Kitabı oku: «Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 2», sayfa 17

This was the offensive return made by America's right arm of national safety; the retort to the harrying of the Chesapeake, and of Long Island Sound, and to the capture and destruction of Washington. But, despite the demonstrated superiority of a national navy, on the whole, for the infliction of such retaliation, even in the mere matter of commerce destroying,—not to speak of confidence in national prowess, sustained chiefly by the fighting successes at sea,—this weighty blow to the pride and commerce of Great Britain was not dealt by the national Government; for the national Government had gone to war culpably unprepared. It was the work of the people almost wholly, guided and governed by their own shrewdness and capacity; seeking, indeed, less a military than a pecuniary result, an indemnity at the expense of the enemy for the loss to which they had been subjected by protracted inefficiency in administration and in statesmanship on the part of their rulers. The Government sat wringing its hands, amid the ruins of its capital and the crash of its resources; reaping the reward of those wasted years during which, amid abounding warning, it had neglected preparation to meet the wrath to come. Monroe, the Secretary of State, writing from Washington to a private friend, July 3, 1814, said, "Even in this state, the Government shakes to the foundation. Let a strong force land anywhere, and what will be the effect?" A few months later, December 21, he tells Jefferson, "Our finances are in a deplorable state. The means of the country have scarcely yet been touched, yet we have neither money in the Treasury nor credit."²⁵⁷ This statement was abundantly confirmed by a contemporary official report of the Secretary of the Treasury. At the end of the year, Bainbridge, commanding the Boston navy yard, wrote the Department, "The officers and men of this station are really suffering for want of pay due them, and articles now purchased for the use of the navy are, in consequence of payment in treasury notes, enhanced about thirty per cent. Yesterday we had to discharge one hundred seamen, and could not pay them a cent of their wages. The officers and men have neither money, clothes, nor credit, and are embarrassed with debts."²⁵⁸ No wonder the privateers got the seamen.

The decision to abandon the leading contention of the war had been reached long before.²⁵⁹ In an official letter, dated June 27, 1814, to the commissioners appointed to treat for peace, after enumerating the threatening conditions confronting the country, now that the European conflict was at an end, Monroe wrote, "On mature consideration it has been decided that, under all the circumstances above alluded to, incident to a prosecution of the war, you may omit any stipulation on the subject of impressment, if found indispensably necessary to terminate it. You will of course not recur to this expedient until all your efforts to adjust the controversy in a more satisfactory manner have failed."²⁶⁰ The phraseology of this instruction disposes completely of the specious plea, advanced by partisans of the Administration, that the subject was dropped because impressment was no longer a live issue; the maritime war of Europe being over. It was dropped because it had to be dropped; because the favorable opportunities presented in 1812 and 1813 had been lost by the incompetency of the national Government, distributed over a period of nearly a dozen years of idle verbal argumentation; because in 1814 there stood between it and disastrous reverse, and loss of territory in the north, only the resolution and professional skill of a yet unrecognized seaman on the neglected waters of Lake Champlain.

Before concluding finally the subject of the offensive maritime operations against the enemy's commerce, it may be mentioned that in the last six months of the war, that is within one fifth of its duration, were made one third of the total captures. Duly to weigh this result, regard must be had to the fact that, when the navy is adequate, the most numerous seizures of commercial shipping are usually effected at the beginning, because the scattered merchantmen are taken unawares. The success of the last few months of this war indicates the stimulus given to privateering, partly by the conditions of the country, imperiously demanding some relief from the necessity, and stagnancy of occupation, caused by the blockade; partly by the growing appreciation of the fact that a richer harvest was to be reaped by seeking the most suitable fields with the most suitable vessels. In an energetic and businesslike people it will be expected that the experience of the two preceding twelvemonths would have produced decided opinions and practical results in the construction of privateers, as well as in the direction given them. It is one thing to take what is at hand and make the most of it in an emergency; it is another to design thoughtfully a new instrument, best qualified for the end in view. The cruiser needed speed and handiness,—that is the first and obvious requirement; but, to escape the numerous enemies gradually let loose to shorten her career, it became increasingly requisite that she should have also weight of armament, to fight, and weight of hull—tonnage—to hold her way in rough and head seas. These qualities were not irreconcilable; but, to effect the necessary combination, additional size was inevitable.

