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THE
SECOND ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1813–1817

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY
HENRY ADAMS.

Vols. I. and II.—The First Administration of Jefferson. 1801–1805.

Vols. III. and IV.—The Second Administration of Jefferson. 1805–1809.

Vols. V. and VI.—The First Administration of Madison. 1809–1813.

Vols. VII., VIII., and IX.—The Second Administration of Madison. 1813–1817. With an Index to the Entire Work.

HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON

By HENRY ADAMS

Vol. I.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1891

Copyright, 1890
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

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.

Society soon learned to take a more sensible view of the subject, but as the first depression passed away a consciousness of personal wrong took its place. The United States were supposed to have stabbed England in the back at the moment when her hands were tied, when her existence was in the most deadly peril and her anxieties were most heavy. England never could forgive treason so base and cowardice so vile. That Madison had been from the first a tool and accomplice of Bonaparte was thenceforward so fixed an idea in British history that time could not shake it. Indeed, so complicated and so historical had the causes of war become that no one even in America could explain or understand them, while Englishmen could see only that America required England as the price of peace to destroy herself by abandoning her naval power, and that England preferred to die fighting rather than to die by her own hand. The American party in England was extinguished; no further protest was heard against the war; and the British people thought moodily of revenge.

This result was unfortunate for both parties, but was doubly unfortunate for America, because her mode of making the issue told in her enemy’s favor. The same impressions which silenced in England open sympathy with America, stimulated in America acute sympathy with England. Argument was useless against people in a passion, convinced of their own injuries. Neither Englishmen nor Federalists were open to reasoning. They found their action easy from the moment they classed the United States as an ally of France, like Bavaria or Saxony; and they had no scruples of conscience, for the practical alliance was clear, and the fact proved sufficiently the intent.

This outbreak of feeling took place in the month of October, when the hopes of England were lowest. While Wellington retreated from Madrid and Burgos to Ciudad Rodrigo; while Napoleon was supposed to be still victorious at Moscow, although his retreat began October 19, two days before Wellington abandoned the siege of Burgos; and while, October 18, the “Wasp” captured the “Frolic,” and October 25 the “United States” captured the “Macedonian,”—in England public opinion broke into outcry against the temporizing conduct of the government toward America, and demanded vigorous prosecution of the war.

“In any other times than the present,” said the “Times” of October 30, “it would appear utterly incredible that men should adopt so drivelling a line of conduct as to think of waging a war of conciliation and forbearance, and that with enemies whom they themselves represent as alike faithless and implacable.”

The Government hastened to pacify these complaints. Orders were given to hurry an overwhelming force of ships-of-the-line and frigates to the American coast. Almost immediately England recovered from her dismay; for November 11 news arrived that the Russians were again masters of Moscow, and that Napoleon was retreating. Day after day the posts arrived from Russia, bringing accounts more and more encouraging, until when Parliament met, November 24, the hope that Napoleon might never escape from Russia had become strong.

Thus the new Ministry found themselves able to face opposition with unexpected strength. Madison’s calculations, reasonable as they seemed to be, were overthrown, and the glow of English delight over the success of Russia made the burden of the American war seem easy to bear. In Parliament hardly a voice was raised for peace. The Marquess Wellesley in the debate on the King’s speech attacked ministers, not because they had brought the country into war with America, but because they had been unprepared for it; “they ought as statesmen to have known that the American government had been long infected with a deadly hatred toward this country, and, if he might be allowed an unusual application of a word, with a deadly affection toward France.”[7] America had been suffered to carry on hostilities without danger to herself, and must be convinced of her folly and desperation. Lord Grenville also asserted that the American government was always hostile to England, but that only the conduct of ministers had enabled it to pluck up courage to show its enmity.[8] Canning, in the Commons, attacked still more sharply the forbearance of the Ministry and their silence toward America:

“It never entered into my mind that the mighty naval power of England would be allowed to sleep while our commerce was swept from the surface of the Atlantic; and that at the end of six months’ war it would be proclaimed in a speech from the throne that the time was now at length come when the long-withheld thunder of Britain must be launched against an implacable foe, and the fulness of her power at length drawn out. It never entered into my mind that we should send a fleet to take rest and shelter in our own ports in North America, and that we should then attack the American ports with a flag of truce.”[9]

From such criticisms Lord Castlereagh had no difficulty in defending himself. Whitbread alone maintained that injustice had been done to America, and that measures ought to be taken for peace.

This debate took place November 30, two days after the destruction of Napoleon’s army in passing the Beresina. From that moment, and during the next eighteen months, England had other matters to occupy her mind than the disagreeable subject of the American war. Napoleon arrived in Paris December 18, and set himself to the task of renewing the army of half a million men which had been lost in Russia, and of strengthening his hold on Germany, where a violent popular emotion threatened to break into open alliance with the Russian Czar. December 30 the Prussian corps of the Grand Army deserted to the Russians; and soon afterward the French abandoned Poland and the province of old Prussia, and with difficulty, no enemy attacking, held Berlin. The interest of England turned to the negotiations and military movements of the Continent, After January 1, 1813, Englishmen never willingly thought of the American war, or gave attention to terms of peace. They regarded the result in America as dependent on the result in Germany; and they would have ignored the war altogether had not the American frigates and privateers from time to time compelled their attention.

With the prospect of a great trade about to open with the continent of Europe, as the French garrisons were driven out of Germany and Spain, English manufacturers could afford to wait with patience for better times; but although a nation so long accustomed to the chances of war could adapt itself quickly to changes in the course of trade, England felt more than it liked to admit the annoyance of American hostilities on the ocean. During the first few months this annoyance was the greater because it was thought to be the result of official negligence. December 30, a merchant writing to the “Times” declared that “the Americans have taken upward of two hundred sail of British merchantmen and three or four packets from the West Indies. Recent advices from the Windward Islands state that the Admiral is mortified at the depredations of the American privateers, it not being in his power to prevent them, most of the few cruisers under his orders having been out so long from England that their copper is nearly off,—so that the privateers remain unmolested, as they can sail round our ships whenever they think proper; they are in consequence become so daring as even to cut vessels out of harbors, though protected by batteries, and to land and carry off cattle from plantations. The accounts from Jamaica by the mail which arrived on Friday represent that island to be literally blockaded by American privateers.”

When the press spoke at all of naval matters, it talked wildly about the American frigates. “Such fearful odds,” said the “Morning Post” in regard to the “Macedonian,” December 26, “would break the heart and spirit of our sailors, and dissolve that charm, that spell, which has made our navy invincible.” “The land-spell of the French is broken, and so is our sea-spell,” said the “Times.” The American frigates were exaggerated into ships-of-the-line, and were to be treated as such, British frigates keeping out of their way. At first, the British naval officers hesitated to accept this view of a subject which had never before been suggested. Neither Captain Dacres nor his court-martial attributed his defeat to this cause; but before long, nearly all England agreed to rate the American frigates as seventy-fours, and complained that the Americans, with their accustomed duplicity, should have deceived the British navy by representing the “Constitution” and “United States” to be frigates. The “Times” protested in vain against this weakness:—

“Good God! that a few short months should have so altered the tone of British sentiments! Is it true, or is it not, that our navy was accustomed to hold the Americans in utter contempt? Is it true, or is it not, that the ‘Guerriere’ sailed up and down the American coast with her name painted in large characters on her sails, in boyish defiance of Commodore Rodgers? Would any captain, however young, have indulged such a foolish piece of vain-boasting if he had not been carried forward by the almost unanimous feeling of his associates?”[10]

To the charge that the British Admiralty had been taken unprepared by the war, the Admiralty replied that its naval force on the American station at the outbreak of hostilities exceeded the American in the proportion of eighty-five to fourteen.

“We have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and heavier frigates,” added the “Times,” January 4, 1813. “Surely we must now mean to smother the American navy.... A very short time before the capture of the ‘Guerriere’ an American frigate was an object of ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually setting the other way, and great pains seem to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the surrender of a British seventy-four to an opponent lately so much contemned.”

The loss of two or three thirty-eight gun frigates on the ocean was a matter of trifling consequence to the British government, which had a force of four ships-of-the-line and six or eight frigates in Chesapeake Bay alone, and which built every year dozens of ships-of-the-line and frigates to replace those lost or worn out; but although the American privateers wrought more injury to British interests than was caused or could be caused by the American navy, the pride of England cared little about mercantile losses, and cared immensely for its fighting reputation. The theory that the American was a degenerate Englishman,—a theory chiefly due to American teachings,—lay at the bottom of British politics. Even the late British minister at Washington, Foster, a man of average intelligence, thought it manifest good taste and good sense to say of the Americans in his speech of February 18, 1813, in Parliament, that “generally speaking, they were not a people we should be proud to acknowledge as our relations.”[11] Decatur and Hull were engaged in a social rather than in a political contest, and were aware that the serious work on their hands had little to do with England’s power, but much to do with her manners. The mortification of England at the capture of her frigates was the measure of her previous arrogance.

The process of acquiring knowledge in such light as was furnished by the cannon of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge could not be rendered easy or rapid. News of the American victories dropped in at intervals, as though American captains intentionally prolonged the enjoyment of their certain success, in order to keep England in constant ill temper. News of the “Java” arrived about the middle of March, and once more the press broke into a chorus of complaints. The “Times” renewed its outcry; the “Courier” abused the “Times” for its “tone of whining lamentation, of affected sensibility, and puerile grief,” but admitted that the behavior of the American frigates seemed extraordinary; while the “Pilot,” the chief naval authority, lamented in set periods the incomprehensible event:—

“The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall not presume to anticipate, that a third British frigate has struck to an American. This is an occurrence that calls for serious reflection,—this, and the fact stated in our paper of yesterday, that Loyd’s list contains notices of upwards of five hundred British vessels captured in seven months by the Americans. Five hundred merchantmen and three frigates! Can these statements be true; and can the English people hear them unmoved? Any one who had predicted such a result of an American war this time last year would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He would have been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue with him, that long ere seven months had elapsed the American flag would be swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins. Yet down to this moment not a single American frigate has struck her flag. They insult and laugh at our want of enterprise and vigor. They leave their ports when they please, and return to them when it suits their convenience; they traverse the Atlantic; they beset the West India Islands; they advance to the very chops of the Channel; they parade along the coasts of South America; nothing chases, nothing intercepts, nothing engages them but to yield them triumph.”

The immediate moral drawn from these complaints was the necessity of punishing the United States; but no one could longer deny that the necessary punishment was likely to prove tedious and costly. February 18 Parliament took up the subject of the American war, and both Houses debated it. In the Lords, Bathurst made a temperate speech devoted to showing that America in claiming immunity from impressments claimed more than England could afford to yield,—“a right hitherto exercised without dispute, and of the most essential importance to our maritime superiority.” Lord Lansdowne replied with tact and judgment, rather hinting than saying that the right was becoming too costly for assertion. “Some time ago it was imagined on all hands that in the event of a war with America, the first operation would be the destruction of her navy. What the fact had turned out to be, he was almost ashamed to mention. If any one were asked what had been the success of our navy in this war, he would unfortunately find some difficulty in giving an answer.”[12] Lord Liverpool, while defending his administration from the charge of imbecility, tended to strengthen the prevailing impression by the tone of his complaints against America: “Although she might have had wrongs, although she might have had grounds for complaint, although she might have had pressing provocations, yet she ought to have looked to this country as the guardian power to which she was indebted not only for her comforts, not only for her rank in the scale of civilization, but for her very existence.”[13] Perhaps these words offered as good an explanation as the Prime Minister could give of the war itself, for apart from the unconscious sarcasm they contained, they implied that England assumed to act as guardian to the United States, and had hitherto denied to the United States the right to act independently.

Both Lord Holland and Lord Erskine gently glanced at this assumption; and Erskine went so far as to intimate that sooner or later England must give way. “It has been said that this war, if the Americans persist in their claims, must be eternal. If so, our prospects are disheartening. America is a growing country,—increasing every day in numbers, in strength, in resources of every kind. In a lengthened contest all the advantages are on her side, and against this country.” The warning lost none of its point from Lord Eldon, who, always ready to meet any logical necessity by an equally logical absurdity, granted that “unless America should think proper to alter her tone, he did not see how the national differences could be settled.”

Such a debate was little likely to discourage America. Every country must begin war by asserting that it will never give way, and of all countries England, which had waged innumerable wars, knew best when perseverance cost more than concession. Even at that early moment Parliament was evidently perplexed, and would willingly have yielded had it seen means of escape from its naval fetich, impressment. Perhaps the perplexity was more evident in the Commons than in the Lords, for Castlereagh, while defending his own course with elaborate care, visibly stumbled over the right of impressment. Even while claiming that its abandonment would have been “vitally dangerous if not fatal” to England’s security, he added that he “would be the last man in the world to underrate the inconvenience which the Americans sustained in consequence of our assertion of the right of search.” The embarrassment became still plainer when he narrowed the question to one of statistics, and showed that the whole contest was waged over the forcible retention of some eight hundred seamen among one hundred and forty-five thousand employed in British service. Granting the number were twice as great, he continued, “could the House believe that there was any man so infatuated, or that the British empire was driven to such straits, that for such a paltry consideration as seventeen hundred sailors, his Majesty’s government would needlessly irritate the pride of a neutral nation or violate that justice which was due to one country from another?” If Liverpool’s argument explained the causes of war, Castlereagh’s explained its inevitable result, for since the war must cost England at least ten million pounds a year, could Parliament be so infatuated as to pay ten thousand pounds a year for each American sailor detained in service, when one tenth of the amount, if employed in raising the wages of the British sailor, would bring any required number of seamen back to their ships? The whole British navy in 1812 cost twenty million pounds; the pay-roll amounted to only three million pounds; the common sailor was paid four pounds bounty and eighteen pounds a year, which might have been trebled at half the cost of an American war.

No one rose in the House to press this reasoning. Castlereagh completed his argument, showing, with more temper than logic, that England was wholly in the right and America altogether in the wrong; the American government and people were infatuated; they had an inordinate and insolent spirit of encroachment and unreasonable hostility; had prostituted their character and showed an unexampled degeneracy of feeling. “For America he confessed that he deeply lamented the injury which her character had sustained by the conduct of her government; it was conduct unworthy of any State calling itself civilized and free.”

Castlereagh’s invective had the merit of being as little serious as his logic, and left as little sting; but what Castlereagh could say without causing more than a smile, never failed to exasperate Americans like drops of vitriol when it came from the lips of George Canning. Canning had not hitherto succeeded better in winning the confidence of England than in curbing the insolence of America; he was still in opposition, while the man whom in 1807 he could hardly condescend to consider a rival was Secretary for Foreign Affairs and leader of the House. Worst of all, Canning could not escape the necessity of supporting him, for Castlereagh’s position in regard to America was strong, while Canning’s own position was weak and needed constant excuse. In the debate of Feb. 18, 1813, he undertook the difficult task of appearing to attack Castlereagh while defending himself.

Canning’s speech began by an argument so characteristic as to win the praise of John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty,—a man less than most politicians prone to waste praise on opponents. Whitbread had quoted, in excuse of the American practice of naturalization, two Acts of Parliament,—one the 6th Anne, according to which any foreigner who served two years in any British vessel, military or merchant, without further condition or even oath, or more than the statement of the fact of service, became entitled to every protection of a natural subject of the realm. No words could be more emphatic than those of the statutes. “Such foreign mariner,” said the 6th Anne, “shall to all intents and purposes be deemed and taken to be a natural-born subject of his Majesty’s kingdom of Great Britain, and have and enjoy all the privileges, powers, rights, and capacities” which a native could enjoy. Again, by the 13th George II. every foreign seaman who in time of war served two years on board an English ship by virtue of the king’s proclamation was ipso facto naturalized. Other naturalization laws existed, guaranteeing all the privileges of a natural-born subject to foreigners under certain conditions; but the Acts of Anne and George II. were most in point, as they referred to foreign sailors alone; and with these laws on the statute-book Parliament seemed to stand in an unfavorable position for disputing the right of America to adopt a similar system. Canning’s argument on the meaning of these statutes was interesting, not only as an example of his own mind, but as the only legal justification of a long war which England fought against America at prodigious expense,—a justification which she maintained for years to be sound.

“My construction of the Acts of Anne was altogether different,” said Canning in reply to these quotations. “I understood that by it this country professed to give that only which it is competent to bestow without interfering in any degree with the rights or claims of other Powers; that it imparted to foreigners on certain conditions certain municipal privileges, but leaves untouched and unimpaired their native allegiance.... The enactments of this statute are a testimony of national gratitude to brave men of whatever country who may lend their aid in fighting the battles of Great Britain, but not an invitation to them to abandon the cause of their own country when it may want their aid; not an encouragement to them to deny or to undervalue the sacred and indestructible duty which they owe to their own sovereign and to their native soil.”

Something peculiarly sacred must have inhered in the statute of Anne which thus conferred naturalization on Dutch or Swedish seamen as “a testimony of national gratitude” for “fighting the battles of Great Britain” for two years in the British merchant service in time of peace, and converted them into citizens enjoying “all the privileges, powers, rights, and capacities” of natural-born subjects of Great Britain, which consisted, according to Canning, only in “certain municipal privileges” in England, subject to the will of a foreign sovereign. Such a definition of the “privileges, powers, rights, and capacities” of a natural-born subject of his Majesty’s kingdom of Great Britain seemed new to American lawyers; but it was received with applause by the House, and was further developed by Croker, who laid down the principle, new to the popular view of England’s pride, that the naturalized citizen, who was by the law required “to all intents and purposes” to “be deemed and taken to be a natural-born subject,” was in fact by the Admiralty “considered as having two countries,—the voluntary service of the one being looked upon as unable to debar the natural allegiance to the other.”

The rest of Canning’s speech consisted in defence of impressment and of paper blockades, and in panegyric upon European republics at the expense of “the hard features of transatlantic democracy.” While assailing the British government because “the arm which should have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen,” he expressed his devout wish that the war might not be concluded until England had smothered in victories the disasters to which she was so little habituated. If an harangue of this character served in any degree to guide or aid the councils of England, it served much more effectually the war-party of America, where Canning was held in singular antipathy, and where every admission he made in regard to “the shock of consternation” caused by the American frigates gave pleasure more acute than any pain his sarcastic phrases could thenceforward inflict.

Alexander Baring spoke with his usual good sense, pointing out that Castlereagh’s speech proved chiefly the greater interest of England to call for and court negotiation on the subject of impressments. Whitbread challenged public opinion by going to the verge of actual sympathy with America. The debate ended in an unopposed vote for a vigorous prosecution of the war, leaving the subject in truth untouched, except that England had avowed an extreme desire to punish America, and naturally felt an extreme irritation because America showed ability to bear punishment.

The spring came, bringing no new prospects. England refused to make a suggestion on which the governments could discuss terms of peace. She refused even to think upon the problem, but massed a huge armament in Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to restore her naval invincibility. Yet reflection seemed still to be silently at work, for, March 22, the “Times” interrupted its outcry over the loss of the “Java” by publishing a temperate article on the new Foreign Seamen Bill of Congress,—an article in which the suggestion first appeared that peace might after all be restored by simply omitting in the pacification any mention of impressment. The idea found support nowhere; but while, insufficient as it seemed, the human imagination could hardly conceive of any other expedient, at the same moment the uselessness of trying to obtain peace on any terms was made clear by the interference of the Russian Czar.

CHAPTER II.

Napoleon declared war against Russia June 22, four days after the American declaration against England; crossed the Niemen June 24, and August 1 was already at Vitebsk, about three hundred miles south of St. Petersburg, and about equally distant from the frontier and from Moscow. There, in the heart of Russia, he paused to collect his strength for some blow that should lay the Russian empire at his feet; and while he hesitated, the Czar, August 3, returned to his capital to wait. At that moment the chances of war favored Napoleon. Nothing was more likely than his success in destroying the Russian army, and in dictating terms of peace in St. Petersburg.

News of the American declaration of war reached St. Petersburg August 6, and added a new anxiety to the overburdened mind of Alexander. The American minister at that court found himself in a delicate position. His Government declared war against England and became for military purposes an ally of France at the moment when Russia entered into formal alliance with England and went to war with France. If Napoleon caught and crushed the Russian army and marched on St. Petersburg, the American minister would certainly be no favorite with Russians; if Napoleon were beaten, the American minister need expect no consideration, for in that case every influence at the Russian Court was certain to be English, and from England could come no favors.

