James and Dolley Madison (38 page)

There were many differences between the War of 1812 and the last American conflict against the British in the revolution. First, in the revolution the Americans had a superb commander in chief in George Washington, who had significant military previous experience in the French and Indian War.
Madison had no military experience. Second, Washington lived with his army and made his decisions in camp; Madison lived a thousand miles away from his army and made decisions in the White House. Third, Washington developed a system of spies that let him know what the British troops, and his own, were doing within twenty-four hours. Madison worked with a pathetic communications system in which news took days to travel; his spies learned little. Fourth, after his 1776 crossing of the Delaware, Washington had the support of almost all Americans and the press in the war; Madison did not. Fifth, Washington had the complete support of the Continental Congress, but Madison had both the Federalists and many of his own Republicans against him.

The president always had to worry about political opposition to the war, especially in New England. “The Federalists in Congress are to put all the strength of their talents into a protest against the war and that the party at large are to be brought out in all their force,” Madison wrote Jefferson. Richard Rush added more bluntly that “Massachusetts and half New England I fear is rotten.”
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Madison's one great weakness as a president at the start of the war was that he did not possess the political skills to hold his own party together with him and to blunt opposition from the Federalists. He had a two-to-one majority in Congress and yet everything he tried to pass in Congress became a chore. If he had the numbers in delegates and was, he believed, in the right in his thinking and planning, why could he not win people over?

The answer, as Rush pointed out, was that he just did not have those unique leadership skills needed for the job—at the moment. Rush told a friend when the war was about to begin that “Mr. Madison is not a Mr. Jefferson or a General Washington, either of whom, from their vast ascendancy over Congress and the public…might be gratified in any little executive freak dear to their heart.”
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The president received much help in that area from his wife. It was in the early months of the war that Dolley Madison struck up a deep friendship with Congressman Henry Clay. She liked Clay as much as she liked any other public figure in the country. He was intelligent, witty, full of good stories, and a social lion. He was also one of the few politicians in Washington who enjoyed snuff, as did Dolley. She offered him pinches of her snuff all the time at receptions and parties and he thanked her for it. She saw in Clay a man of roughly her own age who could, with a little push from her, help her husband's programs in the House. She talked to Clay frequently about politics, reminding him, as she reminded everybody, that she knew
nothing
about politics at all. What her husband was trying to do, but needed help in doing, was promote the states' rights policies of his Republican Party but, at the same time, use his powers as president to increase the national powers of the entire federal government.
Madison did not see a clash between states' and federal rights, but a union. He understood, though, and Dolley understood, that they had to be very careful in talking about the issue because most people saw it as a sharp conflict. If Madison could succeed at melding the local and federal interests in his own party, he would create a very strong nation with people as certain of their state and local rights as their federal protections. Dolley saw Clay as a man who could help her husband succeed and, in the future, lead that drive himself.

Clay saw a friendship with Dolley as a way to become a close ally of the president and get him to help Clay push his economic goals for the government, which he called the “American System.” A strong Madison could do that but a weak president could not. Clay needed to make Madison a stronger president and, through his powerful position as Speaker of the House, could do that. Clay and Dolley, both rambunctious pubic personalities, were united by more than snuff boxes.
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Her friendship with Clay was an example of the increased social politics that Dolley advanced when the war began. She used numerous backdoor channels to find out information. For instance, she would talk to dozens of Washington wives about politics in an effort to sort out where their husbands stood on particular issues. She would send friends to talk to people to find out who was spreading rumors about the Madisons, or their friends, and then befriend the villains to end their campaign. She listened to gossip to pick up rumors that were actually true in order to help her husband. She jumped into the middle of arguments between politicians to calm the waters and bring them back together again. These were things she could do and her husband could not because she was the First Lady and he was the president. He was one of the most powerful men in the world, but his office reined him in. Dolley was under no restraints at all and conducted all of her missions with a smile and a public good word for everybody. Her social politics aided her husband tremendously as the war started.

As the news of Hull's surrender and the fall of both Detroit and Fort Mackinac became public, James Madison needed all the friends his wife could find.

Hull's surrender to British commander Isaac Brock began an 1812 chain of setbacks that could lead to nothing but defeat. Madison was in charge of a relatively new army that was beefed up by emergency callups and new, untrained militias. For hundreds of years Britain had a large standing, well-trained army, and there was its mammoth navy. Madison wrung his hands in frustration.

