawn,
November 28, to surprise and disable the enemy’s batteries and to
destroy a bridge five miles below; after this should be done the
army was to cross. The British were supposed to have not more than a
thousand men within twenty miles to resist the attack of three thousand
men from Buffalo. Apparently Smyth’s calculations were correct. His
two detachments crossed the river at three o’clock on the morning
of November 28 and gallantly, though with severe loss, captured and
disabled the guns and tore up a part of the bridge without destroying
it. At sunrise the army began to embark at the navy yard, but the
embarkation continued so slowly that toward afternoon, when all the
boats were occupied, only twelve hundred men, with artillery, were on
board. “The troops thus embarked,” reported Smyth,[311] “moved up the
stream to Black Rock without sustaining loss from the enemy’s fire. It
was now afternoon, and they were ordered to disembark and dine.”
This was all. No more volunteers appeared, and no other regulars fit
for service remained. Smyth would not cross without three thousand men,
and doubtless was right in his caution; but he showed want of courage
not so much in this failure to redeem his pledges, as in his subsequent
attempt to throw responsibility on subordinates, and on Dearborn who
had requested him to consult some of his officers occasionally, and be
prepared if possible to cross into Canada with three thousand men at
once.[312] Smyth consulted his officers at the moment when consultation
was fatal.
“Recollecting your instructions to cross with three thousand men
_at once_, and to consult some of my principal officers in
‘all important movements,’ I called for the field officers of
the regulars and twelve-months volunteers embarked.”
The council of war decided not to risk the crossing. Winder, who was
considered the best of Smyth’s colonels, had opposed the scheme from
the first, and reported the other officers as strongly against it.
Smyth was aware of their opinions, and his appeal to them could have
no object but to shift responsibility. After receiving their decision,
Smyth sent a demand for the surrender of Fort Erie, “to spare the
effusion of blood,” and then ordered his troops to their quarters.
The army obeyed with great discontent, but fifteen hundred men still
mustered in the boats, when two days afterward Smyth issued another
order to embark. Once more Smyth called a council of war, and once more
decided to abandon the invasion. With less than three thousand men in
the boats at once, the General would not stir.
Upon this, General Smyth’s army dissolved. “A scene of confusion
ensued which it is difficult to describe,” wrote Peter B. Porter soon
afterward,[313]--“about four thousand men without order or restraint
discharging their muskets in every direction.” They showed a preference
for General Smyth’s tent as their target, which caused the General to
shift his quarters repeatedly. A few days afterward Peter B. Porter
published a letter to a Buffalo newspaper, attributing the late
disgrace “to the cowardice of General Smyth.”[314] The General sent a
challenge to his subordinate officer, and exchanged shots with him.
Smyth next requested permission to visit his family, which Dearborn
hastened to grant; and three months afterward, as General Smyth did
not request an inquiry into the causes of his failure, the President
without express authority of law dropped his name from the army roll.
When Dearborn received the official report of Smyth’s grotesque
campaign, he was not so much annoyed by its absurdities as he was
shocked to learn that nearly four thousand regular troops sent to
Niagara in the course of the campaign could not supply a thousand for
crossing the river.[315] Further inquiry explained that sickness had
swept away more than half the army. The brigade of regulars at Buffalo,
which with the exception of Winder’s regiment had never fired a musket,
was reduced to less than half its original number, and both officers
and men were unfit for active duty.[316] Only rest and care could
restore the army to efficiency.
The failures of Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth created a scandal
so noisy that little was thought of General Dearborn; yet Dearborn
still commanded on Lake Champlain the largest force then under arms,
including seven regiments of the regular army, with artillery and
dragoons. He clung to the idea of an attack on Montreal simultaneous
with Smyth’s movement at Niagara.[317] November 8, he wrote from Albany
to Eustis that he was about to join the army under General Bloomfield
at Plattsburg.[318]
“I have been detained several days by a severe rheumatic attack,
but I shall, by the aid of Dr. Mann, be able to set off this day
toward Lake Champlain, where I trust General Bloomfield will be
able to move toward Montreal, and with the addition of three
thousand regular troops that place might be carried and held
this winter; but I cannot consent to crossing the St. Lawrence
with an uncertainty of being able to remain there.”
Whatever were Dearborn’s motives for undertaking the movement,
his official report[319] explained that on arriving at Plattsburg
he found General Bloomfield ill, and was himself obliged to take
command, November 19, when he marched the army about twenty miles to
the Canadian line. At that point the militia declined to go further,
and Dearborn as quietly as possible, November 23, marched back to
Plattsburg. His campaign lasted four days, and he did not enter Canada.
Whether Dearborn, Smyth, or William Hull would have improved the
situation by winning a victory or by losing a battle was a question to
be answered by professional soldiers; but the situation at best was
bad, and when the report of Smyth’s crowning failure reached Dearborn
it seemed for a moment to overcome his sorely tried temper. “I had
anticipated disappointment and misfortune in the commencement of the
war,” he wrote to Eustis,[320] “but I did by no means apprehend such a
deficiency of regular troops and such a series of disasters as we have
witnessed.” He intimated his readiness to accept the responsibility
which properly belonged to him, and to surrender his command. “I shall
be happy to be released by any gentleman whose talents and popularity
will command the confidence of the Government and the country.” To the
President he wrote at the same time:[321] “It will be equally agreeable
to me to employ such moderate talents as I possess in the service of my
country, or to be permitted to retire to the shades of private life,
and remain a mere but interested spectator of passing events.”
CHAPTER XVII.
CULPABLE as was the helplessness of the War Department in 1812, the
public neither understood nor knew how to enforce responsibility for
disasters which would have gone far to cost a European war minister
his life, as they might have cost his nation its existence. By fortune
still kinder, the Navy Department escaped penalty of any sort for
faults nearly as serious as those committed by its rival. The navy
consisted, besides gunboats, of three heavy frigates rated as carrying
forty-four guns; three lighter frigates rated at thirty-eight guns; one
of thirty-two, and one of twenty-eight; besides two ships of eighteen
guns, two brigs of sixteen, and four brigs of fourteen and twelve,--in
all sixteen sea-going vessels, twelve of which were probably equal
to any vessels afloat of the same class. The eight frigates were all
built by Federalist Congresses before President Jefferson’s time; the
smaller craft, except one, were built under the influence of the war
with Tripoli. The Administration which declared war against England
did nothing to increase the force. Few of the ships were in first-rate
condition. The officers complained that the practice of laying up
the frigates in port hastened their decay, and declared that hardly
a frigate in the service was as sound as she should be. For this
negligence Congress was alone responsible; but the Department perhaps
shared the blame for want of readiness when war was declared.
The only ships actually ready for sea, June 18, were the “President,”
44, commanded by Commodore Rodgers, at New York, and the “United
States,” 44, which had cruised to the southward with the “Congress,”
38, and “Argus,” 16, under the command of Commodore Decatur. Secretary
Hamilton, May 21, sent orders to Decatur to prepare for war, and
June 5 wrote more urgently:[322] “Have the ships under your command
immediately ready for extensive active service, and proceed with them
to New York, where you will join Commodore Rodgers and wait further
orders. Prepare for battle, which I hope will add to your fame.” To
Rodgers he wrote on the same day in much the same words:[323] “Be
prepared in all respects for extensive service.” He asked both officers
for their advice how to make the navy most useful. Rodgers’s reply, if
he made one, was not preserved; but Decatur answered from Norfolk, June
8,[324]--
“The plan which appears to me to be the best calculated for our
little navy ... would be to send them out with as large a supply
of provisions as they can carry, distant from our coast and
singly, or not more than two frigates in company, without giving
them any specific instructions as to place of cruising, but to
rely on the enterprise of the officers.”
The Department hesitated to adopt Decatur’s advice, and began by an
effort to concentrate all its ships at New York,--an attempt in which
Secretary Hamilton could not wholly succeed, for the “Constellation”
and the “Chesapeake,” 38-gun frigates, and the “Adams,” 28, were
not in condition for sea; the “Essex,” 32, was not quite ready,
and the “Wasp,” 18, was bringing despatches from Europe, while the
“Constitution,” 44, detained at Annapolis by the difficulty of shipping
a new crew, could not sail within three weeks. The secretary ordered
Captain Hull, who commanded the “Constitution,” to make his way to New
York with the utmost speed, and if his crew were in proper condition,
to look for the British frigate “Belvidera” on the way. The only ships
that could be brought to New York without delay were those of Decatur
at Norfolk. To him the secretary, on the declaration of war, sent
orders to proceed with all despatch northwards, and “to notice the
British flag if it presents itself” on the way. “The ‘Belvidera’ is
said to be on our coast,” added the secretary.[325] Before this letter
reached Norfolk, Decatur and his squadron sailed from the Chesapeake
and were already within sight of Sandy Hook; so that the only orders
from the Navy Department which immediately affected the movement of
the frigates were those sent to New York for Commodore Rodgers and the
frigate “President,” but which included Decatur’s squadron when it
should arrive.
“For the present,” wrote the secretary to Rodgers,[326] “it is
desirable that with the force under your command you remain in
such position as to enable you most conveniently to receive
further more extensive and more particular orders, which will
be conveyed to you through New York. But as it is understood
that there are one or more British cruisers on the coast in
the vicinity of Sandy Hook, you are at your discretion free to
strike them, returning immediately after into port. You are free
to capture or destroy them.”
These orders reached New York June 21. Rodgers in his fine frigate the
“President,” with the “Hornet,” 18, was eager to sail. The hope of
capturing the “Belvidera,” which had long been an intolerable annoyance
to New York commerce, was strong both in the Navy Department and in the
navy; but the chance of obtaining prize money from the British West
India convoy, just then passing eastward only a few days’ sail from the
coast, added greatly to the commodore’s impatience.[327] Decatur’s
squadron arrived off Sandy Hook June 19. June 21, within an hour after
receiving the secretary’s orders of June 18, the whole fleet, including
two forty-four and one thirty-eight-gun frigates, with the “Hornet” and
the “Argus,” stood out to sea.
The secretary might have spared himself the trouble of giving
further orders, for many a week passed before Rodgers and Decatur
bethought themselves of his injunction to return immediately into port
after striking the “Belvidera.” They struck the “Belvidera” within
forty-eight hours, and lost her; partly on account of the bursting of
one of the “President’s” main-deck guns, which blew up the forecastle
deck, killing or wounding sixteen men, including Commodore Rodgers
himself, whose leg was broken; partly, and according to the British
account chiefly, on account of stopping to fire at all, when Rodgers
should have run alongside, and in that case could not have failed to
capture his enemy. Whatever was the reason, the “Belvidera” escaped;
and Rodgers and Decatur, instead of returning immediately into port
as they had been ordered, turned in pursuit of the British West India
convoy, and hung doggedly to the chase without catching sight of their
game, until after three weeks’ pursuit they found themselves within a
day’s sail of the British Channel and the convoy safe in British waters.
This beginning of the naval war was discouraging. The American ships
should not have sailed in a squadron, and only their good luck saved
them from disaster. Rodgers and Decatur showed no regard to the wishes
of the Government, although had they met with misfortune, the navy
would have lost its last hope. Yet if the two commodores had obeyed
the secretary’s commands their cruise would probably have been in
the highest degree disastrous. The Government’s true intentions have
been a matter of much dispute; but beyond a doubt the President and
a majority of his advisers inclined to keep the navy within reach at
first,--to use them for the protection of commerce, to drive away the
British blockaders; and aware that the British naval force would soon
be greatly increased, and that the American navy must be blockaded in
port, the Government expected in the end to use the frigates as harbor
defences rather than send them to certain destruction.
With these ideas in his mind Secretary Hamilton, in his orders of
June 18, told Rodgers and Decatur that “more extensive” orders should
be sent to them on their return to New York. A day or two afterward
Secretary Gallatin complained to the President that these orders had
not been sent.
“I believe the weekly arrivals from foreign ports,” said
Gallatin,[328] “will for the coming four weeks average from one
to one-and-a-half million dollars a week. To protect these and
our coasting vessels, while the British have still an inferior
force on our coasts, appears to me of primary importance. I
think that orders to that effect, ordering them to cruise
accordingly, ought to have been sent yesterday, and that at all
events not one day longer ought to be lost.”
June 22 the orders were sent according to Gallatin’s wish. They
directed Rodgers with his part of the squadron to cruise from the
Chesapeake eastwardly, and Decatur with his ships to cruise from New
York southwardly, so as to cross and support each other and protect
with their united force the merchantmen and coasters entering New York
harbor, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. Rodgers and Decatur were then
beginning their private cruise across the ocean, and never received
these orders until the commerce they were to protect either reached
port in safety or fell into British hands.
Probably this miscarriage was fortunate, for not long after Rodgers
and Decatur passed the Banks the British Vice-Admiral Sawyer sent
from Halifax a squadron to prevent the American navy from doing
what Secretary Hamilton had just ordered to be done. July 5 Captain
Broke, with his own frigate the “Shannon,” 38, the “Belvidera,” 36,
the “Africa,” 64, and “Æolus,” 32, put to sea from Halifax and was
joined, July 9, off Nantucket by the “Guerriere,” 38. Against such a
force Rodgers and Decatur, even if together, would have risked total
destruction, while a success would have cost more than it was worth.
The Americans had nothing to gain and everything to lose by fighting
in line-of-battle.
As Broke’s squadron swept along the coast it seized whatever it met,
and July 16 caught one of President Jefferson’s 16-gun brigs, the
“Nautilus.” The next day it came on a richer prize. The American
navy seemed ready to outstrip the army in the race for disaster. The
“Constitution,” the best frigate in the United States service, sailed
into the midst of Broke’s five ships. Captain Isaac Hull, in command of
the “Constitution,” had been detained at Annapolis shipping a new crew,
until July 5,[329]--the day when Broke’s squadron left Halifax;--then
the ship got under way and stood down Chesapeake Bay on her voyage to
New York. The wind was ahead and very light. Not till July 10 did the
ship anchor off Cape Henry lighthouse,[330] and not till sunrise of
July 12 did she stand to the eastward and northward. Light head-winds
and a strong current delayed her progress till July 17, when at two
o’clock in the afternoon, off Barnegat on the New Jersey coast, the
lookout at the masthead discovered four sails to the northward, and two
hours later a fifth sail to the northeast. Hull took them for Rodgers’s
squadron. The wind was light, and Hull being to windward determined to
speak the nearest vessel, the last to come in sight. The afternoon
passed without bringing the ships together, and at ten in the evening,
finding that the nearest ship could not answer the night signal, Hull
decided to lose no time in escaping.
Then followed one of the most exciting and sustained chases recorded
in naval history. At daybreak the next morning one British frigate was
astern within five or six miles, two more were to leeward, and the
rest of the fleet some ten miles astern, all making chase. Hull put
out his boats to tow the “Constitution;” Broke summoned the boats of
his squadron to tow the “Shannon.” Hull then bent all his spare rope
to the cables, dropped a small anchor half a mile ahead, in twenty-six
fathom water, and warped his ship along. Broke quickly imitated the
device, and slowly gained on the chase. The “Guerriere” crept so near
Hull’s lee-beam as to open fire, but her shot fell short. Fortunately
the wind, though slight, favored Hull. All night the British and
American crews toiled on, and when morning came the “Belvidera,”
proving to be the best sailer, got in advance of her consorts, working
two kedge-anchors, until at two o’clock in the afternoon she tried in
her turn to reach the “Constitution” with her bow guns, but in vain.
Hull expected capture, but the “Belvidera” could not approach nearer
without bringing her boats under the “Constitution’s” stern guns; and
the wearied crews toiled on, towing and kedging, the ships barely out
of gunshot, till another morning came. The breeze, though still light,
then allowed Hull to take in his boats, the “Belvidera” being two and
a half miles in his wake, the “Shannon” three and a half miles on his
lee, and the three other frigates well to leeward. The wind freshened,
and the “Constitution” drew ahead, until toward seven o’clock in the
evening of July 19 a heavy rain-squall struck the ship, and by taking
skilful advantage of it Hull left the “Belvidera” and “Shannon” far
astern; yet until eight o’clock the next morning they were still in
sight keeping up the chase.
Perhaps nothing during the war tested American seamanship more
thoroughly than these three days of combined skill and endurance
in the face of an irresistible enemy. The result showed that Hull
and the “Constitution” had nothing to fear in these respects. There
remained the question whether the superiority extended to his guns;
and such was the contempt of British naval officers for American
ships, that with this experience before their eyes they still believed
one of their 38-gun frigates to be more than a match for an American
forty-four, although the American, besides the heavier armament, had
proved his capacity to out-sail and out-manœuvre the Englishman.
Both parties became more eager than ever for the test. For once,
even the Federalists of New England felt their blood stir; for their
own President and their own votes had called these frigates into
existence, and a victory won by the “Constitution,” which had been
built by their hands, was in their eyes a greater victory over their
political opponents than over the British. With no halfhearted spirit,
the sea-going Bostonians showered well-weighed praises on Hull when his
ship entered Boston harbor, July 26, after its narrow escape; and when
he sailed again, New England waited with keen interest to learn his
fate.
Hull could not expect to keep command of the “Constitution.” Bainbridge
was much his senior, and had the right to a preference in active
service. Bainbridge then held and was ordered to retain command of
the “Constellation,” fitting out at the Washington Navy Yard; but
Secretary Hamilton, July 28, ordered him to take command also of the
“Constitution” on her arrival in port. Doubtless Hull expected this
change, and probably the expectation induced him to risk a dangerous
experiment; for without bringing his ship to the Charlestown Navy
Yard, but remaining in the outer harbor, after obtaining such supplies
as he needed, August 2, he set sail without orders, and stood to the
eastward. Having reached Cape Race without meeting an enemy he turned
southward, until on the night of August 18 he spoke a privateer,
which told him of a British frigate near at hand. Following the
privateersman’s directions the “Constitution” the next day, August 19,
at two o’clock in the afternoon, latitude 41° 42´, longitude 55° 48´,
sighted the “Guerriere.”
The meeting was welcome on both sides. Only three days before,
Captain Dacres had entered on the log of a merchantman a challenge
to any American frigate to meet him off Sandy Hook. Not only had the
“Guerriere” for a long time been extremely offensive to every seafaring
American, but the mistake which caused the “Little Belt” to suffer so
seriously for the misfortune of being taken for the “Guerriere” had
caused a corresponding feeling of anger in the officers of the British
frigate. The meeting of August 19 had the character of a preconcerted
duel.
The wind was blowing fresh from the northwest, with the sea running
high. Dacres backed his main-top-sail and waited. Hull shortened sail
and ran down before the wind. For about an hour the two ships wore and
wore again, trying to get advantage of position; until at last, a few
minutes before six o’clock, they came together side by side, within
pistol-shot, the wind almost astern, and running before it they pounded
each other with all their strength. As rapidly as the guns could
be worked, the “Constitution” poured in broadside after broadside,
double-shotted with round and grape,--and, without exaggeration, the
echo of these guns startled the world. “In less than thirty minutes
from the time we got alongside of the enemy,” reported Hull,[331] “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.”
That Dacres should have been defeated was not surprising; that he
should have expected to win was an example of British arrogance that
explained and excused the war. The length of the “Constitution” was
173 feet; that of the “Guerriere” was 156 feet; the extreme breadth
of the “Constitution” was 44 feet; that of the “Guerriere” was 40
feet, or within a few inches in both cases. The “Constitution” carried
thirty-two long 24-pounders, the “Guerriere” thirty long 18-pounders
and two long 12-pounders; the “Constitution” carried twenty 32-pound
carronades, the “Guerriere” sixteen. In every respect, and in
proportion of ten to seven, the “Constitution” was the better ship;
her crew was more numerous in proportion of ten to six. Dacres knew
this very nearly as well as it was known to Hull, yet he sought a
duel. What he did not know was that in a still greater proportion the
American officers and crew were better and more intelligent seamen than
the British, and that their passionate wish to repay old scores gave
them extraordinary energy. So much greater was the moral superiority
than the physical, that while the “Guerriere’s” force counted as seven
against ten, her losses counted as though her force were only two
against ten.
Dacres’ error cost him dear, for among the “Guerriere’s” crew of two
hundred and seventy-two, seventy-nine were killed or wounded; and the
ship was injured beyond saving before Dacres realized his mistake,
although he needed only thirty minutes of close fighting for the
purpose. He never fully understood the causes of his defeat, and never
excused it by pleading, as he might have done, the great superiority of
his enemy.[332]
Hull took his prisoners on board the “Constitution],” and after
blowing up the “Guerriere” sailed for Boston, where he arrived on the
morning of August 30. The Sunday silence of the Puritan city broke
into excitement as the news passed through the quiet streets that the
“Constitution” was below, in the outer harbor, with Dacres and his crew
prisoners on board. No experience of history ever went to the heart of
New England more directly than this victory, so peculiarly its own;
but the delight was not confined to New England, and extreme though
it seemed it was still not extravagant, for however small the affair
might appear on the general scale of the world’s battles, it raised the
United States in one half hour to the rank of a first-class Power in
the world.
Hull’s victory was not only dramatic in itself, but was also supremely
fortunate in the moment it occurred. The “Boston Patriot” of September
2, which announced the capture of the “Guerriere,” announced in the
next column that Rodgers and Decatur, with their squadron, entered
Boston harbor within four-and-twenty hours after Hull’s arrival,
returning empty-handed after more than two months of futile cruising;
while in still another column the same newspaper announced “the
melancholy intelligence of the surrender of General Hull and his whole
army to the British General Brock.” Isaac Hull was nephew to the
unhappy General, and perhaps the shattered hulk of the “Guerriere,”
which the nephew left at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, eight
hundred miles east of Boston, was worth for the moment the whole
province which the uncle had lost, eight hundred miles to the westward;
it was at least the only equivalent the people could find, and they
made the most of it. With the shock of new life, they awoke to the
consciousness that after all the peace teachings of Pennsylvania and
Virginia, the sneers of Federalists and foreigners; after the disgrace
of the “Chesapeake” and the surrender of Detroit,--Americans could
still fight. The public had been taught, and had actually learned,
to doubt its own physical courage; and the reaction of delight in
satisfying itself that it still possessed the commonest and most brutal
of human qualities was the natural result of a system that ignored the
possibility of war.
Hull’s famous victory taught the pleasures of war to a new generation,
which had hitherto been sedulously educated to think only of its cost.
The first taste of blood maddens; and hardly had the “Constitution”
reached port and told her story than the public became eager for more.
The old Jeffersonian jealousy of the navy vanished in the flash of
Hull’s first broadside. Nothing would satisfy the craving of the
popular appetite but more battles, more British frigates, and more
daring victories. Even the cautious Madison was dragged by public
excitement upon the element he most heartily disliked.
The whole navy, was once more, September 1, safe in port, except only
the “Essex,” a frigate rated at thirty-two but carrying forty-four
guns, commanded by Captain David Porter. She left New York, July 3,
with orders,[333] dated June 24, to join Rodgers, or failing this to
cruise southwardly as far as St. Augustine. June 11 she met a convoy of
seven transports conveying a battalion of the First Regiment, or Royal
Scots, from the West Indies to reinforce Prevost and Brock in Canada.
Porter cut out one transport. With the aid of another frigate he could
have captured the whole, to the great advantage of Dearborn’s military
movements; but the British commander managed his convoy so well that
the battalion escaped, and enabled Prevost to strengthen the force at
Niagara which threatened and defeated Van Rensselaer. August 13 the
British 20-gun sloop-of-war “Alert” came in sight, bore down within
short pistol-shot, and opened fire on the “Essex.” Absurd as the idea
seemed, the British captain behaved as though he hoped to capture the
American frigate, and not until Porter nearly sunk him with a broadside
did the Englishman strike his colors. After taking a number of other
prizes, but without further fighting, September 7 Porter brought his
ship back to the Delaware River.
The return of the “Essex” to port, September 7, brought all the
national vessels once more under the direct control of the Department.
Nearly every ship in the service was then at Boston. The three
forty-fours--the “Constitution,” “United States,” and “President”--were
all there; two of the thirty-eights--the “Congress” and
“Chesapeake”--were there, and the “Constellation” was at Washington.
The “Adams,” 28, was also at Washington; but the “Hornet,” 18, and
“Argus,” 16, were with Rodgers and Decatur at Boston. The “Syren,” 16,
was at New Orleans; the “Essex,” 32, and the “Wasp,” 18, were in the
Delaware.
Carried away by Hull’s victory, the Government could no longer
hesitate to give its naval officers the liberty of action they asked,
and which in spite of orders they had shown the intention to take. A
new arrangement was made. The vessels were to be divided into three
squadrons, each consisting of one forty-four, one light frigate,
and one sloop-of-war. Rodgers in the “President” was to command one
squadron, Bainbridge in the “Constitution” was to command another,
and Decatur in the “United States” was to take the third.[334] Their
sailing orders, dated October 2,[335] simply directed the three
commodores to proceed to sea: “You are to do your utmost to annoy the
enemy, to afford protection to our commerce, pursuing that course which
to your best judgment may under all circumstances appear the best
calculated to enable you to accomplish these objects as far as may be
in your power, returning into port as speedily as circumstances will
permit consistently with the great object in view.”
Before continuing the story of the frigates, the fate of the little
“Wasp” needs to be told. Her career was brief. The “Wasp,” a
sloop-of-war rated at eighteen guns, was one of President Jefferson’s
additions to the navy to supply the loss of the “Philadelphia;” she was
ship-rigged, and armed with two long 12-pounders and sixteen 32-pound
carronades. She carried a crew of one hundred and thirty-seven men,
commanded by Captain Jacob Jones, a native of Delaware, lieutenant in
the “Philadelphia” when lost in the war with Tripoli. The “Wasp” was
attached to Rodgers’s squadron, and received orders from the commodore
to join him at sea. She sailed from the Delaware October 13, and when
about six hundred miles east of Norfolk, October 17, she fell in with
the British 18-gun brig “Frolic,” convoying fourteen merchantmen to
England. The two vessels were equal in force, for the “Frolic’s”
broadside threw a weight of two hundred and seventy-four pounds, while
that of the “Wasp” threw some few pounds less; the “Frolic” measured,
by British report,[336] one hundred feet in length, the “Wasp” one
hundred and six; their breadth on deck was the same; and although
the “Wasp’s” crew exceeded that of her enemy, being one hundred and
thirty-five men against one hundred and ten, the British vessel had
all the men she needed, and suffered little from this inferiority. The
action began at half-past eleven in the morning, the two sloops running
parallel, about sixty yards apart, in a very heavy sea, which caused
both to pitch and roll so that marksmanship had the most decisive share
in victory. The muzzles of the guns went under water, and clouds of
spray dashed over the crews, while the two vessels ran side by side for
the first fifteen minutes. The British fire cut the “Wasp’s” rigging,
while the American guns played havoc with the “Frolic’s” hull and lower
masts. The vessels approached each other so closely that the rammers
of the guns struck the enemy’s side, and at last they fell foul,--the
“Wasp” almost squarely across the “Frolic’s” bow. In the heavy sea
boarding was difficult; but as soon as the “Wasp’s” crew could clamber
down the “Frolic’s” bowsprit, they found on the deck the British
captain and lieutenant, both severely wounded, and one brave sailor at
the wheel. Not twenty of the British crew were left unhurt, and these
had gone below to escape the American musketry. The “Wasp” had only
ten men killed and wounded. The battle lasted forty-three minutes.
If the American people had acquired a taste for blood, the battle
of the “Wasp” and “Frolic” gratified it, for the British sloop was
desperately defended, and the battle, won by the better marksmanship
of the Americans, was unusually bloody. Captain Jones lost the full
satisfaction of his victory, for a few hours afterward the “Poictiers,”
a British seventy-four, came upon the two disabled combatants and
carried both into Bermuda; but the American people would have been glad
to part with their whole navy on such terms, and the fight between the
“Wasp” and the “Frolic” roused popular enthusiasm to a point where no
honors seemed to satisfy their gratitude to Captain Jones and his crew.
The “Wasp’s” brilliant career closed within a week from the day she
left the Delaware. A week afterward another of these ship-duels
occurred, which made a still deeper impression. Rodgers and Decatur
sailed from Boston October 8, with the “President,” the “United
States,” “Congress,” and “Argus,” leaving the “Constitution,”
“Chesapeake,” and “Hornet” in port. Rodgers in the “President,”
with the “Congress,” cruised far and wide, but could find no enemy
to fight, and after making prize of a few merchantmen returned to
Boston, December 31. The “Argus” also made some valuable prizes, but
was chased by a British squadron, and only by excellent management
escaped capture, returning Jan. 3, 1813, to New York. Decatur in
the “United States,” separating from the squadron October 12, sailed
eastward to the neighborhood of the Azores, until, October 25, he
sighted a sail to windward. The stranger made chase. The wind was
fresh from south-southeast, with a heavy sea. Decatur stood toward his
enemy, who presently came about, abreast of the “United States” but
beyond gunshot, and both ships being then on the same tack approached
each other until the action began at long range. The British ship
was the 38-gun frigate “Macedonian” commanded by Captain Carden, and
about the same force as the “Guerriere.” At first the “United States”
used only her long 24-pounders, of which she carried fifteen on her
broadside, while the “Macedonian” worked a broadside of fourteen long
18-pounders. So unequal a contest could not continue. Not only was
the American metal heavier, but the American fire was quicker and
better directed than that of the Englishman; so that Carden, after a
few minutes of this experience, bore down to close. His manœuvre made
matters worse. The carronades of the “United States” came into play;
the “Macedonian’s” mizzen-mast fell, her fore and main top-mast were
shot away, and her main-yard; almost all her rigging was cut to pieces,
and most of the guns on her engaged side were dismounted. She dropped
gradually to leeward, and Decatur, tacking and coming up under his
enemy’s stern, hailed, and received her surrender.
