GAZING AT THE CLUTTER of perfumes, snuffboxes and wigs, Captain Harry Smith could hardly believe the truth. Here he was—an unknown junior officer—sitting in the Prince Regent’s own dressing room, describing to His Royal Highness the capture of Washington.
After a remarkably fast passage from the Chesapeake, Smith had reached London with General Ross’s dispatches early on the morning of September 27. He immediately reported to Lord Bathurst, who lost no time whisking him to Carlton House for a royal interview. Things were moving fast, even for a man of Smith’s jaunty self-confidence. How should he act? he asked Bathurst. “Oh,” said the Earl lightly, “just behave as you would to any gentleman.”
The formula worked. The Prince Regent couldn’t have been more gracious. He asked all the right questions as Smith unrolled a large plan of Washington with the burnt buildings neatly marked in red ink. Outside, the Park and Tower guns began thundering a mighty victory salute.
“War America would have, and war she has got.… Washington is no more,” proclaimed the Courier that afternoon. “The reign of Madison, like that of Bonaparte, may be considered as at an end,” declared the Evening Star. A few days later the National Register reported that in the hour of disaster the President had shot himself.
It was chastisement at last, and London especially savored every detail of the humiliating rout at Bladensburg. “History presents many examples of patriotic heroism in which, if success was not always attained, honor was never lost,” pontificated the Morning Post on the 28th. “It remained for the Americans to display an example of pusillanimity hitherto unknown in the long course of ages.”
In contrast: English valor. All in all, it was almost a morality play and, as the Sun observed, “a lesson for the past and an example for the future of how dangerous and fatal it is to rouse the sleeping Lion of the British Isles.”
The victory capped a summer of almost continuous joy. Napoleon had been gone for six months now, but the celebration rolled on—the balloon ascension in front of Buckingham House … the great festival in Hyde Park, where “the consumption of bottled ale and porter exceeded almost the power of calculation” … the sham naval battle on the Serpentine that saw miniature British “frigates” crush their American counterparts. At the time a few spoilsports observed that it didn’t always happen that way on the ocean, but the doubters were no longer in evidence.
Washington was an indisputable, glorious reality, and it silenced the war’s critics—a small but persistent minority who pointed to the casualties, the drain on the economy, the strategic difficulties, the marginal gains to be won. The peace-minded Spectator had been among the most vocal, but now it swallowed its pride. Calling Ross’s feat a “brilliant dash,” the editors lamely added that they would reserve any questions about advisability for another time.
The government too changed its tune. As Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool was quite aware of the costs of the war. Only four days earlier he had written his Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, in Vienna, “I confess on many counts I wish we were well out of it….” Liverpool was hoping the Peninsular regiments he had sent across the Atlantic would make this possible. Their victories should give him the leverage he needed to deal with both a bellicose public at home and the hardheaded American peace negotiators who were meeting the British representatives at Ghent in Belgium.
Now Liverpool had his leverage, yet his first thoughts were not of peace but of more victories. He and Lord Bathurst immediately decided to add two more regiments to Admiral Cochrane’s force. This was quite a turnabout, for on sober second thought the government had previously cut back the big army promised Cochrane. New Orleans, it was felt, could be taken without Lord Hill and with far fewer troops. Now most of the cut (but not Hill himself) was restored. Together with reinforcements already on the way, Cochrane’s force would be “upwards of 10,000 men.”
This should be enough to accomplish all objectives. Bathurst wrote General Ross, who as far as London knew was still in good health. Moreover, Bathurst added, Ross and Cochrane had the government’s approval to go wherever they liked—Rhode Island, the Delaware, the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, New Orleans, any or all these places. Again unaware of events, Bathurst added that if they went to Baltimore, he hoped they would “make its inhabitants feel a little more the effects of your visit than what has been experienced at Washington.”
More men … a free hand … a hard line—all these a grateful government rushed to bestow on the conquerors of Washington. Whitehall bustled with activity as Colonel Henry Torrens, the hard-working military secretary, set about assembling troops, supplies and transports. Even the Duke of York, nominally the Commander-in-Chief, snapped to life. Only yesterday Torrens had privately described him as “never more drowsy”; today His Royal Highness shuffled papers with the best of them.
The fall of Washington also had its effect at Ghent, where the British and American negotiators continued their fencing. “I hope you’ll be able to put on a face of compress’d joy at least, in communicating the news to the American ministers,” Bathurst wrote Henry Goulburn, the second-ranking member of the British delegation on September 27.
