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The War of 1812 In The Age of Napoleon
By Jeremy Black UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4521-1
CHAPTER 1
PATHS TO WAR
"The World Turned Upside Down" was the tune reportedly played on 19 October 1781, when British troops marched out of their ruined positions at Yorktown, Virginia, in order to surrender to the victorious American and French forces. Yet thirty-two years later, in 1813, British warships were in the Chesapeake and, the following year, troops landed, defeated the Americans at Bladensburg, and burned the public buildings in Washington, the city named after the victor at Yorktown.
What were the British and Americans doing going to war in 1812, and what were the characteristics of the two military systems that competed? This chapter assesses what was at stake, but does so in a dynamic fashion that reflects the changing domestic and international pressures and developments of the period. In particular, it is necessary to look at the character of American society and public culture, because these explain much about the drive to war and about the nature of the conflict that could be waged by the Americans.
The siege of Yorktown was the key clash in ensuring British defeat in what became known as the War of American Independence or, simply, the War of Independence (1775–83). This defeat was indeed an epic episode in world history, but, like many such episodes, it left many aspects and consequences unclear, and the War of 1812 was, in part, one such consequence and was explicitly seen as such by American supporters of the conflict. In particular, major topics in Anglo-American relations remained at issue, while the very nature of the new American state was also unsettled.
Rather than beginning with the rundown to war, however, I deliberately want to start with American debates about how to organize the country for conflict. These help to explain how the USA fought the war as it did, a key aspect of the conflict, and therefore why the Americans failed to mobilize the resources of their society and achieve their goals despite the fact that, for most of the war, Britain was already heavily committed in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon's France. Those who wish to move at once to the campaigning should turn to chapter two, but this chapter will provide significant background, not least to the politics of American warmaking, before turning to Anglo-American relations and the causes of the War of 1812. The last have to be explained both with reference to the wider international context of the world war then being waged by Britain and France, and with regard to the particular factors that led the USA to declare war on Britain.
AMERICA AS A MILITARY POWER
For the USA, the War of 1812 was problematic, indeed poorly-advised, for political and military reasons. Division over goals was crucial to the first. The problems of transition from a military and a military ethos based on a war of independence to those of a state engaged in international conflict were crucial to the second. The character of American warmaking owed much to the nature of the new society and, in particular, its origins in a revolution against imperial Britain. America was created as a society believing in small government and with a suspicion of and, in many cases, hostility to, a permanent military. This hostility reflected longstanding ideas about the dangers of a standing (permanent) army, as well as the way in which the imperial link with Britain had been broken, and therefore the foundation myth of the new country. Ironically, this was a myth that underplayed the major role of the regular soldiers of the American Continental Army in resisting and, eventually, defeating the British. The resulting failure to appreciate the role of regulars was a constraint on postwar American military effectiveness as it discouraged attempts to build up the army.
The anti-authoritarian nature of American public life instead led to an emphasis on voluntary military service by citizens in the shape of a militia, with the civilians presumably possessing skill and weapons as a consequence of the right to bear arms, a right linked to militia service. Events, however, rarely conform to hopes, and more than a militia would be required if the USA was to fight the battle-hardened British regulars successfully. This need was a key issue in the War of 1812, where the militia were handicapped not only by their own limitations, especially limited training, restricted enlistment periods and, in many cases, a reluctance to serve outside the USA, but also by the inadequate military infrastructure, particularly in the shape of poor logistics. Adequate structures had not been defined to integrate militia and regular forces, nor to deal with the supply, pay, and financing of militia forces operating outside the country. These deficiencies greatly handicapped operations against Canada and were a particular problem in ensuring that the use that could have been gained from the militia, for example the large Pennsylvania militia, was not realized. Political opposition in New England to the war also posed serious limitations on the use of the militia from its states.
