of this first year, unexpected as they were, did more, with those which followed, to secure for the United States an honorable peace and a footing among the great powers of the world, than the combined military operations of the whole war to the day when the indentures of peace were executed. Why these victories? asked Englishmen in dismay at the first unwelcome intelligence that their crimson flag had struck to "a piece of striped bunting flying at the masthead of a few fir-built frigates, manned by a handful of bastards and outlaws."* Our naval force on the American stations, responded the admiralty, is by no means inadequate; from Halifax to the West Indies are stationed ships seven times more powerful than the whole of the American navy. Some special cause must have existed. The American ship had, perhaps, the numerical advantage in guns, men, and tonnage; but the Wasp and the Frolic, certainly the Constitution and the Java, were not ill matched; and British vessels had borne more guns in the conflict than they were rated at. Next the admiralty found that the American frigates were ships of the line in disguise, with the tonnage and capacity of British two-deckers. This was an exaggeration; but granting that, instead of bundles of pine boards, these American war vessels were new, well-built, seaworthy, better modelled for action in many respects than those of the British, more advantage must be ascribed to the skill and fighting spirit of those who handled them. While British officers were hampered not only by the restraints of an indocile admiralty, but by their own imperious disdain and an inferior cause, American tars, in this contest of vessel against vessel, fought intelligently and under competent commanders, for vengeance, for the good repute of an infant navy, and for neutral rights. A mingled sense of surprise and shame, and a gratified resentment against the enemy, made these naval achievements irresistible to the American heart. Hull, Jones, Decatur, Bainbridge,―more were to follow,-received each, on his return home, the ovation of a hero. They received banquets from the seaport towns, gold medals and awards of prize-money from * See 6 Hildreth, 370. 1812. OUR NAVAL VICTORIES. 365 Congress, swords from different States, acclamation everywhere. Legislatures vied with Congress and one another in voting thanks to officers and crew. Even Massachusetts forgot political antipathies for the moment, and joined the jubilant strain with New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia ; and, thawing under this late vindication of the Adams policy and commercial rights, the ice-pack of New England Federalism. began to break. Our privateers had pushed off boldly from New England ports; more of them, however, from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Over 300 prizes were taken by them during this first year of the war. The naval successes stimulated their enterprise. On the Northern lakes, too, whose control was seen by both belligerents to depend upon a superiority in light-armed fleets, this government had overcome early disadvantages. A British squadron of five vessels on Lake Ontario bore down on Sackett's Harbor, while a light American sloop-of-war, the Oneida, was being built. It was driven off; and Captain Chauncey, with the completed vessel, and six small schooners hastily purchased and armed, chased the enemy's fleet afterwards to Kingston, crippling the British flag-ship, and taking some small prizes.* July 19. Scarcely had the United States declared war before the British government made an important concession, but all too late. The Marquis Wellesley, who resigned in February, had been succeeded by Lord Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary; Perceval, on the 11th of May, was shot by an assassin's pistol; the Earl of Liverpool became premier, and though Tory politics still ruled, the mediocrity of the Cabinet forced it to temporize. The Nottingham riots, the depression of home industry, remonstrances of British merchants, all impressed the new ministry and Parliament. War with the United States was by no means a welcome addition to the burdens England staggered under. As early as April the Perceval ministry had given a pledge that the commercial restrictions should cease whenever the French gov * See Lossing's War of 1812, 370; 6 Hildreth. April 21. ernment, by some authentic act publicly promulgated, expressly and unconditionally repealed the Berlin and Milan decrees. A parliamentary inquiry concerning the operation June 16. of Orders in Council having closed, Brougham, on the 16th of June, moved in the Commons for their unconditional repeal. The new ministry, to save itself, conceded the point, and on the 23d those exasperating restrictions were revoked; reserving, however, their renewal, should the American government persist in hostile acts. All was in vain; for, ignorant of this approaching climax, the United States had declared war five days before. June 23. May. As a foundation for the British repeal a curious document had been drawn from the French archives, through Barlow's persevering efforts, and transmitted across the Channel. Kindly received at Paris, but suffocated in an atmosphere of bland procrastination, our new minister labored with no little difficulty to procure some authentic act such as might fortify the argument against Great