At the moment when Brock, with his force of a few hundred men attacked Detroit, Napoleon with two hundred thousand men moved upon Smolensk and the Russian army. August 15, he celebrated his fête-day on the banks of the Dnieper; and while Hull was surrendering the fort of Detroit, the Russian army, hardly in better humor than the Ohio militia, were preparing to abandon Smolensk to save themselves from Hull’s fate. Napoleon took possession of the town August 18, but failed to destroy the Russian army, and then, turning away from St. Petersburg, pursued his retreating enemy toward Moscow. The battle of Borodino, or Moscowa, followed, September 6, and the French army entered Moscow September 14. There it remained more than a month.

During these weeks of alarm and incessant fighting, the Czar still found time to think of American affairs. The influence of Count Roumanzoff, though lessening every day, still controlled the regular course of foreign relations. September 21 Roumanzoff sent for Adams, and said that the Emperor had been much concerned to find the interests of his subjects defeated and lost by the new war, and it had occurred to him that perhaps an arrangement might be more easily made by an indirect than by a direct negotiation: he wished to know whether an offer of mediation on his part would meet with any difficulty on the part of the United States.[14] Adams replied that his Government could not fail to consider it as a new evidence of the Czar’s friendship, but suggested that there was a third party to be consulted,—the British government. Roumanzoff answered that he had already sounded the British minister, who had written to Lord Castlereagh on the subject.

The British minister, lately arrived in Russia, was not a person calculated to aid Roumanzoff. Lord Cathcart, who had been chosen by Castlereagh for the post of ambassador at St. Petersburg, was best known as the commander of the Copenhagen expedition in 1807. Some Americans might perhaps remember that he had served in America during the Revolutionary War. A well-informed writer in the London “Times,” who belonged to the Wellesley interest, seemed to doubt Lord Cathcart’s qualifications for his new post. “He is only better fitted for it than the horse he rides,” was the criticism;[15] but the better he had been fitted for it, the worse he would have suited Roumanzoff’s purpose, for his first object could be no other than to overthrow Roumanzoff and thwart his policy. No serious support of Russian mediation could be expected from him. He began his career by seeking access to the Emperor through other channels than the chancellor.[16]

Adams, September 30, advised his Government of the Czar’s proposed mediation. October 15, Roumanzoff announced that his proposal was ready, and would be sent at once to Washington,—which was actually done, before receiving a reply from London. The step could hardly please the British government; but Roumanzoff seemed almost to take pleasure in disregarding England, and perhaps felt that the course of events must either remove him entirely from the government, or make him independent of British support. He clung to the American mediation as the last remnant of his anti-British policy.

The British government would have preferred to make no answer to the Russian offer of mediation. To English statesmen the idea was absurd that England could allow Russia, more than France or the United States themselves, to mediate on blockade and impressment, or upon points of neutrality in any form; but Castlereagh had every reason to conciliate the Czar, and rather than flatly reject a suggestion from such a source, he replied that he thought the time had not yet come, and that the offer would not be accepted by America.[17] So it happened that the offer of Russian mediation went to America without positive objection from England, finding its way slowly across the Atlantic during the winter months.

With it went the tale of Napoleon’s immense disaster. October 23 he began his retreat; November 23 he succeeded in crossing the Beresina and escaping capture; December 5 he abandoned what was still left of his army; and December 19, after travelling secretly and without rest across Europe, he appeared suddenly in Paris, still powerful, but in danger. Nothing could be better calculated to support the Russian mediation in the President’s mind. The possibility of remaining without a friend in the world while carrying on a war without hope of success, gave to the Czar’s friendship a value altogether new.

Other news crossed the ocean at the same time, but encouraged no hope that England would give way. First in importance, and not to be trifled with, was the British official announcement, dated December 26, 1812, of the blockade of the Chesapeake and Delaware. Americans held that this blockade was illegal,[18]—a blockade of a coast, not of a port; a paper-blockade, one of the grievances against which the war was waged; but whatever they might choose to call it, they could not successfully disprove its efficiency, or deny that it made Chesapeake Bay, Delaware River, and the Vineyard Sound little better than British waters. Export of American produce from the Chesapeake and Delaware ceased.

The blockade, though serious beyond all other military measures, roused less attention and less protest than another measure of the British government which had the character of a profitable insult. A circular dated November 9, addressed to the governors of West Indian colonies by the British government, authorized them to issue licenses for importation of necessary supplies during the war,—a precaution commonly taken to meet the risk of famine in those regions. The Governor of the Bermudas, in issuing a proclamation January 14, 1813, published the circular, which contained one unusual provision:[19]—

“Whatever importations are proposed to be made, under the order, from the United States of America, should be by your licenses confined to the ports in the Eastern States exclusively, unless you have reason to suppose that the object of the order would not be fulfilled if licenses are not also granted for the importations from the other ports in the United States.”

Probably the discrimination was intended, like the exemption from blockade, as a favor to New England, and must have been meant to be more or less secret, since publication was likely to counteract its effect; but in time of war the British government was at liberty to seek supplies where it chose.

Madison thought differently. He sent to Congress, February 24, 1813, a special Message expressing indignation at the conduct of England.

“The policy now proclaimed to the world,” he charged, “introduces into her modes of warfare a system equally distinguished by the deformity of its features and the depravity of its character,—having for its object to dissolve the ties of allegiance and the sentiments of loyalty in the adversary nation, and to seduce and separate its component parts the one from the other. The general tendency of these demoralizing and disorganizing contrivances will be reprobated by the civilized world.”

Although many persons shared Madison’s view of war as a compulsory process of international law, Federalists and Republicans were at a loss to understand his view of “deformity” and “depravity” in modes of warfare. The whole truth in regard to West and East Florida was not known, but so much was notorious, even in 1811, as to warrant the British minister in protesting “against an attempt so contrary to every principle of public justice, faith, and national honor.”[20] What the United States could do in Florida in time of peace, England could surely do in Massachusetts in time of war; but if England’s conduct was in reality deformed and depraved, as charged, the celebrated proclamation of William Hull to the Canadians in 1812, inviting them to quit their allegiance and to “choose wisely” the side of the United States, should have been previously disavowed by the United States government. No little ridicule was caused by the contrast between Madison’s attitude toward Canada and his denunciation of England’s attitude toward Massachusetts.

Taken together, the news from Europe in the last days of winter gave ground for deep reflection. With the overthrow of Napoleon’s authority and the close alliance between Great Britain and Russia, the last chance of forcing concessions from England vanished. A long war, with no prospect of success, lay before the United States. New York harbor, the Delaware River, and Chesapeake Bay were already so nearly closed to commerce as to foreshadow complete stoppage; and if Boston was still open, its privileges must soon cease unless Great Britain deliberately intended to regard New England as neutral. All this, though alarming enough, might be met with courage; but against the pronounced disaffection of Massachusetts and Connecticut no defence existed; and whenever those States should pass from stolid inertia into the stage of active resistance to the war, the situation would become hopeless. Under such circumstances England would have a strong motive for refusing peace on any terms.

The shadow of these fears lay over the Inaugural Address which the President pronounced March 4, 1813, after taking for a second time the oath of office at the Capitol. His speech contained only the defence of a war that needed no defence, and complaints against England which were drowned in the tumult of war, the loudest complaint that man could make. Every tone showed that Madison felt doubtful of support, and that in proving the war to be just he betrayed consciousness that it was not energetic. Perhaps the most characteristic sentence in the Address was that in which he congratulated the country “with a proud satisfaction,” that in carrying on the war, “no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed; the war has been waged on our part with scrupulous regard to all these relations, and in a spirit of liberality which was never surpassed.” Madison’s phrases were the more remarkable because at about the same time the British government announced its intention of making America feel what war meant. The courtesy and humanity of the war were to be all on the American side; while not a word in the Inaugural Address gave the pledge which could win victories,—the assurance that the President himself had energy and meant to exert it.

Besides the alarming difficulties which rose partly from failure of military calculations at home and abroad, but chiefly from want of national experience in the business of war, other annoyances surrounded the President, and could not fail to make him wish for peace. Armstrong had not been six weeks in the War Department before he set the members of Administration at odds. The factious days of Robert Smith returned, and the President found the task of maintaining discipline as great in the Cabinet as it was in the army. One of the strongest characters called into prominence by the war, who was himself destined to have charge of the War Department, spoke of Armstrong, four months later, in language hinting impatient consciousness of something too complicated to describe. “And Armstrong!—he was the devil from the beginning, is now, and ever will be.”[21] Only by studying what Armstrong did, could the causes be understood of the passion which he excited in every man he crossed.

Monroe was the first to resent Armstrong’s proceedings. Monroe’s character, the opposite of Armstrong’s, was transparent; no one could mistake his motives, except by supposing them to be complex; and in his relations with Armstrong his motives were simpler than usual, for Armstrong’s views could not be carried into effect without loss of pride to Monroe. Already Monroe had surrendered the War Department to him, with the expectation that if any one was to have general command of the armies in the field, Monroe was to be the man. Down to the time when Armstrong took control, the idea was universal that the next campaign was to be fought by Monroe. Jan. 13, 1813, Serurier wrote to his Government:[22]

“There is much talk of Mr. Monroe for the command of the army, and he has shown a zeal in organizing his Department which tends to confirm me in that belief.... Mr. Monroe is not a brilliant man, and no one expects to find a great captain in him; but he served through the War of Independence with much bravery under the orders and by the side of Washington. He is a man of great good sense, of the most austere honor, the purest patriotism, and the most universally admitted integrity. He is loved and respected by all parties, and it is believed that he would soon gain the hearts of all his officers and soldiers. He would be given a staff as good as possible, and with this assistance as well as all his own recognized resources, it is believed that he would be perfectly suited to carry on the campaign about to open against the last continental possession of England in America.”

As acting Secretary of War, Monroe had urged Congress to increase the number of major-generals; and after Armstrong took charge of the Department Congress passed the Act of February 24, 1813, authorizing the increase. February 27 the nominations were sent to the Senate. In a letter to Jefferson, Monroe told the story:[23]—

“On the day that the nomination of these officers was made to the Senate the President sent for me and stated that the Secretary of War had placed me in his list of major-generals, at their head, and wished to know whether I would accept the appointment, intimating that he did not think I ought to do it, nor did he wish me to leave my present station. I asked where I was to serve. He supposed it would be with the Northern army under General Dearborn. I replied that if I left my present office for such a command it would be inferred that I had a passion for military life, which I had not; that in such a station I could be of no service in any view to the general cause or to military operations, even perhaps with the army in which I might serve; that with a view to the public interest the commander ought to receive all the support which the government could give him, and by accepting the station proposed, I might take from General Dearborn without aiding the cause by anything that I might add. I stated, however, that the grade made no difficulty with me, a desire to be useful being my only object; and that if the command was given me even with a lower grade than that suggested, admitting the possibility, I would accept it. The difficulty related to General Dearborn, who could not well be removed to an inactive station.”

Monroe said, in effect, that he would have the command in chief or nothing. Armstrong said, in effect, that he meant to be commander-in-chief himself. The new major-generals were James Wilkinson, Wade Hampton, William R. Davy of South Carolina, Morgan Lewis of New York, William Henry Harrison of Indiana Territory, and Aaron Ogden of New Jersey. The command of the Northern army was left to Dearborn, and as the world knew Dearborn’s incompetence to conduct a campaign, no one was surprised to learn that Armstrong meant to conduct it as Secretary of War, at the army headquarters in the field, performing the duties of lieutenant-general.

No sooner was Monroe satisfied that Armstrong meant to follow this course than he took the unusual step of writing to the President a formal remonstrance against his colleague’s supposed plan. The act appointing six major-generals was approved February 24. The same evening Monroe had a conversation on the subject with the President, and the next day, February 25, submitted the substance of his remarks in writing.[24] His argument chiefly regarded the inconvenience and unconstitutionality of separating the War Department from the President and of mixing military with civil functions:—

“As soon as General Armstrong took charge of the Department at War, I thought I saw his plan; that is, after he had held it a few days. I saw distinctly that he intended to have no grade in the army which should be competent to a general control of military operations; that he meant to keep the whole in his own hands; that each operation should be distinct and separate, with distinct and separate objects, and of course to be directed by himself, not simply in outline but in detail. I anticipated mischief from this, because I knew that the movements could not be directed from this place. I did not then anticipate the remedy which he had in mind.”

From that moment began a feud between the two Cabinet ministers. The cause was obvious. Armstrong had found that if a general command were to be created, it must be given to Monroe. Probably he felt no more confidence in Monroe’s military abilities than in those of Dearborn; but determined that his hand should not be thus forced, Armstrong decided to retain Dearborn, although his opinion of Dearborn, as shown afterward,[25] made the retention an act of grave responsibility. The decision once taken, he had no choice but to supply Dearborn’s wants by his own presence with the army,—a course certain to challenge attack from all Virginia. Had Armstrong been bent on destroying his rival by means which the world could have found no chance to oppose or criticise, he would have removed Dearborn, and would have sent Monroe to waste his reputation in the task of conquering and holding Canada. The retention of Dearborn was an unfortunate beginning for the new Secretary of War.

The first effect of Armstrong’s administration was to turn Monroe into a vindictive enemy; the second was to alienate Gallatin. Of all the old Republican leaders, Gallatin cared least for office and most for consistency. Under any reasonable distribution of party favors, the Presidency should have fallen to him after Madison, not only because he was the fittest man, the oldest, ablest, and most useful member of the Executive government, but also because he represented Pennsylvania; and if any State in the Union had power to select a President, it was she. Madison would have been glad to secure for Gallatin the succession; he had no special love or admiration for Monroe, while his regard for Gallatin was strong and constant; but Pennsylvania cared more for interests than for men, while Virginia cared so much for men that she became prodigal of interests. Pennsylvania allowed Virginia, through the agency of William B. Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael Leib, to thrust Gallatin aside and to open the path for a third Virginian at the risk of the Union itself. Gallatin, too proud to complain, had no longer an object of ambition; and from the moment ambition ceased abstract ideas of duty alone remained to counteract the disgusts of disappointment.

Gallatin’s abstract ideas were those of 1801,—simplicity, economy, and purity. Financiering—the providing of money for wasteful expenditure—was his abhorrence. “I cannot consent to act the part of a mere financier,” he wrote to Jefferson in 1809;[26] “to become a contriver of taxes, a dealer of loans, a seeker of resources for the purpose of supporting useless baubles, of increasing the number of idle and dissipated members of the community, of fattening contractors, pursers, and agents, and of introducing in all its ramifications that system of patronage, corruption, and rottenness which you so justly execrate.” These words were meant to apply only to a state of peace, but they applied equally well to a state of war from the moment war became useless. In the beginning of Madison’s second term, no man of intelligence denied that the war had failed; that its avowed objects could not be gained; that every month of war increased the danger of disunion, brought national bankruptcy nearer, and fastened habits of extravagance and corruption on the country. From his post at the Treasury, Gallatin could see better than most men the dangers, both financial and political, engendered by the war, while his acquaintance with European affairs showed him the need of rapid diplomacy.

Armstrong represented everything antagonistic to Gallatin; his methods were arbitrary and underhand; his political training was that of the New York school, tempered by personal contact with the court of Napoleon; from him economy could hardly be expected. Yet perhaps the worst feature of his administration was likely to be his use of patronage. The number of Gallatin’s personal enemies was small, and the use of patronage in a way that would outrage him seemed difficult; yet within a few weeks Armstrong offended him deeply. March 18, 1813, William Duane, of the “Aurora” newspaper, was appointed to the post of adjutant-general. The appointment was improper, and the motives to which it was sure to be attributed made it more scandalous than the unfitness of the person made it harmful to the service. Gallatin’s anger was deep: “Duane’s last appointment has disgusted me so far as to make me desirous of not being any longer associated with those who have appointed him.”[27]

Into this embroglio of national and personal difficulties Daschkoff, the Russian chargé at Washington, suddenly dropped the Czar’s offer to mediate a peace. Of its prompt acceptance, under such circumstances, no one could doubt, and on this point the Administration was united. Daschkoff’s letter bore date March 8, and Monroe’s reply was sent March 11. The letter of reply was a civil and somewhat flattering compliment to Alexander;[28] the mission itself was a matter to be more deliberately arranged.

The next decision regarded the character of the mission. The necessary powers might have been sent, without further form, to Minister Adams at St. Petersburg, but the President and his advisers thought with reason that the addition of other negotiators to the mission would give more weight and political effect to the measure.[29] They decided to send two new envoys to join Adams; and on the same reasoning to select prominent men. As a guaranty of their wish for peace, they decided that one of these men should be a Federalist, and they chose James A. Bayard of Delaware for the post. For the other, Monroe thought of naming some Western man, to secure the confidence of the Western country, and reconcile it to the result; but a different turn was given to the measure by Gallatin, who asked the appointment for himself. Gallatin’s exceptional fitness for the task outweighed all objections. The President consented to appoint him; and Monroe, who had from the first attached himself to Gallatin, acquiesced, although he saw the consequences to the Cabinet and the Treasury.

A question less easy to decide was whether the new mission should be despatched at once, or should wait until England should formally accept the mediation. There again political motives dictated immediate action. If England should accept, much time might be saved if the mission were on the spot; if she did not accept, the peace-party in America would be more effectually silenced. In either case, Russia would be deeply pledged to support her own undertaking.

The President did not intend to lose Gallatin in the Treasury. Abundant precedents warranted the double employment of government officers. In 1794 John Jay, then chief-justice, had been sent to negotiate with England, and the Senate had approved the appointment. In 1799 Oliver Ellsworth, also chief-justice, was sent to negotiate with France, and the Senate had again approved. These were Federalist precedents, supposed to be binding, at least on the Federalist party. If the chief-justice, the head of an independent branch of government, could be sent abroad as an Envoy Extraordinary in Executive employment, no objection could exist to sending an Executive officer on a temporary service of the same kind, unless on the score of expediency. To prevent difficulty on that account, the Secretary of the Navy consented to act as head of the Treasury until Gallatin’s return. Gallatin himself inclined to look on his separation from the Treasury as final,[30] but made his arrangements in agreement with the President’s views, which looked to his return in the autumn.

Before he could depart he was obliged to complete the necessary financial arrangements for the coming year, on which he was busily engaged at the moment when Daschkoff’s letter arrived. First in importance was the loan of sixteen million dollars. March 12, subscription books were opened in all the principal towns, and the public was invited to take the whole amount at seven per cent interest, to be reduced to six per cent at the end of thirteen years. About four million dollars were offered on these terms. Proposals in writing were then invited by a Treasury circular, dated March 18, and after an active negotiation between Gallatin and three or four capitalists of New York and Philadelphia,—John Jacob Astor, Stephen Girard, David Parish,—the remainder of the loan was provided. In all about eighteen millions were offered. Fifteen and a half millions were taken, in the form of six per cent stock, issued at eighty-eight dollars for every hundred-dollar certificate, redeemable after the year 1825. About half a million was taken at par, with an annuity of 1½ per cent for thirteen years, in addition to the six per cent interest.

Calculated as a perpetual annuity, as English borrowers would have viewed it, the rate of this loan was less than seven per cent; but if the nominal capital must or should be repaid after twelve years, the rate was about 7.50 per cent. In the end, the government paid 7.487 per cent, for the use of these sixteen millions for thirteen years. The terms were not excessive when it was considered that New England in effect refused to subscribe. Perhaps the loan could not have been taken at all, had not credit and currency been already expanded to the danger-point, as the allotment showed; for while New England, where most of the specie was held, subscribed less than half a million, and Boston took but seventy-five thousand, Pennsylvania, where banking had become a frenzy, took seven million dollars. New York and Baltimore together contributed only half a million more than was given by Philadelphia alone. Ten million dollars were taken by Astor, Girard, and Parish,—three foreign-born Americans, without whose aid the money could not have been obtained on these terms, if at all. Doubtless they were bold operators; but Americans were supposed to be not wanting in the taste for speculation, and the question could not but rise how these men knew the secret of distributing the load which no native American dared carry.

The bargain was completed April 7. At that moment the Treasury was empty, and could not meet the drafts of the other departments; but with sixteen millions in hand, five millions of Treasury notes, and an estimated revenue of something more than nine millions, Gallatin collected about thirty million dollars, and April 17 wrote to the Secretaries of War and Navy,[31] allotting to the one thirteen millions and a quarter, to the other four and a half millions, which could not be exceeded without the consent of Congress. This done, and every question having been settled that could be foreseen,—the tax-bills ready to be laid before Congress, and even the draft for a new bank-charter prepared,—Gallatin bade farewell to the Treasury, and May 9 sailed from the Delaware River, with Bayard, for the Baltic.