The problems of American land power had also been urgent from the outset of the War of Independence in 1775, because the British then had a substantial force of regular troops in Boston, and also as a result of the major and continuing cause of American vulnerability: its lack of a battle fleet. Whatever the strength of individual American warships, as seen in 1812 when three British frigates were captured (see Chapter 4), and whatever the potential of American privateers, the Americans lacked a fleet able to block the use of the Atlantic Ocean by the British. The War of Independence had already made these factors clear. And, in the War of 1812, the British did use their naval superiority, both as a means of supply and communication, which enabled them at least in part to solve the logistical issues of operating in North America, and also as the basis for a strategic dimension of attack on the USA. In the nineteenth century, this British naval capability was to lead to a heavy emphasis in the USA on coastal fortifications, in military doctrine, force structure, and expenditure. This was a policy that was clearly directed against Britain, the leading world naval power through the century, but it was not a viable solution during the War of Independence, nor really during the War of 1812. The relevant forts were lacking at the strategic level and, operationally, garrisons in positions such as Fort Washington and Ticonderoga were unable to prevent British advances, as the campaigns of 1776 and 1777 respectively showed. Instead, by fixing troops as garrisons and exposing them to attack, forts were actually a source of vulnerability, which the fall of Fort Washington in 1776 demonstrated. Similarly, the forts that blocked the river approaches to Philadelphia were captured by the British in 1777.
The War of 1812 indicated that forts could play a key role, the defense of Fort McHenry helping to save Baltimore in 1814. Indeed, no fort designed by an engineer trained at West Point was lost. Washington and New Orleans, however, were not adequately protected by forts. Instead, the British had to be opposed in the field by forces hastily throwing up whatever field fortifications they could, as at Bladensburg and Plattsburg in 1814, and outside New Orleans in 1815.
America, therefore, was vulnerable to attack, and it was understandable that the success of the American Revolution did not end disputes over how best to organize the military. Instead, it encouraged them, as there was room for political debate, without the immediate needs of war lessening the range of options. Moreover, the degree of federal responsibility for defense proved a particular issue of controversy, which looked back to colonial-era disputes over the control and financing of military force.
Yet, as far as both military organization and foreign policy were concerned, the Americans largely avoided the fissiparous and institutionally divisive consequences of a federal system. They did so by giving the key power to the federal government rather than the states. But this was resented at the state level. Individual states lacked the right to negotiate foreign treaties or to make war, although their relations with Native Americans initially threatened to permit both points. Thus, in the mid-1780s, Georgia raised state forces for duty against the Cherokees. During the War of 1812, Benjamin Hawkins, the government's agent with the Creeks, commented on Georgia raising its own troops in an inappropriate fashion. At any event, the states controlled their militia, and this was a central element in American military organization.
Given the unsettled nature of relations between federal and state agencies and aspirations, the nature and size of the national army was particularly controversial. While heading the War Department in 1785–94, Henry Knox, a keen Federalist, pressed hard for a stronger federal government and a national military establishment. In 1783, he had aroused concern by founding the Society of Cincinnati as a body for officers from the War of Independence and their descendants. The society and his policies in general were seen as a threat to the confederation government. Although there have been suggestions that it has been exaggerated, Knox faced opposition to a permanent force, as well as the limiting consequences of the financial weakness of the federal government.
On 3 June 1784, the day after decreeing that the last units of the Continental Army be disbanded, the confederation Congress nevertheless voted to establish a seven hundred-strong regiment of one-year volunteers in order to strengthen America's presence in the Ohio Valley. This was a region where, behind sensitive relations with Native Americans, there was concern about British intentions, as the British were seen as the sponsors of their opposition, although this fear underrated the capacity of the Native Americans to make their own decisions.
To many Americans, the fate of the Ohio Valley was a key test not only for national expansion, but also of national vitality; and this feeling helped provoke the War of 1812. Looking back, competing ambitions over the Ohio Valley had been the cause of conflict between Britain and France in 1754, while, during the War of Independence, Native Americans allied to the British had pressed on the borders of European-American settlement, diverting troops from fighting the British, especially in 1779. Moreover, after 1783, the region appeared crucial to the future of the United States, as well as a site of strategic competition with Britain.
Like the 1748 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle between Britain and France, the Treaty of Paris of 1783 had not clearly settled the boundaries of North America nor, more seriously, the issue of power there. Just as the first peace had thus laid the foundations for the resumption of conflict in 1754, a conflict known as the French and Indian War in the United States and as the Seven Years' War in Britain, so the seeds of war in 1812 owed much to the failure of 1783. Moreover, whatever the nature of the agreement between Britain and its former colonies, such an agreement did not include the Native Americans, and the position and views of the latter became more prominent as a result of expansion by the European Americans (Americans for short), and the prospect of yet more expansion.
