After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe the cause to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to the combustibles; but the real reason usually lies far behind the one act of explosion, in an accumulation of ill feeling that provided the combustibles.
So it was in the fratricidal war of 1812 between Canada and the United States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it was unnecessary. What caused it? What accumulated the ill feeling lying ready like combustibles for the match? Let us see.
The United Empire Loyalists have, by 1812, increased to some 100,000 of Canada's population, cherishing bitter memories of ruin and confiscation and persecution because Congress failed to carry out the pledge guaranteeing protection to the losing side in the Revolution. Then, because Congress failed to carry out her guarantee, England delayed turning over the western fur posts to the United States for almost ten years; and whether true or false, the suspicion became an open charge that the hostility of the Indians to American frontiersmen was fomented by the British fur trader.
Here, then, was cause for rankling anger on both sides, and the bitterness was unwittingly increased by England's policy. It was hard for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of the United States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in thought and speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even ground, looking on the level, eye to eye; and not just a bumptious, underling nation, like a boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hectored and chaffed and bullied and badgered and licked into shape, as a sort of protectorate appended to English interests.
I once asked an Englishman why the English press was so virulently hostile to one of the most brilliant of her rising men.
"Oh," he answered, "you must be English to understand that. We never think it hurts a boy to be well ragged when he 's at school."
Something of that spirit was in England's attitude to the new nation of the United States. England was hard pressed in life-and-death struggle with Napoleon. To recruit both army and navy, conscription was rigidly and ruthlessly enforced. Yet more! England claimed the right to impress British-born subjects in foreign ports, to seize deserters in either foreign ports or on foreign ships, and, most obnoxious of all, to search neutral vessels on the ocean highway for deserters from the British flag. It was an era of great brutality in military discipline. Desertions were frequent. Also thousands of immigrants were flocking to the new nation of the United States and taking out naturalization papers. England ignored these naturalization papers when taken out by deserters.
Let us see how the thing worked out. A passenger vessel is coming up New York harbor. An English frigate with cannon pointed swings across the course, signals the American vessel on American waters to slow up, sends a young lieutenant with some marines across to the American vessel, searches her from stem to stern, or compels the American captain to read the roster of the crew, forcibly seizes half a dozen of the American crew as British deserters, and departs, leaving the Americans gasping with wonder whether they are a free nation or a tail to the kite of English designs. It need not be explained that the offense was often aggravated by the swaggering insolence of the young officers. They considered the fury of the unprepared American crew a prime joke. In vain the government at Washington complained to the government at Westminster. England pigeonholed the complaint and went serenely on her way, searching American vessels from Canada to Brazil.
Or an English vessel has come to Hampton Roads to wood and water. An English officer thinks he recognizes among the American crews men who have deserted from English vessels. Three men defy arrest and show their naturalization papers. High words follow, broken heads and broken canes, and the English crew are glad to escape the mob by rowing out to their own vessel.
Is it surprising that the ill feeling on both sides accumulated till there lacked only the match to cause an explosion? The explosion came in 1807. H. M. S. Leopard, cruising off Norfolk in June, encounters the United States ship Chesapeake. At 3 P.M. the English ship edges down on the American, loaded to the water line with lumber, and signals a messenger will be sent across. The young English lieutenant going aboard the Chesapeake shows written orders from Admiral Berkeley of Halifax, commanding a search of the Chesapeake for six deserters. He is very courteous and pleasant about the disagreeable business: the orders are explicit; he must obey his admiral. The American commander is equally courteous. He regrets that he must refuse to obey an English admiral's orders, but his own government has given most explicit orders that American vessels must not be searched. The young Englishman returns with serious face. The ships were within pistol shot of each other, the men on the English decks all at their guns, the Americans off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as flash a cannon shot rips across the Chesapeake's bows, followed by a broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the American decks to kindling wood before the astonished officers can collect their senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three wounded when the Chesapeake strikes her colors to surrender; but the Leopard does not want a captive. She sends her lieutenant back, who musters the four hundred American seamen, picks out four men as British deserters, learns that another deserter has been killed and a sixth has jumped overboard rather than be retaken, takes his prisoners back to the Leopard, which proceeds to Halifax, where they are tried by court-martial and shot.