For Honour's Sake (26 page)

Although Harrison broke the siege of Fort Wayne, the western frontier ignited in the kind of vicious war that American settlers and Indians had fought so often before. Tecumseh's warriors enjoyed limited success in attacks on various forts and settlements, especially against Fort Harrison,
where they succeeded in burning most of the supplies stored there—including barrels containing 25,316 rations of whisky. Able bush-fighters, the warriors were tactically baffled as to how to breach the stout fortress walls behind which the Americans took shelter. Each attack was ultimately repulsed or brought to an end when reinforcements arrived to break the siege. Yet rather than drawing upon their fighting strengths by merely harassing the forts and blockhouses in which the Americans had taken shelter to keep them pinned uselessly inside and deploying their main strength to ambush Harrison's badly extended supply lines, the warriors continued futilely trying to overrun these strongpoints. Tecumseh was too astute a tactician to not recognize where Harrison was most vulnerable, but just as his campaign was set into motion the warrior chief's iron constitution failed him. Incapacitated by illness, he lay stranded in a small camp on the Wabash River unable to direct operations. So there was little cohesion in the offensive and almost no coordination of effort. By November, it was clear that Tecumseh's all-or-nothing campaign had failed.

The vulnerability of his supply lines had haunted Harrison, for there was little he could do to protect the creaking, overloaded wagons, the strings of weary packhorses, defenceless flatboats, and large herds of cattle and hogs required to provision his army.
¹²
When the Indians failed to strike these columns, Harrison thanked his good fortune and retaliated with a search-and-destroy mission. Regular cavalry and the ruthless mounted Kentucky volunteers rode hard through the forests, burning villages, destroying crops, slaughtering any Indian who crossed their path. No distinction was made between friend and foe. The Potawatomi and Miami—many of the latter having remained loyal to the United States—fled to Brownstown and Amherstburg and claimed British protection. Dependent on the British for food, these and other tribes switched their allegiances accordingly.

Raids and ambushes carried out by both sides raged on as the snows fell and the rivers and lakes froze hard, but it was clear that the winter would pass in a bloody contest where neither side could prevail.

In Washington, a gloomy pall pervaded. Madison, Monroe, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, and War Secretary William Eustis faced
constant criticism for a mismanaged war. Even some War Hawks had turned against them, most noticeably Congressional Speaker Henry Clay. Eustis was under siege, constantly assailed by congressmen and senators demanding his resignation. Madison, ever faithful to those who served him, refused, even though such loyalty must surely cost him votes.

Hoping to bolster support for the war, as part of his annual address to the opening of Congress on November 4, Madison released the diplomatic documents exchanged between Britain and the United States during the summer. Here, he said, was proof that America had sought an honourable peace only to be spurned. He implored Congress to enact laws to increase the army, revise laws governing the state militias so they would be obliged to serve wherever they were sent, enlarge the navy and provide for strong squadrons on the Great Lakes, and prohibit American businessmen from continuing to trade with the British. By carefully avoiding any blockades of New England ports or seizure of ships from the northern states, Britain had been able to supply its armies in Canada and Iberia and its colonies in the West Indies with American agricultural products—a fact that infuriated Madison. In his mind, New England's continuing trade with Britain was nothing less than treason. He sought reinstatement of an embargo to deprive the British of the goods they desperately needed.

Congress responded to the last request with customary horror and overwhelmingly voted against any form of embargo, rightly realizing that their constituents would not respond kindly to losing any source of income from the sales of agricultural products. The Senate also refused any attempt to confine trade so that the war against Britain could be waged on an economic front. That left Madison and his administration no alternative path to forcing Britain to seek terms with the United States but to conquer Canada.