The British ship had no right to expect a victory, for the disparity of
force was even greater than between the “Constitution” and “Guerriere;”
but in this case the British court-martial subsequently censured
Captain Carden for mistakes. The battle lasted longer than that with
the “Guerriere,” and Decatur apologized for the extra hour because
the sea was high and his enemy had the weather-gauge and kept at a
distance; but the apology was not needed. Decatur proved his skill
by sparing his ship and crew. His own loss was eleven men killed
and wounded; the “Macedonian’s” loss was nine times as great. The
“United States” suffered little in her hull, and her spars and rigging
suffered no greater injury than could be quickly repaired; while the
“Macedonian” received a hundred shot in her hull, and aloft nothing
remained standing but her fore and main masts and her fore-yard.
Decatur saved the “Macedonian,” and brought her back to New
London,--the only British frigate ever brought as a prize into an
American port. The two ships arrived December 4, and from New London
the “Macedonian” was taken to New York and received in formal triumph.
Captain Jones of the “Wasp” took command of her in reward for his
capture of the “Frolic.”
Before the year closed, the “Constitution” had time for another
cruise. Hull at his own request received command of the Navy Yard
at Charlestown, and also took charge of the naval defences in New
York harbor, but did not again serve at sea during the war. The
“Constitution” was given to Captain Bainbridge, one of the oldest
officers in the service. A native of New Jersey, Bainbridge commanded
the “Philadelphia” when lost in the Tripolitan war, and was held for
eighteen months a prisoner in Tripoli. In 1812, when he took command of
the “Constitution,” though a year older than Hull and five years older
than Decatur, he had not yet reached his fortieth year, while Rodgers,
born in 1771, had but lately passed it. The difference in age between
these four naval officers and the four chief generals--Dearborn,
Wilkinson, Wade Hampton, and William Hull--was surprising; for the
average age of the naval commanders amounted barely to thirty-seven
years, while that of the four generals reached fifty-eight. This
difference alone accounted for much of the difference in their fortune,
and perhaps political influence accounted for the rest.
Bainbridge showed no inferiority to the other officers of the service,
and no one grumbled at the retirement of Hull. The “Constitution”
sailed from Boston, October 25, with the “Hornet.” The “Essex,” then
in the Delaware, was ordered to join the squadron at certain specified
ports in the south Atlantic, and sailed October 28, expecting a very
long cruise. December 13 Bainbridge arrived at San Salvador, on the
coast of Brazil, where he left the “Hornet” to blockade the “Bonne
Citoyenne,” a British 18-gun sloop-of-war bound to England with
specie. Cruising southward, within sight of the Brazilian coast, in
latitude 13° 6´ south, Bainbridge sighted the British frigate “Java,”
a ship of the same tonnage as the “Guerriere,” throwing a slightly
heavier broadside and carrying a large crew of four hundred and
twenty-six men, if the American account was correct. Bainbridge tacked
and made sail off shore, to draw the stranger away from a neutral
coast; the British frigate followed him, until at half-past one o’clock
in the afternoon Bainbridge shortened sail, tacked again, and stood
for his enemy. Soon after two o’clock the action began, the two ships
being on the same tack, the “Java” to windward and the better sailer,
and both fighting their long-range guns. The British frigate insisted
upon keeping at a distance, obliging Bainbridge after half an hour to
risk the danger of being raked; and at twenty minutes before three
o’clock the “Constitution” closed within pistol-shot.[337] At ten
minutes before three the ships were foul, the “Java’s” jibboom in the
“Constitution’s” mizzen rigging; and from that point the battle became
slaughter. In fifteen minutes the “Java’s” bowsprit, fore-mast, and
main top-mast were cut away, and a few minutes after four o’clock she
ceased firing. Her captain, Lambert, was mortally wounded; the first
lieutenant was wounded; forty-eight of her officers and crew were dead
or dying; one hundred and two were wounded; little more than a hulk
filled with wreck and with dead or wounded men floated on the water.
The “Constitution” had but twelve men killed and twenty-two wounded,
and repaired damages in an hour. Owing perhaps to the death of Captain
Lambert the reports of the battle were more contradictory than usual,
but no one disputed that although the “Java” was to windward and
outsailed the American frigate, and although her broadside counted
as nearly nine against her enemy’s ten,--for the “Constitution”
on this cruise carried two guns less than in her fight with the
“Guerriere,”--yet the “Java” inflicted no more damage than she ought
to have done had she been only one fourth the size of the American
frigate, although she was defended more desperately than either the
“Guerriere” or the “Macedonian.”
With this battle the year ended. Bainbridge was obliged to blow up his
prize, and after landing and paroling his prisoners at San Salvador
sailed for Boston, where he arrived in safety, February 27, 1813.
During the six months the war had lasted the little United States navy
captured three British frigates, besides the 20-gun “Alert” and the
18-gun “Frolic;” privateers by scores had ravaged British commerce,
while the immense British force on the ocean had succeeded only in
capturing the little “Nautilus,” the 12-gun brig “Vixen,” and the
“Wasp.” The commerce of America had indeed suffered almost total
destruction; but the dispute was to be decided not so much by the loss
which England could inflict upon America, as by that which America
could inflict upon England.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN such a war the people of the United States had only themselves to
fear; but their dangers were all the more formidable. Had the war
deeply disturbed the conditions of society, or brought general and
immediate distress, government and Union might easily have fallen to
pieces; but in the midst of military disaster and in plain sight of
the Government’s incompetence, the general public neither felt nor
had reason to fear much change in the routine of life. Commerce had
long accustomed itself to embargoes, confiscations, and blockades, and
ample supplies of foreign goods continued to arrive. The people made
no serious exertions; among a population exceeding seven millions, not
ten thousand men entered the military service. The militia, liable to
calls to the limit of one hundred thousand, served for the most part
only a few weeks in the autumn, went home in whole regiments when they
pleased,[338] and in the East refused to go out at all. The scarcity of
men was so great that even among the sea-goingclass, for whose rights
the war was waged, only with the utmost difficulty and long delays, in
spite of bounties and glory, could sailors be found to man half-a-dozen
frigates for a three-months cruise, although the number of privateers
was never great.
The nation as a whole saw nothing of actual warfare. While scarcely
a city in Europe had escaped capture, and hardly a province of that
continent was so remote as not to be familiar with invading armies or
to have suffered in proportion to its resources, no American city saw
or greatly feared an enemy. The rich farms of New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia produced their usual harvests, and except
on exposed parts of the coast the farmers never feared that their
crops might be wasted by manœuvring armies, or their cattle, pigs, and
poultry be disturbed by marauders. The country was vast, and quiet
reigned throughout the whole United States. Except at the little point
of Niagara, occupied by a few hundred scattered farmers, and on the
extreme outskirts of Ohio and Indiana, the occupations and industries
of life followed in the main their daily course.
The country refused to take the war seriously. A rich nation with
seven million inhabitants should have easily put one hundred thousand
men into the field, and should have found no difficulty in supporting
them; but no inducement that the Government dared offer prevailed upon
the people to risk life and property on a sufficient scale in 1812.
The ranks of the army were to be filled in one of two ways,--either
by enlistment in the regular service for five years, with pay at
five dollars a month, sixteen dollars bounty, and on discharge three
months pay and one hundred and sixty acres of land; or by volunteer
organizations to the limit of fifty thousand men in all, officered
under State laws, to serve for one year, with the pay of regular troops
but without bounty, clothed, and in case of cavalry corps mounted, at
their own expense. In a society where the day-laborers’ wages were
nowhere less than nine dollars a month,[339] these inducements were not
enough to supply the place of enthusiasm. The patriotic citizen who
wished to serve his country without too much sacrifice, chose a third
course,--he volunteered under the Act of Congress which authorized the
President to call one hundred thousand State militia into service for
six months; and upon this State militia Dearborn, Hull, Van Rensselaer,
and Smyth were obliged chiefly to depend.
If the war fever burned hotly in any part of the country Kentucky
was the spot. There the whole male population was eager to prove
its earnestness. When Henry Clay returned to Lexington after the
declaration of war, he wrote to Monroe[340] that he was almost alarmed
at the ardor his State displayed; about four hundred men had been
recruited for the regular army, and although no one had volunteered for
twelve months, the quota of six-months militia was more than supplied
by volunteers.
“Such is the structure of our society, however,” continued Clay,
“that I doubt whether many can be engaged for a longer term
than six months. For that term any force whatever which our
population can afford may be obtained. Engaged in agricultural
pursuits, you are well aware that from about this time, when the
crop is either secured in the barn or laid by in the field until
the commencement of the spring, there is leisure for any kind of
enterprise.”
Clay feared only that these six-months militia corps, which had armed
and equipped themselves for instant service, might not be called
out. His friends were destined not to be disappointed, for early in
August pressing letters arrived from Hull’s army at Detroit begging
reinforcements, and the governor of Kentucky at once summoned two
thousand volunteers to rendezvous, August 20, at Newport, opposite
Cincinnati. This reinforcement could not reach Detroit before the
middle of September, and the difficulties already developed in Hull’s
path showed that the war could not be finished in a single campaign of
six months; but the Kentuckians were not on that account willing to
lengthen their term of service even to one year.
The danger revealed by Hull’s position threw a double obstacle in the
way of public energy, for where it did not check, it promised to
mislead enthusiasm, and in either case it shook, if it did not destroy,
confidence in the national government. The leaders of the war party
saw their fears taking shape. Henry Clay wrote without reserve to
Monroe,[341]--
“Should Hull’s army be cut off, the effect on the public mind
would be, especially in this quarter, in the highest degree
injurious. ‘Why did he proceed with so inconsiderable a force?’
was the general inquiry made of me. I maintained that it was
sufficient. Should he meet with a disaster, the predictions of
those who pronounced his army incompetent to its object will
be fulfilled; and the Secretary of War, in whom already there
unfortunately exists no sort of confidence, cannot possibly
shield Mr. Madison from the odium which will attend such an
event.”
Clay was right in thinking that Eustis could not shield Madison; but
from the moment that Eustis could no longer serve that purpose, Clay
had no choice but to shield the President himself. When the threatened
disaster took place, victims like Eustis, Hull, Van Rensselaer, Smyth,
were sacrificed; but the sacrifice merely prepared new material for
other and perhaps worse disasters of the same kind. In Kentucky this
result was most strongly marked, for in their irritation at the
weakness of the national Government the Kentuckians took the war into
their own hands, appointed William Henry Harrison to the command
of their armies, and attempted to conquer Canada by a campaign that
should not be directed from Washington. August 25 Clay described the
feelings of his State by a comparison suggesting the greatest military
misfortunes known in history:[342]
“If you will carry your recollections back to the age of the
Crusaders and of some of the most distinguished leaders of those
expeditions, you will have a picture of the enthusiasm existing
in this country for the expedition to Canada and for Harrison as
commander.”
A week later, September 21, Clay gave another account, even less
assuring, of the manner in which the popular energy was exhausting
itself:--
“The capitulation of Detroit has produced no despair; it has, on
the contrary, awakened new energies and aroused the whole people
of this State. Kentucky has at this moment from eight to ten
thousand men in the field; it is not practicable to ascertain
the precise number. Except our quota of the hundred thousand
militia the residue is chiefly of a miscellaneous character, who
have turned out without pay or supplies of any kind, carrying
with them their own arms and their own subsistence. Parties
are daily passing to the theatre of action; last night seventy
lay on my farm; and they go on, from a solitary individual,
to companies of ten, fifty, one hundred, etc. The only fear
I have is that the savages will, as their custom is, elude
them, and upon their return fall upon our frontiers. They have
already shocked us with some of the most horrid murders. Within
twenty-four miles of Louisville, on the headwaters of Silver
Creek, twenty-two were massacred a few days ago.”
The adventures of these volunteers made part of the next campaign.
Enthusiastic as Kentucky was, few or none of the eight or ten thousand
men under arms offered to serve for twelve months. Excessively
expensive, wasteful, insubordinate, and unsteady, no general dared to
depend on them. No one could be more conscious of the evils of the
system than the Government; but the Government was helpless to invent a
remedy.
“Proofs multiply daily,” wrote Madison to Monroe, September
21,[343] “of the difficulty of obtaining regulars, and of the
fluctuating resource in the militia. High bounties and short
enlistments, however objectionable, will alone fill the ranks,
and then too in a moderate number.”
To dislike of prolonged service even the most ardent Western supporters
of the war added distrust of the Executive. The war Republicans of
the West and South were hardly less vigorous than the Federalists of
Massachusetts and Connecticut in their criticisms of the Government at
Washington. John Graham, chief clerk of the State Department, who went
to Kentucky in September, wrote to Monroe[344] that “great as is the
popularity of the President, it is barely able to resist the torrent
of public opinion against the Secretary of War, who, so far as I can
judge, is universally considered by the people of this country as
incompetent to his present situation.” Clay’s opinion has already been
shown; but the angriest of all the war leaders on hearing of Hull’s
surrender was Senator Crawford of Georgia.
“Such is my want of confidence in the leaders of our forces,” he
wrote to Monroe,[345] “and their directors, Eustis and Hamilton
in the Cabinet, that I am fearful a continuance of the war,
unless it should be for several years, will only add to the
number of our defeats. The only difficulty I had in declaring
war arose from the incompetency of the men to whom the principal
management of it was to be confided. A Secretary of War who,
instead of forming general and comprehensive arrangements
for the organization of his troops and for the successful
prosecution of the campaign, consumes his time in reading
advertisements of petty retailing merchants to find where he may
purchase one hundred shoes or two hundred hats; and a Secretary
of the Navy who, in instructing his naval officers, should make
the supply of the heads of departments with pineapples and other
tropical fruits through the exertions of these officers,--cannot
fail to bring disgrace upon themselves, their immediate
employers, and the nation. If Mr. Madison finds it impossible to
bring his feelings to consent to the dismission of unfaithful
or incompetent officers, he must be content with defeat and
disgrace in all his efforts during the war. So far as he may
suffer from this course he deserves no commiseration, but his
accountability to the nation will be great indeed!”
Harsh as these comments, were, the Secretary of State found no
difficulty in listening to them; indeed, no member of the party was
more severe than Monroe. He visited Jefferson, and apparently Jefferson
agreed with his criticisms:[346]--
“We conferred on the then state of the Departments of War
and Navy, and agreed that whatever might be the merit of the
gentlemen in them, which was admitted in certain respects, a
change in both was indispensable.”
Indeed, Monroe did what no northern Democrat liked to do,--he found
fault with Dearborn.
“Our military operations,” he told Jefferson, “had been
unsuccessful. One army had been surrendered under circumstances
which impeached the integrity of the commander; and to the
north, in the whole extent of the country, so important and
delicately circumstanced as it was, the management had been
most wretched. The command at the important post of Niagara had
been suffered to fall into State hands, and to be perverted
to local and selfish purposes. Van Rensselaer, a weak and
incompetent man with high pretensions, took it. It was late in
the year before General Dearborn left Boston and repaired to
Albany, and had given no impulse to the recruiting business in
the Eastern States by passing through them and making appeals
to the patriotism of the people; and when he took the command
at Albany it was in a manner to discourage all hope of active
operations during the favorable season. The commander ought to
lead every important movement. If intended to attack Montreal,
that being the grand attack, his station was there. If a smaller
blow only could be given, the feint against Montreal should
have been committed to another, while he commanded in person
where real service was to be performed. It was soon seen that
nothing would be done against Lower Canada; General Dearborn
doubtless saw it on his first arrival at Albany, if he did not
anticipate it before he left Boston. Niagara was the object
next in importance, and had he taken the command there he might
and probably would, by superseding little people and conducting
our military operations, have prevented the riotous and
contentious scenes exhibited there, saved the country and the
Government from the disgraceful defeat of Van Rensselaer, and
the more disgraceful and gasconading discomfiture of Smyth. The
experience of the campaign had excited a doubt with many, if not
with all, whether our military operations would prosper under
General Dearborn; ... he was advanced in years, infirm, and had
given no proof of activity or military talent during the year.”
The Secretary of State required nothing less than the retirement
of the two of his colleagues in the Cabinet, and of the general in
chief command of the army. The Secretary of the Treasury, though
less censorious than Clay, Crawford, or Monroe, shared their
opinions. He spoke of Eustis’s incompetence as a matter universally
admitted, and wrote to Jefferson that though the three disasters of
Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth could not with justice be ascribed
to the Secretary of War, “yet his incapacity and the total want
of confidence in him were felt through every ramification of the
public service.”[347] Jefferson abstained from criticising the chief
incompetents, but set no bounds to his vindictiveness against the
unfortunate generals. “Hull will of course be shot for cowardice and
treachery,” he wrote to Madison;[348] “and will not Van Rensselaer be
broke for incapacity?”
The incapacity of Eustis, Hamilton, Dearborn, Hull, Van Rensselaer, and
Smyth pointed directly to the responsible source of appointment,--the
President himself; but in face of a general election Republicans could
not afford to criticise their President, and only in private could they
assail his Cabinet. The Federalists, factious, weak, and unpopular as
they were, expressed the secret opinion of the whole country, and could
be answered by no facts or arguments except military success, which
Madison was admittedly incompetent to win; but perhaps the failure of
his Cabinet, of his generals, and of his troops gave the Federalists
less advantage than they drew from the failures of diplomacy in which
his genius lay. With reasons such as few nations ever waited to collect
for an appeal to arms, Madison had been so unfortunate in making the
issue that on his own showing no sufficient cause of war seemed to
exist. His management was so extraordinary that at the moment when Hull
surrendered Detroit, Great Britain was able to pose before the world
in the attitude of victim to a conspiracy between Napoleon and the
United States to destroy the liberties of Europe. Such inversion of
the truth passed ordinary bounds, and so real was Madison’s diplomatic
mismanagement that it paralyzed one half the energies of the American
people.
Largely if not chiefly owing to these mistakes, the New England
Federalists were able to convince themselves that Jefferson and Madison
were sold to France. From the moment war was declared, the charge
became a source of serious danger. Only one more step was needed to
throw the clerical party of New England into open revolution. If the
majority meant to close their long career by a catastrophe which should
leave the Union a wreck, they had but to try the effects of coercion.
For a time the followers and friends of the Essex Junto had some
reason to hope that matters would quickly come to this pass, for the
declaration of war caused on both sides an outbreak of temper. In
Massachusetts, Governor Strong issued, June 26, a proclamation[349]
for a public Fast in consequence of the war just declared “against the
nation from which we are descended, and which for many generations
has been the bulwark of the religion we profess;” and although such
a description of England would in previous times have scandalized the
clergy, it was received with general assent. The returning members
of Congress who had voted for war met a reception in some cases
offensive and insulting, to the point of actual assault. Two of the
Massachusetts members, Seaver and Widgery, were publicly insulted and
hissed on Change in Boston; while another, Charles Turner, member for
the Plymouth district, and Chief-Justice of the Court of Sessions for
that county, was seized by a crowd on the evening of August 3, on the
main street of Plymouth, and kicked through the town.[350] By energetic
use of a social machinery still almost irresistible, the Federalists
and the clergy checked or prevented every effort to assist the war,
either by money or enlistments. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts,
with Chief-Justice Parsons at its head, advised[351] Governor Strong
that not to Congress or to the President, but to the governor, belonged
the right to decide when the Constitutional exigency existed which
should call the State militia into the service of the United States;
and Governor Strong decided that neither foreign invasion nor domestic
insurrection existed, and that therefore he could not satisfy the
President’s request for the quota of the United States militia to
defend the coast. When, later in the season, the governor called out
three companies for the defence of Eastport and Castine, in Maine, the
chief-justice privately remonstrated, holding that this act yielded the
main point at issue between the State and National government.[352]
General Dearborn’s annoyance at the difficulties thrown in the way of
enlistments was well-founded. By one favorite device, the creation of
fictitious debts, the person enlisting caused himself to be arrested
and bailed. The courts held that while the suit was pending the man
was the property of his bail, and could not be obliged to resume his
military duties.[353] Many such difficulties were created by the
activity of individuals; but organized efforts were made with still
more effect in counteracting the wishes of government. The Federalist
members of Congress issued an Address to their constituents protesting
against the action of Congress in suppressing discussion; and this
address declared the war to be unnecessary and inexpedient. Immediately
after the declaration, the House of Representatives of Massachusetts
issued another Address to the People of the State,[354] declaring the
war to be a wanton sacrifice of their best interests, and asking their
exertions to thwart it.
“To secure a full effect to your object, it will be necessary
that you should meet and consult together for the common
good in your towns and counties. It is in dark and trying
times that this Constitutional privilege becomes invaluable.
Express your sentiments without fear, and let the sound of
your disapprobation of this war be loud and deep. Let it be
distinctly understood that in support of it your conformity to
the requisitions of law will be the result of principle and not
of choice. If your sons must be torn from you by conscription,
consign them to the care of God; but let there be no volunteers
except for defensive war.”
The people at once acted upon the recommendation to hold town-meetings
and county conventions. Among the earliest was a meeting in Essex
County, July 21, Timothy Pickering presiding, which adopted a
declaration drawn by him, closing with his favorite proposal of a
State Convention, to which the meeting chose delegates. This step--a
revival of the old disunion project of 1804--was received with general
favor, and defeated only by the courageous opposition of Samuel
Dexter, who, breaking away from his party associates, attacked the
scheme so vigorously in Boston town-meeting, August 6 and 7, that
though Harrison Gray Otis and other Federalists leaders gave it their
public support, and though the motion itself was carried, the plan was
abandoned.[355] Thenceforward, while towns and counties continued to
adopt addresses, memorials, and resolutions, they avoided committing
themselves to expressions or acts for which the time was not ripe. A
typical memorial among many that were showered upon the President was
adopted by a convention of electors of the county of Rockingham in New
Hampshire, August 5, and was the better worth attention because drawn
by Daniel Webster, who made there his first appearance as a party
leader:--
“We shrink from the separation of the States as an event
fraught with incalculable evils; and it is among our strongest
objections to the present course of measures that they have in
our opinion a very dangerous and alarming bearing on such an
event. If a separation of the States ever should take place,
it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country
undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the
interest of another; when a small and heated majority in the
government, taking counsel of their passions and not of their
reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and perhaps
stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minority, shall
by hasty, rash, and ruinous measures threaten to destroy
essential rights and lay waste the most important interests. It
shall be our most fervent supplication to Heaven to avert both
the event and the occasion; and the Government may be assured
that the tie that binds us to the Union will never be broken
_by us_.”
The conduct of England strengthened the Federalists. After the repeal
of the Orders in Council became known, Monroe, July 27, authorized
Jonathan Russell in London to arrange an armistice, provided the
British government would consent to an informal arrangement in regard
to impressments and blockades. Hardly had these instructions been
sent to England, when from Albany came news that Sir George Prevost
had proposed an armistice and General Dearborn had accepted it. This
act compelled the President either to stop the war and disorganize his
party, or to disapprove Dearborn’s armistice without prejudice to the
armistice which Russell was to negotiate in London, and also without
censure to General Dearborn. To Dearborn the President, as the story
has shown, sent immediate orders for the renewal of hostilities; while
Monroe, in fresh instructions to Jonathan Russell,[356] explained the
disavowal. The explanations given by Monroe were little likely to
satisfy Federalists that the Government honestly wished for peace.
Monroe alleged that the repeal of the Orders in Council did not satisfy
the United States, because the repeal still asserted the principle
underlying the orders, which the United States could not admit; but he
further maintained that any armistice, made before obtaining redress on
the subject of impressments, might be taken as a relinquishment of the
claim to redress, and was therefore inadmissible.
However sound in principle these objections were, they seemed to
declare perpetual war; for until England should be reduced to the
position of Denmark or Prussia, she would not abandon in express terms
either the right of impressment or that of blockade. The probable
effect of a successful war waged on these grounds would give Canada
and the Floridas to the United States as the consequence of aiding
Napoleon to destroy European and English liberties. The Federalist
clergy had little difficulty in convincing their congregations by
such evidence that Madison was bound under secret engagements with
Napoleon; and while Madison planted himself in the Napoleonic position
of forcing war on a yielding people, the British officials in Canada
stood on the defensive, avoided irritation, and encouraged trade and
commerce. American merchant-vessels carried British passes; and most of
them, to the anger of Napoleon, were freighted with supplies for the
British army in Portugal and Spain. The attitude of England would have
been magnificent in its repose had its dignity not been ruffled by the
conduct of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge, and by the privateers.
While the New England Federalists, taking the attitude of patriots
who strove only to avert impending ruin, made their profit of
every new national disaster, and repressed as well as they could
the indiscretions of their friends, the war party was not so well
disciplined. Democracies in history always suffered from the necessity
of uniting with much of the purest and best in human nature a mass of
ignorance and brutality lying at the bottom of all societies. Although
America was safe for the time from Old World ruin, no political or
military error went so far to disgust respectable people with the
war and its support, as an uprising of brutality which occurred in
Baltimore. Within some twenty years this newest of American cities
had gathered nearly fifty thousand inhabitants, among whom were many
of the roughest characters in America, fit only for privateersmen or
pirates, and familiar with both careers. On the other hand, the State
of Maryland like the State of Delaware contained many conservatives,
who showed their strength every four years by depriving the Republican
candidate for the Presidency of some portion of the State’s electoral
vote. Under their patronage a newspaper called “The Federal Republican”
was published in Baltimore, edited by Jacob Wagner, who had been
chief clerk of the State Department under Secretary Pickering, and
was retained in that office by Secretary Madison until 1807, when he
resigned the place and made use of his knowledge to attack Madison in
the press. As an editor, Jacob Wagner belonged to the extreme wing
of his party, and scrupled at nothing in the way of an assertion or
a slander. His opposition to the war was bitter and unceasing, while
the city of Baltimore shared in the feeling common in the South and
West, that, after the declaration, opposition to the war amounted to
treason and should not be tolerated. June 22, immediately after the
declaration, a well-organized mob deliberately took possession of
Wagner’s printing office and destroyed it, pulling down even the walls,
while the citizens looked on and the mayor confined his exercise of
authority to deprecations.
Wagner removed to the District of Columbia, and began to publish his
paper in Georgetown, where the Government could be made directly
responsible in case of further violence; but his associate, A. C.
Hanson, and several of the Baltimore Federalists, were not disposed
to tolerate the dictation of a mob; and after discussing the matter
a month, some of them determined on an attempt as fool-hardy as it
was courageous.[357] Monday, July 27, the “Federal Republican” was
circulated among its subscribers in Baltimore, purporting to be printed
at 45 Charles Street, though really printed at Georgetown; while about
twenty persons, under the general direction of Henry Lee,--a Virginian
distinguished in the Revolutionary War, and in 1791 governor of his
State,--fortified themselves in the house and waited attack. The same
evening a mob gathered and broke open the door. The garrison fired, and
killed or wounded some of the assailants. The attacking party brought
up a cannon, and a serious battle was about to begin, when the mayor
with a small squadron of cavalry intervened, and persuaded Hanson and
his friends to submit to the civil authority and go to jail to answer
for the blood they had shed. General Lee, General Lingan,--also a
Revolutionary officer,--Hanson, and the other occupants of the house
were marched to the jail through an angry and violent mob. The city was
in commotion, the authorities were helpless, the militia when called
upon did not appear; and that night the mob, consisting chiefly of low
Irish and Germans, entered the jail and took out the prisoners. Some
managed to escape in the confusion; the rest were savagely beaten.
Eight more or less unconscious victims lay all night and till noon
the next day piled on the prison steps, and the crowd, which would
not permit their removal, amused itself by cutting and burning the
sufferers to ascertain whether they were dead. When at last the rioters
permitted them to be removed, General Lingan was in fact dead, General
Lee was crippled, and the others were more or less severely injured.
At that moment, and even long after the heat of temper subsided,[358]
party feeling tended to favor the rioters rather than the Federalists,
who had, as was said, “given aid and comfort to the enemy;” but when
the political effects of the massacre showed themselves, the war party
became aware that a blunder had been committed more serious than any
ordinary crime. The Baltimore massacre recalled the excesses of the
French Revolution, still fresh in men’s minds; and although Democrats
in Pennsylvania and Republicans in Virginia might feel themselves too
strong for disorder, in the North and East the murder of Lingan shook
the foundation of society. Massachusetts and Connecticut looked to
their arms. If their political opinions were to be repressed by such
means, they had need to be unanimous on their own side. The town of
Boston, August 6, declared in strongly worded resolutions[359] that
the riot was “the first fruit of the unnatural and dreadful alliance
into which we have entered in fact, if not in form,” and ordered the
magistrates and citizens to be ready at a moment’s warning, armed and
equipped, to suppress any kind of disorder. Under this excitement, the
Federalists at Rockingham, August 5, talked of disunion, and the rabble
of Plymouth mobbed Turner on the night of August 3. If the majority
alone was to utter opinions, the Republican party north of Pennsylvania
might yet be forced to practise the virtue of silence. Not all the
political and military disasters of the year harmed the Government and
the war more seriously than they were injured by the Baltimore mob.
