Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1

Meanwhile batteries had been erected opposite Detroit, which opened on the evening of August 15, the fort replying; but slight harm was done on either side. Next day Brock crossed the greater part of his force, landing three miles below Detroit. His little column of assault consisted of 330 regulars, 400 militia, and 600 Indians, the latter in the woods covering the left flank.⁴⁵² The effective Americans present were by that morning's report 1,060;⁴⁵³ while their field artillery, additional to that mounted in the works, was much superior to that of the enemy, was advantageously posted, and loaded with grape. Moreover, they had the fort, on which to retire.

Brock's movements were audacious. Some said nothing could be more desperate; "but I answer, that the state of Upper Canada admitted of nothing but desperate remedies."⁴⁵⁴ The British general had served under Nelson at Copenhagen, and quoted him here. He knew also, through the captured correspondence, that his opponent was a prey to a desperation very different in temper from his own, and had lost the confidence of his men. He had hoped, by the threatening position assumed between the town and its home base, to force Hull to come out and attack; but learning now that the garrison was weakened by a detachment of three hundred and fifty, despatched two days before under Colonel McArthur to open intercourse with the Maumee by a circuitous road, avoiding the lake shore, he decided to assault at once. When the British column had approached within a mile, Hull withdrew within the works all his force, including the artillery, and immediately afterward capitulated. The detachment under McArthur, with another from the state of Ohio on its way to join the army, were embraced in the terms; Brock estimating the whole number surrendered at not less than twenty-five hundred. A more important capture, under the conditions, was an American brig, the "Adams," not yet armed, but capable of use as a ship of war, for which purpose she had already been transferred from the War Department to the Navy.

In his defence before the Court Martial, which in March, 1814, tried him for his conduct of the campaign, Hull addressed himself to three particulars, which he considered to be the principal features in the voluminous charges and specifications drawn against him. These were, "the delay at Sandwich, the retreat from Canada, and the surrender at Detroit."⁴⁵⁵ Concerning these, as a matter of military criticism, it may be said with much certainty that if conditions imposed the delay at Sandwich, they condemned the advance to it, and would have warranted an earlier retreat. The capitulation he justified on the ground that resistance could not change the result, though it might protract the issue. Because ultimate surrender could not be averted, he characterized life lost in postponing it as blood shed uselessly. The conclusion does not follow from the premise; nor could any military code accept the maxim that a position is to be yielded as soon as it appears that it cannot be held indefinitely. Delay, so long as sustained, not only keeps open the chapter of accidents for the particular post, but supports related operations throughout the remainder of the field of war. Tenacious endurance, if it effected no more, would at least have held Brock away from Niagara, whither he hastened within a week after the capitulation, taking with him a force which now could be well spared from the westward. No one military charge can be considered as disconnected; therefore no commander has a right to abandon defence while it is possible to maintain it, unless he also knows that it cannot affect results elsewhere; and this practically can never be certain. The burden of anxieties, of dangers and difficulties, actual and possible, weighing upon Brock, were full as great as those upon Hull, for on his shoulders rested both Niagara and Malden. His own resolution and promptitude triumphed because of the combined inefficiency of Hull and Dearborn. He scarcely could have avoided disaster at one end or the other of the line, had either opponent been thoroughly competent.

There was yet another reason which weighed forcibly with Hull, and probably put all purely military considerations out of court. This was the dread of Indian outrage and massacre. The general trend of the testimony, and Hull's own defence, go to show a mind overpowered by the agony of this imagination. After receiving word of the desertion of two companies, he said, "I now became impatient to put the place under the protection of the British; I knew that there were thousands of savages around us." These thousands were not at hand. Not till after September 1 did as many as a hundred arrive from the north—from Mackinac.⁴⁵⁶ In short, unless what Cass styled the philanthropic reason can be accepted,—and in the opinion of the present writer it cannot,—Hull wrote the condemnation of his action in his own defence. "I shall now state what force the enemy brought, or might bring, against me. I say, gentlemen, might bring, because it was that consideration which induced the surrender, and not the force which was actually landed on the American shore on the morning of the 16th. It is possible I might have met and repelled that force; and if I had no further to look than the event of a contest at that time, I should have trusted to the issue of a battle.... The force brought against me I am very confident was not less than one thousand whites, and as many savage warriors."⁴⁵⁷