Twelve years had passed since Gallatin took charge of the finances, and his retirement was an event hardly less serious than a change of President; for it implied that the political system he had done so much to create and support stood so near the brink of disaster as to call him from the chosen field of his duties into a new career, where, if anywhere, he could save it. As Monroe felt called to the army, so Gallatin turned naturally to diplomacy. He knew that after another year of war the finances must be thrown into disorder like that of the Revolutionary War, beyond the reach of financial skill; and he believed that if any one could smooth the path of negotiation, that person was likely to serve best the needs of the Treasury. Yet he took grave responsibility, of which he was fully aware, in quitting his peculiar post at a moment so serious. Success alone could save him from universal censure; and perhaps nothing in his career better proved the high character he bore, and the extraordinary abilities he possessed, than the ease with which he supported responsibility for this almost desperate venture.

The task he had set for himself was hopeless, not so much because of the concessions he was to require, as on account of the change in European affairs which made England indifferent for the moment to any injury the United States could inflict. Monroe’s instructions to the new commission, though long, consisted largely in arguments against the legality of impressment as a part of the jus gentium; although the legality of European war-measures had long ceased to be worth discussing. As the solution of the dispute, Monroe could offer only the new Foreign Seamen Act, which England had refused from the first to consider, and which was certainly open to objections,—on the American side because it offered too much; on the British side because it offered more than could in practice be performed. To make the utmost possible concession, Monroe proposed that no native-born British subject, thenceforward naturalized in America, should be allowed to serve either in the national or the private vessels of the United States,—a provision which carried one step further the offer to naturalize no British seamen except on condition of leaving the sea, and which went to the verge of conceding the right of impressment. Notwithstanding these concessions, the instructions were still positive on the main point. Without a clear and distinct stipulation against impressments, no treaty was to be signed; negotiations must cease, and the negotiators must return home.[32]

CHAPTER III.

During the winter the Republican legislature of New York chose Rufus King, the chief Federalist in the country, to succeed John Smith as United States senator. Some Republicans charged that this election was the price paid by De Witt Clinton for Federalist votes in the Presidential contest; but Clinton’s friends declared it to be the price paid by the Administration Republicans for Federalist aid in granting a corrupt bank charter. That the choice was due to a bargain of some kind no one denied, and possibly both stories were true. Rufus King himself stood above suspicion, and had been considered an opponent of the Federalist alliance with Clinton; but he was a powerful recruit to the opposition in the Senate, which numbered thenceforward nine votes, or precisely one fourth of the body. The annoyance to the Administration was the greater because King’s Republican colleague, Obadiah German, belonged to the Clintonian opposition, and voted with the Federalists. At the same time Charles Cutts of New Hampshire was succeeded by Jeremiah Mason, a very able and extreme Federalist. Three more senators—Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael Leib—could be counted as personally hostile to the President. Jesse Franklin of North Carolina was succeeded by David Stone, an independent, opposed to the war. Already the opposition threatened to outweigh the votes on which the President could depend. As though legislation had become a matter of inferior importance, William H. Crawford of Georgia, the only vigorous Republican leader in the Senate, resigned his seat, and followed Gallatin to Europe. He was sent to take the place of Joel Barlow at Paris, and hurried to his post. In this condition of party weakness, the election of Rufus King and Jeremiah Mason to the Senate was a disaster to the Administration; and all the more anxiously the President feared lest the popular election in May should convert New York altogether into a Federalist State, and give Massachusetts the necessary strength to stop the war.

This election, on which the fate of the war was believed to turn, took place as usual, May 1, and began by a Federalist success in the city of New York, followed by another in Kings, Queens, and Westchester counties. These counties before the century ended had a voting population of near half a million, but in 1813 they cast in State elections about eight thousand votes, and gave a majority of eight hundred for the Federalist candidate Stephen Van Rensselaer, the unfortunate general of the Niagara campaign. Throughout the eastern and central counties the election was disputed; three of the four districts into which the State was divided left the result so close—within about three hundred votes—that only the western counties of Cayuga, Seneca, and Genesee turned the scale. Governor Tompkins was re-elected by the moderate majority of three thousand in a total vote of eighty-three thousand; but the Federalists obtained a majority of ten in the Assembly, and gained confidence with their strength. In this election, for the first time, the issue was distinct between those who supported and those who opposed the war. The chief towns, New York, Hudson, and Albany, were strong in opposition; the country districts tended to support.

In Massachusetts the Federalist governor Caleb Strong, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious by refusing to call out the State’s quota of militia, received nearly fifty-seven thousand votes, while Senator Varnum, the Republican candidate, received forty-three thousand. Considering that the population of Massachusetts was about one fourth smaller than that of New York, the vote of one hundred thousand persons in the smaller State, and only eighty-three thousand in the larger, seemed a proof of popular indifference; but in truth the vote of New York was larger than usual, and only one thousand less than at the next election of governor, in 1816. The difference was due to the unequal suffrage, which in New York State elections was restricted to one hundred pound free-holds, while in Massachusetts all citizens worth sixty pounds were entitled to vote.

At the same time John Randolph met with defeat, for the only time in his life. John W. Eppes, one of Jefferson’s sons-in-law, took residence within Randolph’s district for the purpose of contesting it; and after a struggle succeeded in winning the seat, on the war-issue, by a vote of eleven hundred and twelve to nine hundred and forty-three.[33] This change of membership tended, like the New York election, to show that the people were yielding to the necessity of supporting the war. Yet the process was alarmingly slow. In the second year of hostilities, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were Federal in all branches of their State governments; New York, Delaware, and Maryland were partly Republican and partly Federalist; of the eighteen States only ten were wholly Republican, and seven of these were Southern. In the United States Senate the Administration could count upon twenty-two votes, with reasonable certainty; the other fourteen senators were more or less lukewarm or hostile. In the House, one hundred and fourteen members supported the Administration, and sixty-eight opposed it. As far as concerned numbers, the Administration was strong enough in Congress; but the universal want of faith in its capacity to conduct a war of such consequence gave the Federalists an advantage beyond proportion to their numerical strength. The task of opposition was easy, and its force irresistible when the ablest and oldest Republican in office—the Secretary of the Treasury—felt himself helpless in face of the Government’s inaptitude for war, and wrote to his closest intimates that no one could “expect much improvement in the manner of making it more efficient. I think that there exists real incapacity in that respect,—an incapacity which must necessarily exhaust our resources within a very short time.”[34]

Fortunately for the Government the same slowness of movement which counteracted its undertakings, affected equally its internal enemies in their hostility. The New England extremists wished and expected to act energetically against the war. Chief-Justice Parsons quieted Pickering in the autumn of 1812 by assuring him that the Massachusetts House of Representatives would act at its winter session;[35] yet the legislature met and adjourned without action. The party waited for the spring election of 1813, which was to give them control of New York. Their disappointment at the re-election of Governor Tompkins was extreme, and the temptation to wait until the national government should become bankrupt and disgraced became irresistible. Another campaign was likely to answer their purpose. While England grew stronger every day, America grew weaker; the struggle became more and more unequal, the result more and more certain; and the hope of peaceably restoring the Federalist party to power diminished the temptation to adopt measures of force.

Thus when the Thirteenth Congress met for its extra session, May 24, the Government felt stronger than on March 5, when the old Congress expired. The elections were safely passed; the peace negotiations might be considered as begun; taxation was no longer a matter of taste. The majority liked taxation as little in 1813 as they had liked it in 1812 or in 1801; but they could no longer dispute or even discuss it. Gallatin had gone, leaving the bills for them to pass; and Congress, which at any other time would have rebelled, had no choice but to pass them.

Once more Henry Clay was chosen Speaker, and setting Cheves aside he placed John W. Eppes at the head of the Ways and Means Committee. The House missed John Randolph, but gained John Forsyth of Georgia, and Daniel Webster,—a new member from New Hampshire, of the same age as Calhoun and Lowndes, but five years younger than Clay. Otherwise the members varied little from the usual type, and showed more than their usual faculty for discussing topics no longer worth discussion.

President Madison’s Message of May 25 challenged no angry comment. Its allusion to the Russian mediation and the terms of peace had an accent of self-excuse, as though he were anxious to convince England of her true interests; its allusion to France contained the usual complaint of delays “so unreasonably spun out;” and its reference to the war and the finances was rather cheerful than cheering. Daring as Madison’s policy had been, he commonly spoke in tones hardly to be called bold; and this Message had the disadvantage, which under the circumstances could not be called a fault, of addressing itself rather to Europe and to enemies, than to a spirited and united nation. It had also the merit of directing Congress strictly to necessary business; and Congress acted on the direction.

Nothing less than necessity could at that moment of early summer have induced the members of Congress to remain in session at all. Stout as the majority might be in support of the war, the stoutest were depressed and despondent. They saw themselves disappointed in every hope and calculation on which they had counted a year before. Even their unexpected naval glory was lost for the moment by the victory of Broke’s frigate the “Shannon” over the “Chesapeake,” June 1, as Congress began its work. Disaster after disaster, disgrace upon disgrace, had come and were every moment multiplying. Suffocated with heat, members were forced to sit day by day in the half-finished Capitol, with a Southern village about them, their nearest neighbor a British fleet. “Defeated and disgraced everywhere,” said one of the stanchest war members describing the scene, “Congress was to impose the burden of taxes on a divided people, who had been taught by leaders of the war party to look upon a tax-gatherer as a thief, if not to shoot him as a burglar.”[36] According to the same authority, “the country was at the lowest point of depression, where fear is too apt to introduce despair.” In this condition of spirits, Gallatin’s tax-bills were reported to the House June 10,—measures such as the Republican party had, till very lately, not conceived as within the range of its possible legislation. They included a direct tax of three million dollars; taxes on salt, licenses, spirits, carriages, auctions, sugar refineries; a stamp tax, and a complete machinery for the assessment and collection of these odious and oppressive imposts.

At the same moment, Daniel Webster began his career in Congress by moving Resolutions which caused a long and unprofitable debate on the conduct of France and the character of the French repealing Decree of April 28, 1811,—a debate that could have no other result or object than to mortify and annoy the President, who had been, like so many other rulers, the victim of Napoleon’s audacity. Pending this debate, June 13, the President took to his bed with a remittent fever, and for five weeks his recovery was doubtful. Madison was still confined to his bed, when, July 15, messengers from the lower Potomac brought news that the British fleet, consisting of eight or ten ships-of-the-line and frigates, was in the river, sixty miles below, making its way up the difficult channel to Washington. A reasonable and well-grounded fear took possession of the city. July 21, Serurier wrote to his Government:[37]—

“Every one is making ready to move. I know that they are secretly packing up at the Departments. I have as yet sent nothing away, in order not to show distrust of the Government’s power; but I have got ready my most valuable papers, and from the moment the President shall quit his residence, I shall follow where he goes, with my principal portfolios in one of my carriages.”

The British ships were approaching the city; the sound of their guns was believed to be heard; and the Government had little means of stopping them. Every man prepared for volunteer duty; other work was suspended. About three thousand militia and volunteers, among whom were all the Cabinet and many members of Congress, were mustered, and marched to Fort Washington, which was occupied by some six hundred regular troops, with the Secretary of War at their head; while the Secretary of the Navy took his post on the 28-gun frigate “Adams” in the river beneath, and the Secretary of State rode down the river shore with a cavalry scouting party to reconnoitre the British ships.[38] July 15 and 16 the House of Representatives ordered a Fast, and went into secret session to consider modes of defence.

Unfortunately the motion for inquiry was made by a Federalist. The majority, determined to make no admissions, referred the subject to the Military Committee, which reported the next day through its chairman, Troup of Georgia, that the preparation was “in every respect adequate to the emergence.” When a majority could benefit only its enemies by telling the truth, history showed that honorable men often preferred to tell what was untrue. In this case the British ships made their soundings, and obtained whatever knowledge they sought; then left the river to visit other parts of the Bay, but never were so far distant that they might not, with energy and a fair wind, within four-and-twenty hours, have raided the defenceless village. They had but to choose their own time and path. Not a defensible fort or a picket-fence stood within ten miles of Washington, nor could a sufficient garrison be summoned in time for defence. Armstrong, Jones, and Monroe doubtless assured Congress that their means of defence were “in every respect adequate,” but Congress took the responsibility on its own shoulders when it accepted their assurance.

Perhaps of all the incompetence shown in the war this example most exasperated patriotic citizens, because it was shared by every branch of the government. For six months the Administration and its friends had denounced Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth for betraying the government, while the Clintonians and peace Democrats had denounced the President for imbecility; but in regard to the city of Washington the generals were not in question, for no generals were there, while the President was dangerously ill in bed. The Legislature and Cabinet were chiefly responsible for whatever should happen,—the more because their warning was ample, even if under such circumstances warning was needed. If Jefferson assumed as a matter of course that William Hull was to be shot and Stephen Van Rensselaer broken for their mistakes, Republicans might properly ask what punishment should be reserved for Armstrong, Jones, and Monroe of the Cabinet, Troup of Georgia, Sevier of Tennessee, Wright of Maryland, and other members of the Military Committees of the House and Senate for their neglect of the national capital.

The debate on Webster’s Resolutions, and the report made in consequence by Monroe, July 12, tended to throw additional discredit on the Government. In no respect did Madison’s Administration make an appearance less creditable than in its attitude toward Napoleon’s Decrees, again and again solemnly asserted by it to have been repealed, in the face of proof that the assertion was unfounded. No Federalist rhetoric was necessary to make this mortification felt. Madison seldom expressed himself with more bitterness of temper than in regard to the Emperor’s conduct, and with Monroe the subject drew forth recurrent outbursts of anger and disgust. His report tacitly admitted everything that the Federalists charged, except that the Administration had a secret engagement with France: it had deceived itself, but it had not wilfully deceived the public.

While the House was busied with these unpleasant subjects, the Senate took up the President’s recent nominations. May 29, four names were sent to it for diplomatic appointments,—those of Albert Gallatin, J. Q. Adams, and James A. Bayard, to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain, and a treaty of commerce with Russia; that of Jonathan Russell to be Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden. Rufus King immediately began opposition by moving three Resolutions of inquiry in regard to the nature of the Russian appointments and the authority under which the Treasury was to be administered in the Secretary’s absence. The President replied, June 3, that the duties of the Secretary of the Treasury were discharged by the Secretary of the Navy under the provisions of the Act of 1792. The Senate, by a vote of twenty to fourteen, referred the matter to a committee consisting of Anderson of Tennessee, Rufus King, Brown of Louisiana, and Bledsoe of Kentucky. Anderson, the chairman, wrote to the President and went to see him on behalf of the committee, but received only the answer that the President declined to discuss the matter with them in their official character. The Senate then adopted a Resolution that the functions of Secretary of the Treasury and Envoy Extraordinary were incompatible. The Federalists obtained on this vote the support of Giles, Leib, and Samuel Smith, German of New York, and Gilman of New Hampshire, all of whom were disaffected Republicans; but even with this aid they would have failed without the votes of Anderson, Bledsoe, and the two Louisiana senators, who joined the malcontents.

Madison was then slowly recovering strength, and greatly harassed by anxieties. He would not sacrifice Gallatin to the Senate; he hoped that firmness would carry the point,[39] and at worst he could throw upon senators the charge of factious opposition. This he succeeded in doing. July 16 the Senate committee, naturally expecting Madison to suggest some arrangement, once more sought and obtained a conference,—“when the President was pleased to observe,” said their report,[40] “that he was sorry that the Senate had not taken the same view of the subject which he had done; and that he regretted that the measure had been taken under circumstances which deprived him of the aid or advice of the Senate. After the committee had remained a reasonable time for the President to make any other observations if he thought proper to do so, and observing no disposition manifested by him to enter into further remarks, the committee retired without making any observations on the matter of the Resolutions, or in reply to those made by the President.”

Finding itself thus defied, the Senate, without more discussion, rejected Gallatin’s nomination by eighteen votes to seventeen, Anderson and the two Louisiana senators still adhering to the hostile interest. Adams and Bayard were then confirmed with little opposition.

After the passage of many years, the propriety of the decision may still be left open to debate. As far as the Federalists were concerned, their votes contradicted their own precedents; and if they conceded, as their precedents required, that the question was not one of law but of expediency, they assumed responsibility in acting as final judges. The incompatibility asserted by them was a matter of dispute. Two successive chief-justices had been sent as envoys abroad. No one could doubt that the Secretary of the Treasury, or any other member of the Executive or Judicial departments, might be appointed to negotiate a treaty in Washington. Temporary absence from Washington had never implied incompatibility. Everyone knew that the Secretary of War meant in person to conduct the war on the frontier. No one could question the President’s right to appoint acting secretaries. If convenience alone was the point at issue, surely the President knew best the demands of his own Executive departments, and might be trusted with the responsibility which belonged to him. That he should fail to see, as soon as the Senate could discover, an incompatibility that would work only against himself, need not be taken for granted by his own party, whatever might be the case with the opposition.

On the other hand every one might admit that as the country grew, Secretaries of the Treasury were likely to find work in their own Department that would effectually limit their capacity for foreign travel; and if the Senate thought that stage to be already reached, senators were right in insisting upon the appointment of a new secretary in Gallatin’s place. Unfortunately for their argument, their power did not extend so far. Gallatin remained Secretary of the Treasury, and continued to negotiate as such, without paying attention to the Senate or its theories.

The Senate further weakened its position in acting on the nomination of Jonathan Russell as Minister to Sweden. The subject was referred, June 2, to a committee consisting of Senator Goldsborough of Maryland, together with Anderson and Rufus King. Jonathan Russell had made himself obnoxious to the peace party by eagerness shown, while he was in charge at London, to bring on the war. The committee not only entered on an investigation of his doings at Paris, but also introduced a Resolution declaring that any mission to Sweden at that time was inexpedient, and by order of the Senate asked a conference with the President. Monroe, angry at this conduct, declared privately that a faction in the Senate, counting on the death not only of President Madison but of Vice-President Gerry, and the election of Giles as President of the Senate, were scheming to usurp the Executive power.[41]

In order to counteract their manœuvre, and also to relieve the President, who was then dangerously ill, Monroe took the ground that the Executive would not confer with a co-ordinate branch of government except through an agent, because his dignity would not allow him to meet a committee except by a committee of his own. Monroe thus expressed this somewhat unrepublican doctrine: “A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a head of a Department, and not with the Chief Magistrate; for in the latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.”[42] As a necessary conclusion, Monroe’s argument seemed to the Senate not beyond dispute; but they answered it, three days afterward, still less logically, by passing Goldsborough’s Resolution that it was inexpedient at that time to send a Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden.

Whatever might have been the case with Gallatin’s rejection, no one could doubt that the vote on Russell’s appointment was factious. When twenty-two senators, including Jeremiah Mason, Christopher Gore, Samuel Dana, Rufus King, and William B. Giles, declared that a minister resident in Sweden was inexpedient in the summer of 1813, they declared what every other well-informed man knew to be an error. If any American envoy was ever expedient, it was an envoy to Sweden in 1813; for in Sweden at that moment all that was left of American commerce centred after being driven from England, and the political interests of Sweden were greatly involved with those of the United States. The error was the less to be denied, because, only six months afterward, the Senate admitted itself in the wrong, and approved the appointment of Russell.

These votes of the Senate made a deep impression. In time of peace and safety the Senate might show factiousness without necessarily exciting public anger, although at no time was the experiment quite safe; but at a moment like July, 1813, when public opinion tended toward a serious temper, factiousness was out of place, and was the more dangerous because President Madison, though never showing great power as a popular leader, had still a clear perception of the moment when to strike an enemy. He rarely failed to destroy when he struck. The time had come when the Republican party, with one voice, would be obliged to insist that party discipline must be restored; and this result was precipitated by the Senate’s conduct in regard to the diplomatic nominations.

An illustration of the dangers into which the spirit of faction at that excited moment led the factious, was furnished by the legislature of Massachusetts, which met, May 26, and after listening to a long speech from Governor Strong arraigning the national government for its injustice to England and partiality to France, referred the subject to committees which lost no time in reporting. One of these reports, presented June 4 by Josiah Quincy of the State Senate, closed with a Resolution that the Act admitting Louisiana into the Union violated the Constitution, and that the Massachusetts senators in Congress should use their utmost endeavors to obtain its repeal. Another report, by a joint committee, contained a remonstrance addressed to Congress against the war, couched in terms of strong sectional hostility to the Southern States, and marked throughout by a covert argument for disunion. A third report, also by Josiah Quincy, on a naval victory lately won by Captain James Lawrence of the “Hornet,” contained a phrase even longer remembered than Quincy’s assertion that the Government could not be kicked into a war. The Government had in fact been kicked into the war, but Quincy was not the better pleased. He reported that in order not to give offence to many of the good people of the Commonwealth by appearing to encourage the continuance of an unjust, unnecessary, and iniquitous war, the Massachusetts senate while admiring Lawrence’s virtues refrained from approving his acts,—

“And to the end that all misrepresentations on this subject may be obviated,—

Resolved, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits which are not immediately connected with the defence of our sea-coast and soil.”

