Here's a link to some lesser-known facts about the War of 1812:
Brian Wolly,Tony Horwitz
[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Episode 4.10 The War of 1812
Well, we finally made it to the War of 1812. I’ve only been referring to it for the past four episodes, and twice last season to boot.
When we left off last week, Congress was doing its level best to handicap the United States as it prepared for war with the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain. The year 1812 kicked off with a literal earthquake when five or six minutes of trembling shook Washington City on February 7. Antiwar clergymen naturally declared it was a sign from God that he was angry with the war hawks in Washington.
There was more of a metaphorical earthquake when Treasury Secretary Gallatin proposed measures to pay for the impending war that would make any Republican shake in his boots. Ralph Ketcham describes the measures in his book, James Madison: A Biography:
“Treasury reports forecasting reduced tariff revenues and showing that American trade with England was twenty times that with France caused fiscal nightmares. Gallatin proposed doubling the tariff on such imports as continued to enter the country, as well as stamp duties, license fees, and excises on salt, spirits, carriages, and sugar. Even with these heavy taxes and a conservative estimate of war costs, Gallatin had to propose a loan of $10 million, likely to be subscribed only at ruinous interest rates.”
Did you catch that? A stamp tax! Irony of ironies. These people had basically gone to war with Britain in 1775 over stamp taxes and sugar duties, and now here they were proposing the exact same measures to help finance going to war…with Britain. We’ve officially come full circle, folks. But at least this time it would be the people’s representatives in Congress imposing the taxes and duties on them, and not some foreign power. I doubt that was much comfort to the average citizen though. Madison informed Jefferson, “the House of Representatives have got down the dose of taxes. It is the strongest proof they could give that they do not mean to flinch from the contest to which the mad conduct of Great Britain drives them.”
In lighter news, the President’s House celebrated its first wedding on March 29, 1812, when Dolley’s sister Lucy Payne Washington married Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd. So for those paying attention, if Dolley’s husband John hadn’t died in the yellow fever epidemic, she and her sister would both have been Mrs. Todd, despite being married to men who were not related to each other.
Justice Todd lived in Kentucky, and only came to Washington for about two months of every year, when the Supreme Court sat and heard arguments. Dolley was happy for her sister, but sad to lose her company yet again. She wrote to her sister Anna, “you may suppose that my grief is not slight—My nights are miserable & so are my days.” But after the wedding, she pronounced Thomas Todd, “amiable, intelligent, in short…all that I could wish for in a brother.”
Further parties and celebrations were held when Louisiana was admitted as a state on April 15, 1812. But then on April 20, Vice President George Clinton died. It was no great surprise, considering that he was nearly 72 years old and had been in ill health for some time. The Vice Presidency remained vacant for the rest of Madison’s first term, despite the efforts of many to get James to appoint them to the role. Before Clinton’s death, Dolley wrote to a friend, “The Vice President lies dangerously ill, and electioneering for this office goes beyond description—the world seems to be running mad.”
If you’ve done some quick math, you will realize that 1812 was another election year. I’m not going to spend too much time on the election, because we do have a whole war to cover. The Republican Congressional Caucus unanimously chose Madison for the presidential nomination, and after having their first choice for vice president decline, they selected 67-year-old Elbridge Gerry for the nomination. You’ll recall Elbridge Gerry from season 2 because he was a close friend of John Adams, despite not supporting the Constitution or choosing sides in the Federalist-Republican divide.
And here’s a fun fact I never got a chance to mention in season 2: the term gerrymander is named, somewhat unfairly, after Elbridge Gerry. When he was Governor of Massachusetts in 1812, the Republican legislature created new electoral district boundaries. Some of the districts were very oddly shaped in an effort to maximize Republican electoral success. One district was compared to a salamander in shape, earning it the nickname a “Gerry-mander.” Somehow the name stuck, and today we still refer to the practice of drawing outrageously stupid district lines for partisan gain as gerrymandering.
As the spring of 1812 unfolded, French aggressions at sea increased when they started burning American vessels carrying grain. Calls for war against both Britain and France increased, but if it was foolish to go to war with Britain, it would be insane to go to war with both countries. As tensions mounted, James outlined the situation to Jefferson, sitting comfortably at Monticello.