Accordingly, recognition of these facts is found in the laying down of privateers for the particular business. Niles' Register, a Baltimore weekly, notes with local pride that, although the port itself is bolted and barred by the blockade of the Chesapeake, the Baltimore model for schooners is in demand from Maine to Georgia; that they are being built, often with Baltimore capital, in many places from which escape is always possible. In Boston, there are in construction three stout hulls, pierced for twenty-two guns; clearly much heavier in tonnage, as in armament, than the schooner rate, and bearing the linked names of "Blakely," "Reindeer," and "Avon." Mention is made of one vessel of twenty-two long, heavy guns, which has already sailed, and of two others, to carry as many as thirty to thirty-six, nearly ready.²⁶¹

Between the divergent requirements of size and numbers, there is always a middle term; a mean, not capable of exact definition, but still existent within certain not very widely separated extremes. For commerce destroying by individual cruisers, acting separately, which was the measure that commended itself to the men of 1812, vessels approaching the tonnage of the national sloops of war seemed, by their successes and their immunity from capture, to realize very nearly the best conditions of advantage. The national brigs which put to sea were all captured, save one; and she was so notoriously dull of sailing that her escape was attributed to mere good luck, experienced on several critical occasions. Nearly all the sloops escaped; while the three frigates lost, the "Chesapeake," "Essex," and "President," were taken under circumstances that offered no parallel to the exigencies to which the privateer was liable. They were not run down, uninjured, in a fair race. The only sloop so lost was the "Frolic," of the class of the "Wasp" and "Peacock;" and the circumstances under which she was caught by a frigate are not sufficiently known to pronounce whether she might have been saved, as her sister ship, the "Hornet," was, from the hot pursuit of a seventy-four. Under some conditions of wind and sea, inferiority of bulk inflicts irredeemable disadvantage of speed; but, taking one thing with another, in a system of commerce destroying which rejected squadron action, and was based avowedly upon dissemination of vessels, the gain of the frigate over the sloop due to size did not counterbalance the loss in distribution of effort which results from having only one ship, instead of two, for a first outlay.

That some such convictions, the fruit of rude experience in actual cruising, were gradually forming in men's understanding, is probable from the particulars cited; and they would receive additional force from the consideration that, to make a profit out of privateering under existing conditions, it would be necessary, not only to capture vessels of weak force, but to return safely to port with at least some notable salvage from their cargoes. In other words, there must be power to fight small cruisers, and to escape large ones under all probable disadvantage of weather. Whatever the conclusions of practical seamen and shipowners in this respect, they found no reflection in the dominant power in the Administration and Congress. The exploits of the "Comet," the "Chasseur," and a few other fortunate privateer schooners or brigs of small size, among them being cited specifically the "Mammoth," which in the autumn of 1814 made twenty-one prizes in three months, produced a strong popular impression; and this was diligently but somewhat thoughtlessly deepened by the press, as such popular movements are apt to be, without thorough mastery of all facts, contra as well as pro. It was undeniable, also, that in the threatening aspect of affairs, when Great Britain's whole strength was freed to be exerted against the country, want of time to prepare new means was a weighty element in decision, and recourse must be had to resources immediately at hand for the retaliatory depredation upon the enemy's commerce, from the effect of which so much was expected then, as it is now. For this reason the scheme had naval backing, prominent in which was Captain Porter, who had reached home in the July after the capture of the "Essex."

