Chapter 15

THE THEATRE OF OPERATIONS

War being now immediately at hand, it is advisable, for the better appreciation of the course of events, the more accurate estimate of their historical and military value, to consider the relative conditions of the two opponents, the probable seats of warlike operations, and the methods which it was open to either to pursue.

Invasion of the British Islands, or of any transmarine possession of Great Britain--save Canada--was denied to the United States by the immeasurable inferiority of her navy. To cross the sea in force was impossible, even for short distances. For this reason, land operations were limited to the North American Continent. This fact, conjoined with the strong traditional desire, received from the old French wars and cherished in the War of Independence, to incorporate the Canadian colonies with the Union, determined an aggressive policy by the United States on the northern frontier. This was indeed the only distinctively offensive operation available to her upon the land; consequently it was imposed by reasons of both political and military expediency. On the other hand, the sea was open to American armed ships, though under certain very obvious restrictions; that is to say, subject to the primary difficulty of evading blockades of the coast, and of escaping subsequent capture by the very great number of British cruisers, which watched all seas where British commerce went and came, and most of the ports whence hostile ships might issue to prey upon it. The principal trammel which now rests upon the movements of vessels destined to cripple an enemy's commerce--the necessity to renew the motive power, coal, at frequent brief intervals--did not then exist. The wind, upon which motion depended, might at particular moments favor one of two antagonists relatively to the other; but in the long run it was substantially the same for all. In this respect all were on an equal footing; and the supply, if fickle at times, was practically inexhaustible. Barring accidents, vessels were able to keep the sea as long as their provisions and water lasted. This period may be reckoned as generally three months, while by watchful administration it might at times be protracted to six.

It is desirable to explain here what was, and is, the particular specific utility of operations directed toward the destruction of an enemy's commerce; what its bearing upon the issues of war; and how, also, it affects the relative interests of antagonists, unequally paired in the matter of sea power. Without attempting to determine precisely the relative importance of internal and external commerce, which varies with each country, and admitting that the length of transportation entails a distinct element of increased cost upon the articles transported, it is nevertheless safe to say that, to nations having free access to the sea, the export and import trade is a very large factor in national prosperity and comfort. At the very least, it increases by so much the aggregate of commercial transactions, while the ease and copiousness of water carriage go far to compensate for the increase of distance. Furthermore, the public revenue of maritime states is largely derived from duties on imports. Hence arises, therefore, a large source of wealth, of money; and money--ready money or substantial credit--is proverbially the sinews of war, as the War of 1812 was amply to demonstrate. Inconvertible assets, as business men know, are a very inefficacious form of wealth in tight times; and war is always a tight time for a country, a time in which its positive wealth, in the shape of every kind of produce, is of little use, unless by freedom of exchange it can be converted into cash for governmental expenses. To this sea-commerce greatly contributes, and the extreme embarrassment under which the United States as a nation labored in 1814 was mainly due to commercial exclusion from the sea. To attack the commerce of the enemy is therefore to cripple him, in the measure of success achieved, in the particular factor which is vital to the maintenance of war. Moreover, in the complicated conditions of mercantile activity no one branch can be seriously injured without involving others.

This may be called the financial and political effect of "commerce destroying," as the modern phrase runs. In military effect, it is strictly analogous to the impairing of an enemy's communications, of the line of supplies connecting an army with its base of operations, upon the maintenance of which the life of the army depends. Money, credit, is the life of war; lessen it, and vigor flags; destroy it, and resistance dies. No resource then remains except to "make war support war;" that is, to make the vanquished pay the bills for the maintenance of the army which has crushed him, or which is proceeding to crush whatever opposition is left alive. This, by the extraction of private money, and of supplies for the use of his troops, from the country in which he was fighting, was the method of Napoleon, than whom no man held more delicate views concerning the gross impropriety of capturing private property at sea, whither his power did not extend. Yet this, in effect, is simply another method of forcing the enemy to surrender a large part of his means, so weakening him, while transferring it to the victor for the better propagation of hostilities. The exaction of a pecuniary indemnity from the worsted party at the conclusion of a war, as is frequently done, differs from the seizure of property in transit afloat only in method, and as peace differs from war. In either case, money or money's worth is exacted; but when peace supervenes, the method of collection is left to the Government of the country, in pursuance of its powers of taxation, to distribute the burden among the people; whereas in war, the primary object being immediate injury to the enemy's fighting power, it is not only legitimate in principle, but particularly effective, to seek the disorganization of his financial system by a crushing attack upon one of its important factors, because effort thus is concentrated on a readily accessible, fundamental element of his general prosperity. That the loss falls directly on individuals, or a class, instead of upon the whole community, is but an incident of war, just as some men are killed and others not. Indirectly, but none the less surely, the whole community, and, what is more important, the organized government, are crippled; offensive powers impaired.

But while this is the absolute tendency of war against commerce, common to all cases, the relative value varies greatly with the countries having recourse to it. It is a species of hostilities easily extemporized by a great maritime nation; it therefore favors one whose policy is not to maintain a large naval establishment. It opens a field for a sea militia force, requiring little antecedent military training. Again, it is a logical military reply to commercial blockade, which is the most systematic, regularized, and extensive form of commerce-destruction known to war. Commercial blockade is not to be confounded with the military measure of confining a body of hostile ships of war to their harbor, by stationing before it a competent force. It is directed against merchant vessels, and is not a military operation in the narrowest sense, in that it does not necessarily involve fighting, nor propose the capture of the blockaded harbor. It is not usually directed against military ports, unless these happen to be also centres of commerce. Its object, which was the paramount function of the United States Navy during the Civil War, dealing probably the most decisive blow inflicted upon the Confederacy, is the destruction of commerce by closing the ports of egress and ingress. Incidental to that, all ships, neutrals included, attempting to enter or depart, after public notification through customary channels, are captured and confiscated as remorselessly as could be done by the most greedy privateer. Thus constituted, the operation receives far wider scope than commerce-destruction on the high seas; for this is confined to merchantmen of belligerents, while commercial blockade, by universal consent, subjects to capture neutrals who attempt to infringe it, because, by attempting to defeat the efforts of one belligerent, they make themselves parties to the war.