Under the influence of such passions the Presidential election
approached. Except beyond the mountains the war party was everywhere
a social minority, and perhaps such strength as Madison retained in
the East consisted partly in the popular impression that he was not a
favorite with the authors of the war. The true sentiment of the people,
if capable of expression, was one of fretful discontent; and the sense
of diffused popular restlessness alone explained the obstinacy of De
Witt Clinton in refusing to desist from his candidacy, and still more
the first prominent appearance of Martin Van Buren as manager of the
intrigue for defeating Madison. De Witt Clinton was classed by most
persons as a reckless political gambler, but Martin Van Buren when
he intrigued commonly preferred to intrigue upon the strongest side.
Yet one feeling was natural to every New York politician, whether a
Clinton or a Livingston, Burrite, Federalist, or Republican,--all
equally disliked Virginia; and this innate jealousy gave to the
career of Martin Van Buren for forty years a bias which perplexed his
contemporaries, and stood in singular contradiction to the soft and
supple nature he seemed in all else to show.
No canvass for the Presidency was ever less creditable than that of
De Witt Clinton in 1812. Seeking war votes for the reason that he
favored more vigorous prosecution of the war; asking support from peace
Republicans because Madison had plunged the country into war without
preparation; bargaining for Federalist votes as the price of bringing
about a peace; or coquetting with all parties in the atmosphere of
bribery in bank charters,--Clinton strove to make up a majority which
had no element of union but himself and money. The Federalists held a
conference at New York in September, and in spite of Rufus King, who
was said to have denounced Clinton as a dangerous demagogue in almost
the words used by Hamilton to denounce Aaron Burr ten years before,
after three days debate, largely through the influence of Harrison Gray
Otis, the bargain was made which transferred to Clinton the electoral
votes of the Federalist States. No one knew what pledges were given
by Clinton and his friends; but no man of common-sense who wished to
preserve the government and the Union could longer refuse to vote for
Madison. Only to that extent could the people be said to have reached
any conviction.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN the midst of confusion the election took place. Few moments in
the national history were less cheerful. In the Northwest the force
organized to recapture Detroit, commanded by General Harrison, was
still at Franklinton in the centre of Ohio, unable to advance and
preparing to disband. At Niagara, Van Rensselaer had failed, and
Smyth was in command. At sea, the “Guerriere” and the “Frolic” had
been captured, but Decatur’s victory over the “Macedonian” was still
unknown. Napoleon, though supposed to be dictating peace at Moscow,
was actually in full retreat. Every hope of the war party had already
proved mistaken. Canada was not in their hands; no army had been
enlisted; the people were less united than ever; taxation and debt
could no longer be avoided; and military disgrace had been incurred
beyond the predictions of John Randolph and Josiah Quincy. All this
took place before the country had seen five hundred enemies except its
own Indians on its soil, and when it had no reason to fear immediate
attack.
Once more the steadiness of Pennsylvania saved the Administration from
its worst perils. The election took place, and the electoral votes
of New England, except Vermont, were duly thrown for De Witt Clinton,
while under the management of Martin Van Buren the Republicans of the
New York legislature chose Clinton electors by Federalist aid. New
Jersey and Delaware also voted for Clinton. Maryland gave five of her
electoral votes to Clinton, six to Madison, and elected a legislature
strongly Federalist. A change of twenty electoral votes would have
turned the scale. In 1808, under all the disadvantages of the embargo,
Madison received one hundred and twenty-two votes in an Electoral
College of one hundred and seventy-five; but in 1812 he obtained
only one hundred and twenty-eight votes in an Electoral College of
two hundred and seventeen, although the three new votes of Louisiana
increased his proportion. In Massachusetts the Federalists surprised
even themselves by their immense majority of twenty-four thousand,
and the peace party swept the Congressional districts throughout New
England and New York, doubling Federalist strength in the Thirteenth
Congress.
If John Taylor of Caroline was to be believed, the support given by
Virginia to the Administration was hardly more flattering than the
sweeping condemnation of the North and East. The County of Caroline,
south of the Rappahannock on the road to Richmond, was distinguished
by no peculiarities from the other seaboard counties in the Southern
States, and Colonel Taylor himself did not openly oppose the war; but
he saw no enthusiasm for it among his neighbors. November 8 he wrote
to Monroe,[360]--
“I think I expressed my opinion to you during the last Congress
that the people were not for the war in these parts, though
they were attached to Mr. Monroe and Mr. Madison. In that
opinion I am confirmed by the apathy in choosing electors.
Those respectable and popular men, Colonel James Taylor and Dr.
Bankhead, could not, I am told, get more than about one hundred
and thirty out of about seven hundred free-holders to attend
and vote for Mr. Madison. Among these were the most prominent
minority-men.”
This apathy extended through the three great States of Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and North Carolina. Only along the Indian frontier, west of
the Alleghany Mountains, could enthusiasm be said to exist, and even
there took rather the form of hostilities against the Indians than
against the British.
The effect of these embarrassments and difficulties showed itself in
wavering and uncertain judgment in the Government, and especially in
its diplomacy. The President and the Cabinet hoped and believed, when
the news of Hull’s surrender arrived, that it would produce an outburst
of patriotism. So strong was Monroe’s faith in the people that he
talked to Serurier, September 1, as though the nation were alive with
his own ardor.[361]
“‘We want no armistice for the present,’ said Mr. Monroe to me
with great energy; ‘our resolution is taken. It has been done
after long and cool deliberation, and by consent of the whole
nation; we shall not easily renounce it. Never, certainly,
have we been more determined on war; the disgraceful affront
we have lately experienced at Detroit renders its prolongation
indispensable until our honor is restored.... For myself,’ he
cried, with indignation altogether military and worthy one of
the founders of Independence, ‘Secretary of State as I am, if
to-morrow a British minister should arrive in Washington to
negotiate peace, I would say to him, No; I will not treat with
you now! wait till we have given you a better opinion of us!
When our honor shall be avenged, when you shall have recrossed
the rivers, when our generals shall occupy the best part of your
Canada, then I shall be disposed to listen, and to treat of
peace.’”
These remarks were made in September. In about six weeks the French
minister talked again with the Secretary of State, who assured him, to
his astonishment, that peace might be made with England at any moment.
Serurier, who took Monroe’s pacific temper as seriously as he had taken
his warlike expressions, wrote in alarm to his Government,[362]--
“The English want peace with America; they want it at any price;
they offer all that America asks, and negotiations are about to
open, or rather are continuing, and henceforward openly. Mr.
Monroe made me this communication in nearly these terms....
‘We did not flatter ourselves on obtaining so quickly such
important concessions. Mr. Russell had occasion to see Lord
Castlereagh. Discussing with this minister the repeal of the
Orders in Council, he asked why the repealing Order treated with
such vagueness the renunciation of paper blockades, and whether
the Ministry had in fact wholly abandoned them. Lord Castlereagh
answered: ‘They fall to dust of themselves, and we shall think
no more of them.’ Mr. Russell having noticed the caution with
which the Prince Regent seemed to retain the right to restore at
any time the abolished Orders, Lord Castlereagh observed that,
indeed, something had to be said for the public, but the phrase
did no harm.’”
Monroe added that “very certainly the American government would not
consent to sign the peace without having obtained from England the
renunciation of impressments;” but Serurier had reason for alarm, for
Monroe expected an immediate renewal of negotiations. He had received
from Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren at Halifax another offer of
armistice and negotiation, dated September 30; and soon after the
interview with Serurier, Monroe wrote to Admiral Warren a reply, dated
October 27,[363] which accepted the armistice on condition that,
pending the cessation of hostilities, the practice of impressments
should be suspended, while he made the additional offer of negotiating
without an armistice if the suspension of impressments should be
conceded in principle.
Nothing remained of the refusal to hear England’s advances until “our
honor shall be restored and our generals shall occupy the best parts of
your Canada.” The unexpected indifference to the war which made itself
so evident in all the Atlantic States paralyzed the government. Even
the Federalists of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland
spoke to Monroe in tones hardly more emphatic than those used by
his oldest Virginia friend, Colonel Taylor, who wrote:[364] “If the
President thinks that defeat has raised the spirit of the nation, and
goes on with the war on that ground, he will find himself mistaken.”
The President clearly came to the same conclusion, for he renewed
attempts at negotiation a week before Congress met, and a fortnight
before the election of November 8.
Thenceforward, Madison risked the charge of continuing the war only
to satisfy himself that England could not be forced into an express
renunciation of what she called her right of impressment,--a result
which the opposition already knew to be certain. The experiment was
worth trying, and after the timidity of the American government in
past years was well suited to create national character, if it did not
destroy the nation; but it was not the less hazardous in the face of
sectional passions such as existed in New England, or in the hands of
a party which held power by virtue of Jefferson’s principles. That the
British government should expressly renounce its claim to impressment
was already an idea hardly worth entertaining; but if the war could
not produce that result, it might at least develop a government strong
enough to attain the same result at some future time. If a strong
government was desired, any foreign war, without regard to its object,
might be good policy, if not good morals; and in that sense President
Madison’s war was the boldest and most successful of all experiments
in American statesmanship, though it was also among the most reckless;
but only with difficulty could history offer a better example of its
processes than when it showed Madison, Gallatin, Macon, Monroe, and
Jefferson joining to create a mercenary army and a great national debt,
for no other attainable object than that which had guided Alexander
Hamilton and the Federalists toward the establishment of a strong
government fifteen years before.
Unnatural as Madison’s position was, that of Monroe was more
surprising. Such were the revolutions of politics that Madison found
himself master of the situation, and Monroe was obliged to forego
his ancient distrust of Executive power in the effort to prevent his
rivals from sharing it. Somewhat to the amusement of the Federalists,
who held no high opinion of Monroe’s abilities, the Secretary of State
was placed before the country in the attitude of Cromwell. He could
no longer follow the path of ambition in civil life. If he were to
maintain his hold upon the Presidency, he must serve his country in
the field where his services were needed, or some bolder man would
capture Quebec and the Presidency by a single stroke.
The President himself gave Monroe an early hint to this effect. After
the adjournment of Congress, July 6, 1812, and some two months before
Hull’s surrender was known, Madison suggested[365] to his Secretary of
State the idea of leading the advance upon Montreal. Fortunately for
Monroe, he could neither out-rank Dearborn, nor serve as a subordinate.
Unable to overcome this objection, Madison laid the subject aside,
and soon afterward, toward the end of August, left Washington for
Montpelier, where he enjoyed only a few days’ rest before the news of
Hull’s surrender arrived. The idea that he was himself in any degree
responsible for Hull’s disaster, or for Eustis’s or Dearborn’s supposed
shortcomings, did not distress the President; but he was anxious to
restore confidence in the military administration, and Monroe was
earnest in the wish to assist him. September 2, immediately after
receiving the news, Monroe wrote to the President offering to take a
volunteer commission, and to assume command of the fresh force then
gathering in Kentucky and Ohio to recapture Detroit. Madison replied
September 5,[366] balancing the advantages and objections, but leaning
toward the step. The next day he wrote more strongly,[367] urging
Monroe to go as a volunteer without rank, if no sufficient commission
could be given him. Again, September 10,[368] the President wrote,
offering to risk issuing a volunteer commission under a doubt as to
the meaning of the Act: “I see no evil in risking your appointment
comparable to that which may be obviated by it. The Western country is
all in motion and confusion. It would be grievous if so much laudable
ardor and effort should not be properly concentrated and directed.”
Neither the President nor the Secretary was aware that Governor
William Henry Harrison had taken steps long in advance for occupying
the field on which Monroe’s eyes were fixed. Monroe actually made his
arrangements, sent off cannon to besiege Detroit, and was himself on
the point of starting westward, when letters arrived which showed
that Harrison was not only the popular idol of the moment in Kentucky
and Ohio, but that he had received from the governor of Kentucky the
commission of major-general.[369]
This double set-back from men so inferior as Dearborn and Harrison
irritated Monroe, who could not command in the North on account
of Dearborn, or in the West without a contest with Harrison and
Winchester. Evidently, if he was to take any military position, he
must command in chief.
This idea became fixed not only in Monroe’s mind, but also in that of
the public, particularly among Monroe’s personal following. The man who
stood closest in his confidence and whose advice weighed most with him
in personal matters was his son-in-law, George Hay. September 22 Hay
wrote to him from Richmond,[370]--
“It is rumored here that you are to be appointed
lieutenant-general. Such an appointment would give, I believe,
universal satisfaction.... This is indeed a critical moment.
Some great effort must be made. Unless something important is
done, Mr. Madison may be elected again, but he will not be able
to get along. But Mr. Madison ought not to exact any further
sacrifices from you. If you go into the army you ought to go
with the supreme power in your hand. I would not organize an
army for Dearborn or anybody else. Mr. Madison ought not to
expect it, and if he did I would flatly and directly reject
the proposal. Everybody is looking forward to an event of this
kind, and I do not believe that any man calculates that you are
to go in a subordinate character. The truth is that Dearborn is
laughed at, not by Federalists but by zealous Republicans. I do
not give on this subject a reluctant, hesitating opinion. I am
clear that if you go into the army (about which I say nothing),
you should go as the commander-in-chief.”
Monroe also felt no doubt that if he went to the field at all he must
go in chief command; but he hesitated. As compared with Madison’s
major-generals, Monroe was young, being only fifty-four years old; in
the Revolutionary War he had risen to the rank of captain, and had seen
as much service as made him the military equal of Dearborn or Pinckney,
but he felt no such special fitness for carrying out a campaign as for
planning and superintending it. Probably he could reconcile the two
careers only by some expedient, such as by taking the War Department,
and as Secretary of War accompanying the general in command; or by
accepting the post of lieutenant-general, and from headquarters
advising the Secretary of War as to the conduct of the campaign.
The former course seemed to Monroe to imply serious Constitutional
difficulties, and he inclined to the latter.
Secretary Eustis waited until Dearborn returned from Lake Champlain
to Albany, Smyth failed at Niagara, and Harrison became stationary
in Ohio, then, December 3, sent his resignation to the President.
Instantly informed of this event, and having reason to suppose that
the place would be offered to him, Monroe called his friends to a
consultation,[371] the result of which was narrated in a letter written
to Jefferson six months afterward:[372]--
“I stated [to the President] that if it was thought necessary to
remove me from my present station in the idea that I had some
military experience, and a change in the command of the troops
was resolved on, I would prefer it to the Department of War in
the persuasion that I might be more useful. In the Department of
War a man might form a plan of a campaign and write judicious
letters on military operations; but still these were nothing but
essays,--everything would depend on the execution. I thought
that with the army I should have better control over operations
and events, and might even aid, so far as I could give aid at
all, the person in the Department of War. I offered to repair
instantly to the Northern army, to use my best efforts to form
it, to promote the recruiting business in the Eastern States, to
conciliate the people to the views of the Government, and unite
them so far as it might be possible in the war. The President
was of opinion that if I quitted my present station, I ought to
take the command of the army. It being necessary to place some
one immediately in the Department of War to supply the vacancy
made by Mr. Eustis’s retreat, the President requested me to take
it _pro tempore_, leaving the ultimate decision on the
other question open to further consideration. I did so.”
Monroe, with only the model of Washington before his eyes, felt
aggrieved that the Clintons and Armstrongs of the North thought him
greedy of power; but the curious destiny which had already more than
once made a sport of Monroe’s career promised at last to throw the
weight of a continent upon his shoulders. Secretary of State, acting
Secretary of War, general-in-chief by a double guarantee, and President
thereafter, what more could the witches promise on the blasted heath
of politics that could tempt ambition? Neither Cromwell nor Napoleon
had, at any single moment, laid a broader claim upon the favors of
Fortune.
Monroe grasped too much, and the prizes which would have destroyed
him slipped through his fingers. The story that he was to be
general-in-chief as well as Secretary of War, exaggerated by jealousy,
roused a storm of protest. Even the patient Gallatin interposed there,
and gave the President to understand that if Monroe were transferred
to the army, he should himself claim the vacant Department of State;
and Madison admitted the justice of the claim, although the difficulty
of filling the Treasury created a new obstacle to the scheme. A
greater difficulty arose from sectional jealousies. The loss of New
York to the Republican party, due chiefly to dislike of Virginia and
to Monroe’s previous promotion, was too recent and serious to allow
further experiments. The Republican leaders in New York--Governor
Tompkins, Judge Spencer, and their connections--felt their hopes
depend on checking the open display of Virginia favoritism. Finally,
the Federalists made a scandal of the subject. January 5, Josiah
Quincy, in a speech which for literary quality was one of the best ever
delivered in the House, after giving a keen if not an exact, account
of the “Cabinet, little less than despotic, composed, to all efficient
purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner, which had for twelve years
ruled the nation,” rose to a climax by averring that all the new
Cabinet projects--the loan of twenty millions, an army of fifty-five
thousand regulars, the scheme of mock negotiation--had no other object
than to satiate the ambition of a single man:--
“The army for the conquest of Canada will be raised,--to be
commanded by whom? This is the critical question. The answer
is in every man’s mouth. By a member of the American Cabinet;
by one of the three; by one of that trio who at this moment
constitute in fact, and who efficiently have always constituted,
the whole Cabinet. And the man who is thus intended for the
command of the greatest army this New World ever contained,--an
army nearly twice as great as was at any time the regular army
of our Revolution,--I say the man who is intended for this
great trust is the individual who is notoriously the selected
candidate for the next Presidency.”
In face of these difficulties, Madison could not carry out his scheme.
His only object in pushing Monroe forward was to strengthen himself by
using what he supposed to be Monroe’s popularity; but from the moment
it appeared that Monroe, in the War Department or at the head of the
Northern army, would be a source of weakness rather than of strength,
Madison had no motive to persist; so that Monroe, failing to take
a decided step, suddenly found himself--he hardly knew how--in the
awkward attitude of a disappointed Cromwell. His rival first withdrew
the War Department from his hands. He described to Jefferson[373] the
way in which he lost this vantage ground:--
“It was soon found to be improper, at a period of so much
danger and urgency, to keep that Department in the hands of a
temporary occupant; it ought to be filled by the person who
would have to form the plan of the campaign in every quarter,
and be responsible for it. It being indispensable to fill it
with a prominent character, and the question remaining undecided
relative to the command of the army, more persons thinking a
change urgent, and the opinion of the President in regard to me
being the same, General Armstrong was put in the Department of
War. Had it been decided to continue the command of the army
under General Dearborn, and the question been with me, ‘Would
I take the Department of War, the President and other friends
wishing it?’ I would not have hesitated a moment in complying;
but it never assumed that form.”
If Monroe was more jealous of one man than of another, his antipathies
centred upon John Armstrong, the late American minister at Paris. As
has been already shown, Monroe came into the State Department expecting
rivalry with Armstrong; but he had no occasion to begin active measures
of hostility. Armstrong’s opinions of Madison and Monroe were known to
be the same as those of other New Yorkers; if he came to the support of
the Administration he came not in order to please the Virginians, but
to rescue the government from what he thought Virginian incompetence or
narrowness; and that Armstrong would shut the door of military glory in
the face of the Secretary of State was as certain as that the Secretary
of State would, sooner or later, revenge the insult by ejecting
Armstrong from the Cabinet if he could.
No one denied that Monroe had reason for fearing Armstrong, whose
abilities were undoubted and whose scruples were few. Since his return
from Paris, Armstrong had been known as a discontented Republican,
grumbling without reserve at the manner in which public affairs were
conducted; yet this was no more than many other Northern Republicans
had done, and Armstrong behaved better than most. On the declaration of
war he avoided the mistakes of the Clintons, and acted with Governor
Tompkins and Ambrose Spencer in support of the Administration. July 6,
1812, to the surprise and anger of the Clinton Republicans, Armstrong
accepted the commission of brigadier-general, and was placed in command
of New York city and its defences. His knowledge of the theory and
practice of war was considerable, and his influence as a politician
was likely to be great. In the chronic chaos of New York politics,
Armstrong stood between De Witt Clinton, who wished to win the
Presidency by intrigue, and Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, who hoped to
become President by regular party promotion. Ambrose Spencer, who liked
neither Clinton nor Tompkins, preferred Armstrong as the candidate
of New York. The influence of Spencer in the contest with De Witt
Clinton became for the moment absolute; and the necessity of securing
re-election as governor, in April, 1813, drove Tompkins himself to
support Spencer in urging Armstrong’s appointment as Secretary of War,
although he knew that the appointment of Armstrong to the Cabinet
opened to him the door to the Presidency.[374]
In spite of Armstrong’s services, abilities, and experience,
something in his character always created distrust. He had every
advantage of education, social and political connection, ability and
self-confidence; he was only fifty-four years old, which was also the
age of Monroe; but he suffered from the reputation of indolence and
intrigue. So strong was the prejudice against him that he obtained
only eighteen votes against fifteen in the Senate on his confirmation;
and while the two senators from Virginia did not vote at all, the two
from Kentucky voted in the negative. Under such circumstances, nothing
but military success of the first order could secure a fair field for
Monroe’s rival.
The nomination of Armstrong to be Secretary of War was made Jan. 8,
1813, and was accompanied by that of William Jones of Pennsylvania to
succeed Paul Hamilton as Secretary of the Navy.
The resignation of Paul Hamilton was supposed to be made at the
President’s request, for reasons not given to the public. His
successor, William Jones, long a prominent Republican, a member of
Congress at the beginning of Jefferson’s administration, had been
offered the Navy Department in 1801, when that Department was offered
to almost every leading Republican before falling into the hands
of Robert Smith. Jones then declined the task, and soon retired
from Congress to follow his private business as a ship-owner in
Philadelphia. His appointment in 1812 was probably as good as the party
could supply. He was confirmed by the Senate without opposition; but he
had little to do with the movement of politics or with matters apart
from business.
These changes left no one except Gallatin who belonged to the Cabinet
of President Jefferson. Attorney-General Rodney had resigned his
position a year before, in natural displeasure because the President
nominated Gabriel Duval, the Comptroller of the Treasury, to the vacant
seat of Justice Chase on the Supreme Bench, thus passing over the
Attorney-General in a manner which could be regarded only as a slight.
The President, Dec. 10, 1811, nominated William Pinkney, the late
minister at London, to succeed Rodney. The influence and activity of
the Attorney-General in the Cabinet were at that time less than they
subsequently became; and Pinkney, like Rodney, and like William Wirt
afterward, had little responsibility beyond the few cases in which the
United States were a party before the Courts.
With this reorganization of the Cabinet Madison’s first term of
Presidency drew toward a close. Only Congress required his attention,
and as some compensation for the cares of war, the cares of Congress
diminished. After the general election of Nov. 8, 1812, serious
opposition or even faction in Congress became impossible. Madison
had no reason to fear anything that could happen in the Legislature,
provided he had no difficulties with his Cabinet.
President Madison’s Annual Message of Nov. 4, 1812, was an interesting
paper. Gliding gently over the disasters of the Northern campaign;
dilating on British iniquity in using Indians for allies; commenting
on the conduct of Massachusetts and Connecticut with disfavor, because
it led to the result that the United States were “not one nation for
the purpose most of all requiring it;” praising Rodgers and Hull for
the results of their skill and bravery,--the Message next touched upon
the diplomatic outlook and the future objects of the war in a paragraph
which needed and received much study:--
“Anxious to abridge the evils from which a state of war cannot
be exempt, I lost no time, after it was declared, in conveying
to the British government the terms on which its progress might
be arrested without awaiting the delays of a formal and final
pacification; and our _chargé d’affaires_ at London was at
the same time authorized to agree to an armistice founded upon
them. These terms required that the Orders in Council should be
repealed as they affected the United States, without a revival
of blockades violating acknowledged rules; and that there should
be an immediate discharge of American seamen from British
ships, and a stop to impressment from American ships, with an
understanding that an exclusion of the seamen of each nation
from the ships of the other should be stipulated; and that the
armistice should be improved into a definite and comprehensive
adjustment of depending controversies. Although a repeal of
the orders susceptible of explanations meeting the views of
this Government had taken place before this pacific advance
was communicated to that of Great Britain, the advance [made
by us] was declined [by the British government] from an avowed
repugnance to a suspension of the practice of impressments
during the armistice, and without any intimation that the
arrangement proposed with respect to seamen would be accepted.
Whether the subsequent communications from this Government,
affording an occasion for reconsidering the subject on the part
of Great Britain, will be viewed in a more favorable light
remains to be known. It would be unwise to relax our measures in
any respect on a presumption of such a result.”
Not without difficulty could one understand from this statement
precisely what prevented the restoration of peace. England had never
refused to discharge American seamen on sufficient evidence of wrongful
impressment. According to the Message, the President asked only “an
immediate discharge of American seamen from British ships, and a stop
to impressment from American ships.” The demand of this point seemed
to imply that England had made or would probably make satisfactory
concessions on all others. The Message therefore narrowed the cause
of war to the requirement of a formal suspension of impressments from
American ships, though not of American citizens on shore, pending
negotiations, and to be made permanent by treaty. The demand was
proper, and its only fault was to fall short of full satisfaction; but
considered in its effect upon the politics of the moment the attitude
was new, unsupported by a precedent, unwarranted by any previous
decision or declaration of President or Congress, and open to the
Federalist charge that Madison sought only an excuse for continuing to
stake the national existence on the chance of success in his alliance
with Bonaparte. The rest of the Message helped to strengthen the
impression that a policy of permanent war was to be fixed upon the
country; for it recommended higher pay for recruits and volunteers,
an increase in the number of general officers, a reorganization of
the general staff of the army, and an increase of the navy. The
impression was not weakened by the President’s silence in regard to
the financial wants of the government, which left to the Secretary of
the Treasury the unpleasant duty of announcing that the enormous sum
of twenty million dollars must be borrowed for the coming year. Every
one knew that such a demand was equivalent to admitting the prospect of
immediate bankruptcy.
“I think a loan to that amount to be altogether unattainable,”
Gallatin told Madison in private.[375] “From banks we can expect
little or nothing, as they have already lent nearly to the full
extent of their faculties. All that I could obtain this year
from individual subscriptions does not exceed three million two
hundred thousand dollars.”
The President refrained from presenting this demand to Congress, and
not until after the election was the financial situation made known;
but then Gallatin’s report, sent to the House December 5, estimated
the military expenses at seventeen millions, the naval at nearly five
millions, and the civil at fifteen hundred thousand, besides interest
on the public debt to the amount of three million three hundred
thousand, and reimbursements of loans, treasury notes, etc., reaching
five million two hundred thousand more,--in all, thirty-one million
nine hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. This estimate omitted
every expenditure not already authorized by law, such as the proposed
increase of army and navy.
To meet these obligations, amounting probably to thirty-three million
dollars, Gallatin counted on a revenue of eleven million five hundred
thousand dollars from imports, and half a million from the sale of
lands,--making twelve millions in all; leaving a sum of at least twenty
millions to be borrowed, with an increase of debt to the amount of
fifteen millions.
The state of war brought the advantage of compelling the Legislature
to act or perish; and although Congress had seldom if ever been so
unanimously dissatisfied, it was never so docile. For the first time
Madison could recommend a measure with some certainty that Congress
would listen, and with some confidence that it would act. Faction began
to find its limits, and an Executive order had no longer to excuse
itself; while Congress, on its side, with shut eyes, broke through the
barriers hitherto set to its powers, and roamed almost at will beyond
the limits which the Republican party assigned to the Constitution.
CHAPTER XX.
HARDLY had Henry Clay seated himself again in the Speaker’s chair and
appointed the select committee on military affairs, when the process
of reorganizing the government on a new and energetic footing began.
November 19, David R. Williams, chairman of the military committee,
reported a bill raising the soldiers’ pay to eight dollars a month,
and exempting them from arrest for debt. At any previous moment in
national history such a bill would have aroused paroxysms of alarm, but
the Republicans of 1812 were obliged to accept it without a protest,
and with grave doubts whether it would prove effective; while the
Federalists tried only to strike out the clause which allowed minors
above eighteen years of age to enlist without the consent of their
parents, guardians, or masters. On this subject Josiah Quincy made a
vehement speech, which ruffled the temper of David R. Williams. Quincy
was defeated in the House; but the Senate by a vote of twenty-six to
four saved the rights of parents, guardians, and masters, without
reducing the age of enlistments. The bill became law December 12, and
was quickly followed by another bill raising the bounty and organizing
the recruiting service.
Before this matter was finished, the naval committee reported a bill
for increasing the navy; and the two Houses vied with one another in
their enthusiasm for this recently unpopular branch of the public
service. Here and there an old Republican protested that he could not
in conscience violate every fixed idea of his political existence by
voting for a large naval establishment; but when the House was asked
to appropriate money for four ships-of-the-line and six forty-four-gun
frigates, although the Federalists were much divided as to the wisdom
of building seventy-fours, and debated the subject at great length with
contradictory votes, the House closed the discussion, December 23, by
passing the bill as it stood. In the minority of fifty-six were several
warm friends of the navy, who thought Congress needlessly extravagant.
