The War of 1812 Read online

  The War of 1812

  The War of 1812

  A Forgotten Conflict

  Bicentennial Edition

  DONALD R. HICKEY

  University of Illinois Press

  URBANA, CHICAGO, AND SPRINGFIELD

  © 2012 by the Board of Trustees

  of the University of Illinois

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  P 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Frontispiece: Engraving by Alonzo Chappel depicting

  the battle between the Constitution and the Guerrière.

  Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The War of 1812 : a forgotten conflict / Donald R. Hickey.—Bicentennial ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-252-07837-8 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

  1. United States—History—War of 1812. I. Title.

  E354.H53 2012

  973.5'2—dc23 2011037322

  For my late mother and father,

  who always encouraged the pursuit of knowledge,

  and for my wife, Connie Clark,

  who many years ago encouraged me to write this book

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Preface to the First Edition

  Preface to the Bicentennial Edition

  Introduction

  1. The Road to War, 1801–1812

  2. The Declaration of War

  3. The Baltimore Riots

  4. The Campaign of 1812

  5. Raising Men and Money

  6. The Campaign of 1813

  7. The Last Embargo

  8. The British Counteroffensive

  9. The Crisis of 1814

  10. The Hartford Convention

  11. The Treaty of Ghent

  Conclusion

  A Note on Sources

  Notes

  Index

  Illustrations

  Figures

  Embargo

  Tenskwatawa (the Prophet)

  Tecumseh

  Battle of Tippecanoe

  Henry Clay

  James Madison

  James Monroe

  Proclamation of war

  Alexander Contee Hanson

  Henry Lee

  John Stricker

  John Randolph

  George Prevost

  Isaac Brock

  John Norton

  Constitution v. Guerrière

  De Witt Clinton

  Josiah Quincy

  British license

  Oliver H. Perry

  Battle of the Thames

  George Cockburn

  Death of James Lawrence

  John C. Calhoun

  The prison ship Saratoga

  Winfield Scott

  Battle of Lundy’s Lane

  Defense of Fort Erie

  Dolley Madison

  Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Ft. M’Henry”

  Battle of New Orleans

  Attack on General Armstrong

  Execution of deserter

  Alexander J. Dallas

  Remains of White House

  Remains of Capitol Building

  Octagon House

  Timothy Pickering

  Harrison Gray Otis

  Hartford Convention

  John Quincy Adams

  Lord Liverpool

  Treaty of Ghent

  John Naudee

  Andrew Jackson

  Dartmoor survivors

  Peace

  Charts

  U.S. Trade

  U.S. Public Finance

  Maps

  The War in the North

  The War at Sea

  The War in the Southwest and on the Gulf Coast

  The War on the Atlantic Coast

  The War in the Chesapeake

  The Voice of America

  Hark! the peal for war is rung;

  Hark! the song for battle’s sung;

  Firm be ev’ry bosom strung,

  And ev’ry soldier ready.

  On to Quebec’s embattled halls!

  Who will pause, when glory calls?

  Charge, soldiers, charge, its lofty walls.

  And storm its strong artillery.

  Firm as our native hills, we’ll stand,

  And should the lords of Europe land,

  We’ll meet them on the farthest strand,

  We’ll conquer or we’ll die!

  —A Citizen of Monmouth, NJ (June, 1812)

  On the Conflagrations at Washington

  A veteran host, by veterans led,

  With Ross and Cockburn at their head—

  They came—they saw—they burnt—and fled.

  They left our congress naked walls—

  Farewell to towers and capitols!

  To lofty roofs and splendid halls!

  To courtly domes and glittering things,

  To folly, that too near us clings,

  To courtiers who—tis wel—had wings.

  Farewell to all but glorious war,

  Which yet shall guard Potomac’s shore,

  And honor lost, and fame restore.

  —Philip Freneau (August, 1814)

  Preface to the First Edition

  I first became interested in the War of 1812 in the late 1960s as a graduate student at the University of Illinois. Although the literature on the war was extensive, most studies focused on the military and naval history. The only works that explored domestic developments in any detail were those produced by the great nineteenth-century masters: Richard Hildreth, John Bach McMaster, and especially Henry Adams. I was particularly interested in Federalist opposition to the war, a subject that had never been treated in any systematic way. I explored this topic in my dissertation, “The Federalists and the War of 1812,” which was completed in 1972. In the course of my research, I found that I had to study the Republicans and their policies in order to understand what the Federalists were reacting to. As a result, by the time I finished my dissertation, I had learned almost as much about the Republicans as the Federalists.

