1812: The Navy's War (10 page)
Annexing Canada also had support in other areas of the country, although to a far lesser degree than in the South and West. Congressman John Adams Harper of Deerfield (Manchester), New Hampshire, for instance, believed that, “The Author of Nature marked our limits in the south by the south of Mexico, and on the north by the regions of eternal frosts.”
Henry Clay, the new Speaker of the House in the 12th Congress, spoke for the westerners and southerners when he called for troops to drive Britain out of Canada. Clay was only thirty-four years old, and he was a new congressman, but he was nonetheless chosen Speaker. He provided the House of Representatives with more energy and direction than it had had since the days of Madison and Albert Gallatin in the 1790s. “We must take the continent from [the British],” he told the House. “I wish never to see a peace until we do.”
Clay’s enthusiasm was strengthened by the knowledge that perhaps 60 percent of Upper Canada’s population of 90,000 were recent immigrants from the United States in search of cheap land and no taxes. Britain formed Upper Canada in 1791 by dividing the old province of Quebec into Upper Canada in the west and Lower Canada to the east. Upper Canada ran from Montreal west along the St. Lawrence River, around the northern shores of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior. The British attracted new immigrants to the sparsely populated province by offering them free land and no taxes. Henry Clay believed that the thousands of former American farmers who had emigrated to Upper Canada probably had no loyalty to the small coterie of upper-class British loyalists who ruled them or to the distant king in London.
A small group of talented young congressmen between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty-six—dubbed by Madison’s enemy, Congressman John Randolph of Virginia, as “War Hawks”—supported Clay. There were only about twelve War Hawks, but under Clay’s skilled leadership they dominated the House in the 12th Congress, which ran from March 1811 to March 1813, and they had a strong influence on the president.
Four of the War Hawks were from South Carolina—John C. Calhoun, William Lowndes, David R. Williams, and Langdon Cheves, the chairman of the Naval Committee. Two were from Kentucky, Richard M. Johnson and Joseph Desha, and another was from Tennessee, Felix Grundy. George M. Troup was from Georgia, Peter B. Porter from western New York, and John A. Harper from New Hampshire. Speaker Clay, his wife, Lucretia, and their six children lived in the same Washington boardinghouse—known as the “war mess”—with Cheves, Lowndes, Calhoun, and Grundy. On occasion, Secretary of State Monroe was a dinner guest.
Madison never acknowledged publicly that his aim was to annex Canada. The president insisted the invasion was for the purpose of obtaining a bargaining tool, not for conquest. On June 13, 1812, Monroe explained, “In case of war 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.” Few took him seriously. He admitted himself that it would be “difficult to relinquish territory which had been conquered.”
Absorbing Canada was an old ambition of American patriots, going back to the earliest days of the Revolution. Once the United States had overrun Canada, it was inconceivable that Madison would give it back. The political backlash along the frontier would be fearsome. The president’s strongest allies in the South and the West would have strenuously objected.
Southerners, including the president, had more on their minds than just Canada. On June 26, only days after Congress declared war, the House, with Madison’s approval, passed a resolution allowing the president to occupy East Florida and the rest of West Florida. Madison had already occupied the portion of West Florida between the Mississippi and Pearl Rivers in 1810. He wanted to prevent the British from obtaining East Florida from their dependent ally Spain and also to realize an old dream of the South. On July 3, however, the Senate unexpectedly killed the measure by a vote of 16 to 14. Federalists voted against it as a bloc, and they were joined by Republicans Bradley of Vermont, Howell of Rhode Island, Leib of Pennsylvania, Giles of Virginia, and Samuel Smith of Maryland.
ALTHOUGH CANADA AND Napoleon were the most important elements of Madison’s grand strategy, he thought privateers and letters of marque would give America a potent sea force. He expected dozens and then hundreds of privateers to put out from American ports, as they had during the Revolution. And he foresaw American merchantmen routinely applying for letters of marque, arming themselves, and looking to increase profits by capturing whatever unlucky British merchantman crossed their paths.