Goulburn was delighted to oblige. Although Admiral Lord Gambier supplied the gold braid and Dr. William Adams the technical expertise, it was Goulburn who provided the real muscle for “His Majesties True, Certain, and Undoubted Commissioners, Procurators, and Plenipotentiaries.” He did most of the talking and continually pressed for harsh peace terms—often at cross-purposes with his more relaxed superiors in London.
Now at last he had a real go-ahead from Bathurst, and he took special pleasure in forwarding the latest London newspapers to the Hotel Lovendeghem, where the five-man American delegation lived in the disarray of unaccustomed bachelorhood. At the moment Henry Clay was off on a little junket to Brussels, and Goulburn’s covering note dryly suggested that the papers might relieve his boredom in that uninteresting city.
Beyond such taunts the British tone became distinctly tougher, and any inclination to compromise seemed to vanish. Lord Liverpool and Bathurst, who called the shots from London, felt they had already compromised enough. When the negotiations began in August, they had presented a “shopping list” that included such stern demands as an Indian buffer state in the Northwest Territory and exclusive British control of the Great Lakes. The American negotiators flatly rejected all this, and by now London was willing to settle for considerably less: the prewar Indian boundaries; inclusion of the tribes as parties to the peace treaty; a chunk of Maine big enough for a short cut between Halifax and Quebec; British possession of both sides of the St. Lawrence, as well as certain key posts on the Great Lakes.
For John Quincy Adams and his colleagues this was still too much, and on September 26 they replied to that effect. Their note reached London just after the news of Ross’s triumph, and Liverpool cheerfully wrote Bathurst there was no need to hurry a reply. “Let them feast in the meantime upon Washington.”
Yet the Prime Minister didn’t use the victory to increase his demands. Rising military expenditures, signs of a tax revolt, and the uncertain European political picture all suggested caution. He would like to end the war, he wrote the Duke of Wellington, “if it can be done consistently with our honor and upon such terms as we are fairly entitled to expect.”
To get these, Liverpool was willing to be patient. Jonathan might be stubborn at the moment, but he should feel differently after Wellington’s veterans had won a few resounding victories. Washington was a good start….
The American commissioners were willing to wait too. They were in the happy position of wanting nothing but the status quo. Their only important demand—an end to impressment—had been quietly withdrawn as the storm clouds gathered over. Washington during the summer. Now their main job was simply to stand up to the British, and they were more than equipped to do this.
Adams, the chairman, was clearheaded and implacable; Albert Gallatin, a man of unruffled poise; Henry Clay, the shrewdest of gamblers behind that lazy facade. The other two Americans were less striking figures, but James Bayard was tenacious and Jonathan Russell had a slavish devotion to Clay that made him utterly reliable in a crisis. As a group they towered intellectually over the three British commissioners and. enjoyed a psychological edge as well. It was all too clear that London regarded its representatives as little more than messenger boys.
Nevertheless, the capture of Washington was darkly discouraging, and the effects were deeply felt on. October 8 when a new British note arrived full of bombast, threats and an “ultimatum” that the Indians be restored to their prewar boundaries. Still depressed by the news from home, the Americans accepted the demand, consoling themselves that London no longer insisted that the Indians be a party to the peace treaty.
But the chief consolation for the Americans during these gloomy days was an abundance of evidence that European sympathy had swung to their side. The French press lashed at Ross’s and Cockburn’s free use of the torch in Washington. The Journal des Débats compared the invaders to pirates; the Journal de Paris likened the destruction to burning the Pantheon or St. Peter’s at Rome. “How could a nation eminently civilized, conduct itself at Washington with as much barbarity as the old banditti of Attila and Genseric? Is not this act of atrocious vengeance a crime against all humanity?”
And the deed lost nothing in the telling. According to the French journalists, Washington was “annihilated” … “swept from the face of the earth.” It had been “one of the finest capitals in the world” … “a city whose riches and beauty formed one of the most valuable monuments of the progress of the arts and of human industry”—descriptions which would have startled even the most chauvinistic of the capital’s inhabitants.
