For Honour's Sake (27 page)

The division in the Senate between north and south was immediately made plain when Maryland senator Samuel Smith moved an amendment that effectively gutted the bill's intent by having the second part—that which authorized the occupation of Florida east of the Perdido—struck. On February 2, the Senate voted on the amendment.
Only
two southern senators voted for the amendment while all northerners but four diehard Republicans supported it. The amendment carried nineteen to sixteen.
²¹

While the Senate might have scuttled Monroe's ambitions to annex East Florida, the president did not wholly abandon the project. Rather, he and Monroe decided that the transfer of this Spanish colony to the United States might well be made a condition of peace negotiations to end the war—assuming that Spain would soon be nothing more than a British puppet. In the meantime, they decided that the heavily fortified town of Mobile, the only Spanish presence remaining west of the Perdido, would be taken by force before the spring was out.
²²

Gallatin never shared his colleague.' enthusiasm for the Florida adventure, believing that it satisfied little but a southern ambition to open new territory for settlement and risked a war with Spain that could turn the European powers against America. He also believed that securing East Florida would necessitate commitment of a major military force—indeed, even as the Senate amended the bill, Gen. Andrew Jackson was marching from Tennessee to New Orleans with 2,000 volunteers to carry out the expected conquest—that would bleed money from the treasury badly needed to fund the war with Britain. Raising an army in the south to march against a Spanish colony made no sense to Gallatin when the shortage of manpower in the north was such that it was improbable that the British could be expelled from North America. So Gallatin breathed a sigh of relief when orders went out for Jackson to turn about and come home.
²³

For the forthcoming operations against Canada, Gallatin believed it improbable that more than 15,000 men would be available. This meant that the most America could do was occupy that part of the Canadas between Lake Erie and Montreal. Achieving even this modest ambition, he told Madison, would depend on gaining control of the Great Lakes.
²⁴

In January, the president appointed John Armstrong his new secretary of war. Armstrong was not the president's first choice, but both William H. Crawford of Georgia and Henry Dearborn had refused the position. So he had turned to the fifty-four-year-old veteran of the Revolution and renowned New York political intriguer with powerful ties to the state's leading Republicans. Armstrong was a controversial choice because he was the author of a series of papers known as the Newburgh letters that had incited the U.S. Continental army to mutiny in 1784. Having as secretary of war a man who had sought to turn the army against the administration seemed risky to many senators, who approved his appointment by a vote of only eighteen to fifteen.
²⁵

Madison, who often seemed perplexed that anyone would engage in political manoeuvring while the nation was at war, hoped Armstrong's reputation for being the country's most noted authority on the art of war would offset his less desirable traits. In August 1812, Armstrong had published a treatise entitled
Hints to Young Generals from an Old Soldier
that cemented his status as a military expert. But the “Old Soldier” was a certain wild card. He harboured presidential ambitions, held Monroe in low esteem, and was renowned for a bad temper exacerbated by regular attacks of rheumatism and gout. There were also rumours that Armstrong was notoriously lazy.

Arriving in Washington on February 4, Armstrong dispelled this last criticism by diving into his duties with apparent energy and enthusiasm. Armstrong actually had many reservations about the job he had undertaken, not the least of them being that he was to serve in an executive dominated by Virginians. Like many New Yorkers, he believed the time had come to end the Virginian dynasty in favour of one based on their own state. Assuming his duties after Congress and the administration had largely determined how the War Department was to operate through 1813 also meant he was tied to a course not of his choosing.
Armstrong had also consulted with Dearborn in Albany, who had stated that the major thrust against Canada would be made from New York rather than New England, which would have been Armstrong's preference. To his friend and fellow New York intriguer Ambrose Spencer, Armstrong confided that he was “to execute other men's plans and fight with other men's weapons.”
²⁶
Fearing political disaster if the army should fail, the New York Republicans launched two new journals—the
National Advocate
and the
Albany Argus
—to promote the administration's war program in the state and boost recruitment. Not coincidentally, Spencer made sure that the editors of both publications routinely presented Armstrong as a military genius and offered with mock secrecy that before May 1 the “Old Soldier” would oversee a “brilliant campaign” in Canada.
²⁷

Madison would have settled for any semblance of military competency in the early months of 1813. February brought news of another disaster on the Detroit frontier, where Brigadier General Harrison had made assurances that despite the frigid winter conditions he could take the field to recover Detroit and capture Fort Malden. With 6,300 men, his army vastly outnumbered Lieutenant Colonel Procter's meagre force. Harrison sent Brig. Gen. James Winchester with an advance guard of about 1,000 men to clear the approaches to Detroit. Eager to prove himself superior to Harrison, whom he considered merely a political appointee, Winchester determined to take Detroit on his own.
²⁸

On January 18, his leading elements swept down upon the outpost of Frenchtown at the mouth of the Raisin River and easily drove off the fifty Canadians from the Essex militia and about a hundred Indians after a protracted skirmish. Detroit lay just 26 miles away, but it took two days for Winchester to bring the rest of his troops up. Believing that he owned the field, the American commander issued no orders to erect defensive positions around the small settlement and sent no patrols out to scout the area.