Such tactics, whether in or out of Congress, were more dangerous to their authors than any blunders of the Administration could ever be to the party in power. If the nation should be successful in the war, it might perhaps in good nature leave unpunished the conduct of its malcontents; but if by their means the nation should be conquered or forced into a humiliating peace, the people would never forget, and never forego revenge. Mere opposition to foreign war rarely injured public men, except while the war-fever lasted. Many distinguished statesmen of Europe and America had been, at one time or another, in opposition to some special war,—as was the case with Talleyrand, Charles James Fox, Lord Grey, Jefferson, and Madison; but opposition became unpardonable when it took a form which could have no apparent object except national ruin. The Federalists who held the ideas expressed by the legislature of Massachusetts could explain or defend their future course only by the conviction that the inevitable and long-expected “crisis” was at hand, which must end either in disunion or in reconstruction of the Union on new ground. As “a moral and religious people,” they separated from the common stock, and thenceforward, if the Union lasted, could expect no pardon.

The extravagance of the Massachusetts Federalists was counterbalanced by the same national disasters which caused it. Nothing showed that the war was popular in any of the sea-board States; but the pressure of circumstances, little by little, obliged lukewarm and even hostile communities to support it. Virginia and the Southern States were drawn into relations toward the government which they had never intended to accept. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee submitted to exactions that would at any previous stage of their history have produced a revolution. Perhaps the strongest proof of change in popular prejudices was furnished by the taxes. Tax-bills which were supposed to have already overthrown one great political party,—bills which inflicted the evils so hotly and persistently denounced by Jefferson, Gallatin, and John Randolph in opposition, and which had been long delayed by fear of their popular effect,—were passed by Congress quickly, by decided votes, and with less debate than was given to the discussion whether the President had or had not told all he knew about Bassano’s Decree of April 28, 1811. From the time they were approved by the President, in July and August, 1813, to the time of their repeal, neither the President nor his party was troubled by popular discontent on account of the passage of these Acts. They were accepted as a necessary part of the national system, and of a war-policy.

The most curious symptom, and the one which most perplexed the Federalists, was that this popular movement of concentration acted in direct resistance to the movement of events. In every respect as the Federalists looked back at the past twelve years their prophecies had come true. The Republican party, they argued, had proved itself incompetent, and had admitted the failure of its principles; it had been forced to abandon them in practice, to replace the government where the Federalists had put it, and to adopt all the Federalists’ methods; and even then the party failed. Equally imbecile in peace and war, the democratic movement had ended in such disgrace and helplessness as few governments had ever outlived, and such as no nation with a near and powerful neighbor could have survived. In 1813 the evidence of downfall had become patent. The government was ruined in credit and character; bankrupt, broken, and powerless, it continued to exist merely because of habit, and must succumb to the first shock. All this the Federalists had long foreseen. Fisher Ames in the press, scores of clergymen in the pulpit, numberless politicians in Congress, had made no other use of their leisure than to point out, step by step, every succeeding stage in the coming decline. The catastrophe was no longer far away, it was actually about them,—they touched and felt it at every moment of their lives. Society held itself together merely because it knew not what else to do.

Under circumstances following each other in necessity so stringent, no Federalist could doubt that society would pursue the predicted course; but it did not. Illogical and perverse, society persisted in extending itself in lines which ran into chaos. The threatened “crisis” had arrived, wanting no characteristic of those so long foretold; but society made no effort to save itself. A vaster ruin and still more terrible retribution lay beyond. The Federalists were greatly and naturally perplexed at discovering the silent under-current which tended to grow in strength precisely as it encountered most resistance from events. They tried to explain the phenomenon in their own way,—the clergy according to religious conceptions, the politicians according to their ideas of popular character. The political theory was the more plausible and less respectable. A. C. Hanson, the extreme Maryland Federalist, mobbed and nearly killed in Baltimore in June, 1812, only to be elected to Congress in November, thought that the national movement of 1813 was due to military glory. Hanson wrote to Pickering on the subject, in the autumn:[43]—

“The war is becoming more popular every day in this State [Maryland]. Our successes, and the weak manner in which it is conducted by the enemy make it so.... It would seem that after a while, unless the British can gather the sense and courage to strike some severe blows, the war by its own generative powers will create the means for its support. The vanity of a people cannot bear these brilliant naval victories, and there is no passion to which the rulers of a people can address themselves with greater effect. Even in my district the active opposers of the war are falling off every day, and unless we shortly meet with some reverses, the Administration will shortly find more friends than enemies in this State by a great deal.... The impression is becoming universal that the enemy cannot harm us if he would. A few hard blows struck in the right place would be of great service to the country.”

A people that could feel its vanity flattered by such glories as the war gave in 1813 must have felt the want of flattery to an unusual degree. The idea was extravagant. Not so much the glories as the disgraces of the war roused public sympathy; not so much the love of victory as the ignominy of defeat, and the grinding necessity of supporting government at any cost of private judgment. At such a moment any success was keenly felt, and covered every failure. The slow conviction that come what would the nation must be preserved, brought one man after another into support of the war, until the Federalists found their feet in a quicksand. The “crisis” produced the opposite effect to that which Burke’s philosophy predicted.

Congress finished its work, and August 2 adjourned. Immediately afterward the President went to Montpelier to recover his strength in the air of the Blue Ridge. The session had not been unsatisfactory, for although the Senate refused to impose an embargo, wanted by the President in order to cut off illegitimate trade with England’s dependencies, and although the same body put its negative on the appointments of Gallatin and Jonathan Russell, yet Congress passed the tax-bills, authorized another loan of seven and a half millions, and made the business of trading under a British license a penal offence. The operations of war alone remained to burden the President’s mind.

CHAPTER IV.

The fall of Detroit and Chicago in August, 1812, threw the American frontier back to the line of the Wabash and the Maumee, and threatened to throw it still farther back to the Indian boundary itself. The Miami or Maumee River was defended by Fort Wayne; the Wabash had no other defence than the little fort or blockhouse which Harrison built during the Tippecanoe campaign, and named after himself. Fort Harrison stood near the later city of Terre Haute, close to the border of Illinois; Fort Wayne stood within twenty miles of the Ohio border. The width of Indiana lay between the two.

Had Brock been able, after the capture of Detroit, to lead his little army into Ohio, he might have cleared not only the Maumee River, but the whole western end of Lake Erie from American possession. Recalled in haste to defend Niagara, Brock left only two or three companies of troops as garrison at Detroit and Malden. The Indians could do little without the aid of regular forces, but they tried to carry both Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison by stratagem. The attacks were made almost simultaneously a few days after September 1, and not without skill. In the case of Fort Harrison the Indians were nearly successful, not so much in fighting as in burning it. With great difficulty its young captain, Zachary Taylor, of the Seventh Infantry, succeeded in saving his post. Fort Wayne was held by Captain James Rhea of the First Infantry until reinforcements arrived, September 12. Except the usual massacres of scattered families, the Indians accomplished nothing.

Upon the State of Ohio, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, and of Kentucky with four hundred thousand, fell the immediate burden of defending the border between the Ohio and the Lakes. Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory leaving Vincennes June 19, the day after the declaration of war, was at Cincinnati when threatening news began to arrive from Detroit. Harrison had military knowledge and instincts. He saw that after the capture of Mackinaw Detroit must fall, and that Hull could save himself only by evacuating it.[44] Harrison’s ambition, which had drawn him to Tippecanoe, drew him also to lead the new crusade for the relief or recovery of Detroit. He went to Kentucky at the invitation of Governor Scott, and under the patronage of Scott and Henry Clay he took the direction of military affairs. August 24 news reached Kentucky that Hull was shut in Detroit, and must surrender unless immediately relieved.[45] The Governor of Kentucky at once summoned what was then called a caucus, composed of himself, his successor elect Governor Shelby, Henry Clay, Justice Todd of the United States Supreme Court, Major-General Hopkins of the Kentucky militia, various Congressmen, judges, and other citizens,[46] whose whole authority was needed to warrant giving to Harrison, who was not a citizen of Kentucky, the commission of major-general and the command of the expedition to Detroit. By general acclamation, and on the warm assurances of universal popular approval, the measure was taken; and Harrison started at once for Cincinnati and Detroit to organize the campaign. The news of Hull’s surrender met him as he left Frankfort.

By this combination of skill and accident, Harrison reached the object of his ambition,—the conduct of war on a scale equal to his faith in his own powers; but the torrent of Western enthusiasm swept him forward faster than his secret judgment approved. Appointed by caucus the general of volunteers, he could keep his position only by keeping his popularity. Without deciding precisely where to march, or what military object to pursue, he talked and acted on the idea that he should recover Detroit by a coup-de-main.[47] He knew that the idea was baseless as a practical plan, and futile as a military measure; but nothing less would satisfy the enthusiasm of his Kentucky volunteers, and the national government almost compelled him to pretend what he did not at heart believe possible.

The confusion thus created was troublesome. First, Harrison insisted on commanding the troops marching to relieve Fort Wayne, and obliged the good-natured General Winchester, who outranked him, to yield the point.[48] Then after a forced march with the Kentuckians down the St. Mary’s River, having relieved Fort Wayne, Harrison was obliged, September 19, to surrender the command to Winchester, who arrived with orders from the Secretary of War to take general charge of the northwestern army. Harrison then left Fort Wayne for Piqua. Meanwhile the President and Eustis, learning what had been done in Kentucky, September 17, after much debate decided to give to Harrison the commission of brigadier-general, with the command of the northwestern army, to consist of ten thousand men, with unlimited means and no orders except to retake Detroit.[49] Brigadier-General Winchester, who was already at Fort Wayne, was given the option of serving under Harrison, or of joining the army at Niagara.

These new orders reached Harrison September 25 at Piqua. Harrison then resumed command, and two days afterward, September 27, wrote to the secretary, announcing his plan for the autumn campaign. Three columns of troops, from widely distant quarters, were to move to the Maumee Rapids,—the right column, consisting of Virginia and Pennsylvania troops, by way of the Sandusky River; the centre column, of twelve hundred Ohio militia, by Hull’s road; the left column, consisting of four Kentucky regiments and the Seventeenth U. S. Infantry, was to descend the Auglaize River to Fort Defiance on the Maumee, and thence to fall down that river to the point of junction with the two other columns.

Compared with Hull’s resources, Harrison’s were immense; and that he had no serious enemy to fear was evident from his dividing the army into three columns, which marched by lines far beyond supporting distance of each other. At the same time he ordered Major-General Hopkins of the Kentucky militia to march with two thousand men up the Wabash into the Indian country, and to destroy the Indian settlements on the Wabash and Illinois rivers. Had a British force been opposed to the Americans, its general would have had little difficulty in destroying some one of these four isolated columns, and driving Harrison back to central Ohio; but only bands of Indians, not exceeding five hundred at most, were to be feared before the army should cross the Maumee, and little anxiety existed on account of enemies, unless for the safety of Fort Wayne.

Harrison’s anxieties bore a different character. September 23 he wrote to the Secretary of War: “If the fall should be very dry, I will take Detroit before the winter sets in; but if we should have much rain, it will be necessary to wait at the rapids until the Miami of the Lakes is sufficiently frozen to bear the army and its baggage.”[50] The promise was rash. However dry the season might be, the task of marching an army with siege-artillery past Malden to Detroit, and of keeping it supplied from a base two hundred miles distant, with the British commanding the Lake, was one which Harrison had too much sense to attempt. Nothing but disaster could have resulted from it, even if Detroit had been taken. In the actual condition of that territory, no army could be maintained beyond the Maumee River without controlling the Lake. Perhaps Harrison was fortunate that constant rains throughout the month of October brought the army to a halt long before it reached the Maumee. Only the left division of five Kentucky regiments succeeded in getting to the river, and camped in the neighborhood of old Fort Defiance, waiting for the other columns to reach the rapids. There the Kentuckians remained, under the command of General Winchester, without food, clothing, or sufficient shelter, in a state of increasing discontent and threatening mutiny, till the year closed.

Within a month after assuming command Harrison found himself helpless either to advance or to retreat, or to remain in any fixed position. The supplies required for ten thousand troops could not be sent forward by any means then known. October 22 the left column, consisting of the Kentucky regiments and some regulars, was at Defiance on the Maumee; the central column of a thousand Ohio troops under General Tupper was on Hull’s road, a hundred miles from the Maumee, unable to march beyond Urbana, where its supplies were collecting; the right column of Pennsylvanians and Virginians was still farther from the front, slowly approaching the Sandusky River from the southeast, but far out of reach. General Hopkins’s expedition up the Wabash ended in failure, his troops becoming a mere mob, and at last disbanding, leaving their general to follow them home. Harrison himself was riding indefatigably through the mud, from one end to the other of his vast concave line,—now at Defiance, making speeches to pacify Winchester’s Kentuckians; then at Piqua and Urbana with the Ohioans; soon a hundred miles away at the river Huron, east of Sandusky; next at Wooster, Delaware, or Franklinton, afterward Columbus, in the centre of Ohio, looking for his right wing; but always searching for a passable ridge of dry land, on which his supplies could go forward to the Maumee Rapids. The result of his search was given in a letter of October 22, from Franklinton, to the Secretary of War:—

“I am not able to fix any period for the advance of the troops to Detroit. It is pretty evident that it cannot be done upon proper principles until the frost shall become so severe as to enable us to use the rivers and the margin of the Lake for transportation of the baggage and artillery upon the ice. To get them forward through a swampy wilderness of near two hundred miles, in wagons or on packhorses which are to carry their own provisions, is absolutely impossible.”

The obstacle which brought Harrison’s autumn campaign to this sudden close was the vast swamp that extended from the Sandusky River on his right to the Auglaize River on his left, and for the moment barred the passage of his necessary supplies as effectually as though it had been the Andes. Hull had crossed it, cutting a road as he went, and no one had then appreciated his effort; but he had marched with a small force in May and June. Harrison tried to transport supplies, heavy guns, military stores, and all the material for an army of ten thousand men on a long campaign, as the autumn rains set in. On the extreme right, with great effort and expense, a considerable quantity of rations was accumulated on the Sandusky River, to be sent to the Maumee Rapids whenever the frosts should harden the swamps. On the extreme left, desperate efforts were made to carry supplies to Winchester’s army at Defiance by way of the Auglaize and St. Mary’s rivers. Hull’s road was impassable, and for that reason the column of Ohio troops and their supplies were stopped in the neighborhood of Urbana.

Throughout the months of October and November Harrison’s army stood still, scattered over the State of Ohio, while wagons and packhorses wallowed in mud toward the Maumee Rapids. None arrived. Sometimes the wagons were abandoned in the mud; sometimes the packhorses broke down; sometimes the rivers were too low for boats; then they froze and stopped water-transport. Universal confusion, want of oversight and organization, added to physical difficulties, gave play to laziness, incapacity, and dishonesty. No bills of lading were used; no accounts were kept with the wagoners; and the teams were valued so high, on coming into service, that the owners were willing to destroy them for the price to be received.[51] The waste of government funds was appalling, for nothing short of a million rations at the Maumee Rapids could serve Harrison’s objects, and after two months of effort not a ration had been carried within fifty miles of the spot. In Winchester’s camp at Defiance the men were always on half rations, except when they had none at all. During the greater part of December they had no flour, but lived on poor beef and hickory roots. Typhus swept them away by scores; their numbers were reduced to about one thousand. The exact force which Harrison had in the field was matter of conjecture, for he sent no return of any description to the adjutant-general’s office.[52] The Government gave him carte blanche, and he used it.[53] Chaos and misconduct reigned in every department, while he, floundering through the mud along his line of two hundred miles front, sought in vain for a road.

For the train of errors and disasters in the northwest Secretary Eustis was chiefly responsible, and his resignation, Dec. 3, 1812, left the campaign in this hopeless condition. From Dec. 3, 1812, until Jan. 13, 1813, Monroe acted as Secretary of War; and to him Harrison next wrote from Delaware, December 12, a letter which not only disheartened the Government, but was calculated to create a prejudice against the writer in the mind of any Secretary of War who was not invincibly prejudiced in his favor.[54]

“If there were not some important political reason,” said Harrison, “urging the recovery of the Michigan Territory and the capture of Malden as soon as those objects can possibly be effected, and that to accomplish them a few weeks sooner expense was to be disregarded, I should not hesitate to say that if a small proportion of the sums which will be expended in the quartermaster’s department in the active prosecution of the campaign during the winter was devoted to obtaining the command of Lake Erie, the wishes of the Government, in their utmost extent, could be accomplished without difficulty in the months of April and May. Malden, Detroit, and Mackinaw would fall in rapid succession. On the contrary, all that I can certainly promise to accomplish during the winter, unless the strait should afford us a passage on the ice, is to recover Detroit. I must further observe that no military man would think of retaining Detroit, Malden being in possession of the enemy, unless his army was at least twice as strong as the disposable force of the enemy. An army advancing to Detroit along a line of operation passing so near the principal force of the enemy as to allow them access to it whenever they think proper, must be covered by another army more considerable than the disposable force of the enemy. I mention this circumstance to show that the attack ought not to be directed against Detroit, but against Malden; and that it depends upon the ice affording a safe passage across the strait, whether I shall be able to proceed in this way or not. Detroit is not tenable. Were I to take it without having it in my power to occupy the opposite shore, I should be under the necessity of hiding the army in the adjacent swamp to preserve it from the effects of the shot and shells which the enemy would throw with impunity from the opposite shore. This result is so obvious to every man who has the least military information, that it appears to me as extraordinary as any other part of General Hull’s conduct that he should choose to defend Detroit rather than attack Malden.”

Hull could have asked no better apology for his surrender. Harrison did not know that the insubordination and refusal of the Ohio colonels to evacuate Detroit had forced Hull to remain there; but that Detroit was not tenable came at last to the surface as a self-evident truth of the campaign,—which Hull had always seen, and which Harrison himself announced almost as clearly in August as in December, but which he ignored in the interval.

“If it should be asked,” he continued, “why these statements were not made sooner,—I answer that although I was always sensible that there were great difficulties to be encountered in the accomplishment of the wishes of the President in relation to the recovery of Detroit and the conquest of the adjacent part of Upper Canada in the manner proposed, I did not make sufficient allowance for the imbecility and inexperience of the public agents and the villany of the contractors. I am still, however, very far from believing that the original plan is impracticable. I believe on the contrary that it can be effected.”

The excuse did not satisfy the Cabinet, who thought they saw that Harrison wished to throw upon Government the responsibility for a military failure fatal to himself. Perhaps a simpler motive guided Harrison, who from the first never had known precisely what to do, or had seen any clear path to success. He wrote, January 4, from Franklinton,—

“When I was directed to take the command in the latter end of September, I thought it possible by great exertions to effect the objects of the campaign before the setting in of winter.... The experience of a few days was sufficient to convince me that the supplies of provisions could not be procured for our autumnal advance; and even if this difficulty was removed, another of equal magnitude existed in the want of artillery. There remained then no alternative but to prepare for a winter campaign.”

According to this account he had seen early in October that advance was impossible, yet he wasted millions of money and many of his best troops in attempting it. Winter had come, and he was pledged to a winter campaign as impracticable as the autumn campaign had proved to be. Without the control of the Lake, any army beyond the Maumee must starve or surrender. The government had already paid a vast price in money and men in order to obtain this knowledge; yet Harrison proposed a winter campaign, with full persuasion of its uselessness.