Indeed, this dynamic element of the situation in North America could not be adequately captured in any peace treaty between Britain and the United States, or between the latter and Native Americans. US expansion in accordance with treaties suggested the purchase of land by the Americans and agreement by the Native Americans, but there was also incessant American pressure, including conflict, which helped lead to rejectionist religious revival among the Native Americans. From this perspective, the War of 1812 emerges not, as it can be presented, as an interlude in improving Anglo-American relations looking toward later cooperation between the two powers, but instead as the culmination of bitter relations and conflict between Native Americans and European Americans that helped result in the subjugation of the former to the east of the Mississippi. In turn, this subjugation paved the way for the subjugating of those farther west.
In 1784–86, three treaties with Native Americans ceded much of southern and eastern Ohio to American settlement. This settlement was seen by most Americans as a rightful response to the God-given opportunities for expansion, and this expansion as a recompense for their struggle for independence from Britain. In July 1787, Congress went on to pass the Northwest Ordinance. This not only reasserted American sovereignty over the region, but also made it clear that this sovereignty was to be the prelude to settlement. The ordinance provided for the establishment of new states there, and thus for an advancing frontier of American settlement combined with a dynamic political structure capable of organizing these acquisitions. This structure included the prospect of new militia forces that would support further expansion.
The ordinance declared that Native American rights would only be infringed "in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress," and that Native American lands would only be acquired with their consent. This, however, was a policy that was to be widely honoured in the breach, helping to lead to conflict with the Native Americans. Such warfare, in turn, was used to justify renewed expansion by the new country and the development of its military strength, while this conflict also encouraged suspicion of Britain, which was seen as the sponsor of Native American opposition.
The absence, until the Constitution was settled and established, of a well-organized government or a system of direct taxation, was a fundamental limit to American military capability at the federal level. By the end of 1786 the regiment established in 1784 consisted of only 565 officers and men. The army, however, was subsequently expanded as relations slipped into an initially unsuccessful war with Native Americans, with American defeats in 1790 and 1791. Nevertheless, after Anthony Wayne's conclusive victory over Blue Jacket at Fallen Timbers on 20 August 1794, and the resulting Treaty of Greenville of 1795, the army was cut to 3,359 men in 1796. The army was then expanded anew by the governing Federalists in 1798, during the Quasi War with France, with Washington as commander in chief and Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804), a key Federalist leader, as senior ranking major general. The latter sought to develop the force as a powerful permanent body able to unite America against internal subversion and foreign threat, but his intentions were suspect to many and he was accused of authoritarian aspirations.
Opposed to France in the late-1790s, the Federalists linked foreign and domestic policies closely to military preparedness, and built up both the army and the navy. "Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute" [to a foreign state] became their slogan, after the "XYZ" affair, a supposed French attempt to buy off the Americans. The limiting consequences of federal financial weaknesses ensured, however, that the construction of ten frigates during the Quasi War was financed by subscriptions raised in 1798 in the major ports, such as Philadelphia. The Federalist government also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in order to strengthen it against internal opposition. This was a divisive step. In response, while asserting states' rights in their resolutions, Kentucky and Virginia denounced the acts as violations of the U.S. Constitution and thus, in effect, pressed the role of state governments in deciding the constitutional character of federal actions. Regional and other tensions led to continuing reports of the imminent dissolution of the Union, such as that sent Robert, Viscount Castlereagh, the British secretary of war, by Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan revolutionary, in 1807.
Differences over the size and organization of the military in part rested on contrasting conceptions of the international system. Whereas Hamilton advanced a pessimistic interpretation of competing states and of the need, in response, for governmental and military preparedness, critics felt that a benign international system was possible. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and the Democratic-Republicans, who gained power after the bitterly contested election of 1800, limited the peacetime army establishment to 3,284 men. They were not interested in a European-style military nor in what they saw as an authoritarian army of imperial size, being opposed to the taxes maintaining such an army entailed and suspicious of the existing army, not least because most of the senior officers were Federalists. Jefferson, president from 1801 to 1809, preferred to rely on national unity, which was an example of the comforting illusion that virtue would necessarily prevail. This view led him, in his inaugural address in 1801, to claim that America was the strongest country in the world.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The War of 1812 In The Age of Napoleon by Jeremy Black. Copyright © 2009 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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