“Frigates and seventy-fours,” wrote Jefferson,[376] “are a sacrifice
we must make, heavy as it is, to the prejudices of a part of our
citizens.” No one who saw the quickness of this revolution could
doubt that whatever evils war might cause, it was a potent force
to sweep nations forward on their destined way of development or
decline. Madison, Monroe, Gallatin, as well as Jefferson and the whole
Republican party accepted a highly paid mercenary army, a fleet of
ships-of-the-line, a great national debt at high interest, and a war
of conquest in coincidence with the wars of Napoleon, on ground which
fifteen years before had been held by them insufficient to warrant
resistance to France.
More serious suggestions were offered by the failure of Congress to act
its intended part as the controlling branch of government. The founders
of the Constitution had not expected the legislative power whose wishes
the President was created to carry out, and which was alone responsible
for the policy of government, to prove imbecile; yet every one saw that
Congress was sinking, or had already sunk, low in efficiency. Before
the declaration of war, this condition of the Legislature was concealed
by the factiousness which caused it; but the first meeting of Congress
during the war disclosed one of the commonplaces of history,--that no
merely legislative body could control a single, concentrated Executive,
even though it were in hands as little enterprising as those of
President Madison. The declaration of war placed Congress in a new
position. Although the sessions were unchanged in character, they
became suddenly unimportant compared with Executive acts. Congress no
longer counteracted directly the Executive will, or refused what the
President required; the wishes expressed in his Annual Message were for
the first time carried out like orders. On the other hand the country
was excited by a reorganization of the Cabinet, and Congress seemed
to feel itself superfluous, while the President decided upon the
conflicting claims of politicians to act as channels for dispensing his
power.
The exceptions to the newly-established discipline were chiefly
found among the war leaders themselves, who had done most to make
it necessary. As the demands of the government became greater, they
interfered with favorite interests or prejudices. This was particularly
the case with the required financial measures. Gallatin made in
his annual report no direct recommendations; he contented himself
with a brief statement of receipts and estimates; but in a letter
to the Committee of Ways and Means, dated November 18, he suggested
a resource which might to the extent of a few millions relieve the
Treasury from its immediate burden. The resource was accidental.
Immediately after the repeal of the British Orders in Council, British
merchandise to a great amount was shipped to America in reliance on
the Act of Congress of March 2, 1811, which declared that the repeal
of the British Orders, at any time, should of itself put an end to the
American non-importation. The declaration of war, five days before
the British repeal, rendered inoperative the Act of March 2, 1811, so
that the importers became liable not only to capture by the public and
private armed vessels of both countries, but also to confiscation of
their property by the government on its arrival in the United States.
Both events occurred. Some vessels were captured at sea, and sent in;
but these and all the rest were alike seized on their arrival, and
libelled by the government without distinction. The question then
arose, what should be done with them.
Under the law of forfeiture, one half was vested in the custom-house
officers or informers, the other half in the United States; and the
power to remit, in whole or in part, was vested in the Secretary
of the Treasury. No one expected the government to exact the full
forfeiture, for the importations had been made in good faith, and the
property was chiefly American. As though to protect the owners the
courts interfered, and in certain districts compelled the collectors to
release the cargoes on receiving bonds to their appraised value. The
action of the courts obliged the President to make the rule general.
All the cargoes were released, the goods passed into the market, and
only bonds to the amount of near eighteen million dollars, besides
duties to the amount of five millions, remained in charge of the
Treasury. The five millions were safe; but the bonds were by no means
as good as the gold.
Gallatin expressed to the Committee of Ways and Means the opinion,
that in view of the extraordinary profits of the importers, who had
no right to any profit at all, substantial justice would be done by
remitting that half of the forfeitures which would otherwise fall to
the collectors, and by exacting for the public only an equivalent
for unexpected war profits. His plan aimed at placing the importers,
as nearly as possible, in the condition they had expected, on the
withdrawal of the non-importation, when they ordered the importations
to be made.[377]
Gallatin’s views were explained more fully in the course of the debate.
The importers had been aware of their risk, and had not taken it
without much hesitation, after consulting Jonathan Russell, then in
charge of the legation at London. The Government held non-importation
to be more effective than armies or fleets in bringing England to
terms, and the non-importation was still in force as a war measure.
Gallatin’s orders, which admitted these goods for sale, violated the
law and the policy of government; but if the goods had been admitted,
as was the case, at least they should not be used to diminish the
government’s receipts from internal taxation. The duties already levied
to the amount of five million dollars did not exceed twenty-five per
cent on their cost, while the goods themselves commanded war prices,
and no other goods of the same kind were allowed to enter the country.
The profits could hardly fail to be great, and no small part of these
profits, besides the invested capital, was British. Finally, within
the wider questions of equity, law, and policy remained the fact that
bankruptcy in one form or another stood directly before the Treasury,
and that four or five million dollars might be the means of national
salvation.
If objections were to be made, one might have supposed that Cheves,
Clay, and Calhoun would have resisted Gallatin’s idea because it
offered too much encouragement to mercantile speculation resting
on violation of law; but nothing was more uncertain than the moral
sensitiveness of a political body. What seemed to one statesman a
right and proper act seemed evident dishonesty to another; nor had
the science of ethics made sensible progress toward the invention of
practical tests. Statesmen who saw nothing improper in the seizure
of West Florida, the attacks on East Florida, or the campaign of
Tippecanoe; who maintained the doctrine that the admission of Louisiana
dissolved the Union, or that Champagny’s letters satisfied the demands
of government and the Acts of Congress,--war Democrats and Federalists
alike, representing the morality and the energy of the country, joined
in attacking Gallatin’s plan. Langdon Cheves, chairman of the Ways
and Means Committee, after reporting from the committee, November 25,
a resolution to leave the subject to the Secretary of the Treasury,
began a speech, December 4, by declaring that he trembled for the
consequences of the measure; it would shake the party to pieces; it
would make angels weep.
“I trust in God,” cried Cheves, “no man who may be thus
consigned by this House to the Secretary of the Treasury to
await his decision and to supplicate his clemency, will so
far forget what he owes to his own true interests and to his
character as a free citizen as to give an equivalent for that
sum of money which may be demanded as the government’s share of
the profits. I would rather see the objects of the war fail,--I
would rather see the seamen of the country impressed on the
ocean and our commerce swept from its bosom,--than see the long
arm of the Treasury indirectly thrust into the pocket of the
citizen through the medium of a penal law.”
Henry Clay admitted and favored total confiscation, but not the idea of
a compromise:--
“The law ought to be enforced or not. He thought a compromise
in the case dangerous and undignified; indeed, he felt shocked
at the idea of an equivalent. Already are our laws too openly
violated or fraudulently eluded. Shall we degrade them still
further by carrying them into the market and fixing a price
upon their violation? Extend the principle of an equivalent,
from cases of prohibition merely, to instances of moral
turpitude,--to felony and homicide,--and every gentleman will
see its enormity. No, sir! Let us not pollute our hands with
this welt-gild!”
Calhoun would not allow that the government could properly act at all:--
“If our merchants are innocent,” he said, “they are welcome to
their good fortune; if guilty, I scorn to participate in its
profits. I will never consent to make our penal code the basis
of our Ways and Means, or to establish a partnership between the
Treasury and the violators of the Non-importation Law.”
William Lowndes fortified his position by an argument showing that
“if the plan of confiscation and of a rigid execution of the law were
dismissed, no just principles of policy and not even the interests
of the Treasury could sanction an exaction which would resolve itself
into a tax.” Josiah Quincy found himself for once in accord with his
chief opponents, and declared that in his opinion highway robbery stood
a little higher in point of courage, and was a little less in point
of iniquity, than this Treasury attempt to make calumny the basis
of plunder. Felix Grundy said: “Gentlemen have assumed a strange,
high-minded position in this argument, the force of which, I confess,
is beyond my comprehension.”
December 11 the House in Committee of the Whole, by a vote of fifty-two
to forty-nine, rejected Gallatin’s suggestion. December 15 a bill came
from the Senate remitting all forfeitures on goods owned by Americans
and shipped from England before September 15, when the declaration of
war became known there. After a sharp debate this bill passed by a vote
of sixty-four to sixty-one,--Calhoun, Cheves, and Lowndes voting with
the Federalists and securing its passage. This decision closed one
source of revenue for the year.
The course taken by Cheves, Calhoun, and Lowndes was largely due to
their dislike of the non-importation system on which the proposed
forfeiture rested. They wished to abolish commercial restrictions; they
were anxious to avoid internal taxation, and to supply the Treasury
with revenue by admitting British goods under heavy duties. So earnest
was Cheves in pursuit of this object that he hardly tolerated any
other, and made no secret of his hope that the failure to exact these
forfeitures and to lay internal taxes would compel Congress to depend
upon imports for resources.
“How are the exigencies of the government for the next year
to be supplied?” he asked as early as December 4. “Is the
deficiency to be derived from [internal] taxes? No! I will tell
gentlemen who are opposed to them, for their comfort, that there
will be no taxes imposed for the next year. It was said last
session that you would have time to lay them for this session,
but I then said it was a mistake. You now find this to be the
fact. By your indecision then, when the country was convinced
they were necessary, you have set the minds of the people
against taxes; but were it otherwise, you have not time now to
lay them for next year.”
Calhoun also laid down emphatic principles on this point, dwelling in
strong language on what he held to be the radical error of Virginia
statesmanship.
“At the end of the last session,” said Calhoun, December 8, “I
recommended high duties as a substitute for the Non-importation
Act. High duties have no pernicious effects, and are consistent
with the genius of the people and the institutions of the
country. It is thus we would combine in the highest degree
the active resources of the country with the pressure on the
manufactures of the enemy. Your army and navy would feel the
animating effect.... The non-importation as a redress of wrongs
is radically defective. You may meet commercial restrictions
with commercial restrictions, but you cannot safely confront
premeditated insult and injury with commercial restrictions
alone.... It sinks the nation in its own estimation; it
counts for nothing what is ultimately connected with our best
hopes,--the Union of these States. Our Union cannot safely
stand on the cold calculation of interest alone; it is too
weak to withstand political convulsions; we cannot without
hazard neglect that which makes man love to be a member of an
extensive community,--the love of greatness, the consciousness
of strength.”
The three South Carolinians--Calhoun, Cheves, and Lowndes--had a
financial policy of their own, in which they received some private
sympathy, if not much active support, from the Treasury. Gallatin, in
his own way, stood in a position almost as solitary as that of John
Randolph; but condemned as he was to support the burden of a war which
Congress had insisted upon, with only such financial means as Congress
left him, he could feel little sympathy with any financial scheme,
for all were more or less clumsy and inefficient. As far as he could
see, nothing but peace could save the Treasury. In June, at the time
of declaring war, he urged taxation; but the party feared taxation,
and preferred to wait the chances of military success. In December
these expected successes turned into disasters; the country showed
an unforeseen hostility to the war. Taxation might easily be fatal,
for the war found little real support except in Kentucky, Tennessee,
and the Southern States, precisely where internal taxation would
excite deepest resistance. The war leaders would not hear of laying
taxes at such a moment, and they had no great difficulty in carrying
their point. Gallatin himself could afford to wait. The accidental
importations from England after the repeal of the British orders
brought five million dollars into the Treasury,--a sum so much greater
than had been expected, and so ample for meeting the interest on old
and new loans, that Gallatin could not think himself obliged to exhaust
his influence and risk that of his party in order to wring taxes from
a timid Congress. The secretary’s attitude brought upon him a fair and
just rebuke from John Randolph, that he had trifled with the dignity
of the House.[378] Had Gallatin been inclined to retort, he would have
replied that so far as the Treasury knew, the House had no dignity
to trifle with; but Gallatin never lost control of his temper or his
tongue, and after having been the readiest and boldest adviser of his
party he had become a master in the art of silence. He expressed once
more his belief in the necessity of taxation;[379] but this done he let
Congress go its own gait.
Cheves aspired to abolish the remains of Jeffersonian
statesmanship,--non-importations, embargoes, and restrictions,--and
to restore the freedom of commerce; and in support of this scheme he
obtained from Gallatin a letter dated Feb. 9, 1813,[380] expressing
the decided opinion that Congress must not only impose war taxes, both
external and internal, but must also repeal the non-importation, if the
increased expenditures authorized by law were to be met. February 15
Cheves introduced a bill carrying out the secretary’s opinion so far
as to suspend the Non-importation Act in part, though continuing it
against articles specially enumerated. Two days afterward the House,
by a vote of sixty-nine to forty-seven, instructed the Committee of
Ways and Means to report tax-bills, although Cheves complained that
the instruction was deceptive, and that no system of taxation could
possibly be adopted within the fortnight that remained of the session.
Apparently Cheves looked on the motion as a manœuvre to save the
Non-importation Act; but he could hardly have been prepared to see
the Federalist member, Elisha Potter of Rhode Island, rise, February
20, and declare that his constituents had invested a capital of four
or five million dollars in manufactures protected by non-importation,
and that Cheves’s bill, sacrificing as it did the interests of the
manufacturing States, ought not to pass.
Such a change of attitude foreshadowed a revolution. New England had
her price. The system which Jefferson forced upon her at the cost of
the Southern States had begun to work its intended effect. Under the
pressure of Virginia legislation, New England was abandoning commerce
and creating manufactures. While every Federalist newspaper in the
country denounced the restrictive system without ceasing, nearly every
Federalist in the House voted with Potter in its favor. By seventy-nine
votes to twenty-four, the Committee of the Whole struck out Cheves’s
proposed relaxation, and converted his bill into a measure for the
stricter enforcement of non-importation. Cheves and Lowndes were then
obliged to vote against their own bill, so amended, in a minority of
forty-five to sixty-seven.
Nothing remained but to depend upon loans and call an extra session
to consider the taxes. The loan bill, passed January 26, authorized
the President to borrow sixteen million dollars on any terms he could
obtain, provided only that the nominal capital might be repaid at
the end of twelve years. Attempts to limit the rates of interest and
discount were defeated, and the bill passed by a vote of seventy-five
to thirty-eight. Another bill immediately followed, authorizing the
issue of treasury notes bearing interest at five and two fifths per
cent, to be redeemed in one year. Five millions in such notes were
to be issued at all events, and five millions more in case the loan
should prove less advantageous than the notes. By these means Congress
proposed to supply the needed twenty-one million dollars, although no
one could say with confidence how much these millions would cost, or
whether they could be obtained at any price.
There ended the financial work of the session. The military and
naval results were more considerable. Besides the Act increasing the
soldiers’ pay to eight dollars a month, Congress authorized the
President to raise twenty new regiments of infantry for one year’s
service, with full pay, bounty of sixteen dollars, and invalid pensions
of five dollars a month. Six new major-generals and an equal number
of brigadiers were authorized February 24; the departments of the
commissary and quartermaster-general were placed on a better footing;
the general staff was organized with comparative liberality,--until,
March 3, 1813, the last day of Madison’s first term, the President,
who had begun his career of power in an Administration which in effect
abolished army and navy, commanded a regular force consisting by law of
fifty-eight thousand men,[381] and was surrounded by major-generals and
brigadiers by the dozen, instead of the solitary brigadier Wilkinson
who had been left to command the frontier garrisons of 1801, while four
ships-of-the-line, six forty-fours, and six sloops-of-war were building
to reinforce the six frigates and the rest of the navy actually in
service; and in addition to all this, an unlimited order had been
issued for flotillas on the lakes.
With each new Act, John Randolph showed how his old friends were giving
the lie to their old political professions; but by common consent party
consistency was admitted to be no longer capable of defence. The party
which had taken power in 1801 to carry out the principle that the hopes
of society and the rights of the States must not be risked by war for
points of pride or profits of commerce, declared with equal energy in
1812 that the country had no choice but to sacrifice hopes and rights
because England would not expressly abandon a point of pride. Doubtless
this momentary position was far beyond the conscious convictions of the
party, but it made a precedent; and although political parties were apt
to think that precedents could be ignored, history seldom failed to
show that they decided the course of law. As far as concerned the old
Republican party, the triumph of the national movement was for the time
complete.
Yet the government was not so rigid in its logic, even in regard to
municipal legislation, as it professed to be. If the dispute about
impressment was to be settled, it must be settled by a general consent
to abandon the practice. Whether governments consented expressly or
tacitly, by a preliminary agreement, by treaty, by legislation, or by
simply ceasing to impress, was a matter of little concern provided
the practice was stopped. The United States were not obliged to wage
war on England or France merely because, under old international law,
those governments claimed what they called a right to seize their
subjects on the high seas. Indeed, the cause of war would not have
been removed by an express surrender of impressment on the high seas,
though it had been accompanied by an equally express surrender of
the right of search. The difficulty lay deeper and extended further
than the American flag had ability to go. Much the larger number of
impressments took place on shore or within British waters. Many of the
American seamen for whose sake the war continued to be fought were
American only in the sense that they carried American papers. They were
British-born, in British service, and were impressed in the grog-shops
of London or Liverpool. The American government could hardly concede
to its seamen the liberty refused to its ships,--of carrying double
sets of papers, and appearing as American or British at will; yet if
the American protection had legal meaning, it entitled the seaman to
complete immunity, no matter where he might be, or might have been
in the past, or might intend to be in the future, even though he had
never been in the United States in his life. The British officer could
not be allowed to disregard the protection, even though such a system
would make seamen a privileged class, with double nationality and no
allegiance.
Annoyed by this insuperable obstacle to an arrangement, Monroe offered
the British government to prohibit by Act of Congress the employment
of British seamen in the public or private marine of the United
States.[382] The offer was meant as an inducement for England to
sacrifice her seamen already naturalized in America, on the chance of
recovering those who might not carry American papers; but it bore to
England the look of an evasion, and was received by Lord Castlereagh
in that sense.[383] The subject had reached this stage when it was
brought before Congress by the President’s Annual Message, and was
referred by the House to the Committee of Foreign Relations. January 29
Felix Grundy made a report from the committee,[384] doubtless written
in concert with Monroe and intended to support his position, since it
approved what the secretary had done and gave authority to his views.
The report asserted with emphasis that impressment alone prevented an
armistice. More than once, as though this were the weak point of the
government’s situation, Grundy returned to the theme that impressment
“must be provided for in the negotiation; the omission of it in a
treaty of peace would not leave it on its former grounds,--it would in
effect be an absolute relinquishment.”
The danger of thus committing the government to a _sine qua non_
which might need to be abandoned was becoming more evident every day,
for already Napoleon was known to have suffered some great disaster in
Russia, and his power in Spain was evidently threatened with overthrow.
After Napoleon should have been routed in Russia and Spain, and the
American armies should have abandoned the hope of conquering Canada,
the chance of driving England into an express surrender of impressments
would vanish. Wisdom dictated caution; but Monroe’s letters and
Grundy’s report, while committing the government to a _sine qua
non_ preliminary to negotiation, proposed to escape the inevitable
difficulty by an expedient less dignified than the country had a right
to expect. Grundy reported a bill to serve as the groundwork for peace.
This bill began by a prospective, reciprocal prohibition, “from and
after the termination of a treaty of peace,” to employ on any vessel,
public or private, any but actual citizens, “or persons who being
resident within the United States at the time of such treaty, and
having previously declared agreeably to existing laws their intention
to become citizens of the United States, shall be admitted as such
within five years thereafter in the manner prescribed by law.” With
these exceptions, Congress was to dismiss all foreign seamen from
the American service, and to forbid forever the sea as a livelihood
to persons coming into the country with the intention of acquiring
citizenship, after the treaty of peace.
The objections to this measure were evident. It seemed tacitly to admit
the right of impressment; it denied to one class of citizens rights in
which all others were protected, and its Constitutionality was at least
doubtful; it trenched on Executive functions and the treaty-making
power; it placed American merchants under great disadvantages,
depriving them of seamen, and under many circumstances making it
impossible for an American ship to return from a distant port. Yet
perhaps its worst practical fault consisted in pressing upon England,
as an ultimatum, terms of peace which she had again and again rejected
and was certain to reject. Indeed, the only argument of weight advanced
in favor of the bill was that its rejection by England would heal the
divisions of America. Unfortunately, even this argument seemed to have
little foundation.
The bill passed the House by a vote of eighty-nine to thirty-three, and
February 12 went to the Senate. There Giles took it in hand, and after
sharp opposition it was amended and passed, February 27, by a vote of
eighteen to twelve. In its adopted form the Act did not contain the
clause that roused most opposition, but reached the same result in a
less direct way:--
“From and after the termination of the war,” ran the new
statute, “it shall not be lawful to employ on board any of the
public or private vessels of the United States any person or
persons except citizens of the United States, or persons of
color, natives of the United States.... No person who shall
arrive in the United States from and after the time when this
Act shall take effect shall be admitted to become a citizen of
the United States who shall not for the continued term of five
years next preceding his admission as aforesaid have resided
within the United States, without being at any time within the
said five years out of the territory of the United States.”
The subject of impressment was so difficult to understand, even in its
simpler facts, that the practical workings of this measure could not
be foreseen. No one knew how many naturalized British seamen were
in the American service, or how many British seamen not naturalized;
and there was no sufficient evidence to serve as the foundation for a
probable guess as to the number of impressments from American ships, or
how they were distributed among the three classes,--(1) native American
citizens; (2) naturalized British seamen; and (3) seamen avowedly
British subjects. According to a report made from the Department of
State, Feb. 18, 1813,[385] the supposed number of seamen registered
in the United States since 1796 amounted to about one hundred and
forty thousand. The actual number in any one year was unknown. In
1805 Gallatin estimated them, from the registered tonnage, at fifty
thousand.[386]
Foreign seamen served chiefly in the foreign trade; and since the
registered tonnage in foreign trade increased from 750,000 tons
in 1805 to 984,000 tons in 1810, the number of seamen increased
proportionately from 45,000 to 60,000 or thereabout. In 1807 Gallatin
estimated the increase at five thousand a year, more than half being
British sailors.[387] Probably fifteen thousand seamen, or one fourth
of the whole number employed in 1810,[388] were of foreign origin, and
might or might not carry American papers. If they did not, the reason
could only be that they knew the worthlessness of such papers. Genuine
American protections could be bought in any large port for two dollars
apiece, while forged protections were to be had by the gross.[389] A
large proportion of the British seamen in American service carried no
evidence of American citizenship.
According to Lord Castlereagh’s statement in Parliament, the number
of seamen claiming to be Americans in the British service amounted
to three thousand five hundred in January, 1811, and to something
more than three thousand in February, 1813, at the time he was
speaking.[390] Of these, he said, only about one in four, or some
eight hundred, could offer proof of any sort, good or bad, of their
citizenship; the others had no evidence either of birth or of
naturalization in America. If this was true, and the closest American
calculation seemed rather to favor Castlereagh’s assertion, the new Act
of Congress sacrificed much to obtain little; for it authorized the
President to expel from American service five or ten thousand seamen,
and to forbid future employment or naturalization to all British
seamen, if England in return would cease to employ five or six hundred
impressed Americans.
The concession was immense, not only in its effect on legitimate
American commerce and shipping, but also on the national character.
America possessed certainly the right, which England had always
exercised, of naturalizing foreign seamen in her service, and still
more of employing such seamen without naturalization. In denying
herself the practice she made a sacrifice much greater in material
cost, and certainly not less in national character, than she ever
made by tolerating impressments under protest. The impressments cost
her about five hundred seamen a year, of whom only a fraction were
citizens; of these such as were natives could in most cases obtain
release on giving evidence of their citizenship, while five times
the number of native British seamen annually deserted the British
service for the American. Thus England was much the greater sufferer
from the situation; and America preserved her rights by never for an
instant admitting the British doctrine of impressment, and by retaining
the ability to enforce at any moment her protest by war. All these
advantages were lost by Monroe’s new scheme. Under the Act of 1813
America would save her citizens to whatever number they amounted, but
she would do so by sacrificing her shipping, by abandoning the practice
if not the right of employing and naturalizing British seamen, and by
tacitly admitting the right of impressment so far as to surrender the
use of undoubted national rights as an equivalent for it.
Numbers of leading Republicans denounced the measure as feeble,
mischievous, and unconstitutional. Only as an electioneering argument
against the extreme Federalists, and as a means of satisfying
discontented Republicans, was it likely to serve any good purpose; but
the dangers of discord and the general apathy toward the war had become
so evident as to make some concession necessary,--and thus it happened
that with general approval the law received the President’s signature,
and the next day the Twelfth Congress expired. With it expired
President Madison’s first term of office, leaving the country more than
ever distracted, and as little able to negotiate as to conquer.
INDEX TO VOLS. I. AND II.
Act of Congress, of Jane 28, 1809, restoring intercourse with Great
Britain, i. 80;
of June 28, 1809, suspending the recruiting service, 85;
of June 28, 1809, reducing the naval establishment, 85;
of March 1, 1810, concerning the commercial intercourse between
the United States and Great Britain and France, 194–198 (see
Non-intercourse);
of Feb 14, 1810, appropriating sixty thousand dollars for the
Cumberland Road, 209;
of March 26, 1810, providing for the Third Census, 209;
of March 30, 1810, appropriating five thousand dollars for
experiments on the submarine torpedo, 209;
of Feb. 20, 1811, admitting the State of Louisiana into the
Union, 326;
of Jan. 15, 1811, authorizing the occupation of East Florida,
327;
of March 2, 1811, reviving non-intercourse against Great Britain,
338–354 (see Non-intercourse);
of Jan. 11, 1812, to raise an additional military force of
twenty-five thousand men, ii. 147, 153;
of Feb. 6, 1812, to accept volunteers, 159–161;
of March 14, 1812, authorizing a loan for eleven million dollars,
169;
of April 4, 1812, laying an embargo for ninety days, 201, 202,
203;
of April 8, 1812, admitting the State of Louisiana into the
Union, 235;
of April 10, 1812, authorizing a call for one hundred thousand
militia, 204;
of June 18, 1812, declaring war against Great Britain, 228, 229;
of July 1, 1812, doubling the duties on imports, 235;
of Dec. 12, 1812, increasing the pay of the army, 435;
of Jan. 20, 1813, increasing the bounty for recruits, 436;
of Jan. 2, 1813, for building four seventy-fours and six
frigates, 436;
of Jan. 5, 1813, remitting fines, forfeitures, etc., 443;
of Feb. 8, 1813, authorizing loan of sixteen millions, 448;
of Feb. 25, 1813, authorizing the issue of Treasury notes for
five millions, 448;
of Jan. 29, 1813, for raising twenty regiments for one year, 449;
of Feb. 24, 1813, for appointing six major-generals and six
brigadiers, 449;
of March 3, 1813, to provide for the supplies of the army, 449;
of March 3, 1813, for the better organization of the general
staff, 449;
of March 3, 1813, for building six sloops-of-war, 449;
of March 3, 1813, for the regulation of seamen on board the
public and private vessels of the United States, 453–458.
Act of the territorial legislature of Indiana, permitting the
introduction of slaves, ii. 76.
Adams, President, expenditures of his administration, i. 200, 205,
206.
Adams, John Quincy, nominated as minister to Russia, i. 11;
renominated and confirmed, 86;
nominated and confirmed Justice of the Supreme Court, 360;
sails for Russia, 408;
arrives, 409;
his negotiations in 1809, 409, 411;
his negotiations in 1810, 412–418;
his success, 419, 420, 422.
“Adams,” brig, launched at Detroit, ii. 304;
captured and recaptured, 347;
destroyed, 347.
“Adams,” 28-gun frigate, ii. 364.
“Aeolus,” case of, ii. 273.
“Aeolus,” British frigate, ii. 368.
“Africa,” British frigate, ii. 368.
Albany, headquarters of Dearborn, ii. 304, 305, 308, 309, 310.
“Alert,” British sloop-of-war, her action with the “Essex,” ii. 35,
377.
Alexander, Czar of Russia, with Napoleon at Erfurt, i. 23;
his alliance with Napoleon, 134, 257;
his approaching rupture with Napoleon, 385, 408–424;
interferes for American commerce in Denmark, 410, 411;
his reply to Napoleon’s demands, 413, 414;
gives special orders to release American ships, 415;
his attachment to the United States, 415;
his ukase on foreign trade, 418.
Amelia Island, i. 165.
Anderson, Joseph, senator from Tennessee, defeats mission to
Russia, i. 12;
criticises Giles, ii. 150;
chairman of committee on declaration of war, 228.
“Argus,” sloop-of-war, ii. 363, 364, 378, 381.
Armistice between Dearborn and Prevost, ii. 322, 323, 324, 404;
known to Brock, 330;
disavowed by Madison, 340, 404;
an advantage to Dearborn, 343;
proposed by Monroe, 403;
proposed by Admiral Warren, 416.
