Chapter 41

THE WAR OF 1812

[1807]

Although paying, so long as Jay's treaty was in force, for certain invasions of our commerce, Great Britain had never adopted a just attitude toward neutral trade. She persisted in loosely defining contraband and blockade, and in denouncing as unlawful all commerce which was opened to us as neutrals merely by war or carried on by us between France and French colonies through our own ports.

The far more flagrant abuse of impressment, the forcible seizure of American citizens for service in the British navy, became intolerably prevalent during Jefferson's administration. Not content with reclaiming deserters or asserting the eternity of British citizenship, Great Britain, through her naval authorities, was compelling thousands of men of unquestioned American birth to help fight her battles. Castlereagh himself admitted that there had been sixteen hundred bona fide cases of this sort by January 1, 1811. And in her mode of asserting and exercising even her just claims she ignored international law, as well as the dignity and sovereignty of the United States. The odious right of search she most shamefully abused. The narrow seas about England were assumed to be British waters, and acts performed in American harbors admissible only on the open ocean. When pressed by us for apology or redress, the British Government showed no serious willingness to treat, but a brazen resolve to utilize our weak and too trustful policy of peace.

One instance of this shall suffice. Commodore Barron, in command of the United States war vessel Chesapeake, was attacked by the Leopard, a British two-decker of fifty guns, outside the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, to recover three sailors, falsely alleged to be British-born, on board. Their surrender being refused, the Leopard opened fire. The Chesapeake received twenty-one shots in her hull, and lost three of her crew killed and eighteen wounded. She had been shamefully unprepared for action, and was hence forced to strike, but Humphreys, the Leopard's commander, contemptuously declined to take her a prize. There was no excuse whatever for this wanton and criminal insult to our flag, yet the only reparation ever made was formal, tardy, and lame.

Sincere as was our Government's desire to maintain strict neutrality in the European conflict, it naturally found difficulty in making England so believe. Their opponents at home ceaselessly charged Jefferson, Madison, and all the Republicans with partiality to France, so that Canning and Castlereagh were misled; and they were confirmed in their suspicion by Napoleon's crafty assumption that our embargo or non-intercourse policy was meant to act, as it confessedly did, favorably to France. Napoleon's confiscation of our vessels, at one time sweeping, he advertised as a friendly proceeding in aid of our embargo. Yet all this did not, as Castlereagh captiously pretended, prove our neutrality to be other than strict and honest. At this time it certainly was both. So villainously had Napoleon treated us that all Americans now hated him as heartily as did any people in England.

[1812]

The non-intercourse mode of hostility, a boomerang at best, had played itself out before Jefferson's retirement; and since George's ministry showed no signs whatever of a changed temper, guiltily ill-prepared as we were, no honorable or safe course lay before us but to fight Great Britain. Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams, and Monroe--the last the soul of the war--deserved the credit of seeing this first and clearest, and of the most sturdy and consistent action accordingly. Their spirit proved infectious, and the Republicans swiftly became a war party.

Most of the "war-hawks," as they were derisively styled, were from the South and the southern Middle States. Fearing that, if it were a naval war, glory would redound to New England and New York, which were hotbeds of the peace party, they wished this to be a land war, and shrieked, "On to Canada." They made a great mistake. The land operations were for the most part indescribably disgraceful. Except the exploits of General Brown and Colonel Winfield Scott, subsequently the head of the national armies, not an action on the New York border but ingloriously failed. The national Capitol was captured and burnt, a deed not more disgraceful to England in the commission than to us in the permission. Of the officers in command of armies, only Harrison and Jackson earned laurels.

Harrison had learned warfare as Governor of Indiana, where, on November 7, 1811, he had fought the battle of Tippecanoe, discomfiting Tecumseh's braves and permanently quieting Indian hostilities throughout that territory. In the new war against England, after Hull's pusillanimous surrender of Detroit, the West loudly and at length with success demanded "Tippecanoe" as commander for the army about to advance into Canada. Their estimate of Harrison proved just. Overcoming many difficulties and aided by Perry's flotilla on Lake Erie, he pursued Proctor, his retreating British antagonist, up the River Thames to a point beyond Sandwich. Here the British made a stand, but a gallant charge of Harrison's Kentucky cavalry irreparably broke their lines. The Indians, led by old Tecumseh in person, made a better fight, but in vain. The victory was complete, and Upper Canada lay at our mercy.

The crowning naval triumph during the war, one of the most brilliant, in fact, in all naval annals, was won by Oliver Hazard Perry near Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, over the Briton, Barclay, a naval veteran who had served under Nelson at Trafalgar. The fleets were well matched, the American numbering the more vessels but the fewer guns. Barclay greatly exceeded Perry in long guns, having the latter at painful disadvantage until he got near. Perry's flag-ship, the Lawrence, was early disabled. Her decks were drenched with blood, and she had hardly a gun that could be served. Undismayed, Perry, with his insignia of command, crossed in a little boat to the Niagara. Again proudly hoisting his colors, aided by the wind and followed by his whole squadron, he pressed for close quarters, where desperate fighting speedily won the battle. Barclay and his next in command were wounded, the latter dying that night. "We have met the enemy and they are ours," Perry wrote to Harrison, "two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop."

Triumph far more complete might have attended the war but for the perverse and factious federalist opposition to the administration. Some Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.

Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible. Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature "to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering, referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began to be sedulously hushed--in consequence of the glorious news of victory and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.