The War With the United States by William Wood

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CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes

Volume 14

THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES
A Chronicle of 1812

By WILLIAM WOOD
TORONTO, 1915

CONTENTS

I. OPPOSING CLAIMS
II. OPPOSING FORCES
III. 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT
IV. 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON HEIGHTS
V. 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY
VI. 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CHAPTER I

OPPOSING CLAIMS

International disputes that end in war are not generally
questions of absolute right and wrong. They may quite as
well be questions of opposing rights. But, when there
are rights on both sides; it is usually found that the
side which takes the initiative is moved by its national
desires as well as by its claims of right.

This could hardly be better exemplified than by the vexed
questions which brought about the War of 1812. The British
were fighting for life and liberty against Napoleon.
Napoleon was fighting to master the whole of Europe. The
United States wished to make as much as possible out of
unrestricted trade with both belligerents. But Napoleon's
Berlin Decree forbade all intercourse whatever with the
British, while the British Orders-in-Council forbade all
intercourse whatever with Napoleon and his allies, except
on condition that the trade should first pass through
British ports. Between two such desperate antagonists
there was no safe place for an unarmed, independent,
'free-trading' neutral. Every one was forced to take
sides. The British being overwhelmingly strong at sea,
while the French were correspondingly strong on land,
American shipping was bound to suffer more from the
British than from the French. The French seized every
American vessel that infringed the Berlin Decree whenever
they could manage to do so. But the British seized so
many more for infringing the Orders-in-Council that the
Americans naturally began to take sides with the French.

Worse still, from the American point of view, was the
British Right of Search, which meant the right of searching
neutral merchant vessels either in British waters or on
the high seas for deserters from the Royal Navy. Every
other people whose navy could enforce it had always
claimed a similar right. But other peoples' rights had
never clashed with American interests in at all the same
way. What really roused the American government was not
the abstract Right of Search, but its enforcement at a
time when so many hands aboard American vessels were
British subjects evading service in their own Navy. The
American theory was that the flag covered the crew wherever
the ship might be. Such a theory might well have been
made a question for friendly debate and settlement at
any other time. But it was a new theory, advanced by a
new nation, whose peculiar and most disturbing entrance
on the international scene could not be suffered to upset
the accepted state of things during the stress of a
life-and-death war. Under existing circumstances the
British could not possibly give up their long-established
Right of Search without committing national suicide.
Neither could they relax their own blockade so long as
Napoleon maintained his. The Right of Search and the
double blockade of Europe thus became two vexed questions
which led straight to war.

But the American grievances about these two questions
were not the only motives impelling the United States to
take up arms. There were two deeply rooted national
desires urging them on in the same direction. A good many
Americans were ready to seize any chance of venting their
anti-British feeling; and most Americans thought they
would only be fulfilling their proper 'destiny' by wresting
the whole of Canada from the British crown. These two
national desires worked both ways for war--supporting
the government case against the British Orders-in-Council
and Right of Search on the one hand, while welcoming an
alliance with Napoleon on the other. Americans were far
from being unanimous; and the party in favour of peace
was not slow to point out that Napoleon stood for tyranny,
while the British stood for freedom. But the adherents
of the war party reminded each other, as well as the
British and the French, that Britain had wrested Canada
from France, while France had helped to wrest the Thirteen
Colonies from the British Empire.

As usual in all modern wars, there was much official
verbiage about the national claims and only unofficial
talk about the national desires. But, again as usual,
the claims became the more insistent because of the
desires, and the desires became the more patriotically
respectable because of the claims of right. 'Free Trade
and Sailors' Rights' was the popular catchword that best
describes the two strong claims of the United States.
'Down with the British' and 'On to Canada' were the
phrases that best reveal the two impelling national
desires.

Both the claims and the desires seem quite simple in
themselves. But, in their connection with American
politics, international affairs, and opposing British
claims, they are complex to the last degree. Their
complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous
that they baffle description within the limits of the
present book. Yet, since nothing can be understood without
some reference to its antecedents, we must take at least
a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which
finally resulted in the War of 1812.

