1812

AS THE UNITED STATES approached war in the winter and spring of 1812, President Madison had a clear strategy for winning: while Napoleon was launching his widely anticipated invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812, the United States would invade lightly defended Canada. Bonaparte’s success in Russia and America’s in Canada, Madison expected, would bring Perceval to the negotiating table. The president’s strategy did not include a major role for the navy. He assumed, as he always had, that in the early stages of the war the Royal Navy would make quick work of the tiny American fleet. Instead of relying on the navy, Madison intended to unleash hundreds of privateers and bring pressure on British commerce, as privateers had done so successfully during the War of Independence. They would be America’s navy.

Madison’s confidence in Napoleon was widely shared in the United States and in Europe, particularly Britain. Long before the president urged Congress to declare war on June 1, it was common knowledge that the French dictator intended to invade Russia in 1812 as soon as the weather permitted. “If war should not commence soon,” wrote John Quincy Adams, the American ambassador in St. Petersburg, on October 11, 1811, “there is . . . nobody who thinks it possible it should be postponed longer than until next summer.” Napoleon was at the apogee of his power. The stupendous French forces gathering along the Russian frontier during the winter and spring of 1812 could not be hidden, and they looked invincible. By June 1812 his Grand Army had grown to an astonishing 600,000 plus, the largest in history. Czar Alexander could summon less than half that number, and perhaps only a third. The belief that Russia would be on her knees in a matter of weeks was all but universal.

War between Napoleon and Alexander had appeared certain since at least December 31, 1810. On that date the czar issued a ukase (decree) that opened trade with Britain while imposing high tariffs on the French, thus breaking Napoleon’s continental trading system and ending Russia’s alliance with France. Knowing full well how violent Napoleon’s reaction would be, Alexander prepared for war. Few observers expected him to be able to withstand Bonaparte, but Alexander was determined to resist to the last. In the winter of 1811–12, General Mikhail Kutuzov defeated Russia’s old nemesis the Turks, ending for the moment their interminable conflict, which had flared up again in 1811. Kutuzov’s force could then combine with other elements of the Russian army and concentrate on the French and their allies. In April 1812 the czar further improved his position by making an alliance with Sweden, eliminating the possibility of Bernadotte’s army attacking St. Petersburg while Napoleon was invading Russia’s heartland.

In May, even as Bonaparte’s hordes were gathering along the Russian border, he demonstrated to the world his dominion over Europe by throwing a lavish ball for himself in Dresden, the capital of Saxony. The proud princes and monarchs of Europe, including those of Prussia and Austria, were required to attend and pay homage to their new master at his grand soiree. When the reluctant guests were assembled in the lavish ballroom of the King of Saxony, the crowd suddenly grew silent, and then a loud voice announced, “the emperor!” After a pause, Napoleon, dressed in his green uniform, made a dramatic, solitary entrance. His message was clear enough; he was not just the Emperor of France. He was The Emperor—certainly of Europe, but after that, who knew? In June 1812 it was hard to imagine what country, or what coalition, could curb his unlimited ambition. Once he subdued Russia and pacified Spain, Britain would stand alone. Could she survive the tidal wave that was sure to follow? It seemed unlikely.

The emperor had convinced nearly everyone that he was unbeatable, and Madison, it would seem, believed he was—at least for the moment. To be sure, Napoleon had 250,000 troops stuck in Spain for four years, unable to defeat the guerrillas and their British allies. Of course, it was Joseph Bonaparte leading the French army there, not his brother. It was widely assumed that once Napoleon turned his full attention to the Iberian Peninsula, he would prevail. Eventually the French dictator would overreach, Madison thought, and that would be the end of him. But for now he was supreme and a useful lever against the British.

In the wake of the grand May ball, Napoleon traveled to the front and took personal command of the Grand Army, his confidence—like that of his generals— absolute. Ignoring the yearning of all Europeans, including his own people, for an end to the mass killing that had been going on for twenty years, he was determined to bring Russia to heel. Once he had done so, his dominance of the European mainland would be complete. Britain would then be in danger of seeing the French dictator, in the not too distant future, strutting in London.

It appeared likely that after subduing Russia, Bonaparte would force the small British army out of Spain and Portugal, while simultaneously building a fleet large enough to challenge the Royal Navy in preparation for an invasion of the British mainland. Of course, there were other possibilities. After throwing Wellington out of the Iberian Peninsula, the emperor might eject Britain from Gibraltar, sweep across North Africa into Egypt, and from there push east with the compliance of his new Russian ally and conquer India, which he had long dreamed of doing. Sooner or later, though, he would invade Britain; there could be no doubt about it. Madison was sure that, faced with this reality, the intractable Perceval would at last seek a rapprochement with the United States.