Not that Congress had any intention of enabling the president to raise an army that would meet Dearborn's estimates of what was required for this purpose. Thirty thousand men, Dearborn said, but as the end of the year drew close the entire army numbered barely 19,000. The committee studying the recommendations for reforming the army made repeated demands for ever more information and continued to express its lack of confidence in the war secretary.
¹³

While Congress dithered the nation voted, and on December 3 the Electoral College revealed returns that gave Madison a sweeping victory, with 128 presidential electors to Clinton's 89. The results, however, revealed a deep national rift that directly resulted from the war. Clinton had won every seaboard state from New Hampshire through to Delaware and a goodly chunk of Maryland. Madison swept the rest of the country.
¹⁴

But the president's re-election failed to quell the criticism being heaped on his administration by the House and the Senate. No sooner were the election results in than a strong lobby of Republican congressmen demanded Eustis's removal. Before Madison could decide what to do, Eustis resigned. He left Washington in disgust and retired to Boston. Madison offered the position to Monroe, who agreed to assume it only temporarily, until a permanent replacement could be found. Consequently, for a little more than a month Monroe was both secretary of state and secretary of war, but his attention focused on attempting to manoeuvre a series of bills through the House and the Senate that would prepare the army and navy for operations in 1813.
¹⁵

Two days before the end of the year, in a letter to a friend in Delaware, Henry Clay enumerated the errors of the campaigns of 1812. “Mr. Madison is wholly unfit for the storms of War. Nature has cast him in too benevolent a mould. Admirably adapted to the tranquil scenes of peace—blending all the mild & amiable virtues, he is not fit for the rough and rude blasts which the conflicts of Nations generate. Our hope then for the future conduct of the War must be placed upon the vigor which he may bring into the administration by the organization of his new Cabinet. And here again he is so hesitating, so tardy, so far behind the National sentiment.”

If Madison was unfit, Clay advised his friend, the same could not be said of Congress. Never “was there a body assembled more disposed to adopt any and every measure calculated to give effect and vigor to the operations of the War than are the members of the 12th Congress.”

The nation, too, was strong and determined. Clay dismissed Clinton's sweep of New England as resulting from the incompetence with which the war had been prosecuted in 1812. Given some successes, the north
would
rally
to the war that the south and west unshakeably supported. “The justness of our cause … the spirit & patriotism of the Country … will at last I think bring us honourably out.”
¹⁶

The House and the Senate were hardly as keen to support the war as Clay made out, a fact quickly made evident when Monroe and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin tabled a series of urgent proposals. Gallatin's dilemma was how to finance a war from a nearly empty treasury chest. Expenses in 1813 would total $32 million, of which $17 million would go to the army and $5 million to the navy. Yet he forecast only $12 million in revenues, meaning a shortfall of $20 million. Where was the money to come from? The nation's banks had already loaned as much as could be expected, and an 1812 float of various war bonds had netted only $3.2 million from individual investors. Scouring the federal troves, Gallatin found what he thought was a perfect source of the needed funding. During the confusion that followed British cancellation of the orders-in-council, and as New England traders flagrantly carried on trade with the enemy, the government had collected about $23 million in bonds and duties levied on goods imported from Britain. Normally most of this money would be returned to the importers, but Gallatin proposed a bill allowing the government to retain half of it on the basis that the importers had realized huge profits from this questionable trade.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Langdon Cheves led the moral outcry against the proposal. “I would rather see the objects of the war fail,” declared this stalwart War Hawk. “I would rather see the seamen of the country impressed on the ocean and our commerce swept away from its bosom, than see the long arm of the Treasury indirectly thrust into the pocket of the citizen through the medium of a penal law.” Henry Clay stepped away from the Speaker's chair to shout, “Let us not pollute our hands with this weltgild!”
¹⁷
The motion was roundly defeated.