The relations of the British Empire with the United States
passed through four gradually darkening phases between
1783 and 1812--the phases of Accommodation, Unfriendliness,
Hostility, and War. Accommodation lasted from the
recognition of Independence till the end of the century.
Unfriendliness then began with President Jefferson and
the Democrats. Hostility followed in 1807, during
Jefferson's second term, when Napoleon's Berlin Decree
and the British. Orders-in-Council brought American
foreign relations into the five-year crisis which ended
with the three-year war.

William Pitt, for the British, and John Jay, the first
chief justice of the United States, are the two principal
figures in the Accommodation period. In 1783 Pitt, who,
like his father, the great Earl of Chatham, was favourably
disposed towards the Americans, introduced a temporary
measure in the British House of Commons to regulate trade
with what was now a foreign country 'on the most enlarged
principles of reciprocal benefit' as well as 'on terms
of most perfect amity with the United States of America.'
This bill, which showed the influence of Adam Smith's
principles on Pitt's receptive mind, favoured American
more than any other foreign trade in the mother country,
and favoured it to a still greater extent in the West
Indies. Alone among foreigners the Americans were to be
granted the privilege of trading between their own ports
and the West Indies, in their own vessels and with their
own goods, on exactly the same terms as the British
themselves. The bill was rejected. But in 1794, when the
French Revolution was running its course of wild excesses,
and the British government was even less inclined to
trust republics, Jay succeeded in negotiating a temporary
treaty which improved the position of American sea-borne
trade with the West Indies. His government urged him to
get explicit statements of principle inserted, more
especially anything that would make cargoes neutral when
under neutral flags. This, however, was not possible, as
Jay himself pointed out. 'That Britain,' he said, 'at
this period, and involved in war, should not admit
principles which would impeach the propriety of her
conduct in seizing provisions bound to France, and enemy's
property on board neutral vessels, does not appear to me
extraordinary.' On the whole, Jay did very well to get
any treaty through at such a time; and this mere fact
shows that the general attitude of the mother country
towards her independent children was far from being
unfriendly.

Unfriendliness began with the new century, when Jefferson
first came into power. He treated the British navigation
laws as if they had been invented on purpose to wrong
Americans, though they had been in force for a hundred
and fifty years, and though they had been originally
passed, at the zenith of Cromwell's career, by the only
republican government that ever held sway in England.
Jefferson said that British policy was so perverse, that
when he wished to forecast the British line of action on
any particular point he would first consider what it
ought to be and then infer the opposite. His official
opinion was written in the following words: 'It is not
to the moderation or justice of others we are to trust
for fair and equal access to market with our productions,
or for our due share in the transportation of them; but
to our own means of independence, and the firm will to
use them.' On the subject of impressment, or 'Sailors'
Rights,' he was clearer still: 'The simplest rule will
be that the vessel being American shall be evidence that
the seamen on board of her are such.' This would have
prevented the impressment of British seamen, even in
British harbours, if they were under the American merchant
flag--a principle almost as preposterous, at that particular
time, as Jefferson's suggestion that the whole Gulf Stream
should be claimed 'as of our waters.'

If Jefferson had been backed by a united public, or if
his actions had been suited to his words, war would have
certainly broken out during his second presidential term,
which lasted from 1805 to 1809. But he was a party man,
with many political opponents, and without unquestioning
support from all on his own side, and he cordially hated
armies, navies, and even a mercantile marine. His idea
of an American Utopia was a commonwealth with plenty of
commerce, but no more shipping than could be helped:

I trust [he said] that the good sense of our country
will see that its greatest prosperity depends on a
due balance between agriculture, manufactures, and
commerce; and not on this protuberant navigation,
which has kept us in hot water since the commencement
of our government... It is essentially necessary for
us to have shipping and seamen enough to carry our
surplus products to market, but beyond that I do not
think we are bound to give it encouragement... This
exuberant commerce brings us into collision with other
Powers in every sea.