December 20 he sent orders[55] to Winchester to descend the Maumee River from Defiance to the rapids, there to prepare sleds for an expedition against Malden, to be made by a choice detachment when the whole army should concentrate at the rapids. Early in January, the ground being at last frozen, provisions in large quantities were hurried to the Maumee River. Artillery was sent forward. The Pennsylvania and Virginia brigades moved to the Sandusky River, making an effective force of fifteen hundred men at that point. The whole effective force on the frontier amounted to six thousand three hundred infantry.[56] Harrison intended to move his headquarters forward from the Sandusky, and to reach the Maumee Rapids January 20, to which point he supposed General Winchester already in motion from Defiance.[57]

This was the situation January 12; and although Harrison hinted in his reports of January 4 and 8 that his winter campaign would probably fail,[58] he showed the intention of advancing at least as far as the strait opposite Malden, about thirty-five miles beyond the Maumee. This he might venture without much danger; and if he reached that point, supposing the straits to be frozen, the enemy to show little sign of resistance, and the weather to favor, he might attack Malden. Hull had been expected to take Malden with twelve or fourteen hundred men, with an open river behind him, a British fleet on his flank, fifty miles of road to cover, and supplies for only a few days at Detroit; but Harrison with six thousand men, the river frozen and the British fleet frozen in it, a secure base, with a million rations close in his rear, and no Isaac Brock in his front, still spoke with extreme doubt of his prospects, and said that “most of the well-informed men who knew the character of the country”[59] expected a suspension of operations for the winter.

Aware that from a military point of view no land-campaign could, except by accident, effect any result proportionate to its cost, Harrison had placed himself at the head of a popular movement so strong that he would have met the fate of Hull and Alexander Smyth, had he not made at least a demonstration against an enemy whose face he had not yet seen. Forced by his own pledges and the public discontent to enter on an unmilitary campaign, he was anxious to risk as little as possible where he could hardly expect to gain anything; and he would probably have contented himself with his first scheme of a coup-de-main against Malden or Detroit, without attempting to hold either place, had not his subordinate, General Winchester, rescued him from an awkward position by a blunder that relieved Harrison of further responsibility.

Brigadier-General Winchester was a planter of Tennessee, sixty-one years old, and formerly an officer in the Revolutionary War. Though outranking Harrison, he had allowed himself to be set aside by what he thought intrigue,[60] and consented to conduct the left wing of the force under Harrison’s command. Winchester was not a favorite with his Kentucky militia-men, who had no choice in electing him to their command. Their term of service was to expire in February; they had been imprisoned since September in a wilderness at Defiance,—hungry, cold, sick, and mutinous, able to find no enemy willing to fight them, and disgusted with idleness. No sooner was the ground frozen and the general movement of concentration possible, than Winchester’s command by common consent, under Harrison’s orders, broke up their camp near Defiance and marched to the rapids, where Hull’s road crossed the Maumee. There they arrived January 10, as Harrison expected. They fortified themselves on the north bank, and waited for the arrival of Harrison, who intended to join them January 20.

Winchester’s force included three regiments of Kentucky militia, numbering nine hundred effectives,[61] and the Seventeenth United States Infantry, numbering three hundred men, also Kentuckians. Altogether he had under his command at the rapids about thirteen hundred men,[62]—a force barely sufficient to hold the exposed position it had taken on the north bank of the river. The three Kentucky militia regiments were soon to go home. The other columns were not yet within supporting distance. If Colonel Proctor, who commanded at Malden, were capable of imitating Brock’s enterprise, he would hardly throw away an opportunity, which might never recur, to strike a blow at the Kentuckians, and by defeating them to drive Harrison’s army behind the Sandusky River. Every military motive warned Winchester not to divide, detach, or expose his troops without caution. He was himself a detachment, and he had no support nearer than the Sandusky.

While the troops were busily engaged in building a store-house and throwing up log-works in an injudicious and untenable position,[63] two Frenchmen came into camp, begging protection for the inhabitants of Frenchtown on the river Raisin, thirty miles in front, and within the British lines. Thirty-three families, or about one hundred and fifty persons, were resident at Frenchtown, and the place was held by a few Canadian militia, supposed to consist of two companies, with about as many Indians,—in all, some three hundred men.[64] This force might easily be destroyed, and the loss to the British would be serious. Winchester’s troops became eager to dash at them. A council of war decided, January 16, without a voice in remonstrance, that the movement should be made. The most ardent supporter of the adventure was Col. John Allen of the Kentucky Rifle regiment; but no one offered opposition, and Winchester agreed to the council’s opinion.[65]

The next morning, Jan. 17, 1813, Col. William Lewis, of the Fifth Kentucky militia, started for the river Raisin, with four hundred and fifty men.[66] A few hours afterward he was followed by Colonel Allen with one hundred and ten men. No reports told what regiments were taken, or where they were at any moment stationed; but Lewis and Allen probably led twelve companies, drawn from four Kentucky regiments,—the Seventeenth United States Infantry, recruited in Kentucky, commanded by Col. Samuel Wells; the Kentucky Rifles, Col. John Allen; the First Kentucky Infantry; and Colonel Lewis’s regiment, the Fifth Kentucky Infantry,—in all, six hundred and sixty men, representing the flower of Kentucky.

They marched on the ice, along the shore of Maumee Bay and Lake Erie, until nightfall, when they camped, and at two o’clock the next afternoon, January 18, reached without meeting resistance the houses on the south bank of the river Raisin. The north bank was occupied, according to British authority,[67] by fifty Canadian militia and two hundred Indians. The British force opened fire with a three-pound howitzer. The action began at three o’clock and lasted till dark, when the enemy after an obstinate resistance was driven about two miles into the woods with inconsiderable loss.[68] The action was sharp, and cost the Americans not less than twelve killed and fifty-five wounded, reducing their effective number to six hundred.

Colonel Lewis had orders to take possession of Frenchtown, and hold it. He reported his success to General Winchester at the rapids, and remained at Frenchtown waiting further orders. Winchester became then aware that the situation was hazardous. Six hundred men were with him in a half-fortified camp on the north bank of the Maumee; six hundred more were thirty miles in advance, at the Raisin River; while fully two thousand—or, according to Harrison’s estimate, four thousand[69]—enemies held two fortresses only eighteen miles beyond the Raisin. The Kentuckians at the Maumee, equally aware of their comrades’ peril, insisted on going to their aid. Winchester promptly started on the evening of January 19, and arrived at Frenchtown the next morning. Colonel Wells’s Seventeenth United States Infantry, two hundred and fifty men, followed, arriving at Frenchtown in the evening.[70]

Winchester, before leaving the Maumee Rapids, sent a despatch to Harrison with a report of the battle of the 18th, which met Harrison on the road hurrying to the Maumee Rapids. The next morning, January 20, Harrison arrived at the camp on the Maumee, and found there about three hundred Kentucky troops,[71] the remainder being all with Winchester at the river Raisin. Probably Harrison, whose own caution was great, felt the peril of Winchester’s situation,[72] but he sent his inspector-general, Captain Hart, forward with orders to Winchester “to hold the ground we had got at any rate,”[73] while he wrote to the Secretary of War:—

“Upon my way to this place [Maumee Rapids] last evening, I received the letter from the General [Winchester] of which the enclosed is a copy, informing me of the complete success of the enterprise in the defeat of the enemy and taking the stores they had collected. The detachment under Colonel Lewis remain at the river Raisin, and General Winchester very properly marched yesterday with two hundred and fifty men to reinforce him and take the command.... It is absolutely necessary to maintain the position at the river Raisin, and I am assembling the troops as fast as possible for the purpose.”[74]

Harrison added that his only fear was lest Winchester should be overpowered. He waited at the Maumee Rapids two days, until at noon, January 22, a messenger arrived with disastrous tidings from the front.

Winchester afterward told the story of his own proceedings with so much candor that his narrative became a necessary part of any explanation of his disaster:—

“Suspecting that Proctor would make an attempt to avenge this stroke, and knowing that our wounded men could not be removed, I hastened to reinforce Colonel Lewis with Wells’s regiment, two hundred and fifty men; and set out myself to join him, and arrived on the morning of the 20th. The town, lying on the north side of the river, was picketed on three sides, the longest facing the north, and making the front. Within these pickets Colonel Lewis’s corps was found. Not thinking the position eligible, nor the pickets a sufficient defence against artillery, I would have retreated but for the wounded, of whom there were fifty-five; but having no sufficient means for transporting these, and being equally destitute of those necessary for fortifying strongly, I issued an order for putting the place in the best condition for defence that might be practicable, intending to construct some new works as soon as the means for getting out timber might be had. On the evening of the 20th Wells arrived, and was directed to encamp on the right, in an open field, immediately without the picketing. On the 21st a patrol as far as Brownstown [opposite Malden] was sent out, and returned without seeing anything of an enemy. On the same day a man from Malden came in who reported that the enemy were preparing to attack us; but knowing nothing of the kind or extent of the preparation made or making, what he brought was thought to be only conjecture and such as led to a belief that it would be some days before Proctor would be ready to do anything.... Neither night-patrol nor night-pickets were ordered by me, from a belief that both were matters of routine and in constant use.... Not to discommode the wounded men, ... I took quarters for myself and suite in a house on the southern bank, directly fronting the troops and only separated from them by the river, then firmly frozen, and but between eighty and a hundred yards wide.”

The only educated officer under Harrison’s command was Major E. D. Wood of the Engineers, one of the early graduates of West Point, and an officer of high promise. He was not with Winchester’s division, but with the right wing on the Sandusky, and arrived at the Maumee Rapids some ten days afterward, where he built Fort Meigs, in February. During the campaign he kept a diary, and his criticisms of Winchester, Lewis, Allen, and their command were quoted with approval by the Kentucky historian,[75] as well as by Harrison’s biographer:[76]—

“The troops were permitted to select, each for himself, such quarters on the west side of the river as might please him best, whilst the general ... took his quarters on the east side,—not the least regard being paid to defence, order, regularity, or system, in the posting of the different corps.... With only one third or one fourth of the force destined for that service; destitute of artillery, of engineers, of men who had ever seen or heard the least of an enemy; and with but a very inadequate supply of ammunition,—how he ever could have entertained the most distant hope of success, or what right he had to presume to claim it, is to me one of the strangest things in the world.... Winchester was destitute of every means of supporting his corps long at the river Raisin; was in the very jaws of the enemy, and beyond the reach of succor. He who fights with such flimsy pretensions to victory will always be beaten, and eternally ought to be.”

Defeat under such conditions was disgraceful enough; but defeat by Colonel Proctor was one of the worst misfortunes that happened to an American general. The Prince Regent took occasion, at the close of the war, to express his official opinion of this officer, then Major-General Proctor, in language of unusual severity.[77] Yet Proctor’s first movements at the Raisin River showed no apparent sign of his being “so extremely wanting in professional knowledge, and deficient in those active, energetic qualities which must be required of every officer,” as his later career, in the Prince Regent’s opinion, proved him to be. He had opposed Brock’s bold movement on Detroit; but he did not hesitate to make a somewhat similar movement himself. January 21 he marched with artillery across the river on the ice, to Brownstown opposite Malden, in full view of any American patrol in the neighborhood. His force consisted of six hundred whites, all told,[78] besides either four hundred and fifty, six hundred or eight hundred Indians, under the chief Round Head, Tecumthe being absent collecting reinforcements on the Wabash.[79] This large body of more than a thousand men, without an attempt at concealment, crossed to Brownstown and marched twelve miles, January 21, camping at night within five miles of Frenchtown.[80] If the British historian James was correct, they numbered eleven hundred and eighty men, of whom five hundred and thirty were white, and the rest Indians;[81] but the official return reported the whites, including every person present, at five hundred and ninety-seven men. Two hours before dawn, January 22, they again advanced, and before daybreak approached within musket-shot of the picket-fence, and half-formed their line, before an alarm was given.

Had Proctor dashed at once on the defenceless Seventeenth regiment and the fence that covered the militia, he would probably have captured the whole without loss; but he preferred to depend on his three-pound guns, which gave the Kentuckians opportunity to use their rifles. In such fighting the Americans had much the advantage, especially as British regulars were opposite them. Within an hour the Forty-first regiment lost fifteen killed and ninety-eight wounded, and of the entire body of six hundred British troops not less than twenty-four were killed and one hundred and sixty-one wounded.[82] Their three-pound guns were abandoned, so murderous were the Kentucky rifles.[83] Had all the American troops been under cover, the battle would have been theirs; but Wells’s Seventeenth regiment was a hundred yards away, on open ground outside the picket-fence on the right, where it was flanked by the Canadian militia and Indians and driven back toward the river, until Allen’s Rifle regiment went out to help it. Gradually forced toward the rear, across the river, this part of the line was at last struck with a panic and fled, carrying with it Winchester himself, Colonel Allen, and Colonel Lewis; while six hundred Indians were in hot pursuit, or already in advance of them.

In the deep snow escape was impossible. Nearly a hundred Kentuckians fell almost side by side, and were scalped. Among these was Colonel Allen. General Winchester and Colonel Lewis were so fortunate as to fall into the hands of the chief Round Head, who first stripped them and then took them to Proctor, who had for the time withdrawn his forces and ceased firing. By Proctor’s advice, General Winchester sent an order to the men within the picket-fence to surrender.

By eight o’clock all resistance had ceased except from three hundred and eighty-four Kentuckians who remained within the picket-fence, under the command of Major Madison of the Rifle regiment. Surrounded by a thousand enemies, they had no chance of escape. Their ammunition was nearly exhausted; retreat was impossible; they could choose only between surrender and massacre, and they surrendered.[84] The British officers looked at them with curiosity, as they came within the British line.

“Their appearance,” said Major Richardson,[85] “was miserable to the last degree. They had the air of men to whom cleanliness was a virtue unknown, and their squalid bodies were covered by habiliments that had evidently undergone every change of season, and were arrived at the last stage of repair.... It was the depth of winter; but scarcely an individual was in possession of a great coat or cloak, and few of them wore garments of wool of any description. They still retained their summer dress, consisting of cotton stuff of various colors shaped into frocks, and descending to the knee. Their trowsers were of the same material. They were covered with slouched hats, worn bare by constant use, beneath which their long hair fell matted and uncombed over their cheeks; and these, together with the dirty blankets wrapped round their loins to protect them against the inclemency of the season, and fastened by broad leathern belts, into which were thrust axes and knives of an enormous length, gave them an air of wildness and savageness which in Italy would have caused them to pass for brigands of the Apennines. The only distinction between the garb of the officer and that of the soldier was that the one, in addition to his sword, carried a short rifle instead of a long one, while a dagger, often curiously worked and of some value, supplied the place of the knife.”

This description gave a lifelike idea of what Harrison justly thought the best material in the world for soldiery, had it been properly handled. Men who for four months had suffered every hardship, and were still unclothed, unfed, uncared for, and sacrificed to military incompetence, but hardened to cold, fatigue, and danger, had no reason to be ashamed of their misfortunes or of their squalor. Fortunately about five hundred were saved as prisoners, and thirty or forty escaped to the rapids; the rest, four hundred in number, were killed in battle, or massacred afterward.

Had Proctor acted with energy, he might have advanced to the rapids, and there have captured Harrison with his remaining force of nine hundred men, his artillery train and stores. Even with the utmost celerity Harrison could hardly have escaped, if an active pursuit had been made by Indians through the swamp which he had with extreme difficulty crossed two days before,[86] and in the heavy rain which followed the battle;[87] but Proctor had no wish for fighting. So far from thinking of attack, he thought only of escaping it, and hurried back to Malden at noon the same day, leaving the wounded prisoners behind without a guard. Nothing excused such conduct, for Proctor knew the fate to which he was exposing his prisoners. That night the Indians, drunk with whiskey and mad with their grievances and losses, returned to Frenchtown and massacred the wounded. About thirty perished, some apparently burned. Fortunately for the United States the glamour of Proctor’s victory hid his true character, and he was made a major-general,—the most favorable event of the war for the American armies he was to meet, and one which cost Great Britain even more in pride than in power.

CHAPTER V.

If Proctor was afraid of Harrison, with more military reason Harrison was afraid of Proctor; and while the British colonel, deserting his wounded prisoners, hurried from the field of battle, and felt himself in danger until the next day he was again entrenched at Malden, at the same moment Harrison, burning the post at the Maumee Rapids and destroying such stores as were collected there, hastened back to the Portage or Carrying River some fifteen miles in the rear. Within thirty-six hours after the battle, the two enemies were sixty miles apart. At the Portage River Harrison remained a week, until he had collected a force of two thousand men. With these he returned to the rapids February 1, and began to construct a regularly fortified camp on the south bank of the river. Fort Meigs, as it was called, did credit to the skill of Major Wood, the engineer officer who constructed it; but such a fortress seemed rather intended for defence than for the conquest of Canada.

In fact, Harrison had succeeded only in making the most considerable failure that had thus far marked the progress of the war; but while the public was still assuming treason and cowardice in William Hull, who had been sent with fifteen hundred men to hold Detroit and conquer Canada, and had been left unsupported to face destruction,—the same public admitted the excuses of Harrison, who with ten thousand men, unlimited means, and active support at Niagara, after four months of effort, failed even to pass the Maumee River except with a detachment so badly managed that only thirty-three men in a thousand escaped. This was the crowning misfortune which wrung from Gallatin the complaint that a “real incapacity” for war existed in the government itself, and must inevitably exhaust its resources without good result; but although it drove Gallatin to Europe, it left Harrison on the Maumee. Harrison would not take on himself the disgrace of admitting his inability to recapture Detroit, and the President would not, without his express admission, order him to desist. As Armstrong afterward explained:[88] “The Cabinet, not inexpert at deciphering military diplomacy, and peculiarly shy of incurring any responsibility it could avoid, determined, with perhaps less of patriotism than of prudence, to leave the question of continuing the winter campaign exclusively with the General.” The General, not inclined to sink into obscurity or to admit failure, set himself to a third campaign as hopeless as either of its predecessors. Ordering all the troops in his rear to join him, making a body of four thousand men, he fixed February 11 as the day for his advance on Malden, not expecting to reduce that place, but merely to raid it.[89] When the day arrived, the roads had again become impassable, the ice was no longer safe; and Harrison, “with much reluctance and mortification,”[90] was reduced to write from the Maumee Rapids to the Secretary of War that the campaign must cease.

Thus the Western movement, likened by Henry Clay to a tenth-century crusade, ended in failure. The Government would have been in a better position had it never sent a man to the Maumee, but merely built a few sloops at Cleveland. The entire result of six months’ immense effort was confined to raids into the Indian country; and even these were costly beyond proportion to their results. When the militia of Kentucky and Ohio, which had been mustered in August for six months’ service, returned to their homes in February, 1813, not only had they failed to reoccupy a foot of the ground abandoned by Hull, but they left Harrison almost alone at Fort Meigs, trembling lest the enemy should descend on his rear and destroy his supplies, or force him back to protect them.[91] He had accumulated artillery, ammunition, and stores at the Maumee Rapids, in a fortress which itself required a garrison of two thousand men and from which he could neither fall back, as he thought the wiser course,[92] nor remain with safety exposed to an active enemy. He called for more militia from Kentucky and Ohio, but the people no longer felt enthusiasm for war.

“I am sorry to mention,” reported Harrison, March 17,[93] “the dismay and disinclination to the service which appear to prevail in the Western country; numbers must give that confidence which ought to be produced by conscious valor and intrepidity, which never existed in any army in a superior degree than amongst the greater part of the militia who were with me through the winter. The new drafts from this State [Ohio] are entirely of another character, and are not to be depended on.”

In short, Harrison, who had in 1812 commanded ten thousand militia, seemed to think double the number necessary for 1813, besides regular troops and a fleet.

President Madison and two successive Secretaries of War had allowed themselves, for fear of displeasing Kentucky, to give Harrison carte blanche,[94] which Harrison had used without other limit than that of the entire resources of the West. The time at last came when such management must be stopped, and Secretary Armstrong, naturally impatient under the load of Eustis’s and Monroe’s failures, quickly decided to stop it. Harrison’s letter of February 11, announcing his failure, reached the Department March 1. March 5 the secretary wrote to Harrison ordering him to maintain a threatening attitude, but altering the mode of warfare. Henceforward the army was to be made subordinate,—the navy was to take the lead; and until the middle of May, when the fleet on Lake Erie should be constructed, Harrison was to maintain a strict defensive, and to protect the line of the Maumee with six regular regiments, only three of which had been yet partly raised.

Meanwhile, Harrison had but a few hundred regulars and some Pennsylvania and Virginia militia,—perhaps five hundred men in all,—to hold Fort Meigs, and mere squads of militia to guard eight other posts which had cost the government some millions of dollars. These five hundred troops, whose service was mostly near its end, he left at Fort Meigs, and in the middle of March he set out for Chillicothe and Cincinnati. Greatly annoyed at the summary manner in which Armstrong had put an end to his campaigning, he protested only against the inadequacy of his force for the defence required of it, and insisted on a temporary reinforcement of militia to garrison the fortress that had cost him so much effort to construct at the Maumee Rapids.

