America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (5 page)

For the British, the war in America was not a popular one, and the country was far from united in regard to the conflict. Whig opposition to the war was substantial. For example, in February 1781, before Cornwallis’s surrender, a motion in parliament to keep soldiers at home rather than send them to America was defeated but garnered 165 votes. Ordinary people also were against the war. In April 1779, recruits of the 71st Highlanders mutinied when ordered to America. They were willing to fight the French and the Spaniards, but not the Americans. Throughout Britain many felt either that the colonists had been denied the rights Englishmen enjoyed or that they weren’t worth the cost in blood and treasury.

No explanation for Britain’s defeat can exclude the commanders entrusted with the conduct of the war. In particular, three generals bear responsibility for the outcome. All were senior officers in the army and not without talents. Yet they proved inadequate to the task assigned them. Sir William Howe was the first. True, he won several battles, but he hesitated when he should have been more aggressive, defeating the Continental army but never—as he could have—destroying it. Then there was his replacement, General Clinton. He too chose not to wage a vigorous war, preferring to lament his own situation, which he usually saw as a predicament. Moreover, had Henry Clinton possessed a shred of strategic initiative, he would have, on his own, ventured north to aid Burgoyne. However, no single individual possesses greater responsibility for Britain’s defeat in the American war than Lieutenant General John Burgoyne. The expedition in 1777 from Canada was his plan, and he executed it very poorly. Of course, Germain should have sent definitive orders to Clinton in New York City, but the fiasco at Saratoga was of Burgoyne’s own doing.

Taken together, Generals Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne could have produced different results, but they did not. Yet in accounting for Britain’s defeat, one other senior officer requires mention. That would be Sir Thomas Graves, whose command of his ships at the Battle of the Capes gives new meaning to the adjective “lackluster.” Had Graves handled his fleet more vigorously, as later admirals of the Royal Navy would handle theirs, the outcome of Cornwallis’s campaign in Virginia would have been different. So, as much as anyone, Thomas Graves joins John Burgoyne and the others as men responsible for the loss of the American colonies.

Why did the Americans win?

After all, the thirteen colonies had limited resources, lacked seasoned military commanders, and were saddled with a Congress that was at best half-effective. Moreover, the population, mostly farmers and merchants, was divided as to which side should triumph. Yet the Americans managed not only to engage the British for eight years but also to win. They defeated a first-class military power. How were they able to do this? The explanation lies beyond the reasons given above for Britain’s defeat. Something else accounts for the outcome.

First and foremost the Americans won because France came to their aid. The French provided arms and supplies. They provided soldiers, and perhaps more important, they provided money. More than once, the French rescued the Americans when the latter’s treasury was depleted. One example from 1781 reveals the importance of French financial assistance. When Washington planned to march south with Rochambeau to trap Cornwallis, he had no money to pay his troops, who therefore were reluctant to move. The French commander gave him the funds and the army marched to Virginia. No fact is more important to understanding the American victory in the War for Independence than the largesse of the French.

There is a second reason why the rebel Americans triumphed. It is a simple one: George Washington was the commander in chief of the Continental army. He was a remarkable individual, deserving of his reputation. Personally brave, he was a man of impeccable integrity whose commanding presence was felt by all. That he lost more battles than he won matters not. He won when he had to, and as important, he held the army together under the most difficult of circumstances. To put down the rebellion, the British needed to eliminate Washington and his army. George Washington made sure he and his troops survived, and in doing so, he brought victory to the Continental army and to the cause for which it fought.

Of course, Washington was not the only American general. There were others, and several were successful, which is surprising given the lack of command experience these men possessed. The senior British officers all had experience in the field. These men did not. Yet at Bennington, Saratoga, Cowpens, and other battles, American field commanders performed admirably. One such general stands out. He is Nathanael Greene, whose campaign in the South was masterful. That the thirteen colonies, lacking much of a military tradition, could produce such men is rather remarkable.

One final factor helps explain why the Americans won. From 1775 to 1783 there were in the colonies a sufficient number of men able and willing to fight for something they believed in. Whether in the Continental army or the state militia, men—ordinary men—felt compelled to endure hardship and risk life to expel the British from land they considered their own. To be sure, American victory in the War for Independence required French assistance and the services of George Washington and his fellow officers. But without men from New Hampshire, Maryland, the Carolinas, and the other colonies, men who left their families with musket in hand, men who believed in independence, the war that gave birth to a new nation would not have been won.

2

1812

1812–1815

On June 1, 1812, James Madison, America’s fourth president, sought from Congress a declaration of war against Great Britain. In his message to the legislature the president summarized the country’s grievances. Madison said England unlawfully kidnapped American seamen, forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy. He complained that English trade regulations violated the rights of neutrals and thereby harmed American commerce. He noted the insulting tone of British diplomacy. And he implied that in reference to Native Americans on the frontier, British actions were full of mischief.