Notwithstanding such opinions, Jefferson stood firm on
the question of 'Sailors' Rights.' He refused to approve
a treaty that had been signed on the last day of 1806 by
his four commissioners in London, chiefly because it
provided no precise guarantee against impressment. The
British ministers had offered, and had sincerely meant,
to respect all American rights, to issue special
instructions against molesting American citizens under
any circumstances, and to redress every case of wrong.
But, with a united nation behind them and an implacable
enemy in front, they could not possibly give up the right
to take British seamen from neutral vessels which were
sailing the high seas. The Right of Search was the
acknowledged law of nations all round the world; and
surrender on this point meant death to the Empire they
were bound to guard.

Their 'no surrender' on this vital point was, of course,
anathema to Jefferson. Yet he would not go beyond verbal
fulminations. In the following year, however, he was
nearly forced to draw the sword by one of those incidents
that will happen during strained relations. In June 1807
two French men-of-war were lying off Annapolis, a hundred
miles up Chesapeake Bay. Far down the bay, in Hampton
Roads, the American frigate _Chesapeake_ was fitting out
for sea. Twelve miles below her anchorage a small British
squadron lay just within Cape Henry, waiting to follow
the Frenchmen out beyond the three-mile limit. As Jefferson
quite justly said, this squadron was 'enjoying the
hospitality of the United States.' Presently the
_Chesapeake_ got under way; whereupon the British frigate
_Leopard_ made sail and cleared the land ahead of her.
Ten miles out the _Leopard_ hailed her, and sent an
officer aboard to show the American commodore the orders
from Admiral Berkeley at Halifax. These orders named
certain British deserters as being among the _Chesapeake's_
crew. The American commodore refused to allow a search;
but submitted after a fight, during which he lost twenty-one
men killed and wounded. Four men were then seized. One
was hanged; another died; and the other two were
subsequently returned with the apologies of the British
government.

James Monroe, of Monroe Doctrine fame, was then American
minister in London. Canning, the British foreign minister,
who heard the news first, wrote an apology on the spot,
and promised to make 'prompt and effectual reparation'
if Berkeley had been wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right
of Search did not include the right to search a foreign
man-of-war, though, unlike the modern 'right of search,'
which is confined to cargoes, it did include the right
to search a neutral merchantman on the high seas for any
'national' who was 'wanted.' Canning, however, distinctly
stated that the men's nationality would affect the
consideration of restoring them or not. Monroe now had
a good case. But he made the fatal mistake of writing
officially to Canning before he knew the details, and,
worse still, of diluting his argument with other complaints
which had nothing to do with the affair itself. The result
was a long and involved correspondence, a tardy and
ungracious reparation, and much justifiable resentment
on the American side.

Unfriendliness soon became Hostility after the _Chesapeake_
affair had sharpened the sting of the Orders-in-Council,
which had been issued at the beginning of the same year,
1807. These celebrated Orders simply meant that so long
as Napoleon tried to blockade the British Isles by
enforcing his Berlin Decree, just so long would the
British Navy be employed in blockading him and his allies.
Such decisive action, of course, brought neutral shipping
more than ever under the power of the British Navy, which
commanded all the seaways to the ports of Europe. It
accentuated the differences between the American and
British governments, and threw the shadow of the coming
storm over the exposed colony of Canada.

Not having succeeded in his struggle for 'Sailors' Rights,'
Jefferson now took up the cudgels for 'Free Trade'; but
still without a resort to arms. His chosen means of
warfare was an Embargo Act, forbidding the departure of
vessels from United States ports. This, although nominally
aimed against France as well, was designed to make Great
Britain submit by cutting off both her and her colonies
from all intercourse with the United States. But its
actual effect was to hurt Americans, and even Jefferson's
own party, far more than it hurt the British. The Yankee
skipper already had two blockades against 'Free Trade.'
The Embargo Act added a third. Of course it was evaded;
and a good deal of shipping went from the United States
and passed into Canadian ports under the Union Jack.
Jefferson and his followers, however, persisted in taking
their own way. So Canada gained from the embargo much of
what the Americans were losing. Quebec and Halifax swarmed
with contrabandists, who smuggled back return cargoes
into the New England ports, which were Federalist in
party allegiance, and only too ready to evade or defy
the edicts of the Democratic administration. Jefferson
had, it is true, the satisfaction of inflicting much
temporary hardship on cotton-spinning Manchester. But
the American cotton-growing South suffered even more.