Then the value of General Proctor to his enemy became immense. Between January 22, when he attacked Winchester, and the end of April, when he moved on Fort Meigs, Proctor molested in no way the weak and isolated American garrisons. With hundreds of scouts and backwoodsmen at his command, he had not the energy or the knowledge to profit by his opponents’ exposed and defenceless condition. He allowed Major Wood to make Fort Meigs capable of standing a siege; he let Harrison, unmolested, pass a month away from his command; he looked on while the Virginia militia marched home, leaving only a handful of sickly men, under a major of artillery, to defend the unfinished fort; he made no attempt to waylay Harrison, who returned with reinforcements by way of the Auglaize River; and not until Harrison had enjoyed all the time necessary to prepare for attack, did Proctor disturb him.

Harrison, expecting an assault, hurried back from Cincinnati to Fort Meigs with some three hundred men, leaving a brigade of Kentucky militia to follow him. April 12 he reached the fort, but not till April 28 did Proctor appear at the mouth of the Maumee, with about five hundred regulars and nearly as many militia,—nine hundred and eighty-three whites, all told, and twelve hundred Indians under Tecumthe and other chiefs.[95] Besides this large force, he brought two twenty-four pound guns with other artillery from Detroit, and two gunboats supported the land-battery. While the guns were placed in position on the north bank of the river, the Indians crossed and surrounded the fort on the south. May 1 the batteries opened, and during four days kept up a heavy fire. Proctor, like Harrison, moved in the wilderness as though he were conducting a campaign on the Rhine; he liked regular modes of warfare, and with a force almost wholly irregular, after allowing Fort Meigs to be built, he besieged it as though he could take it by battering its earthen ramparts. Untaught by his losses at the river Raisin, he gave once more advantage to the Kentucky rifle; and with every opportunity of destroying the reinforcement which he knew to be near, he allowed himself to be surprised by it.

The Kentucky brigade of twelve hundred men, under Brigadier-General Green Clay, had descended the Auglaize River in boats, and arrived at Defiance May 3, where they learned that Fort Meigs was invested. So neglectful of his advantages was Proctor that he not only failed to prevent General Clay from advancing, but failed to prevent communication between the besieged fort and the relief-column, so that Harrison was able to arrange a general attack on the investing lines, and came near driving the British force back to Malden with the loss of all its artillery and baggage. At about nine o’clock on the morning of May 5, Clay’s brigade descended the rapids, and eight hundred and sixty-six men under Colonel William Dudley,[96] landing on the north side of the river, surprised and took possession of the British batteries, which were entirely unsupported. Had Clay’s whole force been on the ground, and had it been vigorously pushed forward, the small British division which held the north bank must have abandoned all its positions; but Dudley’s men were under no discipline, and though ready to advance were in no hurry to retreat, even when ordered. Three companies of the British Forty-first, and some of the Canadian militia soon gathered together; and although these could hardly have been half the number of Dudley’s force,[97] yet with Tecumthe and a body of Indians they attacked the batteries, drove the Kentuckians out, dispersed them, and either captured or massacred the whole body, under the eyes of Harrison and Fort Meigs.

This affair, though little less fatal to the Americans than that of the river Raisin, was much less dearly bought by the British. Five hundred prisoners fell into Proctor’s hands; two or three hundred more of the Kentucky brigade, including “the weak and obstinate but brave”[98] Dudley himself, must have been either killed in battle or massacred after surrender;[99] only one hundred and seventy escaped; the boats with the baggage were captured; while the whole British loss on the north side of the river hardly exceeded fifty killed and wounded. A bitter feeling against Proctor was caused by the massacre of some forty American prisoners while under a British guard, and also, as was alleged, under the eyes of General Proctor, who did not interpose, although a soldier of the Forty-first was murdered in trying to protect them. Probably all the prisoners would have been massacred had Tecumthe not ridden up at full speed, tomahawk in hand, and threatened to kill the first Indian who defied his authority.[100]

On the south side Harrison had better fortune, and Colonel John Miller of the Nineteenth U. S. Infantry by a sortie gallantly captured a battery, with some forty prisoners; but neither on the north nor on the south did the fighting of May 5 decide any immediate military result. Besides losing on the north bank half the reinforcement brought by General Green Clay, Harrison had lost in the siege and in the sorties on the south bank nearly three hundred men in killed and wounded.[101] If the numbers loosely reported in the American accounts were correct, the siege cost Harrison one thousand men, or fully half his entire force, including his reinforcements. After the fighting of May 5, he withdrew once more into the fort; the British batteries reopened fire, and the siege went on. No further attempt was made to trouble the enemy in open field. Harrison felt himself too weak for further ventures; yet never had his chance of a great success been so fair.

Proctor’s siege of Fort Meigs was already a failure. Not only had the fort proved stronger than he expected, but the weather was bad; his troops were without shelter; dysentery and loss in battle rapidly weakened them; half his militia went home, and, what was fatal to further action, his Indians could not be held together. Within three days after the battle of May 5, the twelve hundred Indians collected by Tecumthe’s influence and exertions in the northwest territory dispersed, leaving only Tecumthe himself and a score of other warriors in the British camp.[102] Proctor had no choice but to retire as rapidly as possible, and May 9 embarked his artillery and left his encampment without interference from Harrison, who looked on as a spectator while the movement was effected.

From that time until the middle of July Proctor remained quiet. Harrison moved his headquarters to Upper Sandusky and to Cleveland, and began to prepare for advance under cover of a naval force; but he was not allowed to rest, even though Proctor might have preferred repose. Proctor’s position was difficult. Told by Sir George Prevost[103] that he must capture what supplies he needed from the Americans, and must seek them at Erie and Cleveland, since Lower Canada could spare neither food nor transport, he was compelled to look for support to the American magazines. He was issuing ten thousand rations a day to the Indian families at Malden, and his resources were near an end.[104] Leaving Malden with either three hundred and ninety-one regulars, or about five hundred regulars and militia, and by one British account nearly a thousand Indians, by another between three and four thousand,[105] Proctor returned by water to the Maumee Rapids July 20, and tried to draw the garrison of Fort Meigs into an ambush. The attempt failed. General Green Clay, who was in command, had learned caution, and imposed it on his troops. Proctor then found that his Indians were leaving him and returning to Detroit and Amherstburg. To occupy them, Proctor took again to his boats and coasted the Lake shore as far as the Sandusky River, while the Indians who chose to accompany him made their way by land. August 1 the expedition effected a landing at the mouth of the Sandusky, and scattered panic into the heart of Ohio.

In truth, nothing could be more alarming than this movement, which threatened Harrison in all directions,—from Fort Meigs, on the Maumee, to Erie, or Presqu’isle, where Perry’s fleet was building. On Sandusky River Harrison had collected his chief magazines. All the supplies for his army were lying at Upper Sandusky, some thirty miles above the British landing-place, and he had only eight hundred raw recruits to defend their unfortified position.[106] Nothing but an untenable stockade, called Fort Stephenson, on the Sandusky River, where the town of Fremont afterward grew, offered an obstacle to the enemy in ascending; and Tecumthe with two thousand Indians was said to be moving from Fort Meigs by the direct road straight for the magazines, thus flanking Fort Stephenson and every intermediate position on the Sandusky.

In just panic for the safety of his magazines, the only result of a year’s campaigning, Harrison’s first thought was to evacuate Fort Stephenson in order to protect Upper Sandusky. The flank-attack from two thousand Indians, who never showed themselves, impelled him to retire before Proctor, and to leave the river open. July 29, after a council of war, he sent down a hasty order to young Major Croghan who commanded Fort Stephenson, directing him immediately to burn the fort and retreat up the river or along the Lake shore, as he best could, with the utmost haste.[107] Croghan, a Kentuckian, and an officer of the Seventeenth U. S. regiment, refused to obey. “We have determined to maintain this place, and by Heaven, we will,” he wrote back.[108] Harrison sent Colonel Wells, of the same regiment, to relieve him; but Croghan went to headquarters, and by somewhat lame excuses carried his point, and resumed his command the next day. Harrison gave him only conditional orders to abandon the fort,—orders which Croghan clearly could not regard, and which Harrison seemed to feel no confidence in his wishing to follow.[109] In the face of British troops with cannon he was to retreat; but “you must be aware that the attempt to retreat in the face of an Indian force would be vain.” Proctor’s main force was believed to be Indian.

Neither evacuating nor defending Fort Stephenson, Harrison remained at Seneca, ten miles behind it, watching for Tecumthe and the flank attack, and arranging a plan of battle for his eight hundred men by which he could repel the Indians with dragoons in the open prairie.[110] Croghan remained at Fort Stephenson with one hundred and sixty men, making every preparation to meet an attack. August 1 the woods were already filled with Indians, and retreat was impossible, when the British boats appeared on the river, and Proctor sent to demand surrender of the fort. Immediately on Croghan’s refusal, the British howitzers opened fire and continued until it became clear that they were too light to destroy the stockade.

If experience had been of service to Proctor, he should have learned to avoid direct attack on Americans in fortified places; but his position was difficult, and he was as much afraid of Harrison as Harrison was afraid of him. Fearing to leave Croghan’s little fort in the rear, and to seek Harrison himself, ten miles above, on the road to Upper Sandusky; fearing delay, which would discontent his Indian allies; fearing to go on to Cleveland or Erie without crippling Harrison; still more afraid to retire to Malden without striking a blow,—Proctor again sacrificed the Forty-first regiment which had suffered at the river Raisin and had been surprised at Fort Meigs. On the afternoon of August 2 the Forty-first regiment and the militia, in three columns of about one hundred and twenty men each,[111] with the utmost gallantry marched to the pickets of Fort Stephenson, and were shot down. After two hours’ effort, and losing all its officers, the assaulting column retired, leaving twenty-six dead, forty-one wounded, and about thirty missing, or more than one fifth of their force. The same night the troops re-embarked and returned to Malden.

Proctor’s report[112] of this affair was filled with complaints of the Indians, who could not be left idle and who would not fight. At Sandusky, he said, “we could not muster more hundreds of Indians than I might reasonably have expected thousands.”

“I could not, therefore, with my very small force remain more than two days, from the probability of being cut off, and of being deserted by the few Indians who had not already done so.... On the morning of the 2d inst. the gentlemen of the Indian department who have the direction of it, declared formally their decided opinion that unless the fort was stormed we should never be able to bring an Indian warrior into the field with us, and that they proposed and were ready to storm one face of the fort if we would attempt another. I have also to observe that in this instance my judgment had not that weight with the troops I hope I might reasonably have expected.... The troops, after the artillery had been used for some hours, attacked two faces, and impossibilities being attempted, failed. The fort, from which the severest fire I ever saw was maintained during the attack, was well defended. The troops displayed the greatest bravery, the much greater part of whom reached the fort and made every effort to enter; but the Indians who had proposed the assault, and, had it not been assented to, would have ever stigmatized the British character, scarcely came into fire before they ran out of its reach. A more than adequate sacrifice having been made to Indian opinion, I drew off the brave assailants.”

Sir George Prevost seemed to doubt whether Proctor’s excuse for the defeat lessened or increased the blame attached to it.[113] The defeat at Sandusky ruined Proctor in the esteem of his men. On the American side, Harrison’s conduct roused a storm of indignation. Through the whole day, August 2, he remained at Seneca with eight hundred men, listening to the cannonade at Fort Stephenson till late at night, when he received an express from Croghan to say that the enemy were embarking. The story ran, that as the distant sound of Croghan’s guns reached the camp at Seneca, Harrison exclaimed: “The blood be on his own head; I wash my hands of it.[114]” Whatever else might be true, his conduct betrayed an extravagant estimate of his enemy’s strength. The only British eye-witness who left an account of the expedition reckoned Proctor’s force, on its departure from Malden, at about four hundred troops, and “nearly a thousand Indians.”[115] The Indians dispersed until those with Proctor at Fort Stephenson probably numbered two or three hundred,[116] the rest having returned to Detroit and Malden. Harrison reported the British force as five thousand strong, on the authority of General Green Clay.[117]

Whether the British force was large or small, Harrison’s arrangements to meet it did not please Secretary Armstrong. “It is worthy of notice,” he wrote long afterward,[118] “that of these two commanders, always the terror of each other, one [Proctor] was now actually flying from his supposed pursuer; while the other [Harrison] waited only the arrival of Croghan at Seneca to begin a camp-conflagration and flight to Upper Sandusky.”

The well-won honors of the campaign fell to Major George Croghan, with whose name the whole country resounded. Whatever were the faults of the two generals, Major Croghan showed courage and intelligence, not only before and during the attack, but afterward in supporting Harrison against the outcry which for a time threatened to destroy the General’s authority. Immediately after the siege of Fort Stephenson every energy of the northwest turned toward a new offensive movement by water against Malden, and in the task of organizing the force required for that purpose, complaints of past failures were stifled. Secretary Armstrong did not forget them, but the moment was not suited for making a change in so important a command. Harrison organized, under Armstrong’s orders, a force of seven thousand men to cross the Lake in boats, under cover of a fleet.

The fleet, not the army, was to bear the brunt of reconquering the northwest; and in nothing did Armstrong show his ability so clearly as in the promptness with which, immediately after taking office, he stopped Harrison’s campaign on the Maumee, while Perry was set to work at Erie. Feb. 5, 1813, Armstrong entered on his duties. March 5 his arrangements for the new movements were already made. Harrison did not approve them,[119] but he obeyed. The Navy Department had already begun operations on Lake Erie, immediately after Hull’s surrender; but though something was accomplished in the winter, great difficulties had still to be overcome when February 17 Commander Perry, an energetic young officer on gunboat service at Newport, received orders from Secretary Jones to report to Commodore Chauncey on Lake Ontario. Chauncey ordered him to Presqu’isle, afterward called Erie, to take charge of the vessels under construction on Lake Erie. March 27 he reached the spot, a small village in a remote wilderness, where timber and water alone existed for the supply of the fleets.

When Perry reached Presqu’isle the contractors and carpenters had on the stocks two brigs, a schooner, and three gunboats. These were to be launched in May, and to be ready for service in June. Besides these vessels building at Erie, a number of other craft, including the prize brig “Caledonia,” were at the Black Rock navy-yard in the Niagara River, unable to move on account of the British fort opposite Buffalo and the British fleet on the Lake. Perry’s task was to unite the two squadrons, to man them, and to fight the British fleet, without allowing his enemy to interfere at any stage of these difficult operations.

The British squadron under Commander Finnis, an experienced officer, had entire control of the Lake and its shores. No regular garrison protected the harbor of Presqu’isle; not two hundred men could be armed to defend it, nor was any military support to be had nearer than Buffalo, eighty miles away. Proctor or Prevost were likely to risk everything in trying to destroy the shipyard at Erie; for upon that point, far more than on Detroit, Fort Meigs, Sandusky, or Buffalo, their existence depended. If Perry were allowed to control the Lake, the British must not only evacuate Detroit, but also Malden, must abandon Tecumthe and the military advantages of three or four thousand Indian auxiliaries, and must fall back on a difficult defensive at the Niagara River. That they would make every effort to thwart Perry seemed certain.

Superstition survived in nothing more obstinately than in faith in luck; neither sailors nor soldiers ever doubted the value of this inscrutable quality in the conduct of war. The “Chesapeake” was an unlucky ship to the luckiest commanders, even to the British captain who captured it. The bad luck of the “Chesapeake” was hardly steadier than the good luck of Oliver Perry. Whatever he touched seemed to take the direction he wanted. He began with the advantage of having Proctor for his chief enemy; but Harrison, also a lucky man, had the same advantage and yet suffered constant disasters. Commander Finnis was a good seaman, yet Finnis failed repeatedly, and always by a narrow chance, to injure Perry. Dearborn’s incompetence in 1813 was not less than it had been in 1812; but the single success which in two campaigns Dearborn gained on the Niagara obliged the British, May 27, to evacuate Fort Erie opposite Buffalo, and to release Perry’s vessels at Black Rock. June 6, at leisure, Perry superintended the removal of the five small craft from the navy-yard at Black Rock; several hundred soldiers, seamen, and oxen warped them up stream into the Lake. Loaded with stores, the little squadron sailed from Buffalo June 13; the wind was ahead; they were five days making eighty miles; but June 19 they arrived at Presqu’isle, and as the last vessel crossed the bar, Finnis and his squadron came in sight. Finnis alone could explain how he, a first-rate seaman, with a strong force and a fair wind, in such narrow seas, could have helped finding Perry’s squadron when he knew where it must be.

From June 19 to August 1 Perry’s combined fleet lay within the bar at Presqu’isle, while Proctor, with a sufficient fleet and a military force superior to anything on the Lake, was planning expeditions from Malden against every place except the one to which military necessity and the orders of his Government bade him go. August 4, Perry took out the armaments of his two brigs and floated both over the bar into deep water. Had the British fleet been at hand, such a movement would have been impossible or fatal; but the British fleet appeared just as Perry’s vessels got into deep water, and when for the first time an attack could not be made with a fair hope of success.

These extraordinary advantages were not gained without labor, energy, courage, and wearing anxieties and disappointments. Of these Perry had his full share, but no more; and his opponents were no better off than himself. By great exertions alone could the British maintain themselves on Lake Ontario, and to this necessity they were forced to sacrifice Lake Erie. Sir George Prevost could spare only a new commander with a few officers and some forty men from the lower Lake to meet the large American reinforcements on the upper. When the commander, R. H. Barclay, arrived at Malden in June, he found as many difficulties there as Perry found at Presqu’isle. Barclay was a captain in the British Royal Navy, thirty-two years old; he had lost an arm in the service, but he was fairly matched as Perry’s antagonist, and showed the qualities of an excellent officer.

Perry’s squadron, once on the Lake, altogether overawed the British fleet, and Barclay’s only hope lay in completing a vessel called the “Detroit,” then on the stocks at Amherstburg. Rough and unfinished, she was launched, and while Perry blockaded the harbor, Barclay, early in September, got masts and rigging into her, and armed her with guns of every calibre, taken from the ramparts.[120] Even the two American twenty-four pound guns, used by Proctor against Fort Meigs, were put on board the “Detroit.” Thus equipped, she had still to be manned; but no seamen were near the Lake. Barclay was forced to make up a crew of soldiers from the hardworked Forty-first regiment and Canadians unused to service. September 6 the “Detroit” was ready to sail, and Barclay had then no choice but to fight at any risk. “So perfectly destitute of provisions was the port that there was not a day’s flour in store, and the crews of the squadron under my command were on half allowance of many things; and when that was done, there was no more.”[121]

Early on the morning of September 9 Barclay’s fleet weighed and sailed for the enemy, who was then at anchor off the island of Put-in-Bay near the mouth of Sandusky River. The British squadron consisted of six vessels,—the “Detroit,” a ship of four hundred and ninety tons, carrying nineteen guns, commanded by Barclay himself; the “Queen Charlotte” of seventeen guns, commanded by Finnis; the “Lady Prevost” of thirteen guns; the “Hunter” of ten; the “Little Belt” carrying three, and the “Chippeway” carrying one gun,—in all, sixty-three guns, and probably about four hundred and fifty men. The American squadron consisted of nine vessels,—the “Lawrence,” Perry’s own brig, nearly as large as the “Detroit,” and carrying twenty guns; the “Niagara,” commander Jesse D. Elliott, of the same tonnage, with the same armament; the “Caledonia,” a three-gun brig; the schooners “Ariel,” “Scorpion,” “Somers,” “Porcupine,” and “Tigress,” carrying ten guns; and the sloop “Trippe,” with one gun,—in all, fifty-four guns, with a nominal crew of five hundred and thirty-two men, and an effective crew probably not greatly differing from the British. In other respects Perry’s superiority was decided, as it was meant to be. The Americans had thirty-nine thirty-two pound carronades; the British had not a gun of that weight, and only fifteen twenty-four pound carronades. The lightest guns on the American fleet were eight long twelve-pounders, while twenty-four of the British guns threw only nine-pound shot, or less. The American broadside threw at close range about nine hundred pounds of metal; the British threw about four hundred and sixty. At long range the Americans threw two hundred and eighty-eight pounds of metal; the British threw one hundred and ninety-five pounds. In tonnage the Americans were superior as eight to seven. In short, the Navy Department had done everything reasonably necessary to insure success; and if the American crews, like the British, were partly made up of landsmen, soldiers or volunteers, the reason was in each case the same. Both governments supplied all the seamen they had.