All the news that arrived at the White House from the war front was bad. British general Brock's encampment at Niagara, with Hull's entire army with him as prisoners, unnerved American commanders, and most of these commanders had no wartime experience. Stephen Van Rensselaer, a rich landowner from New York, was one of them. He panicked at Brock's arrival. “Alarm pervades the country and distrust among the troops,” he wrote New York governor Daniel Tompkins, “While we are growing weaker our enemy is growing stronger.” Hearing of his panic, General Dearborn further deflated Van Rensselaer by telling him that it was possible that he and his army could be captured, too.
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A short time later, American general Alexander Smyth arrived at Niagara to join forces with Van Rensselaer in a joint attack on Canada. Smyth refused to serve under Van Rensselaer, though, and then a miffed Van Rensselaer attacked Canada on his own, minus Smyth's army. He was defeated at Queenston Heights and most of his army taken. It was both a military and public-relations disaster. Shortly afterward, Van Rensselaer retired from military life. Smyth took over his army and bragged about what he was going to do to the British army in Canada, but staged only one half-hearted attack, on Fort Erie, could not take
it, and withdrew his men. His army was soon dispersed. Later, Dearborn, with six thousand men, attempted to attack Montreal, which was defended by just five hundred British soldiers. He made several feints at the city and then withdrew, defeated yet again. British newspapers made fun of him. One said that he “advances backwards.”
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Dearborn then resigned, too.

Back near Detroit, General William Henry Harrison and General James Winchester argued over who was in command of the army. Harrison wrote the president that his plans to take Detroit and move into Canada were impracticable. The roads were too muddy for an advance on Detroit, he did not have enough men, his troops were untrained, and his civilian agents were bunglers, he complained. Madison shook his head in disbelief at the incompetents who ran his army.

In 1813, Madison ordered attacks on Kingston, York (Toronto), and the Niagara frontier in Canada, but only the attack on York succeeded. Following that victory, there was a deep split between American commanders in the region that further delayed any progress.

At the same time that Madison's army was stalled in the northwest, the British set up a naval blockade from New York City down the Atlantic coast to impede American trade (they did not blockade New England ports in hopes that those states would force the national government to give up the war). Crusty British admiral Cockburn burned numerous vessels he found near Norfolk, Virginia, and burned Fredericktown, Georgetown, and Havre de Grace on the northeast Maryland shore. His actions shook America. It seemed that the British could strike wherever and whenever they chose.

The elections in the United States had brought good news (the defeat of John Randolph by Thomas Jefferson's son-in-law) and bad news (the return of the strident Federalist Thomas Pickering from Massachusetts to Congress). Madison had a majority in the House but was uncertain how votes would go in the relatively evenly divided Senate, full of cantankerous critics, many from his own party. The Senate's intransigence continued to cripple him as chief executive.

The news from the navy was grim. The American ship
Chesapeake
was sunk in a battle with the British fleet off the coast of New England, following a fierce battle (which was made memorable by dying American commander James Lawrence's plea, “Don't give up the ship!”). The British press memorialized the battle as symbolic of British sea superiority.

And then an odd thing happened. The loss, and Lawrence's death, was not seen as a defeat in America. It was hailed as a victory and Lawrence became an instant martyr. Poems and songs were written about him, newspapers hailed
him in editorials, congressmen delivered eulogies about him, and Oliver Perry renamed one of his ships the
Lawrence
. His last words, “Don't give up the ship!” became the new motto of the navy.
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What happened to Lawrence was yet again an example of what often happened during the war. The people and the press took a defeat and spun it into a victory. The Americans did not have many victories in the war, and those they had were small, but the people and the press built them up into historic triumphs, continually building the story that America was winning the war.

One thing President Madison did not have to worry about was his tiny navy. The United States had only seventeen ships in the summer of 1812, including seven large frigates. Four of them carried forty-four cannon and the rest carried thirty-six. They had all been built longer than the average frigates. The frigates, and all the other ships, not only were seaworthy but also had been maintained meticulously by the navy. Although the army had few officers that had ever seen combat, the navy was full of combat veterans. Its commanders and seamen had been active in the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s and in the Tripoli wars in the early 1800s. They had been trained as young men and had been with the navy for years. The seamen were excellent sailors and gunners. One problem the United States did have in the early months of the war was in attracting new sailors. Madison solved that the same way he solved the problem of increasing the size of his army. He simply spent millions on signing bonuses, advance pay, and higher salaries. It worked.

The navy also benefitted from War Department confusion. It was decided to separate the navy into two squadrons, but the decision was not made for weeks. In the interim, Captain John Rodgers took it upon himself to set sail for England and sink as many ships as he could. He did not find any on that voyage, but his cruise terrified the British, who feared he would bombard their seaports. Rodgers's early departure had the unintended consequence of making Britain believe the Americans had a complex plan for victory at sea and many more ships than they actually did.

The British Navy was mammoth. In the war against Napoleon, the British Navy won two hundred battles and lost just five. The British ships were deployed all over the world, though, and many stuck in the Mediterranean to fight Napoleon's navy. Consequently, they sent few ships to America, giving the United States time to gain a foothold in the Atlantic and on the Great Lakes.

Brilliant American commanders gained notoriety, and impressive victories, throughout the war, beginning in 1812 when Captain Isaac Hull, the nephew of the disgraced General Hull, found himself trapped in the Atlantic on his ship, the
Constitution
, by a squadron of five British ships. He fled but could not find a wind
to help him escape. He then put his sailors into longboats and had them pull the boat. That did not work either, so he sent men far ahead of the ship to drop its anchor. Then they pulled the boat, using the anchor as a foothold on the ocean floor. The British could not capture him. He gained more and more ground and eventually sailed safely into the Boston harbor. The long, dramatic chase was the talk of both England and America, and all saluted the resourceful Hull.