In fact, commercial blockade, though most effective as a military measure in broad results, is so distinctly commerce-destructive in essence, that those who censure the one form must logically proceed to denounce the other. This, as has been seen,[389] Napoleon did; alleging in his Berlin Decree, in 1806, that war cannot be extended to any private property whatever, and that the right of blockade is restricted to _fortified_ places, actually invested by competent forces. This he had the face to assert, at the very moment when he was compelling every vanquished state to extract, from the private means of its subjects, coin running up to hundreds of millions to replenish his military chest for further extension of hostilities. Had this dictum been accepted international law in 1861, the United States could not have closed the ports of the Confederacy, the commerce of which would have proceeded unmolested; and hostile measures being consequently directed against men's persons instead of their trade, victory, if accomplished at all, would have cost three lives for every two actually lost. It is apparent, immediately on statement, that against commerce-destruction by blockade, the recourse of the weaker maritime belligerent is commerce-destruction by cruisers on the high sea. Granting equal efficiency in the use of either measure, it is further plain that the latter is intrinsically far less efficacious. To cut off access to a city is much more certainly accomplished by holding the gates than by scouring the country in search of persons seeking to enter. Still, one can but do what one can. In 1861 to 1865, the Southern Confederacy, unable to shake off the death grip fastened on its throat, attempted counteraction by means of the "Alabama," "Sumter," and their less famous consorts, with what disastrous influence upon the navigation--the shipping--of the Union it is needless to insist. But while the shipping of the opposite belligerent was in this way not only crippled, but indirectly was swept from the seas, the Confederate cruisers, not being able to establish a blockade, could not prevent neutral vessels from carrying on the commerce of the Union. This consequently suffered no serious interruption; whereas the produce of the South, its inconvertible wealth--cotton chiefly--was practically useless to sustain the financial system and credit of the people. So, in 1812 and the two years following, the United States flooded the seas with privateers, producing an effect upon British commerce which, though inconclusive singly, doubtless co-operated powerfully with other motives to dispose the enemy to liberal terms of peace. It was the reply, and the only possible reply, to the commercial blockade, the grinding efficacy of which it will be a principal object of these pages to depict. The issue to us has been accurately characterized by Mr. Henry Adams, in the single word "Exhaustion."[390]

Both parties to the War of 1812 being conspicuously maritime in disposition and occupation, while separated by three thousand miles of ocean, the sea and its navigable approaches became necessarily the most extensive scene of operations. There being between them great inequality of organized naval strength and of pecuniary resources, they inevitably resorted, according to their respective force, to one or the other form of maritime hostilities against commerce which have been indicated. To this procedure combats on the high seas were merely incidental. Tradition, professional pride, and the combative spirit inherent in both peoples, compelled fighting when armed vessels of nearly equal strength met; but such contests, though wholly laudable from the naval standpoint, which under ordinary circumstances cannot afford to encourage retreat from an equal foe, were indecisive of general results, however meritorious in particular execution. They had no effect upon the issue, except so far as they inspired moral enthusiasm and confidence. Still more, in the sequel they have had a distinctly injurious effect upon national opinion in the United States. In the brilliant exhibition of enterprise, professional skill, and usual success, by its naval officers and seamen, the country has forgotten the precedent neglect of several administrations to constitute the navy as strong in proportion to the means of the country as it was excellent through the spirit and acquirements of its officers. Sight also has been lost of the actual conditions of repression, confinement, and isolation, enforced upon the maritime frontier during the greater part of the war, with the misery and mortification thence ensuing. It has been widely inferred that the maritime conditions in general were highly flattering to national pride, and that a future emergency could be confronted with the same supposed facility, and as little preparation, as the odds of 1812 are believed to have been encountered and overcome. This mental impression, this picture, is false throughout, alike in its grouping of incidents, in its disregard of proportion, and in its ignoring of facts. The truth of this assertion will appear in due course of this narrative, and it will be seen that, although relieved by many brilliant incidents, indicative of the real spirit and capacity of the nation, the record upon the whole is one of gloom, disaster, and governmental incompetence, resulting from lack of national preparation, due to the obstinate and blind prepossessions of the Government, and, in part, of the people.

This was so even upon the water, despite the great names--for great they were in measure of their opportunities--of Decatur, Hull, Perry, Macdonough, Morris, and a dozen others. On shore things were far worse; for while upon the water the country had as leaders men still in the young prime of life, who were both seamen and officers,--none of those just named were then over forty,--the army at the beginning had only elderly men, who, if they ever had been soldiers in any truer sense than young fighting men,--soldiers by training and understanding,--had long since disacquired whatever knowledge and habit of the profession they had gained in the War of Independence, then more than thirty years past. "As far as American movements are concerned," said one of Wellington's trusted officers, sent to report upon the subject of Canadian defence, "the campaign of 1812 is almost beneath criticism."[391] Instructed American opinion must sorrowfully admit the truth of the comment. That of 1813 was not much better, although some younger men--Brown, Scott, Gaines, Macomb, Ripley--were beginning to show their mettle, and there had by then been placed at the head of the War Department a secretary who at least possessed a reasoned understanding of the principles of warfare. With every material military advantage, save the vital one of adequate preparation, it was found too late to prepare when war was already at hand; and after the old inefficients had been given a chance to demonstrate their incapacity, it was too late to utilize the young men.