The American claims of 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights'
were opposed by the British counter-claims of the
Orders-in-Council and the Right of Search. But 'Down with
the British' and 'On to Canada' were without exact
equivalents on the other side. The British at home were
a good deal irritated by so much unfriendliness and
hostility behind them while they were engaged with Napoleon
in front. Yet they could hardly be described as
anti-American; and they certainly had no wish to fight,
still less to conquer, the United States. Canada did
contain an anti-American element in the United Empire
Loyalists, whom the American Revolution had driven from
their homes. But her general wish was to be left in peace.
Failing that, she was prepared for defence.

Anti-British feeling probably animated at least two-thirds
of the American people on every question that caused
international friction; and the Jeffersonian Democrats,
who were in power, were anti-British to a man. So strong
was this feeling among them that they continued to side
with France even when she was under the military despotism
of Napoleon. He was the arch-enemy of England in Europe.
They were the arch-enemy of England in America. This
alone was enough to overcome their natural repugnance to
his autocratic ways. Their position towards the British
was such that they could not draw back from France, whose
change of government had made her a more efficient
anti-British friend. 'Let us unite with France and stand
or fall together' was the cry the Democratic press repeated
for years in different forms. It was strangely prophetic.
Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1808 began its self-injurious
career at the same time that the Peninsular War began to
make the first injurious breach in Napoleon's Continental
System. Madison's declaration of war in 1812 coincided
with the opening of Napoleon's disastrous campaign in
Russia.

The Federalists, the party in favour of peace with the
British, included many of the men who had done most for
Independence; and they were all, of course, above suspicion
as patriotic Americans. But they were not unlike
transatlantic, self-governing Englishmen. They had been
alienated by the excesses of the French Revolution; and
they could not condone the tyranny of Napoleon. They
preferred American statesmen of the type of Washington
and Hamilton to those of the type of Jefferson and Madison.
And they were not inclined to be more anti-British than
the occasion required. They were strongest in New England
and New York. The Democrats were strongest throughout
the South and in what was then the West. The Federalists
had been in power during the Accommodation period. The
Democrats began with Unfriendliness, continued with
Hostility, and ended with War.

The Federalists did not hesitate to speak their mind.
Their loss of power had sharpened their tongues; and they
were often no more generous to the Democrats and to France
than the Democrats were to them and to the British. But,
on the whole, they made for goodwill on both sides; as
well as for a better understanding of each other's rights
and difficulties; and so they made for peace. The general
current, however, was against them, even before the
_Chesapeake_ affair; and several additional incidents
helped to quicken it afterwards. In 1808 the toast of
the President of the United States was received with
hisses at a great public dinner in London, given to the
leaders of the Spanish revolt against Napoleon by British
admirers. In 1811 the British sloop-of-war _Little Belt_
was overhauled by the American frigate _President_ fifty
miles off-shore and forced to strike, after losing
thirty-two men and being reduced to a mere battered hulk.
The vessels came into range after dark; the British seem
to have fired first; and the Americans had the further
excuse that they were still smarting under the _Chesapeake_
affair. Then, in 1812, an Irish adventurer called Henry,
who had been doing some secret-service work in the United
States at the instance of the Canadian governor-general,
sold the duplicates of his correspondence to President
Madison. These were of little real importance; but they
added fuel to the Democratic fire in Congress just when
anti-British feeling was at its worst.