To bring added pressure on the prime minister, Madison planned to invade Canada in the summer of 1812. Once in possession of even part of Canada, he would have a powerful bargaining tool, particularly when a French victory in Russia would threaten British security as never before. In addition, American privateers would be attacking British commerce and disrupting the supply line moving troops, equipment, money, and food to Wellington’s army in Portugal and Spain. The president even hoped that faced with the prospect of having to fight both France and the United States, the stubborn prime minister might come to terms without the need for actual combat.

EMBARRASSED BY HIS dependence on as noxious a dictator as Napoleon, and stung by Federalist accusations that he was a French puppet, Madison consistently denied that he timed his call for war to coincide with Bonaparte’s plunge into Russia. The president was always careful to distance himself in public from the French dictator, insisting that no matter what critics claimed, he was not allied with Napoleon nor dependent on him in any way and never would be. “Our government will not under any circumstances that may occur, form a political connection with France,” Madison wrote in Washington’s semiofficial National Intelligencer. “It is not desirable to enter the lists with the two great belligerents at once; but if England acts with wisdom, and France perseveres in her career of injustice and folly, we should not be surprised to see the attitude of the United States change toward these powers.”

Indifferent to Madison’s warnings, Napoleon attacked American commerce—to the limited extent he could, given the strength of the Royal Navy—throughout 1812. The armada of Yankee merchantmen supplying food to British forces in Spain annoyed the emperor. The ports of Lisbon and Cadiz, it seemed, were always crowded with American vessels, protected by British licenses that permitted them to ship food to Wellington’s army. French privateer attacks on these licensed merchantmen embarrassed and frustrated the president, but he continued to focus his anger on Britain, while condemning Bonaparte and denying any dependence on him.

Secretary of State Monroe underscored the distance the administration was keeping from Bonaparte in public by writing anti-French editorials in the National Intelligencer, which Madison sent to Joel Barlow, the harried American ambassador in Paris, telling him, “in the event of a pacification with Great Britain, the full tide of indignation with which the public mind here is boiling will be directed against France, if not obviated by a due reparation of her wrongs. War will be called for by the nation almost una voce.”

Many years later, in 1827, Madison continued to insist that the American declaration of war and Napoleon’s invasion happening at the same time were a “fortuitous” coincidence. “The moment chosen for the war,” he said, “would, therefore, have been well chosen with a reference to the French expedition against Russia; and although not so chosen, the coincidence between the war and the expedition promised at the time to be as it was fortuitous.”

“Had the French emperor not been broken down,” Madison wrote in the same letter, “as he was to a degree at variance with all probability and which no human sagacity could anticipate, can it be doubted that Great Britain would have been constrained by her own situation and the demands of her allies to listen to our reasonable terms of reconciliation?”

No matter how much Madison protested, however, the fact remained that without Bonaparte, his war strategy was incomprehensible. The normal instruments a president used to fight a war, namely, an army and a navy, were not available to him. The pigmy American navy could not contend with Britain’s mighty fleet, and the U. S. Army was in even worse shape than the navy. Led by a group of elderly generals, the army had not engaged in combat (except against Native Americans) since the end of the Revolution. Legislation in April 1808—hastily passed in response to the Chesapeake-Leopard affair—had authorized an increase in the regular force from 3,000 to 10,000, but its actual size fluctuated between 5,000 and 7,000. Low pay and miserly enlistment bonuses, coupled with America’s deep political divisions, made recruitment excruciatingly difficult.

In June 1812 the army had men scattered in twenty-three locations around the nation’s periphery. The tiny War Department was not organized to fight a major European power, and fifty-nine-year-old Dr. William Eustis, the secretary of war, was incapable of leading it. Eustis’s experience of war was as a surgeon many years earlier. He had never commanded a fighting unit. A former medical student of Dr. Joseph Warren—the legendary patriot leader killed during the Battle of Bunker Hill—Eustis had bravely tended the wounded during that famous fight, placing his own life in danger, and for the rest of the war he served as a doctor in the Continental Army. Eventually he went into politics and became a powerful Republican ally of Jefferson and Madison. As good a man as Eustis was, however, he was utterly unqualified to lead the War Department.

By the same token, even a person of greater ability would have had enormous problems managing the department, raising an army in a country where the vast majority of men did not want to serve, or invading Canada when the congressmen who urged doing so did not dare raise taxes to fund it. Congress’s refusal to increase taxes was an accurate barometer of public support for the war.

Even if the public were behind the war, the secretary had a staff of only eight clerks, and they had to handle Indian affairs and pensions as well as army business. Furthermore, Eustis did not have a quartermaster branch until the end of March 1812. Until then, that critical function was performed in the Treasury Department. From uniforms to food to artillery, the army suffered from organizational chaos. Only in the matter of muskets and gunpowder did the troops have adequate supplies. A vibrant small arms industry supplied the muskets, and gunpowder was plentiful.