Armstrong, John, minister in Paris, his discontent, i. 28;
his relations with Roumanzoff, 29;
his complaints in 1809, 39;
communicates Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, 135, 235;
his comments on the right of search, 145;
his interview with King Louis of Holland, 147, 148;
his despatch on Fouché and Montalivet, 224;
on Napoleon’s motives, 225;
his minute for a treaty, 228;
his recall asked by Napoleon, 228, 229, 252;
his remonstrance against the doctrine of retaliation, 233, 234;
his report of Jan. 10, 1810, 238;
inquires condition of revoking decrees, 251;
communicates Non-intercourse Act of May 1, 1810, 252;
his reception of Cadore’s letter of Aug. 5, 1810, 259, 260;
returns to America, 260, 261, 381;
declares Napoleon’s conditions to be not precedent, 261;
silent about indemnity, 260, 296;
Virginian jealousy of, 370;
on Napoleon’s designs on the Baltic, 417;
becomes brigadier-general, ii. 427;
his attitude towards Monroe and Madison, 426, 427;
nominated Secretary of War, 428;
his character, 428.
Army, in 1809, i. 169;
described by Wilkinson, 170, 171;
encamped at Terre aux Bœufs, 171–175;
reductions in 1810, 200–207;
raised by law to thirty-five thousand men, ii. 148, 151–153;
useless, 165;
condition of, 289, 292;
recruiting for, 294;
war establishment in 1812, 295;
enlistments in, 337, 390, 391, 401;
difficulty of filling, 394;
Acts of Congress for filling ranks of, 435, 436;
war establishment in 1813, 449. (See Infantry.)
“Asia,” American ship, burned by French squadron, ii. 193, 198.
Astor, John Jacob, ii. 301.
Austria, i. 27, 134;
fights battles of Essling and Wagram, 106.
Bacon, Ezekiel, member of Congress from Massachusetts, ii. 156;
votes against frigates, 164;
moves war taxes, 165, 166.
Baen, William C., captain of Fourth U. S. Infantry, killed at
Tippecanoe, ii. 104.
Bainbridge, William, captain in U. S. navy, ii. 384;
takes command of the “Constitution,” 384;
captures “Java,” 385, 386.
Baltimore, population in 1810, i. 289.
Baltimore riot, July 27, 1812, ii. 406–409.
Bank of the United States, i. 167;
bill introduced for rechartering, 207, 208;
hostile influence of State Banks, 327, 330, 332, 335, 336;
pretexts for opposition to charter of, 328, 329;
necessity for, 329;
Crawford’s bill for rechartering, 332;
debate on, 332–336;
defeat of, 337.
Banks, popularity of, ii. 208, 209.
Baring, Alexander, ii. 276.
Barlow, Joel, on Robert Smith’s appointment, i. 10;
on Smith’s opposition to Macon’s bill, 187;
his defence of the President, 299, 301, 378;
appointed minister to France, 359;
his instructions on revocation of French Decrees, 427;
his departure delayed by Monroe, ii. 50;
ready to start, 55;
order for his departure countermanded, 56;
order finally given, 61;
his instructions, 66;
his want of success, 217;
arrives in Paris, Sept. 19, 1811, 245;
his negotiation with Bassano, 248–263;
his journey to Wilna, 263, 264;
his death, 265.
Bassano, Duc de. (See Maret.)
Bassett, Burwell, member of Congress from Virginia, i. 206.
Bathurst, Lord, on the Orders in Council, ii. 275.
Baton Rouge, i. 306.
Bayard, James A., senator from Delaware, ii. 229.
Baynes, Edward, adjutant-general to Sir George Prevost, ii. 323.
Bayonne Decree. (See Decrees.)
Belden, Lieutenant, ii. 32.
“Belvidera,” British frigate, blockading New York, ii. 364, 365;
escapes from Rodgers’ squadron, 366;
chases “Constitution,” 368, 370.
Bernadotte. (See Sweden.)
Bibb, William A., member of Congress from Georgia, on the
annexation of West Florida to Louisiana, i. 324.
Bidwell, Barnabas, i. 359.
Bingham, A. B., captain of the British corvette “Little Belt,” his
account of his action with the “President,” ii. 30, 31, 33–36.
Bleecker, Harmanus, member of Congress from New York, ii. 211.
Blockade, Napoleon’s definition of, i. 149, 227, 250;
Pinkney’s definition of, 287; ii. 10;
of April 26, 1809, by England of all ports and places under the
government of France, i. 63, 64, 103, 277;
of May 16, 1806, (Fox’s) 277;
Wellesley’s conduct regarding, 278–280, 318;
withdrawal required by Madison, 318, 383;
withdrawal demanded by Pinkney, ii. 4, 5, 17;
reply of England to demand of withdrawal, 6, 9, 15, 23;
becomes the only apparent _casus belli_, 221;
alleged by Madison as the third _casus belli_, 222;
of Venice, July 27, 1806, i. 279;
of New York, ii. 25, 118, 222.
Bloomfield, Joseph, brigadier general, ii. 291;
at Plattsburg, 359, 360.
“Bonne Citoyenne,” British sloop-of-war, ii. 384.
Boston, reception of F. J. Jackson, in, i. 214, 216;
population in 1810, 289.
Boston town-meeting on Baltimore riot, ii. 409.
Boyd, Adam, member of Congress from New Jersey, i. 206.
Boyd, John P., colonel of Fourth U. S. Infantry, ii. 92, 93;
arrives at Vincennes, 94. (See Infantry.)
Bradley, Stephen R., senator from Vermont, votes against occupying
East Florida, ii. 243.
Brazil, i. 46.
Brock, Isaac, governor of Upper Canada, ii. 316;
his military precautions, 317;
his military force, 317;
his civil difficulties, 318, 319;
orders expedition to Mackinaw, 320;
his proclamation, 320;
dismisses his legislature, 320;
passes Long Point, 321, 322;
arrives at Malden, 329;
decides to cross the Detroit River, 330;
his march on Detroit, 332;
returns to Niagara, 341;
his military wishes, 342;
distressed by loss of vessels, 347;
his force at Niagara, 348;
surprised on Queenston Heights, 349;
his death, 350.
Broke, P. B. V., captain of British frigate “Shannon,” commands
squadron, ii. 368, 369;
chases “Constitution,” 370, 371.
Brougham, Henry, organizes agitation against Orders in Council, ii.
271, 280, 283;
his speech of March 3, 1812, 276;
obliges ministers to grant a committee of inquiry, 283–285;
moves repeal, 285.
Burr, Aaron, his memoir to Napoleon, i. 239.
Burwell, William A., member of Congress from Virginia, on reducing
the army and navy in 1810, i. 202.
Cabinet. (See Robert Smith, James Monroe, Albert Gallatin, William
Eustis, John Armstrong, Paul Hamilton, William Jones, Cæsar A.
Rodney, William Pinkney.)
Cadore, Duc de. (See Champagny.)
“Caledonia,” 2-gun British brig, captured by Lieutenant Elliott,
ii. 347.
Calhoun, John Caldwell, member of Congress from South Carolina, ii.
122;
on Committee of Foreign Relations, 124, 128;
his war-speech of Dec. 12, 1811, 143, 144;
votes for frigates, 164;
warns Quincy of the embargo, 201;
on the conquest of Canada, 212;
his war-report, 226;
his bill declaring war, 228;
his speech of June 24, 1812, against the restrictive system, 233;
favors war-taxation, 235;
opposes compromise of forfeitures under Non-importation Act, 442;
favors high import duties, 444.
Campbell, George Washington, member of Congress from Tennessee, his
Report reaches Canning, i. 49;
not a member of the Eleventh Congress, 76;
senator from Tennessee, his criticism of Giles, ii. 150, 151.
Canada, intended conquest of, ii. 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 150,
212;
invasion planned at Washington, 297;
ordered by Eustis, 302;
conquest attempted by Hull, 296;
invaded by Hull, 302;
evacuated, 315;
difficulties of defending, 316–319;
extent of Upper, 316;
military force in 1812, 317, 338;
Jefferson and Madison on campaign in, 337;
invasion of, at Niagara, 344, 345;
Van Rensselaer’s attack on, 346–353;
Smyth’s attempts against, 354–358;
Dearborn’s march to, 360.
Canning, George, his reply to Napoleon and Alexander, i. 23;
his notice to Pinkney of possible change in the Orders, 42;
his note of Dec. 24, 1808, announcing a change, 43;
his anger at Pinkney’s reply, 44, 45;
his willingness for further relaxations, 45;
his discontent with Castlereagh and Perceval, 48, 106;
his reception of Erskine’s despatches and Campbell’s Report, 49,
50, 51;
his assertion as to the cause of the embargo, 51;
his instructions to Erskine of Jan. 23, 1809, 52–57, 66, 70–73,
90;
his character, 56;
his influence declining, 57, 58;
his speech of March 6, 1809, on the Orders, 61;
his remark to Pinkney on the Order of April 26, 64;
his disavowal of Erskine’s arrangement, 87–95;
his statement to the House of Commons, 97, 98;
his instructions to F. J. Jackson, July 1, 1809, 98–105;
his charge of duplicity against Madison, 99, 100, 114, 125;
his resignation, 107;
his duel with Castlereagh, 107;
his relations with Wellesley, 266, 267;
his speech on the renewal of intercourse between the United
States and Great Britain, 276;
his speech of March 3, 1812, on the Orders in Council and li
censes, ii. 277, 278.
Carden, J. S., captain of the British frigate “Macedonian,” ii.
382, 383.
Cass, Lewis, colonel of Ohio militia, ii. 298;
refuses to abandon Detroit, 315;
his discontent with Hull, 326;
detached to open an interior road to the river Raisin, 328;
ordered to return, 329;
included in Hull’s capitulation, 334.
Castlereagh, Lord, his supposed failures as Secretary of War, i.
47, 48, 106, 107;
retires from the cabinet, 107;
his quarrel with Canning, 56, 57;
his duel with Canning, 107;
becomes foreign Secretary, ii. 216;
his instructions to Foster of April 10, 1812, 216, 220;
announces suspension of Orders in Council, 286;
his statement of number of American seamen in British service,
456.
Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence, French ambassador in Russia, i. 412;
recalled, 418;
congratulates Adams, 419.
Census of 1810, i. 289.
Champagny, Duc de Cadore, his instructions to Turreau in defence of
the Decrees, Dec. 10, 1808, i. 31;
in defence of the Spanish colonies, 33;
his remonstrances to Napoleon against severity to the United
States, 138, 139;
complains of the Non-intercourse Act, 140;
his instructions to Hauterive, June 13, 1809, on concessions to
the United States, 140;
his note on the right of search and blockade, 149, 150, 250;
his efforts on behalf of neutral commerce, 222;
his interview with Armstrong, Jan. 25, 1810, 229, 230;
his note of Feb. 14, 1810, announcing reprisals for the
Non-intercourse Act, 232;
his letter of August 5, 1810, announcing that the Decrees are
revoked, 253–256, 286, 296–302, 383, 414, 415; ii. 7;
creates a contract by letter of August 5, i. 342;
his report on the Decrees, 348, 349, 382, 388; ii. 8;
his phrase _bien entendu_, 387, 388;
declares the Decrees revoked on Feb. 2, 1811, 386, 389, 390;
removed from office, 401.
Champlain, Lake. (See Plattsburg.)
Chauncey, Isaac, takes command on Lake Ontario, ii. 344.
“Chesapeake Affair,” Canning’s instructions of Jan. 23, 1809, for
settling, i. 52, 53;
Erskine’s settlement of the, 67, 68;
settlement disavowed, 88–90;
Canning’s instructions of July 1, 1809, for settling, 101;
Jackson’s offer to settle, 126, 130;
untouched by Wellesley, 285;
Foster’s instructions to settle, ii. 23;
American indifference to settlement, 37;
its effect on the Indians, 79;
settled by Foster, 121, 122, 270.
“Chesapeake,” frigate, ii. 29, 36.
Cheves, Langdon, member of Congress from South Carolina, asserts
contract with Napoleon, i. 342, 343;
in the Twelfth Congress, ii. 122;
chairman of naval committee, 124;
on Committee on Ways and Means, 124;
his opinion on the war-power, 160;
his motion to build a navy, 162;
his argument in favor of seventy-fours, 163;
his hostility to non-importation, 205, 230, 232, 446, 447, 448;
favors war-taxation, 235;
opposes forfeitures under Non-importation Act, 441;
on war-taxes, 444.
Chew, Captain Samuel, deposition of, ii. 193, 196.
Chicago. (See Dearborn, Fort.)
Christie, John, lieut.-colonel of Thirteenth Infantry, ii. 349,
350, 351.
Cintra, convention of, i. 48.
Claiborne, W. C. C., governor of Orleans Territory, takes
possession of West Florida, i. 310–314.
Clay, Henry, senator from Kentucky, his war-speech of Feb. 22,
1810, i. 189;
his speech on the occupation of West Florida, 320, 321;
his speech on the Bank Charter, 333, 334;
elected speaker, ii. 122, 124;
favors army of thirty-five thousand men, 151;
favors war-power, 161;
favors navy, 164;
supposed to have coerced Madison to war, 196;
urges embargo, 201;
suppresses discussion in the House, 227;
his vote defeats repeal of non-importation, 234;
his account of the military efforts of Kentucky, 390–393;
his comments on Hull’s surrender, 392, 393;
opposes compromise of forfeitures under Non-importation Act, 442.
Clinton, De Witt, nominated for the presidency by New York, ii.
215;
his canvass, 409, 410;
his electoral vote, 413.
Clinton, George, Vice-President of the United States, i. 76, 190;
his vote against the Bank Charter, 337;
his political capacity, 363, 364;
his death, ii. 214.
Commerce, nature and value of American, i. 290, 291.
Commercial Intercourse, Act of May 1, 1810, regarding. (See
Non-intercourse.)
Commercial restrictions, list of measures of, i. 152, 194;
Madison’s devotion to, 293, 295;
Madison’s return to, 304.
Congress, first session of Eleventh, meets, May 22, 1809, i. 76;
proceedings of, 77–86;
adjourns June 28, 86;
second session meets, Nov. 27, 1809, 176;
proceedings of, 178–209;
adjourns, May 2, 1810, 209;
character of, 316;
election of Twelfth, 316;
third session of Eleventh, 319–358;
close of Eleventh, 358;
first session of Twelfth, meets Nov. 4, 1811, ii. 118;
its composition, 122;
chooses Henry Clay speaker, 124;
war-debate in, 133–153;
proceedings of, 133–175, 201, 202, 204;
declares war against England, 228, 229;
adjourns, July 6, 1812, 235;
decline of influence, 437;
second session of Twelfth, 435–458.
“Congress,” 38-gun frigate, ii. 363;
at Boston, 378;
her cruise, 381.
“Constellation,” 38-gun frigate, at Washington, ii. 364, 372, 378.
“Constitution,” 44-gun frigate, chased by British squadron, ii.
364, 369–372;
captures “Guerriere,” 373–375;
captures “Java,” 385, 386.
Cotton, manufacturers of, i. 16;
American, prohibited in France, 151.
Craig, Sir James, governor of Lower Canada, i. 86.
Crawford, William H., senator from Georgia, opposes mission to
Russia, i. 12;
on the message of Jan. 3, 1810, 179;
represents the Treasury, 181;
votes with Samuel Smith, 191;
his character, 331;
introduces Bank Charter, 332;
his speech on Bank Charter, 332, 333;
reports bill for fifty thousand volunteers, 358;
party to revolutionizing East Florida, ii. 239;
his comments on the conduct of the war, 395.
Creek Indians, Tecumthe visits, ii. 92, 108.
Crillon, Count Edward de, his family, ii. 176;
acts as John Henry’s agent, 177–179;
his social success, 178, 180;
his evidence, 183;
sails for France, 184;
an impostor, 185;
an agent of French police, 186.
Croker, John Wilson, Secretary to the Admiralty, i. 58.
Cuba, i. 37, 38.
Cumberland Road, i. 209.
Dacres, J. R., captain of the “Guerriere,” ii. 27, 37, 373;
his action with the “Constitution,” 373–375.
Dalberg, Duc, negotiates with Joel Barlow, ii. 259;
his remonstrances to Bassano against Napoleon’s treatment of the
United States, 262.
Dallas, Alexander James, third lieutenant of the frigate
“President,” ii. 28, 32.
Daveiss, Joseph H., offers to serve as a volunteer in Harrison’s
campaign, ii. 94;
urges an attack on Tippecanoe, 99, 101;
his death, 103, 104, 107.
Dearborn, Fort, at Chicago, murders at, ii. 110;
garrison at, 294;
evacuated, 334.
Dearborn, Henry, appointed collector at Boston, i. 9;
his orders, as Secretary of War, to Wilkinson, Dec. 2, 1808, 169;
appointed senior major-general, ii. 289;
his plan of campaign, 297, 306, 340, 341;
reaches Albany, 304;
goes to Boston, 305;
his difficulties at Boston, 306, 307, 309;
returns to Albany, 310;
ignorant that he commands operations at Niagara, 310, 322, 339;
sends militia to Niagara, 321;
negotiates armistice, 322, 323, 340;
effect of armistice, 324, 343;
armistice rejected by the President, 340;
his opinion of Van Rensselaer, 353;
his campaign against Montreal, 360;
his reflections on the campaign of 1812, 360, 361;
Monroe’s criticisms of, 396, 397;
George Hay’s remark on, 421.
Decatur, Stephen, captain in U. S. navy, commands squadron, ii.
363;
his orders, 363, 364, 368;
his advice, 364;
his first cruise in 1812, 366, 368, 375;
his second cruise, 381;
captures the “Macedonian,” 382, 383;
returns to port with prize, 383.
Decrees, French, of 1798, ii. 139.
Decrees of Berlin, Milan, and Bayonne, i. 24, 152, 297;
their rigid enforcement, 30;
Champagny’s argument in defence of, 31, 32;
their effect on England, 46;
their effect on France, 138;
Napoleon drafts, June 10, 1809, decree repealing that of Milan,
139–141;
lays aside draft of repealing decree, 141;
drafts Vienna decree of August, 1809, retaliating the
Non-intercourse Act, 143, 144, 150, 230;
Louis’s resistance to, 148, 240, 241;
Napoleon’s condition of repeal, 229, 245, 250, 251;
null and void for licensed vessels, 248;
declared by Champagny revoked on Nov. 1, 1810, 255;
declared revoked by Madison, 304, 317, 347, 348;
Russell’s reports on the revocation, 381–396;
declared revoked by Champagny for Feb. 2, 1811, 386, 389, 390;
not revoked, 394, 395;
declared fundamental laws by Napoleon, 397, 407;
declared successful by Napoleon, 398;
considered suspended by Madison, 400, 401;
recognized by United States, 402, 403;
their revocation doubted by Russell, 395, 400, 406;
their revocation affirmed by Russell, 405;
enforced on the Baltic, 426, 427;
Barlow instructed that they are considered revoked, 427;
revocation asserted by Pinkney, ii. 3, 5, 6, 11;
evidence of revocation asked by Wellesley, 4;
argued by Pinkney, 7, 8;
revocation denied by Wellesley, 23;
affirmed to be still in force by Foster, 41;
affirmed by Monroe to be revoked as far as America has a right to
expect, 42;
their international and municipal characters, 43;
argued by Monroe, 4, 45;
their revocation unknown to the President, 56;
argued by Serurier, 60;
disputed by Madison, 64;
their revocation a personal affair with Madison, 65;
their effect on the northwestern Indians, 83;
declared not repealed by British courts, 118;
their repeal doubted by Madison and Monroe, 120, 187–189;
repeal asserted in annual message, 125;
repeal assumed by House committee, 133, 134;
repeal denied by Monroe, 194, 195, 201;
repeal assumed by Monroe, 198;
Bassano’s report on validity of, 216, 253;
repeal assumed by Madison, 218, 224;
repeal maintained by Monroe till June, 1812, 232;
Bassano’s instructions on repeal of, 248–249;
repeal asserted by Barlow, 252;
evidence of repeal required by Barlow, 254;
Decree of St. Cloud, dated April 28, 1811, repealing, 255–257,
259;
still enforced, 260, 261;
revocation unknown to the French authorities, 262, 263.
Decree of Rambouillet, March 23, 1810, sequestering American
property in retaliation for the Non-importation Act, i. 236,
242, 274;
of July 25, 1810, regarding licenses, 247;
of July 22, 1810, confiscating American property in Dutch and
Spanish ports, 258;
of Aug. 5, 1810, confiscating American property in France, 258.
Decrès, Denis, Duc, Napoleon’s minister of marine, i. 142, 143;
Marmont’s story of, 222.
Delaware Indians, ii. 73.
Denmark, spoliations in, i. 409, 411.
Detroit, military situation of, ii. 293, 295, 301;
measures for protection of, 296;
Hull’s difficulties in defending, 315, 322, 324;
Hull besieged in, 325–331;
Brock’s attack on, 332–334;
Hull’s surrender of, 334, 393;
reinforcements for, 391;
expedition to recover, to be commanded by Harrison, 392, 393.
Dexter, Samuel, defeats project of State convention in
Massachusetts, ii. 402.
Duane, William, editor of the “Aurora,” his attacks on Gallatin, i.
361, 364.
Duval, Gabriel, appointed Justice of the Supreme Court, ii. 429.
Eel River Miami Indians, ii. 71, 75.
Elections in 1809, i. 12, 13, 158;
in 1810, 215, 316;
in Massachusetts in April, 1811, ii. 115;
in April, 1812, 204;
in May, 1812, 209;
in New York, May, 1812, 209;
presidential, of 1812, 409, 410, 412–414.
Electoral College in 1808 and 1812, ii. 413.
Elliott, Jesse D., lieutenant U. S. navy, ii. 344;
cuts out British vessels at Fort Erie, 347.
Embargo, repeal of, i. 33;
Turreau’s complaints of repeal, 34, 35, 37;
Canning’s note on, 42;
revocation of orders attributed to, 75, 77;
John Taylor’s explanation of repeal, 195, 196;
approved by Napoleon, 254;
causes France to lose her colonies, 254;
its effect on the northwestern Indians, ii. 83;
for sixty days, recommended by the President, March 31, 1812,
193, 194, 195, 197, 198;
Foster’s report on, 199;
act passed by Congress, 201, 202.
England, financial dangers of, in 1809, i. 46, 47;
political decline of, 57, 58;
distress of, in 1811, ii. 2;
apathy of, upon American questions, 24;
change of tone between 1807 and 1812, 225, 270, 286;
war declared against, 228, 229;
distress of, in 1812, 268;
attitude toward the war, 405.
Eppes, John W., member of Congress from Virginia, chairman of
Committee of Ways and Means in Eleventh Congress, i. 76;
his appropriation bills for 1810, 200;
his bill for reviving non-intercourse against Great Britain, 338;
maintains doctrine of contract with France, 341;
waits arrival of Serurier, 345;
amends his non-intercourse bill, 351;
quarrels with John Randolph, 352.
Erie, Fort. (See Fort Erie.)
Erie, Lake, armaments on, ii. 296, 304, 317, 344.
Erskine, David Montague, British minister to the United States, i.
34;
his report, March 17, 1809, of Turreau’s anger at the repeal of
embargo, 34, 35;
his threatening despatches of November and December, 1808, 49,
50;
his instructions of Jan. 23, 1809, 52–57, 66, 70–72, 90, 94,
111;
his reasons for exceeding instructions, 67, 70, 94;
his settlement of the “Chesapeake affair,” 67, 68;
“Chesapeake” settlement disavowed by Canning, 88, 89;
his settlement of commercial disputes, 70–73;
his commercial arrangement received in England, 87;
disavowed, 90, 95;
his explanation of the order of April 26, 1809, 82, 83;
his reply to Canning’s criticisms, 94;
his recall, 95;
effect of his disavowal in the United States, 109;
Jackson’s opinion of, 119, 120;
his farewell audience, 120;
effect of his arrangement on Napoleon, 139, 140, 141;
comparison between his pledges and those of Champagny, 301.
“Essex,” 32-gun frigate, her action with the “Alert,” ii. 35, 377;
arrives with despatches, 52, 56;
sails in July, 1812, 377;
returns to port, 378.
Essex county In Massachusetts, declaration of meeting, ii. 402.
Eustis, William, appointed Secretary of War, i. 9;
orders Wilkinson not to camp at Terre aux Bœufs, 172, 174;
authorizes Harrison to buy Indian land in the Wabash valley, ii.
82;
approves Harrison’s purchase, 85;
orders Harrison to preserve peace with Indians, 88, 93;
orders the Fourth Regiment to Indiana, 92, 93;
his lost letter of Sept. 18, 1811, to Harrison, 95;
appears before the Committee of Foreign Relations, 129;
his supposed incompetence, 168, 206, 392, 395, 396, 397, 398;
his duties in 1812, 168;
on recruiting, 294;
his letters to William Hull, announcing war, 299;
and ordering conquests in Canada, 302;
his orders to Dearborn to repair to Albany, 306, 308, 309;
and to take direction of militia at Niagara, 310, 321, 340;
resigns, 422.
Exchange, turn of, against England, in 1808, i. 47.
Fagan, agent of Fouché, i. 239.
“Federal Republican” newspaper, ii. 406, 407.
Federalist party, deprived of grievances, i. 77;
praise Madison, 78, 158;
make common cause with Jackson, 158;
described by Giles, 180.
Federalists, in Congress, Foster’s reports of their conduct and
advice, ii. 171–175;
their reception of Henry’s documents, 183, 184;
cease attempts to discuss war, 227, 228;
their attitude towards the war, 398, 399;
support Clinton for the presidency, 410.
Fenwick, John R., lieut.-colonel of Light Artillery, ii. 352.
Ferdinand VII., proposed kingdom for, in America, i. 239;
cedes Florida by treaty of 1819, ii. 236.
Fernandina in East Florida, seized by United States, ii. 240;
occupation disavowed and maintained, 242, 243.
Finances in 1809, i. 163, 178;
customs-revenue in 1807, 1808, 1809, 1810, 290, 319;
military and naval appropriations of the Eleventh Congress, 357;
in 1811; ii. 126;
Gallatin’s estimates for war, 156–159;
war-taxes proposed by Gallatin, 166;
approved by the House, 166, 167;
laid aside, 167, 168;
in 1812, 432, 433;
in 1813, 438–448.
(See Loans.)
Findlay, James, colonel of Ohio volunteers, ii. 298, 315, 326.
Findley, William, member of Congress from Pennsylvania, favors war,
ii. 145.
Florida, Napoleon’s retention of, i. 32, 33;
Napoleon insinuates an idea regarding, 408;
Foster instructed to protest against the seizure of, ii. 23;
his protest, 37;
Monroe’s reception of the protest, 38, 39.
Florida, East, Madison asks authority to occupy, i. 326, 327;
Congress authorizes occupation of, 327;
commissioners sent to take possession of, 327;
revolutionized, ii. 237–243;
bill for occupation of, 243.
Florida, West, revolution in, i. 307–315;
Madison orders occupation of, 310–312, 318;
Claiborne takes possession of, 313;
organized as part of Orleans Territory, 314;
protest of British chargé, 314, 315;
Giles’s bill for annexing to Orleans Territory, 320;
debate on annexation, 320–323;
Macon’s bill, admitting, as a part of Louisiana, 323, 324;
remains a separate territory, 326;
divided by act of Congress, ii. 236;
ceded by Spain in 1819, 237.
Forfeitures under the Non-importation act, ii. 436–443.
Fort Dearborn, Chicago, ii. 110, 294;
garrison massacred, 334.
Fort Erie, ii. 343, 347, 348, 358.
Fort George, ii. 300, 343, 347;
Brock’s headquarters, 341, 348, 349, 351.
Fort Harrison, ii. 95, 106, 294.
Fort Niagara, bombarded, ii. 355.
Fortifications, appropriation for, in 1809, i. 85;
appropriation asked for, in 1810, 319.
Foster, Augustus John, appointed British minister to the United
States, ii. 16, 21;
F. J. Jackson’s opinion of, 22;
his instructions, 22, 23;
arrives at Washington, 37, 52;
protests against the seizure of Florida, 37;
reports Monroe’s language about Spanish America, 38;
protests against the non-importation, 39;
narrows the issue to Fox’s blockade and the Orders in Council,
40, 41;
reports Monroe’s language on the revocation of the French
decrees, 42;
threatens retaliation for the non-importation, 44;
reports that the Orders in Council are the single object of
irritation, 45;
settles the “Chesapeake” affair, 121, 122;
his report of executive temper in November, 1811, 131;
his report of Gallatin’s language about taxes, 156;
his report of the conduct of Federalists in Congress, 172–175;
receives instructions, March 21, 1812, 191;
communicates them, 192;
his report of Monroe’s remarks on recent French spoliations, 195,
198;
his report of Madison’s and Monroe’s remarks on the embargo of
April, 1812, 199;
suggests Madison’s re-election, 213.
Fouché, Joseph, Duc d’Otrante, Napoleon’s minister of police, i.
222;
opposes the commercial system, 224;
sends an agent to the British government, 238, 239;
disgraced and exiled, 241.
France, alienation between United States and, i. 28–41, 141–151;
difficulties of commerce with, 152, 245;
value of spoliations in 1809, 1810, 242, 243;
contract with, 339, 340;
unfriendly language of the annual message toward, ii. 125;
Madison’s language regarding, 187, 218, 224;
theory of contract with, apparently abandoned, 223;
Monroe’s language regarding, 232.
