Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 2

by A. T. Mahan

In these operations the ships of war were seconded by privateers from the West Indies, which hovered round this coast, as the Halifax vessels did round that of New England, seeking such scraps of prize money as might be left over from the ruin of American commerce and the immunities of the licensed traders. The United States officers at Charleston and Savannah were at their wits' ends to provide security with their scanty means,—more scanty even in men than in vessels; and when there came upon them the additional duty of enforcing the embargo of December, 1813, in the many quarters, and against the various subterfuges, by which evasion would be attempted, the task was manifestly impossible. "This is the most convenient part of the world for illicit trade that I have ever seen," wrote Campbell. From a return made this summer by the Secretary of the Navy to Congress,[202] it is shown that one brig of eighteen guns, which was not a cruiser, but a station ship at Savannah, eleven gunboats, three other schooners, and four barges, were apportioned to the stretch of coast from Georgetown to St. Mary's,—over two hundred miles. With the fettered movement of the gunboats before mentioned, contrasted with the outside cruisers, it was impossible to meet conditions by distributing this force, "for the protection of the several inlets," as had at first been directed by the Navy Department. The only defensive recourse approximately satisfactory was that of the deep-sea merchant service of Great Britain, proposed also by Hull at the northward, to assemble vessels in convoys, and to accompany them throughout a voyage. "I have deemed it expedient," wrote Campbell from St. Mary's, "to order the gun vessels to sail in company, not less than four in number, and have ordered convoy to the inland trade at stated periods, by which means vessels may be protected, and am sorry to say this is all that can be effected in our present situation."[203] In this way a fair degree of immunity was attained. Rubs were met with occasionally, and heavy losses were reported from time to time. There was a certain amount of fighting and scuffling, in which advantage was now on one side, now on the other; but upon the whole it would appear that the novelty of the conditions and ignorance of the ground rather imposed upon the imagination of the enemy, and that their operations against this inside trade were at once less active and less successful than under the more familiar features presented by the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts.

Whatever more or less of success or injury attended the coastwise trade in the several localities, the point to be observed is that the enemy's operations effectually separated the different sections of the country from one another, so far as this means of intercourse was concerned; thereby striking a deadly blow at the mutual support which might be given by communities differing so markedly in resources, aptitudes, and industries. The remark before made upon the effect of headlands, on the minor scale of a particular shore-line, applied with special force to one so extensive as that of the United States Atlantic coast in 1813. Cape Cod to the north and Cape Fear to the south were conspicuous examples of such projection. Combined with the relatively shelterless and harborless central stretch, intervening between them, from the Chesapeake to Sandy Hook, they constituted insuperable obstacles to sustained intercommunication by water. The presence of the enemy in great numbers before, around, and within the central section, emphasized the military weakness of position which nature herself had there imposed. To get by sea from one end of the country to the other it was necessary to break the blockade in starting, to take a wide sweep out to sea, and again to break it at the desired point of entrance. This, however, is not coasting.

The effect which this coast pressure produced upon the welfare of the several sections is indicated here and there by official utterances. The war party naturally inclined to minimize unfavorable results, and their opponents in some measure to exaggerate them; but of the general tendency there can be no serious doubt. Mr. Pearson, an opposition member of the House from North Carolina, speaking February 16, 1814, when the record of 1813 was made up, and the short-lived embargo of December was yet in force, said: "Blocked up as we are by the enemy's squadron upon our coast, corked up by our still more unmerciful embargo and non-importation laws, calculated as it were to fill up the little chasm in the ills which the enemy alone could not inflict; the entire coasting trade destroyed, and even the little pittance of intercourse from one port to the other in the same state destroyed [by the embargo], the planters of the Southern and Middle states, finding no market at home for their products, are driven to the alternative of wagoning them hundreds of miles, in search of a precarious market in the Northern and Eastern states, or permitting them to rot on their hands. Many articles which are, or by habit have become, necessary for comfort, are obtained at extravagant prices from other parts of the Union. The balance of trade, if trade it may be called, from these and other causes being so entirely against the Southern and Middle states, the whole of our specie is rapidly travelling to the North and East. Our bank paper is thrown back upon the institutions from which it issued; and as the war expenditures in the Southern and Middle states, where the loans have been principally obtained, are proportionately inconsiderable, the bills of these banks are daily returning, and their vaults drained of specie, to be locked up in Eastern and Western states, never to return but with the return of peace and prosperity."[204]

