For Honour's Sake (42 page)

Wherever the army marched it would not do so under Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson. Early in the new year, the old general had requested a court of inquiry into his conduct of the 1813 campaign—a request granted by Armstrong on March 24. By then, however, he had presided over another defeat. In mid-March, Wilkinson had led 4,000 men north from Champlain into Lower Canada. Within a week, the Americans met 180 Canadian militia, redcoats, and Royal Marines barricaded inside a stone mill on the Lacolle River. A fitful siege brought the defenders perilously close to exhausting their ammunition, but Wilkinson's nerve again deserted him. Retreating across the border, Wilkinson left for Washington to face his critics.
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Declaring that he would submit only to the judgment of a court of senior generals—none of whom could be spared from active duty—Wilkinson was placed on the unassigned list, never again to hold command.
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That suited Armstrong, left free to promote younger officers and to pursue his personal ambition to be appointed lieutenant general and the nation's highest-ranking officer. Standing in the way of the latter ambition because of seniority issues were just two officers—Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson and Brig. Gen. Jacob Brown. The former was engaged in a brutal Indian war on the Tennessee frontier, while the latter had arrived
at Sackets Harbor on February 24 with 2,000 men and authority to lead the forthcoming spring campaign against Upper Canada. A regular army officer, Brown was a logical choice for promotion to major general. Despite an erratic and cruel disposition when it came to Indians, Jackson had personally led Tennessee militia and volunteers to quell the 1813 Tecumseh-inspired Creek uprising in Alabama and Florida. On March 27, the final stage of this brutal war, in which neither side showed the other mercy, concluded when Jackson led about 2,000 men against some 900 Creek warriors and 300 women and children sheltered in a fortified position on the Tallapoosa River. By sunset, 700 of the warriors and many of the women and children were dead.
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The victory freed Jackson for service in the north, and Armstrong could easily have converted his militia rank into a regular army commission.

Jackson's immense popularity in Tennessee held no coin in Washington. Although Republican to the core, Jackson had ensured his unpopularity by denouncing President Jefferson's administration and backing Monroe over Madison for the presidency. Armstrong was determined to prevent the man's rise. But Madison was equally intent on thwarting Armstrong's ambition to gain overall command of the army. So he nominated Brown for promotion to major general, and Congress readily agreed.

Armstrong did breathe new life into the flagging army by promoting six young colonels—among them Winfield Scott—assuring the troops marched to battle behind more competent officers than before. But better officers could little offset the fact that Madison's executive lacked a viable strategic plan for the 1814 campaign.

Madison was lukewarm to major offensive operations. With negotiations about to begin, he preferred a defensive war over one of conquest. This put him at odds with Armstrong, also engaged in a bitter dogfight with Monroe for executive dominance. Yet Madison refused to fire Armstrong, as advocated by his secretary of state.

In the end, Congress scuttled Armstrong's grand campaign by rejecting the classification scheme and merely increasing the bounty paid for men willing to enlist for five years or the war's duration. Existing regular army troops were automatically re-enlisted until the war ended.

Congress also failed to finance the war, projected at $45.3 million in 1814. William Jones, serving as secretary of both the navy and treasury, estimated a $29.3-million shortfall. Yet, after three week.' debate, Congress authorized borrowing only $25 million, the consensus being that raising such a sum clearly exceeded the government's credit. Despondent, Jones asked to resign the treasury. Madison soon consented, appointing Tennessee senator George Washington Campbell—providing Federalists opportunity to coin a new jeer hinged on his initials, GWC. “Government Wants Cash!” cried Massachusetts congressman Samuel Taggart. Campbell brought no real qualifications to the job and lacked any clout with the New England bankers who were the essential lenders upon whom the government depended. In the absence of any fiscal policy, the treasury limped from one short-term loan to another, never assured that the next infusion of cash would be forthcoming.
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On the military front, gaining any ground in Canada seemed doubtful. The better hope was that the navy might achieve some victories at sea, but even there prospects looked bleak. Only a successful negotiation could retrieve the nation's fortunes, so the peace talks were the most critical component of the government's 1814 strategy. Madison's commissioners must secure for America what her army and navy could not win by battle.
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At no point had the prospect for defending Canada looked brighter, yet neither the victories won the previous fall nor reinforcements received from Britain, nor assurances from Lord Bathurst and Henry Goulburn at the War and Colonial Office in London that more men and supplies were to be provided, brightened Sir George Prevost's gloomy countenance. On January 14, he had written Bathurst that experience “has taught me that reinforcement even by the most direct route to this Country cannot arrive in time to give a decided Character to the Campaign, as inevitably the principal events must have occurred before they can ascend the St. Lawrence to their destination.” While the number of British regulars and Canadian Voltigeurs available were reported at 900 officers and about 15,000
other ranks, many
were
sick or recovering from wounds.
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All had been exhausted by the 1813 campaign. Not even the rapid development of events in Europe could boost his spirits.