In London the cry was still for chastisement, and what could be a more legitimate target than the public buildings of any enemy capital? “Such are the fruits which America has derived from this unnatural war,” declared the Courier, adding, “But the vial of our wrath is not yet exhausted; a few days, perhaps hours, will bring us intelligence of further successes.” The Public Ledger was more specific; the editors said they wouldn’t be surprised to see Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore all turned into “heaps of smoldering rubbish” by the end of the year.
In fact, rumors swept London in the first week of October that Baltimore had already fallen. The details were convincingly specific: 100 sail taken … a prodigious amount of flour, “ready packed in barrels.” Assuring its readers that this was no mere gossip, the Morning Post explained that the story came straight from the Cork Reporter, which got it from Admiral Sawyer at Cove, who got it from the brig Charybdis, which got it from a Spanish ship off the banks of Newfoundland. The Morning Chronicle provided no such authentication, but its version was even more exciting: Baltimore had not only fallen, but under the protection of the British forces it had “seceded from the Union and proclaimed itself neutral.”
The government of course knew better, but optimism was sky-high by the middle of the month. Facing a pleasant interlude with “no particular problems, on the 16th Colonel Torrens sent a note to his friend Major General Taylor, suggesting they go for a day’s shooting during the coming week. He assured Taylor they had the chiefs blessing: “HRH gave us carte blanche to destroy all the pheasants we can.”
No pheasants fell to these particular guns, for the following morning the roof fell in. Captain Duncan MacDougall arrived with the latest dispatches from the Chesapeake: Ross was dead … the army and navy repulsed at Baltimore.
As soon as possible Lord Liverpool and Bathurst hurried to the Horse Guards, where they huddled with Colonel Torrens over the selection of a new general. Colonel Brooke was clearly too junior; so was Major General John Keane, now on his way out with the first of Cochrane’s reinforcements. Sir Thomas Picton had the seniority but seemed a little too rough. In the end they picked Major General Sir Edward Pakenham—Wellington’s brother-in-law and one of his most trusted staff officers.
While all this was being settled behind closed doors at Whitehall, the press struggled bravely with the disastrous news. “Another brilliant victory,” proclaimed the Morning Post. If the results didn’t seem too decisive, the paper continued, it was only because the cowardly militia refused to stand up to British bayonets. “All the victories of Alexander, Caesar, Scipio, and Hannibal are dimmed by the resplendent glories of the heroes of our isle. It is hard, then, it is indeed distressing that their immediate duty requires them to contend with a set of creatures who take the field only to disgrace the musket.”
As for the death of Ross, that could be explained by another cowardly American trick: “the assassin-like manoeuver of marking their man, under the security of their impenetrable forests.”
Nobody was really fooled. It was all too clear that the army had failed to reach its objective and had lost its leader in the process. Worse, the affair probably gave the Americans new spirit, canceling out whatever benefits might have come from Washington. “Victories which have effects like these,” remarked the Statesman on sober reflection, “we think Britain had better be without.”
Then, on top of Baltimore came the disaster of Lake Champlain and Plattsburg, and now even the pretense of victory was ludicrous. “So lamentable an instance of weakness and imbecility has not been recorded in our military annals!” Colonel Torrens wrote the Marquis of Tweeddale in a letter that reflected the government’s shock and anguish. “Good God! Is it to be borne that an officer in command of 9,000 British troops shall retreat before a handful of Banditti because he forsooth thinks that the object to be gained by an attack after the loss of the fleet would not justify the loss—as if there were no such thing as national honor and professional credit to fight for!”
On October 18, as the bad news came pouring in, Lord Bathurst dashed off new instructions to his peace commissioners at Ghent. Gone was the policy of calculated delay—the strategy of marking time until a few military victories gave Britain a solid bargaining position. Clearly there would be no more victories until the reinforcements reached America, and now the choice was to escalate the war or ask for less.
London asked for less. Out went the long list of territorial demands cooked up in August. Instead, Britain would settle for the doctrine of uti possidetis—each side to keep what it held. To Bathurst this meant Britain would get the northern half of Maine, Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara on the Great Lakes—the last a little anticipatory since it was still held by the Americans.
At Ghent, Henry Goulburn submitted the new British terms on October 21—just as the first details of Baltimore and Plattsburg arrived. It was a bad day to be asking Americans for anything. “The news is very far from satisfactory,” Goulburn wrote Bathurst that night. “We owed the acceptance of our article respecting the Indians to the capture of Washington; and if we had either burnt Baltimore or held Plattsburg, I believe we should have had peace on the terms which you have sent us in a month at least. As things appear to be going on in America, the result of our negotiation may be very different.”