Britain. Napoleon's minister, Bassano, finally produced a decree, dated April 28th, 1811, which formally directed that, in consideration of the resistance of the United States to the British Orders in Council under the act of March 2d preceding, the Berlin and Milan decrees should be considered as of no force against American vessels since November 1st, 1810. The issue of some such mandate seems by no means inconsistent with the imperial acts and policy of that date;* but Bassano's admission that the document had never before been published, coupled with a false assurance that Russell and Serrurier knew of it before, fostered the belief that this decree was of fresh manufacture, when, more likely, the Emperor, after his usual manner of dealing, kept it as a pledge which he might recall at will, should America's subsequent course displease him. Vexed at the imperial assumption that our act of March 2d was the cause, instead of the effect of his conduct, Madison would gladly, even now, have turned the war upon Napoleon, whom he had learned to detest, could only admissible terms be * See supra, p. 328. 1812. ORDERS IN COUNCIL REVOKED. 367 Aug. 9 Sept. 30. Oct. 27. June 26 July 2. arranged with England.* But this was impracticable. Overtures from the British government, by way of Canada and the British naval commander at Halifax, our government postponed to dispatches Augfrom Russell on the subject, to whom instructions had been sent simultaneously with the declaration of war. Advices through this more authentic channel confirmed a studied indifference on Castlereagh's part, as though England had gone far enough; and ascertaining that the British ministry declined to put either temporary or permanent stop to impressments from American merchantmen, Russell terminated diplomatic functions, as Foster had done already before him, and each government was left without a representative.† Aug. 24 Sept. 12. The war proceeded, therefore, mainly on the issue of sailors' rights. "It should take more to make peace than prevent war," wrote Jefferson in the first exultation over Hull's advance into Canada. And yet neither indemnification nor security was asked by the United States; nothing, besides this repeal of Orders in Council, but to make an end of impressments on terms mutually discouraging all employment of one another's sailors. The impressment grievance and the right of search had become too serious a one to be dismissed upon any pretext of difficulty. Over 6000 cases had already been registered at our State department of men claiming to be impressed Americans. How many more instances might have occurred, of which no record was made, or what deduction might be proper for fraudulent claimants, cannot be stated. But Castlereagh himself admitted that, after making all due allowances, there might have been, by January, 1811, 1600 bond fide American citizens serving by compulsion in the British * Madison's Writings, August 11, 1812. Jefferson expresses a similar wish to fall next upon France, August 5, 1812. † See Madison's message and documents, November, 1812; Annals of Congress. A résumé of this subject sent into Congress, July 6, 1812, showed that from 1792 British impressment had been a standing subject of fruitless complaint and remonstrance under every administration, beginning with Washington's. fleet. Protection papers had long been ignored, because, as British commanders alleged, the issue of such documents was abused, and they passed by delivery into the hands of those having no right to them. Proof of American birth was requisite, therefore, before the captive could get his release; and deprived, meantime, of every reasonable opportunity for furnishing such testimony while scouring through the seas, at the peril of his life, under the rigorous discipline of a British manof-war, what slavery must not an American citizen have endured? Now that war had broken out, the lot of such captives was truly a hard one. Impressed American sailors were lashed, put in irons, threatened with loaded pistols pointed at their heads, for refusing on these vessels to fight their own country. Eight such patriotic tars were liberated from the Guerriere on her surrender; ten from the Java.* At the outbreak of hostilities 2500 of these impressed claimants were lodged in Dartmoor and other English prisons for their obstinacy, and there detained, for the most part, until the war was over.† A people, whose sense of allegiance as a duty is thus outraged, should know no lesser limits of resistance than those of the national manhood. No matter what the rank of the victims may have been, the better statesmanship, the broader philanthropy places persons far above property, linking their rights to the footstool of Divine justice. A war on such an issue alone must more likely have humanized than humiliated this young republic. Much of the obstruction which our government encountered this year from its own citizens, in prosecuting a war, whose ill success, whether it were wisely or unwisely begun, must have exposed us to the derision of the world, we may attribute to the rivalries of a Presidential campaign. Madison and Gerry, it has been seen, were selected by the Congressional caucus as the standard-bearers of the administration and war party. But caucus selection could not unite all even among those who Niles's Register, 1813, pp. 479, 480. |