Following Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig in October, the French Empire had simply collapsed. Napoleon had fled into France with an army led by Tsar Alexander I hot in pursuit while the Duke of Wellington broke the French in Spain and chased them across the Pyrenees to occupy Toulouse. On March 31, Russian, Prussian, and Swedish troops marched triumphant into Paris. Six days later, Napoleon abdicated and accepted exile to Elba, an island off the western coast of Tuscany. After more than ten years of war, Europe was at peace. And Britain was free to unleash its military juggernaut against the United States.

That might was formidable. The army and Royal Navy had more than a million men in service. While anxious to stem the drain war had imposed on the treasury by discharging most of this strength, Lord Liverpool's cabinet was determined to give Prevost sufficient means to not only defend Canada but assume the offensive. “It is the wish of His Majesty's Government to press the war with all possible vigour up to the moment when Peace shall be finally concluded,” Bathurst informed Prevost.
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Within a week of Napoleon's abdication, Wellington received instructions to ready 13,000 Peninsular Army troops for redeployment to Canada. By early May, London's
Morning Chronicle
crowed, the Americans must soon face
the “elite of the army.
”
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The British government intended to settle the matter of mastery of the Great Lakes, control of which Bathurst and Goulburn considered essential to securing Canada from further invasion. Ill-pleased with Admiral John Warren's performance, the Admiralty had eased him out of command early in the year. His replacement, fifty-five-year-old Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, had taken up his duties at Halifax Station on April 1. Whereas Warren, like Prevost, had favoured defensive strategies that verged on inaction, Cochrane promised to take the war to the enemy. “I have it much at heart,” he informed Bathurst, “to give them a complete drubbing before peace is made, when I trust their northern limits will be circumscribed and the command of the Mississippi wrested from them.”
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Cochrane had fought America during the Revolution, and little regarded its citizens or its institutions. He particularly disliked slavery and believed that many of the teeming thousands toiling on southern plantations would welcome an opportunity to escape aboard British ships and to fight their former masters. Certain that by genetic disposition all slaves were natural horsemen, Cochrane envisioned a large force of cavalry that would “be as good Cossacks as any in the Russian army, and more terrific to the Americans than any troops that can be brought forward.”
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Accordingly, he spent his second day on the job writing a proclamation that slaves would be welcomed aboard Royal Navy ships and could choose between “entering into His Majesty's sea or land forces, or of being sent as
FREE
settlers, to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies.”
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Throughout 1814 many slaves did manage to reach the safety of British ships and most were transferred to Nova Scotia, much to the alarm of southern plantation owners.

Cochrane knew, however, that while encouraging the flight of slaves might alarm plantation owners, it would discomfit few other Americans. Some, mostly northerners, would even welcome this potential weakening of the “peculiar institution.” Cochrane wanted to cripple America so badly that its citizens would demand peace on whatever terms Britain cared to insist. To that end, on April 25, he ordered the entire U.S. coastline blockaded. This brought to an abrupt end the cozy arrangement that spared northern ports from the blockade imposed on ports to the south in order to allow export from New England of trade goods needed by the British. “I have stationed off the said Ports and Places,” Cochrane declared, “a Naval Force adequate to maintain the said Blockade in the most rigorous and effective manner.”
¹⁷

British ships seemed to be everywhere along the American coast. “With ceaseless vigilance they traversed continually the allotted cruising grounds, capturing the privateers, harrying the coasters, and keeping the more powerful ships confined to port; no American frigate could proceed singly to sea without imminent risk of being crushed by the superior force of the numerous British squadrons,” observed one commentator.
¹⁸