The reproach of this mortifying incident cannot be lifted from off Hull's memory; but for this very reason, in weighing the circumstances, it is far less than justice to forget his years, verging on old age, his long dissociation from military life, his personal courage frequently shown during the War of Independence, nor the fact that, though a soldier on occasion, he probably never had the opportunity to form correct soldierly standards. To the credit account should also be carried the timely and really capable presentation of the conditions of the field of operations already quoted, submitted by him to the Government, which should not have needed such demonstration. The mortification of the country fastened on his name; but had the measures urged by him been taken, had his expedition received due support by energetic operations elsewhere, events need not have reached the crisis to which he proved unequal. The true authors of the national disaster and its accompanying humiliation are to be sought in the national administrations and legislatures of the preceding ten or twelve years, upon whom rests the responsibility for the miserably unprepared condition in which the country was plunged into war. Madison, too tardily repentant, wrote, "The command of the Lakes by a superior force on the water ought to have been a fundamental part in the national policy from the moment the peace [of 1783] took place. What is now doing for the command proves what may be done."⁴⁵⁸

CHAPTER VII
OPERATIONS ON THE NORTHERN FRONTIER AFTER HULL'S SURRENDER. EUROPEAN EVENTS BEARING ON THE WAR

By August 25, nine days after the capitulation of Detroit, Brock was again writing from Fort George, by Niagara. About the time of his departure for Malden, Prevost had received from Foster, late British minister to Washington, and now in Nova Scotia, letters foreshadowing the repeal of the Orders in Council. In consequence he had sent his adjutant-general, Colonel Baynes, to Dearborn to negotiate a suspension of hostilities. Like all intelligent flags of truce, Baynes kept his eyes wide open to indications in the enemy's lines. The militia, he reported, were not uniformed; they were distinguished from other people of the country only by a cockade. The regulars were mostly recruits. The war was unpopular, the great majority impatient to return to their homes; a condition Brock observed also in the Canadians. They avowed a fixed determination not to pass the frontier. Recruiting for the regular service went on very slowly, though pay and bounty were liberal. Dearborn appeared over sixty, strong and healthy, but did not seem to possess the energy of mind or activity of body requisite to his post. In short, from the actual state of the American forces assembled on Lake Champlain, Baynes did not think there was any intention of invasion. From its total want of discipline and order, the militia could not be considered formidable when opposed to well-disciplined British regulars.⁴⁵⁹ Of this prognostic the war was to furnish sufficient saddening proof. The militia contained excellent material for soldiers, but soldiers they were not.

Dearborn declined to enter into a formal armistice, as beyond his powers; but he consented to a cessation of hostilities pending a reference to Washington, agreeing to direct all commanders of posts within his district to abstain from offensive operations till further orders. This suspension of arms included the Niagara line, from action upon which Hull had expected to receive support. In his defence Hull claimed that this arrangement, in which his army was not included, had freed a number of troops to proceed against him; but the comparison of dates shows that every man present at Detroit in the British force had gone forward before the agreement could be known. The letter engaging to remain on the defensive only was signed by Dearborn at Greenbush, near Albany, August 8. The same day Brock was three hundred and fifty miles to the westward, embarking at Long Point for Malden; and among his papers occurs the statement that the strong American force on the Niagara frontier compelled him to take to Detroit only one half of the militia that volunteered.⁴⁶⁰ His military judgment and vigor, unaided, had enabled him to abandon one line, and that the most important, concentrate all available men at another point, effect there a decisive success, and return betimes to his natural centre of operations. He owed nothing to outside military diplomacy. On the contrary, he deeply deplored the measure which now tied his hands at a moment when the Americans, though restrained from fighting, were not prevented from bringing up re-enforcements to the positions confronting him.