As Goulburn feared, on October 24 the American commissioners flatly rejected the British demands. They wanted no part of uti possidetis. Instead, each side should keep what it had at the start of hostilities.
The continued stubbornness of the Americans caused new exasperation at Downing Street, for the disastrous military news had touched off a growing protest against the war. For some it was a matter of priorities. The Congress of Vienna was off to a rocky start … the Russians were taking over Poland … Prussia and Austria were eying Saxony … France seemed on the verge of another revolution—all with nearly half the British Army 3,000 miles away. This protracted conflict with America was tying down troops badly needed to strengthen England’s hand on the all-important Continent of Europe.
There was also a growing clamor against military expenditures. As long as Napoleon was a threat, the British were willing to put up with back-breaking taxes—not only for their own forces, but their allies too. They had bankrolled the struggle for almost 20 years; now Bonaparte was gone and they wanted relief.
The American war was no way to get it. It cost a thousand guineas to ship a single cannon from Portsmouth to Lake Ontario. The Americans, on the other hand, were right on the spot. Even in their precarious financial condition they could wage war at minimum cost. Their tax bill came to about one-twentieth the horrendous amount paid by long-suffering Britons.
Worse, the cost of the war was rising. As always, the military had underestimated its needs and expenditures. “The continuance of the American war will entail upon us a prodigious expense, much more than we had any idea of,” Lord Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, who was having his own troubles at Vienna.
Not only was the tax bill staggering, but business was surprisingly poor—and getting worse every day the war dragged on. The end of Bonaparte had not spelled prosperity. On the other hand, Cochrane’s blockade and the American privateers were costing the country dearly. Some 1,400 vessels had been lost to privateers … insurance rates were higher than before Napoleon fell … 20,000 cases of goods lay on the docks at Liverpool, waiting for peace and shipment to America.
Even so, most Britons would be willing to make a great sacrifice if the purpose of the war were worth it. But it was one thing to defend a free hand for the Royal Navy—including the right of impressment—and quite a different matter to be demanding American territory. Even those not privy to the negotiations at Ghent could read the proclamation issued at Halifax claiming the west side of the “Penobscot River. The Morning Chronicle considered this a dangerous escalation of the war that would only draw the Americans closer together.
Above and beyond these practical complaints, a moral revulsion crept over the public. When the Continental papers denounced the destruction at Washington, they pricked perhaps the most vulnerable point of Britain’s anatomy—her national conscience. In ever-increasing numbers English critics too spoke of the “unmanly vengeance” exhibited in burning, say, the Library of Congress. “We are persuaded,” the Times raged back, “that a single shelf in the Spencerian library would purchase all the scarce books that ever found their way across the Atlantic since the United States have had to boast an existence; and sure we are that if there were any scarce books at Washington, the readers that could read them were that much scarcer.”
Such ranting accomplished nothing. Criticism continued to mount, and on November 1 the government quietly capitulated. Lord Bathurst ordered Cochrane to end his policy of retaliation.
But the larger question of the conduct of the war remained. It seemed to be leading nowhere, with nothing to look forward to but an open-ended commitment of more men, more money, more effort. “Think of the expense of such a war!” exploded William Cobbett even before the news of Baltimore arrived. “We conquer nothing, we capture nothing, and almost every action is followed by a retreat.”
Indeed, it was the sheer endlessness of it all that discouraged people the most. Only a few weeks ago the Naval Chronicle was speculating on the dissolution of the Union; now the press wondered whether Canada could be saved. Early in October the guessing game was whether New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore would be taken next. A month later the Mayor of Liverpool was warning Lord Sidmouth of the city’s “insufficient means of repelling attack in the event of such being made by the American government.”
Criticism continued to mount, until finally on November 4 the government did what it always did in times of trouble—it turned to the Duke of Wellington. After a full cabinet discussion, Lord Liverpool wrote the Duke in Paris, where as British Ambassador he was trying to breathe life into the newly restored Bourbon monarchy. The French capital seethed with rancor, and stressing Wellington’s personal danger, Liverpool said the cabinet was resolved to get him out. As a pretext, he could either go to Vienna and consult with Castlereagh or take command in America.