Nile.' Weekly Register
complained: “The eastern coast is much vexed by the enemy. Having destroyed a great portion of the coasting craft,
they seem determined to enter the little outports and villages, and burn everything that floats.”
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While coastal commerce was seriously disrupted, the blockade was less effective in bottling up the small sloops-of-war. Many managed to escape, usually under cover of night during heavy storms, to stalk British merchantmen on the high seas. Knowing it would be futile to try sailing prize-ships past the blockades into American ports, the U.S. naval commanders and privateers looted what they could from the cargoes and burned the ships. In the words of one naval expert: “Damage done and consternation caused were very great.”
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Despite these successes, the fact remained that the U.S. Navy was too small and too outgunned on the American coast to tip the scales in its favour. In 1814 the British had undisputed naval supremacy at sea.

Cochrane also tried to ensure supremacy on the Great Lakes, capitalizing on steps taken by Warren and Bathurst during the winter. In January, the Admiralty had agreed to assume complete responsibility for naval operations on the lakes. Earlier, Bathurst had sent 300 sailors from England and ordered Warren to match this force with seamen from Halifax. Those from Britain reached Quebec in November while the Halifax detachment, consisting of two battalions of marines, two companies of marine artillery, and a company of rocketeers, had arrived a few weeks earlier. In December, 250 seamen were sent overland from Halifax to help crew two new frigates being built at Kingston, the 58-gun
Prince Regent
and the 43-gun
Princess Charlotte.
Combined with the six vessels already afloat, of which the largest was the 23-gun
Wolfe,
Yeo believed he could gain mastery of Lake Ontario.

The Admiralty provided Yeo with even more resources in March, sending a convoy of 600 sailors and dockyard workers. In the holds were four prefabricated warships, complete with all fittings and armaments, to be assembled at Kingston. Although these ships-in-frame reached Quebec in April, they were delayed there by Prevost's inability to spare the men and resources to move them farther west. While the men went on to Kingston, the ships languished in their crates until July, when he was finally able to persuade a private contractor to deliver one of them. The delay meant the boat would not be ready for action until December 1814.
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But the increased manpower enabled Yeo's completion of the two frigates. And, as soon as they
cleared
the dockyard in mid-April, work began on a larger ship of the line that would mount 102 guns.
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Although aware of the great activity under way at Kingston, Yeo's nemesis, Commodore Isaac Chauncey at Sackets Harbor, had been slow to start new construction during the winter and had only two 22-gun brigs,
Jefferson
and
Jones,
laid down by February. Construction then began on the frigate
Superior,
initially fitted with 62 guns until Chauncey ordered four removed in August in a curious challenge to Yeo to give battle on the grounds that the ship no longer was superior in firepower to anything the British had on the lake.

Despite the British shipbuilding efforts, by May they still remained at a slight disadvantage in overall strength on Lake Ontario. Yeo had 1,517 men and eight warships with guns capable of combined weight of broadside firepower of 2,752 pounds of metal. Chauncey mustered eight ships capable of delivering broadsides weighing 4,188 pounds, and 2,321 men.
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But Yeo's ships were ready sooner and he decided to commit them to action in a joint operation with the new army commander and administrator of Upper Canada, Lt. Gen. Sir Gordon Drummond, before the Americans could venture out. Having come from Britain to relieve Maj. Gen. Francis de Rottenburg, Drummond was no stranger to Canada. Born and raised in New Brunswick, he had been posted to Canada from 1808 to 1811 while a major general. A soldier since age seventeen, Drummond had rocketed up through the ranks from lieutenant to colonel in his first three years of service. The forty-one-year-old officer was a stern, handsome man who had fought battles in the Netherlands, West Indies, and Egypt and since 1811 had commanded the troops garrisoning southern Ireland. But he was no firebrand, and one leading Upper Canadian suspected that he was “destitute of that military fire and vigour of decision which the principal commander of this country must possess in order to preserve it.”
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Accompanying Drummond to Canada had been thirty-eight-year-old Maj. Gen. Phineas Riall, who assumed the ailing Maj. Gen. John Vincent's command of British forces west of Kingston. Riall's only battle experience had been in the West Indies. Not
that this short, stout Tipperary Irishman considered himself inexperienced. Brave to the point of impetuosity, Riall never shied from a fight.
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