The isolation of North Carolina was extreme, with Cape Fear to the south and the occupied Chesapeake north of her. The Governor of the central state of Pennsylvania, evidently in entire political sympathy with the national Administration, in his message to the legislature at the same period,[205] is able to congratulate the people on the gratifying state of the commonwealth; a full treasury, abundant yield of agriculture, and the progress of manufacturing development, which, "however we may deprecate and deplore the calamities of protracted war, console us with the prospect of permanent and extensive establishments equal to our wants, and such as will insure the real and practical independence of our country." But he adds: "At no period of our history has the immense importance of internal navigation been so strikingly exemplified as since the commencement of hostilities. The transportation of produce, and the intercourse between citizens of the different states, which knit more strongly the bonds of social and political union, are greatly retarded, and, through many of their accustomed channels, entirely interrupted by the water craft of the enemy, sinking, burning, and otherwise destroying, the property which it cannot appropriate to its own use." He looks forward to a renewal of similar misfortune in the following year, an anticipation more than fulfilled. The officials of other states, according to their political complexion, either lamented the sufferings of the war and its supposed injustice, or comforted themselves and their hearers by reflecting upon the internal fruitfulness of the country, and its increasing self-sufficingness. The people were being equipped for independence of the foreigner by the progress of manufactures, and by habits of economy and self-denial, enforced by deprivation arising from the suppression of the coasting trade and the rigors of the commercial blockade.

The effect of the latter, which by the spring of 1814 had been in force nearly a twelvemonth over the entire coast south of Narragansett Bay, can be more directly estimated and concisely stated, in terms of money, than can the interruption of the coasting trade; for the statistics of export and import, contrasted with those of years of peace, convey it directly. It has already been stated that the exports for the year ending September 30, 1814, during which the operation of the blockade was most universal and continuous, fell to $7,000,000, as compared with $25,000,000 in 1813, and $45,000,000 in 1811, a year of peace though of restricted intercourse. Such figures speak distinctly as well as forcibly; it being necessary, however, to full appreciation of the difference between 1813 and 1814, to remember that during the first half of the former official period—from October 1, 1812, to April 1, 1813,—there had been no commercial blockade beyond the Chesapeake and Delaware; and that, even after it had been instituted, the British license system operated to the end of September to qualify its effects.

Here and there interesting particulars may be gleaned, which serve to illustrate these effects, and to give to the picture that precision of outline which heightens impression. "I believe," wrote a painstaking Baltimore editor in December, 1814, "that there has not been an arrival in Baltimore from a foreign port for a twelvemonth";[206] yet the city in 1811 had had a registered tonnage of 88,398, and now boasted that of the scanty national commerce still maintained, through less secluded ports, at least one half was carried on by its celebrated schooners,[207] the speed and handiness of which, combined with a size that intrusted not too many eggs to one basket, imparted special facilities for escaping pursuit and minimizing loss. A representative from Maryland at about this time presented in the House a memorial from Baltimore merchants, stating that "in consequence of the strict blockade of our bays and rivers the private-armed service is much discouraged," and submitting the expediency "of offering a bounty for the destruction of enemy's vessels;" a suggestion the very extravagance of which indicates more than words the extent of the depression felt. The price of salt in Baltimore, in November, 1814, was five dollars the bushel. In Charleston it was the same, while just across the Spanish border, at Amelia Island, thronged with foreign merchant ships, it was selling at seventy cents.[208]

Such a contrast, which must necessarily be reproduced in other articles not indigenous, accounts at once for the smuggling deplored by Captain Campbell, and at the same time testifies both to the efficacy of the blockade and to the pressure exercised upon the inland navigation by the outside British national cruisers and privateers. This one instance, affecting one of the prime necessaries of life, certifies to the stringent exclusion from the sea of the coast on which Charleston was the chief seaport. Captain Dent, commanding this naval district, alludes to the constant presence of blockaders, and occasionally to vessels taken outside by them, chased ashore, or intercepted in various inlets; narrating particularly the singular incident that, despite his remonstrances, a flag of truce was sent on board the enemy by local authorities to negotiate a purchase of goods thus captured.[209] This unmilitary proceeding, which evinces the necessities of the neighborhood, was of course immediately stopped by the Government.