Despite the well-known deficiencies of the army and navy, Madison could not let pass the singular opportunity presented by Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. The time to act was now, he thought; to wait would be to lose his best chance of moving Spencer Perceval to change his American policy. The president had been threatening war for so long that he feared if he delayed any longer he would lose all credibility.

Lack of preparedness was not a reason to avoid war, Madison insisted. He thought that real preparations would begin only when war was actually declared. “It had become impossible to avoid or even delay war,” he wrote, “at a moment when we were not prepared for it and when it was certain that effective preparations would not take place whilst the question of war was undecided.” The president hoped the declaration would bring the country together and set in motion a real push to arm. He did not envision a long war. The sudden, unexpected declaration of one, he thought, might be enough to change Perceval’s mind and bring peace before Christmas.

EVEN WITH THE army in the disorganized, embryonic state it was, Madison assumed—as did most Republicans, including Jefferson—that Canada was there for the taking. With a diverse population of less than half a million scattered over a wide expanse of territory and tenuously ruled by a not-very-popular British minority, the colony appeared exceptionally vulnerable. In the spring of 1812, forcing Britain out of Canada looked particularly easy. The British were tied down in Portugal, Spain, Sicily, Ireland, India, and the West Indies, and they now had to contend with an apparent Napoleonic victory in Russia. Only a token army of perhaps 7,000 of His Majesty’s regulars was stationed in the Canadian provinces, and they were dispersed from Halifax to Quebec to Montreal, and farther west at Kingston, York, Detroit, and Lake Huron. Provincial troops supplemented the regulars, but their capacity and commitment were suspect. It had become an article of faith among Madison’s supporters that, if attacked, Canada would fall like a ripe apple. Jefferson famously declared, “The acquisition of Canada this year [1812], as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.” Jefferson told Revolutionary War hero General Thaddeus Kosciusko, “The partisans of England here [the Federalists] have endeavored much to goad us into the folly of choosing the ocean instead of the land.... That would be to meet their strength with our own weakness, instead of their weakness with our strength.”

Chasing the British out of North America had long been a cherished dream of both Madison and Jefferson. Although they repeatedly denied being anti-British, their anger, in fact, ran deep. They had no love for Napoleon, but they believed the danger he presented was far less than that posed by Britain. The French dictator would eventually go too far, they felt; his ambition far exceeded his capacity, and, in any event, his system would die with him, whereas the British impulse to control the oceans and expand their empire had been exhibited for centuries through the reigns of many monarchs. Imperialism was inherent in the country’s nature, they believed, and therefore a greater danger.

Conquering Canada would deprive hostile Indian nations of critical support from the British and cut off the supply of natural resources Britain required for her economy and defense. As Napoleon spread his dominion over Europe and shut down trade with Britain, the raw materials needed to sustain the Royal Navy came increasingly from Canada, making this vast territory, once considered of limited use to the fleet, critically important.

Madison planned to make a sudden thrust across the Canadian border as soon as Congress declared war, capitalizing on the eagerness of people in the western states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee and the territories of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois to drive the British out of Canada. Along the entire American frontier, people were convinced that British agents operating out of Canada were inciting the Indian nations and supplying them with weapons. Feeling intensified when the charismatic chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (known as the Prophet) emerged as leaders of a movement to unite the tribes, north and south, and make them strong enough to secure their territory and their way of life. Tecumseh, who was part Shawnee and part Creek, adamantly opposed selling more Indian lands to the United States; he urged the tribes to remain true to their traditions and reject American attempts to turn them into docile farmers.

Tecumseh’s power grew appreciably on September 30, 1809, when William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, concluded the lopsided Treaty of Fort Wayne with the Potawatomis, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Delawares, Lenape, Weas, and Kickapoos, dispossessing the tribes of over three million acres for an equivalent of $5,250. This was but one in a series of unequal treaties that Harrison had concluded with the Indians. Since becoming governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory in 1800, he had carried out President Jefferson’s policy of turning as many Indians as possible into farmers. Jefferson wanted those who resisted to be driven west beyond the Mississippi. His policy left no room for Native Americans to remain on the land and pursue their traditional way of life.

The American government’s tactics outraged Tecumseh. His movement, which had been strengthening since 1810, grew even stronger when the Treaty of Fort Wayne became fully understood. The contest between Tecumseh, the Prophet, and Harrison eventually led to the Battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811, which was portrayed as a victory for Governor Harrison but led Tecumseh and his growing number of followers to draw ever closer to the British.

Governor Harrison was a great hero among settlers along the frontier, where people mindlessly placed all the blame for sour relations with the tribes on the British. In the western states and territories frontiersmen were convinced that, deprived of British aid, the Indians could easily be driven beyond the Mississippi, allowing Americans to appropriate their lands. A tidal wave of farmers and speculators awaited their opportunity.

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.

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.