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.