“To go to war against both, presents a thousand difficulties; above all, that of shutting all the ports of the Continent of Europe against our cruisers who can do little without the use of them. It is pretty certain also, that it would not gain over the Federalists, who would turn all those difficulties against the Administration.” America had cause to go to war with both countries, but chose the more egregious aggressor, which was still Britain.
On June 1, a clerk read out Madison’s prepared message to Congress. In it, he outlined the many reasons to go to war with Britain: (1) impressment of American sailors into Royal Navy service; (2) British cruisers attacking American vessels within sight of their own harbors; and (3) the Rule of 1756 and Orders in Council directing attacks on neutral vessels. He concluded, “It has become sufficiently certain that the commerce of the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the belligerent rights of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies; but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation,...a commerce polluted by…forgeries and perjuries.”
On June 4, the House of Representatives voted in a secret session 79 to 49 in favor of declaring war on Great Britain. The Senate dilly-dallied. First they attempted to pass alternatives to declaring war, but that failed. The British ambassador tried to keep one Senator so drunk that he would be unable to show up to vote, but Ralph Ketcham writes that the Senator “nonetheless staggered in for every roll call to support the administration.”
The next delaying tactic was a call to put France on equal footing with Britain, essentially daring the administration to call for war against both. But that vote failed by a margin of two votes. Finally, after wasting nearly two weeks, on June 17, the Senate voted 19 to 13 to declare war on Great Britain. The next day, the House accepted minor Senate alterations to the declaration, and then Madison signed it. The U.S. was officially at war with Britain.
Later that year, in his annual message to Congress, James would have this to say about the war: “The war in which we are actually engaged is a war neither of ambition nor of vainglory. …It is waged not in violation of the rights of others, but in maintenance of our own. …To have shrunk [from it]...would have struck us from the high rank where the virtuous struggles of our fathers had placed us, and have betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in trust for future generations. It would have acknowledged that on [water]...where all independent nations have equal and common rights, the American people were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals.”
Support for the war was initially high. Veterans of the American Revolution wrote to the president expressing their support and willingness to fight the British once more. States raised militia forces and distributed arms. Newspapers suggested that each state should commit to building one frigate to donate to the navy.
Opposition to the war was most serious in New England, both because it was still a bastion of Federalists, and also because New England dominated American shipping and felt it had the most to lose from war with Britain. In fact, a New Englander gave the war the name it was known by at the time: Mr. Madison’s War. It’s unclear exactly when or why the war was eventually called simply the War of 1812. The Anglo-American War might have made more sense, but I’m not in charge of these things. Apparently the Brits referred to it as the American War of 1812, so as to not confuse it with the Napoleonic wars they were also fighting at the same time.
Residents of New England called meetings and conventions to denounce the war. One group issued a statement saying, “It is impossible to submit in silence [when] a great people find themselves oppressed by their government, their rights neglected, their interests overlooked.”
Dolley meanwhile kept up a steady stream of parties and social engagements at the President’s House. She wanted the world to know that the U.S. was not threatened by the war, and that it was business as usual in the nation’s capital. Or rather, fun as usual, as the case may be.
And Dolley had to literally keep up appearances as well, writing to a friend who lived in Paris, “As you have everything and we have nothing, I will ask the favor of you to send me by a safe vessel large headdresses, a few flowers, feathers, gloves and stockings, black and white, and any other pretty things. …draw upon my husband for the amount.” By the time Dolley’s friend was finished shopping for her, the total bill, including shipping, was $2000, which is almost $48,000 in today’s money. I truly wonder if the women of America would have been so fond of Dolley Madison if they had known how much money she was spending, during a war no less, to import extravagant clothes from France, when the rest of the country was suffering the shortages and lack of anything imported due to the war and all the various embargoes and trade impasses. I’m guessing, not.
Allow me to now introduce you to the major military players of the War of 1812. First we have Henry Dearborn, an overweight, 61-year-old Revolutionary War veteran who had been Jefferson’s Secretary of War. Next up was Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, who was 62. There have been a lot of Pinckneys running around this podcast, so let me clarify who’s who. Thomas Pinckney and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were brothers. They had a cousin named Charles Pinckney, which is why I always refer to Charles Cotesworth with both names, to keep him separate from plain old Charles. And then there’s Attorney General William Pinckney, who was from Maryland and not related to the South Carolina Pinckneys.
