The truth of this observation is shown by one single fact, which will receive recurrent mention from time to time in the narrative. Owing partly to the necessities of the British Government, and partly as a matter of favor extended to the New England States, on account of their antagonism to the war, the commercial blockade of the coast was for a long time—until April 25, 1814—limited to the part between Narragansett Bay and the boundary of Florida, then a Spanish colony. During this period, which Madison angrily called one of "invidious discrimination between different parts of the United States," New England was left open to neutral commerce, which the British, to supply their own wants, further encouraged by a system of licenses, exempting from capture the vessels engaged, even though American. Owing largely to this, though partly to the local development of manufactures caused by the previous policy of restriction upon foreign trade, which had diverted New England from maritime commerce to manufactures, that section became the distributing centre of the Union. In consequence, the remainder of the country was practically drained of specie, which set to the northward and eastward, the surplusage above strictly local needs finding its way to Canada, to ease the very severe necessities of the British military authorities there; for Great Britain, maintaining her own armies in the Spanish peninsula, and supporting in part the alliance against Napoleon on the Continent, could spare no coin to Canada. It could not go far south, because the coasting trade was destroyed by the enemy's fleets, and the South could not send forward its produce by land to obtain money in return. The deposits in Massachusetts banks increased from $2,671,619, in 1810, to $8,875,589, in 1814; while in the same years the specie held was respectively $1,561,034 and $6,393,718.[398]
It was a day of small things, relatively to present gigantic commercial enterprises; but an accumulation of cash in one quarter, coinciding with penury in another, proves defect in circulation consequent upon embarrassed communications. That flour in Boston sold for $12.00 the barrel, while at Baltimore and Richmond it stood at $6.50 and $4.50, tells the same tale of congestion and deficiency, due to interruption of water communication; the whole proving that, under the conditions of 1812, as the United States Government had allowed them to become, through failure to foster a navy by which alone coast defence in the true sense can be effected, the coast frontier was essentially the weak point. There Great Britain could put forth her enormous naval strength with the most sensible and widespread injury to American national power, as represented in the financial stability which constitutes the sinews of war. Men enough could be had; there were one hundred thousand registered seamen belonging to the country; but in the preceding ten years the frigate force had decreased from thirteen of that nominal rate to nine, while the only additions to the service, except gunboats, were two sloops of war, two brigs, and four schooners. The construction of ships of the line, for six of which provision had been made under the administration which expired in 1801, was abandoned immediately by its successor. There was no navy for defence.
Small vessels, under which denomination most frigates should be included, have their appropriate uses in a naval establishment, but in themselves are inadequate to the defence of a coast-line, in the true sense of the word "defence." It is one of the first elements of intelligent warfare that true defence consists in imposing upon the enemy a wholesome fear of yourself. "The best protection against the enemy's fire," said Farragut, "is a rapid fire from our own guns." "No scheme of defence," said Napoleon, "can be considered efficient that does not provide the means of attacking the enemy at an opportune moment. In the defence of a river, for instance," he continues, "you must not only be able to withstand its passage by the enemy, but must keep in your own hands means of crossing, so as to attack him, when occasion either offers, or can be contrived." In short, you must command either a bridge or a ford, and have a disposable force ready to utilize it by attack. The fact of such preparation fetters every movement of the enemy.
At its very outbreak the War of 1812 gave an illustration of the working of this principle. Tiny as was the United States Navy, the opening of hostilities found it concentrated in a body of several frigates, with one or two sloops of war, which put to sea together. The energies of Great Britain being then concentrated upon the navy of Napoleon, her available force at Halifax and Bermuda was small, and the frigates, of which it was almost wholly composed, were compelled to keep together; for, if they attempted to scatter, in order to watch several commercial ports, they were exposed to capture singly by this relatively numerous body of American cruisers. The narrow escape of the frigate "Constitution" from the British squadron at this moment, on her way from the Chesapeake to New York, which port she was unable to gain, exemplifies precisely the risk of dispersion that the British frigates did not dare to face while their enemy was believed to be at hand in concentrated force. They being compelled thus to remain together, the ports were left open; and the American merchant ships, of which a great number were then abroad, returned with comparative impunity, though certainly not entirely without losses.