Dearborn's action was not approved by the Administration, and the armistice was ended September 4, by notification. Meantime, to strengthen the British Niagara frontier, all the men and ordnance that could now be spared from Amherstburg had been brought back by Brock to Fort Erie, which was on the lake of that name, at the upper end of the Niagara River. Although still far from secure, owing to the much greater local material resources of the United States, and the preoccupation of Great Britain with the Peninsular War, which prevented her succoring Canada, Brock's general position was immensely improved since the beginning of hostilities. His successes in the West, besides rallying the Indians by thousands to his support, had for the time so assured that frontier as to enable him to concentrate his efforts on the East; while the existing British naval superiority on both lakes, Erie and Ontario, covered his flanks, and facilitated transportation—communications—from Kingston to Niagara, and thence to Malden, Detroit, Mackinac, and the Great West. To illustrate the sweep of this influence, it may be mentioned here—for there will be no occasion to repeat—that an expedition from Mackinac at a later period captured the isolated United States post at Prairie du Chien, on the Mississippi, on the western border of what is now the state of Wisconsin. Already, at the most critical period, the use of the water had enabled Brock, by simultaneous movements, to send cannon from Fort George by way of Fort Erie to Fort Malden; while at the same time replacing those thus despatched by others brought from Toronto and Kingston. In short, control of the lakes conferred upon him the recognized advantage of a central position—the Niagara peninsula—having rapid communication by interior lines with the flanks, or extremities; to Malden and Detroit in one direction, to Toronto and Kingston in the other.

It was just here, also, that the first mischance befell him; and it cannot but be a subject of professional pride to a naval officer to trace the prompt and sustained action of his professional ancestors, who reversed conditions, not merely by a single brilliant blow, upon which popular reminiscence fastens, but by efficient initiative and sustained sagacious exertion through a long period of time. On September 3, Captain Isaac Chauncey had been ordered from the New York navy yard to command on Lakes Erie and Ontario. Upon the latter there was already serving Lieutenant Melancthon T. Woolsey, in command of a respectable vessel, the brig "Oneida," of eighteen 24-pounder carronades. On Erie there was as yet no naval organization nor vessel. Chauncey consequently, on September 7, ordered thither Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott to select a site for equipping vessels, and to contract for two to be built of three hundred tons each. Elliott, who arrived at Buffalo on the 14th, was still engaged in this preliminary work, and was fitting some purchased schooners behind Squaw Island, three miles below, when, on October 8, there arrived from Malden, and anchored off Fort Erie, two British armed brigs, the "Detroit"—lately the American "Adams," surrendered with Hull—and the "Caledonia," which co-operated so decisively in the fall of Mackinac. The same day he learned the near approach of a body of ninety seamen, despatched by Chauncey from New York on September 22.⁴⁶¹ He sent to hasten them, and they arrived at noon. The afternoon was spent in preparations, weapons having to be obtained from the army, which also supplied a contingent of fifty soldiers.

The seamen needed refreshment, having come on foot five hundred miles, but Elliott would not trifle with opportunity. At 1 A.M. of October 9 he shoved off with a hundred men in two boats, and at 3 was alongside the brigs. From Buffalo to Fort Erie is about two miles; but this distance was materially increased by the strong downward current toward the falls, and by the necessity of pulling far up stream in order to approach the vessels from ahead, which lessened the chance of premature discovery, and materially shortened the interval between being seen and getting alongside. The enemy, taken by surprise, were quickly overpowered, and in ten minutes both prizes were under sail for the American shore. The "Caledonia" was beached at Black Rock, where was Elliott's temporary navy yard, just above Squaw Island; but the wind did not enable the "Detroit," in which he himself was, to stem the downward drift of the river. After being swept some time, she had to anchor under the fire of batteries at four hundred yards range, to which reply was made till the powder on board was expended. Then, the berth proving too hot, the cable was cut, sail again made, and the brig run ashore on Squaw Island within range of both British and American guns. Here Elliott abandoned her, she having already several large shot through her hull, with rigging and sails cut to pieces, and she was boarded in turn by a body of the enemy. Under the conditions, however, neither side could remain to get her off, and she was finally set on fire by the Americans.⁴⁶² Besides the vessel herself, her cargo of ordnance was lost to the British. American seamen afterward recovered from the wreck by night four 12-pounders, and a quantity of shot, which were used with effect.

