faction, which had been shifting about for two months, kept the measure twelve days in suspense, with the co-opJune 5-17. eration of the peace men. Their effort was to substitute for the declaration of war letters of marque and reprisal against both England and France, late accounts from the latter country being by no means agreeable, as the President had been forced to admit. But this absurd idea* was relinquished, and by a close vote, 19 to 13, the Senate sent back the bill with consistent amendments, which the House accepted. At three o'clock on the afternoon of the 18th this momentous act of a single sentence, drafted by Pinkney, had received the President's signature, and war with Great Britain had legally begun. Congress at once removed its injunction of secrecy, and the President proclaimed hostilities the next day.†

June 18.

With this declaration of war a long session, the most prolific hitherto known in our national anuals, passed its meridian point. The Twelfth Congress adjourned on the 6th of July, already stamped as an assembly with which only the First and Fifth could compare for energy and dispatch. In buoyancy and audacity it surpassed the one, in sympathetic leadership the other. It emitted for the first time the full aroma of the new West, of a young and crowding people. Since 1789 Congress had either followed or resisted the Executive, but now

* A feeble effort to join France as our enemy had been made in the House: "A piece of sublimated impartiality," writes Jefferson," a solecism worthy of Don Quixote only, that of a choice to fight two enemies at a time, rather than to take them by succession."-Jefferson's Works, 1812. †The House minority soon after issued a protest to vindicate their conduct to their constituents, denouncing the war as unjust, impolitic, unpromising, an undertaking for which the nation was unprepared, and which of necessity placed the United States on the side of France. The document was chiefly composed by Quincy.-See Lossing's War of 1812, 228; Boston Centinel, July 15th, 1812; Niles's Register.

Letters of marque and reprisal were authorized in detail: Act of June 26th, 1812. The non-importation act was not repealed, and trading with the enemy was forbidden under heavy penalties.-Act July 6th, 1812. The whole number of acts passed during this session was 138. See United States Statutes at Large.

1812.

WAR RASH BUT JUST.

355

Congress drew the Executive by the force of a firmer conviction.

"Rushing headlong into difficulties, with little calculation of the means, and little concern for the consequences." This was the harshest censure to which the administration and Congress had justly exposed themselves by embarking in the present contest against Great Britain. All other strictures made by the peace men of that day may be dismissed as unworthy the rhetorical phrasing they employed. The United States may have been duped into a war with England, but the provocation was strong and war or dishonorable submission was the only visible alternative which Britain had left us. Napoleon was but the finger-post in this business,-no ally whatever. War we chose with England because it was needful to choose one of the alternatives, and either choice bristled with objections. Peace and free commerce were desirable, but the two could not be had together. Modest retirement from the ocean or a war of commercial restraints the peace men themselves would not submit to. Open and violent war, therefore, was undertaken; rashly, we cannot doubt, and over-confidently, and yet honestly, and, as events turned out, by no means disastrously to the national character. There could not be a war for maritime and neutral rights without, in some sense, an offensive war.

Want of sectional unanimity, however, was the first and almost the decisive obstacle to this war. Pennsylvania, and the States south and west, earnestly supported it, while New England, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware rather held back. The instinct of honor and self-preservation should unite citizens to arm for their country when once the resolve is taken. Not thus, however, was Federalism prepared to reason. Pride, prejudice, inflexibility of temper, bitterly disappointed ambition, the patriotism of State lines, held the Federal Catos together. Not disunionists, necessarily, such leaders seemed to prefer the worst calamity to the Union rather than they should turn out false prophets.

The minority protest of Congress against the war served as the platform of a national peace party with conservative Fed

June 26.

eralism for its nucleus. Upon such a platform the "friends of peace, liberty, and commerce," as they styled themselves, began to organize for the presidential campaign. Meanwhile, their New England partisans set their faces like flint against active preparations. They obstructed the national recruitment and subscriptions to the national loan. From the Massachusetts House (the other branch of this legislature having a Republican majority) emanated an address disapproving the war, and calling upon the people to vote down the men who had become responsible for it. Governor Griswold, of Connecticut, backed by the State legislature, refused to comply with the President's requisition for militia, alleging that, to his mind, no danger of invasion existed, such as the Constitution and laws meant they should be marched for.* The Governors of Massachusetts and Rhode Island claimed a similar right of independent discretion. Connecticut advanced one step farther in this imbroglio, her legislature passing a law for raising a provisional army of 2600 men for special State defence, under State officers.

August.