Dearborn was heading the Northern Department, while Pinckney took the Southern Department. In the west was 59-year-old William Hull, another Revolutionary War veteran. Not one of them inspired much confidence, and Hull even earned himself the nickname “Granny” from the Federalists. Meanwhile, according to one source of the time, Secretary of War Eustis “had no sense of ‘forming general and comprehensive arrangements for the organization of his troops,’ but instead ‘consumed his time in reading advertisements of petty retailing merchants to find where he may purchase one hundred shoes or two hundred hats.” So, not exactly the A-Team here.
I should also pause here and add some commentary about another reason the U.S. was risking a war with Britain, because it didn’t have anything to do with impressment or harrassment of vessels on the open sea. None of the books I read really got into this factor, but I came across it during ancillary research. It relates to the Native Americans, who, as usual, have been mostly overlooked by historians.
As Americans expanded into the territory acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase, they inevitably came into conflict with the people who already lived on those lands, various tribes whose superior claim to the land went back centuries. But we all know that the colonial powers didn’t really care about native peoples and their claims to anything. The Americans were definitely no better than the colonial powers in this respect.
As American settlers clashed with Native Americans, the British lent help to the tribes, and this was the reason that Congressmen from the southern and western frontier states wanted to go to war with Britain. They couldn’t care less about impressment—no one from their states was serving on a ship anyway. They only cared about the lands they wanted to take from the Native Americans. So that’s a dirty little secret about the War of 1812.
Now, onto the tactical stuff. President Madison decided to launch both land and sea campaigns, so shortly after Congress approved the declaration of war, he ordered Commodore John Rodgers out to sea, to protect American commercial vessels and also to engage British warships when it seemed like a good idea. On land, James ordered the invasion of Canada at Detroit, Niagara, and Montreal. Now, just to clarify, Canada at this time was a collection of still-British colonies, not an independent nation. But still, remember season 1 and the Revolutionary War and the several ill-fated attempts to invade Canada? It never goes well. And this time is no different.
The same day that war was declared, the British ambassador in Washington suddenly became quite receptive to all the demands the U.S. had been making for months, if not years. Ambassador Foster asked Madison if revoking the Orders in Council and agreeing to negotiate on impressment would be sufficient to declare an armistice. Madison didn’t want to sacrifice the advantage the U.S. could gain by quick military action, so he replied that the terms for ending the war were now repeal of the orders, renunciation of illegal blockades, the end of impressments, and the return of all those who had previously been impressed. He had no real reason to expect that Britain would agree to those terms, so war proceeded.
Meanwhile, France essentially said, “just kidding” with respect to its repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and they resumed aggressions against American vessels. In response to the Federalists basically saying “I told you so,” James published editorials, writing, “our government will not, under any circumstances that may occur, form a political connection with France. … 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.”
Translation: if Britain agrees to our terms, we’ll end the war with them and immediately go to war with France. Spoiler alert: none of that happened.
Against this backdrop, yet another secession movement developed in New England. Not a single New England Federalist voted in favor of war, and now that it had been declared, they had no interest in participating. New England courts ruled that only state governors could declare an emergency warranting use of the state militias, so Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to furnish the militia called for by the president and prevented any militia from serving outside their state.
One Boston minister declared “if at the present moment no symptoms of civil war appear they certainly will soon,” while another said, “as Mr. Madison has declared war, let Mr. Madison carry it on. … The Union has long since virtually dissolved: and it is full time that this part of the Disunited States should take care of themselves.”
Former Massachusetts Senator (and former Federalist Secretary of State under Washington and Adams) Timothy Pickering wrote, “to my ears there is no magic in the sound of Union. If the great objects of union are utterly abandoned—much more if they are wantonly, corruptly, and treacherously sacrificed by the Southern and Western states—let the Union be severed.”