(See Napoleon.)
Fremantle, Colonel, letter on the situation of Parliament, i. 58.
Frigates. (See Navy, “President,” “Constitution,” “United States,”
“Chesapeake,” “Congress,” “Constellation,” “Essex,” and
“Adams.”)
“Frolic,” British sloop-of-war, ii. 379;
her action with the “Wasp,” 380.
Fulton’s torpedo, i. 209.
Gallatin, Albert, Secretary of the Treasury, his appointment as
Secretary of State defeated, i. 4–8;
his quarrel with Samuel Smith, 10;
his conversation with Turreau about the Floridas, 38, 39;
his remarks to Turreau on renewing intercourse with Great
Britain, 74;
his letters on Erskine’s disavowal, 110, 111;
his expectations from Jackson’s mission, 110, 116, 117;
his feud with Giles, Smith, and Leib, 159;
his letter of remonstrance to Jefferson, 160, 161, 164;
his enemies, 167;
his annual report of 1809, 178;
his bill for excluding British and French ships, 183 (see Macon);
his remarks on Napoleon’s secret confiscations, 259;
his remarks to Turreau on revival of non-intercourse against
England, 303;
gives notice of revival of non-intercourse against England, 304;
his annual report of 1810, 319;
his dependence on the bank, 329, 335;
asks an increase of duties, 357;
his letter of resignation, 360–366;
Serurier’s estimate of, ii. 46;
his annual report of November, 1811, 126;
attacked by Giles, 148, 149;
delays his estimates, 156;
his war-taxes, 156–159, 165, 166, 204;
reported June 26, 235;
his loan of 1812, 206, 207;
believed to think war unnecessary, 225;
complains of Congress, 234, 235;
reports tax-bills to Congress, 235;
his instructions at the outbreak of war, 301;
his opinion of Eustis, 397, 398;
claims department of State, 424;
his annual report of Dec. 5, 1812, 433, 438;
his views on the forfeiture of merchandise imported in 1812, 439,
440;
his attitude toward war-taxation, 446.
Gardenier, Barent, member of Congress from New York, his remarks on
Jefferson and Madison, i. 79, 80;
supports Macon’s bill, 185;
cause of changing rule of previous question, 353.
Gaudin, Duc de Gaete, orders of, i. 348.
George III., king of England, becomes insane, i. 288; ii. 2.
George, Prince of Wales, his Whig associations, ii. 3, 4;
becomes Prince Regent, Feb. 6, 1811, 14;
retains Spencer Perceval’s ministry, 14;
his audience of leave for William Pinkney, 16, 18–20;
his conditional declaration of April 21, 1812, that the Orders in
Council should be withdrawn, 254, 282.
Gerry, Elbridge, elected governor of Massachusetts in 1810 and
1811, i. 215; ii. 115;
defeated in 1812, 204;
nominated for the vice-presidency, 214;
elected, 413.
“Gershom,” American brig, burned by French squadron, ii. 193, 198.
Gholson, Thomas, member of Congress from Virginia, moves new rule
of previous question, i. 353.
Giles, William Branch, senator from Virginia, defeats Gallatin’s
appointment as Secretary of State i. 4–7;
votes for mission to Russia, 11;
his report on F. J. Jackson, 178, 179, 182, 183;
wishes energy of government, 180, 189;
his bill for the annexation of West Florida, 319, 320;
his speech on the Bank charter, 333;
his political capacity, 363;
reports bill for raising twenty-five thousand troops, ii. 147;
his speech attacking Gallatin, 148, 149;
his factiousness, 150;
his admission of errors, 154;
his speech on the volunteer bill, 161;
votes for war, 229;
votes against occupying East Florida, 243;
on seamen’s bill, 454.
Gore, Christopher, elected governor of Massachusetts in 1809, i.
12;
invites F. J. Jackson to Boston, 213;
defeated in the election of 1810, 215;
and in 1811, ii. 115.
“Grace Ann Greene,” American vessel released by Napoleon, i. 391.
Graham, John, his account of public opinion in Kentucky, ii. 394.
Grandpré, Louis, i. 306, 307.
Grenville, Lord, on Canning, i. 49.
Grétry, i. 235.
Grundy, Felix, member of Congress from Tennessee, ii. 122, 137,
196;
on Committee of Foreign Relations, 124, 128;
his speech in favor of war, 137–141;
favors large army, 152;
opposes war-power, 161;
against frigates, 164;
on embargo, 201;
on the political effects of war, 213;
on forfeitures, 443;
reports bill for regulation of seamen, 452, 453.
“Guerriere,” British frigate, ii. 25;
“Little Belt” mistaken for, 26–30;
Captain Dacres of, 37;
joins Broke’s squadron, 368;
chases “Constitution,” 370;
captured by “Constitution,” 372–375.
Gunboats, i. 168.
Hamilton, Paul, appointed Secretary of the Navy, i. 9, 206;
his orders to Commodore Rodgers of June 9, 1810, ii. 26;
of May 6, 1811, 25;
his supposed incompetence, 169, 290, 395, 398;
his orders to Rodgers, Decatur, and Hull in June, 1812, 363–365,
368;
his orders of September, 1812, 378;
resigns, 428.
Hammond, George, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, i. 45.
Hampton, Wade, brigadier-general in U. S. army, i. 169;
takes command at New Orleans, 175; ii. 291.
Hanson, A. C., ii. 407.
Harper, Robert Goodloe, ii. 144.
Harrison, Fort, ii. 95, 106, 294.
Harrison, William Henry, governor of Indiana Territory, ii. 68;
his account of Indian affairs, 69–73;
his treaties of 1804 and 1805, 75, 77;
his influence in the dispute about slavery in Indiana, 75–77;
his interview with the Prophet in August, 1808, 80;
his treaty of Sept. 30, 1809, 83, 84;
his interview with Tecumthe of Aug. 12, 1810, 85–88;
his letter to Tecumthe June 24, 1811, 90;
his talk with Tecumthe July 27, 1811, 91;
instructed to avoid hostilities, 93;
raises military forces, 93;
sends army up the Wabash valley, 94;
constructs Fort Harrison, 95;
marches on Tippecanoe, 97;
his arrival, 98–100;
his camp, 102;
attacked, 103;
his return to Vincennes, 106;
Humphrey Marshall’s opinion of, 107;
his estimate of the effect of his campaign, 107, 108;
appointed by Kentucky to command expedition to recover Detroit,
392, 420;
unable to advance, 412.
Hauterive, Alexandre Maurice, Comte d’, charged with negotiations
with Armstrong, i. 140, 141.
Hawkesbury, Lord. (See Liverpool.)
Hay, George, his advice to Monroe, ii. 421.
Henry, John, secret agent of Sir James Craig, his report on
disunion, i. 14;
recalled, 86;
demands money, ii. 176;
comes to Boston, 177;
employs Crillon to negotiate with Monroe, 178;
obtains fifty thousand dollars, 179;
sails for Europe, 180;
papers of, 182;
supposed effect of, in Florida affairs, 241.
Holland, exempted from the non-intercourse, i. 72, 90–92, 112.
(See Louis Bonaparte.)
Holland, Lord, ii. 275.
Holstein, Duchy of, i. 413.
“Hornet,” sloop-of-war, brings despatches, ii. 215, 217;
cruises with Rodgers’ squadron, 365, 366;
at Boston, 378, 381;
her second cruise, 384;
blockades the “Bonne Citoyenne,” 384.
Howell, Jeremiah B., senator from Rhode Island, votes against
occupying West Florida, ii. 243.
Hull, Isaac, captain in U. S. navy, commands “Constitution,” ii.
364;
his orders, 364;
chased by a British squadron, 369–371;
captures “Guerriere,” 372–375;
takes command at New York, 383.
Hull, William, governor of Michigan Territory, ii. 292;
appointed brigadier-general, 292, 298;
his advice regarding the defence of Detroit, 296;
his march to Detroit, 298;
his loss of papers, 300;
arrives at Detroit, 301;
invades Canada, 302, 317;
his proclamation, 303;
his required campaign, 311;
decides to besiege Malden, 312–314;
sudden discovery of his danger, 314, 315;
evacuates Canada, 315;
his situation at Detroit, 322–329;
his capitulation, 332, 334;
Jefferson’s opinion of, 336, 398.
Illinois Territory, population in 1810, i. 289.
Impressment becomes a _casus belli_, ii. 116–118;
not expressly mentioned as such by Pinkney, 18;
or in the annual message, 125;
treated by House Committee of Foreign Relations, 134, 135;
mentioned by Grundy, 139;
by Madison’s war-message, 222;
only obstacle to peace, 430–432, 450–452;
extent of, 451, 452.
Impressments, i. 74, 292, 351, 352.
India, career of Marquess Wellesley in, i. 266.
Indiana Territory, population in 1810, i. 289;
created in 1800, ii. 68;
its dispute about the introduction of slavery, 75;
adopts second grade of territorial government, 76.
Indians in 1810, i. 318;
in the Northwest, ii. 69;
their condition described by Governor Harrison, 69;
trespasses on their territory, 70;
effects of intoxication upon, 71, 72;
murders committed upon, 72, 73;
Jefferson’s policy toward, 73–75;
Harrison’s treaties with, in 1804 and 1805, 75;
Tecumthe and the Prophet, 78;
Jefferson’s refusal to recognize them as a confederated body, 79;
establishment at Tippecanoe Creek, 79–81;
their hostility to cessions of land, 82, 87;
their land-cession of Sept. 30, 1809, 83, 84;
their outbreak imminent in 1810, 85;
outbreak delayed by British influence, 85;
their interview with Harrison, Aug. 12, 1810, 86–88;
government wishes peace with, 89;
of the Six Nations in Upper Canada, wish to remain neutral, 319;
their employment in war by the British, 320;
murders by, 393, 394.
Infantry, Fourth Regiment of, ordered to Indiana July, 1811, ii.
92, 93;
arrives, 94;
part of the expedition to Tippecanoe, 96;
losses in the battle, 104;
its share in the battle, 107;
ordered to Detroit, 110;
marches to Detroit, 298;
at the battle of Maguaga, 325.
Invisibles, the, i. 363.
Jackson, Francis James, his reputation, i. 96;
appointed British minister to the United States, 97;
his instructions, 99–105;
sails for America, 105;
Gallatin’s expectations from, 111, 117;
arrives at Washington, 115, 116;
his impressions, 117–120;
his negotiation, 120–132;
rupture with, 132;
his anger, 154, 155;
his complaints, 156;
his reception in Baltimore and New York, 157;
discussed before Congress, 176, 178, 179, 182;
his letters from New York and Boston, 212–218;
returns to England, 219;
his treatment by Wellesley, 218, 219, 269, 271, 272;
his influence with the British government, ii. 13;
his account of Pinkney’s “inamicable leave,” 20;
his opinion of Augustus J. Foster, 22;
his death, 22.
Jackson, Mrs. F. J., i. 115, 157.
“Java,” British frigate, her action with the “Constitution,” ii.
385, 386.
Jefferson, Thomas, Turreau’s anger with, i. 34;
Gallatin’s remarks on, 38, 39;
the “National Intelligencer” on, 75;
Randolph’s remarks on, 78;
Robert Smith’s remarks on, 84;
intermediates with Monroe, 161, 162;
expenditures of his administration, 200, 205, 206;
considered too timid by Robert Smith, ii. 48;
his Indian policy, 69, 73–75, 78, 79, 81;
his opinion of William Hull, 336, 398;
his expectation of the conquest of Canada, 337;
his opinion of Van Rensselaer, 398.
Jesup, Thomas S., acting adjutant-general at Detroit, ii. 329.
Johnson, Richard Mentor, member of Congress from Kentucky, i. 197,
203; ii. 122;
his war speech, 142;
on the dangers of a navy, 164;
on the treason of opposition, 212.
Jones, Jacob, captain in U. S. navy, commands the “Wasp,” ii. 379;
his action with the “Frolic,” 380;
captured, 381;
takes command of the “Macedonian,” 383.
Jones, Walter, his letter to Jefferson, on dissensions in Madison’s
Cabinet, i. 188.
Jones, William, appointed Secretary of the Navy, ii. 428, 429.
Kentucky, enthusiasm for the war, ii. 390;
number of men in the field, 391, 393;
distaste for the regular army, 391, 394.
Key, Philip Barton, member of Congress from Maryland, i. 185.
King, Rufus, his supposed opposition to Clinton, ii. 410.
Labouchere, i. 238, 239.
Lambert, Henry, captain of the British frigate “Java,” ii. 385,
386.
Langdon, John, of New Hampshire, nominated for the Vice-Presidency,
ii. 214.
Lansdowne, Marquis of, ii. 275.
Lauriston, Marquis de, French ambassador to Russia, i. 418.
Lee, Henry, crippled by Baltimore rioters, ii. 407, 408.
Leib, Michael, senator from Pennsylvania, i. 181, 189, 191; ii.
229, 243;
votes against Bank charter, 337;
his political capacity, 364.
Licenses of trade, British, i. 59, 64;
scandal of, 273;
debate on, 274, 275;
Canning’s remarks on, 278, 280;
Sidmouth’s conditions on, 281;
Castlereagh proposes to abandon, 221, 282.
Licenses, Napoleon’s system of, i. 246–249;
promised abandonment of, 392, 393;
continued issue of, 400;
repudiated by Napoleon, 414, 417, 422;
municipal character of, ii. 43;
their continued issue, 54;
extension of, 250.
Lincoln, Levi, declines appointment as justice, i. 359.
Lingan, James Maccubin, killed by Baltimore rioters, ii. 407, 408.
“Little Belt,” British sloop of-war, affair of, i. 25–37, 45, 270.
Livermore, Edward St. Loe, member of Congress from Massachusetts,
i. 184.
Liverpool, Lord, on American partiality to France, i. 50;
succeeds Castlereagh at the War Department, 263.
Lloyd, James, senator from Massachusetts, ii. 183.
Loan for 1810, i. 178;
of 1812, for eleven millions, ii. 169;
partial failure of, 207;
of 1813, for twenty millions, 433, 448.
Long, Charles, joint paymaster-general of the forces, i. 58.
Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, resists Napoleon’s decrees, i.
146;
his interview with Armstrong, 147, 148;
threatened by Napoleon, 236, 237, 240;
stipulates seizure of American ships, 240, 274;
abdicates, 242.
Louisiana, government offered to Monroe, i. 162;
proposed as a kingdom for the French Bourbons, 239;
admitted into the Union, 323–326; ii. 235.
Lowndes, William, member of Congress from South Carolina, ii. 122,
164;
his hostility to non-importation, 205, 234, 445, 448;
opposes compromise of forfeitures, 442.
Lyon, Matthew, member of Congress from Kentucky, i. 358.
McArthur, Duncan, colonel of Ohio militia, ii. 298, 326, 328, 332,
334.
“Macedonian,” British frigate, capture of, ii. 382, 383.
McKee, John, ii. 237.
Macon, Nathaniel, member of Congress from North Carolina, votes
with Federalists, i. 182;
his bill for excluding British and French shipping, 183, 184;
bill defeated by Senate, 185, 191, 193;
Samuel Smith’s motives for defeating, 185–188, 192, 193;
his bill No. 2, 194, 195;
adopted by Congress, 197, 198;
his remark on manufacturing influence, 197;
his speech on reducing the army and navy in 1810, 201;
his bill admitting the State of Louisiana, with West Florida,
into the Union, 323–326;
not candidate for speaker, ii. 123, 124;
his account of the opinions prevailing at Washington, 129;
supports war, 145;
his remark on France and England, 196.
Madison, James, inauguration of, i. 1;
his inaugural address, 2, 3, 4;
offers the Treasury to Robert Smith, 7, 379;
appoints Robert Smith Secretary of State, 8;
his Cabinet, 9, 10;
nominates J. Q. Adams to Russia, 11;
his letter to Erskine accepting settlement of the “Chesapeake
affair,” 68–70, 89;
issues proclamation renewing intercourse with England, 73, 74;
his views of the change in British policy, 75, 76, 81, 83;
his message of May 23, 1809, 76, 77;
his popularity, 80, 85, 86;
on the disavowal of Erskine’s arrangement, 112;
revives non-intercourse against England, 114;
his negotiation with F. J. Jackson, 117, 122–132;
described by Jackson, 120;
his message of Nov. 29, 1809, 176, 177;
special message of Jan. 3, 1810, asking for volunteers, 179;
his opinions of Samuel and Robert Smith, 186;
dissensions in his cabinet, 188;
remarks on the experiment of unrestricted commerce, 210, 211;
his reply to Napoleon’s note on the right of search and blockade,
250;
his anger at Napoleon’s confiscations, 292;
his instructions of June 5, 1810, to Armstrong on Champagny’s
reprisals, 293, 294;
his devotion to commercial restrictions, 293, 295;
his instructions of July 5, 1810, to Armstrong requiring
indemnity, 295, 296, 297, 299;
his decision to accept the conditions of Champagny’s letter of
August 5, 296–301;
revives non-intercourse against Great Britain, 303, 304;
takes military possession of West Florida, 308–312, 318;
his supposed character, 310;
his annual message of Dec. 5, 1810, 314, 317–319;
asks authority to take possession of East Florida, 327;
appoints commissioners for East Florida, 327;
decides to enforce the non-intercourse against Great Britain,
347;
his doubts regarding Napoleon’s folly, 350;
his irritation at Smith’s proposed inquiry from Serurier, 350,
351;
offers the State Department to Monroe, 366, 372, 374;
his parting interview with Robert Smith, 375–377;
his anger with Smith, 378;
his translation of _bien entendu_, 387, 388;
his success in maintaining his own system in the Cabinet, ii. 61,
62;
his discontent with Napoleon’s conduct, 63, 64, 125, 187, 218,
224;
his orders to maintain peace with the northwestern Indians, 88,
93;
his attitude toward war with England, 118, 125, 129, 131, 175,
196, 197, 213;
his annual message of Nov. 5, 1811, 124;
entertains Crillon, 179, 185;
his message communicating Henry’s papers, 181;
his embargo message, 193, 198, 199;
his comments on the conduct of the Senate, 203;
sustains non-importation, 205;
renominated for the presidency, 214;
perplexed by the French decrees, 218;
his letter to Barlow threatening war on France, 218, 259;
his view of the “immediate impulse” to war with England, 220,
226;
his war message, 221–226;
signs declaration of war, and visits departments, 229;
his measures regarding East Florida, 237, 239, 241, 243;
his remarks on Napoleon’s Russian campaign, 265;
his remarks in August, 1812, on the Canadian campaign, 337;
re-elected President, 413;
wishes Monroe to command western army, 419, 420, 425;
his annual message of 1812, 430–433.
Maguaga, battle of, ii. 325.
Malden, British trading post on the Detroit River, ii. 73, 80, 85,
300;
to be besieged by Hull, 303, 314;
British force at, 312, 313.
Manufactures, growth of, in 1809–1810, i. 15–19;
political influence of, 197;
protection of, 319.
Maret, Hugues Bernard, Duc de Bassano, Napoleon’s secretary, i.
143;
succeeds Champagny as Minister of Foreign Affairs, 401;
his report to Napoleon of March 10, 1812, ii. 216, 253;
his negotiation with Joel Barlow, 248–263;
his instructions to Serurier of October, 1811, on the revocation
of the Decrees, 248, 249;
communicates Decree of St. Cloud to Barlow and Serurier, 255–257;
his instructions to Dalberg, 260;
invites Barlow to Wilna, 263;
dismisses his guests, 264.
Marmont, Marshall, his story of Decrès, i. 222.
Marshall, Humphrey, on W. H. Harrison, ii. 107.
Maryland, her electoral vote, ii. 406, 413.
Massa, Duc de, letter from, i. 347.
Massachusetts, election of 1809, i. 12;
tonnage of, 15;
manufactures of, 17–19;
resolutions of legislature regarding F. J. Jackson, 214;
election of, 1810, 215;
Republican control of, in 1810 and 1811, ii. 115;
Federalists recover control of, in 1812, 204;
gives trouble to Dearborn, 305;
refuses to obey call for militia, 309;
temper of, 397–401, 409;
Federalist majority in the Congressional elections of 1812, 413.
Massassinway, council at, ii. 111.
Matthews, George, appointed commissioner to take possession of East
Florida, ii. 237;
his proceedings, 238–240;
disavowed, 240–242.
Mecklenburg, Grand Duchy of, closes its ports to American commerce,
i. 413.
“Melampus,” British frigate, ii. 25.
Merry, Anthony, i. 118, 119, 120, 121.
Message, first annual of President Madison, May 23, 1809, i. 76;
annual, of Nov. 29, 1809, 176–178;
special, of Jan. 3, 1810, asking for volunteers, 179;
annual, of Dec. 5, 1810, 317–319;
special, of Feb. 19, 1811, on the revocation of the French
decrees, 347, 348;
annual, of Nov. 5, 1811, ii. 124–126;
special, of March 9, 1812, communicating John Henry’s papers,
181;
special, of April 1, 1812, recommending an embargo for sixty
days, 198;
of April 24, 1812, asking for two Assistant Secretaries of War,
206;
of June 1, 1812, recommending a declaration of war with England,
221–226;
annual, of Nov. 4, 1812, 430–433.
Michigan territory, population in 1810, i. 289.
Michillimackinaw, Island of, ii. 294;
captured by British expedition, 314, 320.
Militia, constitutional power of Congress over, ii. 159, 160, 400;
Cheves’s opinion on the war power, 160;
act authorizing call for one hundred thousand, 204, 390;
refuses to cross the frontier, 351, 352, 360;
of Kentucky, 391, 393.
Miller, James, Lieutenant-Colonel of Fourth U. S. Infantry, at
Detroit, ii. 326, 328.
Mitchell, D. B., Governor of Georgia, ii. 242.
Mobile, ii. 236.
Monroe, James, Madison’s advances to, i. 159, 161, 162;
his state of mind, 162;
offered the State Department, 366;
his acceptance and policy, 368–374;
takes charge, 380;
Secretary of State, April 1, 1811, ii. 50;
his sensitiveness about the title to West Florida, 38;
his reply to Foster’s protest against the seizure of Florida, 38,
39;
blames Jonathan Russell for questioning the revocation of the
French decrees, 42;
asserts the revocation of the French decrees, 42, 43;
abandons task of reconciliation with England, 44;
requires revocation of the Orders in Council, 45;
delays Barlow’s departure, 50;
his remonstrances to Serurier about Napoleon’s conduct, 51, 54,
188, 189, 194, 195, 200, 217;
his remarks on protection accorded to commerce, 58;
his acceptance of Madison’s policy, 59–61;
affirms to Foster the repeal of Napoleon’s decrees, 65;
his letter of June 13, 1812, to John Taylor, of Caroline, 66;
his language to Serurier, in October, 1811, 120;
informs Serurier, in November, of executive plan, 129;
agrees to assist the independence of Spanish America, 130;
negotiates purchase of Henry’s papers, 178–180;
his remarks to Foster on Wellesley’s instructions, 192;
his conference with House Committee of Foreign Relations, March
31, 1812, 197;
his remarks on the embargo, 199, 200, 202;
his relations toward Matthews and the occupation of East Florida,
238, 240, 241, 242;
his criticisms on the conduct of the war, 396, 397;
assures Serurier he will not negotiate for peace, 415;
proposes to negotiate, 416;
proposes to take a military commission, 419, 420;
hesitates between civil or military control of the war, 421–423;
becomes acting Secretary of War, 423;
excites jealousy, 424, 425;
abandons military career, 425, 426;
offers to prohibit the employment of foreign seamen, 451.
“Moniteur,” The, ii. 253.
Montalivet, Comte de, Napoleon’s Minister of the Interior, i. 221;
his efforts for American commerce, 223, 224.
Moore, Sir John, his Spanish campaign, i. 26, 47, 48.
Morier, J. P., British chargé at Washington, i. 219;
his protest against the seizure of West Florida, 315.
Mountmorris, Lord, i. 265.
Napoleon, his Spanish campaign, i. 22–28;
his severity toward American commerce, 30–32;
withholds Florida, 32, 33;
his causes for rupture with the United States, 39, 40;
his war with Austria in 1809, 106, 134;
learns the repeal of the embargo and of the British Orders, 136;
his first reply to Armstrong’s communication, 137;
drafts Decree withdrawing the Milan Decree, 139;
cause of his hesitation, 140, 141;
lays aside his repealing Decree, 141;
his draft of Vienna Decree of August 4, 1809, 143, 144, 230, 233,
236;
his view of the right of search, 137, 145, 149;
quarrels with his brother Louis, 146, 147;
his increased severity toward the United States, 150–152, 220;
calls a Cabinet council on commerce, Dec. 19, 1809, 220, 221;
discussions with Montalivet, 221, 223;
his note to Gaudin on American ships, 224;
his want of money, 225, 226, 237;
calls for a report from Champagny, Jan. 10, 1810, 226, 227;
his dislike for Armstrong, 228, 229;
his condition for the revocation of his Decrees, 229;
his draft of note asserting retaliation on the Non-intercourse
Act, 230, 231;
his reply to Armstrong’s remonstrances, 234, 235;
his memory, 235;
his decree of Rambouillet, 236;
his threats of annexing Holland, 238, 246;
his annexation of Holland, 241, 242;
his reflections on Macon’s act, 244, 245;
his license system, 246;
his instructions to Champagny ordering announcement that the
Decrees will be withdrawn, 253;
dictates letter of August 5, 1810, 253;
his idea of a trap, 257, 383;
his instructions of Dec. 13, 1810, on the non-intercourse and the
Floridas, 384;
on commercial liberties, 386;
his address of March 17, 1811, to the deputies of the Hanse
Towns, 396, 397;
his address of March 24, 1811, to the Paris merchants, 398, 399,
420;
appoints Maret in place of Champagny, 401;
orders a report on American commerce, 402, 403;
admits American cargoes, May 4, 1811, 404;
his instruction of August 28, 1811, about Spanish America and
Florida, 407, 408;
his rupture with Russia and Sweden, 408–427;
his order of May 4, 1811, opening his ports to American commerce,
ii. 44, 59;
probable amount of his spoliations, 247;
his restrictions on American commerce, 247;
goes to Holland, Sept. 19, 1811, 248;
his interview with Joel Barlow, 249;
his extension of the license system in January, 1812, 250;
his seizure of Swedish Pomerania, 251, 252;
his decree of St. Cloud, April 28, 1811, 255, 256;
his departure for Poland, May 9, 1812, 258;
enters Russia, 259, 288;
his battle at Borodino, Sept. 7, 1812, 263;
enters Moscow, Sept. 15, 1812, 263;
begins his retreat, 264;
his passage of the Beresina, 264;
his return to Paris, December, 1812, 265.
“National Intelligencer” on renewal of intercourse with Great
Britain, i. 75;
on Erskine’s disavowal, 109, 110;
Joel Barlow’s letter in, 299.
“Nautilus,” sloop-of-war, captured, ii. 369, 386.
Navigation Act, moved by Macon, i. 183.
Navy, in 1809, i. 168, 169;
reductions in 1810, 200–207;
opposed by Republican party, ii. 162;
increase refused by Congress in January, 1812, 164;
condition of, in June, 1812, 363, 364;
distribution of, in September, 1812, 377, 378;
movements and battles of, in 1812, 362–387;
increase of, 436, 449.
(See “Constitution,” “President,” “United States,”
“Constellation,” “Chesapeake,” “Congress,” “Essex,” “Adams,”
“Wasp,” “Hornet,” “Argus,” “Syren,” “Nautilus.”)
Nelson, Roger, member of Congress from Maryland, i. 202, 203.
New Hampshire, becomes Federalist in 1809, i. 13.
New Orleans, i. 170.
“New Orleans packet,” seized under the Berlin and Milan Decrees,
ii. 8;
by a “municipal operation,” 42, 43.
New York city, described by F. J. Jackson, i. 213;
population in 1810, 289.
New York State, election of 1809, i. 13;
banking mania in, ii. 208;
election in May, 1812, 209;
nominates De Witt Clinton to the presidency, 215;
recruiting in, 305.
Niagara, military importance of, ii. 304, 310;
force at, 311, 320, 341, 344;
force raised to six thousand men, 345;
Van Rensselaer’s campaign at, 346–353;
Alexander Smyth’s campaign at, 353–358;
sickness of troops at, 359.
Niagara, Fort. (See Fort Niagara.)
Nicholas, Wilson Cary, member of Congress from Virginia, on the
appointment of Gallatin as Secretary of State, i. 4, 5, 6;
resigns from Congress, 76.
Non-intercourse, list of measures, i. 194.
Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, its effect on commerce, i.
35, 36;
English view of, 62;
affected by Erskine’s arrangement, 80, 88, 90;
revived by Erskine’s disavowal, 111, 114, 115;
communicated to Napoleon, 135;
communication denied by Napoleon, 232, 234, 235, 254;
Champagny’s complaints of, 140;
Napoleon’s retaliation on, 143, 150, 151, 230, 232, 254, 255;
its mischievous effects in America, 164, 165, 166, 178, 184;
about to expire, 183;
suspended, 195–198, 210;
revived by proclamation of Nov. 2, 1810, 302, 303, 304.