This actual experience illustrates exactly the principle of coast defence by the power having relatively the weaker navy. It cannot, indeed, drive away a body numerically much stronger; but, if itself respectable in force, it can compel the enemy to keep united. Thereby is minimized the injury caused to a coast-line by the dispersion of the enemy's force along it in security, such as was subsequently acquired by the British in 1813-14, and by the United States Navy during the Civil War. The enemy's fears defend the coast, and protect the nation, by securing the principal benefit of the coast-line—coastwise and maritime trade, and the revenue thence proceeding. In order, however, to maintain this imposing attitude, the defending state must hold ready a concentrated force, of such size that the enemy cannot safely divide his own—a force, for instance, such as that estimated by Gouverneur Morris, twenty years before 1812.[399] The defendant fleet, further, must be able to put to sea at a moment inconvenient to the enemy; must have the bridge or ford Napoleon required for his army. Such the United States had in her seaports, which with moderate protection could keep an enemy at a distance, and from which escape was possible under conditions exceedingly dangerous for the detached hostile divisions; but although possessing these bridge heads leading to the scene of ocean war, no force to issue from them existed. In those eleven precious years during which Great Britain by American official returns had captured 917 American ships,[400] a large proportion of them in defiance of International Law, as was claimed, and had impressed from American vessels 6,257 seamen,[401] asserted to be mostly American citizens, the United States had built two sloops of 18 guns, and two brigs of 16; and out of twelve frigates had permitted three to rot at their moorings. To build ships of the line had not even been attempted. Consequently, except when weather drove them off, puny divisions of British ships gripped each commercial port by the throat with perfect safety; and those weather occasions, which constitute the opportunity of the defendant sea power, could not be improved by military action.
Such in general was the condition of the sea frontier, thrown inevitably upon the defensive. With the passing comment that, had it been defended as suggested, Great Britain would never have forced the war, let us now consider conditions on the Canadian line, where circumstances eminently favored the offensive by the United States; for this war should not be regarded simply as a land war or a naval war, nor yet as a war of offence and again one of defence, but as being continuously and at all times both offensive and defensive, both land and sea, in reciprocal influence.
Disregarding as militarily unimportant the artificial boundary dividing Canada from New York, Vermont, and the eastern parts of the Union, the frontier separating the land positions of the two belligerents was the Great Lakes and the river St. Lawrence. This presented certain characteristic and unusual features. That it was a water line was a condition not uncommon; but it was exceptionally marked by those broad expanses which constitute inland seas of great size and depth, navigable by vessels of the largest sea-going dimensions. This water system, being continuous and in continual progress, is best conceived by applying to the whole, from Lake Superior to the ocean, the name of the great river, the St. Lawrence, which on the one hand unites it to the sea, and on the other divides the inner waters from the outer by a barrier of rapids, impassable to ships that otherwise could navigate freely both lakes and ocean.