All of Madison’s points were valid. The Royal Navy did seize U.S. citizens and force them to serve on British warships. England’s “Orders-in-Council” did discriminate against American merchants, whose ships comprised the second largest merchant fleet in the world. Moreover, British diplomats often treated their American counterparts with disdain. And ministers in London, seeing the possibility of a Native American federation to serve both as a buffer state for Canada and a wall against further westward expansion of the United States, frequently were scheming with native tribes to stem the flow of white Americans eager to settle in the Northwestern territories.

Madison got what he sought, signing the declaration on June 18. But the vote was hardly unanimous. In the House of Representatives not a single Federalist voted in the affirmative, the vote being seventy-nine to forty-nine. In the upper chamber thirteen senators opposed war, six fewer than the number supporting the president. Differences were regional. War hawks in the South and West wanted to fight. People in New England felt otherwise. The region’s well-being depended on trade, which they knew would be crippled. So strong was New England’s opposition to the war that initially Massachusetts and Connecticut did not send militia to meet their state’s military quota. And farmers in New York and Vermont, and in what is now Maine, traded with their Canadian neighbors throughout the conflict. One key customer was the British army, whose troops in Spain and Portugal depended on American grain.

In 1812 Britain was at war with France, and had been almost continuously since 1792. The struggle was worldwide, and England’s goal was to prevent Napoleon from dominating Europe and the other places Monsieur Bonaparte eyed, such as Russia, the Caribbean, Egypt, and India. England’s military was stretched thin. It had little desire to fight the United States.

At first Britain hoped that diplomacy quickly would end the war, particularly when, on June 23, 1812, the government in London provisionally repealed the Orders-in-Council. Indeed, the British commander in Canada was instructed not to undertake offensive actions lest hopes for a diplomatic resolution be jeopardized. But the Americans insisted that impressment of their sailors be stopped. On this point, England could not and would not yield.

Great Britain’s security as well as her economic prosperity depended on her navy. In 1812 this was the largest industrial organization in the world, with more than 590 warships in service. Yet England, with a relatively small population, could not adequately man these vessels. So she resorted to impressment. British nationals, wherever they were and whatever nationality they espoused, legally could be seized and forced to serve. In the event, Americans, both native born and naturalized, were often taken. Between 1792 and 1802, according to one American historian, roughly twenty-four hundred American sailors were forcibly taken from their ships. This same historian, William M. Fowler Jr., writes that during the next ten years the number almost tripled. Not only did this practice of impressment harm the sailor involved, it also was an affront to American honor.

At the start of the war Madison’s strategy was to strike at Canada from several locations. This would divide British forces and, hopefully, achieve success before the British army and navy could react. Negotiations would then be held, and, from a position of strength, the Americans would be able to favorably realign borders, remove threats posed by Native Americans, and, quite possibly, have the British withdraw altogether from Canada, whose four provinces and two large islands would become part of the United States.

The strategy was not without merit. Upon embracing it, Madison and his generals envisioned a brief and victorious war. As we shall see they got neither.

On July 12, 1812, Brigadier General William Hull, a veteran of the War for Independence, led a force of twenty-two hundred American soldiers across the Detroit River into Canada. This was the first of three expeditions comprising the overall American plan. Much was expected, but Hull achieved little, and early in August he turned back, re-crossing the river. He and his men settled in at Detroit, then a town of some 150 houses, awaiting the British. The enemy soon arrived. Major General Isaac Brock, British commander in Upper Canada, had seven hundred regulars and a contingent of Indians. On August 15 Brock called on Hull to surrender. In his message to the Americans he said that once the battle was joined, he would not be able to control his native allies. Unfortunately, the British general’s observation was not an empty threat. Native Americans often displayed a savagery in and after battle not shown by those trained to European standards. Receiving Brock’s message, Hull did the unexpected. He surrendered his entire force, without a fight. He and 582 regulars became prisoners of war. Sixteen hundred Ohio volunteers were paroled home. Some twenty-five hundred muskets and thirty-three cannons were turned over to the British. Yet, for the president, even more bad news was to follow.

The Niagara River flows north from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. Thirty-four miles long, it was—and still is—a boundary between Canada and the United States. During the War of 1812 it was the scene of several battles. The first took place in October 1812.

Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer was a prominent New York politician and general of militia. It was he who would command the second American invasion force. With an army of nine hundred regulars and twenty-six hundred militia he chose to attack Queenstown Heights across the Niagara River from Lewiston, New York. On the afternoon of October 13, a Tuesday, he assaulted the Heights. His troops fought well, though several militia units refused to participate, arguing that they were to serve only on American soil. For a time the flow of battle favored the Americans. But the British rallied, and the attack was repulsed. Van Rensselaer had more than 300 men killed or wounded. In excess of 950 were taken prisoner. British losses were less: 14 men killed and 77 wounded, with 21 missing. However, among the dead was Isaac Brock, who in Canada is rightly considered a military hero.

