James and Dolley Madison (32 page)

Everyone seemed to worry about Madison's resolve for no good reason. He had been a strident opponent of the sea policies of both England and France for years, had been tough with ambassadors, and had never backed down from his beliefs. He had even fired Robert Smith, his inefficient secretary of state, and replaced him with Monroe in 1811. He acted, and he acted quickly. The president
was his own man, too. He wrote Jefferson constantly, seeking advice but often ignoring his counsel. The firing of Smith was a good example. Jefferson had lobbied for the return of Monroe to Washington for over a year but was surprised that Madison dismissed Smith to make Monroe secretary of state. He told Madison that Smith's friends in Washington would now conspire to give Madison trouble because of the secretary's ouster. Madison paid no attention to Jefferson's feelings.

By the middle of June 1812, state legislatures, local politicians, and newspaper editors were certain that war would be declared. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “everybody in this quarter expects the declaration of war as soon as the season will permit the entrance of militia into Canada.” During the second week of June, the state legislature of Maryland went into special session and appointed a committee to study the quick raising of a state militia. Newspapers reported that “within a few days” the “final question” of war would be decided in Congress.
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All were nervous. Members of Congress remained at their posts, waiting for the war message, and would not leave the capital until they received it. “Congress will not adjourn…from the idea that it will make a bad impression,” wrote Mrs. Madison.
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News came quickly.

Congress received a very strong message from President Madison declaring war on Great Britain on June 1. “The conduct of their government presents a series of acts hostile to the U.S. as an independent and neutral nation,” he wrote, adding that “not content with these occasional expedients for laying waste our neutral trade, the cabinet of Great Britain resorted at length to the sweeping system of blockades, under the name of Order in Council, which has been molded and managed as might best suit its political views, its commercial jealousies or the avidity of British cruisers,” he said.
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Several months later, in his first war message to Congress, Madison, in tough language, told the people not only that was war necessary but also that to avoid one at that point would be unthinkable and indefensible. America had been pushed too far. “To have shrunk from it…would have struck us from the high rank where the virtuous struggles of our fathers had placed us, and have
betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in trust for future generations…would have acknowledged that the American people were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals.”
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On June 4, the House of Representatives approved of the war, and the Senate followed on June 17. The House's Council on Foreign Relations issued a long, detailed report backing Madison on his war at the same time. Congress decreed that “the President of the United States is hereby authorized to use the whole land and naval force of the United States to carry the same into effect.”
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Nobody realized more than President Madison that this war with England was an uphill conflict. The American army had but a few thousand men and very few of them had ever been in battle. There were few men left who had been officers in the American Revolution. Congress still insisted on its right to appoint generals, overriding the president, and would pick them based on politics and not on military experience. Congress, even after listening to Madison plead for more money for the army for years, had not appropriated anywhere near enough funding to fight a war. The navy was tiny compared to the vast British fleet. Even though Britain was heavily engaged in its war with Napoleon, it would have no trouble dispatching tens of thousands of troops to fight against the United States. Even that auxiliary army was much larger, and far better trained, than American forces.

