“Should it be asked,” wrote Madison ten years after the war,[495] “why the individual in question was placed, and after such developments of his career continued, at the head of the War Department, the answer will readily occur to those best acquainted with the circumstances of the period. Others may be referred for an explanation to the difficulty, which had been felt in its fullest pressure, of obtaining services which would have been preferred, several eminent citizens to whom the station had been offered having successively declined it. It was not unknown at the time that objections existed to the person finally appointed, as appeared when his nomination went to the Senate, where it received the reluctant sanction of a scanty majority [eighteen to fifteen]. Nor was the President unaware or unwarned of the temper and turn of mind ascribed to him, which might be uncongenial with the official relations in which he was to stand. But these considerations were sacrificed to recommendations from esteemed friends; a belief that he possessed, with known talents, a degree of military information which might be useful; and a hope that a proper mixture of conciliating confidence and interposing control would render objectionable peculiarities less in practice than in prospect.”
Possibly Armstrong took a different view of Madison’s conduct, and regarded his own acceptance of the War Department in January, 1813, as proof both of courage and disinterestedness. He knew that he could expect no confidence from Virginians; but apparently he cared little for Virginian enmity, and was chiefly fretted by what he thought Virginian incompetence. No one could fail to see that he came into the Government rather as a master than a servant. According to General Wilkinson, he was quite as much feared as hated. “I am indeed shocked,” wrote Wilkinson in his Memoirs,[496] “when I take a retrospect of the evidence of the terror in which that minister kept more than one great man at Washington.” Wilkinson, who hated Madison even more than he hated Armstrong, evidently believed that the President was afraid of his secretary. Madison himself explained that he thought it better to bear with Armstrong’s faults than to risk another change in the Department of War.
In that decision Madison was doubtless right. Whatever were Armstrong’s faults, he was the strongest Secretary of War the government had yet seen. Hampered by an inheritance of mistakes not easily corrected, and by a chief whose methods were unmilitary in the extreme, Armstrong still introduced into the army an energy wholly new. Before he had been a year in office he swept away the old generals with whom Madison and Eustis had encumbered the service, and in their place substituted new men. While Major-Generals Dearborn, Pinckney, and Morgan Lewis were set over military districts where active service was unnecessary, and while Major-General Wilkinson was summoned to the last of his many courts of inquiry, the President sent to the Senate, January 21 and February 21, the names of two new major-generals and six brigadiers of a totally different character from the earlier appointments.
The first major-general was George Izard of South Carolina, born at Paris in 1777, his father Ralph Izard being then American commissioner with Franklin and Deane. Returning to America only for a few years after the peace, George Izard at the age of fifteen was sent abroad to receive a military education in England, Germany, and France in the great school of the French Revolution. As far as education could make generals, Izard was the most promising officer in the United States service. Appointed in March, 1812, colonel of the Second Artillery, promoted to brigadier in March, 1813, he served with credit under Hampton at Chateaugay, and received his promotion over the heads of Chandler, Boyd, and one or two other brigadiers his seniors. He was intended to succeed Hampton on Lake Champlain.
The second new major-general was Jacob Brown, who after receiving the appointment of brigadier, July 19, 1813, was suddenly promoted to major-general at the same time with Izard. The selection was the more remarkable because Brown had no military education, and was taken directly from the militia. Born in Pennsylvania in 1775 of Quaker parentage, Brown began life as a schoolmaster. At the instance of the Society of Friends, he taught their public school in New York city for several years with credit.[497] He then bought a large tract of land near Sackett’s Harbor, and in 1799 undertook to found a town of Brownville. He soon became a leading citizen in that part of New York, and in 1809 was appointed to the command of a militia regiment. In 1811 he was made a brigadier of militia, and at the beginning of the war distinguished himself by activity and success at Ogdensburg. His defence of Sackett’s Harbor in 1813 won him a brigade in the regular service, and his share in Wilkinson’s descent of the St. Lawrence led to his further promotion.
Wilkinson, who regarded Brown as one of his enemies, declared that he knew not enough of military duty to post the guards of his camp,[498] and that he compelled his battery to form in a hollow for the advantage of elevating the pieces to fire at the opposite heights.[499] Winfield Scott, who was one of Brown’s warmest friends, described him as full of zeal and vigor, but not a technical soldier, and but little acquainted with organization, tactics, police, and camp-duties in general.[500] The promotion of an officer so inexperienced to the most important command on the frontier, gave a measure of Armstrong’s boldness and judgment.
The six new brigadiers were also well chosen. They were Alexander Macomb, T. A. Smith, Daniel Bissell, Edmund P. Gaines, Winfield Scott, and Eleazer W. Ripley, all colonels of the regular army, selected for their merits. Armstrong supplied Brown’s defects of education by giving him the aid of Winfield Scott and Ripley, who were sent to organize brigades at Niagara.
The energy thus infused by Armstrong into the regular army lasted for half a century; but perhaps his abrupt methods were better shown in another instance, which brought upon him the displeasure of the President. Against Harrison, Armstrong from the first entertained a prejudice. Believing him to be weak and pretentious, the Secretary of War showed the opinion by leaving him in nominal command in the northwest, but sending all his troops in different directions, without consulting him even in regard to movements within his own military department. Harrison, taking just offence, sent his resignation as major-general, May 11, 1814, but at the same time wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky a letter which caused the governor to address to the President a remonstrance against accepting the resignation.[501]
At that moment Armstrong and Madison were discussing the means of promoting Andrew Jackson in the regular service for his success in the Creek campaigns. No commission higher than that of brigadier was then at their disposal, and a commission as brigadier was accordingly prepared for Jackson May 22, with a brevet of major-general.[502] Harrison’s resignation had been received by Armstrong two days before issuing Jackson’s brevet, and had been notified to the President, who was then at Montpelier.[503] The President replied May 25, suggesting that in view of Harrison’s resignation, the better way would be to send a commission as major-general directly to Jackson: “I suspend a final decision, however, till I see you, which will be in two or three days after the arrival of this.”[504] No sooner did Armstrong receive the letter, than without waiting for the President’s return he wrote to Jackson, May 28: “Since the date of my letter of the 24th Major-General Harrison has resigned his commission in the army, and thus is created a vacancy in that grade, which I hasten to fill with your name.”[505]
Armstrong’s course was irregular, and his account to Jackson of the circumstances was incorrect; for Harrison’s resignation had been received before, not after, Armstrong’s letter of the 24th. Madison believed that Armstrong wished to appear as the source of favor to the army. Armstrong attributed Madison’s hesitation to the wish of Madison and Monroe that Harrison, rather than Jackson, should take command of Mobile and New Orleans.[506] Both suspicions might be wrong or right; but Armstrong’s conduct, while betraying the first motive, suggested the fear that the President might change his mind; and Harrison believed that the President would have done so, had not Armstrong’s abrupt action made it impossible. “The President expressed his great regret,” said Harrison’s biographer,[507] “that the letter of Governor Shelby had not been received earlier, as in that case the valuable services of General Harrison would have been preserved to the nation in the ensuing campaign.”