Jefferson, with curious insanity of optimism, had once written, "We begin to broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulf Stream as of our waters, within which hostilities and cruising are to be frowned on for the present, and prohibited as soon as either consent or force will permit;"[392] while at the same time, under an unbroken succession of maritime humiliations, he of purpose neglected all naval preparation save that of two hundred gunboats, which could not venture out of sight of land without putting their guns in the hold. With like blindness to the conditions to which his administration had reduced the nation, he now wrote: "The acquisition of Canada this year [1812], as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching."[393] This would scarcely have been a misappreciation, had his care for the army and that of his successor given the country in 1812 an effective force of fifteen thousand regulars. Great Britain had but forty-five hundred in all Canada,[394] from Quebec to St. Joseph's, near Mackinac; and the American resources in militia were to hers as ten to one. But Jefferson and Madison, with their Secretary of the Treasury, had reduced the national debt between 1801 and 1812 from $80,000,000 to $45,000,000, concerning which a Virginia Senator remarked: "This difference has never been felt by society. It has produced no effect upon the common intercourse among men. For my part, I should never have known of the reduction but for the annual Treasury Report."[395] Something was learned about it, however, in the first year of the war, and the interest upon the savings was received at Detroit, on the Niagara frontier, in the Chesapeake and the Delaware.

The War of 1812 was very unpopular in certain sections of the United States and with certain parts of the community. By these, particular fault was found with the invasion of Canada. "You have declared war, it was said, for two principal alleged reasons: one, the general policy of the British Government, formulated in the successive Orders in Council, to the unjustifiable injury and violation of American commerce; the other, the impressment of seamen from American merchant ships. What have Canada and the Canadians to do with either? If war you must, carry on your war upon the ocean, the scene of your avowed wrongs, and the seat of your adversary's prosperity, and do not embroil these innocent regions and people in the common ruin which, without adequate cause, you are bringing upon your own countrymen, and upon the only nation that now upholds the freedom of mankind against that oppressor of our race, that incarnation of all despotism--Napoleon." So, not without some alloy of self-interest, the question presented itself to New England, and so New England presented it to the Government and the Southern part of the Union; partly as a matter of honest conviction, partly as an incident of the factiousness inherent in all political opposition, which makes a point wherever it can.

Logically, there may at first appear some reason in these arguments. We are bound to believe so, for we cannot entirely impeach the candor of our ancestors, who doubtless advanced them with some degree of conviction. The answer, of course, is, that when two nations go to war, all the citizens of one become internationally the enemies of the other. This is the accepted principle of International Law, a residuum of the concentrated wisdom of many generations of international legists. When war takes the place of peace, it annihilates all natural and conventional rights, all treaties and compacts, except those which appertain to the state of war itself. The warfare of modern civilization assures many rights to an enemy, by custom, by precedent, by compact; many treaties bear express stipulations that, should war arise between the parties, such and such methods of warfare are barred; but all these are merely guaranteed exceptions to the general rule that every individual of each nation is the enemy of those of the opposing belligerent.

Canada and the Canadians, being British subjects, became therefore, however involuntarily, the enemies of the United States, when the latter decided that the injuries received from Great Britain compelled recourse to the sword. Moreover, war, once determined, must be waged on the principles of war; and whatever greed of annexation may have entered into the motives of the Administration of the day, there can be no question that politically and militarily, as a war measure, the invasion of Canada was not only justifiable but imperative. "In case of war," wrote the United States Secretary of State, Monroe, a very few days[396] before the declaration, "it might be necessary to invade Canada; not as an object of the war, but as a means to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion." War now is never waged for the sake of mere fighting, simply to see who is the better at killing people. The warfare of civilized nations is for the purpose of accomplishing an object, obtaining a concession of alleged right from an enemy who has proved implacable to argument. He is to be made to yield to force what he has refused to reason; and to do that, hold is laid upon what is his, either by taking actual possession, or by preventing his utilizing what he still may retain. An attachment is issued, so to say, or an injunction laid, according to circumstances; as men in law do to enforce payment of a debt, or abatement of an injury. If, in the attempt to do this, the other nation resists, as it probably will, then fighting ensues; but that fighting is only an incident of war. War, in substance, though not perhaps in form, began when the one nation resorted to force, quite irrespective of the resistance of the other.

Canada, conquered by the United States, would therefore have been a piece of British property attached; either in compensation for claims, or as an asset in the bargaining which precedes a treaty of peace. Its retention even, as a permanent possession, would have been justified by the law of war, if the military situation supported that course. This is a political consideration; militarily, the reasons were even stronger. To Americans the War of 1812 has worn the appearance of a maritime contest. This is both natural and just; for, as a matter of fact, not only were the maritime operations more pleasing to retrospect, but they also were as a whole, and on both sides, far more efficient, far more virile, than those on land. Under the relative conditions of the parties, however, it ought to have been a land war, because of the vastly superior advantages on shore possessed by the party declaring war; and such it would have been, doubtless, but for the amazing incompetency of most of the army leaders on both sides, after the fall of the British general, Brock, almost at the opening of hostilities. This incompetency, on the part of the United States, is directly attributable to the policy of Jefferson and Madison; for had proper attention and development been given to the army between 1801 and 1812, it could scarcely have failed that some indication of men's fitness or unfitness would have preceded and obviated the lamentable experience of the first two years, when every opportunity was favorable, only to be thrown away from lack of leadership. That even the defects of preparation, extreme and culpable as these were, could have been overcome, is evidenced by the history of the Lakes. The Governor General, Prevost, reported to the home government in July and August, 1812, that the British still had the naval superiority on Erie and Ontario;[397] but this condition was reversed by the energy and capacity of the American commanders, Chauncey, Perry, and Macdonough, utilizing the undeniable superiority in available resources--mechanics and transportation--which their territory had over the Canadian, not for naval warfare only, but for land as well.