At the same time, Clay would brook no criticism of Madison and his administration that opposed the war. Josiah Quincy, the Boston Federalist, had, along with Virginian John Randolph, been a constant thorn in the side of Madison and Jefferson for five congressional terms. Although Randolph had lost a bid for re-election, Quincy had been handily returned and came to the House determined to defend the
nation from a perceived secret agenda that threatened the very roots of its freedom. The president's cabinet, he announced, was “little less than despotic, composed, to all efficient purposes of two Virginians and a foreigner.” This triad of Madison, Monroe, and Gallatin—always suspect because he was foreign born—Quincy alleged was bent on subjugating Americans with “a King or an Emperor, dukedoms, and earldoms and baronies.” James the First, of course, would be succeeded by James the Second, a pact already made between Madison and Monroe to bring this to effect.

When Quincy's diatribe ended, Clay responded with a two-day-long harangue. Standing in the congressional hall, which was so cold and damp that his breath clouded around him like smoke, Clay reiterated all the causes of the war, detailed Madison's peace overtures during its opening months, and scathingly pointed out the baseless nature of Quincy's allegations of presidential conspiracies to corrupt the nation's democratic foundations.

The “Speaker opened all his portholes upon poor Quincy,” New Hampshire's John A. Harper commented. “He brought his artillery to play well—the fire on board
Constitution,
the
Wasp
or the
United States
could not have been better directed.”
¹⁸

Although most Federalists agreed that Quincy had stepped across the line of decorum, they also saw enough truth in his allegations to cause a serious congressional split that resulted in the majority of the northern congressmen stoutly opposing almost every bill that the administration presented. Any attempt, whether real or not, to give the White House a free hand in prosecuting the war was suspect.

In this atmosphere Gallatin's proposals for financing the war stood no chance of endorsement. Instead he was given authority only to issue more treasury notes and to borrow another $16 million on whatever terms could be negotiated so long as repayment was guaranteed to take place within twelve years. That the $11 million loan authorized by Congress the previous year was still unfulfilled because Gallatin had been unable to find a lender for $5 million of it made no impression on the legislators. There was also the fact that a stack of treasury notes remained from the 1812 issue, so a new issue was unlikely to succeed.

Yet it was clear that if the United States was to make a better showing on the field of battle than it had in 1812, the army must be greatly enlarged and a navy built that could master the Great Lakes. It was equally clear that the British were unlikely to retain the passive, defensive stance of the previous year in light of the failure to negotiate a lasting armistice. The most obvious threat was that the Royal Navy would blockade American ports and raid its coastal cities. They might also land an army in Florida to threaten the United States from the south and force a war on two fronts.

To meet the coastal threat Gallatin suggested that Monroe divide the country into military districts defended by a contingent of regular troops under command of a permanent commander who could also draw upon local state militias in the event of an attack. Ten thousand men would be required for this duty from a total authorization of 35,000. The immediacy of the threat to America's coast was made apparent in January, when two Royal Navy ships of the line and several frigates out of Halifax sailed into Chesapeake Bay and established a blockade that the American navy dared not contest.
¹⁹

Monroe fretted that the remaining 25,000 men available for offensive operations would be insufficient. He really wanted 35,000 men to carry out an ambitious campaign that included invading all of British North America before the end of the year and the seizure of East Florida, and another 10,000 in reserves—a total army of 55,000. Debates raged on the House and Senate floors, and when the voices stilled, authorization was granted to raise only 20,000 more men to bring the army up to 35,000. The term of service, however, was reduced from a mandatory five years to just twelve months.
²⁰
It was a desperate scheme, designed to achieve nothing more than to enable the army to take the field in the spring. If the war was not won by the end of the year, the government would have to cobble together sufficient forces to carry on the fight by returning to the next congressional sitting with cap in hand.

As for seizing East Florida, Monroe argued that when the war on the Iberian Peninsula was settled Spain would be an appendage either of Great Britain or of France. In either case the United States would be threatened from the south if the territory was not annexed. The majority
of its population were Americans
anyway,
he maintained, and would welcome annexation. A bill to enable the president to order occupation of both Floridas and to govern until the seizure of the country east of the Perdido River might be legitimized by “future negotiation” with Spain was presented to the Senate.