Non-intercourse Act of May 1, 1810, its passage, i. 194–198, 274;
its effect on Napoleon, 220, 244, 255;
its effect in England, 273–276;
its condition precedent to reviving non-intercourse, 297;
creates a contract, 342, 395, 396.
Non-intercourse Act of March 2, 1811, reviving act of March 1,
1809, moved by Eppes, Jan. 15, 1811, i. 338;
decided upon, 347;
amended, 351;
reported, 352;
passed, 354, 391;
its effect on Napoleon, 393, 394, 400, 404;
Foster’s instructions on the, ii. 23;
his protest against, 39;
his threat of retaliation, 44, 124;
not noticed by Napoleon, 56;
an intolerable burden to the United States, 140;
efforts to suspend, 205, 230–234, 447;
not retaliated by England, 270;
forfeitures under, 438–443;
Calhoun on, 444;
bill for stricter enforcement of, 448.
Ocaña, battle at, i. 268.
Ohio, population in 1810, i. 289.
Olmstead, Gideon, case of, i. 13.
Ontario, Lake, armaments on, ii. 342, 344.
Order in Council, of January, 1807, called Howick’s, i. 112, 278;
of November, 1807, possible alterations in, 42;
Order of Dec. 21, 1808, suspending export duties on foreign
produce, 43, 44;
further relaxations proposed, 45;
their effect on English trade, 46;
asserted by Canning not to have caused the embargo, 51;
Canning’s conditions of repealing, 53, 54, 56, 70–73, 90, 94,
101, 102;
Grenville and Sidmouth’s language regarding, 59, 60;
debate on, March 6, 1809, 60–62;
Order of April 26, 1809, establishing a general blockade in place
of the Orders of November, 1807, 63, 64, 65, 81, 103, 113,
126, 152;
Erskine’s arrangement withdrawing, 70–73;
disavowal of Erskine’s arrangement, 87–95, 109–113;
Order of May 24, 1809, repudiating Erskine’s arrangement, and
protecting vessels sailing under it, 93, 95;
Canning’s instructions of July 1, 1809, to F. J. Jackson, on,
101–105;
issue chosen by Madison and Monroe, ii. 39, 40, 45, 121, 188;
conditions of repeal, 124, 220;
enforced by British prize-courts, 118, 124, 267;
alleged as Madison’s fourth complaint, 222;
revocation promised by Prince Regent on formal revocation of
French decrees, 254, 282;
popular agitation against, 271, 281, 283;
debate of Feb. 28, 1811, in House of Lords, 275;
debate of March 3 in House of Commons, 276;
Rose’s definition of, 276, 283;
Canning’s remarks on, 277, 278;
Perceval’s account of, 279;
ministers grant a committee on, 283, 284;
suspension of, June 16, 1812, 286, 287, 403;
suspension not satisfactory to the President, 404;
repeal susceptible of satisfactory explanations, 431.
Otis, Harrison Gray, ii. 402;
supports Clinton, 410.
Ouvrard, Gabriel Julien, i. 239.
Papenberg, i. 165.
Parliament, debates on the Orders in Council, i. 49–52, 58–62;
on the Duke of York, 57, 58;
passes the Regency bill, ii. 13, 14;
meets Jan. 7, 1812, 270;
debates in, 270–280;
orders a committee of inquiry into the Orders in Council, 282,
284.
Parsons, Theophilus, chief-justice of Massachusetts, his opinion
on the power of a State over its militia, ii. 400.
Pennsylvania, resists mandate of Supreme Court, i. 13;
decides presidential election of 1812, ii. 412.
Perceval, Spencer, Chancellor of the Exchequer, his relaxations of
the Orders in Council, i. 42, 45, 63;
decline of his authority in 1809, 57, 58, 62, 63;
his difficulties with Canning and Castlereagh, i. 107;
becomes First Lord of the Treasury, 263;
invites Wellesley into the Cabinet, 267;
Wellesley’s opinion of, 281, 282, 283;
prime minister of England, becomes ruler after the insanity of
George III., ii. 2, 3;
retained as prime minister by the Prince Regent, 14;
his indifference to Wellesley’s advice, 268;
his remarks on an American war, 271;
his persistence in the system of commercial restriction, 272;
his remarks on licenses, 274;
his silence towards Canning, 280;
his bargain for Sidmouth’s support, 281;
concedes a committee on the Orders in Council, 283;
his assassination, 284.
Petry, M., i. 228, 229.
Philadelphia, population of, in 1810, i. 289.
Phillimore, Dr. Joseph, his pamphlets on the license system, ii.
274.
Piankeshaw Indians, ii. 71, 75.
Pickering, Timothy, senator from Massachusetts, his toast at
Jackson’s dinner, i. 217;
his speech on the occupation of West Florida, 321, 322;
loses his seat in the Senate, ii. 116;
his attempt to call a State convention in 1812, 402.
Pinckney, Thomas, appointed major-general, ii. 290.
Pinkney, William, United States minister in London, his reply, Dec.
28, 1808, to Canning’s first advance, i. 43, 44, 45;
his reception of Canning’s further advances, 49, 51, 52;
opinion attributed to, by Canning, 54;
his pleasure at the Order of April 26, 1809, 63, 64;
his opinion of Francis James Jackson, 96;
his intimacy with Wellesley, 270, 275;
his reports of Wellesley’s intentions, 271;
inquires whether Fox’s blockade is in force, 277–280;
notifies Wellesley of Champagny’s letter of Aug. 5, 1810, 286;
his republican insolence, 287;
demands repeal of the Orders, Nov. 3, 1811, ii. 3;
his argument that the French Decrees were revoked and that Fox’s
blockade was illegal, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11;
his definition of blockade, 10;
his demand for an audience of leave, 12, 15;
his hesitation, 16;
his note of Feb. 17, 1811, to Wellesley, 17;
insists on “an inamicable leave,” 18, 20;
his final audience, 19, 20;
his character as minister, 20, 21;
sails for America, 21;
appointed Attorney-General, 429.
Pitkin, Timothy, member of Congress from Connecticut, votes for war
measures, ii. 147.
Pitt, William, his patronage of young men, i. 264, 265.
Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, military force at, ii. 344;
Dearborn’s campaign from, 360.
Poland, i. 257.
Population of the United States in 1810, i. 289.
Porter, David, captain in U. S. navy, commands “Essex,” ii. 377;
captures “Alert,” 377;
returns to port, 378;
sails again, 384.
Porter, Peter Buell, member of Congress from New York, ii. 122;
on Committee of Foreign Relations, 124, 128;
his report favoring war, 133–136;
his war speech, 136;
favors small army, 151;
asks for provisional army, 165;
introduces embargo bill, 201;
calls for volunteers, 355;
charges General Smyth with cowardice, 358;
his duel with Smyth, 358.
Portland, Duke of, his death, i. 107.
Pottawatomies, charged by Tecumthe with bad conduct, ii. 111, 112.
Potter, Elisha, member of Congress from Rhode Island, i. 167; ii.
447.
“President,” American 44-gun frigate, ordered to sea, May 6, 1811,
ii. 25, 26;
chases a British war-vessel, 27;
fires into the “Little Belt,” 30;
at New York, 363, 365;
goes to sea, 366;
cruise of, 366, 368;
returns to Boston, 375, 378;
sails again, 381;
returns to Boston, Dec. 31, 1812, 381.
Previous question, the rule of, adopted, i. 353–356;
denounced by Stanford, ii. 146.
Prevost, Sir George, governor general of Canada, ii. 317;
his report on the lukewarm and temporizing spirit in Upper
Canada, 318, 319;
negotiates armistice with Dearborn, 323;
his military superiority in August, 1812, 338, 339.
Prince Regent. (See George, Prince of Wales.)
Proclamation of July 2, 1807, on the “Chesapeake” affair, i. 31;
of April 19, 1809, renewing intercourse with Great Britain, 73,
115;
of Aug. 9, 1809, reviving the Non-intercourse Act against Great
Britain, 114, 115;
of Nov. 2, 1810, reviving the non-intercourse against Great
Britain, 302, 303, 304, 338, 400;
of Oct. 27, 1810, ordering the military occupation of West
Florida, 310, 311;
of November 2, 1810, announcing the repeal of the French Decrees,
ii. 4, 56;
of William Hull on invading Canada, 303, 320;
of Isaac Brock in reply to Hull, 320.
Proctor, Henry, Colonel of the Forty-first British Infantry,
arrives at Malden, ii. 314;
disapproves Brock’s measures, 330.
Prophet, the Shawnee, begins Indian movement at Greenville, ii. 78;
removes to Tippecanoe Creek, 79;
his talk with Gov. Harrison in August, 1808, 80;
charged with beginning hostilities, 95;
sends Indians to Harrison, 97, 100;
blamed for the affair at Tippecanoe, 108.
Prussia, spoliations by, i. 226;
closes ports to American vessels, 413, 416.
Queenston, battle at, ii. 349–352.
Quincy, Josiah, member of Congress from Massachusetts declares the
admission of Louisiana a virtual dissolution of the Union, i.
325, 326;
votes for war-measures, ii. 147, 152;
gives warning of embargo, 201;
moves that the war-debate be public, 227;
opposes enlistment of minors, 435;
opposes forfeitures, 443.
Rambouillet, decree of. (See Decrees.)
Randolph, John, his remarks on Jefferson, i. 78;
on Erskine’s arrangement, 79;
on Madison’s message, 177;
his attempt to reduce expenditures in 1810, 199–207;
on the incapacity of government, 209;
on the contract with Napoleon, 344, 345;
his quarrel with Eppes, 352;
denounces the previous question, 353;
his remarks on President and Cabinet, February, 1811, 360, 361;
supports the Bank charter, 362;
his opinion of “the cabal,” 363, 364;
his quarrel with Monroe, 367;
his report on slavery in Indiana, ii. 76;
replies to Grundy on war, 142, 145;
ridicules army bill, 153;
declares war impossible, 202;
his comments on Eustis and Hamilton, 206;
his remarks on war, 211;
criticises Gallatin, 446.
Regiments. (See Army.)
Remusat, Mme. de, i. 235.
Revenue. (See Finances.)
Rhea, John, member of Congress from Tennessee, on the annexation of
West Florida to Louisiana, i. 324;
asserts contract with Napoleon, 343.
Richardson, Lieutenant of Canadian militia, his account of the
capture of Detroit, ii. 332.
Rockingham, in New Hampshire, county meeting of, ii. 403, 409.
Rodgers, John, captain in the United States navy, ordered to sea in
the “President,” May 6, 1811, ii. 25;
chases the “Little Belt,” 26, 27;
mistakes the “Little Belt” for the “Guerriere,” 29, 30;
his action with the “Little Belt,” 28–36;
his orders in June, 1812, 363, 365, 367, 368;
chases the “Belvidera,” 366;
arrives with his squadron at Boston, 375;
sails again with squadron, 378, 381;
returns, Dec. 31, 1812, 381.
Rodney, Cæsar A., his report on slavery in Indiana, ii. 76;
resigns attorney-generalship, 429.
Rose, George, on the Orders in Council, ii. 276, 277, 281, 283;
yields to an inquiry, 283.
Rose, George Henry, i. 95, 112–116.
Roumanzoff, Count Nicholas, chancellor of the Russian empire, his
language about Austria, i. 134;
declines to interfere in Danish spoliations, 409, 410, 411;
declines to release vessels at Archangel, 415;
protests against ukase, 418.
Rovigo, Duc de. (See Savary.)
Rule of 1756, Canning’s demand for express recognition of, i. 53,
55, 72, 104.
Rush, Richard, comptroller of the Treasury, ii. 229.
Russell, Jonathan, charged with legation at Paris, i. 260, 380;
his reports on the revocation of the Decrees, 381–395;
blamed by Monroe for questioning the revocation of the French
Decrees, ii. 42;
blamed by Serurier for his tone, 53;
sent as chargé to the legation at London, 252, 282;
asks proofs that the French Decrees are repealed, 252;
his reports from London, 283.
Russia, mission to, declared inexpedient, i. 11;
minister to, appointed, 86;
her rupture with France in 1811, 385, 398, 399, 412–423.
Ryland, Herman W., secretary to Sir James Craig, i. 86.
Sackett’s Harbor, military importance of, ii. 342, 343.
Saint Mary’s River, i. 165.
Salt duty, repeal of, ii. 149, 150;
to be re-enacted, 157, 166, 167.
Sandwich, opposite Detroit, ii. 302.
Savary, Duc de Rovigo, i. 241.
Sawyer, British Vice-admiral, ii. 368.
Sawyer, Lemuel, member of Congress from North Carolina, i. 184.
Scheldt, British expedition to, i. 107.
Schooner, the swiftest sailer in the world, ii. 48.
Scott, Sir William, decides the French Decrees to be still in
force, ii. 267.
Scott, Winfield, captain of artillery in 1808, ii. 292;
his description of the army, 292;
lieutenant-colonel at Queenston Heights, 351;
surrenders, 352.
Seamen, foreign, in the American service, ii. 455–457.
Search, right of, as understood by Napoleon, i. 137, 145.
Seaver, Ebenezer, member of Congress from Massachusetts, ii. 400.
Sedition Law, the, ii. 146.
Semonville, Comte de, his official address, i. 382, 388; ii. 8.
Serurier, succeeds Turreau as French minister at Washington, i.
345, 346;
his first interview with Robert Smith, 346;
reports the government decided to enforce non-intercourse against
Great Britain, 347;
his estimates of Gallatin and Robert Smith, ii. 46–50;
the crisis of his fortune, 52;
reports Monroe’s anger at Napoleon’s conduct, 51, 53, 54, 57;
remonstrates at Barlow’s delay, 55;
his letter of July 19, 1811, on the repeal of Napoleon’s Decrees,
60;
his report of Monroe’s and Madison’s remarks on Napoleon’s
arrangements, July, 1811, 63, 64;
his report of Madison’s warlike plans in November, 1811, 129,
130;
his reports on Crillon and John Henry’s papers, 178–181;
his report of Madison’s language on the French spoliations, 187;
his report of Monroe’s language regarding the repeal of the
French Decrees, 188, 189, 194, 195;
his report of Monroe’s remarks on the embargo and war, 200;
remonstrates against suspension of the Non-importation Act, 205;
his remarks on the failure of the loan, 208;
his report of angry feeling against France, 217;
his report of Monroe’s complaints in June, 1812, 231;
his report of Monroe’s language about the occupation of East
Florida, 241;
his report of Monroe’s language about negotiation for peace, 415,
416.
“Shannon,” British frigate, ii. 368;
chases “Constitution,” 370.
Sheaffe, R. H., Major-General of the British army in Canada, ii.
349, 351.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, i. 265.
Shipping, its prosperity in 1809–1810, i. 15, 290;
protection of, 319.
Short, William, i. 11.
Sidmouth, Lord, speech on the Orders in Council, i. 59;
his weariness of the Orders, 282, 283;
enters Cabinet, ii. 281.
Slavery in Indiana, ii. 75–77.
Sloops-of-War, in the U. S. navy, act of Congress for building six,
ii. 449.
(See “Wasp,” “Hornet,” “Argus,” “Syren,” “Nautilus.”)
Smilie, John, member of congress from Pennsylvania, i. 204.
Smith, John Spear, chargé in London, ii. 21, 267.
Smith, Robert, offered the Treasury Department, i. 7, 379;
becomes Secretary of State, 8, 10;
his language about war with France, 35;
his letter to Erskine accepting settlement of the “Chesapeake
Affair,” 68, 69, 89;
his replies to Canning’s three conditions, 71–73;
his remarks to Turreau on Jefferson’s weakness and indiscretions,
84;
introduces F. J. Jackson to the president, 120;
his interviews with Jackson, 122–124, 126;
his incompetence, 159;
Madison’s resentment of his conduct on Macon’s bill, 186, 187;
his supposed quarrels in the Cabinet, 188;
opposed to Madison’s course toward France, 296, 297, 366, 374,
375, 378;
notifies Turreau of the President’s intention to revive the
non-intercourse against England, 302, 303;
explains to Turreau the occupation of West Florida, 313;
his first interviews with Serurier, 346, 347;
irritates Madison by questioning Serurier, 350;
his abilities, 363, 376;
his removal from the State Department, 375–377;
his Address to the People, 378;
his retort against Madison, 379;
Serurier’s estimate of, ii. 46–50;
his remark about American schooners, 48;
his comments on Jefferson, Madison, and Clinton, 48;
his pamphlet reveals secrets annoying to Madison, 54.
Smith, Samuel, senator from Maryland, defeats Gallatin’s
appointment as Secretary of State, i. 4–7;
his quarrel with Gallatin, 10, 11;
votes for mission to Russia, 11;
re-elected to the Senate, 159;
his support of Giles, 180;
defeats Macon’s bill, 185, 192, 193;
his motives, 185, 186, 187, 192;
reports bill of his own, 197, 198;
moves censure of Pickering, 322;
his speech on the Bank Charter, 335, 336;
his abilities, 363;
opposes every financial proposal, 234;
votes against occupying East Florida, 243.
Smyth, Alexander, inspector-general of U. S. army, with rank of
brigadier, ii. 353;
arrives at Buffalo with brigade, 346;
his disagreement with Van Rensselaer, 346, 348;
ordered to take command, 353;
his Niagara campaign, 354–358;
dropped from the army-roll, 358.
Snyder, Simon, governor of Pennsylvania, i. 13.
Spain, Napoleon’s and Moore’s campaigns in, i. 22–28;
Wellesley’s campaigns in, 268.
Spanish America, Napoleon’s policy toward, i. 32, 33, 384, 385,
407;
Jefferson’s wishes regarding, 37, 38;
Madison’s policy towards, 38, 39, 305–315;
Spencer Perceval’s policy toward, 269, 283, 284;
movements for independence in, 305.
Specie in the United States in 1810, i. 330.
Spoliations by Napoleon, i. 30, 151, 152, 220, 255;
value of, 242, 243;
Madison’s anger at, 292;
Madison’s demand for indemnity, 295, 296;
their municipal character, 299;
their justification as reprisals, 230, 232, 234, 237, 254, 258,
259, 388, 391, 396;
in Denmark, 409, 411;
not matter of discussion, ii. 54, 125;
Madison’s language regarding, 187;
Monroe’s language regarding, 188, 189;
new, reported in March, 1812, 193, 224, 251,
in June, 231;
probable value of, 247.
Stanford, Richard, member of Congress from North Carolina, i. 182;
his retort on Calhoun, ii. 144;
his speech on war, 146.
Stanley, Lord, ii. 283.
Steamboat, i. 215, 216.
Stephen, James, his speech of March 6, 1809, i. 60, 65;
his remarks on Erskine’s arrangement, 98;
on the Orders, ii. 276;
yields to a parliamentary inquiry, 284.
Story, Joseph, retires from Congress, i. 76;
obnoxious to Jefferson, 359.
Strong, Caleb, re-elected governor of Massachusetts in April, 1812,
ii. 204;
his Fast Proclamation, 399;
declines to obey call for militia, 400;
calls out three companies, 400.
Sumter, Thomas, appointed minister to Brazil, i. 11.
Sweden, Bernadotte, Prince of, i. 424;
his rupture with Napoleon, 425, 426;
Napoleon declares war on, ii. 251.
Swedish Pomerania, i. 425.
“Syren,” sloop-of-war, ii. 378.
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, his letter of Dec. 21, 1804; i.
321;
on the boundaries of Louisiana, 321, 322.
Taxes, war, ii. 157, 165, 166;
postponed, 168, 204;
reported June 26, 1812, 235;
postponed by Congress, 235, 444;
bill for, 447.
Taylor, John, member of Congress from South Carolina, author of
Macon’s bill No. 2, i. 194;
his speech, 195, 196;
introduces Bank charter, 208.
Taylor, John, of Caroline, his advice to Monroe, i. 369, 370;
Monroe’s letter to, June 13, 1812, ii. 66;
his remarks on the presidential election of 1812, 414, 417.
Tazewell, Littleton Waller, i. 161.
Tecumthe, or Tecumseh, his origin, ii. 78;
his plan of Indian confederation, 78, 79;
establishes himself at Tippecanoe, 79;
character of his village, 80;
joined by the Wyandots, 83;
his conference with Harrison, Aug. 12, 1810, 85–88;
seizes salt in June, 1811, 90;
his talk at Vincennes, July 27, 1811, 91;
starts for the Creek country, 92;
his account of the affair at Tippecanoe, 105, 109;
returns from the Creek country, 108;
his reply to British complaints, 109;
his speech of May 16, 1812, 111;
joins the British at Malden, 329, 330;
routs Ohio militia, 315;
at the battle of Maguaga, 325;
at the capture of Detroit, 332.
Terre aux Bœufs, encampment at, i. 171–175.
Thiers, Louis Adolphe, on Napoleon, i. 225, 226, 236.
“Times,” The London, on the Orders in Council, i. 62;
on English apathy towards the United States, ii. 24;
on an American war, 287.
Tippecanoe Creek, ii. 68, 79;
Indian settlement at, 80;
character of, 81;
to be a large Indian resort, 91;
to be broken up, 92, 94;
Harrison’s march on, 97;
arrival at, 98;
camp at, 101;
battle of, 103;
characterized by Tecumthe, 105, 109, 111;
retreat from, 106;
Harrison’s estimate of effect of battle, 107, 108;
charged upon England, 140, 143.
Tompkins, D. D., Governor of New York; his prevention of the bank
charter, ii. 209.
Toronto. (See York.)
Torpedo, Fulton’s, i. 209.
Totten, Joseph G., captain of engineers, ii. 350, 352.
Towson, Nathan, captain of artillery, ii. 347.
Treaty of Feb. 22, 1819, with Spain, ceding Florida, ii. 237.
Treaties, Indian, of Greenville, Aug. 3, 1795, ii. 79;
of Aug. 18, 1804, with the Delaware Indians, ceding land, 75;
of Aug. 27, 1804, with the Piankeshaw Indians, ceding land, 75,
77;
of Aug. 21, 1805, with the Delawares, Pottawatomies, Miamis, Eel
River, and Weas, 75;
of Nov. 25, 1808, with the Chippewa, Ottawa, Pottawatomy, Wyandot
and Shawanee nations, 82;
of Sept. 30, 1809, with the Delawares, Pottawatomies, Miamis, and
Eel River Miamis, 83, 85, 87.
Troup, George McIntosh, member of Congress from Georgia, i. 185,
202;
on admission of West Florida, 324;
his war-speech, ii. 144, 145;
votes for frigates, 164.
Turner, Charles, member of Congress from Massachusetts, assaulted
in Plymouth, ii. 400, 409.
Turreau, French minister to the United States, his anger with the
government in the spring of 1809, i. 33–40;
his report on the repeal of the embargo, 34;
on the non-importation act, 35;
on disunion, 36;
on the Spanish colonies, 37;
his advice on rupture with the United States, 40;
his report of Gallatin’s remarks on renewal of intercourse with
Great Britain, 74;
his report of Robert Smith’s remarks on Jefferson’s weakness and
indiscretions, 84;
his note of June 14, 1809, remonstrating at the unfriendly
conduct of the United States, 84;
his recall ordered by Napoleon, 226;
his successor arrives, 345, 346.
Ukase, Imperial, of Dec. 19, 1810, i. 418, 419.
Union, dissolution of, a delicate topic, i. 14;
a cause of repealing the embargo, 34;
discussed by Turreau, 36;
discussed in New England, ii. 403, 409.
United States, population in 1810, i. 289.
“United States,” 44-gun frigate, ii. 363;
first cruise of, in 1812, 366, 375;
at Boston, 378;
second cruise of, 381;
captures the “Macedonian,” 382, 383.
University, national, i. 319.
Van Buren, Martin, his support of De Witt Clinton, ii. 409, 413.
Van Rensselaer, Solomon, colonel of New York militia, commands
attack on Queenston, ii. 348.
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, Major-General of New York militia, ordered
to take command at Niagara, ii. 321;
forwards letter to Hull, 324;
his force, Aug. 19, 1812, 341;
his alarming position, 342, 343;
his force, Sept. 15, 344;
expected to invade Canada with six thousand men, 345;
his attack on Queenston, 346, 347–353;
retires from command, 353;
Monroe’s opinion of, 396;
Jefferson’s comment on, 398.
Varnum, Joseph B., of Massachusetts, re-elected speaker, i. 76;
his rulings on the previous question, 353;
elected senator, ii. 116.
Vermilion River, Indian boundary, ii. 97, 98.
Vienna, Napoleon’s draft for a decree of, i. 143, 144, 150, 152.
Vincennes, territorial capital of Indiana, ii. 68, 71, 79;
the Shawnee prophet’s talk at, 80;
Tecumthe’s talks at, 85, 91;
citizens’ meeting at, 92;
Indian deputation at, 108;
panic at, 110.
Virginia creates manufactures in New England, i. 19, 20;
apathy of, toward the war, ii. 413, 414.
“Vixen,” sloop-of-war, captured, ii. 386.
Wabash, valley of, ii. 67, 68, 75, 77;
Harrison’s land purchase in, 83;
war imminent in, 85.
Wadsworth, William, Brigadier-General of New York militia, ii. 351;
surrenders at Queenston, 352.
Wagner, Jacob, editor of the “Federal Republican,” ii. 406, 407.
Wales, Prince of. (See George, Prince of Wales.)
War, declared by Monroe to be nearly decided in November, 1811, ii.
130;
recommended by House Committee of Foreign Relations, Nov. 29,
1811, 133–136;
its objects explained by Peter B. Porter, 136;
its effects discussed by Felix Grundy, 138, 141;
Grundy’s account of its causes, 139, 140;
Macon’s view of its object, 145;
war-taxes (see Finance), war-power (see Militia), department of,
its incompetence, 168 (see Eustis;)
Monroe’s remarks on, 190;
Madison’s message recommending, 221–226;
expediency of, 223;
Madison’s recapitulation of causes, 220–223;
Calhoun’s report on causes, 226;
Calhoun’s bill for, adopted by the House, 228;
by the Senate, 228, 229;
and signed by the President, 229;
criticisms on the conduct of, 392–399;
opposition to, 398–403;
apathy towards, 414;
only attainable object of, 418;
reasons of continuance, 430–432.
Ward, Robert Plumer, ii. 279.
Washington city, F. J. Jackson’s impressions of, i. 116–119.
Washington, President, expenditures of his administration, i. 200.
“Wasp,” sloop-of-war, ii. 364, 378;
her action with the “Frolic,” 379, 380.
Wayne, Fort, ii. 294.
Wea Indians, ii. 71, 75, 87.
Webster, Daniel, his Rockingham Resolutions, ii. 403.
Wellesley, Marquess, his character, i. 264, 265, 269;
appointed ambassador to the Supreme Junta, 267;
becomes Foreign Secretary, 268;
his friendship with Pinkney, 270, 275;
his promises, 271;
his note on Jackson, 272;
his remark on American hatred, 273;
his procrastination, 277–280, 285;
his contempt for his colleagues, 281, 282;
resolves to retire, 285;
his reply to Champagny’s letter of August 5, 283;
hopes for a Whig ministry in November, 1811, ii. 4;
his controversy with Pinkney over the French Decrees and the law
of blockade, 5, 6, 9;
abandons hope of a Whig ministry, 14;
rejects Pinkney’s demands, 14, 15, 18;
appoints a minister to Washington, 16;
his instructions of April 10, 1811, to the new minister (see
Foster), 22, 23;
criticises his colleagues for apathy towards America, 24;
his instructions to Foster of Jan. 28, 1812, 191, 192;
settles the “Chesapeake” affair, 121, 122, 270;
urges his colleagues to choose a course, 267, 268;
resigns from the cabinet, Jan. 16, 1812, 271.
Wellesley, Sir Arthur, i. 266;
fights the battle of Talavera, 106;
made a viscount, 264;
general-in-chief, 267;
retreats, 268.
Wellesley, Henry, i. 264;
envoy in Spain, 268;
on Perceval’s commercial policy, 283, 284.
Westmoreland, Lord Privy Seal, i. 282.
West Point, school at, i. 319.
Whiskey-tax, rejected, ii. 167.
Whitbread, Samuel, member of Parliament, i. 50; ii. 270.
Widgery, William, member of Congress from Massachusetts, ii. 400.
Wilberforce, William, member of Parliament, ii. 273, 280.
Wilkinson, James, brigadier-general, his movements, i. 37;
Gallatin’s remarks on his character, 38;
military court of inquiry on, 169;
his influence on the army, 169;
ordered to New Orleans, 170;
his encampment at Terre aux Bœufs, 171–175;
summoned to Washington for investigation, 175;
senior brigadier, ii. 291.
Williams, David R., not a member of the Eleventh Congress, i. 76;
in the Twelfth Congress, ii. 122;
chairman of military committee, 124, 435.
Wilna, in Poland, Barlow’s journey to, ii. 263, 264.
Winchester, Joseph, brigadier-general, ii. 291.
Winder, William H., Colonel of Fourteenth Infantry, ii. 357, 359.