Some of the War Hawks themselves, so eager for a battle with the British, shook their heads at the prospect of Madison becoming America's first-ever president to also serve as commander in chief. He lacked military experience and he had not shown the administrative experience necessary to lead a large army and fight a war against the globe's premier military power. John Calhoun wrote that “our President, although a man of amiable manners and great talents, has not I fear those commanding talents which are necessary to control those about him. He permits division in his cabinet…there is a great want of military knowledge and the whole of our system has to be commenced and organized.”
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But Madison had enjoyed strong support for a war from a number of reputable sources, such as veterans of the American Revolution. One of them, John Keemle of Pennsylvania wrote him of soldiers who fought with Washington that “in '76 they risked their lives & fortunes for the independence of their country & though now less able to do it, still you will perceive by the expression of their sentiments…that they are again determined to make any remaining sacrifices on the same later & many of them have sons who would glory in joining their fathers in the offering.” In the attached address, he said the men “will rally round the standard of the government as we did in the time that tried men's souls, determined to die as freemen, rather than live as slaves, under some imperious tyrant, whose will is law.”
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The veterans of the revolution told Madison that they hated the British as much now as they had during the armed conflict of the 1770s. Former soldier John Stark wrote him that “I found them treacherous and ungenerous as friends and dishonorable as enemies.”
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Summing up all of the veterans' letters was a note from George Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. He wrote him that he was proud of what his grandfather and his troops had accomplished in making a new nation and now worried about what would happen to it. He said the United States was “an empire of reason, proudly arisen amid the oppressions of a suffering world. May the last of the republics long be preserved in the pure & benevolent spirit of her Constitution & laws; great within herself, may she stand as a monument of virtue amid the storms of conflicting empires & present to future ages the inestimable blessings of rational liberty.” He did not want to see that empire perish.
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College students were ready to put down their books and pick up muskets, too. The president's nephew Alfred Madison wrote him from the campus of the College of William and Mary that “at this critical juncture of our affairs it is thought by many that war, or measures leading to a war, will probably be the result of the deliberations of Congress. Consequently, there are many young men in my acquaintance ready to become applicants for commission in the army,” and he said he thought his friend William Pendleton would apply (Pendleton did enlist and fought in the war until its very end in 1816).
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An angry family friend, John Tyler, a state legislator from Virginia, wrote from Richmond that he not only supported Madison's get-tough policies but also wished they were even stronger. “I would seize British goods found on land, lock up every store [owner] and hold them responsible for consequences…I would imprison every British soldier in the states. By God in heaven, if we go on this way [no action], our nation will sink into disgrace and slavery.”
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Madison's attorney general, Caesar Rodney (a nephew of Caesar Rodney, signer of the Declaration of Independence, who had also served as Jefferson's attorney general) kept asking Madison what he was waiting for. As early as 1810, the attorney general told the president that “from both [England and France] we have received sufficient cause for commencing hostilities. We have thus far avoided them, with either, by the pacific line of conduct adopted. Can we stand on this course any longer with safety?” Rodney added that a war would not be just for victory but “those rights which God & nature have given an independent nation.”
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Madison had been receiving so many hundreds of letters of support, and calling for war, that he asked the public, through the
National Intelligencer
newspapers, to please stop writing him. He could hardly get through half of those mailed in from all over America.
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States and cities joined the war chorus, too. In New York, Commodore John Rodgers was ordered to take charge of five naval ships and prepare to sail. Over one hundred men in a local militia company were ordered to man a fort on the shore in New York City. Hundreds of militiamen in Boston did the same. Various legislatures announced plans to raise local militias to dramatically increase the size of the American army and navy. Newspapers supported the war and suggested that each state should build and donate one frigate to the navy and join together to raise dozens of large militia companies. States and cities printed lists of the cannon, muskets, and ammunition they had available. Municipalities called large general meetings to discuss the conflict and what they could do to help the federal government. One newspaper referred to the British disdainfully as “the unprincipled wretches.”
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Most of the newspapers in the nation printed a letter from President Madison that urged all citizens to help. “I do, moreover, exhort all the good people in the United States as they love their country, as they value the precious heritage derived from the virtue and valor of their fathers…exert themselves in preserving order in promoting concord, in maintaining the authority and the efficacy of the laws and in supporting and invigorating all the measures…for obtaining a speedy, a just and an honorable peace,” he wrote.
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The papers printed letters such as one from a group of Marylanders to President Madison back in 1810 that claimed that there was nothing like a war to bring the feuding parties in American politics together. The men from Maryland told the president that “one desirable result [of war] will follow; it will unite the friends of our republican form of government by whatever names they may be distinguished.”
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The nation's newspapers began covering the war right away. One New York newspaper even announced that it was printing a special weekly paper each Saturday called
War
that would cover nothing except the conflict ($2 per year subscription). Hundreds of amateur poets, using their own names or pseudonyms, such as the “Patriot Muse” for a New York paper, began writing poems about Great Britain, which were published in journals throughout the country. Booksellers began running lengthy advertisements selling nothing but military books. Amateur musical composers penned songs to be sung for the conflict, such as “War Song,” published in the Philadelphia
Aurora
, which reminded singers in one of its verses that “for soldier foes we have steel and lead, for traitors we have hanging.”
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Newspapers continued to publish news of seized and searched ships and the names of American seamen captured by the British Navy. Writers contributed letters and columns to newspapers denouncing the British. Some were
political and some were religious; the religious reminded readers that God was clearly on the American side of the dispute. Statements by President Madison and others in the American government were printed, along with editorials supporting whatever they said. Copies of letters leaked to the press, such as a heated one from Secretary of State James Monroe to the British ambassador, were reproduced word for word. Earlier, President Madison, using his friendship with Samuel Smith, the editor of the
National Intelligencer
, leaked confidential letters to him from high-ranking British and French diplomats to help generate and sustain public anger.
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Local artillerists opened up schools and held classes for amateurs to learn how to load and fire heavy cannon and muskets and how to use new artillery machinery. Men who fancied themselves military experts mailed plans for large new forts to President Madison and state governors. One man in New York built a detailed wood model of a new fort he wanted the city to construct in the battery, at the southern tip of New York City, so American artillery could pound any British ships in sight in the bay. He reminded readers that his new fort came complete with outdoor protection for artillerists so that they could fire away in rain and snowstorms.
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Newspaper editors used colorful language in hundreds of editorials supporting the war. “By the blessing of divine Providence, our country will yet emerge with renovated glory from the clouds and tempests that rage in her horizons and obscure her destiny,” wrote one excited editor.
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All applauded Madison's declaration of August 20 as a national day of prayer, and his decision was lauded by the leaders of the different churches in America. Most of the states, such as Massachusetts, also declared their own day of prayer (Massachusetts governor Caleb Strong, however, asked that the almighty work hard not to bring victory to America, but to bring both sides to the peace table, and quickly).
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Newspapers ran letters from any American who had just returned from England or had sailed past England or recently met an Englishman, so that their readers could be current with news of the vile enemy.

Americans, now at war with England, began to applaud the French, the British enemy whom they had been denouncing for high-seas atrocities for years. The French navy, which had been sinking and capturing American ships all spring and summer, was suddenly and repeatedly thanked for turning over American seamen they had taken off British ships and put on board American vessels bound for home. States frantically disbursed arms for their militias. New York announced one week after war was declared that it had already shipped five thousand stands of arms to its western district to army troops there who
might be involved in an invasion of Canada (ironically, the British rescinded their 1756 Orders of Council, which permitted their sea policy toward America, a victory for Madison and his Non-Intercourse Act, on the very day that the United States declared war, making the scuttling of the orders a moot point).
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