The importance of the lakes to military operations must always be great, but it was much enhanced in 1812 by the undeveloped condition of land communications. With the roads in the state they then were, the movement of men, and still more of supplies, was vastly more rapid by water than by land. Except in winter, when iron-bound snow covered the ground, the routes of Upper Canada were well-nigh impassable; in spring and in autumn rains, wholly so to heavy vehicles. The mail from Montreal to York,—now Toronto,—three hundred miles, took a month in transit.[402] In October, 1814, when the war was virtually over, the British General at Niagara lamented to the Commander-in-Chief that, owing to the refusal of the navy to carry troops, an important detachment was left "to struggle through the dreadful roads from Kingston to York."[403] "Should reinforcements and provisions not arrive, the naval commander would," in his opinion, "have much to answer for."[404] The Commander-in-Chief himself wrote: "The command of the lakes enables the enemy to perform in two days what it takes the troops from Kingston sixteen to twenty days of severe marching. Their men arrive fresh; ours fatigued, and with exhausted equipment. The distance from Kingston to the Niagara frontier exceeds two hundred and fifty miles, and part of the way is impracticable for supplies."[405] On the United States side, road conditions were similar but much less disadvantageous. The water route by Ontario was greatly preferred as a means of transportation, and in parts and at certain seasons was indispensable. Stores for Sackett's Harbor, for instance, had in early summer to be brought to Oswego, and thence coasted along to their destination, in security or in peril, according to the momentary predominance of one party or the other on the lake. In like manner, it was more convenient to move between the Niagara frontier and the east end of the lake by water; but in case of necessity, men could march. An English traveller in 1818 says: "I accomplished the journey from Albany to Buffalo in October in six days with ease and comfort, whereas in May it took ten of great difficulty and distress."[406] In the farther West the American armies, though much impeded, advanced securely through Ohio and Indiana to the shores of Lake Erie, and there maintained themselves in supplies sent over-country; whereas the British at the western end of the lake, opposite Detroit, depended wholly upon the water, although no hostile force threatened the land line between them and Ontario. The battle of Lake Erie, so disastrous to their cause, was forced upon them purely by failure of food, owing to the appearance of Perry's squadron.
From Lake Superior to the head of the first rapid of the St. Lawrence, therefore, the control of the water was the decisive factor in the general military situation. Both on the upper lakes, where water communication from Sault Sainte Marie to Niagara was unbroken, and on Ontario, separated from the others by the falls of Niagara, the British had at the outset a slight superiority, but not beyond the power of the United States to overtake and outpass. Throughout the rapids, to Montreal, military conditions resembled those which confront a general charged with the passage of any great river. If undertaken at all, such an enterprise requires the deceiving of the opponent as to the place and time when the attempt will be made, the careful provision of means and disposition of men for instant execution, and finally the prompt and decisive seizure of opportunity, to transfer and secure on the opposite shore a small body, capable of maintaining itself until the bulk of the army can cross to its support. Nothing of the sort was attempted here, or needed to be undertaken in this war. Naval superiority determined the ability to cross above the rapids, and there was no occasion to consider the question of crossing between them. Immediately below the last lay Montreal, accessible to sea-going vessels from the ocean. To that point, therefore, the sea power of Great Britain reached, and there it ended.
The United States Government was conscious of its great potential superiority over Canada, in men and in available resources. So evident, indeed, was the disparity, that the prevalent feeling was not one of reasonable self-reliance, but of vainglorious self-confidence; of dependence upon mere bulk and weight to crush an opponent, quite irrespective of preparation or skill, and disregardful of the factor of military efficiency. Jefferson's words have already been quoted. Calhoun, then a youthful member of Congress, and a foremost advocate of the war, said in March, 1812: "So far from being unprepared, Sir, I believe that in four weeks from the time a declaration of war is heard, on our frontier, the whole of Upper Canada"—halfway down the St. Lawrence—"and a part of Lower Canada will be in our power." This tone was general in Congress; Henry Clay spoke to the same effect. Granting due preparation, such might indeed readily have been the result of a well-designed, active, offensive campaign. Little hope of any other result was held by the British local officials, and what little they had was based upon the known want of military efficiency in the United States. Brock, by far the ablest among them, in February declared his "full conviction that unless Detroit and Michilimackinac be both in our possession at the commencement of hostilities, not only Amherstburg"—on the Detroit River, a little below Detroit—"but most probably the whole country, must be evacuated as far as Kingston."[407] This place is at the foot of Ontario, close to the entrance to the St. Lawrence. Having a good and defensible harbor, it had been selected for the naval station of the lake. If successful in holding it, there would be a base of operations for attempting recovery of the water, and ultimately of the upper country. Failing there, of course the British must fall back upon the sea, touch with which they would regain at Montreal, resting there upon the navy of their nation; just as Wellington, by the same dependence, had maintained himself at Lisbon unshaken by the whole power of Napoleon.