As a sign of how bad things were for the American army, when General Dearborn arrived in Albany on July 26 to launch a campaign against Montreal, he found only 1200 troops who were both unorganized and badly equipped. What’s more, no one was even sure who was supposed to be in charge! Secretary of War Eustis thought that operations in western New York were under his command, while General Dearborn logically assumed they were under his.
Furthermore, Dearborn in New York and General Hull in Detroit had made no plans to coordinate their attacks into Canada. The possibility for swift decisive action was lost, leading James to write to Dearborn that the “systematic operation having been frustrated, it remains only to pursue the course that will diminish the disappointment as much as possible.”
General Dearborn was supposed to attack at Niagara, secure the eastern end of Lake Ontario, and march on Montreal. Instead, he agreed to pause everything when he received an emissary from the governor general of Canada on August 9. It seems the Canadian governor was hopeful that some sort of peace was on the verge of being worked out, and Dearborn was too timid to attack, so he agreed to a temporary armistice.
Meanwhile, over in Detroit, General Hull had rapidly advanced across the border into Canada in mid-July, and there was hope that he would swiftly capture Fort Malden. But then, for reasons, he did nothing for two weeks. In the meantime, the British had captured Mackinac Island, which lay in the straits between lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior. Native Americans allied with the British, “swarm[ed] down in every direction” according to Hull. To top it off, British General Isaac Brock was able to use the Great Lakes to move a force of troops to Detroit.
I’ll let Ralph Ketcham describe what happened next. “By failing to do what he might have done easily in mid-July, Hull suddenly found himself in what Madison termed a ‘very ineligible’ position: he faced a brilliantly led army capable of thwarting his invasion of Canada while his own lines of supply and reinforcement…were about to be straddled by Indians emboldened by the scent of victory.
The aging American general, estranged from his eager young subordinates, collapsed in a spasm of fear and indecision. He recalled his forces to the fort at Detroit, whereupon Brock promptly appeared at its gates, demanding surrender. To the astonishment of the British as well as most of his own officers, Hull capitulated, and by August 23, Brock was back at the Niagara frontier with Hull’s army as captives. Beyond the settlements in Ohio, the entire Northwest Territory was abandoned to British-Indian domination, and a triumphant British army holding two thousand American prisoners looked across the Niagara at green, nervous New York militiamen.”
Note to American governments of all time periods: stop trying to invade Canada, you morons!
In response to all this blundering, Madison put Commodore Isaac Chauncey in command at lakes Ontario and Erie, which the British controlled, and ordered him to build ships and assemble enough men to wrest control of the lakes back. And General William Henry Harrison was commissioned to lead a contingent of Kentucky militiamen to Detroit, to resume the conquest of Canada.
Meanwhile, back in New York, the militia was being led by Stephen Van Rensselaer, a wealthy Federalist landowner with no military experience. Classic. He wrote to General Dearborn on August 31, “alarm pervades the country, and distrust among the troops. …Many are without shoes; all clamorous for pay; many are sick.” Seriously, it’s 1778 all over again.
Dearborn’s response did not inspire confidence. He basically told Van Rensselaer to be prepared for anything, ready to make a good retreat, and that reinforcements and supplies were unlikely to make it to him in time. Solid leadership.
But in October, General Alexander Smyth arrived with 1650 regular army troops, and things were looking up. But not for long. Smyth refused to act under Van Rensselaer, a mere militia commander, so Van Rensselaer acted alone, attacking Canada with only his small militia force. As Ralph Ketcham writes, “The resourceful Brock placed his small regular corps before Van Rensselaer’s inexperienced troops and repulsed them at Queenston Heights. Wounded men from this battle, returning across the river, so frightened the untried forces there that they refused to cross into Canada. The troops there, despite individual instances of great bravery, were overwhelmed and eventually captured, delivering to the British a second American army in less than two months. Only Brock’s death on the battlefield gave some hope for the future.”
Van Rensselaer asked to be relieved of his command, which he was, and Smyth took over, but he did no better. By November, he had ruled out a full-scale attack and withdrew and dispersed his army. Madison later observed that “[his] talent for military command was equally mistaken by himself and his friends.” Indeed.
