[126] Report of General A. Hall, Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 394.
[127] December 17, 1813. Captains' Letters, Navy Department.
CHAPTER XIII[ToC]
SEABOARD MARITIME OPERATIONS
Upon the Canada frontier the conditions of 1813 had permitted the United States an ample field for offensive operations, with good prospect of success. What use was made of the opportunity has now been narrated. Upon the seaboard, continuous illustration was afforded that there the country was widely open to attack, thrown wholly on the defensive, with the exception of preying upon the enemy's commerce by numerous small cruisers. As a secondary operation of war this has always possessed value, and better use of it perhaps never was made than by the American people at this time; but it is not determinative of great issues, and the achievements of the public and private armed vessels of the United States, energetic and successful as they were at this period, constituted no exception to the universal experience. Control of the highways of the ocean by great fleets destroys an enemy's commerce, root and branch. The depredations of scattered cruisers may inflict immense vexation, and even embarrassment; but they neither kill nor mortally wound, they merely harass. Co-operating with other influences, they may induce yielding in a maritime enemy; but singly they never have done so, and probably never can. In 1814 no commerce was left to the United States; and that conditions remained somewhat better during 1813 was due to collusion of the enemy, not to national power.
The needs of the British armies in the Spanish Peninsula and in Canada, and the exigencies of the West India colonies, induced the enemy to wink at, and even to uphold, a considerable clandestine export trade from the United States. Combined with this was the hope of embarrassing the general government by the disaffection of New England, and of possibly detaching that section of the country from the Union. For these reasons, the eastern coast was not included in the commercial blockade in 1813. But no motive existed for permitting the egress of armed vessels, or the continuance of the coasting trade, by which always, now as then, much of the intercourse between different parts of the country must be maintained, and upon which in 1812 it depended almost altogether. With the approach of spring in 1813, therefore, not only was the commercial blockade extended to embrace New York and all south of it, together with the Mississippi River, but the naval constriction upon the shore line became so severe as practically to annihilate the coasting trade, considered as a means of commercial exchange. It is not possible for deep-sea cruisers wholly to suppress the movement of small vessels, skirting the beaches from headland to headland; but their operations can be so much embarrassed as to reduce their usefulness to a bare alleviation of social necessities, inadequate to any scale of interchange deserving the name of commerce.
"I doubt not," wrote Captain Broke, when challenging Lawrence to a ship duel, "that you will feel convinced that it is only by repeated triumphs in even combat that your little navy can now hope to console your country for the loss of that trade it cannot protect."[128] The taunt, doubtless intended to further the object of the letter by the provocation involved, was applicable as well to coasting as to deep-sea commerce. It ignored, however, the consideration, necessarily predominant with American officers, that the conditions of the war imposed commerce destruction as the principal mission of their navy. They were not indeed to shun combat, when it offered as an incident, but neither were they to seek it as a mere means of glory, irrespective of advantage to be gained. Lawrence, whom Broke's letter did not reach, was perhaps not sufficiently attentive to this motive.