It was a fatal error and a demonstration of clear incompetence. Just before dawn on the morning of January 22, the Americans awoke to an attack by about 600 redcoats and militia and the same number of Indian
warriors who had all crossed the ice on the lake from Fort Malden during the night. Procter bungled the attack, however, by pausing to deploy artillery carried across the ice on sleighs rather than taking advantage of the complete surprise won by charging the Americans, who were just awakening and rolling out of their bedding to take up position. A fierce firefight ensued, during which 185 of the attackers were killed, but when Prevost sent a message to Winchester that he feared being unable to constrain the Indians if the Americans were overwhelmed, the American commander ordered his entire force to surrender. By this time the Americans had suffered heavily, with almost 400 having been killed. Barely 100 Americans managed to escape, slipping off into the woods by one and twos. Among the captured was Henry Clay's brother-in-law Capt. Nathaniel Hart and, of course, Winchester.

Lacking sufficient soldiers to guard all the prisoners, Procter left about thirty of the most seriously wounded at Frenchtown under the care of an Indian guard while he withdrew his force and the other prisoners to Brownstown. Many of the Indians were drunk on captured stores of liquor, but this failed to alarm the British officer. Soon after the redcoats and Canadian militia departed, a group of drunken Indians pushed the guards aside and scalped the American prisoners.
²⁹

It was a clear atrocity and one that rocked Washington when word of the murders reached it. “Remember the River Raisin” became a political slogan and battle cry. But the fact remained that Harrison's winter offensive to regain Detroit had been defeated.
³⁰

Again it fell to the United States Navy to bolster the spirits of the American people, and a new secretary was at the helm. Paul Hamilton had shown less military acumen than had Eustis in the War Department. A drunk and spendthrift, he depended on the office for an income and clung tenaciously to the position even after repeated congressional delegations begged him to resign. The North Carolinian failed to grasp the significance of mastery of the Great Lakes and so had presented a naval bill seeking only a large increase in the ocean fleet that panicked the Republicans over its costs. The Senate slashed his designs down to an addition of only four 74-gun ships and six 44-gun ships and gave the department $2.5 million funding. That bill only barely passed Congress
when a minority of Republicans voted alongside the Federalists (always keen to strengthen the navy that protected New England shipping) to carry it against the opposition of most Republicans, who thought the price tag too rich. Hamilton's performance during the bill debates, where he was often clearly inebriated, proved the final straw for Madison, who pointedly advised the man to resign. He went noisily, publicly accusing Madison of personal betrayal.

His successor was easily decided—William Jones, a Pennsylvania Republican with some familiarity, via business connections, with maritime issues. Jones reported that Hamilton had left the department in chaos that could be rectified only by radical reform. He also thought that such reform would save the government about $1 million annually in wasteful administrative costs. But he also aspired to greatly increase the number of seventy-fours to ensure the navy's ability to protect American merchant mariners, while Gallatin continued to argue that the costs of building even the ships approved by Congress would drain the treasury.
³¹

Despite ineffectual leadership from the top, however, the naval officers taking ships out to sea continued to wreak havoc on the Royal Navy—much to the joy of the president and public. On February 22, a delighted Madison sent a message to Congress reporting that the 49-gun
Java
had been engaged and sunk by
Constitution
off Brazil.

But the navy could not alone bring Great Britain to its knees. America simply had too few ships to gain mastery of the seas or even to break any blockades. Madison recognized this and also realized that the conquest of Canada, which was to have provided a decisive bargaining chip to gain concessions from the British government necessary to enable the United States to negotiate its return in exchange for an honourable peace, was equally unlikely in 1813. A protracted war that the nation could ill afford loomed. So it was with great relief that Madison took hold of a possible lifeline cast his direction during a celebratory banquet hosted at the Russian minister to America's house two days after he took the oath of office for his second term as president on March 4. During what Dolley Madison described as a “brilliant & pleasant” affair, André Daschkoff handed the president a note from
Tsar Alexander I in which the Russian emperor offered to act as a peacemaker between Great Britain and the United States.

Madison quickly accepted this “humane and enlightened” offer. Russia, he said, was “the only power in Europe which can command respect from both France and England.”
³²
Peace, and more importantly an honourable peace by which America might achieve all its objects, seemed withingrasp.

I
n September 1812, Tsar Alexander I had taken the fancy that he might arbitrate a peace agreement between the United States and Great Britain. While partly motivated by a wish to open both countries to Russian commerce, he also thought playing peacemaker would enhance his influence in world affairs even as his reign stood endangered. On the cold, clear Monday of September 7, more than 250,000 soldiers had met on a field of battle near the town of Borodino. When the smoke drifted away from the stark ridges and wide farm fields, 38,000 French lay dead and wounded while the Russian Army barely escaped destruction at the cost of more than 45,000 casualties. Victory at Borodino opened the road to Moscow for Napoleon, and like a rising tide the Grande Armée moved relentlessly into Russia's heartland, posing the threat that the French might soon parade through the streets of St. Petersburg.