Under these circumstances, the Secretary of the Navy addressed a letter, October 22, 1814,²⁶² to the naval committees of both houses of Congress, enlarging on the greater attention of the enemy drawn to the heavy frigates, and the increased difficulty of their getting to sea. He recommended an appropriation of $600,000 for the purchase of fast-sailing schooners for preying on the hostile commerce. In consequence, a bill was introduced to build or purchase for the navy twenty vessels, to carry not less than eight nor more than fourteen guns; in short, of privateer class, but to be under naval control, not only as regarded discipline and organization but direction of effort. It was intended that a squadron of them should be intrusted to Captain Porter, another to Captain Perry;²⁶³ and Porter drew up a plan of operations, which he submitted to the Department, providing for the departure of the vessels, their keeping together for support in one quarter, scattering in another, and again reuniting at a fixed rendezvous.²⁶⁴ Both officers reported great difficulty in procuring suitable vessels, owing to the extent of privateering, the lack of necessary funds, and the depreciation of Government credit, which caused its drafts to be refused.

When introducing the bill into the lower House, the Chairman of the Naval Committee, after paying some compliments to the military achievements of the naval vessels, said that in regard to depredation on the commerce of the enemy, he believed their efficiency could not be compared to that of vessels of a smaller class. This note dominated the brief discussion; the speakers in favor being significantly enough from Maryland, prepossessed doubtless by local pride in their justly celebrated schooners. Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, moved an amendment to allow vessels of twenty-two guns; an increase of fifty per cent. The limitation to fourteen guns, he remarked, was inserted in the Senate by a gentleman from Maryland; but it was not the fact that the best privateers were limited to fourteen guns. One or two which had arrived lately, after reaping a rich harvest, carried sixteen. Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, seconded this amendment, hoping that the Senate limitation would be rejected. He quoted Captain Perry, who had "never known an instance in which a brig of the United States had failed to overtake a schooner." One member only, Mr. Reed, of Massachusetts, spoke against the whole scheme. Though opposed to the war, he said, he wished it conducted on correct principles. He "was warranted by facts in saying that no force would be half as efficient, in proportion to its expense; none would be of so much service to the country; none certainly would touch the enemy half so much as a naval force of a proper character;" which, he affirmed, this was not. Ingersoll's amendment was rejected, obtaining only twenty-five votes. The bill went again to conference, and on November 11, 1814, was reported and passed, fixing the limits of armament at from eight to sixteen guns; a paltry addition of two. Forty years later the editor of the "Debates of Congress," Senator Benton, wrote, "This was a movement in the right direction. Private armed vessels, and the success of small ships of war cruising as privateers, had taught Congress that small vessels, not large ships, were the effective means of attacking and annoying the enemy's commerce."²⁶⁵

The final test was not permitted, to determine what success would have attended the operations of several Baltimore schooners, united under the single control of a man like Porter or Perry, and limited strictly to the injury of the enemy's commerce by the destruction of prizes, without thought of profit by sending them in. The advent of peace put a stop to an experiment which would have been most instructive as well as novel. Looking to other experiences of the past, it may be said with confidence little short of certainty that, despite the disadvantage of size, several schooners thus working in concert, and with pure military purpose, would effect vastly more than the same number acting separately, with a double eye to gain and glory. The French privateer squadrons of Jean Bart and Duguay Trouin, in the early eighteenth century, the example of the celebrated "Western" squadrons of British frigates in the war of the French Revolution, as protectors and destroyers of commerce, demonstrated beyond peradventure the advantage of combined action in this, as in all military enterprise; while the greater success of the individual United States cruiser over the average privateer, so singularly overlooked by the national legislators, gives assurance that Porter's and Perry's schooners would collectively have done incomparable work. This, however, is far from indicating that divisions of larger vessels,—sloops or frigates,—under officers of their known energy, could not have pushed home into the English Channel, or elsewhere where British commerce congregated, an enterprise the results of which would have caused the ears of those that heard them to tingle.