Madison expected little or nothing from the official navy. To be sure, trying to divine how the United States could fight the mighty British fleet was next to impossible. After years of neglect under two Republican administrations, America’s navy—in a prosperous, seafaring country of nearly eight million—consisted of only twenty men-of-war, seven of which—the
Chesapeake
,
Constellation
,
New York
,
Adams
,
Essex
,
John Adams
, and
Boston
(all frigates and all built prior to Jefferson taking office in 1801)—were laid up for repairs. Some thought the
Boston
and the
New York
were so rotten they were beyond fixing. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, had 1,000 warships—at least 600 of which were continually at sea, while the rest were undergoing repairs or in various stages of completion.
Chesapeake
,
Constellation
,
New York
,
Adams
,
Essex
,
John Adams
, and
Boston
(all frigates and all built prior to Jefferson taking office in 1801)—were laid up for repairs. Some thought the
Boston
and the
New York
were so rotten they were beyond fixing. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, had 1,000 warships—at least 600 of which were continually at sea, while the rest were undergoing repairs or in various stages of completion.
Of course, most of Britain’s fleet was occupied blockading Napoleonic Europe and servicing distant parts of the empire. The Admiralty’s North American Station at Halifax had only one 64-gun ship-of-the-line, five frigates of between 32 and 38 guns, eleven sloops of war between 16 and 20 guns, and six smaller armed schooners and brigs. Even so, the Halifax squadron was stronger than anything the American navy could assemble. And Halifax was augmented by a small force at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and larger fleets at Antigua in the Leeward Islands and at Port Royal, Jamaica.
The huge disparity of forces had long since led Madison to conclude the American fleet would be either blockaded, captured, or destroyed early in the war and be of no real help in securing victory. He could not say so publicly, of course, not even to his intimates—except perhaps for Jefferson and Albert Gallatin, the secretary of the Treasury—but the conclusion was inescapable.
Nonetheless, Madison still needed to concoct some plan for the navy, and when he held discussions with his advisors in the winter and spring of 1812, he toyed with the idea of keeping all the ships secure in their home ports, acting as defensive batteries and not venturing out to sea at all. At the time, the navy was spread thinly, from Portland in the Maine District of Massachusetts to New Orleans, with major bases at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Boston; New York; Philadelphia; Washington; and Norfolk.
Hamilton and Gallatin were in favor of keeping the ships in port, but Madison was unsure. He had heard a version of the same strategy from Jefferson, who proposed gathering the fleet in a single place, presumably New York, keeping it safe, and not having it put to sea except on important occasions. In fact, Gallatin and Jefferson thought privateering should be the only naval weapon employed on the high seas. Instead of wasting scarce dollars on the navy, they urged spending it on the army for the invasion of Canada.
Concerned about the president’s frame of mind, Charles Goldsborough, chief clerk of the navy, alerted two prominent captains who were in Washington at the time, William Bainbridge and Charles Stewart, and they protested loudly to both Hamilton and Madison. The two distraught officers explained the negative consequences of confining the fleet to port: British marauders would have the sea to themselves, they argued, with dire consequences for American trade and defense. They saw no reason to allow Britain such a luxury. When properly deployed, they maintained, the American navy could have an impact out of all proportion to its size. If the Admiralty had to contend with enemy frigates and sloops of war operating singly or in pairs over the vast ocean, it would be forced to employ a substantial fleet to convoy merchantmen, blockade ports, and hunt down America’s elusive warships. Furthermore, Bainbridge and Stewart insisted, the individual ships in the U.S. fleet were better than their counterparts in the Royal Navy, and the American officer corps welcomed the chance to prove it.
While skeptical of Bainbridge and Stewart’s claims, Madison paid some attention to their advice and rejected the recommendation of Gallatin and Hamilton. But he still did not commit himself to an alternate strategy. He remained uncertain. The only thing he was sure about was that the pipsqueak navy would not matter.
CHAPTER FIVE
The United States Declares War
M
ADISON APPROACHED HIS call for a declaration of war with great reluctance, so much so that some historians later claimed the War Hawks forced him into it. This view, however, overlooks the president’s inner strength. He had a backbone that could withstand any political pressure. His desire for peace was the result not of a weak character but rather of deeply held convictions. Over the years, as leader in the House of Representatives, as secretary of state, and finally as president, he had worked hard to reconcile America’s differences with Britain over free trade and impressment. And he continued to do so in the winter and spring of 1812. He tried to convince Prime Minister Perceval that American complaints about the Orders in Council and impressment could no longer be ignored, that the United States preferred war to dishonor.