It was a curiously oblique way of approaching the matter, but there was no doubt how much importance Liverpool attached to the American assignment:
You should go out with full powers to make peace, or to continue the war, if peace should be found to be impracticable, with renewed vigour….
The more we contemplate the character of the American war, the more satisfied we are of the many inconveniences which may grow out of the continuance of it. We desire to bring it to an honourable conclusion; and this object would, in our judgment, be more likely to be attained by vesting you with double powers than by any other arrangement which could be suggested.
Among other advantages, Liverpool wrote Castlereagh the same day, Wellington had the prestige to make unappetizing peace terms palatable to the British public.
The Duke was initially inclined to go, but the more he thought about the scheme, the less he liked it. Writing Liverpool on the 9th, he saw little chance of success: “That which appears to me to be wanting in America is not a General, or General officers and troops, but a naval superiority tin the Lakes.” Without this, no one—Prevost or anybody else—could accomplish very much … “and I shall go there only to prove the truth of Prevost’s defense, and to sign a peace which might as well be signed now…”
As to peace terms, Wellington went on to offer some unsolicited advice:
I confess that I think you have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession of territory from America…. You have not been able to carry it into the enemy’s territory, notwithstanding your military success, and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory of the enemy on the point of attack …
Then if this reasoning is true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory; indeed the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any….
There could not have been a bigger jolt to the government’s hopes and plans. Wellington was not only England’s greatest general; he was the country’s most respected, most revered public figure. All Britain deferred to his judgment, and it was almost unthinkable to go against his considered wishes. While he was too good a soldier to say so, he clearly didn’t want this American assignment, and it was just as clear that he regarded the government’s whole approach to peace as unrealistic.
It was a shaken group of ministers that faced the opposition in Parliament, which was now in session again. In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville deplored the destruction at Washington; in the House of Commons, George Tierney denounced the ever-growing deficit. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer Nicholas Vansittart presented a new list of mountainous military expenditures, the Whig benches exploded with indignation. Parliament was committed to tax relief—not more taxes—and the promise to end the detested property tax was “as strong a pledge as Parliament could give.”
Far from ending the property tax, Vansittart conceded on November 17, the government planned to ask for an extension. Once more the Whigs erupted in anger, and Samuel Whitbread warned that the American war would prove a bigger drain than the struggle against Napoleon.
The government’s spokesmen fought back, stressing the perils of a quick, easy peace … calling for patience … arguing that the war was fast approaching a turning point. All that was needed, the Times declared, was “a small degree of additional perseverance.” Then Admiral Cochrane would win great new victories in the south, and the American economy would collapse.
Above all, it was argued, a little patience and the Union itself might dissolve. There were several hopeful signs: Nantucket had declared its “neutrality” … the people east of the Penobscot were swearing allegiance to the Crown … several of the New England states planned a convention at Hartford, Connecticut, that might lead to secession.
But the mail from America soon dashed these high hopes. The Foreign Office had good sources in Boston, and one of these contacts (“very respectable”) sent in a report clearly showing that Cochrane’s operations along the Atlantic seaboard had boomeranged. Whatever the Federalist old guard might say, New England as a whole was rallying to the colors. In the space of four weeks thousands of new men had joined the militia, and the coastal towns were all astir.
This was, of course, confidential information, but there was nothing confidential about the American newspapers that reached London on November 18, offering fresh proof that all sections of the country were closing ranks. Madison, it seemed, had released to the press those harsh British peace terms presented in August, and the nation exploded in anger. Even the President’s old foe, Alexander Hanson of the Georgetown Federal Republican, stood by his side.
In vain Lord Liverpool cried “foul,” complaining that it was an inexcusable breach of etiquette to release a confidential diplomatic exchange. The damage was done, and the British public knew all too well that the government had once again misassessed the situation. Its tactics had strengthened rather than weakened American unity, and the thrashing of Jonathan lay further off than ever.
Parliament went into a new uproar. In the House of Lords, the Marquis of Lansdowne declared that it was one thing to fight for a great principle like Britain’s maritime rights, but a totally different matter to conquer territory, impose boundaries, and generally hem in America. He didn’t want any part of that. In the House of Commons, Alexander Baring declared that the whole business was like asking England to surrender Cornwall.
Emotions ran high, but actually the government had already decided to give up its territorial demands. As early as November 13 Lord Liverpool privately wrote Wellington, reassuring him on the matter. On the 15th Bathurst warned Goulburn at Ghent to be prepared for this new retreat.
