The Invasion of Canada (13 page)

The War Hawks are only a handful, yet they effectively control Congress. Five of them room together in the same boarding house, predictably dubbed the War Mess. Clay is their leader, a brilliant,
fervent orator who has been Speaker since the opening of the fall session. Poetically handsome, with fair, tousled hair and a quizzical smile, he is no disinterested chairman. He thinks nothing of leaving his neutral post and invading the floor of the House to speak, sometimes for hours. He has seen to it that his cronies chair the key committees, notably the naval committee and the foreign relations committee. The latter-Peter B. Porter’s committee – is packed with Clay supporters. Its majority report, brought down in November, 1811, was unequivocal. Since Britain would not budge on the two major issues threatening peace – the Orders in Council and impressment-therefore “we must now tamely submit and quietly submit or we must resist by those means which God has placed within our reach.” In short, a call to war.

At dinner with the President in the still unfinished Executive Mansion, Foster encounters another actor in the drama, the dashing Comte Edouard de Crillon, whose extraordinarily thick legs he cannot help remarking. The following day he invites the count to his own table where they discuss the count’s estate in Chile. It is all bunkum, as Foster will presently learn: there is no Chilean estate and no Comte de Crillon, either – only a charlatan named Soubiron, a master at masquerade. This imposter has attached himself to a handsome Irish rascal named John Henry, and the two are in the process of palming off a series of letters that Henry has written while in the pay of Sir James Craig, the former governor general of Canada. It develops that Henry, at his own suggestion, was sent by Craig in 1808 as a spy to Federalist New England to see if anyone within the opposition party there might help force a separation from the Union – in short, to seek and make contact with traitors. Henry, being remarkably unsuccessful, was paid a pittance, but the cunning Soubiron believes that copies of the letters, now more than three years old, are worth a minor fortune.

And so, to James Madison, they appear to be. The President is persuaded to squander the entire secret service fund of $50,000 for documents he believes will discomfit the Federalists, lay some of their leaders open to the charge of treason, and embarrass the British.

Madison’s coup backfires. Henry has named no names, mentioned no specifics. The President’s enemies quickly discover that the Irishman is not the reformed patriot he pretends to be and that the chief executive has looted the treasury for a batch of worthless paper. But the Henry affair, revealing yet another instance of British perfidy, helps to arouse further public feeling already inflamed by Tippecanoe
and its aftermath, by a depression in the southwest brought on by the Orders in Council, and by continuing British high-handedness on the seas-more sailors impressed, more ships seized. “If this event does not produce a war, nothing will do so,” Augustus Foster comments after Madison tables the letters on March 9. But war does not come, and this helps shore up Federalist convictions (and Foster’s) that for all the Republicans’ warlike clamour, the government is bluffing, as it had been after the
Chesapeake
affair. Tragically, the congressional doves do not take the War Hawk movement seriously.

Nor does Foster. He is extraordinarily well informed, for he moves in the highest circles, dining regularly with congressmen, senators, and the President himself. He knows that William Hull, Governor of Michigan Territory, has come to town, hoping (Foster believes) to be made Secretary of War in place of the genial but ineffective incumbent, William Eustis. He knows that a former secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, is also in town, trying to decide whether or not to give up his sinecure as collector of customs in Boston and take over command of the expanding army. He must know that Hull, who is another of his dinner guests, is also pondering the offer of an army command in the northwest. The United States, in short, is acting like a nation preparing for war; the President himself, in Foster’s words, is “very warlike,” but there is no sense of urgency in the reports he sends to Whitehall. He prefers the company of the President’s warm-hearted and unwarlike wife, Dolley, who could not attend his January ball marking the Queen’s birthday for political reasons but was forced to gaze on the preparations at a distance, from her bedroom window.