The general considerations that have been advanced are sufficient to indicate what should have been the general plan of the war on the part of the United States. Every war must be aggressive, or, to use the technical term, offensive, in military character; for unless you injure the enemy, if you confine yourself, as some of the grumblers of that day would have it, to simple defence against his efforts, obviously he has no inducement to yield your contention. Incidentally, however, vital interests must be defended, otherwise the power of offence falls with them. Every war, therefore, has both a defensive and an offensive side, and in an effective plan of campaign each must receive due attention. Now, in 1812, so far as general natural conditions went, the United States was relatively weak on the sea frontier, and strong on the side of Canada. The seaboard might, indeed, in the preceding ten years, have been given a development of force, by the creation of an adequate navy, which would have prevented war, by the obvious danger to British interests involved in hostilities. But this had not been done; and Jefferson, by his gunboat policy, building some two hundred of those vessels, worthless unless under cover of the land, proclaimed by act as by voice his adherence to a bare defensive. The sea frontier, therefore, became mainly a line of defence, the utility of which primarily was, or should have been, to maintain communication with the outside world; to support commerce, which in turn should sustain the financial potency that determines the issues of war.

The truth of this observation is shown by one single fact, which will receive recurrent mention from time to time in the narrative. Owing partly to the necessities of the British Government, and partly as a matter of favor extended to the New England States, on account of their antagonism to the war, the commercial blockade of the coast was for a long time--until April 25, 1814--limited to the part between Narragansett Bay and the boundary of Florida, then a Spanish colony. During this period, which Madison angrily called one of "invidious discrimination between different parts of the United States," New England was left open to neutral commerce, which the British, to supply their own wants, further encouraged by a system of licenses, exempting from capture the vessels engaged, even though American. Owing largely to this, though partly to the local development of manufactures caused by the previous policy of restriction upon foreign trade, which had diverted New England from maritime commerce to manufactures, that section became the distributing centre of the Union. In consequence, the remainder of the country was practically drained of specie, which set to the northward and eastward, the surplusage above strictly local needs finding its way to Canada, to ease the very severe necessities of the British military authorities there; for Great Britain, maintaining her own armies in the Spanish peninsula, and supporting in part the alliance against Napoleon on the Continent, could spare no coin to Canada. It could not go far south, because the coasting trade was destroyed by the enemy's fleets, and the South could not send forward its produce by land to obtain money in return. The deposits in Massachusetts banks increased from $2,671,619, in 1810, to $8,875,589, in 1814; while in the same years the specie held was respectively $1,561,034 and $6,393,718.[398]

It was a day of small things, relatively to present gigantic commercial enterprises; but an accumulation of cash in one quarter, coinciding with penury in another, proves defect in circulation consequent upon embarrassed communications. That flour in Boston sold for $12.00 the barrel, while at Baltimore and Richmond it stood at $6.50 and $4.50, tells the same tale of congestion and deficiency, due to interruption of water communication; the whole proving that, under the conditions of 1812, as the United States Government had allowed them to become, through failure to foster a navy by which alone coast defence in the true sense can be effected, the coast frontier was essentially the weak point. There Great Britain could put forth her enormous naval strength with the most sensible and widespread injury to American national power, as represented in the financial stability which constitutes the sinews of war. Men enough could be had; there were one hundred thousand registered seamen belonging to the country; but in the preceding ten years the frigate force had decreased from thirteen of that nominal rate to nine, while the only additions to the service, except gunboats, were two sloops of war, two brigs, and four schooners. The construction of ships of the line, for six of which provision had been made under the administration which expired in 1801, was abandoned immediately by its successor. There was no navy for defence.

Small vessels, under which denomination most frigates should be included, have their appropriate uses in a naval establishment, but in themselves are inadequate to the defence of a coast-line, in the true sense of the word "defence." It is one of the first elements of intelligent warfare that true defence consists in imposing upon the enemy a wholesome fear of yourself. "The best protection against the enemy's fire," said Farragut, "is a rapid fire from our own guns." "No scheme of defence," said Napoleon, "can be considered efficient that does not provide the means of attacking the enemy at an opportune moment. In the defence of a river, for instance," he continues, "you must not only be able to withstand its passage by the enemy, but must keep in your own hands means of crossing, so as to attack him, when occasion either offers, or can be contrived." In short, you must command either a bridge or a ford, and have a disposable force ready to utilize it by attack. The fact of such preparation fetters every movement of the enemy.

At its very outbreak the War of 1812 gave an illustration of the working of this principle. Tiny as was the United States Navy, the opening of hostilities found it concentrated in a body of several frigates, with one or two sloops of war, which put to sea together. The energies of Great Britain being then concentrated upon the navy of Napoleon, her available force at Halifax and Bermuda was small, and the frigates, of which it was almost wholly composed, were compelled to keep together; for, if they attempted to scatter, in order to watch several commercial ports, they were exposed to capture singly by this relatively numerous body of American cruisers. The narrow escape of the frigate "Constitution" from the British squadron at this moment, on her way from the Chesapeake to New York, which port she was unable to gain, exemplifies precisely the risk of dispersion that the British frigates did not dare to face while their enemy was believed to be at hand in concentrated force. They being compelled thus to remain together, the ports were left open; and the American merchant ships, of which a great number were then abroad, returned with comparative impunity, though certainly not entirely without losses.