Political conflicts were passionate at this season, and accompanied not seldom by acts of violence. Almost the first blood of this war was shed in a Baltimore riot; the civic mob being provoked, though not justified, by the fierce persistence of an opposition newspaper of that city in assailing the war policy, and befouling the administration. A howling populace gathered about the printing office, bent upon sacking it, but the establishment was guarded, and the ringleaders, forcing the doors open, were fired upon. One of them was killed, several wounded. The local authorities removed the defenders to jail, ostensibly to answer a charge of murder; but not content with devastating the abandoned building, and scattering the types, the rioters next night broke into the jail, the city officials having been remiss in precautions, and a horrible mangling ensued. A respected veteran, General Lingan, expired at their hands; eleven others were badly beaten and maltreated.†

* Governor Griswold died in office before this year ended.

† See 6 Hildreth, 325, for the details of this riot; Niles's Register; also, Harvey's Daniel Webster, 351. The obnoxious newspaper was the

1812.

HULL INVADES CANADA.

357

As for prosecuting war against Great Britain, the first natural reliance was upon our army, and an immediate invasion of the British Provinces. "On to Canada," had been the cry of the war party for years; and it was thought an easy matter to throw an American force over the line, chastise our Canadian neighbors before reinforcements could arrive, and hold the whole St. Lawrence region as security for favorable terms with the mother country. To the feverish eagerness for such a movement, fanned in the West by Harrison's campaign and the suspicion that Britain tampered with our border Indians, may be attributed, in no slight degree, the haste with which war was declared in the summer, and the precipitancy with which our new, half-equipped army was moved across the borders.*

Recruiting commenced well in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Kentucky heart fired with enthusiasm. Governor Hull, of Michigan, who had been commissioned as one of the new brigadier-generals, crossed under directions of the War Department from Detroit to the Canadian shore, with a force of 2200 effective men, including regulars and local militia but consisting chiefly of Ohio volunteers, on the 12th of July, and July 12. took peaceful possession of the quiet little British village of Sandwich. With the American flag flying on both sides of the river, and a grandiloquent proclamation to the inhabitants, it seemed from the first dispatches as if Canada had fallen. But Hull did not move down promptly to Malden, the nearest military post of importance, as he might have done, before the British General Brock had time to strengthen it; and while he dallied came the intelligence, too, that a combined force of British and Indians had surprised the American post, Mackinac, at the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan, whose commander had not been apprised that war was declared. In fact Brock, the British governor

July 18.

"Federal Republican," and its editor a young man, Alexander Hanson. He had been driven in June to Georgetown with his press, but returned to Baltimore to re-establish it.

*See Monroe Correspondence, 1812; Madison's Writings, April 2,

of Upper Canada, had acted with promptness and decision; and summoning his legislature at York, now Toronto, the capital of his province, on the first intelligence of war, he made the most of his poor resources. Tecumseh and a

Aug. 7-8.

August. party of Indians were taken into the British service; and Colonel Proctor, having reinforced Malden under orders, next undertook to intercept Hull's supplies, and cut off communication between Detroit and Ohio. Upon a first repulse Hull recrossed with his main body, and the Americans fled to Detroit, where General Brock soon held them at bay with a slightly inferior force. At the moment patriotic Philadelphians were at the height of jubiAug. 16. lation over Hull's invading manifesto, which the press had just printed, denouncing instant death to every Britisher who should be taken fighting side by side with Indians, Hull himself threw out the white flag from his fort at Detroit, and surrendered all his forces, and the stronghold itself, to the allied Brock and Tecumseh; and this without having first fired a gun or consulted one of his subordinates, some of whom had shown far more military capacity than himself.*

Great was the indignation of the West, great the mortification of our whole people, on learning that instead of capturing Upper Canada at the first blow, we had lost our whole Michigan Territory. The task now was to retake Detroit under a competent commander. Olio and Kentucky went on filling rapidly their quotas, while urging the administration to march them under Harrison. The President hesitated, doubtful whether Harrison was a man of sufficient military experience. He proposed that Monroe should go to the scene, as a volun

* This capitulation gave up to the British some 2000 American troops, of whom the volunteers and militia were at once permitted to return home on parole; while Hull and the regulars were sent to Montreal, and detained somewhat longer. A court martial, held at Albany, in 1814, found Hull guilty of cowardice, neglect of duty, and unofficerlike conduct, and his name was stricken from the rolls of the army. For the full narrative of Hull's expedition and surrender, with all the extenuating circumstances of his conduct, see Lossing's War of 1812.

Fort Dearborn, the site of the present city of Chicago, but then a solitary post in the wilderness, had also been evacuated, August 15, by Hull's orders.