By now Goulburn was used to London’s erratic ways. Still, he couldn’t help expressing his personal disappointment. “You know,” he wrote Bathurst, “that I was never inclined to give way to the Americans.” As a loyal servant of the Crown, however, he promised that the British commissioners would do their best “to bring the negotiations to a speedy issue.”
So a new note went off to the Americans on November 26. It abandoned the principle of uti possidetis, and from then on the two sides made steady progress. There was, in fact, little left to settle. The United States had given way on “free trade and sailors’ rights”; Britain had dropped a strong stand on the Indians and any thought of territory. About all that remained were the questions of whether Massachusetts fishermen could dry and cure their catch on the shores of Newfoundland, and whether English vessels had freedom of navigation on the Mississippi. These issues were met by the simple expedient of silence: they were left out of the treaty altogether.
December 23, both parties agreed on a final draft. There was only one last-minute hitch: the British refused to return several small islands seized in Passamaquoddy Bay. They claimed these had always belonged to the Crown and would be held until future negotiations determined their title. This was nothing to fight a war about—the Americans acquiesced.
At 4:00 P.M., December 24, the five U.S. commissioners left the Hotel Lovendeghem, entered their carriages, and drove to the Chartreuse, a former monastery where the British had their quarters. For the next two hours all the diplomats sat together, going over the six copies of the treaty page by page. Then, at 6:00 P.M.—as the bells of St. Bovan began ringing in Christmas Eve—they carefully signed and sealed a “Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America.”
For five months’ work it was an amazingly simple document. Mainly, it ended the war; returned all territory seized by either side (except the islands in the Passamaquoddy Bay); restored the Indians to their prewar status; and set up four commissions to deal with specific questions involving the Canadian boundary.
There was, however, one unusual provision. Normally treaties took effect when signed—but not this one. It would become operative only when unconditionally ratified by both parties, with the ratifications to be exchanged in Washington. “Even if peace is signed,” Lord .Liverpool explained in a letter to Castlereagh, “I shall not be surprised if Madison endeavours to play us some trick in the ratification of it.”
To the end, the British wrote off the President as a sly, malevolent gnome—quite likely to reject the treaty altogether in some dark political maneuver … or equally likely to change a line here and there to snatch an undeserved advantage. So the war would go on—His Majesty’s forces would press as hard as ever—until the treaty was actually ratified and this slippery man was nailed down to its terms.
These dark suspicions were carefully hidden on the 24th at Ghent. All was perfect courtesy as the delegates sat at the long table in the Chartreuse, busy with their quills and ribbon and sealing wax. Speaking for the British, Lord Gambier said he hoped that peace would be permanent, and John Quincy Adams expressed the same wish. During the evening all joined together at the Cathedral for an impressively solemn service.
Christmas was appropriately merry. At noon John Payne Todd, Madison’s wastrel stepson on hand as a minor secretary, gave a party that introduced eggnog to Ghent. The innovation was greeted with acclaim. At the Chartreuse the British sat down to roast beef and plum pudding, brought direct from England.
Across the Channel, London too was enjoying Christmas. The Morning Chronicle dotingly reported that the Viscountess Cremorne “exercised her usual benevolence” at her house on Great Stanhope Street, showering beef, bread and coals on thirty fortunate Irishmen. (“They were afterwards admitted to the servants’ hall, wherein a liberal distribution of whiskey and ale took place.”) At Highgate a Miss Mellon—otherwise unidentified—also made the poor happy: beef and bread to the elderly men; “and to every distressed aged female that applied, a chemise, a cloak, a blanket and wine; and to the children of poverty, one shilling each.”
The damp air glowed with good fellowship this first Christmas since Napoleon, and now there were rumors of an early peace with America too. The Times—committed as always to total victory—scoffed at the notion as “madness.” Yet the financial circles in the City had a way of knowing such things, and during most of the 24th the so-called ”peace policies” showed unusual strength. At Amsterdam, where the shrewd Dutch bankers also had their sources, the American loan rose from 73 to 88—a high that hadn’t been matched since the war began.
Around 2:00 P.M. on the 26th, Anthony St. John Baker, secretary to the British peace commission, arrived from Ghent with three copies of the treaty. He said nothing, but was immediately closeted with Bathurst at the Foreign Office. Soon afterward Lord Liverpool was observed hurrying to Carlton House to see the Prince Regent.
