James and Dolley Madison (39 page)

The privateers captured or sunk 1,500 naval or merchant ships during the war. They brazenly attacked large British man-of-war convoys, well-protected merchant ships, and troop transports. Dozens of them routinely cruised around Great Britain, looking for local shipping to plunder. American captains had no fear, and the privateers and the navy struck terror into the hearts of British citizens.

There was some cheer for the president in September. Admiral Isaac Chauncey wanted to concentrate his attention on Lake Ontario and was looking for someone to replace him in Lake Erie. He heard of a twenty-seven-year-old captain who was tired of running gunboat squadrons and eager for larger battles. His name was Oliver Perry. When he arrived at the Great Lakes, Chauncey decided that he was exactly the kind of captain he was looking for and put him charge of the navy on Lake Erie; Perry soon made history. He oversaw the completion of four vessels on Lake Erie and then transferred five more from the Niagara River. He had small, inexperienced crews, though, and had to beg commanders in the army and navy for help. William Henry Harrison sent him one hundred Kentucky riflemen and several dozen former sailors in his army. Perry recruited locals, even though they had no naval experience. Also with him were black freedmen and teenaged boys. He took his small flotilla and ragtag crew out on to the lake and engaged British commander Robert Barclay and his squadron. Perry surprised all by spreading sand over the decks of his ships so that his men would have traction if waves washed over the decks. He arranged to attack with the wind to his back, giving him an advantage. Perry sailed directly into the middle of the British fleet and became entangled with their two largest ships. His ship, the
Lawrence
, along with an enemy ship, was badly disabled. Perry escaped by leaping into a longboat and rowing to the
Niagara
to continue the battle amid a hail of musket balls. He then sailed the
Niagara
directly at the British ships, cannon blazing. He disabled several, and the rest surrendered. Perry scribbled a note to Chauncey that made the young sea captain famous forever: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”
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It was a huge victory for the Americans, and Perry became an instant national hero. Madison approved $260,000 in prize money, plus three months' additional pay to Perry and his men.

The American press cheered their navy, but the British press blasted the English navy. The
London Times
charged that the British government bought out “the impatient ‘dogs of war' muzzled and clogged.”
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President Madison celebrated too soon. Six weeks later, he learned that Generals James Wilkinson (whom Winfield Scott labeled an “unprincipled imbecile”
¹⁰
) and Wade Hampton, in command of two armies supposed to attack Montreal, had fallen into bickering. There was no attack and, in fact, the armies wound up fleeing from Canada, harassed by a British force. Shortly after that, the English retook York and, in a series of short battles, chased the remaining American forces away from the Niagara River region. The British fleet at the northern end of Lake Champlain, in New York, repeatedly defeated American vessels on its waters.

At the end of the year, Madison's confidante, Attorney General Rush, was in despair. In a letter to John Adams, he said that the nation “seems to fight for nothing but disaster and defeat and, I dread to add, disgrace…the prospect looks black. It is awful.”
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Adams, who was slowly becoming an ally of former foe Madison, wrote a calm letter back to Rush and told him that all the nation needed was, he said in a metaphor, to winnow the wheat from the chaff—to streamline the army and navy, find new commanders, and find more troops. All would be well, Adams assured him. Rush showed Madison the letter and the president smiled; “Opinions from such a quarter had the smack of rich and old wine,” he told Rush.
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There had been severe setbacks and humiliations in 1813. Perhaps the most disgraceful was the massacre of American troops near Frenchtown (now Monroe, Michigan), near the Raisin River in the Detroit region. President Madison's great fear had always been that the Native Americans fighting with the British would become unruly and that the British would not be able to manage them. In a skirmish near Frenchtown on January 20, 1813, the British defeated the Americans after hundreds of their Native American allies attacked the American rear, slaughtering over one hundred soldiers and scalping them. The Americans left about one hundred wounded prisoners behind in Frenchtown, under the care of local residents, but the Native Americans came back and butchered all of them. The incident soon became known as the Raisin River Massacre.

In Virginia, two thousand troops under British admiral George Cockburn defeated a badly organized militia force of 450 men and seized Hampton. The soldiers ran amok, led by the Chasseurs Britannique, French prisoners of war who had joined the Redcoats to avoid imprisonment. Frenchmen beat up numerous residents of Hampton, burned several buildings, and, worse, raped a number of local women. Their crimes were all written down by British officers.
Americans were outraged. The British were, too, and the Frenchmen were promptly sent to Canada, where they spent the remainder of the war.
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As 1813 ended, President Madison was privately glum but publicly buoyant. In December, he sent the new Congress his fifth annual message. In it, he praised the increase of business and shipping in the country, said the war had brought about unity between the people of the different regions of the nation, and insisted, as always, that America would win the conflict. In a line that was to have immense meaning for him and the country just a short time later, he said, “The war, with all its vicissitudes, is illustrating the capacity and the destiny of the United States to be a great, a flourishing, and a powerful nation, worthy of the friendship which it is disposed to cultivate with all others.”
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The year 1814 began on a chilly January day in the White House when Secretary of War Armstrong met with President Madison to promote new generals. To complete the list, Madison added the name of Andrew Jackson, who had just successfully defeated an army of Creek Native Americans in Florida. He told Jackson to March toward New Orleans, in the far-off Louisiana Territory, just on the off chance that the British might think of attacking the critical port city.