As if the defeats at Detroit and Queenstown Heights were not enough, success also eluded the Americans in Lower Canada (Upper Canada comprised the lands west of the Ottawa River and Montreal). In November, Major General Henry Dearborn, like Hull a veteran of the War for Independence, led a force of three thousand soldiers into Canada from Plattsburgh, New York. Here too American militia chose not to cross the border. Dearborn stayed in Canada for three days without engaging the enemy. He then withdrew, retiring back to Plattsburgh for the winter. His expedition had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Far to the west, and several months earlier, the first action of the war had also had disappointing results for the Americans. On July 17, 1812, a small force of British regulars supplemented by Canadian fur traders and Native Americans took possession of an American outpost on Mackinac Island at the northern tip of Lake Huron. This was done without loss of life and had two important consequences: (1) the British retained the lucrative Canadian fur trade, and (2) the Native Americans of the Michigan Territory saw the Crown as likely victors and, therefore, aided the king’s cause.

As the year 1812 came to an end, the American strategy of a quick victory clearly had failed. Hull’s surrender, Van Rensselaer’s defeat, and Dearborn’s inaction had shattered Madison’s plan. Moreover, these expeditions had revealed an army that was lacking in leadership. Six months after it began, the United States was involved in a war that quite possibly it would lose.

Yet if America’s army had fallen short of success, its navy had not.

In 1812 the United States Navy had but fourteen vessels ready for sea. None of these were ships of the line, the battleships of their day. Only seven were frigates—fast, well-armed ships ideal for scouting and operations against merchant ships. Of these seven three deserve special mention. They were the
Constitution
, the
United States
, and the
President
. Rated as forty-four-gun frigates, these ships were larger and more heavily armed than the standard English frigate. Conceived by the Philadelphia shipwright Joshua Humphreys, they would make their presence known. One of them, the USS
Constitution
, would become an American icon.

In addition to the fourteen oceangoing ships, the American navy had numerous gunboats. Built in response to President Thomas Jefferson’s anti-naval policies, these were small vessels, lightly armed, unsuitable for the open sea but potentially useful for harbor and coastal defense. Jefferson believed a blue-water navy would encourage foreign adventures the United States should avoid. So he had produced a large number of these gunboats. They turned out to be of little value.

Yet despite its small size, the American navy was well prepared for battle. Its officer corps was excellent; its crews were fine sailors. Moreover, the navy had combat experience. Prior to 1812 the U.S. Navy had seen action against the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and during an undeclared war against France in the Caribbean (in which the thirty-eight-gun frigate USS
Constellation
had captured a French frigate of forty guns). When war broke out in 1812, the navy was ready and confident of success.

This confidence was rewarded when on August 19, 1812, the
Constitution
encountered the frigate HMS
Guerriere
of thirty-eight guns in the mid-Atlantic. The result was a nautical slugfest in which the American ship triumphed. Two months later Stephen Decatur, in command of the
United States
, defeated and took in tow HMS
Macedonian
, also of thirty-eight guns. Earlier the USS
Wasp
, a sloop, had pounded
HMS
Frolic
into submission while the USS
Essex,
a thirty-two-gun frigate, captured HMS
Alert
. Late in November the
Constitution
returned to action and, off the coast of Brazil, destroyed the heavy frigate HMS
Java
. Finally, in 1813 the American sloop
Hornet
beat HMS
Peacock
, a sister ship to
Frolic
.

These single-ship actions stunned the Royal Navy (against French and Spanish ships the British almost never lost). They also shocked a British public unaccustomed to defeat at sea. For the Americans they were cause for celebration, offsetting the setbacks along the Canadian border.

One American ship, the USS
Essex
, made history when in late January 1813 she entered the waters off Cape Horn and became the first American naval vessel to enter the Pacific Ocean. Built at Salem, Massachusetts, and funded by public subscription (101 Americans contributed, including a shopkeeper from Salem named Edmund Gale who gave $10), the ship cost $74,000 to build. Salem citizens raised the full amount. Commanded by David Porter, the ship wrecked Britain’s lucrative whaling trade. So many vessels did Porter seize that at one time he gave command of a prize to a twelve-year-old midshipman by the name of David Farragut. Responding to the
Essex
, the Royal Navy dispatched two frigates to the Pacific. In March 1814, they cornered Porter’s ship off Valparaiso.
Essex
was well armed, but her guns were short-range carronades. With their longer-range cannons the two British warships stood off and pounded the Americans into submission.