1812: The Navy's War (31 page)
Jones did not waste any time indicating his strong support for building the freshwater fleet. On January 27 he wrote to Commodore Chauncey, “It is impossible to attach too much importance to our naval operations on the lakes—the success of the ensuing campaign will depend absolutely upon our superiority on all the lakes—and every effort and resource must be directed to that object.... Whatever force the enemy may create, we must surpass.” Giving priority to Chauncey and Macdonough included the politically unpopular decision to move men and supplies away from defending seaports and rushing them to the lakes.
On February 22 Jones outlined his strategic priorities for the blue-water fleet. He told the navy’s leadership “to expect a very considerable augmentation of the naval force of the enemy on our coast [in] the . . . spring; . . . his policy will be to blockade our ships of war in our own harbors; intercepting our private cruisers, prizes, and trade, and harass the seaboard. Our great inferiority in naval strength, does not permit us to meet them on this ground without hazarding the precious germ of our national glory.” Therefore, Jones wrote, the navy needed to create “a powerful diversion” by attacking British merchantmen in places like the West Indies, where their warships, although present, were not patrolling in overwhelming numbers. Jones’s priority thus was commerce raiding. He told the captains that his intention was “to dispatch all our public ships, now in port, as soon as possible, in such positions as may be best adapted to destroy the commerce of the enemy.” The secretary did not want to waste precious resources fighting spectacular individual ship battles; he stressed that the destruction of Britain’s trade, not personal glory, should be the objective of every captain.
Jones thought sloops of war were better commerce raiders than frigates or battleships. They were faster, took less time to build, were much cheaper, and required smaller crews. Sloops could also beat the blockade more easily, and they could elude bigger warships in the open ocean. He supported building larger warships for the long term, but for an immediate impact he favored sloops of war. By the same token, Jones, the old privateer, had a high appreciation of the devastating effects a big privateer fleet could have on British commerce. He saw the navy and the privateers working in harness toward the same objective, not as competitors for men and supplies.
MADISON NEEDED NEW leadership for the army as much or more than for the navy. For weeks, supporters of the war had been calling for Secretary Eustis’s resignation, and as defeat followed defeat, these calls grew deafening. As soon as Madison’s reelection was official on December 3, Secretary Eustis resigned, and Monroe became acting secretary until Madison could choose a successor. The president considered appointing Monroe, who initially wanted to be either secretary of war or the commander of the army with the rank of lieutenant general—George Washington’s title. Monroe undoubtedly thought a great military victory would open a clear path to the presidency, but when he realized that budget constraints would not allow him to raise the army he wanted, he decided to remain at the State Department. The president then, unaccountably, asked his friend General Dearborn and then Senator William Crawford, both of whom turned him down. Madison next considered two New Yorkers, Governor Tompkins and fifty-four-year-old Brigadier General John Armstrong. Removing Tompkins from the governorship of New York might have meant allowing Dewitt Clinton to obtain that sensitive position, so the president ultimately turned to Armstrong, the former ambassador to France who was now in charge of defending New York City. On January 8 Armstrong’s name went to the Senate for confirmation.
The appointment was controversial. Among Armstrong’s enemies was another former ambassador to France, James Monroe, who had a number of reservations. He distrusted Armstrong; the general had a reputation as an intriguer that went back to his close association with General Horatio Gates during and after the Revolutionary War. Armstrong’s intrigues were so clumsy, and so fraught with peril for the Republic, they brought a resounding rebuke from General Washington. In 1783, when Armstrong was twenty-four years old, he wrote the infamous “Newburgh Addresses,” urging army officers to be far more strident in their demands on Congress for back pay and, in fact, threatening a military coup. At the time, he was an aide to the ever-ambitious General Gates, Washington’s persistent critic. At a tense meeting of officers on March 15, 1783, Washington, who still commanded the loyalty and affection of the army—apart from the Gates cabal—condemned the addresses as “unmilitary” and “subversive.” Historian Thomas Fleming wrote that thanks to Washington, “the most perilous moment in the brief history of the United States of America ended peacefully.”