Preparations for war are the responsibility of a trio of old hands – all sixtyish – from the Revolution – Hull, Eustis, and Dearborn. Unlike Clay and his Hawks, these ex-soldiers, none of whom has had experience with staff command, can scarcely be said to be champing at the bit. Hull and Dearborn cannot even make up their minds whether to shoulder the responsibility of leadership. Eustis, a one-time surgeon’s assistant, is genial, courteous, and a staunch party man but generally held to be incompetent-an executive unable to divorce himself from detail. Congress has refused to create two assistant secretaries, and so the entire war department of the United States consists of Eustis and eight clerks.

Governor Hull has been invited to the capital to discuss the defence of the northwestern frontier. Brock’s assessment has been dead on: the Indians have dictated Washington’s strategy; with Tecumseh’s
followers causing chaos in Indiana and Michigan territories, the United States has no option but to secure its western flank.

Washington believes in Hull. He has a reputation for sound judgement, personal courage, decisive command. During the Revolution he fought with distinction, survived nine battles, received the official thanks of Congress. One gets a fleeting picture of a gallant young field officer in his mid-twenties, rallying his troops on horseback at Bemis Heights, stemming a retreat in the face of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne’s regulars, or helping Mad Anthony Wayne carry the Stony Point fort at bayonet point (a bullet creasing his hat, another clipping his boot).

The President and the Secretary of War listen carefully to Hull’s advice. The Governor points out that the United States must secure Lake Erie by reinforcing the tiny fort at Detroit and building warships to command the water routes in order to allow the swift movement of men and supplies. Hull realizes that the Indians hold the key to defeat or victory. A formidable army at Detroit, denying the lake to British transport, can cut the Indians off from the British and perhaps prevent a general uprising of the tribes. And without the Indians, he is convinced, “the British cannot hold Upper Canada.”

Eustis goes along with Hull’s plan only to discover that no American captain can be found who will take command on Lake Erie. Besides, it costs money to build ships, and Congress is niggardly with naval funds. Hull and Eustis, caught up in the war fever, persuade themselves that it will be enough to march a considerable force north to strengthen Detroit, cow the Indians into neutrality, and convince the British across the river that the natives are under control. Should war come, Detroit will be the springboard for an invasion that will drive the British out of all the country west of Niagara.

Hull declines the command of the army that will reinforce Detroit; he does not wish to give up his post as governor of Michigan Territory. A substitute is found in Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, an old frontier campaigner, aged fifty-seven, who first accepts but then backs out as the result of an attack of gout-an episode that hints at the paucity of leadership material in the American military establishment. Hull is hurriedly called for and told he can keep the governorship if he will accept a commission as brigadier-general in command of the Army of the Northwest.

Finally, Hull agrees. He is to raise an army of twelve hundred volunteers from the Ohio militia (as Brock has predicted) to be augmented
by some four hundred regular troops. With this force he is to cut a road through forest and swamp for two hundred miles from Urbana, Ohio, to Detroit and thus secure the frontier.

Henry Dearborn, after cautiously weighing the lifetime post of customs collector against the less secure appointment of Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, finally settles on the latter and is commissioned major-general. He, too, has a plan. If war comes, the main army will attack Montreal by the historic Champlain water route, thus cutting off all of Upper Canada from reinforcements and supplies. At the same time, three columns will strike at Canada from the border points of Detroit, Niagara, and Sackets Harbor. The attack from Detroit will take care of the Indians. The other two, from opposite ends of Lake Ontario, will serve to slice up the upper province, knocking out the major British fortresses at Niagara and Kingston. Dearborn’s headquarters will be at Albany, the nerve centre from which roads veer off to the three eastern invasion points. (Detroit is so remote that Dearborn treats it as a separate command.)

On paper all of this makes sense, but it depends on inspired leadership, swift communications, careful timing, well-trained troops, an efficient war department, and a united, enthusiastic nation. None of these conditions exists.

Dearborn leaves the capital early in April for Boston, where he expects, with misplaced optimism, to raise his citizen army. Given the New England governors’ violent opposition to war, it is a forlorn hope. Hull, who departs for the Ohio frontier, will have better luck.