This actual experience illustrates exactly the principle of coast defence by the power having relatively the weaker navy. It cannot, indeed, drive away a body numerically much stronger; but, if itself respectable in force, it can compel the enemy to keep united. Thereby is minimized the injury caused to a coast-line by the dispersion of the enemy's force along it in security, such as was subsequently acquired by the British in 1813-14, and by the United States Navy during the Civil War. The enemy's fears defend the coast, and protect the nation, by securing the principal benefit of the coast-line--coastwise and maritime trade, and the revenue thence proceeding. In order, however, to maintain this imposing attitude, the defending state must hold ready a concentrated force, of such size that the enemy cannot safely divide his own--a force, for instance, such as that estimated by Gouverneur Morris, twenty years before 1812.[399] The defendant fleet, further, must be able to put to sea at a moment inconvenient to the enemy; must have the bridge or ford Napoleon required for his army. Such the United States had in her seaports, which with moderate protection could keep an enemy at a distance, and from which escape was possible under conditions exceedingly dangerous for the detached hostile divisions; but although possessing these bridge heads leading to the scene of ocean war, no force to issue from them existed. In those eleven precious years during which Great Britain by American official returns had captured 917 American ships,[400] a large proportion of them in defiance of International Law, as was claimed, and had impressed from American vessels 6,257 seamen,[401] asserted to be mostly American citizens, the United States had built two sloops of 18 guns, and two brigs of 16; and out of twelve frigates had permitted three to rot at their moorings. To build ships of the line had not even been attempted. Consequently, except when weather drove them off, puny divisions of British ships gripped each commercial port by the throat with perfect safety; and those weather occasions, which constitute the opportunity of the defendant sea power, could not be improved by military action.

Such in general was the condition of the sea frontier, thrown inevitably upon the defensive. With the passing comment that, had it been defended as suggested, Great Britain would never have forced the war, let us now consider conditions on the Canadian line, where circumstances eminently favored the offensive by the United States; for this war should not be regarded simply as a land war or a naval war, nor yet as a war of offence and again one of defence, but as being continuously and at all times both offensive and defensive, both land and sea, in reciprocal influence.

Disregarding as militarily unimportant the artificial boundary dividing Canada from New York, Vermont, and the eastern parts of the Union, the frontier separating the land positions of the two belligerents was the Great Lakes and the river St. Lawrence. This presented certain characteristic and unusual features. That it was a water line was a condition not uncommon; but it was exceptionally marked by those broad expanses which constitute inland seas of great size and depth, navigable by vessels of the largest sea-going dimensions. This water system, being continuous and in continual progress, is best conceived by applying to the whole, from Lake Superior to the ocean, the name of the great river, the St. Lawrence, which on the one hand unites it to the sea, and on the other divides the inner waters from the outer by a barrier of rapids, impassable to ships that otherwise could navigate freely both lakes and ocean.

The importance of the lakes to military operations must always be great, but it was much enhanced in 1812 by the undeveloped condition of land communications. With the roads in the state they then were, the movement of men, and still more of supplies, was vastly more rapid by water than by land. Except in winter, when iron-bound snow covered the ground, the routes of Upper Canada were well-nigh impassable; in spring and in autumn rains, wholly so to heavy vehicles. The mail from Montreal to York,--now Toronto,--three hundred miles, took a month in transit.[402] In October, 1814, when the war was virtually over, the British General at Niagara lamented to the Commander-in-Chief that, owing to the refusal of the navy to carry troops, an important detachment was left "to struggle through the dreadful roads from Kingston to York."[403] "Should reinforcements and provisions not arrive, the naval commander would," in his opinion, "have much to answer for."[404] The Commander-in-Chief himself wrote: "The command of the lakes enables the enemy to perform in two days what it takes the troops from Kingston sixteen to twenty days of severe marching. Their men arrive fresh; ours fatigued, and with exhausted equipment. The distance from Kingston to the Niagara frontier exceeds two hundred and fifty miles, and part of the way is impracticable for supplies."[405] On the United States side, road conditions were similar but much less disadvantageous. The water route by Ontario was greatly preferred as a means of transportation, and in parts and at certain seasons was indispensable. Stores for Sackett's Harbor, for instance, had in early summer to be brought to Oswego, and thence coasted along to their destination, in security or in peril, according to the momentary predominance of one party or the other on the lake. In like manner, it was more convenient to move between the Niagara frontier and the east end of the lake by water; but in case of necessity, men could march. An English traveller in 1818 says: "I accomplished the journey from Albany to Buffalo in October in six days with ease and comfort, whereas in May it took ten of great difficulty and distress."[406] In the farther West the American armies, though much impeded, advanced securely through Ohio and Indiana to the shores of Lake Erie, and there maintained themselves in supplies sent over-country; whereas the British at the western end of the lake, opposite Detroit, depended wholly upon the water, although no hostile force threatened the land line between them and Ontario. The battle of Lake Erie, so disastrous to their cause, was forced upon them purely by failure of food, owing to the appearance of Perry's squadron.