Monroe felt that Armstrong had no loyalty to the president and would use his office to promote his own political ambitions. He believed Armstrong wanted to break Virginia’s grip on the presidency by assuming the office himself. He thought Armstrong would blur the boundary between the secretary and his field commanders, and try to run the army in the field as well as in Washington for the purpose of acquiring enough military glory to propel him into the White House.
Others beside Monroe opposed Armstrong. The vote to confirm him was unusually close—18 for and 15 against, with Virginia’s two senators not voting. It was an inauspicious beginning.
Like Jones, Armstrong went right to work the minute he arrived in Washington on February 4, 1813. Regardless of questions about his character, the new appointment seemed to portend better results from the War Department. But as time passed it would become painfully evident that Armstrong’s reputation for duplicity was well deserved, and his abilities as a military leader greatly exaggerated.
B
OTH ARMSTRONG AND Jones were constrained by the unwillingness of Congress to pay for the war through taxation. Internal taxes had been eliminated during the Jefferson administration, which left the Treasury dependent on tariffs for almost all its revenue. Since Britain was America’s lead trading partner, wartime prohibitions drastically reduced the government’s revenue. Loans were the only alternative, but Congress, under the influence of state-chartered banks, made securing them difficult by abolishing the United States Bank in 1811. A combination of Federalists and Republicans, by a single vote, declined to renew the bank’s charter. Vice President George Clinton cast the deciding vote against, even though President Madison supported it. Congressmen who voted for the war but refused to provide for its funding hoped, like the president, that it would be of short duration, perhaps only a few months. When that proved not to be the case, Congress still refused to finance the war properly by enacting substantial internal taxes.
OTH ARMSTRONG AND Jones were constrained by the unwillingness of Congress to pay for the war through taxation. Internal taxes had been eliminated during the Jefferson administration, which left the Treasury dependent on tariffs for almost all its revenue. Since Britain was America’s lead trading partner, wartime prohibitions drastically reduced the government’s revenue. Loans were the only alternative, but Congress, under the influence of state-chartered banks, made securing them difficult by abolishing the United States Bank in 1811. A combination of Federalists and Republicans, by a single vote, declined to renew the bank’s charter. Vice President George Clinton cast the deciding vote against, even though President Madison supported it. Congressmen who voted for the war but refused to provide for its funding hoped, like the president, that it would be of short duration, perhaps only a few months. When that proved not to be the case, Congress still refused to finance the war properly by enacting substantial internal taxes.
In his annual report in November, Secretary Gallatin announced that an additional $20 million was needed to fund the war. Republicans in Congress again refused to raise internal taxes, afraid the country would not support them, which it probably would not have. They remembered that when John Adams raised taxes to pay for the Quasi-War with France, he was defeated for a second term. On the other hand, when Jefferson did away with internal taxes, he was reelected overwhelmingly. That was not the only reason for his popularity, of course, but it certainly contributed to it.
Instead of internal taxes, Republican War Hawks like Calhoun, Lowndes, and Cheves proposed in December 1812 to renew trade with Britain. They claimed this would produce the desired revenue from customs duties. By some magic, taxes on imports were considered external, even though they led to higher prices internally. When Cheves and Lowndes introduced a bill to in effect allow free trade, they were voted down. Ironically, New England Federalists, who in other respects were strong advocates of rapprochement with Britain, did not support the legislation because their fledgling manufacturing plants were prospering under wartime restrictions against British imports.
Republicans preferred to borrow rather than tax, ignoring the fact that in doing so they were placing in the hands of the war’s opponents—Federalist bankers in Boston and Philadelphia—the power to deny Madison the money he needed to carry on the war. Through privateering, smuggling, manufacturing, shipping, and banking, an inordinate amount of the country’s specie was flowing into the coffers of Federalist banks in New England and Philadelphia, producing great wealth for those who opposed the war.
In February 1813, Gallatin told the House Ways and Means Committee that the Non-Importation Act would have to be modified and internal taxation increased to finance the war, particularly the expansion of the army and navy, which had just been voted on. As expected, the House of Representatives—firmly in control of the Republicans—resolutely refused to raise internal taxes or adjust the Non-Importation Act. Instead, it passed legislation authorizing Madison to borrow $16 million on the best terms he could obtain, as well as another bill, authorizing the president to issue five million one-year Treasury notes bearing 5.4 percent interest. These notes were only one step removed from bills printed by the Continental Congress during the Revolution.