  In the years that followed, I continued to study the war, and I published some of my findings in articles. Other scholars were working on the war, too, but most of the work continued to focus on a narrow range of topics, particularly the military and naval engagements. What we needed, it seemed to me, was a broader treatment of the war—one that dealt with politics, diplomacy, economics, and finance as well as battles and campaigns. We needed a study, in other words, that more fully explored Republican policies and their impact on the nation. Such was the genesis of this book.

  It is my hope that this book will serve two ends. As a short, comprehensive study, I hope it will be suitable for students and others interested in a general overview of the war. And as a study that reexamines the sources and contains new material, I hope it will appeal to specialists as well. In short, this work is designed to be both a textbook and a monograph and to appeal to generalists and specialists alike.

  In the course of writing this book, I have incurred numerous obligations. Robert McColley (my mentor at the University of Illinois) and Morton Borden (my inspiration at the University of California at Santa Barbara) both urged me to undertake this project and made helpful suggestions along the way. Others who read the manuscript and gave me the benefit of their expertise were Edward Skeen, Clifford Egan, J. C. A. Stagg, James Broussard, and Lowell Blaisdell. I am also indebted to Vance Burke, who shared materials from his extensive personal library, and to the History Department at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, which invited me to take part in a re
markably stimulating seminar in the summer of 1987. I profited greatly from the Classic Texts Seminar, and while living in Storrs I was able to do considerable work on this project.

  Wayne State College facilitated my research with three hours of release time from my teaching chores in the spring of 1986 and again in the spring of 1988. The college gave me annual grants to defray some of my research costs, and the Social Science Division provided travel money on two occasions. I am also indebted to the Wayne State Foundation for a Faculty Renewal Grant that facilitated my research in the summer of 1987.

  I want to thank the library staff at Wayne State College, particularly Gail Egbers, Jan Brumm, and two generations of interlibrary loan librarians—Mary Jo Gross and Peggy Brown—who proved remarkably adept at locating and borrowing materials for me. For the extensive assistance they afforded me, I owe a special debt to the library staffs at the University of Illinois at Urbana, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. For supplying me with materials, I am also indebted to the Kansas City Branch of the National Archives, the University of South Carolina Library, the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library.

  In my travels around the country, I used resources at a number of other libraries and manuscript depositories. I’d like to thank the staffs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Texas Tech University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of California at Berkeley, California State University at Fullerton, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, Duke University, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Essex Institute, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Maine Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Historical Society, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

  For permission to quote from articles I’ve published, I am indebted to the editors of the Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of American Studies, New England Quarterly, Military Affairs, Indiana Magazine of History, and Maryland Historian. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Connie Clark, for urging me to write this book and for giving me the freedom to do it.

  Preface to the Bicentennial Edition

  When I undertook a senior honors thesis in the 1960s on New England’s opposition to the War of 1812, I never imagined that I would make a career out of this conflict. I completed a PhD dissertation on Federalist opposition to the war in 1972 and launched a series of articles in the hope of landing a college or university teaching job in what was a difficult job market. I held a series of temporary positions until 1978, when I landed a permanent post at Wayne State College in Nebraska. Except for a couple of visiting assignments, this has been my home ever since. By the mid-1980s, I had finished the string of articles I wanted to write and, at the suggestion of my wife, undertook this book.

  I had no great expectations for the book. I merely hoped that it would sell enough copies to justify a paperback edition, and that the paperback would sell a few more copies before going out of print. Much to my surprise, the book did far better than I had ever imagined. There were book club editions, an audio edition, a paperback edition, and, in time, even a collector’s leather-bound edition. Now, some twenty years later, the paperback is still in print.

  What accounts for the book’s longevity? Three things, I think. First, I did not write this book until I had spent close to fifteen years learning my craft. Any book written much earlier, especially when I was fresh out of graduate school, would have been eminently forgettable. Secondly, I wrote for a broad audience. My aim was not to impress my colleagues with my erudition but to reach as many people as possible with my story. Hence, I tried to keep the writing simple and to craft a narrative that anyone could follow. Finally, I did not limit myself to the military history of the war. Rather, I included the domestic and diplomatic history. This gave the book a breadth lacking in most histories of the war, which usually focus on the battles and campaigns.

  My book seems to have served the public well over the years, but it is now time for a revised edition. My aim is not simply to capitalize on the bicentennial of the war, although that makes a new edition especially timely. Rather, I wanted to correct the errors, add new material, and reshape some of the existing material. Although this edition is roughly 5 percent longer than the original edition, I have not dropped anything of material importance that appeared in the first edition. Thus, the new edition supersedes the old one.

