For Honour's Sake (25 page)

In America the small victories at sea seemed weak tonic, deemed too little and too late in coming to enable President Madison to easily win re-election. After a mere four months of war fought with little enthusiasm, the nation was weary of the conflict. The growing anti-war movement blamed the entire affair on Madison and his administration, conveniently forgetting Congress's role in forcing its declaration. Even those who believed the war just and necessary tended to lay responsibility for its poor prosecution on the steps of the White House.

I
n the fall of 1812 President James Madison faced the curious situation of having a fellow Republican running against him for presidential office. DeWitt Clinton, the forty-three-year-old mayor of New York City, had ardently opposed President Thomas Jefferson's policies and considered Madison a Jeffersonian pawn put into office merely to continue the “Virginian dynasty.” Once considered by many party insiders a strong presidential contender, Clinton's vitriolic criticism of two successive Republican presidents had by 1812 reduced him to an outcast. He advanced himself for the party's presidential nomination anyway, and the 1812 Republican caucus rejected him in an 82–0 vote that endorsed Madison for a second term. Undeterred, Clinton used his influence in New York to persuade Republicans in that state's legislature to endorse his presidential candidacy in May with equal unanimity.

Clinton knew he could win only by crafting an alliance between anti-war Republicans and Federalists. Consequently, the election devolved into a contest between northern and southern states, with Clinton's support concentrated in New England. It was soon evident that his anti-administration campaign was causing the most hotly contested presidential election in the nation's short history. While Clinton spent the autumn stumping with frenzied haste throughout the northern states to drum up support from Federalists, disgruntled Republicans, and merchants suffering reduced trade because of the war, Madison adhered to the custom of the time by pretending that playing politics was beneath the dignity of his office. He made no speeches, released no
campaign pamphlets, and was noticeably absent from public events where he could have shaken hands and solicited votes.
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Not that Madison was sanguine about being re-elected. By November, gatherings in the White House drawing room were notably “dismal and dark” and the ranks of supporters attending were “thin and solemn,” as many a Republican congressman and senator kept his distance for fear of the taint that might touch him from too close an association with a man soon to be voted from office. One observer noted that the month was punctuated by negative news of military and electoral setbacks “day after day, like the tidings of Job's disasters.”
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Efforts to renew offensives against Canada in November had proved farcical. Finally rousing himself on November 28, Gen. Alexander Smyth crossed the Niagara River above the falls under cover of darkness and established two small bridgeheads on the Canadian shore near Fort Erie. But when he failed to reinforce the advance troops quickly enough they were thrown back. With 1,200 men in boats waiting to renew the attack, Smyth convened his senior officers for a council of war. Such councils generally resulted in cautious decisions. Predictably, Smyth was advised that this first wave of embarked troops was too small to carry Fort Erie by assault, so he cancelled the attack.

Two days later he loaded 1,500 men in boats and then convened another council of war, which drew the same conclusion as previously. Smyth defended these decisions, claiming that many of the regular troops embarked were so ill they could hardly have stood a day's march and the militiamen could not be trusted to perform their duty. The militia, he wrote, tended to “look on a battle as on a theatrical exhibition; who if they are disappointed of the sights, break their muskets; or if they are without rations for a day desert.” After this debacle, Smyth applied to Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn for leave to visit his family. The old general cheerfully agreed. Smyth went off, keeping quiet the fact that he had no intention of returning to duty.
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For his part, although plagued by frequent, almost debilitating bouts of rheumatism, Dearborn had by mid-November assembled 3,000 regulars and an equal number of militia at Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain, from where he marched on Montreal. The American force was quickly
detected, and Maj. Charles-Michel d'Irumberry de Salaberry of the mostly French-Canadian Provincial Corps of Light Infantry moved to meet it with a mere two companies of Voltigeurs and 300 Indian warriors. Marching through swamps, the Canadians established a blocking position at Burtonville. On November 19, Dearborn's army occupied Champlain on the western bank of the Richelieu River only to discover the Canadians on the opposite shore. Shortly before dawn, the Americans forced a crossing against scattered resistance from a thin screen of Voltigeurs and Indians. In the confused first minutes of this engagement a number of American troops fired upon each other. Several men were killed and a number of others wounded, prompting the rest of the invaders to retreat back across the river.

That was enough for Dearborn. He immediately led his troops back to Plattsburgh and wrote to Secretary of War William Eustis, “I had anticipated disappointment and misfortune in the commencement of the war, but I did by no means apprehend such a deficiency of regular troops and such a series of disasters as we have witnessed.” Dearborn asked Madison to allow him “to retire to the shades of private life, and remain a mere interested spectator of passing events.”
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The only good news from the Canadian front stemmed not from land-based operations but rather from the efforts of America's small navy. Madison had always appreciated that whoever controlled the Great Lakes was free to move men and supplies with virtual impunity. American control of any of the lakes would jeopardize British ability to defend their communities and forts standing on the shoreline. Lying as it did at the nexus of Lower and Upper Canada, with York and Kingston on its shores, Lake Ontario was the most strategically important lake. Madison had ordered the navy to gain control of it, a duty that had fallen on September 3, 1812, to Commodore Isaac Chauncey. Establishing his headquarters at Sackets Harbor on the southeastern shore, Chauncey discovered his only war vessel was the brig
Oneida.
But several lake schooners had been commandeered and were being converted into fighting ships.