From Lake Superior to the head of the first rapid of the St. Lawrence, therefore, the control of the water was the decisive factor in the general military situation. Both on the upper lakes, where water communication from Sault Sainte Marie to Niagara was unbroken, and on Ontario, separated from the others by the falls of Niagara, the British had at the outset a slight superiority, but not beyond the power of the United States to overtake and outpass. Throughout the rapids, to Montreal, military conditions resembled those which confront a general charged with the passage of any great river. If undertaken at all, such an enterprise requires the deceiving of the opponent as to the place and time when the attempt will be made, the careful provision of means and disposition of men for instant execution, and finally the prompt and decisive seizure of opportunity, to transfer and secure on the opposite shore a small body, capable of maintaining itself until the bulk of the army can cross to its support. Nothing of the sort was attempted here, or needed to be undertaken in this war. Naval superiority determined the ability to cross above the rapids, and there was no occasion to consider the question of crossing between them. Immediately below the last lay Montreal, accessible to sea-going vessels from the ocean. To that point, therefore, the sea power of Great Britain reached, and there it ended.

The United States Government was conscious of its great potential superiority over Canada, in men and in available resources. So evident, indeed, was the disparity, that the prevalent feeling was not one of reasonable self-reliance, but of vainglorious self-confidence; of dependence upon mere bulk and weight to crush an opponent, quite irrespective of preparation or skill, and disregardful of the factor of military efficiency. Jefferson's words have already been quoted. Calhoun, then a youthful member of Congress, and a foremost advocate of the war, said in March, 1812: "So far from being unprepared, Sir, I believe that in four weeks from the time a declaration of war is heard, on our frontier, the whole of Upper Canada"--halfway down the St. Lawrence--"and a part of Lower Canada will be in our power." This tone was general in Congress; Henry Clay spoke to the same effect. Granting due preparation, such might indeed readily have been the result of a well-designed, active, offensive campaign. Little hope of any other result was held by the British local officials, and what little they had was based upon the known want of military efficiency in the United States. Brock, by far the ablest among them, in February declared his "full conviction that unless Detroit and Michilimackinac be both in our possession at the commencement of hostilities, not only Amherstburg"--on the Detroit River, a little below Detroit--"but most probably the whole country, must be evacuated as far as Kingston."[407] This place is at the foot of Ontario, close to the entrance to the St. Lawrence. Having a good and defensible harbor, it had been selected for the naval station of the lake. If successful in holding it, there would be a base of operations for attempting recovery of the water, and ultimately of the upper country. Failing there, of course the British must fall back upon the sea, touch with which they would regain at Montreal, resting there upon the navy of their nation; just as Wellington, by the same dependence, had maintained himself at Lisbon unshaken by the whole power of Napoleon.

There was, however, no certainty that the Lisbon of Canada would be found at Montreal. Though secure on the water side, there were there no lines of Torres Vedras; and it was well within the fears of the governors of Canada that under energetic attack their forces would not be able to make a stand short of Quebec, against the overwhelming numbers which might be brought against them. In December, 1807, Governor General Craig, a soldier of tried experience and reputation, had written: "Defective as it is, Quebec is the only post that can be considered tenable for a moment. If the Americans should turn their attention to Lower Canada, which is most probable, I have no hopes that the forces here can accomplish more than to check them for a short time. They will eventually be compelled to take refuge in Quebec, and operations must terminate in a siege."[408] Consequent upon this report of a most competent officer, much had been done to strengthen the works; but pressed by the drain of the Peninsular War, heaviest in the years 1809 to 1812, when France elsewhere was at peace, little in the way of troops had been sent. As late as November 16, 1812, the Secretary for War, in London, notified Governor General Prevost that as yet he could give no hopes of reinforcements.[409] Napoleon had begun his retreat from Moscow three weeks before, but the full effects of the impending disaster were not yet forecast. Another three weeks, and the Secretary wrote that a moderate detachment would be sent to Bermuda, to await there the opening of the St. Lawrence in the spring.[410] But already the United States had lost Mackinac and Detroit, and Canada had gained time to breathe.

Brock's remark, expanded as has here been done, defines the decisive military points upon the long frontier from Lake Superior to Montreal. Mackinac, Detroit, Kingston, Montreal--these four places, together with adequate development of naval strength on the lakes--constituted the essential elements of the military situation at the opening of hostilities. Why? Mackinac and Detroit because, being situated upon extremely narrow parts of the vital chain of water communication, their possession controlled decisively all transit. Held in force, they commanded the one great and feasible access to the northwestern country. Upon them turned, therefore, the movement of what was then its chief industry, the fur trade; but more important still, the tenure of those points so affected the interests of the Indians of that region as to throw them necessarily on the side of the party in possession. It is difficult for us to realize how heavily this consideration weighed at that day with both nations, but especially with the British; because, besides being locally the weaker, they knew that under existing conditions in Europe--Napoleon still in the height of his power, never yet vanquished, and about to undertake the invasion of Russia--they had nothing to hope from the mother country. Yet the leaders, largely professional soldiers, faced the situation with soldierly instinct. "If we could destroy the American posts at Detroit and Michilimackinac," wrote Lieutenant-Governor Gore of Upper Canada, to Craig, in 1808, "many Indians would declare for us;" and he agrees with Craig that, "if not for us, they will surely be against us."[411]

It was Gore's successor, Brock, that wrested from the Americans at once the two places named, with the effect upon the Indians which had been anticipated. The dependence of these upon this water-line communication was greatly increased by various punitive expeditions by the United States troops in the Northwest, under General Harrison, in the autumn and winter of 1812-13. To secure further the safety of the whites in the outer settlements, the villages and corn of the hostile natives were laid waste for a considerable surrounding distance.[412] They were thus forced to remove, and to seek shelter in the Northwest. This increase of population in that quarter, relatively to a store of food never too abundant, made it the more urgent for them to remain friends of those with whom it rested to permit the water traffic, by which supplies could come forward and the exchange of commodities go on. The fall of Michilimackinac, therefore, determined their side, to which the existing British naval command of the upper lakes also contributed; and these causes were alleged by Hull in justification of his surrender at Detroit, which completed and secured the enemy's grip throughout the Northwestern frontier. This accession of strength to the British was not without very serious drawbacks. Shortly before the battle of Lake Erie the British commissaries were feeding fourteen thousand Indians--men, women, and children. What proportion of these were warriors it is hard to say, and harder still how many could be counted on to take the field when wanted; but it is probable that the exhaustion of supplies due to this cause more than compensated for any service received from them in war. When Barclay sailed to fight Perry, there remained in store but one day's flour, and the crews of his ships had been for some days on half allowance of many articles.