Authorizing a loan and obtaining it were two very different things, as Gallatin could attest to. He was expected to find this massive amount for a government that had no national bank, and thus no national circulating medium, and that refused to raise taxes in one of the more prosperous countries in the world. The Congress adjourned on March 4, and by then the government was nearly out of cash. Federalist bankers in Boston and Philadelphia showed no interest in loaning the nearly bankrupt government any money. In fact, they hoped the administration would go broke. Gallatin narrowly averted catastrophe through the good offices of John Jacob Astor, who with Philadelphia bankers David Parish and Stephen Gerard loaned the government nearly $8.5 million at a whopping 7.5 percent.
The unwillingness of American politicians who had voted for the war to adequately fund it was noticed in London and substantially weakened the chances that President Madison could negotiate a satisfactory peace.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Napoleon and Alexander
D
URING THE SECOND week of November 1812, while Madison had been trying to stir a reluctant country to renew the war effort, incredible reports began circulating in London that Napoleon was suffering a catastrophic reversal in Russia. The British could scarcely believe the good news. Back on July 18, immediately after Napoleon’s invasion, Liverpool had signed a treaty of peace and amity with Czar Alexander, and he had given him as much support as he could, shipping him, for instance, 100,000 muskets. The alliance had one object—destroying Bonaparte—but at the time few people in London believed the czar could. During the summer, the British watched with bated breath as the Grand Army drove into Russia against weak resistance. It looked as if the czar would soon be at the negotiating table—on his knees.
URING THE SECOND week of November 1812, while Madison had been trying to stir a reluctant country to renew the war effort, incredible reports began circulating in London that Napoleon was suffering a catastrophic reversal in Russia. The British could scarcely believe the good news. Back on July 18, immediately after Napoleon’s invasion, Liverpool had signed a treaty of peace and amity with Czar Alexander, and he had given him as much support as he could, shipping him, for instance, 100,000 muskets. The alliance had one object—destroying Bonaparte—but at the time few people in London believed the czar could. During the summer, the British watched with bated breath as the Grand Army drove into Russia against weak resistance. It looked as if the czar would soon be at the negotiating table—on his knees.
Napoleon knew the Russian climate necessitated that he not remain long. His army was forced to live off the countryside; it could not be supplied from France or its satellites. At all costs, he had to avoid being sucked into the Russian vastness during the brutally hot summer. He strove for an early climactic battle that would destroy the Russian army in a single engagement. Alexander’s strategy was to deny him that opportunity. Once Napoleon crossed the Niemen River (the border between Poland and Russia) and marched into the Russian heartland, the die was cast; he had to defeat the czar or lose his aura of invincibility.
As the summer wore on, the British watched nervously as the czar’s armies stayed just beyond Napoleon’s grasp, luring him deeper into the country. Bonaparte pushed on, racing for Smolensk, where he hoped to induce his great battle, but again the czar’s armies, although fighting briefly, escaped during the night of August 18–19 deeper into Russia, along the road to Moscow.
Napoleon might have stopped at Smolensk in August, consolidated his gains, and resumed the battle in the spring, but he never seriously considered that option. Instead, he marched on toward Moscow, something he knew was dangerous and had hoped to avoid. The heat was now unbearable and sustenance from the countryside nonexistent. As the Russian armies retreated, they carried out the czar’s scorched-earth policy, burning village after village and field after field before the French reached them. The heat, impossible logistics, and scorched earth ate away huge chunks of the Grand Army. Men dropped by the thousands from lack of water and food, and so did Napoleon’s irreplaceable horses. Nonetheless, he kept moving closer to Moscow, believing the Russians would not let their sacred city fall without a climactic fight. The alternative was to admit failure and retreat, and if he did that, he could no longer pretend to be master of Europe. Retreat meant the end of his regime, and perhaps his life. And so, the prisoner of his image, he pressed forward, marching on through Russia’s poisonous countryside.
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