CHAPTER XV
THE NIAGARA CAMPAIGN, AND EVENTS ON THE GREAT LAKES, IN 1814

Active operations in the field for the winter of 1813-14 came to an end with the successful incursion of the British army upon the territory of the State of New York, before narrated.²⁶⁶ This had resulted in the capture of Fort Niagara and in the wasting of the frontier, with the destruction of the villages of Lewiston, Manchester, Buffalo, and others, in retaliation for the American burning of Newark. Holding now the forts on both banks of the Niagara, at its entrance into Lake Ontario, the British controlled the harbor of refuge which its mouth afforded; and to this important accession of strength for naval operations was added an increased security for passing troops, at will and secretly, from side to side of the river. From a military standpoint each work was a bridge-head, assuring freedom of movement across in either direction; that such transit was by boats, instead of by a permanent structure, was merely an inconvenient detail, not a disability. The command of the two forts, and of a third called Mississaga, on the Canadian side, immediately overlooking the lake, appears to have been vested in a single officer, to whom, as to a common superior, were issued orders involving the action of the three.

This disposition recognized implicitly the fact that the forts, taken together, constituted a distinct element in the general British scheme of operations. Fort Niagara by position threatened the line of communications of any American army seeking to act on the Canadian side. An effective garrison there, unless checked by an adequate force stationed for the particular purpose, could move at any unexpected moment against the magazines or trains on the American side; and it was impossible to anticipate what number might be thus employed at a given time, because intercourse between Niagara and George was open. If by original or acquired superiority of numbers, as had been the case in 1813, the American general should push his opponent back towards the head of the lake, Fort George would in turn become an additional menace to his communications. Therefore, properly to initiate a campaign for the command of the Niagara peninsula, in 1814, it would be necessary either to reduce both these works, which, if they were properly garrisoned, meant an expenditure of time; or else to blockade them by a large detachment of troops, which meant a constant expenditure of force, diminishing that available for operations in the field. The British military situation thus comprised two factors, distinct but complementary; the active army in the field, and the stationary fortifications which contributed to its support by sheltering its supplies and menacing those of the enemy. The British commander of the district, Lieutenant-General Drummond, estimated that the blockaders before either fort, being ever on the defensive against a sortie which they could not foresee, must in numbers considerably exceed the besieged, covered as these were by their works, and able to receive re-enforcement from the opposite shore. Consequently, when the officer in immediate local control, Major-General Riall, embarrassed by the smallness of his field force, suggested the destruction of Fort Niagara, except a citadel of restricted extent, needing a less numerous garrison, his superior replied that not only would such smaller work be much more easily taken, but that in every event the loss through holding the place was more than compensated by the danger and the precautions entailed upon the enemy.²⁶⁷

The inactivity, substantially unbroken, which prevailed throughout the winter of 1813-14, was due principally to the unusual mildness of the weather. This impeded movement in all quarters, by preventing the formation of ice and of the usual hard snow surface, which made winter the most favorable season for land transportation. Chauncey at Sackett's Harbor chafed and fretted over the detention of the stores and guns for his new ships then building, upon which he was reckoning for control of the lake. "The roads are dreadful," he wrote on February 24, "and if the present mild weather continues we shall experience difficulty." A week later, "I have the mortification to inform you that all our heavy guns are stopped at and below Poughkeepsie in consequence of the badness of the roads, and that the teamsters have abandoned them there." He has given up hopes of a frost, and counts now only upon water communication; but the delay and change of route were the cause of two smart affairs with which the lake operations opened, for on March 29 he announces that the guns are still below Albany, and now must come by way of Oswego and the lake,²⁶⁸ instead of securely inland by sleds. Yeo reported a like delay on his side in the equipment of his new ships, owing to the unusual scarcity of snow.