Hull refitted the ship, took on supplies and more men, and set sail again, gunning for British warships. He found them. On August 19, he encountered on of the best, the
Guerriere
, whose captain had been challenging American captains to fights in newspapers. The
Guerriere
fired first, but its shells fell short. It turned and fired again, but the volley was too high. Meanwhile, Hull, in the navy since he was fourteen and a veteran of the Tripoli wars, got in front of a northwest wind and, adjusting his sails constantly, rushed the
Guerriere
but held fire until he was just fifty yards away. Then he fired his cannon and tore up the
Guerriere
. In the hot fire between the two vessels, a cannonball from the Guerriere bounced harmlessly off the side of the
Constitution
. A seaman yelled that the ship must have sides of iron and the nickname “Old Ironsides” was born.

Hull was not alone in beating the British on the high seas. Young Stephen Decatur sailed his huge, fifty-six-gun ship
United States
close to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, where he found the British ship
Macedonian
, with forty-nine guns. The
United States
maneuvered quickly to gain an advantage over the
Macedonian
. Decatur got off seventy broadsides to the enemy's thirty and captured her easily, later turning her into an American ship. President Madison instructed Congress to pay a $200,000 prize to the very grateful officers and crew of the
United States
. A short time later, the
Constitution
, now under the command of William Bainbridge, sunk the
Java
off the coast of Brazil. The
Essex
, with forty-six guns, captured the British ship
Alert
, and also captured a British troop transport carrying 160 soldiers on their way from the island of Barbados to the United States. In the winter of 1812 and spring of 1813, American vessels recorded victories over dozens of much larger British ships, capturing most and sinking some.

No one caused more of a sensation than Captain David Porter. He was ordered to captain the
Essex
and join the
Hornet
and
Constitution
in the southern Atlantic, but he missed them. Then, on his own, he decided to sail south down the coast of South America, around Cape Horn and out into the Pacific Ocean. He decided that if he could sink or capture a number of British whaling ships, he could hurt the overall British economy and, at the same time, establish United States' mastery of the Pacific. He brought along his thirteen-year-old foster son, David Farragut, who would later be a naval hero in the Civil War.
His voyage was a triumph. Porter and the men on his
Essex
, a frigate with thirty-two guns, captured or sunk dozens of small British whalers and captured nearly two hundred sailors. Porter, giddy with success, then sailed westward to the Marquesas Islands in the south Pacific, anchored and spent the winter there, his men repairing their ships in the morning and frolicking with native girls in the afternoon. Porter wrote in his journal that “the valuable whale shipping there is entirely destroyed and the actual injury we have done them may be estimated at $2.5 million, independent of the expenses of vessels sent in search of me.”

Porter and his one-ship navy sailed back to Chile, where they were attacked by two British ships sent halfway around the world with the sole goal of capturing him. In a fierce fight, the British captured the
Essex
, killed fifty-eight sailors and wounded sixty-six (thirty-one drowned). Porter had been badly defeated and lost his ship, but he had become so famous that when he returned home, he was given a boisterous welcome and became a national hero.
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At the same time, Madison authorized the establishment of “privateers,” private merchant ships that were outfitted for war with dozens of cannon. The United States had great success with the privateers in the revolution and would have it again in the War of 1812. Madison authorized about five hundred privateers, most smaller ships that carried about 100–150 sailors and dozens of cannon. As in the revolution, President Madison authorized the privateers to sell or auction off all the goods they seized on captured ships. A small percentage of the money went to the federal government, but the overwhelming majority went to the privateers themselves. In addition to that booty and their regular pay, the privateers were given $25 bounty per prisoner of war they brought to shore. Sometimes they seized ships with two hundred men on them, so the bounty was profitable.
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It was enough. That winter and spring, the privateers sunk or captured 450 British ships. The ships were taken not in any one ocean but all over. Hundreds were captured in the warm waters of the Caribbean, and hundreds off the chilly coast of Canada. American commanders sunk British ships off the coasts of Portugal, Spain, and France. Some privateers were based in France and sunk dozens of ships cruising in the English Channel. They captured larger British merchant ships carrying valuable cargo, troop transports with hundreds of men, and, in one famous instance, a ship carrying 150 horses for the British army in Canada.
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The victories of both the privateers and the United States Navy were not just numbers, either. The loss of so many ships forced the British government to build dozens of new ships at a high cost. Merchant ships insisted that convoys of British warships surrounded them on their way across the Atlantic, which cost more money and reduced the number of ships that could fight. In addition to all that, insurance premiums
on all merchant ships were raised because they ran the risk of being sunk by the Americans. This created great fear in Parliament and in the British press. A Canadian editor wrote in a panic that “American privateers annoy this place to a degree astonishingly injurious; scarcely a day passes but crews are coming in that have had their vessels taken and sunk.” The
London Times
wrote of the West Indies that “the American privateers are still enabled to range unmolested.”
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