ADISON APPROACHED HIS call for a declaration of war with great reluctance, so much so that some historians later claimed the War Hawks forced him into it. This view, however, overlooks the president’s inner strength. He had a backbone that could withstand any political pressure. His desire for peace was the result not of a weak character but rather of deeply held convictions. Over the years, as leader in the House of Representatives, as secretary of state, and finally as president, he had worked hard to reconcile America’s differences with Britain over free trade and impressment. And he continued to do so in the winter and spring of 1812. He tried to convince Prime Minister Perceval that American complaints about the Orders in Council and impressment could no longer be ignored, that the United States preferred war to dishonor.
But Perceval ignored the president’s warnings. Had Congress passed the proposed naval expansion bill in January, or approved internal taxes to pay for a military buildup, or if New England Federalists had not been so relentless in their attacks on Madison, perhaps Perceval might have been more attentive. But no matter what the president said or did, the prime minister clung to his conviction that the Orders in Council and impressment were necessary for survival, even though they might lead to war with the United States. Perceval preferred that the Americans not declare war, of course, but he would not alter his policies to prevent it. And he did not believe for an instant that either Madison or Congress had the stomach for a fight. He thought that in the end the United States would swallow whatever indignities he heaped on her, because internal divisions and a miniscule army and navy would keep her leadership restrained. On May 30, only two days before Madison called for a declaration of war, the British ambassador in Washington reaffirmed to Secretary of State Monroe that the cabinet would not repeal the Orders.
It did not help matters that the British ambassador was thirty-two-year-old Sir John Augustus Foster, an upper-class Tory snob, with a pronounced dislike for the republic and an inability to understand its people or their politics. Foster was singularly unable to grasp Madison’s determination to fight rather than submit to Perceval’s indignities. The ambassador kept reporting to London what Perceval wanted to hear—that the president had no intention of asking for a declaration of war and the divided Congress had no intention of passing one. The pathetic state of America’s armed forces was so notorious, and so often commented on in Congress and the press, that right up until war was actually declared, Foster believed that when the president or congressional leaders threatened war, they were bluffing. The ambassador was encouraged in his views by British sympathizers in the Federalist Party like Congressman Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, the Federalist leader in the House of Representatives, who met with Foster regularly and confirmed that the president and the Republican Congress were not really contemplating war. It was not until May 1812 that Foster, responding to what he was hearing generally in Washington, began warning London of the possibility that Madison might be serious. But by then it was too late.
On the first of June the president delivered an impassioned appeal to Congress, urging a declaration of war against Great Britain for threatening “the United States as an independent and neutral nation.” In listing America’s grievances, Madison pointed first to impressment. “American citizens,” he wrote, “under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn from their country and everything dear to them; have been dragged on board ships of war of a foreign nation and exposed, under the severest of their discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of their oppressors, and to be melancholy instruments of taking away those of their brethren.”
The president then condemned “British cruisers [for] . . . violating the rights and peace of our coasts. They hover over and harass our entering and departing commerce,” he wrote. “To the most insulting pretensions they have added the most lawless proceedings in our very harbors, and have wantonly spilt American blood within the sanctuary of our territorial jurisdiction.” He further charged the British with “plundering our commerce in every sea.” And he accused them of instituting a “sweeping system of blockades, under the name of orders in council . . . [which have established a] monopoly . . . for her own commerce and navigation.” Lastly, he abhorred British encouragement of the Indian nations to war against America on her extensive frontiers. He said that the warfare spared “neither age nor sex and [was] . . . distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity.”
The House of Representatives immediately took up the president’s appeal. In presenting the war measure to his colleagues, Congressman John C. Calhoun declared, “The United States must support their character and station among nations of the earth, or submit to the most shameful degradation.” On June 4 the House approved the declaration of war 79 to 49. The Senate voted on June 17 and narrowly passed the measure 19 to 13. Madison signed the bill the following day. All thirty-nine Federalists voted against going to war; the Republicans in both houses voted 98 to 23 in favor.
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