Wolcott, Alexander, i. 359, 360.
Wool, John E., Captain of Thirteenth Infantry, gains Queenston
Heights, ii. 349, 350.
Woollen manufactures, i. 17.
Wright, Robert, member of Congress from Maryland, his motion on
impressments, i. 351, 352;
opposes Gallatin’s taxes, ii. 167;
his threats against opposition, 213.
York, or Toronto, capital of Upper Canada, ii. 316.
York, Duke of, i. 57, 58, 105.
END OF VOL. II.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Tooke’s Prices, ii. 389, 390.
[2] State Papers, iii. 373.
[3] State Papers, iii. 376.
[4] Instructions of Wellesley to Foster, April 10, 1811; Papers
presented to Parliament, February, 1813.
[5] Robert Smith to Pinkney, July 2, 1810; State Papers, iii. 360.
[6] Smith to Pinkney, July 5, 1810; State Papers, iii. 362.
[7] Pinkney to Wellesley, Dec. 10, 1810; State Papers, iii. 376.
[8] Russell to Cadore, Dec. 10, 1810; State Papers, iii. 391.
[9] Wellesley to Pinkney, Dec. 29, 1810; State Papers, iii. 408.
[10] Pinkney to Wellesley, Jan. 14, 1811; State Papers, iii. 409.
[11] Pinkney to Madison, Dec. 17, 1810; Wheaton’s Pinkney, p. 452.
[12] Wellesley to Pinkney, Feb. 11, 1811; State Papers, iii. 412.
[13] Pinkney to Wellesley, Feb. 13, 1811; State Papers, iii. 412.
[14] Pinkney to Wellesley, Feb. 13, 1811; State Papers, iv. 413.
[15] Wellesley to Pinkney, Feb. 15, 1811; State Papers, iii. 413.
[16] Smith to Pinkney, Nov. 15, 1810; State Papers, iii. 375.
[17] Pinkney to Wellesley, Feb. 17,1811; State Papers, iii. 414.
[18] Wellesley to Pinkney, Feb. 23, 1811; State Papers, iii. 415.
[19] Pinkney to Wellesley, Feb. 23, 1811; State Papers, iii. 415.
[20] Pinkney to Robert Smith, March 1, 1811; State Papers, iii. 415.
[21] Wellesley to Foster, April 29, 1811; Papers, etc., 1813, p. 294.
[22] F. J. Jackson to Pickering, April 24, 1811; New England
Federalism, p. 382.
[23] Bath Archives, Second Series, i. 219.
[24] Pinkney to Madison, Aug. 13, 1810; Wheaton’s Pinkney, p. 444.
[25] Papers relating to America, _C_, presented to Parliament,
February, 1813.
[26] Instruction No. 3; MSS. British Archives.
[27] Instruction No. 8; MSS. British Archives.
[28] Bath Archives, Second Series, i. 221.
[29] Cobbett’s Debates, xxiv. 34.
[30] Secretary Hamilton to Commodore Rodgers, May 6, 1811; MSS. Navy
Department Archives.
[31] Secretary Hamilton to Commodore Rodgers, June 9, 1810; MSS. Navy
Department Archives.
[32] Rodgers’s Report of May 23, 1811; State Papers, Foreign Affairs,
iii. 497.
[33] Niles’s Register, i. 34.
[34] American State Papers, Foreign Affairs, iii. 473.
[35] State Papers, iii, 477.
[36] London Times, Dec. 7, 1811; Palladium, Feb. 18, 1812.
[37] James. Naval Occurrences, p. 97.
[38] Monroe to Foster, July 8, 1811; State Papers iii. 543.
[39] Foster to Wellesley, July 5, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[40] Foster to Monroe, July 3, 1811; State Papers, iii. 435.
[41] Foster to Wellesley, July 7, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[42] Monroe to Foster, July 23, 1811; State Papers, iii. 439.
[43] Foster to Wellesley, July 18, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[44] Serurier to Champagny, No. 5, March 5, 1811. Archives des Aff.
Étr. MSS.
[45] Serurier to Champagny, Feb. 17, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[46] Serurier to Champagny, March 26, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[47] Serurier to Champagny, April 5, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[48] Serurier to Maret, June 30, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[49] Serurier to Maret, July 5, 1811; Archives des Aff Étr. MSS.
[50] See vol. v. p. 393.
[51] Serurier to Maret, July 10, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[52] Serurier to Maret, July 20, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[53] Serurier to Monroe, July 19, 1811; MSS. State Department Archives.
[54] Serurier to Maret, July 20, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[55] Serurier to Monroe, July 23, 1811; State Papers, iii. 508.
[56] Serurier to Maret, July 24, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[57] Monroe to Taylor, June 13, 1812; Monroe MSS.
[58] Dawson’s Harrison, p. 8.
[59] Dawson’s Harrison, p. 11.
[60] Dawson’s Harrison, pp. 7, 31, 32.
[61] Life of Lincoln, by Hay and Nicolay, chap. i.
[62] Jefferson to Harrison, Feb. 27, 1803; Works, iv. 471.
[63] Dunn’s Indiana (American Commonwealths), p. 324.
[64] Dillon’s History of Indiana, App. G. p. 617.
[65] Dunn’s Indiana, p. 397.
[66] Treaty of Greenville; State Papers, Indian Affairs, p. 562.
[67] Harrison to the Secretary of War, March 22, 1814; Drake’s
Tecumseh, p. 161.
[68] Treaty of Nov. 7, 1807; State Papers, Indian Affairs, p. 747.
[69] Dawson’s Harrison, p. 106.
[70] Dawson, p. 129.
[71] Eustis to Harrison, July 15, 1809. Indian Affairs, p. 761.
[72] Harrison to the Secretary of War, March 22, 1814; Drake’s
Tecumseh, p. 162.
[73] Dawson, p. 142.
[74] Harrison to Eustis, July 4, 1810; Dawson, p. 149. Harrison to
Governor Scott, Dec. 13, 1811; Dawson, p. 244. Badollet’s Letters to
Gallatin; Gallatin MSS. Dillon’s Indiana, p. 455.
[75] Harrison to Governor Scott of Kentucky, March 10, 1809; Dawson, p.
119.
[76] State Papers, Indian Affairs, p. 799.
[77] War Department Archives, MSS.
[78] Dawson, pp. 173, 174.
[79] Dawson’s Harrison, p. 179.
[80] Dawson, p. 190.
[81] Dawson, p. 191.
[82] Dawson, p. 200.
[83] Boyd to Eustis, Dec. 10, 1811; MSS. War Department Records.
[84] Marshall’s Kentucky, ii. 509.
[85] Dawson, p. 195. Cf. McAffee, p. 18.
[86] Harrison to Eustis, Oct. 6, 1811; MSS. War Department Archives.
[87] Dawson, p. 253.
[88] Harrison to Eustis, Oct. 13, 1811; MSS. War Department Archives.
[89] Harrison to Eustis, Nov. 2, 1811; MSS. War Department Archives.
[90] Letter in New England Palladium, Dec. 24, 1811.
[91] Dawson, p. 196.
[92] Dawson, p. 196.
[93] Speech of Captain Charley, July 10, 1814; State Papers, Indian
Affairs, i. 830.
[94] Dawson, p. 206.
[95] Harrison to Governor Scott, Dec. 13, 1811; Dawson, p. 244.
[96] McAffee, p. 25. Dawson, p. 206.
[97] Harrison to Eustis, Nov. 18, 1811; State Papers, Indian Affairs,
p. 776.
[98] Harrison to Eustis, Nov. 18, 1811; State Papers, Indian Affairs,
p. 776.
[99] Dawson, p. 216.
[100] Dawson, pp. 216, 250.
[101] Dawson, p. 211.
[102] McAffee, p. 28.
[103] Harrison to Eustis, Nov. 18, 1811; State Papers, Indian Affairs,
p. 776.
[104] See Plan of Camp. Lossing, p. 205.
[105] Lossing, p. 203.
[106] Harrison to Eustis, Nov. 8, 1811; National Intelligencer, Nov.
30, 1811. Niles, i. 255.
[107] William Taylor to ----, Nov. 8, 1811; National Intelligencer,
Dec. 7, 1811.
[108] General Return; State Papers, Indian Affairs, i. 779.
[109] Dawson, p. 233.
[110] Dawson, p. 233. Lossing, p. 206, _note_.
[111] Report of Nov. 18, 1811; Niles, i. 304.
[112] Dawson, p. 267.
[113] Lossing, p. 206, _note_.
[114] Marshall’s Kentucky, ii. 507, 521.
[115] Harrison to J. M. Scott, Dec. 2, 1811. Niles, i. 311.
[116] Harrison to Eustis, Dec. 4, 1811; State Papers, Indian Affairs,
p. 779.
[117] MSS. Canadian Archives. C. 676, p. 147.
[118] J. Rhea to Eustis, March 14, 1812; State Papers, Indian Affairs,
p. 806.
[119] Dawson, p. 263.
[120] State Papers, Indian Affairs, p. 808.
[121] Dawson, p. 266.
[122] Serurier to Maret, Oct. 23, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[123] Foster to Wellesley, Nov. 5, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[124] Macon to Nicholson, Nov. 21, 1811; Nicholson MSS.
[125] Annals of Congress, 1811–1812, p. 715.
[126] Serurier to Maret, Nov. 28, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[127] Foster to Wellesley, Nov. 9, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[128] Foster to Wellesley, Nov. 21, 1811; Papers presented to
Parliament in 1813, p. 417.
[129] Foster to Wellesley, Jan. 16, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[130] Foster to Wellesley, Dec. 11, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[131] Foster to Wellesley, Dec. 11, 1811; MSS. British Archives.
[132] Foster to Wellesley, Jan. 16, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[133] Foster to Wellesley, Feb. 2, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[134] Crillon’s evidence; Annals of Congress, 1811–1812, p. 1222.
[135] Les États Unis il y a quarante ans; Par Caraman. Revue
Contemporaine, 31 Août, 1852, p. 26.
[136] Serurier to Maret, May 27, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[137] Serurier to Maret, March 2, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[138] Serurier to Maret, March 2, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[139] Serurier to Maret, March 22, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[140] Serurier to Maret, May 27, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[141] Caraman, p. 28. Revue Contemporaine, 31 août, 1852.
[142] Serurier to Maret, Jan. 2, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[143] Serurier to Maret, March 2, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[144] Foster to Wellesley, March 12, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[145] Foster to Wellesley, April 1, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[146] Papers communicated to Parliament in 1813, p. 314.
[147] Foster to Wellesley, April 1, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[148] Serurier to Maret, March 23, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[149] Macon to Nicholson, March 24, 1812; Nicholson MSS.
[150] Statesman’s Manual, ii. 444, _note_.
[151] Adams’s Gallatin, pp. 457–459.
[152] Speech of John Smilie, April 1, 1812; Annals of Congress, p.
1592. Monroe to Colonel Taylor, June 13, 1812; Monroe MSS.
[153] Speech of John Randolph, April 1, 1812; Annals of Congress, p.
1593.
[154] Speech of John Randolph, April 1, 1812; Annals of Congress, p.
1593.
[155] Foster to Wellesley, April 1, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[156] Foster to Wellesley, April 2, 1812; Papers, 1813, p. 564.
[157] Foster to Wellesley, April 3, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[158] Serurier to Maret, April 9, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[159] Supplemental Journal, April 1, 1812; Annals of Congress,
1811–1812, p. 1588.
[160] Madison to Jefferson, April 24, 1812; Writings, ii. 532.
[161] Serurier to Maret, April 24, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[162] National Intelligencer, April 23, 1812.
[163] Serurier to Maret, May 4, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[164] Message of March 27, 1812; Niles, ii. 39.
[165] Adams’s Gallatin, p. 460, _note_.
[166] Ante, vol. i. pp. 139, 142.
[167] Foster to Castlereagh, May 3, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[168] Papers presented to Parliament, 1813, p. 475.
[169] Serurier to Maret, May 27, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[170] Madison to Jefferson, May 25, 1812; Works ii. 535.
[171] Madison to Barlow, Aug. 11, 1812; Works ii. 540.
[172] Madison to Henry Wheaton, Feb. 26, 1827; Works iii. 553.
[173] Castlereagh to Foster, April 10, 1812; Papers, etc., 1813, p. 511.
[174] Foster to Castlereagh, June 6, 1812; Papers, etc., 1813, p. 577.
[175] Madison to Wheaton, Feb. 26, 1827; Madison’s Works, iii. 553.
[176] Richard Rush to Benjamin Rush, June 20, 1812; Rush MSS.
[177] Serurier to Maret, June 13, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[178] Adams’s Gallatin, p. 466.
[179] Petition of inhabitants; Annals of Congress, 1811–1812, p. 2157.
[180] United States _vs._ Arredondo, 6 Peters, p. 741.
[181] State Papers, Foreign Relations, iv. 617, 623; Diary of J. Q.
Adams, Feb. 15, 1819, iv. 254, 255.
[182] Secretary of State to Gen. George Matthews and John McKee, Jan.
26, 1811; State Papers, Foreign Affairs, iii. 571.
[183] Matthews to Monroe, Aug. 3, 1811; Secret Acts, Resolutions, and
Instructions under which East Florida was invaded in 1812 and 1813.
Washington.
[184] Matthews to Monroe, Oct. 14, 1811; Secret Acts, Resolutions, and
Instructions under which East Florida was invaded in 1812 and 1813.
Washington.
[185] Niles, ii. 93.
[186] State Papers, Foreign Affairs, iii. 572.
[187] Crawford to Monroe, Aug. 6, 1812; Monroe MSS. State Dep. Archives.
[188] Works, ii. 532.
[189] Serurier to Maret, May 4, 1812; Archives des. Aff. Étr. MSS.
[190] State Papers, iii. 572.
[191] State Papers, iii. 573.
[192] Governor Garzia to Governor Mitchell, Dec. 12, 1812; Niles, iii.
311.
[193] An Act, etc., Annals of Congress; 12th Congress, 1811–1812, Part
I. p. 324.
[194] Maret to Serurier, October, 1811; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[195] Barlow to Monroe, Nov. 17, 1812; MSS. State Department Archives.
[196] Notes dictées en conseil, 25 nov. 1811; Correspondance, xxiii. 36.
[197] Note sur le Blocus continental, 13 janvier, 1812; Correspondance,
xxiii. 167.
[198] Barlow to Monroe, Dec. 19, 1811; State Papers, Foreign Affairs,
iii. 515.
[199] Napoleon to Davoust, Jan. 19, 1812; Correspondance, xxiii. 182.
[200] Napoleon to Davoust, Jan. 19, 1812; Correspondance, p. 194.
[201] Barlow to Russell, March 2, 1812; State Papers, Foreign Affairs,
iii. 518.
[202] Barlow to Monroe, March 16, 1812; MSS. State Department Archives.
[203] Barlow to Bassano, May 1, 1812; State Papers, iii. 602.
[204] Barlow to Monroe, May 12, 1812; State Papers, iii. 603.
[205] See _ante_, Vol. v. p. 402.
[206] Maret to Serurier, May 10, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[207] Madison to Barlow, Aug. 11, 1812; Works, ii. 540.
[208] Bassano to Dalberg, 10 August, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[209] Bassano to Dalberg, 10 August, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[210] Dalberg to Bassano, Aug. 11, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[211] Madison to Wheaton, Feb. 26, 1827; Works, iii. 553.
[212] State Papers, iii. 421.
[213] The Courier, Sept. 22, 1812; Letter signed “Vetus.”
[214] Cobbett’s Debates, xxi. 61.
[215] Cobbett’s Debates, xxi. 773.
[216] Reflections, etc.; Letter, etc., February, 1812. By Joseph
Phillimore.
[217] Cobbett’s Debates, xxi. 847.
[218] Times report, March 4; National Intelligencer, April 25, 1812.
Cf. London Morning Chronicle, March 4, 1812.
[219] Memoirs of R. Plumer Ward, i. 446.
[220] Memoirs of R. Plumer Ward, i. 450.
[221] Memoirs of R. Plumer Ward, i. 441.
[222] Life of Sidmouth, iii. 74.
[223] Memoirs of R. Plumer Ward, i. 478.
[224] Castlereagh to Foster, April 10, 1812; Papers of 1813, No. 4, p.
505.
[225] Monroe to Russell, July 27, 1811; State Papers, iii. 422.
[226] Russell to Monroe, March, 1812; State Papers, iii. 426, 427.
[227] Macon to Nicholson, March 25, 1812; Nicholson MSS.
[228] Autobiography, p. 31.
[229] Eustis to Anderson, June 6, 1812; State Papers, Military Affairs,
i. 319.
[230] Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812; Hull’s Defence, pp. 29–32.
[231] Defence of Dearborn, by H. A. S. Dearborn, p. 1. Boston, 1824.
[232] Prevost to Brock, July 31, 1812. Tupper’s Life of Brock, p. 209.
[233] Hull’s Trial; Defence, pp. 21, 22.
[234] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of Eustis, Appendix, p. 4.
[235] Defence of Dearborn, p. 9.
[236] Memoirs, p. 36.
[237] Gallatin’s Writings, ii. 503–511.
[238] Armstrong’s Notices, i. 48.
[239] Hull’s Trial; Hull to Eustis, July 9, 1812, Appendix, p. 9;
Clarke’s Life of Hull, p. 335.
[240] Hull’s Memoirs, pp. 45, 46. Trial, App. (18).
[241] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of Col. Joseph Watson, p. 151.
[242] Hull to Eustis, July 19, 1812; War Department MSS.
[243] Dearborn to Eustis, May 8, 1812; War Department MSS.
[244] Dearborn to Eustis, June 26, 1812; War Department MSS.
[245] Clarke’s Life of Hull, p. 417. Hull’s Memoirs, p. 173.
[246] Dearborn to Eustis, July 1, 1812; War Department MSS.
[247] Eustis to Dearborn, July 9, 1812; War Department MSS.
[248] Eustis to Dearborn, July 9, 1812; Dearborn MSS.
[249] Dearborn to Eustis, July 13, 1812; War Department MSS.
[250] Eustis to Dearborn, July 20, 1812; MSS. War Department Records.
[251] Dearborn to Eustis, July 28, 1812. Defence of Dearborn, p. 4.
[252] Richardson, p. 5; Christie, ii. 34; Prevost to Bathurst, Aug. 26,
1812; Brock to Prevost, Aug. 7, 1812; Niles, iii. 265, 266.
[253] Lieutenant-Colonel Raby to Captain Gleg, July 27, 1812. Proctor
to Brock, July 26, 1812. MSS. Canadian Archives.
[254] Richardson, p. 9.
[255] Hull to Eustis, July 22, 1812. Hull’s Defence, App. No. 2 (10).
[256] Richardson, p. 18.
[257] Hull’s Trial, Cass’s testimony. Hull’s Memoirs, p. 64.
[258] Abstracts of General Returns of Troops in Upper and Lower Canada,
July 30, 1812. Freer Papers, 1812–1813. MSS. Canadian Archives.
[259] Prevost to Bathurst, Aug. 17, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[260] Brock to Liverpool, Aug. 29, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[261] Van Rensselaer’s Narrative, pp. 9, 10.
[262] Dearborn’s Defence of Dearborn, p. 4.
[263] Dearborn’s Defence of Dearborn, p. 4.
[264] Life of Prevost, p. 39; Life of Brock, p. 214.
[265] Dearborn to Eustis, Aug. 9, 1812; Dearborn’s Defence, p. 6.
[266] Van Rensselaer to Dearborn, Aug. 18, 1812; Van Rensselaer’s
Narrative, App. p. 25.
[267] Richardson, pp. 16, 24; James’s Military Occurrences, i. 65.
[268] Hull to Eustis, Aug. 26, 1812; Niles, iii. 46.
[269] McAffee, pp. 83, 84.
[270] Hull to Eustis, Aug. 26, 1812; Niles, iii. 55.
[271] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of James Dalliby, pp. 80, 81. Life of
Brock, p. 289.
[272] Hull to Eustis, Aug. 26, 1812; Niles, iii. 55.
[273] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of Colonel Miller, p. 111.
[274] Memoir, p. 110.
[275] Hull to Eustis, Aug. 26, 1812; Niles, iii. 55.
[276] Hull to Eustis, Aug. 26, 1812; Niles, iii. 55.
[277] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of Major Jesup, p. 96.
[278] Life of Brock, p. 228.
[279] Despatch of Aug. 29, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[280] Letter of Sept. 3, 1812; Life, p. 267.
[281] Richardson, p. 30.
[282] Hull’s Trial; Evidence of Major Snelling, p. 40.
[283] Jefferson to Duane, Oct. 1, 1812; Works, vi. 79.
[284] Madison to Gallatin, Aug. 8, 1812; Gallatin’s Writings, i. 524.
[285] Prevost to Bathurst, Aug. 17, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[286] Prevost to Bathurst, Aug. 24, 1812; MSS. British Archives.
[287] Dearborn to Madison, Aug. 15, 1812; Madison MSS. State Department
Archives.
[288] Eustis to Dearborn, Aug. 15, 1812; Hull’s Memoirs, p. 87.
[289] Dearborn to Eustis, Aug. 15, 1812; War Department MSS.
[290] Van Rensselaer to Tompkins, Aug. 19, 1812; Narrative, Appendix,
p. 27.
[291] Life of Brock, pp. 293, 294.
[292] Van Rensselaer’s Narrative, Appendix, p. 35.
[293] Van Rensselaer’s Narrative, Appendix, p. 42.
[294] Dearborn to Eustis, Sept. 14, 1812; War Department MSS.
[295] Dearborn to Eustis, Sept. 1, 1812; War Department MSS.
[296] Van Rensselaer to Tompkins, Sept. 15, 1812; Narrative, Appendix,
p. 50.
[297] Dearborn to Van Rensselaer, Sept. 17, 1812; Narrative, Appendix,
p. 56.
[298] Dearborn to Van Rensselaer, Sept. 26, 1812; Narrative, Appendix,
p. 59.
[299] Dearborn to Van Rensselaer, Oct. 13, 1812; War Department MSS.
[300] Narrative, p. 19.
[301] Report of Lieutenant Elliott, Oct. 9, 1812. Official Letters, p.
66.
[302] Van Rensselaer to Secretary Eustis, Oct. 14, 1812; Narrative,
Appendix, p. 62.
[303] Life of Brock, p. 330.
[304] Christie’s Report, Feb. 22, 1813; Armstrong’s Notices, i. 207.
[305] Life of Brock, p. 324.
[306] Van Rensselaer to Dearborn, Oct. 14, 1812; Niles, iii. 138.
[307] Dearborn to Eustis, Oct. 21, 1812; War Department MSS. Dearborn
to Madison, Oct. 24, 1812; Madison MSS., State Department Archives.
[308] Niles, iii. 203.
[309] Lossing, p. 427 _note_.
[310] State Papers, Military Affairs, i. 501.
[311] Smyth to Dearborn, Dec. 4, 1812; Niles, iii. 282.
[312] Dearborn to Smyth, Oct. 21, 1812; State Papers, Military Affairs,
i. 493.
[313] Niles, iii. 284.
[314] Niles, iii. 264.
[315] Dearborn to Eustis, December 11, 1812; War Department MSS.
[316] Major Campbell to General Smyth, Nov. 27, 1812; Military Affairs,
i. 500. General Winder to General Smyth, Dec. 2, 1812; Military
Affairs, i. 507.
[317] Dearborn to Smyth, Oct. 28 and Nov. 8, 1812; Military Affairs, i.
495, 497.
[318] Dearborn to Eustis, Nov. 8, 1812; War Department MSS.
[319] Dearborn to Eustis, Nov. 24, 1812; War Department MSS.
[320] Dearborn to Eustis, Dec. 11, 1812; War Department MSS.
[321] Dearborn to Madison, Dec. 13, 1812; Madison MSS., State
Department Archives.
[322] Hamilton to Decatur, June 5, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[323] Hamilton to Rodgers, June 5, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[324] Decatur to Hamilton, June 8, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[325] Hamilton to Decatur, June 18, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[326] Hamilton to Decatur, June 18, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[327] Rodgers to Hamilton, Sept. 1, 1812; Official Letters, p. 52.
[328] Adams’s Gallatin, p. 465.
[329] Hull to Secretary Hamilton, July 7, 1812; MSS. Navy Department.
[330] Hull to Secretary Hamilton, July 10, 1812; MSS. Navy Department.
[331] Hull to Secretary Hamilton, Aug. 28, 1812; MSS. Navy Department.
[332] Niles, ii. 333.
[333] Hamilton to Porter, June 24, 1812; MSS. Navy Department Records.
[334] Hamilton to Rodgers and Decatur, Sept. 9, 1812; MSS. Navy
Department Records.
[335] MSS. Navy Department Records.
[336] James, Naval Occurrences, p. 152.
[337] Bainbridge’s Journal, Report of Jan. 3, 1813; Niles, iii. 411.
[338] Brigadier-General Tannehill to Brigadier-General Smyth, Dec. 7,
1812; State Papers, Military Affairs, i. 507.
[339] Remarks of D. R. Williams, Nov. 20, 1812; Annals of Congress,
1812–1813, p. 156.
[340] Clay to Monroe, July 29, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[341] Clay to Monroe, Aug. 12, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[342] Clay to Monroe, Aug. 25, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[343] Madison to Monroe, Sept. 21, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[344] Graham to Monroe, Sept. 27, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[345] Crawford to Monroe, Sept. 27, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[346] Monroe to Jefferson, June 7, 1813; Jefferson MSS., State
Department Archives.
[347] Gallatin to Jefferson, Dec. 18, 1812; Adams’s Gallatin, p. 470.
[348] Jefferson to Madison, Nov. 5, 1812; Jefferson MSS. series v. vol.
xv.
[349] Niles, ii. 355.
[350] Judge Turner’s Affidavit, Boston Patriot, Aug. 19, 1812.
[351] Opinion, etc.; State Papers, Military Affairs, i. 324.
[352] Sumner’s East Boston, p. 738.
[353] Speech of E. Bacon, Nov. 20, 1812; Annals of Congress, 1812–1813,
pp. 157, 158.
[354] Address, etc., June 26, 1812; Niles, ii. 417.
[355] Pickering to John Lowell, Nov. 7, 1814; New England Federalism,
p. 404. The Palladium, Aug. 7, 1812; The Patriot, Aug. 8, 1812.
[356] Monroe to Jonathan Russell, Aug. 21, 1812; State Papers, iii. 587.
[357] Report of Baltimore City Council; Niles, ii. 376, 377.
[358] Lossing, p. 244.
[359] The Palladium, Aug. 7, 1812.
[360] John Taylor to Monroe, Nov. 8, 1812; Monroe MSS. State Department
Archives.
[361] Serurier to Maret, Sept. 2, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[362] Serurier to Maret, Oct. 21, 1812; Archives des Aff. Étr. MSS.
[363] Monroe to Admiral Warren, Oct. 27, 1812; State Papers, iii. 596.
[364] John Taylor to Monroe, Nov. 8, 1812; Monroe MSS., State
Department Archives.
[365] Madison to Monroe, Sept. 5, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[366] Madison to Monroe, Sept. 5, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[367] Madison to Monroe, Sept. 6, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[368] Madison to Monroe, Sept. 10, 1812; Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[369] Monroe to Jefferson, June 7, 1813; Jefferson MSS.
[370] Hay to Monroe, Sept. 22, 1812; Monroe MSS.
[371] Monroe to Crawford, Dec. 3, 1812; Monroe MSS.
[372] Monroe to Jefferson, June 7, 1813; Jefferson MSS.
[373] Monroe to Jefferson, June 7, 1813; Jefferson MSS. Cf. Monroe to
Madison, Feb. 25, 1813; Monroe, MSS., State Department Archives.
[374] Hammond, i. 358, 360, 405, 406.
[375] Gallatin’s Writings, i. 528.
[376] Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 1, 1815; Works, vi. 400.
[377] Gallatin to Cheves, Nov. 23, 1812; Annals, 1812–1813, p. 1258.
[378] Annals of Congress, 1812–1813, p. 800.
[379] Letters of Gallatin, Feb. 3, 1813, and Feb. 9, 1813; Annals of
Congress, 1812–1813, p. 1063.
[380] Annals of Congress, 1812–1813, p. 1063.
[381] Organization of the Army. Niles, iv. 145.
[382] Monroe to Jonathan Russell, June 26, 1812; State Papers, iii. 585.
[383] Lord Castlereagh to Jonathan Russell, Aug. 29, 1812; State
Papers, iii. 589.
[384] Annals of Congress, 1812–1813, p. 932.
[385] Annals of Congress, 1812–1813, p. 93.
[386] Gallatin to Jefferson, November, 1805; Works, i. 267.
[387] Gallatin to Jefferson, April 16, 1807; Works, i. 335.
[388] Dallas to the Committee of Foreign Relations, Jan. 26, 1816.
Annals of Congress, 1815–1816, p. 176.
[389] Massachusetts Report on Impressed Seamen, 1813, p. 53. Speech of
James Emott, Jan. 12, 1813; Annals of Congress, 1812–1813, p. 735.
[390] Cobbett’s Debates, Feb. 18, 1813.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
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