And then our friend General “Granny” Dearborn in Albany had gathered a force of 6000 men. They marched north to Plattsburg for the long-awaited invasion of Montreal, which was defended by fewer than 500 British soldiers. Dearborn conducted a few small raids across the border and then…did nothing. He set up winter quarters and just sat there.
Meanwhile, over in Detroit, things weren’t much better. General William Henry Harrison was in constant disputes with the senior officer of the regular army, General Joseph Winchester. Harrison wrote to Madison that it was impossible to transport wagons and pack horses through the swampy wilderness west of Lake Erie, and that until the rivers and lakes froze over, they were at a standstill.
In the midst of all this incompetence and bad news, it’s something of a miracle that James was reelected in the election of 1812. The Federalists didn’t even bother to name a candidate—a true sign that they were failing as a party. Instead, they gave their support to a break-away Republican candidate who was also backed by disaffected Republicans. This was De Witt Clinton, the nephew of George Clinton. De Witt Clinton tried to be all things to all people which usually doesn’t go well, and Madison won the electoral college by a vote of 128 to 89.
After winning re-election, James’s first order of business was to shuffle his cabinet. Secretary of War Eustis was a disaster. In Albert Gallatin’s words, “[Eustis’s] incapacity and the total want of confidence in him were felt through every ramification of the public service.” He continued that a Secretary of War who actually knew what he was doing would “save millions and the necessary business would be better done.”
For reasons that remain unclear to me, especially after a convincing election victory, James continued to let fear of Congress dictate his Cabinet appointments. He wanted to move James Monroe to War and Gallatin to State, while bringing in someone new at Treasury. But he was worried Congressional opposition would stymie him and force him to lose his two best people. So Monroe and Gallatin stayed where they were, and James appointed General John Armstrong to War. Armstrong had recently returned from France, where he had been serving as minister. He had some military experience, which was an improvement over Eustis, but Gallatin doubted Armstrong’s loyalty to the administration.
Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton was less incompetent than Eustis, but as Ralph Ketcham writes, “He had…become an alcoholic; he often appeared drunk at public celebrations, and for two years his work day had ended at noon.” Just what you want during a war. Thankfully, he resigned, and James appointed William Jones to the role. Jones was a Philadelphia merchant and sea captain, whom James later pronounced, “the fittest minister who had ever been charged with the Navy Department.”
The election of 1812 did not adjust the makeup of Congress to any large degree, and the War Hawks were still the dominant faction. In his presidential address toward the end of the year, James emphasized the few bright spots of the war and mostly avoided talking about the disasters. He requested more ships for the navy, higher bonuses and pay for the army, more federal control over the state militia, and the creation of a general staff.
Congress mostly complied with his requests, but instead of raising taxes to pay for everything, they increased the administration’s borrowing cap, which wasn’t super helpful because Gallatin estimated that it would be impossible to borrow the amount the government needed to finance the war.
As 1813 dawned, things were going quite badly in the land war. General Harrison’s army in Ohio had been defeated and massacred. Kentucky and Ohio militiamen returned home. And the U.S. was no closer to recapturing Detroit than they had been the year before. Treasury Secretary Gallatin also informed James that “we have hardly money enough to last till the end of the month.”
Things were going better at sea. In October 1812 the American vessel Wasp had defeated a much stronger British warship, and then in December the defeated and captured British frigate Macedonian was brought into harbor at New London—the only British warship ever carried as a prize into an American port. When news of the Macedonian’s capture reached Washington, Dolley was at a naval ball being held at Tomlinson Hall. When the naval lieutenant came in with the flag of the captured British ship, it was paraded around the dance floor and then laid at Dolley’s feet, a gesture which had no precedent in American history.
Also in December, the U.S.S. Constitution destroyed the British frigate Java off the coast of Brazil, which tells you how far-flung this war was. Things were going surprisingly bad for Britain, and not just in their war with the Americans. The war with Napoleon was also giving them fits. News that Napoleon had captured Moscow came in October 1812, but by then Napoleon was actually executing his disastrous, deadly retreat from that city. That news wouldn’t reach America for another two months.
If anyone thought the War of 1812 was actually going to be over in 1812, they were sorely mistaken.
Next week, we’ll pick up with Madison’s second inauguration and cover more war, which drags on for another two years.
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull.