The same conditions imposed similar, if less decisive, limitations upon the movements of bodies of men. The most important instance of purpose frustrated was in an enterprise projected by Drummond against Put-in Bay, where were still lying the "Detroit" and "Queen Charlotte", the most powerful of the prizes taken by Perry the previous September, the injuries to which had prevented their removal to the safer position of Erie. On January 21 he communicated to Governor-General Prevost the details of an expedition of seventeen hundred and sixty men,²⁶⁹ two hundred of them seamen, who were to start from the Niagara frontier by land against Detroit, and from there to cross on the ice to the Bass Islands, where it was hoped they could seize and burn the vessels. The occupation of Fort Niagara, and other dispositions made of his division on the peninsula, had so narrowed his front of defence, and thereby strengthened it, as to warrant this large detachment.

This project was one of several looking to regaining control of Lake Erie, which during the remainder of the war occupied unceasingly the attention of British officers. Although the particular destination was successfully concealed, the general fact of preparations for some offensive undertaking did not escape the observation of the Americans, who noted that in the recent raid and destruction care had been taken to spare a great number of sleighs, and to collect them within the British lines. From this it was inferred that, when Lake Erie froze over, a dash would be made against the naval station and ships at Erie.²⁷⁰ This would be undoubtedly a more valuable achievement, but the enemy knew that the place was in some measure defended, with ample re-enforcements at call; whereas a descent upon Put-in Bay could encounter no other resistance than that of the small permanent garrison of seamen. The mildness of the weather, leaving the lake open on January 17, relieved the apprehension of the United States authorities, and on February 3 Drummond had to report that his scheme must be abandoned, as after that late period of the winter better conditions could not be expected.²⁷¹

In default of the control of Lake Erie, measures were taken by the British to supply the remote and isolated posts of Mackinac and St. Joseph's by land carriage from Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a distance of only forty miles, and thence across the ice to Matchedash Bay, on Lake Huron; where also were being built batteaux and gunboats, to transport the stores to their destination when navigation opened. As far as Huron this land route was out of reach of probable molestation, but from there it was necessary to proceed at the earliest moment; for, although there was no American naval force then on that lake, one might be expected to arrive from Erie early in the season. To this cross-country line there was an alternative one still more remote, from Montreal up the Ottawa River, and thence by other water communication, striking Lake Huron much higher up. It was practicable only for canoes with light lading, and in other respects not satisfactory. The maintenance of Mackinac therefore must depend upon armed control of the upper lakes; and to this the destruction of the prizes at the islands would doubtless have contributed, morally and materially.

On the American side as little was accomplished during the winter. Wilkinson's army, which at the end of 1813 was cantoned at French Mills, on the Salmon River, just within the New York boundary, was withdrawn from that position February 13. The greater part marched to Lake Champlain, where they again took winter quarters in two divisions; one at Burlington, Vermont, the other at Plattsburg. The third contingent, under the command of General Brown, was sent to Sackett's Harbor, where it arrived February 24.

The Secretary of War, General Armstrong, despite his vacillating course the previous year, had never lost sight of his perfectly accurate conviction that Kingston, if not Montreal, was the true objective for the northern army. Convinced that he had been misled in the spring of 1813 by the opinions of the commanders on the spot, Chauncey and Dearborn, he was again anxious, as he had been in the intervening autumn, to retrieve the error. On February 28 he issued to Brown two sets of instructions;²⁷² the one designed to transpire, in order to mislead the enemy, the other, most secret, conveying the real intention of the Department. In the former, stress was laid upon the exposure of western New York, and the public humiliation at seeing Fort Niagara in the hands of the British. Brigadier-General Scott accordingly had been sent there to organize a force for the capture of the fort and the protection of the frontier; but, as his numbers were probably insufficient, Brown was directed to march to Batavia, and thence to Buffalo, with the two thousand troops he had just brought from French Mills. This letter was meant to reach the enemy's ears. The other, embodying the true object aimed at, read thus: "It is obviously Prevost's policy, and probably his intention, to re-establish himself on Lake Erie during the ensuing month. But to effect this other points of his line must be weakened, and these will be either Kingston or Montreal. If the detachment from the former be great, a moment may occur in which you may do, with the aid of Commodore Chauncey, what I last year intended Pike should have done without aid, and what we now all know was very practicable, viz.: to cross the river, or head of the lake, on the ice, and carry Kingston by a coup de main." The letter ended by making the enterprise depend upon a concurrence of favorable conditions; in brief, upon the discretion of the general, with whom remained all the responsibility of final decision and action.