The conduct of this affair was of a character frequent in the naval annals of that day. Elliott's quick discernment of the opportunity to reverse the naval conditions which constituted so much of the British advantage, and the promptness of his action, are qualities more noticeable than the mere courage displayed. "A strong inducement," he wrote, "was that with these two vessels, and those I have purchased, I should be able to meet the remainder of the British force on the Upper Lakes." The mishap of the "Detroit" partly disappointed this expectation, and the British aggregate remained still superior; but the units lost their perfect freedom of movement, the facility of transportation was greatly diminished, and the American success held in it the germ of future development to the superiority which Perry achieved a year later. None realized the extent of the calamity more keenly than Brock. "This event is particularly unfortunate," he wrote to the Governor General, "and may reduce us to incalculable distress. The enemy is making every exertion to gain a naval superiority on both lakes; which, if they accomplish, I do not see how we can retain the country. More vessels are fitting for war on the other side of Squaw Island, which I should have attempted to destroy but for your Excellency's repeated instructions to forbear. Now such a force is collected for their protection as will render every operation against them very hazardous."⁴⁶³ To his subordinate, Procter, at Detroit, he exposed the other side of the calamity.⁴⁶⁴ "This will reduce us to great distress. You will have the goodness to state the expedients you possess to enable us to replace, as far as possible, the heavy loss we have sustained in the 'Detroit'.... A quantity of provisions was ready to be shipped; but as I am sending you the flank companies of the Newfoundland Regiment by the 'Lady Prevost,' she cannot take the provisions." Trivial details these may seem; but in war, as in other matters, trivialities sometimes decide great issues, as the touching of a button may blow up a reef. The battle of Lake Erie, as before said, was precipitated by need of food.

Brock did not survive to witness the consequences which he apprehended, and which, had he lived, he possibly might have done something to avert. The increasing strength he had observed gathering about Elliott's collection of purchased vessels corresponded to a gradual accumulation of American land force along the Niagara line; the divisions of which above and below the Falls were under two commanders, between whom co-operation was doubtful. General Van Rensselaer of the New York militia, who had the lower division, determined upon an effort to seize the heights of Queenston, at the head of navigation from Lake Ontario. The attempt was made on October 13, before daybreak. Brock, whose headquarters were at Fort George, was quickly on the ground; so quickly, that he narrowly escaped capture by the advance guard of Americans as they reached the summit. Collecting a few men, he endeavored to regain the position before the enemy could establish himself in force, and in the charge was instantly killed at the head of his troops.

In historical value, the death of Brock was the one notable incident of the day, which otherwise was unproductive of results beyond an additional mortification to the United States. The Americans gradually accumulated on the height to the number of some six hundred, and, had they been properly re-enforced, could probably have held their ground, affording an opening for further advance. It was found impossible to induce the raw, unseasoned men on the other side to cross to their support, and after many fruitless appeals the American general was compelled to witness the shameful sight of a gallant division driven down the cliffs to the river, and there obliged to surrender, because their comrades refused to go betimes to their relief.

Van Rensselaer retired from service, and was succeeded by General Smyth, who now held command of the whole line, thirty miles, from Buffalo to Fort Niagara, opposite Fort George, where the river enters Lake Ontario. A crossing in force, in the upper part of the river, opposite Black Rock, was planned by him for November 28. In preparation for it an attack was to be made shortly before daylight by two advance parties, proceeding separately. One was to carry the batteries and spike the guns near the point selected for landing; the other, to destroy abridge five miles below, by which re-enforcements might arrive to the enemy.