The opinion of competent soldiers on the spot, such as Craig and Brock, in full possession of all the contemporary facts, may be accepted explicitly as confirming the inferences which in any event might have been drawn from the natural features of the situation. Upon Mackinac and Detroit depended the control and quiet of the Northwestern country, because they commanded vital points on its line of communication. Upon Kingston and Montreal, by their position and intrinsic advantages, rested the communication of all Canada, along and above the St. Lawrence, with the sea power of Great Britain, whence alone could be drawn the constant support without which ultimate defeat should have been inevitable. Naval power, sustained upon the Great Lakes, controlled the great line of communication between the East and West, and also conferred upon the party possessing it the strategic advantage of interior lines; that is, of shorter distances, both in length and time, to move from point to point of the lake shores, close to which lay the scenes of operations. It followed that Detroit and Michilimackinac, being at the beginning in the possession of the United States, should have been fortified, garrisoned, provisioned, in readiness for siege, and placed in close communication with home, as soon as war was seen to be imminent, which it was in December, 1811, at latest. Having in that quarter everything to lose, and comparatively little to gain, the country was thrown on the defensive. On the east the possession of Montreal or Kingston would cut off all Canada above from support by the sea, which would be equivalent to insuring its fall. "I shall continue to exert myself to the utmost to overcome every difficulty," wrote Brock, who gave such emphatic proof of energetic and sagacious exertion in his subsequent course. "Should, however, the communication between Montreal and Kingston be cut off, the fate of the troops in this part of the province will be decided."[413] "The Montreal frontier," said the officer selected by the Duke of Wellington to report on the defences of Canada, "is the most important, and at present [1826] confessedly most vulnerable and accessible part of Canada."[414] There, then, was the direction for offensive operations by the United States; preferably against Montreal, for, if successful, a much larger region would be isolated and reduced. Montreal gone, Kingston could receive no help from without; and, even if capable of temporary resistance, its surrender would be but a question of time. Coincidently with this military advance, naval development for the control of the lakes should have proceeded, as a discreet precaution; although, after the fall of Kingston and Montreal, there could have been little use of an inland navy, for the British local resources would then have been inadequate to maintain an opposing force.

Considered apart from the question of military readiness, in which the United States was so lamentably deficient, the natural advantages in her possession for the invasion of Canada were very great. The Hudson River, Lake George, and Lake Champlain furnished a line of water communication, for men and supplies, from the very heart of the resources of the country, centring about New York. This was not indeed continuous; but it was consecutive, and well developed. Almost the whole of it lay within United States territory; and when the boundary line on Champlain was reached, Montreal was but forty miles distant. Towards Kingston, also, there was a similar line, by way of the Mohawk River and Lake Oneida to Oswego, whence a short voyage on Ontario reached the American naval station at Sackett's Harbor, thirty miles from Kingston. As had been pointed out six months before the war began, by General Armstrong, who became the United States Secretary of War in January, 1813, when the most favorable conditions for initiative had already been lost, these two lines were identical as far as Albany. "This should be the place of rendezvous; because, besides other recommendations, it is here that all the roads leading from the central portion of the United States to the Canadas diverge--a circumstance which, while it keeps up your enemy's doubts as to your real point of attack, cannot fail to keep his means of defence in a state of division."[415] The perplexity of an army, thus uncertain upon which extreme of a line one hundred and fifty miles long a blow will fall, is most distressing; and trebly so when, as in this case, the means of communication from end to end are both scanty and slow. "The conquest of Lower Canada," Sir James Craig had written, "must still be effected by way of Lake Champlain;" but while this was true, and dictated to the officer charged with the defence the necessity of keeping the greater part of his force in that quarter, it would be impossible wholly to neglect the exposure of the upper section. This requirement was reflected in the disposition of the British forces when war began; two thirds being below Montreal, chiefly at Quebec, the remainder dispersed through Upper Canada. To add to these advantages of the United States, trivial as was the naval force of either party on Champlain, the preponderance at this moment, and throughout the first year, was in her hands. She was also better situated to enlarge her squadrons on all the lakes, because nearer the heart of her power.

Circumstances thus had determined that, in general plan, the seaboard represented the defensive scene of campaign for the United States, while the land frontier should be that of offensive action. It will be seen, with particular reference to the latter, that the character of the front of operations prescribed the offensive in great and concentrated force toward the St. Lawrence, with preparations and demonstrations framed to keep the enemy doubtful to the last possible moment as to where the blow should fall; while on the western frontier, from Michilimackinac to Niagara, the defensive should have been maintained, qualifying this term, however, by the already quoted maxim of Napoleon, that no offensive disposition is complete which does not keep in view, and provide for, offensive action, if opportunity offer. Such readiness, if it leads to no more, at least compels the opponent to retain near by a degree of force that weakens by so much his resistance in the other quarter, against which the real offensive campaign is directed.