Between forces so matched, victory ought not to have been in doubt; and if it was so, the fault certainly lay not in Perry. When, at daylight September 10, his look-out discovered the British fleet, Perry got his own squadron under way, and came down with a light wind from the southeast against Barclay’s line, striking it obliquely near the head. Perry must have been anxious to fight at close range, where his superiority was as two to one, while at long range his ship could use only two long twelve-pounders against the “Detroit’s” six twelves, one eighteen, and two twenty-fours,—an inferiority amounting to helplessness. Both the “Lawrence” and the “Niagara” were armed for close fighting, and were intended for nothing else. At long range their combined broadside, even if all their twelve-pounders were worked on one side, threw but forty-eight pounds of metal; at short range the two brigs were able to throw six hundred and forty pounds at each broadside.

Perry could not have meant to fight at a distance, nor could Commander Elliott have thought it good seamanship. Yet Perry alone acted on this evident scheme; and though his official account showed that he had himself fought at close range, and that he ordered the other commanders to do the same, it gave no sufficient reasons to explain what prevented the whole fleet from acting together, and made the result doubtful. He did not even mention that he himself led the line in the “Lawrence,” with two gunboats, the “Ariel” and the “Scorpion,” supporting him, the “Caledonia,” “Niagara,” and three gunboats following. The “Lawrence” came within range of the British line just at noon, the wind being very light, the Lake calm, and Barclay, in the “Detroit,” opposite. Perry’s report began at that point:—

“At fifteen minutes before twelve the enemy commenced firing; at five minutes before twelve the action commenced on our part. Finding their fire very destructive, owing to their long guns, and its being mostly directed to the ‘Lawrence,’ I made sail (at quarter-past twelve) and directed the other vessels to follow, for the purpose of closing with the enemy. Every brace and bowline being shot away, she became unmanageable, notwithstanding the great exertions of the sailing-master. In this situation she sustained the action upwards of two hours, within canister-shot distance, until every gun was rendered useless, and a greater part of the crew either killed or wounded. Finding she could no longer annoy the enemy, I left her in charge of Lieutenant Yarnall, who, I was convinced from the bravery already displayed by him, would do what would comport with the honor of the flag. At half-past two, the wind springing up, Captain Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the ‘Niagara,’ gallantly into close action. I immediately went on board of her, when he anticipated my wish by volunteering to bring the schooners, which had been kept astern by the lightness of the wind, into close action.... At forty-five minutes past two the signal was made for ‘close action.’ The ‘Niagara’ being very little injured, I determined to pass through the enemy’s line; bore up, and passed ahead of their two ships and a brig, giving a raking fire to them from the starboard guns, and to a large schooner and sloop, from the larboard side, at half pistol-shot distance. The smaller vessels at this time having got within grape and canister distance, under the direction of Captain Elliott, and keeping up a well-directed fire, the two ships, a brig, and a schooner surrendered, a schooner and sloop making a vain attempt to escape.”

From this reticent report, any careful reader could see that for some reason, not so distinctly given as would have been the case if the wind alone were at fault, the action had been very badly fought on the American side. The British official account confirmed the impression given by Perry. Barclay’s story was as well told as his action was well fought:—

“At a quarter before twelve I commenced the action by a few long guns; about a quarter-past, the American commodore, also supported by two schooners, ... came to close action with the ‘Detroit.’ The other brig [the ‘Niagara’] of the enemy, apparently destined to engage the ‘Queen Charlotte,’ kept so far to windward as to render the ‘Queen Charlotte’s’ twenty-four pounder carronades useless, while she was, with the ‘Lady Prevost,’ exposed to the heavy and destructive fire of the ‘Caledonia’ and four other schooners, armed with heavy and long guns.... The action continued with great fury until half-past two, when I perceived my opponent [the ‘Lawrence’] drop astern, and a boat passing from him to the ‘Niagara,’ which vessel was at this time perfectly fresh. The American commodore, seeing that as yet the day was against him, ... made a noble and, alas! too successful an effort to regain it; for he bore up, and supported by his small vessels, passed within pistol-shot and took a raking position on our bow.... The weather-gage gave the enemy a prodigious advantage, as it enabled them not only to choose their position, but their distance also, which they [the ‘Caledonia,’ ‘Niagara,’ and the gunboats] did in such a manner as to prevent the carronades of the ‘Queen Charlotte’ and ‘Lady Prevost’ from having much effect, while their long ones did great execution, particularly against the ‘Queen Charlotte.’”

Barclay’s report, agreeing with Perry’s, made it clear that while Perry and the head of the American line fought at close quarters, the “Caledonia,” “Niagara,” and the four gunboats supporting them preferred fighting at long range,—not because they wanted wind, but because the “Caledonia” and gunboats were armed with long thirty-two and twenty-four pounders, while the British vessels opposed to them had only one or two long twelve-pounders. Certainly the advantage in this respect on the side of the American brig and gunboats was enormous; but these tactics threw the “Niagara,” which had not the same excuse, out of the battle, leaving her, from twelve o’clock till half-past two, firing only two twelve-pound guns, while her heavy armament was useless, and might as well have been left ashore. Worse than this, the persistence of the “Caledonia,” “Niagara,” and their gunboats in keeping, beyond range of their enemies’ carronades nearly lost the battle, by allowing the British to concentrate on the “Lawrence” all their heavy guns, and in the end compelling the “Lawrence” to strike. On all these points no reasonable doubt could exist. The two reports were the only official sources of information on which an opinion as to the merits of the action could properly be founded. No other account, contemporaneous and authoritative, threw light on the subject, except a letter by Lieutenant Yarnall, second in command to Perry on the “Lawrence,” written September 15, and published in the Ohio newspapers about September 29,—in which Yarnall said that if Elliott had brought his ship into action when the signal was given, the battle would have ended in much less time, and with less loss to the “Lawrence.” This statement agreed with the tenor of the two official reports.

Furious as the battle was, a more furious dispute raged over it when in the year 1834 the friends of Perry and of Elliott wrangled over the action. With their dispute history need not concern itself. The official reports left no reasonable doubt that Perry’s plan of battle was correct; that want of wind was not the reason it failed; but that the “Niagara” was badly managed by Elliott, and that the victory, when actually forfeited by this mismanagement, was saved by the personal energy of Perry, who, abandoning his own ship, brought the “Niagara” through the enemy’s line, and regained the advantage of her heavy battery. The luck which attended Perry’s career on the Lake saved him from injury, when every other officer on the two opposing flagships and four-fifths of his crew were killed or wounded, and enabled him to perform a feat almost without parallel in naval warfare, giving him a well-won immortality by means of the disaster unnecessarily incurred. No process of argument or ingenuity of seamanship could deprive Perry of the fame justly given him by the public, or detract from the splendor of his reputation as the hero of the war. More than any other battle of the time, the victory on Lake Erie was won by the courage and obstinacy of a single man.

Between two opponents such as Perry and Barclay, no one doubted that the ships were fought to their utmost. Of the “Lawrence” not much was left; ship, officers, and crew were shot to pieces. Such carnage was not known on the ocean, for even the cockpit where the sick and wounded lay, being above water, was riddled by shot, and the wounded were wounded again on the surgeon’s board. Of one hundred and three effectives on the “Lawrence,” twenty-two were killed and sixty-one wounded. The brig herself when she struck was a wreck, unmanageable, her starboard bulwarks beaten in, guns dismounted, and rigging cut to pieces. The British ships were in hardly better condition. The long guns of the gunboats had raked them with destructive effect. Barclay was desperately wounded; Finnis was killed; Barclay’s first lieutenant was mortally wounded; not one commander or second in command could keep the deck; the squadron had forty-one men killed and ninety-four wounded, or nearly one man in three; the “Detroit” and “Queen Charlotte” were unmanageable and fell foul; the “Lady Prevost” was crippled, and drifted out of the fight. Perry could console himself with the thought that if his ship had struck her flag, she had at least struck to brave men.

CHAPTER VI.

General Harrison, waiting at Seneca on the Sandusky River, received, September 12, Perry’s famous despatch of September 10: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The navy having done its work, the army was next to act.

The force under Harrison’s command was ample for the required purpose, although it contained fewer regular troops than Armstrong had intended. The seven regular regiments assigned to Harrison fell short in numbers of the most moderate expectations. Instead of providing seven thousand rank-and-file, the recruiting service ended in producing rather more than twenty-five hundred.[122] Divided into two brigades under Brigadier-Generals McArthur and Lewis Cass, with a light corps under Lieutenant-Colonel Ball of the Light Dragoons, they formed only one wing of Harrison’s army.

To supply his main force, Harrison had still to depend on Kentucky; and once more that State made a great effort. Governor Shelby took the field in person, leading three thousand volunteers,[123] organized in eleven regiments, five brigades, and two divisions. Besides the militia, who volunteered for this special purpose, Harrison obtained the services of another Kentucky corps, which had already proved its efficiency.

One of Armstrong’s happiest acts, at the beginning of his service as War Secretary,[124] was to accept the aid of Richard M. Johnson in organizing for frontier defence a mounted regiment of a thousand men, armed with muskets or rifles, tomahawks, and knives.[125] Johnson and his regiment took the field about June 1, and from that time anxiety on account of Indians ceased. The regiment patrolled the district from Fort Wayne to the river Raisin, and whether in marching or fighting proved to be the most efficient corps in the Western country. Harrison obtained the assistance of Johnson’s regiment for the movement into Canada, and thereby increased the efficiency of his army beyond the proportion of Johnson’s numbers.

While the mounted regiment moved by the road to Detroit, Harrison’s main force was embarked in boats September 20, and in the course of a few days some forty-five hundred infantry were safely conveyed by way of Bass Island and Put-in-Bay to Middle Sister Island, about twelve miles from the Canadian shore.[126] Harrison and Perry then selected a landing place, and the whole force was successfully set ashore, September 27, about three miles below Malden.

Although Proctor could not hope to maintain himself at Malden or Detroit without control of the Lake, he had still the means of rendering Harrison’s possession insecure. According to the British account, he commanded at Detroit and Malden a force of nine hundred and eighty-six regulars, giving about eight hundred effectives.[127] Not less than thirty-five hundred Indian warriors had flocked to Amherstburg, and although they greatly increased the British general’s difficulties by bringing their families with them, they might be formidable opponents to Harrison’s advance. Every motive dictated to Proctor the necessity of resisting Harrison’s approach. To Tecumthe and his Indians the evacuation of Malden and Detroit without a struggle meant not only the sacrifice of their cause, but also cowardice; and when Proctor announced to them, September 18, that he meant to retreat, Tecumthe rose in the council and protested against the flight, likening Proctor to a fat dog that had carried its tail erect, and now that it was frightened dropped its tail between its legs and ran.[128] He told Proctor to go if he liked, but the Indians would remain.

Proctor insisted upon retiring at least toward the Moravian town, seventy miles on the road to Lake Ontario, and the Indians yielded. The troops immediately began to burn or destroy the public property at Detroit and Malden, or to load on wagons or boats what could not be carried away. September 24, three days before Harrison’s army landed, the British evacuated Malden and withdrew to Sandwich, allowing Harrison to establish himself at Malden without a skirmish, and neglecting to destroy the bridge over the Canards River.

Harrison was surprised at Proctor’s tame retreat.

“Nothing but infatuation,” he reported,[129] “could have governed General Proctor’s conduct. The day that I landed below Malden he had at his disposal upward of three thousand Indian warriors; his regular force reinforced by the militia of the district would have made his number nearly equal to my aggregate, which on the day of landing did not exceed forty-five hundred.... His inferior officers say that his conduct has been a series of continued blunders.”

This crowning proof of Proctor’s incapacity disorganized his force. Tecumthe expressed a general sentiment of the British army in his public denunciation of Proctor’s cowardice. One of the inferior British officers afterward declared that Proctor’s “marked inefficiency” and “wanton sacrifice” of the troops raised more than a doubt not only of his capacity but even of his personal courage, and led to serious thoughts of taking away his authority.[130] The British at Sandwich went through the same experience that marked the retreat of Hull and his army from the same spot, only the year before.

Harrison on his side made no extreme haste to pursue. His army marched into Malden at four o’clock on the afternoon of September 27,[131] and he wrote to Secretary Armstrong that evening: “I will pursue the enemy to-morrow, although there is no probability of my overtaking him, as he has upwards of a thousand horses, and we have not one in the army.”[132] The pursuit was not rapid. Sandwich, opposite Detroit, was only thirteen miles above Malden, but Harrison required two days to reach it, arriving at two o’clock on the afternoon of September 29. From there, September 30, he wrote again to Secretary Armstrong that he was preparing to pursue the enemy on the following day;[133] but he waited for R. M. Johnson’s mounted regiment, which arrived at Detroit September 30, and was obliged to consume a day in crossing the river. Then the pursuit began with energy, but on the morning of October 2 Proctor had already a week’s advance and should have been safe.

Proctor seemed to imagine that the Americans would not venture to pursue him. Moving, according to his own report,[134] “by easy marches,” neither obstructing the road in his rear nor leaving detachments to delay the enemy, he reached Dolson’s October 1, and there halted his army, fifty miles from Sandwich, while he went to the Moravian town some twenty-six miles beyond. He then intended to make a stand at Chatham, three miles behind Dolson’s.

“I had assured the Indians,” said Proctor’s report of October 23, “that we would not desert them, and it was my full determination to have made a stand at the Forks (Chatham), by which our vessels and stores would be protected; but after my arrival at Dover [Dolson’s] three miles lower down the river, I was induced to take post there first, where ovens had been constructed, and where there was some shelter for the troops, and had accordingly directed that it should be put into the best possible state of defence that time and circumstances would admit of; indeed it had been my intention to have opposed the enemy nearer the mouth of the river, had not the troops contrary to my intention been moved, during my absence of a few hours for the purpose of acquiring some knowledge of the country in my rear.”

The British army, left at Dolson’s October 1, without a general or orders,[135] saw the American army arrive in its front, October 3, and retired three miles to Chatham, where the Indians insisted upon fighting; but when, the next morning, October 4, the Americans advanced in order of battle,[136] the Indians after a skirmish changed their minds and retreated. The British were compelled to sacrifice the supplies they had brought by water to Chatham for establishing their new base, and their retreat precipitated on the Moravian town the confusion of flight already resembling rout.

Six miles on their way they met General Proctor returning from the Moravian town, and as much dissatisfied with them as they with him. Pressed closely by the American advance, the British troops made what haste they could over excessively bad roads until eight o’clock in the evening, when they halted within six miles of the Moravian town.[137] The next morning, October 5, the enemy was again reported to be close at hand, and the British force again retreated. About a mile and a half from the Moravian town it was halted. Proctor had then retired as far as he could, and there he must either fight, or abandon women and children, sick and wounded, baggage, stores, and wagons, desert his Indian allies, and fly to Lake Ontario. Probably flight would not have saved his troops. More than a hundred miles of unsettled country lay between them and their next base. The Americans had in their advance the mounted regiment of R. M. Johnson, and could outmarch the most lightly equipped British regulars. Already, according to Proctor’s report, the rapidity of the Americans had destroyed the efficiency of the British organization:[138]—

“In the attempt to save provisions we became encumbered with boats not suited to the state of navigation. The Indians and the troops retreated on different sides of the river, and the boats to which sufficient attention had not been given became particularly exposed to the fire of the enemy who were advancing on the side the Indians were retiring, and most unfortunately fell into possession of the enemy, and with them several of the men, provisions, and all the ammunition that had not been issued to the troops and Indians. This disastrous circumstance afforded the enemy the means of crossing and advancing on both sides of the river. Finding the enemy were advancing too near I resolved to meet him, being strong in cavalry, in a wood below the Moravian town, which last was not cleared of Indian women and children, or of those of the troops, nor of the sick.”

The whole British force was then on the north bank of the river Thames, retreating eastward by a road near the river bank. Proctor could hardly claim to have exercised choice in the selection of a battleground, unless he preferred placing his little force under every disadvantage. “The troops were formed with their left to the river,” his report continued, “with a reserve and a six-pounder on the road, near the river; the Indians on the right.” According to the report of officers of the Forty-first regiment, two lines of troops were formed in a thick forest, two hundred yards apart. The first line began where the six-pound field-piece stood, with a range of some fifty yards along the road. A few Canadian Light Dragoons were stationed near the gun. To the left of the road was the river; to the right a forest, free from underbrush that could stop horsemen, but offering cover to an approaching enemy within twenty paces of the British line.[139] In the wood about two hundred men of the British Forty-first took position as well as they could, behind trees, and there as a first line they waited some two hours for their enemy to appear.

The second line, somewhat less numerous, two hundred yards behind the first, and not within sight, was also formed in the wood; and on the road, in rear of the second line, Proctor and his staff stationed themselves. The Indians were collected behind a swamp on the right, touching and covering effectually the British right flank, while the river covered the left.

Such a formation was best fitted for Harrison’s purposes, but the mere arrangement gave little idea of Proctor’s weakness. The six-pound field-piece, which as he afterward reported “certainly should have produced the best effect if properly managed,” had not a round of ammunition, and could not be fired.[140] The Forty-first regiment was almost mutinous, but had it been in the best condition it could not have held against serious attack. The whole strength of the Forty-first was only three hundred and fifty-six rank-and-file, or four hundred and eight men all told.[141] The numbers of the regiment actually in the field were reported as three hundred and fifteen rank-and-file, or three hundred and sixty-seven men all told.[142] The dragoons were supposed not to exceed twenty. This petty force was unable to see either the advancing enemy or its own members. The only efficient corps in the field was the Indians, who were estimated by the British sometimes at five hundred, at eight hundred, and twelve hundred in number, and who were in some degree covered by the swamp.

A. B. Advance Guard on foot at head of 5 Collumns—the 1st Battalion of the mounted Regiments.

C. D. Capt. Slecker’s Comp. of 100 men on foot at head of 2 Collumns

Note: five Brigades & Reserved Corps, Governor Shelbys troops

G. D. E. represents the whole of the 2d Battalion after I was wounded & finding it impracticable on account of logs & the thickness of the woods to break through the Indian line & form in their rear, I ordered the men to dismount & fight the Indians in their own way, part of the time the Indians contended for the ground at the 2d Swamp.

ACCOMPANYING COL. R. M. JOHNSON’S LETTER OF NOV. 21st 1813, DETAILING THE AFFAIR OF THE 5th AT THE RIVER THAMES, ETC.—WAR DEPARTMENT ARCHIVES, MSS.

Harrison came upon the British line soon after two o’clock in the afternoon, and at once formed his army in regular order of battle. As the order was disregarded, and the battle was fought, as he reported, in a manner “not sanctioned by anything that I had seen or heard of,”[143] the intended arrangement mattered little. In truth, the battle was planned as well as fought by Richard M. Johnson, whose energy impressed on the army a new character from the moment he joined it. While Harrison drew up his infantry in order of battle, Johnson, whose mounted regiment was close to the British line, asked leave to charge,[144] and Harrison gave him the order, although he knew no rule of war that sanctioned it.

Johnson’s tactics were hazardous, though effective. Giving to his brother, James Johnson, half the regiment to lead up the road against the six-pound gun and the British Forty-first regiment, R. M. Johnson with the other half of his regiment wheeled to the left, at an angle with the road, and crossed the swamp to attack twice his number of Indians posted in a thick wood.

James Johnson, with his five hundred men, galloped directly through the British first line,[145] receiving a confused fire, and passing immediately to the rear of the British second line, so rapidly as almost to capture Proctor himself, who fled at full speed.[146] As the British soldiers straggled in bands or singly toward the rear, they found themselves among the American mounted riflemen, and had no choice but to surrender. About fifty men, with a single lieutenant, contrived to escape through the woods; all the rest became prisoners.

R. M. Johnson was less fortunate. Crossing the swamp to his left, he was received by the Indians in underbrush which the horses could not penetrate. Under a sharp fire his men were obliged to dismount and fight at close quarters. At an early moment of the battle, Johnson was wounded by the rifle of an Indian warrior who sprang forward to despatch him, but was killed by a ball from Johnson’s pistol. The fighting at that point was severe, but Johnson’s men broke or turned the Indian line, which was uncovered after the British defeat, and driving the Indians toward the American left, brought them under fire of Shelby’s infantry, when they fled.

In this contest Johnson maintained that his regiment was alone engaged. In a letter to Secretary Armstrong, dated six weeks after the battle, he said:[147]—

“I send you an imperfect sketch of the late battle on the river Thames, fought solely by the mounted regiment; at least, so much so that not fifty men from any other corps assisted.... Fought the Indians, twelve hundred or fifteen hundred men, one hour and twenty minutes, driving them from the extreme right to the extreme left of my line, at which last point we came near Governor Shelby, who ordered Colonel Simrall to reinforce me; but the battle was over, and although the Indians were pursued half a mile, there was no fighting.”