To the first of these was attached a party of seventy seamen, who carried out their instructions, spiking and dismounting the guns. The fighting was unusually severe, eight out of the twelve naval officers concerned being wounded, two mortally, and half of the seamen either killed or wounded. Although the bridge was not destroyed, favorable conditions for the crossing of the main body had been established; but, upon viewing the numbers at his disposal, Smyth called a council of war, and after advising with it decided not to proceed. This was certainly a case of useless bloodshed. General Porter of the New York militia, who served with distinguished gallantry on the Niagara frontier to the end of the war, was present in this business, and criticised Smyth's conduct so severely as to cause a duel between them. "If bravery be a virtue," wrote Porter, "if the gratitude of a country be due to those who gallantly and desperately assert its rights, the government will make ample and honorable provision for the heirs of the brave tars who fell on this occasion, as well as for those that survive."⁴⁶⁵ Another abortive movement toward crossing was made a few days later, and with it land operations on the Niagara frontier ended for the year 1812. Smyth was soon afterward dropped from the rolls of the army.

In the eastern part of Dearborn's military division, where he commanded in person, toward Albany and Champlain, less was attempted than at Detroit or Niagara. To accomplish less would be impossible; but as nothing was seriously undertaken, nothing also disastrously failed. The Commander-in-Chief gave sufficient disproof of military capacity by gravely proposing to "operate with effect at the same moment against Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal."⁴⁶⁶ Such divergence of effort and dissemination of means, scanty at the best, upon points one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles apart, contravened all sound principle; to remedy which no compensating vigor was discoverable in his conduct. In all these quarters, as at Detroit, the enemy were perceptibly stronger in the autumn than when the war began; and the feebleness of American action had destroyed the principal basis upon which expectation of success had rested—the disaffection of the inhabitants of Canada and their readiness to side with the invaders. That this disposition existed to a formidable extent was well known. It constituted a large element in the anxieties of the British generals, especially of Brock; for in his district there were more American settlers than in Lower Canada.⁴⁶⁷ On the Niagara peninsula, especially, climatic conditions, favorable to farming, had induced a large immigration. But local disloyalty is a poor reed for an assailant to rest upon, and to sustain it in vigorous action commonly requires the presence of a force which will render its assistance needless. Whatever inclination to rebel there might have been was effectually quelled by the energy of Brock, the weakness of Hull, and the impotence of Dearborn and his subordinates.

In the general situation the one change favorable to the United States was in a quarter the importance of which the Administration had been slow to recognize, and probably scarcely appreciated even now. The anticipated military laurels had vanished like a dream, and the disinclination of the American people to military life in general, and to this war in particular, had shown itself in enlistments for the army, which, the President wrote, "fall short of the most moderate calculation." The attempt to supplement "regulars" by "volunteers," who, unlike the militia, should be under the General Government instead of that of the States—a favorite resource always with the Legislature of the United States—was "extremely unproductive;" while the militia in service were not under obligation to leave their state, and might, if they chose, abandon their fellow-countrymen outside its limits to slaughter and capture, as they did at Niagara, without incurring military punishment. The governors of the New England States, being opposed to the war, refused to go a step beyond protecting their own territory from hostilities, which they declared were forced upon them by the Administration rather than by the British. For this attitude there was a semblance of excuse in the utter military inefficiency to which the policy of Jefferson and Madison had reduced the national government. It was powerless to give the several states the protection to which it was pledged by the Constitution. The citizens of New York had to fortify and defend their own harbor. The reproaches of New England on this score were seconded somewhat later by the outcries of Maryland; and if Virginia was silent under suffering, it was not because she lacked cause for complaint. It is to be remembered that in the matter of military and naval unpreparedness the great culprits were Virginians. South of Virginia the nature of the shore line minimized the local harrying, from which the northern part of the community suffered. Nevertheless, there also the coasting trade was nearly destroyed, and even the internal navigation seriously harassed.