  Although I have made some changes in every chapter, the bulk have come in the three that deal with military history: chapter 4: The Campaign of 1812, chapter 6: The Campaign of 1813, and chapter 8: The British Counteroffensive. These chapters have been rewritten. I also added a fair amount of new material to the Conclusion. Although I have incorporated additional British/Canadian and Indian material, this edition, like the first, focuses mainly on the American side of the story. Readers interested in the other side should consult the works recommended in “A Note on Sources.” I have completely rewritten that note to reflect the flood of material that has appeared since the publication of the first edition of this book. To better guide readers through the new edition, I have inserted subheadings. I have also added two charts and replaced the original illustrations (which were portraits) with new ones that depict a broader range of people and events from the war. The maps were redrawn to reflect the new place-names that appear in this edition.

  The University of Illinois Press did a good job producing the first edition of the book, and it has done an equally good job supporting the book over the years. I am indebted to Dick Wentworth, the director of the press in the 1980s, for agreeing to publish a book that was much longer than the one I had promised, and I am equally indebted to the current director, Bill Regier, for agreeing to publish a new edition despite the financial constraints that all publishers face today. I would also like to thank my copyeditors: Cynthia Mitchell, who worked on the first edition, and Kathryn Roberts Morrow, who labored over this one. I am also obligated to Paul Arroyo and Jennifer Reichlin for all their fine work to make the original manuscript accessible with modern word processing software, and to Tad Ringo for help along the way. I owe a special debt to Tracy Ellen Smith for preparing the new maps and to Dan Morrow for creating the charts.

  If the first edition of this book was the fruit of twenty years of scholarly labor, this edition is the culmination of another twenty years, and a number of people have helped me along the way. Two Canadians, Donald E. Graves and the late Robert Malcomson, have been generous in answering my questions and sharing their research. I have learned a great deal from them about the military and naval history of the war and the British and Canadian perspective. Two other Canadians, Carl Benn and Faye Kert, have also been generous in sharing their research, particularly on the role of Indians and privateers in the war. For pointing out errors and suggesting improvements when the first edition came out, I am indebted to Lawrence E. Babits, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Blake, Forrest Daniel, Patrick Lipscomb III, Ian Pemberton, Thomas H. Reed, Major Eric Stanhagen, Donald K. Steiner, and Neil York. For helping me prepare the new edition by supplying information, suggesting sources, or aiding in other ways, I am indebted to Douglas M. Arnold, James M. Banner, Jr., Charles Berthold, Scott Butler, Bill Dudley, Paul Gilje, Andrew Lambert, Georg Mauerhoff, Dustin Meeker, Seth Rockman, and Matthew Warshauer. I owe a special debt to the staff at the U.S. Conn Library at Wayne State College, and particularly to Terri Headley, who has been remarkably adept at borrowing materials from other libraries. I also want to thank Jeryl Nelson for helping me figure out the effective interest rates on the U.S. war loans and Edmund Elfers and Lynn Bowder for working their magic on the illustrations so that t
hey were suitable for publication. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Connie D. Clark, for thirty years of unfailing support and excellent advice.

  The War of 1812

  Introduction

  The War of 1812 is probably our most obscure war. Although a great deal has been written about the conflict, the average American is only vaguely aware of why we fought or who the enemy was. Even those who know something about the contest are likely to remember only a few dramatic moments, such as the Battle of New Orleans, the burning of the nation’s capital, or the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Why is this war so obscure? One reason is that no great president is associated with the conflict. Although his enemies called it “Mr. Madison’s War,” James Madison hardly measures up to such war leaders as Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, or Franklin Roosevelt. Moreover, the best American generals in this war—Andrew Jackson, Jacob Brown, and Winfield Scott—were unable to turn the tide because each was confined to a secondary theater of operations. No one like George Washington, Ulysses Grant, or Dwight Eisenhower emerged to put his stamp on the war and to carry the nation to victory.

  Another reason for the obscurity of this war is that its causes are complex and still subject to debate. Some scholars have argued for the primacy of maritime causes, claiming that the United States went to war to force the British to give up the Orders-in-Council, which restricted American trade with the European Continent, and impressment, which was the Royal Navy’s practice of removing seamen from American merchant vessels. In contemporary parlance, the war was fought for “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.” Other writers have emphasized western aims—the desire to conquer Canada to secure additional farm land or to put an end to British influence over Indians in the Old Northwest. Still others have focused on political causes, asserting that the Republicans embraced war as a means of forging party unity, maintaining power, and silencing the Federalists. Yet another group has stressed ideological factors—the desire to uphold the prestige of the republic, preserve national honor, and ensure the continued vitality of republican institutions. The decision for war, in other words, has been attributed to a wide variety of motives.1