A somewhat singular incidental circumstance, supporting the other inferences, is found in the spasmodic elevation of the North Carolina coast into momentary commercial consequence as a place of entry and deposit; not indeed to a very great extent, but ameliorating to a slight degree the deprivation of the regions lying north and south,—the neighborhood of Charleston on the one hand, of Richmond and Baltimore on the other. "The waters of North Carolina, from Wilmington to Ocracoke, though not favorable to commerce in time of peace, by reason of their shallowness and the danger of the coast, became important and useful in time of war, and a very considerable trade was prosecuted from and into those waters during the late war, and a coasting trade as far as Charleston, attended with less risk than many would imagine. A vessel may prosecute a voyage from Elizabeth City [near the Virginia line] to Charleston without being at sea more than a few hours at any one time."[210] Some tables of arrivals show a comparative immunity for vessels entering here from abroad; due doubtless to the unquestioned dangers of the coast, which conspired with the necessarily limited extent of the traffic to keep the enemy at a distance. It was not by them wholly overlooked. In July, 1813, Admiral Cockburn anchored with a division off Ocracoke bar, sent in his boats, and captured a privateer and letter-of-marque which had there sought a refuge denied to them by the blockade elsewhere. The towns of Beaufort and Portsmouth were occupied for some hours. The United States naval officer at Charleston found it necessary also to extend the alongshore cruises of his schooners as far as Cape Fear, for the protection of this trade on its way to his district.

The attention aroused to the development of internal navigation also bears witness to the pressure of the blockade. "It is my opinion," said the Governor of Pennsylvania, "that less than one half the treasure expended by the United States for the protection of foreign commerce, if combined with state and individual wealth, would have perfected an inland water communication from Maine to Georgia." It was argued by others that the extra money spent for land transportation of goods, while the coasting trade was suspended, would have effected a complete tide-water inland navigation such as here suggested; and there was cited a declaration of Robert Fulton, who died during the war, that within twenty-one months as great a sum had been laid out in wagon hire as would have effected this object. Whatever the accuracy of these estimates, their silent witness to the influence of the blockade upon commerce, external and coastwise, quite overbears President Madison's perfunctory denials of its effectiveness, based upon the successful evasions which more or less attend all such operations.

Perhaps, however, the most signal proof of the pressure exerted is to be seen in the rebound, the instant it was removed; in the effect upon prices, and upon the movements of shipping. Taken in connection with the other evidence, direct and circumstantial, so far cited, what can testify more forcibly to the strangulation of the coasting trade than the fact that in the month of March, 1815,—news of the peace having been received February 11,—there sailed from Boston one hundred and forty-four vessels, more than half of them square-rigged; and that of the whole all but twenty-six were for United States ports. Within three weeks of April there arrived at Charleston, exclusive of coasters, one hundred and fifty-eight vessels; at Savannah, in the quarter ending June 30, two hundred and three. Something of this outburst of activity, in which neutrals of many nations shared, was due, as Mr. Clay said, to the suddenness with which commerce revived after momentary suspension. "The bow had been unstrung that it might acquire fresh vigor and new elasticity"; and the stored-up products of the country, so long barred within, imparted a peculiar nervous haste to the renewal of intercourse. The absolute numbers quoted do not give as vivid impression of conditions at differing times as do some comparisons, easily made. In the year 1813, as shown by the returns of the United States Treasury, out of 674,853 tons of registered—sea-going—shipping, only 233,439—one third—paid the duties exacted upon each several voyage, and of these many doubtless sailed under British license.[211] In 1814 the total tonnage, 674,632, shows that ship-building had practically ceased; and of this amount one twelfth only, 58,756 tons, paid dues for going out.[212] In 1816, when peace conditions were fully established, though less than two years had passed, the total tonnage had increased to 800,760; duties, being paid each voyage, were collected on 865,219.[213] Thus the foreign voyages that year exceeded the total shipping of the country, and by an amount greater than all the American tonnage that put to sea in 1814.