While most of London buzzed with curiosity, the City already knew—or at least that part of the City which enjoyed good Continental connections. Enterprising stock jobbers had raced ahead of Baker and beaten him to town. By 1:00 P.M. the “peace shares” were bounding upward, and knowledgeable gentlemen at Lloyds were giving 50 guineas to get 100, if a peace treaty were signed by midnight—a gamble that could only be described as a sure thing. “None were in on the secret for some time but those connected with the American junta,” complained the Evening Star, which had none of these valuable contacts.
But by 4 o’clock the news was general … with reactions as divided as the country. When announcements were made that evening at the Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters, there were cheers—but groans and hisses too. Next morning the Times thundered against “this deadly instrument,” while the Chronicle congratulated the nation on a “desirable act.” The Public Ledger was “mortified”; the Morning Post “astounded”; but significantly, the prowar Courier came around and accepted the treaty “with great satisfaction.” Perhaps the Sun expressed the mood of war-weary London the best: the paper approved “with feelings which would prevent us, however, from blazing our windows with illuminations in honor of the event.”
There were no such mixed emotions in the new, politically powerful manufacturing centers mushrooming through the Midlands. At Birmingham an immense crowd watched for the mail coach bearing the official announcement, then took the horses out of the traces, and with much shouting and cheering pulled the coach themselves to the Post Office. There was general rejoicing at Manchester, and at Britain’s hard-hit ports as well. At Yarmouth the bells were rung for two days, and flags appeared everywhere.
At Downing Street, Lord Liverpool was more relieved than exultant. “You know how anxious I was that we should get out of this war as soon as we could do so with honor,” he wrote George Canning, currently serving in Lisbon. This he felt had been done, and it was best to make peace “before the impatience of the country on the subject had been manifested at public meetings or by motions in Parliament.”
Now Liverpool’s main concern was to make the treaty stick. On December 27 he had it ratified by the Prince Regent, and that same day Anthony Baker was ordered to carry it to Washington for similar action there.
Along with the treaty went a batch of orders for Cochrane, Pakenham and His Majesty’s other commanders in North America. If Washington unconditionally ratified, Baker was to inform them at once, sending along sets of orders that suspended hostilities. Cochrane was then to “return immediately to England” with all his ships, except a handful left for routine assignments. “My Lords further direct you to afford every facility and means of transport in your power for the conveyance back to England of the army under Sir Edward Pakenham with all its baggage and stores.”
Besides coming home, Pakenham had a little tidying to do: “You will assure the friendly Indian Nations that Great Britain would not have consented to make peace with the United States of America, unless those Nations and Tribes who had taken part with us had been included in the Pacification.” And if this sounded a little glib, the next passage was almost ominous: the General should do his utmost to persuade the Indians to accept the peace, “as we would not be justified in affording them further assistance if they should persist in hostilities.”
All this, of course, assumed the Americans would ratify. But Downing Street remained fearful that Madison would do nothing of the kind. Even now it seemed likely that this tireless schemer would reject the treaty and continue the war as his one hope of staying in power. Or perhaps he would tinker with some phrase and change the whole meaning. “It must not be disguised,” warned the Evening Star, “that every evil is to be apprehended from the delays that may be interposed by the quirking, quibbling chicanery of Madisonian pettifogging diplomacy.” Or as Henry Goulburn put it more succinctly: “The Americans always cheat us.”
In that event, Baker was to alert the various commanders that ratification had failed, and they already had their plans and orders. On the Atlantic coast a mighty hammer blow should be poised and waiting. Sir Edward Pakenham—with New Orleans safely under his belt—was slated to be in the Delaware or Chesapeake by the end of February or early March, and from here his 10,000 veterans could strike at any of the big eastern cities.
Meanwhile there would be no easing of pressure. The convoy system would be maintained. The troop reinforcements going out in January would leave on schedule. If Pakenham needed the men, this would save two months in getting them to him; if peace came, they could always be sent home—Anthony Baker had the orders in his pocket
On January 2, 1815, Baker sailed from Plymouth on the sloop of war Favourite along with Henry Carroll, Clay’s secretary at Ghent, who was bringing one of the three American copies of the treaty. Flying a flag of truce, the little vessel slipped out of the harbor, turned west, and clawed her way into the wintry Atlantic.