In the capital, the war fever grows in the face of British stubbornness. On April 15, Augustus Foster attends a great dinner given by the New Orleans deputies to mark Louisiana’s entry into the Union. He is in the best possible position to assess the temper of the Congress, for most of its members are present along with the cabinet. Foster finds himself sandwiched between-of all people-the two leading War Hawks. Henry Clay, on one side, is as militant as ever. The twenty-six-year-old John Calhoun, on the other, is “a man resolved,” his tone cool and decided. It all seems very curious to Foster. He decides that a great many people are afraid of being laughed at if they don’t fight and thus arrives, quite unconsciously, at the nub of the matter.

Far to the north, in Quebec City, the new governor general of Canada, Sir George Prevost, has no illusions about the future. He warns the British government that he shortly expects a declaration of
war from Madison. Foster cannot yet see it. To him, it is merely “a curious state of things.” The party grows too noisy for him, and presently he takes his leave, repairing to the Executive Mansion, there to enjoy the more peaceful company of the engaging Dolley Madison.

DAYTON, OHIO, April 6,1812. Duncan McArthur, one of Wayne’s old frontier scouts, now General of the Ohio militia, that “enterprising, hardy race” of which Brock has written, is haranguing his citizen soldiers.

“Fellow citizens and soldiers,” cries McArthur, “the period has arrived when the country again calls its heroes to arms …!” Who, he asks, will not volunteer to fight against perfidious England – “that proud and tyrannical nation, whose injustice prior to 1776, aroused the indignation of our fathers to manly resistance?”

“Their souls could no longer endure slavery,” says McArthur. “The HEAVEN protected patriots of Columbia obliged the mighty armies of the tyrant to surrender to American valor.…”

He warms to his subject, sneers at Britain’s “conquered and degraded troops,” gibes at “the haughty spirit of that proud and unprincipled nation,” calls for vengeance, justice, victory.

What is going on? Is the country in a state of war? The eager volunteers, harking to their leader’s braggadocio, must surely believe that the United States and Britain are at each other’s throats. Yet war has not been declared. Few Englishmen believe it likely nor does the majority of Americans. Nonetheless, the call has gone out from Washington for volunteers, and Ohio has been asked to fill its quota. For Duncan McArthur, the original war-the War of Independence-has never ended.

“Could the shades of the departed heroes of the revolution who purchased our freedom with their blood, descend from the valiant mansions of peace, would they not call aloud to arms?” he asks. “And where is that friend to his country who would not obey that call?”

Where indeed? McArthur is preaching to the converted. By May, Ohio’s quota of twelve hundred volunteers will be over-subscribed. Sixteen hundred militiamen answer the call. These will form the undisciplined core of the Army of the Northwest, which Brigadier-General William Hull, Governor of Michigan, will lead to Detroit.

The new general joins his troops at Dayton, Ohio, after a journey
that has left him weak from cold and fever. In spite of his reputation he is a flabby old soldier, tired of war, hesitant of command, suspicious of the militia who he knows are untrained and suspects are untrustworthy. He has asked for three thousand men; Washington finally allows him two thousand. He does not really want to be a general, but he is determined to save his people from the Indians. A Massachusetts man, he has been Governor of Michigan for seven years and now feels he knows it intimately-every trail, every settlement, every white man, woman, and child, and much of the Canadian border country. He is convinced that the Indians, goaded by the British, are particularly hostile to the Michigan settlers. He sees himself as their protector, their father-figure, and he looks like a stereotype father in a popular illustration, the features distinguished if fleshy, the shock of hair dead white. (He is only fifty-eight, but some of his men believe him closer to seventy.) He chews tobacco unceasingly, a habit that muddies the illusion, especially when he is nervous and his jaws work overtime. There is a soft streak in Hull, no asset in a frontier campaign. As a young man he studied for the ministry, only to give it up for the law, but something of the divinity student remains.