Harrison’s official report gave another idea of the relative share taken by the Kentucky infantry in the action; but the difference in dispute was trifling. The entire American loss was supposed to be only about fifteen killed and thirty wounded. The battle lasted, with sharpness, not more than twenty minutes; and none but the men under Johnson’s command enjoyed opportunity to share in the first and most perilous assault.

The British loss was only twelve men killed and thirty-six wounded. The total number of British prisoners taken on the field and in the Moravian town, or elsewhere on the day of battle, was four hundred and seventy-seven; in the whole campaign, six hundred. All Proctor’s baggage, artillery, small arms, stores, and hospital were captured in the Moravian town. The Indians left thirty-three dead on the field, among them one reported to be Tecumthe. After the battle several officers of the British Forty-first, well acquainted with the Shawnee warrior, visited the spot, and identified his body. The Kentuckians had first recognized it, and had cut long strips of skin from the thighs, to keep, as was said, for razor-straps, in memory of the river Raisin.[148]

After Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, Tecumthe’s life was of no value to himself or his people, and his death was no subject for regret; but the manner chosen for producing this result was an expensive mode of acquiring territory for the United States. The Shawnee warrior compelled the government to pay for once something like the value of the lands it took. The precise cost of the Indian war could not be estimated, being combined in many ways with that of the war with England; but the British counted for little, within the northwestern territory, except so far as Tecumthe used them for his purposes. Not more than seven or eight hundred British soldiers ever crossed the Detroit River; but the United States raised fully twenty thousand men, and spent at least five million dollars and many lives in expelling them. The Indians alone made this outlay necessary. The campaign of Tippecanoe, the surrender of Detroit and Mackinaw, the massacres at Fort Dearborn, the river Raisin, and Fort Meigs, the murders along the frontier, and the campaign of 1813 were the price paid for the Indian lands in the Wabash Valley.

No part of the war more injured British credit on the American continent than the result of the Indian alliance. Except the capture of Detroit and Mackinaw at the outset, without fighting, and the qualified success at the river Raisin, the British suffered only mortifications, ending with the total loss of their fleet, the abandonment of their fortress, the flight of their army, and the shameful scene before the Moravian town, where four hundred British regulars allowed themselves to be ridden over and captured by five hundred Kentucky horsemen, with hardly the loss of a man to the assailants. After such a disgrace the British ceased to be formidable in the northwest. The Indians recognized the hopelessness of their course, and from that moment abandoned their dependence on England.

The battle of the Thames annihilated the right division of the British army in Upper Canada. When the remnants of Proctor’s force were mustered, October 17, at Ancaster, a hundred miles from the battlefield, about two hundred rank-and-file were assembled.[149] Proctor made a report of the battle blaming his troops, and Prevost issued a severe reprimand to the unfortunate Forty-first regiment on the strength of Proctor’s representations. In the end the Prince Regent disgraced both officers, recognizing by these public acts the loss of credit the government had suffered; but its recovery was impossible.

So little anxiety did General Harrison thenceforward feel about the Eighth Military District which he commanded, that he returned to Detroit October 7; his army followed him, and arrived at Sandwich, October 10, without seeing an enemy. Promptly discharged, the Kentucky Volunteers marched homeward October 14; the mounted regiment and its wounded colonel followed a few days later, and within a fortnight only two brigades of the regular army remained north of the Maumee.

At Detroit the war was closed, and except for two or three distant expeditions was not again a subject of interest. The Indians were for the most part obliged to remain within the United States jurisdiction. The great number of Indian families that had been collected about Detroit and Malden were rather a cause for confidence than fear, since they were in effect hostages, and any violence committed by the warriors would have caused them, their women and children, to be deprived of food and to perish of starvation. Detroit was full of savages dependent on army supplies, and living on the refuse and offal of the slaughter-yard; but their military strength was gone. Some hundreds of the best warriors followed Proctor to Lake Ontario, but Tecumthe’s northwestern confederacy was broken up, and most of the tribes made submission.

CHAPTER VII.

The new Secretaries of War and Navy who took office in January, 1813, were able in the following October to show Detroit recovered. Nine months solved the problem of Lake Erie. The problem of Lake Ontario remained insoluble.

In theory nothing was simpler than the conquest of Upper Canada. Six months before war was declared, Jan. 2, 1812, John Armstrong, then a private citizen, wrote to Secretary Eustis a letter containing the remark,—

“In invading a neighboring and independent territory like Canada, having a frontier of immense extent; destitute of means strictly its own for the purposes of defence; separated from the rest of the empire by an ocean, and having to this but one outlet,—this outlet forms your true object or point of attack.”

The river St. Lawrence was the true object of attack, and the Canadians hardly dared hope to defend it.

“From St. Regis to opposite Kingston,” said the Quebec “Gazette” in 1814, “the southern bank of the river belongs to the United States. It is well known that this river is the only communication between Upper and Lower Canada. It is rapid and narrow in many places. A few cannon judiciously posted, or even musketry, could render the communication impracticable without powerful escorts, wasting and parcelling the force applicable to the defence of the provinces. It is needless to say that no British force can remain in safety or maintain itself in Upper Canada without a ready communication with the lower province.”

Closure of the river anywhere must compel the submission of the whole country above, which could not provide its supplies. The American, who saw his own difficulties of transport between New York and the Lakes, thought well of his energy in surmounting them; but as the war took larger proportions, and great fleets were built on Lake Ontario, the difficulties of Canadian transport became insuperable. Toward the close of the war, Sir George Prevost wrote to Lord Bathurst[150] that six thirty-two-pound guns for the fleet, hauled in winter four hundred miles from Quebec to Kingston, would cost at least £2000 for transport. Forty twenty-four-pounders hauled on the snow had cost £4,800; a cable of the largest size hauled from Sorel to Kingston, two hundred and fifty-five miles, cost £1000 for transport. In summer, when the river was open, the difficulties were hardly less. The commissary-general reported that the impediments of navigation were incalculable, and the scarcity of workmen, laborers, and voyageurs not to be described.[151]

[(Larger)]

UPPER CANADA

NEW YORK

EAST END OF
LAKE ONTARIO
AND
RIVER ST. LAWRENCE
FROM
Kingston to French Mills

REDUCED FROM AN
ORIGINAL DRAWING IN THE
NAVAL DEPARTMENT

BY JOHN MELISH.

STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N.Y.

If these reasons for attacking and closing the river St. Lawrence had not been decisive with the United States government, other reasons were sufficient. The political motive was as strong as the military. Americans, especially in New England, denied that treasonable intercourse existed with Canada; but intercourse needed not to be technically treasonable in order to have the effects of treason. Sir George Prevost wrote to Lord Bathurst, Aug. 27, 1814,[152] when the war had lasted two years,—

“Two thirds of the army in Canada are at this moment eating beef provided by American contractors, drawn principally from the States of Vermont and New York. This circumstance, as well as that of the introduction of large sums of specie into this province, being notorious in the United States, it is to be expected Congress will take steps to deprive us of those resources, and under that apprehension, large droves are daily crossing the lines coming into Lower Canada.”

This state of things had then lasted during three campaigns, from the beginning of the war. The Indians at Malden, the British army at Niagara, the naval station at Kingston were largely fed by the United States. If these supplies could be stopped, Upper Canada must probably fall; and they could be easily stopped by interrupting the British line of transport anywhere on the St. Lawrence.

The task was not difficult. Indeed, early in the war an enterprising officer of irregulars, Major Benjamin Forsyth, carried on a troublesome system of annoyance from Ogdensburg, which Sir George Prevost treated with extreme timidity.[153] The British commandant at Prescott, Major Macdonnell, was not so cautious as the governor-general, but crossed the river on the ice with about five hundred men, drove Forsyth from the town, destroyed the public property, and retired in safety with a loss of eight killed and fifty-two wounded.[154] This affair, Feb. 23, 1813, closed hostilities in that region, and Major Forsyth was soon ordered to Sackett’s Harbor. His experience, and that of Major Macdonnell, proved how easy the closure of such a river must be, exposed as it was for two hundred miles to the fire of cannon and musketry.

The St. Lawrence was therefore the proper point of approach and attack against Upper Canada. Armstrong came to the Department of War with that idea fixed in his mind. The next subject for his consideration was the means at his disposal.

During Monroe’s control of the War Department for two months, between Dec. 3, 1812, and Feb. 5, 1813, much effort had been made to increase the army. Monroe wrote to the chairman of the Military Committee Dec. 22, 1812, a sketch of his ideas.[155] He proposed to provide for the general defence by dividing the United States into military districts, and apportioning ninety-three hundred and fifty men among them as garrisons. For offensive operations he required a force competent to overpower the British defence, and in estimating his wants, he assumed that Canada contained about twelve thousand British regulars, besides militia, and three thousand men at Halifax.

“To demolish the British force from Niagara to Quebec,” said Monroe, “would require, to make the thing secure, an efficient regular army of twenty thousand men, with an army of reserve of ten thousand.... If the government could raise and keep in the field thirty-five thousand regular troops, ... the deficiency to be supplied even to authorize an expedition against Halifax would be inconsiderable. Ten thousand men would be amply sufficient; but there is danger of not being able to raise that force, and to keep it at that standard.... My idea is that provision ought to be made for raising twenty thousand men in addition to the present establishment.”

Congress voted about fifty-eight thousand men, and after deducting ten thousand for garrisons, counted on forty-eight thousand for service in Canada. When Armstrong took control, Feb. 5, 1813, he began at once to devise a plan of operation for the army which by law numbered fifty-eight thousand men, and in fact numbered, including the staff and regimental officers, eighteen thousand nine hundred and forty-five men, according to the returns in the adjutant-general’s office February 16, 1813. Before he had been a week in the War Department, he wrote, February 10, to Major-General Dearborn announcing that four thousand men were to be immediately collected at Sackett’s Harbor, and three thousand at Buffalo. April 1, or as soon as navigation opened, the four thousand troops at Sackett’s Harbor were to be embarked and transported in boats under convoy of the fleet across the Lake at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, thirty-five miles, to Kingston. After capturing Kingston, with its magazines, navy-yards, and ships, the expedition was to proceed up the Lake to York (Toronto) and capture two vessels building there. Thence it was to join the corps of three thousand men at Buffalo, and attack the British on the Niagara River.[156]

In explaining his plan to the Cabinet, Armstrong pointed out that the attack from Lake Champlain on Montreal could not begin before May 1; that Kingston, between April 1 and May 15, was shut from support by ice; that not more than two thousand men could be gathered to defend it; and that by beginning the campaign against Kingston rather than against Montreal, six weeks’ time would be gained before reinforcements could arrive from England.[157]

Whatever defects the plan might have, Kingston, and Kingston alone, possessed so much military importance as warranted the movement. Evidently Armstrong had in mind no result short of the capture of Kingston.

Dearborn received these instructions at Albany, and replied, February 18, that nothing should be omitted on his part in endeavoring to carry into effect the expedition proposed.[158] Orders were given for concentrating the intended force at Sackett’s Harbor. During the month of March the preparations were stimulated by a panic due to the appearance of Sir George Prevost at Prescott and Kingston. Dearborn hurried to Sackett’s Harbor in person, under the belief that the governor-general was about to attack it.

Armstrong estimated the British force at Kingston as nine hundred regulars, or two thousand men all told; and his estimate was probably correct. The usual garrison at Kingston and Prescott was about eight hundred rank-and-file. In both the British and American services, the returns of rank-and-file were the ordinary gauge of numerical force. Rank-and-file included corporals, but not sergeants or commissioned officers; and an allowance of at least ten sergeants and officers was always to be made for every hundred rank-and-file, in order to estimate the true numerical strength of an army or garrison. Unless otherwise mentioned, the return excluded also the sick and disabled. The relative force of every army was given in effectives, or rank-and-file actually present for duty.

In the distribution of British forces in Canada for 1812–1813, the garrison at Prescott was allowed three hundred and seventy-six rank-and-file, with fifty-two officers including sergeants. To Kingston three hundred and eighty-four rank-and-file were allotted, with sixty officers including sergeants. To Montreal and the positions between Prescott and the St. John’s River about five thousand rank-and-file were allotted.[159] At Prescott and Kingston, besides the regular troops, the men employed in ship-building or other labor, the sailors, and the local militia were to be reckoned as part of the garrison, and Armstrong included them all in his estimate of two thousand men.

The British force should have been known to Dearborn nearly as well as his own. No considerable movement of troops between Lower and Upper Canada could occur without his knowledge. Yet Dearborn wrote to Armstrong, March 9, 1813, from Sackett’s Harbor,[160]—

“I have not yet had the honor of a visit from Sir George Prevost. His whole force is concentrated at Kingston, probably amounting to six or seven thousand,—about three thousand of them regular troops. The ice is good, and we expect him every day.... As soon as the fall [fate?] of this place [Sackett’s Harbor] shall be decided, we shall be able to determine on other measures. If we hold this place, we will command the Lake, and be able to act in concert with the troops at Niagara.”

A few days later, March 14, Dearborn wrote again.[161]

“Sir George,” he said, had “concluded that it is too late to attack this place.... We are probably just strong enough on each side to defend, but not in sufficient force to hazard an offensive movement. The difference of attacking and being attacked, as it regards the contiguous posts of Kingston and Sackett’s Harbor, cannot be estimated at less than three or four thousand men, arising from the circumstance of militia acting merely on the defensive.”

Clearly Dearborn did not approve Armstrong’s plan, and wished to change it. In this idea he was supported, or instigated, by the naval commander on the Lake, Isaac Chauncey, a native of Connecticut, forty years of age, who entered the service in 1798 and became captain in 1806. Chauncey and Dearborn consulted together, and devised a new scheme, which Dearborn explained to Armstrong about March 20:[162]—

“To take or destroy the armed vessels at York will give us the complete command of the Lake. Commodore Chauncey can take with him ten or twelve hundred troops to be commanded by Pike; take York; from thence proceed to Niagara and attack Fort George by land and water, while the troops at Buffalo cross over and carry Forts Erie and Chippewa, and join those at Fort George; and then collect our whole force for an attack on Kingston. After the most mature deliberation the above was considered by Commodore Chauncey and myself as the most certain of ultimate success.”

Thus Dearborn and Chauncey inverted Armstrong’s plan. Instead of attacking on the St. Lawrence, they proposed to attack on the Niagara. Armstrong acquiesced. “Taking for granted,” as he did[163] on Dearborn’s assertion, “that General Prevost ... has assembled at Kingston a force of six or eight thousand men, as stated by you,” he could not require that his own plan should be pursued. “The alteration in the plan of campaign so as to make Kingston the last object instead of making it the first, would appear to be necessary, or at least proper,” he wrote to Dearborn, March 29.[164]

The scheme proposed by Dearborn and Chauncey was carried into effect by them. The contractors furnished new vessels, which gave to Chauncey for a time the control of the Lake. April 22 the troops, numbering sixteen hundred men, embarked. Armstrong insisted on only one change in the expedition, which betrayed perhaps a shade of malice, for he required Dearborn himself to command it, and Dearborn was suspected of shunning service in the field.

From the moment Dearborn turned away from the St. Lawrence and carried the war westward, the naval and military movements on Lake Ontario became valuable chiefly as a record of failure. The fleet and army arrived at York early in the morning of April 27. York, a village numbering in 1806, according to British account, more than three thousand inhabitants, was the capital of Upper Canada, and contained the residence of the lieutenant-governor and the two brick buildings where the Legislature met. For military purposes the place was valueless, but it had been used for the construction of a few war-vessels, and Chauncey represented, through Dearborn, that “to take or destroy the armed vessels at York will give us the complete command of the Lake.” The military force at York, according to British account, did not exceed six hundred men, regulars and militia; and of these, one hundred and eighty men, or two companies of the Eighth or King’s regiment, happened to be there only in passing.[165]

Under the fire of the fleet and riflemen, Pike’s brigade was set ashore; the British garrison, after a sharp resistance, was driven away, and the town capitulated. The ship on the stocks was burned; the ten-gun brig “Gloucester” was made prize; the stores were destroyed or shipped; some three hundred prisoners were taken; and the public buildings, including the houses of Assembly, were burned. The destruction of the Assembly houses, afterward alleged as ground for retaliation against the capitol at Washington, was probably the unauthorized act of private soldiers. Dearborn protested that it was done without his knowledge and against his orders.[166]

The success cost far more than it was worth. The explosion of a powder magazine, near which the American advance halted, injured a large number of men on both sides. Not less than three hundred and twenty Americans were killed or wounded in the battle or explosion,[167] or about one fifth of the entire force. General Pike, the best brigadier then in the service, was killed. Only two or three battles in the entire war were equally bloody.[168] “Unfortunately the enemy’s armed ship the ‘Prince Regent,’” reported Dearborn,[169] “left this place for Kingston four days before we arrived.”

Chauncey and Dearborn crossed to Niagara, while the troops remained some ten days at York, and were then disembarked at Niagara, May 8, according to Dearborn’s report, “in a very sickly and depressed state; a large proportion of the officers and men were sickly and debilitated.”[170] Nothing was ready for the movement which was to drive the British from Fort George, and before active operations could begin, Dearborn fell ill. The details of command fell to his chief-of-staff, Colonel Winfield Scott.

The military organization at Niagara was at best unfortunate. One of Secretary Armstrong’s earliest measures was to issue the military order previously arranged by Monroe, dividing the Union into military districts. Vermont and the State of New York north of the highlands formed the Ninth Military District, under Major-General Dearborn. In the Ninth District were three points of activity,—Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario, and the Niagara River. Each point required a large force and a commander of the highest ability; but in May, 1813, Plattsburg and Sackett’s Harbor were denuded of troops and officers, who were all drawn to Niagara, where they formed three brigades, commanded by Brigadier-Generals John P. Boyd, who succeeded Pike, John Chandler, and W. H. Winder. Niagara and the troops in its neighborhood were under the command of Major-General Morgan Lewis, a man of ability, but possessing neither the youth nor the energy to lead an army in the field, while Boyd, Chandler, and Winder were competent only to command regiments.

Winfield Scott in effect assumed control of the army, and undertook to carry out Van Rensselaer’s plan of the year before for attacking Fort George in the rear, from the Lake. The task was not very difficult. Chauncey controlled the Lake, and his fleet was at hand to transfer the troops. Dearborn’s force numbered certainly not less than four thousand rank-and-file present for duty. The entire British regular force on the Niagara River did not exceed eighteen hundred rank-and-file, and about five hundred militia.[171] At Fort George about one thousand regulars and three hundred militia were stationed, and the military object to be gained by the Americans was not so much the capture of Fort George, which was then not defensible, as that of its garrison.

Early on the morning of May 27, when the mist cleared away, the British General Vincent saw Chauncey’s fleet, “in an extended line of more than two miles,” standing toward the shore. When the ships took position, “the fire from the shipping so completely enfiladed and scoured the plains, that it became impossible to approach the beach,” and Vincent could only concentrate his force between the Fort and the enemy, waiting attack. Winfield Scott at the head of an advance division first landed, followed by the brigades of Boyd, Winder, and Chandler, and after a sharp skirmish drove the British back along the Lake shore, advancing under cover of the fleet. Vincent’s report continued:[172]—

“After awaiting the approach of the enemy for about half an hour I received authentic information that his force, consisting of from four to five thousand men, had reformed his columns and was making an effort to turn my right flank. Having given orders for the fort to be evacuated, the guns to be spiked, and the ammunition destroyed, the troops under my command were put in motion, and marched across the country in a line parallel to the Niagara River, toward the position near the Beaver Dam beyond Queenston mountain.... Having assembled my whole force the following morning, which did not exceed sixteen hundred men, I continued my march toward the head of the Lake.”

Vincent lost severely in proportion to his numbers, for fifty-one men were killed, and three hundred and five were wounded or missing, chiefly in the Eighth or King’s regiment.[173] Several hundred militia were captured in his retreat. The American loss was about forty killed and one hundred and twenty wounded. According to General Morgan Lewis, Col. Winfield Scott “fought nine-tenths of the battle.”[174] Dearborn watched the movements from the fleet.

For a time this success made a deep impression on the military administration of Canada, and the abandonment of the whole country west of Kingston was thought inevitable.[175] The opportunity for achieving a decided advantage was the best that occurred for the Americans during the entire war; but whatever might be said in public, the battle of Fort George was a disappointment to the War Department[176] as well as to the officers in command of the American army, who had hoped to destroy the British force. The chief advantage gained was the liberation of Perry’s vessels at Black Rock above the Falls, which enabled Perry to complete his fleet on Lake Erie.