On November 10, Chauncey sallied forth with
Oneida
and six armed schooners. Overtaking the corvette
Royal George,
Chauncey chased it into
Kingston harbour. Unable to press his advantage because of cannon fire coming from the town's forts, the American commodore retired after exchanging cannonades with the British for two hours. Only one man on either side was killed and none of the ships suffered notable damage. But Chauncey could correctly assert that he now controlled Lake Ontario, for the British naval officers on the lake proved unwilling to venture out from Kingston harbour for fear of being intercepted. Their timidity was such that even Sir George Prevost reported that the “officers of the Marine appear to be destitute of all energy and spirit,” though he conceded this resulted partly from a lack of sailors.
Royal George,
for example, had just seventeen men fit for duty and
Earl of Moira
ten.
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The fact remained, however, that after Brock's death, Prevost had assumed a purely defensive strategy. Clinging to the notion that the United States would agree to an armistice, the Canadian governor steadfastly refused to sanction any violation of American territory. While along the Upper and Lower Canadian fronts his forces were too weak to conduct major operations across the border, the potential existed on the western frontier for British troops to advance from Detroit in support of Tecumseh's confederacy, which in September had launched a major offensive aimed at driving the Americans out of the territory north of the Ohio River.

On August 29, Brock had briefly outlined Tecumseh's forthcoming strategy in a letter to Lord Liverpool. Explaining that Tecumseh “for the last two years has carried on, contrary to our remonstrances, an active warfare against the United States,” Brock wrote that the Shawnee chief now appeared “determined to continue the contest until they obtain the Ohio for a boundary. The United States government is accused, and I believe justly, of having corrupted a few dissolute characters whom they pretended to consider as chiefs, and with whom they contracted agreements and concluded treaties, which they have attempted to impose on the whole Indian race.”
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He also made the case, subsequently endorsed by Prevost, that any peace treaty with the Americans must include provisions for the Indians, particularly the return of “an extensive tract of country, fraudulently usurped from them.”
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In effect, the intent was to undo all the treaties negotiated by
then Indiana governor William Henry Harrison. While the British hoped to achieve this through negotiation, Tecumseh determined to win the land back through military action.

Brock's success at Detroit had emboldened many of the tribes that had earlier bowed to Harrison's threats and entered into treaties. Shortly after Hull's surrender the Potawatomi at Tippecanoe and Fort St. Joseph rebelled, laid siege to Fort Wayne, and sent an urgent message to Amherstburg for help from the warriors and British there. Tecumseh was soon on the march, while Lt. Col. Henry Procter, commanding the British forces after Brock hurried off to the Niagara front, first dithered, then reluctantly sent about 500 troops and a matching number of Indians under command of Maj. Adam Muir to establish a firm position on the Maumee River southwest of the dilapidated ruin of Fort Defiance in order to cut the easiest route by which Fort Wayne could be reinforced. Reliant on boats to carry supplies and several small artillery pieces, Muir's force crawled slowly forward, hampered by typically low late-summer river levels. The boats were dragged more often than floated.
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It was soon evident that the Indian confederacy's campaign would be over before the British were in position.

While Tecumseh's forces were formidable, they were also widely scattered and too short of gunpowder and shot for sustained operations. Tecumseh's intelligence network also failed, for even as he led the tribes in an all-or-nothing uprising his old nemesis Harrison entered the Ohio Valley at the head of a vastly superior army of Kentucky militia and regular troops. Harrison, who had resigned the Indiana governorship to return to Kentucky and raise a militia army, had his sights set on command of a reconstituted Army of the West. Congressional Speaker and fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay supported this ambition, making it plain to the White House that Harrison should get the command.

Patriotic war fever burned more fiercely in Kentucky than elsewhere in the Union. While few other states were able to fill militia quotas, recruiting officers in Kentucky were overwhelmed with volunteers. When 2,000 men had mustered on a parade ground at Georgetown in August, Clay had been there to address them. “Kentucky was famed for her bravery” and so “they had the double character of Americans and Kentuckians to support,” he declared.
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The Kentucky militia had then
expected to march north to reinforce Hull and join in the conquest of Canada. And it was widely believed that their leader would be the hero of Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison. “If you will carry your recollection back to the age of the Crusades,” Clay wrote James Monroe, “and of some of the most distinguished leaders of those expeditions, you will have a picture of the enthusiasm existing in this country for the expedition to Canada, and for Harrison as the commander.”
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But Eustis had already given command of the Army of the West to Brig. Gen. James Winchester, another tired veteran of the Revolution and a former North Carolinian Indian fighter turned plantation owner in Tennessee. In late August, Winchester had camped at Cincinnati and was still preparing to march to the aid of Fort Wayne when Harrison rode in and announced that he was taking command of the Kentucky militiamen there while Winchester could lead the regular troops. He also insisted that overall command was his. Through an exchange of tightly worded notes the two men bickered until at last Winchester acquiesced.

Content for the moment, Harrison ordered Winchester to take 2,500 men and establish a position at the rapids of the Maumee River that could serve as the army's forward base for the winter. Harrison, meanwhile, would move across country with 2,000 men to relieve Fort Wayne. Consequently Winchester was groping his way through the forests toward the Maumee at the same time as Muir approached it from the north. On September 25 some Indian scouts captured several Americans, interrogated them, and then killed the men before carrying back the news that a far superior force approached. Muir sought to ambush the Americans but was foiled when the bodies were discovered and Winchester ordered his men to cease the advance, throw up a stout wooden breastwork, and await an attack. Realizing he could never carry the field against a prepared enemy, Muir withdrew. As the Americans were now between him and Fort Wayne, the entire object of his mission was frustrated, so Muir and his men manhandled their boats back to Amherstburg.
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