CHAPTER I.
The American declaration of war against England, July 18, 1812, annoyed those European nations that were gathering their utmost resources for resistance to Napoleon’s attack. Russia could not but regard it as an unfriendly act, equally bad for political and commercial interests. Spain and Portugal, whose armies were fed largely if not chiefly on American grain imported by British money under British protection, dreaded to see their supplies cut off. Germany, waiting only for strength to recover her freedom, had to reckon against one more element in Napoleon’s vast military resources. England needed to make greater efforts in order to maintain the advantages she had gained in Russia and Spain. Even in America, no one doubted the earnestness of England’s wish for peace; and if Madison and Monroe insisted on her acquiescence in their terms, they insisted because they believed that their military position entitled them to expect it. The reconquest of Russia and Spain by Napoleon, an event almost certain to happen, could hardly fail to force from England the concessions, not in themselves unreasonable, which the United States required.
This was, as Madison to the end of his life maintained, “a fair calculation;”[1] but it was exasperating to England, who thought that America ought to be equally interested with Europe in overthrowing the military despotism of Napoleon, and should not conspire with him for gain. At first the new war disconcerted the feeble Ministry that remained in office on the death of Spencer Perceval: they counted on preventing it, and did their utmost to stop it after it was begun. The tone of arrogance which had so long characterized government and press, disappeared for the moment. Obscure newspapers, like the London “Evening Star,” still sneered at the idea that Great Britain was to be “driven from the proud pre-eminence which the blood and treasure of her sons have attained for her among the nations, by a piece of striped bunting flying at the mastheads of a few fir-built frigates, manned by a handful of bastards and outlaws,”—a phrase which had great success in America,—but such defiances expressed a temper studiously held in restraint previous to the moment when the war was seen to be inevitable.
Castlereagh did not abandon the hope of peace until Jonathan Russell, August 24, reported to him the concessions which the President required antecedent to negotiation, the stoppage of impressments, dismissal of impressed seamen, indemnity for spoliations, and abandonment of paper blockades. The British secretary intimated that he thought these demands, as conditions precedent to an armistice, somewhat insulting;[2] and in conversation he explained to Russell that such concessions would merely cost the Ministry their places without result. “You are not aware,” he said,[3] “of the great sensibility and jealousy of the people of England on this subject; and no administration could expect to remain in power that should consent to renounce the right of impressment or to suspend the practice, without certainty of an arrangement which should obviously be calculated to secure its object.” Russell then proposed an informal understanding,—adding of his own accord, without authority from his Government, a proposal, afterward adopted by Congress, that the United States should naturalize no more British seamen. Castlereagh made the obvious reply that an informal understanding offered no more guaranty to England than a formal one; that it had the additional disadvantage of bearing on its face a character of disguise; that in any case the discussion of guaranties must precede the understanding; and that Russell had on this subject neither authority nor instructions.[4]
The correspondence closed September 19, and Russell left England; but not until October 13, after learning that the President had refused to ratify the armistice made by Prevost with Dearborn, did the British government order general reprisals,—and even this order closed with a proviso that nothing therein contained should affect the previous authority given to Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren to arrange a cessation of hostilities.
The realization that no escape could be found from an American war was forced on the British public at a moment of much discouragement. Almost simultaneously a series of misfortunes occurred which brought the stoutest and most intelligent Englishmen to the verge of despair. In Spain Wellington, after winning the battle of Salamanca in July, occupied Madrid in August, and obliged Soult to evacuate Andalusia; but his siege of Burgos failed, and as the French generals concentrated their scattered forces, Wellington was obliged to abandon Madrid once more. October 21, he was again in full retreat on Portugal. The apparent failure of his campaign was almost simultaneous with the apparent success of Napoleon’s; for the Emperor entered Moscow September 14, and the news of this triumph, probably decisive of Russian submission, reached England about October 3. Three days later arrived intelligence of William Hull’s surrender at Detroit; but this success was counterbalanced by simultaneous news of Isaac Hull’s startling capture of the “Guerriere,” and the certainty of a prolonged war.
In the desponding condition of the British people,—with a deficient harvest, bad weather, wheat at nearly five dollars a bushel, and the American supply likely to be cut off; consols at 57½, gold at thirty per cent premium; a Ministry without credit or authority, and a general consciousness of blunders, incompetence, and corruption,—every new tale of disaster sank the hopes of England and called out wails of despair. In that state of mind the loss of the “Guerriere” assumed portentous dimensions. The “Times” was especially loud in lamenting the capture:—
“We witnessed the gloom which that event cast over high and honorable minds.... Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American; and though we cannot say that Captain Dacres, under all circumstances, is punishable for this act, yet we do say there are commanders in the English navy who would a thousand times rather have gone down with their colors flying, than have set their fellow sailors so fatal an example.”
No country newspaper in America, railing at Hull’s cowardice and treachery, showed less knowledge or judgment than the London “Times,” which had written of nothing but war since its name had been known in England. Any American could have assured the English press that British frigates before the “Guerriere” had struck to American; and even in England men had not forgotten the name of the British frigate “Serapis,” or that of the American captain Paul Jones. Yet the “Times’s” ignorance was less unreasonable than its requirement that Dacres should have gone down with his ship,—a cry of passion the more unjust to Dacres because he fought his ship as long as she could float. Such sensitiveness seemed extravagant in a society which had been hardened by centuries of warfare; yet the “Times” reflected fairly the feelings of Englishmen. George Canning, speaking in open Parliament not long afterward,[5] said that the loss of the “Guerriere” and the “Macedonian” produced a sensation in the country scarcely to be equalled by the most violent convulsions of Nature. “Neither can I agree with those who complain of the shock of consternation throughout Great Britain as having been greater than the occasion required.... It cannot be too deeply felt that the sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was broken by those unfortunate captures.”
Of all spells that could be cast on a nation, that of believing itself invincible was perhaps the one most profitably broken; but the process of recovering its senses was agreeable to no nation, and to England, at that moment of distress, it was as painful as Canning described. The matter was not mended by the “Courier” and “Morning Post,” who, taking their tone from the Admiralty, complained of the enormous superiority of the American frigates, and called them “line-of-battle ships in disguise.” Certainly the American forty-four was a much heavier ship than the British thirty-eight, but the difference had been as well known in the British navy before these actions as it was afterward; and Captain Dacres himself, the Englishman who best knew the relative force of the ships, told his court of inquiry a different story:[6] “I am so well aware that the success of my opponent was owing to fortune, that it is my earnest wish, and would be the happiest period of my life, to be once more opposed to the ‘Constitution,’ with them [the old crew] under my command, in a frigate of similar force with the ‘Guerriere.’” After all had been said, the unpleasant result remained that in future British frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their inferiors in force. What applied to the “Guerriere” and “Macedonian” against the “Constitution” and “United States,” where the British force was inferior, applied equally to the “Frolic” against the “Wasp,” where no inferiority could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward admitted what America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British were no more than the equals of Americans.