The fourth cause of war, the desire to conquer Canada,
was by far the oldest of all. It was older than
Independence, older even than the British conquest of
Canada. In 1689 Peter Schuyler, mayor of Albany, and the
acknowledged leader of the frontier districts, had set
forth his 'Glorious Enterprize' for the conquest and
annexation of New France. Phips's American invasion next
year, carried out in complete independence of the home
government, had been an utter failure. So had the second
American invasion, led by Montgomery and Arnold during
the Revolutionary War, nearly a century later. But the
Americans had not forgotten their long desire; and the
prospect of another war at once revived their hopes. They
honestly believed that Canada would be much better off
as an integral part of the United States than as a British
colony; and most of them believed that Canadians thought
so too. The lesson of the invasion of the 'Fourteenth
Colony' during the Revolution had not been learnt. The
alacrity with which Canadians had stood to arms after
the _Chesapeake_ affair was little heeded. And both the
nature and the strength of the union between the colony
and the Empire were almost entirely misunderstood.

Henry Clay, one of the most warlike of the Democrats,
said: 'It is absurd to suppose that we will not succeed
in our enterprise against the enemy's Provinces. I am
not for stopping at Quebec or anywhere else; but I would
take the whole continent from them, and ask them no
favours. I wish never to see peace till we do. God has
given us the power and the means. We are to blame if we
do not use them.' Eustis, the American Secretary of War,
said: 'We can take Canada without soldiers. We have only
to send officers into the Provinces, and the people,
disaffected towards their own Government, will rally
round our standard.' And Jefferson summed it all up by
prophesying that 'the acquisition of Canada this year,
as far as the neighbourhood of Quebec, will be a mere
matter of marching.' When the leaders talked like this,
it was no wonder their followers thought that the
long-cherished dream of a conquered Canada was at last
about to come true.

CHAPTER II

OPPOSING FORCES

An armed mob must be very big indeed before it has the
slightest chance against a small but disciplined army.

So very obvious a statement might well be taken for
granted in the history of any ordinary war. But '1812'
was not an ordinary war. It was a sprawling and sporadic
war; and it was waged over a vast territory by widely
scattered and singularly heterogeneous forces on both
sides. For this reason it is extremely difficult to view
and understand as one connected whole. Partisan
misrepresentation has never had a better chance. Americans
have dwelt with justifiable pride on the frigate duels
out at sea and the two flotilla battles on the Lakes.
But they have usually forgotten that, though they won
the naval battles, the British won the purely naval war.
The mother-country British, on the other hand, have made
too much of their one important victory at sea, have
passed too lightly over the lessons of the other duels
there, and have forgotten how long it took to sweep the
Stars and Stripes away from the Atlantic. Canadians have,
of course, devoted most attention to the British victories
won in the frontier campaigns on land, which the other
British have heeded too little and Americans have been
only too anxious to forget. Finally, neither the Canadians,
nor the mother-country British, nor yet the Americans,
have often tried to take a comprehensive view of all the
operations by land and sea together.

The character and numbers of the opposing forces have
been even less considered and even more misunderstood.
Militia victories have been freely claimed by both sides,
in defiance of the fact that the regulars were the really
decisive factor in every single victory won by either
side, afloat or ashore. The popular notions about the
numbers concerned are equally wrong. The totals were far
greater than is generally known. Counting every man who
ever appeared on either side, by land or sea, within the
actual theatre of war, the united grand total reaches
seven hundred thousand. This was most unevenly divided
between the two opponents. The Americans had about 575,000,
the British about 125,000. But such a striking difference
in numbers was matched by an equally striking difference
in discipline and training. The Americans had more than
four times as many men. The British had more than four
times as much discipline and training.

The forces on the American side were a small navy and a
swarm of privateers, a small regular army, a few
'volunteers,' still fewer 'rangers,' and a vast
conglomeration of raw militia. The British had a detachment
from the greatest navy in the world, a very small
'Provincial Marine' on the Lakes and the St Lawrence,
besides various little subsidiary services afloat,
including privateers. Their army consisted of a very
small but latterly much increased contingent of Imperial
regulars, a few Canadian regulars, more Canadian militia,
and a very few Indians. Let us pass all these forces in
review.

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