Madison also knew that in the spring of 1814 his armies in some areas of the nation were much better. They had been together for a year or longer and had learned how to be soldiers. Their aim with muskets and pistols was better; they drilled each day; they marched and maneuvered better; and, for no identifiable reason, they had more spirit, more national pride. The president helped the army function by revamping the high command. He created the General Staff. This was a team of generals that oversaw different aspects of the army. It ran the army, but did not run its military operations. He also created a board of navy commissioners to do the same thing.

The British were ready to put an end to the tedious war across the Atlantic in the summer of 1814. They had finished with Napoleon and could turn all of their attention to the pesky Americans. Their plan was simple. They would send a large army to Canada to attack the New England states, forcing them to petition the Washington government for peace. At the same time, the British Navy would tighten its blockade of American seaports, and its fleet would destroy the American navy and the massive flotilla of privateers. A special army/navy team would attack the southern city of New Orleans, seize it, and bottle up the Mississippi. The war would be over. Right on schedule, the British sent ten thousand more troops to Canada, plus a large fleet of warships, in the early spring of 1814, to reinforce the armies there.

There were holes in the British plan. The head of their armies in Canada, George Prevost, was a capable governor but an inexperienced military leader who could not command men. The British fleet had been completely unable to stop the privateers in two years, so why could they be throttled now? British ships had not done a good job of sealing up seaports. An attack by a massive army out of Canada would have to cover hundreds of miles, with soldiers marching over a terrain of lakes, rivers, mountains, meadows, and swamps. The Americans found it impossible to go north to Canada in the revolution, so why would it be easy for the British to do it going south?

Britain's supreme military strategist, the duke of Wellington, who had just defeated Napoleon, scoffed at the entire operation and told friends that America was too large to conquer and, even if you did, was too big to occupy. Revolution would follow revolution. Still, the British persisted.
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Madison sent his new generals and larger army to engage them. This time, under new, young leadership, the Americans fought well. They defeated the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, near Buffalo, New York, and established themselves as a force north of the border.

At the same time, though, the British Navy arrived off the coast of Eastport, Maine, and threatened it. Other ships appeared up and down the East Coast as a general panic ensued. Where would they strike? What seaports would they shell? How many Americans would they kill?

Madison was tentative in this latest crisis. He did not know what to do. Neither did anyone in his cabinet. At the same time, Gallatin's message from Europe arrived, informing Madison not only that the British were intent on winning the war but that the British people, still stung from the revolution forty years earlier, wanted revenge and were completely behind the country's army and navy. They were not going to give up, and there was not going to be a compromise.

Madison warned America to get ready for an attack somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard. He wanted to “be prepared as well as we can to meet the augmented force which may invade us,” he said. What could he do? If he called up all the militia in all the states to be prepared for an assault, he would meet the British with thin and untrained forces. He could not send his armies to specific seaports because he did not know where the British would strike. His intelligence, unlike Washington's in the revolution, was thin. He knew nothing and just waited to see what would happen.

Foreign diplomats in Washington immediately saw what was happening. “The cabinet is frightened,” wrote French Minister Serrurier. “It continues, however, to keep a good face externally, but the fact is that it has a consciousness of its weakness and of the full strength of the enemy.”
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Madison learned in the middle of the summer of 1814 that his secretary of war, Armstrong, had been insubordinate; he had lied to him, deceived him, and usurped his power. Armstrong had written numerous letters to General Harrison that caused him to resign. He had ordered all of his commanders in the Canadian region to correspond only with him and to ignore the president, the commander in chief. He had reorganized army regiments, which was normally authorized by the president. Finally, he had led Andrew Jackson to believe that Madison had tried to block his promotion, which was not true; Madison had the highest regard for Jackson.

Unfortunately, Madison did not fire Armstrong on the spot, as he should have. He was so worried about the impending British invasion along the Chesapeake that he felt he needed Armstrong to defend the city. He also did not criticize General William Winder, an ineffective commander who had told ten thousand militiamen in the Washington area to be prepared for a British invasion, but provided them with no plans for a defense of the city and spent his time riding about the countryside and not directing his troops. The president felt that he needed the two men, as deficient as they were, because there was no time to put other men in their place with the British army and navy so close.

Madison was wrong, but, months later, he would acknowledge the mistake and take swift steps to correct it. In August 1814, none of that was his concern, though. The Redcoats not only defeated a collection of American militia but also went on to burn the Capitol, the White House, and several other government buildings.

Shortly after that, the British set their sights on nearby Baltimore, a bustling seaport and one of America's largest cities. In mid-September, Admiral Cockburn sailed into the Baltimore harbor with the intent of leveling Fort McHenry. The British army sent a force to take the fort by land, but they were repulsed by a hard-fighting local militia company working with the regular army. Pushed back, Cockburn then opened fire on the fort with the guns from his fleet on September 13. The Americans in the fort fired their guns, but their range was too short. Cockburn, in possession of guns with longer range, continued his fire all night. It seemed that the British would completely level Fort McHenry and sweep their way into Baltimore.

Watching the bombardment that night from the deck of one of the British ships in the harbor was Washington lawyer Francis Scott Key, a friend of Dolley Madison's. He was there to arrange for the discharge of a prisoner, Dr. William Beams. The doctor was certain that the fort would be gone by morning. The British fired 1,800 shells at the fort over a twenty-five-hour period. Forty Americans were killed in the bombardment. The bursting of the shells in the
air throughout the night made the scene appear to be a summer carnival, but the bombs bursting in the air did not stop. Thousands of people in Baltimore watched the carnage all night, depressed. Few could sleep from the noise of the shells as they exploded upon impact with the walls of the fort.