These instructions were elicited, immediately, by recent information that the effective garrison in Kingston was reduced to twelve hundred, with no prospect of increase before June, when re-enforcements from Europe were expected. Certainly, Drummond at this time thought the force there no stronger than it should be, and early in April was apprehensive on that account for the safety of the place.²⁷³ Brown and Chauncey, however, agreed that less than four thousand men was insufficient for the undertaking. Singularly enough, this number was precisely that fixed upon by Yeo and Drummond, in consultation, as necessary for the reduction of Sackett's Harbor; which they concurred with Prevost in considering the quickest and surest solution of the difficulty attending their situation about Niagara, owing to the exhaustion of local resources upon the peninsula.²⁷⁴ The scarcity thus experienced was aggravated by the number of dependent Indian warriors, who with their families had followed the British retreat from Malden and Detroit, and now hung like lead upon the movements and supplies of the army. "Nearly twelve hundred barrels of flour monthly to Indians alone," complained the commanding officer, who had long since learned that for this expenditure there was no return in military usefulness. In the felt necessity to retain the good-will of the savages, no escape from the dilemma was open, except in the maintenance of a stream of supplies from Lower Canada by keeping command of the Lake;²⁷⁵ to secure which nothing was so certain as to capture Sackett's and destroy the shipping and plant.

Having decided that the enterprise against Kingston was not feasible, Brown fell into the not unnatural mistake of construing the Secretary's other letter to present not merely a ruse, but an alternative line of action, more consonant to his active martial temper than remaining idle in garrison. Accordingly, he left Sackett's with his two thousand, an event duly chronicled in a letter of Drummond's, that on Sunday, March 13, three thousand five hundred left Sackett's for Niagara; a statement sufficiently characteristic of the common tendency of an enemy's force to swell, as it passes from mouth to mouth. The division had progressed as far as the present city of Syracuse, sixty miles from Sackett's, and Brown himself was some forty miles in advance of it, at Geneva, when one of his principal subordinates persuaded him that he had misconstrued the Department's purpose. In considerable distress he turned about, passing through Auburn on the 23d at the rate of thirty miles a day, so said a contemporary newspaper,²⁷⁶ and hurried back to Sackett's. There further consultation with Chauncey convinced him again that he was intended to go to Niagara, and he resumed his march. Before April 1 he reached Batavia, where his instructions read he would receive further orders. General Scott was already at Buffalo, and there the troops were placed under his immediate charge for organization and drill; Brigadier-General Gaines being sent back to command at Sackett's, where he arrived April 10.

At this moment Chauncey was undergoing his turn of qualms. "The enemy," he wrote the following day, "have prepared a force of three thousand troops, with gunboats and a number of small craft, to attack the harbor the moment the fleet leaves it. They may, however, be determined to make the attack at all hazards, and I am sorry to say our force is but little adapted to the defence of the place. There are not a thousand effective men besides the sailors and marines."²⁷⁷ His information was substantially correct. Drummond had arranged to concentrate three thousand men from the north shore of the lake; but he wanted besides eight hundred from the peninsula, and for lack of these the project was abandoned.

The movement of Brown's small contingent to Buffalo, though contrary to the intention of the Government, may be considered to have opened the campaign of 1814; destined to prove as abortive in substantial results as that of the year before, but not so futile and inglorious to the American arms. The troops engaged had been formed under the skilful organization and training of Scott. Led by Brown, who, though not an educated soldier nor a master of the technicalities of the profession, was essentially an aggressive fighting man of masculine qualities, they failed indeed to achieve success, for which their numbers were inadequate; but there was no further disgrace.