Only on the Great Lakes had the case of the United States improved, when winter put an end to most operations on the northern frontier. As in the Civil War a half century later, so in 1812, the power of the water over the issues of the land not only was not comprehended by the average official, but was incomprehensible to him. Armstrong in January, and Hull in March, had insisted upon a condition that should have been obvious; but not till September 3, when Hull's disaster had driven home Hull's reasoning, did Captain Chauncey receive orders "to assume command of the naval force on lakes Erie and Ontario, and to use every exertion to obtain control of them this fall." All preparations had still to be made, and were thrown, most wisely, on the man who was to do the work. He was "to use all the means which he might judge essential to accomplish the wishes of the government."⁴⁶⁸ It is only just to give these quotations, which indicate how entirely everything to be done was left to the energy and discretion of the officer in charge, who had to plan and build up, almost from the foundation, the naval force on both lakes. Champlain, apparently by an oversight, was not included in his charge. Near the end of the war he was directed to convene a court-martial on some occurrences there, and then replied that it had never been placed under his command.⁴⁶⁹

Chauncey, who was just turned forty, entered on his duties with a will. Having been for four years in charge of the navy yard at New York, he was intimately acquainted with the resources of the principal depot from which he must draw his supplies. On September 26, after three weeks of busy collecting and shipping, he started for his station by the very occasional steamboat of those days, which required from eighteen to twenty hours for the trip to Albany. On the eve of departure, he wrote the Government that he had despatched "one hundred and forty ship-carpenters, seven hundred seamen and marines, more than one hundred pieces of cannon, the greater part of large caliber, with muskets, shot, carriages, etc. The carriages have nearly all been made, and the shot cast, in that time. Nay, I may say that nearly every article that has been sent forward has been made."⁴⁷⁰ The words convey forcibly the lack of preparation which characterized the general state of the country; and they suggest also the difference in energy and efficiency between a man of forty, in continuous practice of his profession, and generals of sixty, whose knowledge of their business derived over a disuse of more than thirty years, and from experience limited to positions necessarily very subordinate. From the meagreness of steamer traffic, all this provision of men and material had to go by sail vessel to Albany; and Chauncey wrote that his personal delay in New York was no injury, but a benefit, for as it was he should arrive well before the needed equipment.

On October 6 he reached Sackett's Harbor, "in company with his Excellency the Governor of New York, through the worst roads I ever saw, especially near this place, in consequence of which I have ordered the stores intended for this place to Oswego, from which place they will come by water." Elliott had reported from Buffalo that "the roads are good, except for thirteen miles, which is intolerably bad; so bad that ordnance cannot be brought in wagons; it must come when snow is on the ground, and then in sleds." All expectation of contesting Lake Erie was therefore abandoned for that year, and effort concentrated on Ontario. There the misfortune of the American position was that the only harbor on their side of the lake, Sackett's, close to the entrance of the St. Lawrence, was remote from the highways of United States internal traffic. The roads described by Chauncey cut it off from communications by land, except in winter and the height of summer; while the historic water route by the Mohawk River, Lake Oneida, and the outlet of the latter through the Oswego River, debouched upon Ontario at a point utterly insecure against weather or hostilities. It was necessary, therefore, to accept Sackett's Harbor as the only possible navy yard and station, under the disadvantage that the maintenance of it—and through it, of the naval command of Ontario—depended upon this water transport of forty miles of open lake from the Oswego River. The danger, when superiority of force lapsed, as at times it did, was lessened by the existence of several creeks or small rivers, within which coasting craft could take refuge and find protection from attack under the muskets of the soldiery. Sackett's Harbor itself, though of small area, was a safe port, and under proper precautions defensible; but in neither point of view was it comparable with Kingston.