Similarly, the seaboard, defensive in general relation to the national plan as a whole, must have its own particular sphere of offensive action, without which its defensive function is enfeebled, if not paralyzed. Having failed to create before the war a competent navy, capable of seizing opportunity, when offered, to act against hostile divisions throughout the world, it was not possible afterwards to retrieve this mistake. Under the circumstances existing in 1812, the previous decade having been allowed by the country to pass in absolute naval indifference, offensive measures were necessarily confined to the injury of the enemy's commerce. Had a proper force existed, abundant opportunity for more military action was sure to occur. The characteristics of parts of the American coast prevented close blockade, especially in winter; and the same violent winds which forced an enemy's ships off, facilitated egress under circumstances favoring evasion. Escape to the illimitable ocean then depended at worst upon speed. This was the case at Boston, which Commodore Bainbridge before the war predicted could not be effectually blockaded; also at Narragansett, recommended for the same reason by Commodore John Rodgers; and in measure at New York, though there the more difficult and shoaler bar involved danger and delay to the passage of heavy frigates. In this respect the British encountered conditions contrary to those they had know before the French Atlantic ports, where the wind which drove the blockaders off prevented the blockaded from leaving. Once out and away, a squadron of respectable force would be at liberty to seek and strike one of the minor divisions of the enemy, imposing caution as to how he dispersed his ships in face of such a chance. To the south, both the Delaware and Chesapeake could be sealed almost hermetically by a navy so superior as was that of Great Britain; for the sheltered anchorage within enabled a fleet to lie with perfect safety across the path of all vessels attempting to go out or in. South of this again, Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, though useful commercial harbors, had not the facilities, natural or acquired, for sustaining a military navy. They were not maritime centres; the commerce of the South, even of Baltimore with its famous schooners, being in peace carried on chiefly by shipping which belonged elsewhere--New England or foreign. The necessities of a number of armed ships could not there be supplied; and furthermore, the comparatively moderate weather made the coast at once more easy and less dangerous for an enemy to approach. These ports, therefore, were entered only occasionally, and then by the smaller American cruisers.

For these reasons the northern portion of the coast, with its rugged shores and tempestuous weather, was the base of such offensive operations as the diminutive numbers of the United States Navy permitted. To it the national ships sought to return, for they could enter with greater security, and had better prospects of getting out again when they wished. In the Delaware, the Chesapeake, and on the Southern coast, the efforts of the United States were limited to action strictly, and even narrowly, defensive in scope. Occasionally, a very small enemy's cruiser might be attacked; but for the most part people were content merely to resist aggression, if attempted. The harrying of the Chesapeake, and to a less extent of the Delaware, are familiar stories; the total destruction of the coasting trade and the consequent widespread distress are less known, or less remembered. What is not at all appreciated is the deterrent effect upon the perfect liberty enjoyed by the enemy to do as they pleased, which would have been exercised by a respectable fighting navy; by a force in the Northern ports, equal to the offensive, and ready for it, at the time that Great Britain was so grievously preoccupied by the numerous fleet which Napoleon had succeeded in equipping, from Antwerp round to Venice. Of course, after his abdication in 1814, and the release of the British navy and army, there was nothing for the country to do, in the then military strength of the two nations, save to make peace on the best terms attainable. Having allowed to pass away, unresented and unimproved, years of insult, injury, and opportunity, during which the gigantic power of Napoleon would have been a substantial, if inert, support to its own efforts at redress, it was the mishap of the United States Government to take up arms at the very moment when the great burden which her enemy had been bearing for years was about to fall from his shoulders forever.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] Ante, p. 144.

[390] Adams, History of the United States, vol. viii. chap. viii.

[391] Sir J. Carmichael Smyth, Précis of Wars in Canada, p. 116.

[392] To Monroe, May 4, 1806. Jefferson's Writings, Collected and Edited by P.L. Ford, vol. viii. p. 450.

[393] Ibid., vol. vi. p. 75.

[394] Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. viii. p. 183. The author is indebted to Major General Sir F. Maurice, and Major G. Le M. Gretton, of the British Army, for extracts from the official records, from which it appears that, excluding provincial corps, not to be accounted regulars, the British troops in Canada numbered in January, 1812, 3,952; in July, 5,004.

[395] Giles, Annals of Congress, 1811-12, p. 51.

[396] June 13, 1812. Works of James Monroe, vol. v. p. 207.

[397] Prevost to Liverpool, July 15, 1812. Canadian Archives, Q. 118.

[398] Niles' Register, vol. vii. p. 195.

[399] Ante, p. 71.

[400] American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. iii. p. 584.

[401] Niles' Register, vol. ii. p. 119. "Official Returns in the Department of State" are alleged as authority for the statement. Monroe to Foster, May 30, 1812, mentions "a list in this office of several thousand American seamen who have been impressed into the British service." American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. iii. p. 454.

[402] Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. viii. p. 111.

[403] Drummond to Prevost, Oct. 20, 1814. Report on Canadian Archives, 1896, Upper Canada, p. 9.

[404] Ibid., Oct. 15.

[405] Prevost to Bathurst, Aug. 14, 1814. Report on Canadian Archives, 1896, Lower Canada, p. 36.

[406] Travels, J.M. Duncan, vol. ii. p. 27.

[407] Life of Sir Isaac Brock, p. 127.

[408] Report on Canadian Archives, 1893, Lower Canada, p. 1.

[409] Ibid., p. 75.

[410] Ibid.

[411] Report on Canadian Archives, 1893, Lower Canada, p. 3.

[412] Brackenridge, War of 1812, pp. 57, 63, 65, 66.

[413] Life of Brock, p. 193.

[414] Smyth, Précis of the Wars in Canada, p. 167.

[415] Armstrong to Eustis, Jan. 2, 1812. Armstrong's Notices of the War of 1812, vol. i, p. 238.