1812

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I don’t know if teachers even cover the War of 1812. I did it quickly, but had success with one opening example. It was one I came across in an otherwise boring book by Marshall Smelser. He noted that France and England were both powerful, but in different ways – and could not come to grips with each other and win decisive victory. I would ask my students, “Okay, England was powerful at sea? They would be like a __.” 

Students would offer various guesses – “whale,” being most common, “barracuda,” etc. Smelser preferred: “Shark.” A man-eater. 

Next, “France was powerful on land. They would be like a __.” 

Guesses here were more varied: “lion,” grizzly,” etc. Smelser used the tiger as example. Another hunter of men. 

Next, you told the class the U.S. was weak on both land and sea. “We would be the __.” 

The answer Smelser used was the “terrapin,” an edible turtle.

 

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Hendrik Van Loon, writing in 1927, explained that the two powers, France and England, solved their dilemma “after the old and trusted habit of all big nations, by sacrificing the rights of the small ones.”

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I sometimes threw in a quote from Thucydides: “In fact, the strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they must.” I tried to make it clear to my classes that the behavior of nations changes little over time. 

Van Loon has his own take on the subject, writing, “Let me remind you here that in the code of international relations there is no such word as affection.” (124/381) 

We always had a good discussion in my class based on the question, “What do nations want most?” 

My answer was “power,” which got you everything else. Students can give you a lengthy list of what nations want, in the process. 

 

AS THE U.S. drifted toward war, Democratic-Republicans in Congress finally accepted a bill to authorize 50,000 additional volunteers – but refused to expand the size of the navy. In almost every public statement, by Monroe, Madison, and others, “the theme of national honor was reiterated again and again as the most compelling motive for a declaration of war.” 

Unfortunately, the British ambassador was listening to Federalists, who claimed the U.S. had no intention of fighting, and that such talk was only political, meant to ensure Madison won reelection in 1812.

 

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March 9: A variety of issues complicated the situation. First, a series of letters by John Henry, revealed that he had been sent by the Governor General of Canada to encourage Federalist leaders in New England, should they choose to break away from the U.S. Unhappy with his treatment at the hands of the British government, Henry, an Irishman, agreed to sell the letters to the U.S. for $50,000. 

President Madison revealed them in a message to Congress. 

France then caused fresh trouble, burning two American ships bound for Spain with food for Wellington’s army. Calling in the French ambassador for a dressing down, James Monroe’s opening words were, 

Well, Sir, it is then decided that we are going to receive nothing but outrages from France! And at what a moment too! At this very instant when we are going to war with our enemies. Remember where we were two days ago. You know what warlike measures have been taken for three months past. … We have made use of Henry’s documents as a last means of exciting the nation and Congress. … Within a week we are going to propose an embargo, and the declaration of war… to be the immediate consequences of it.

 

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April 7: In an editorial in the National Intelligencer, it was hinted that the U.S. might go to war with Britain – and France. A week later, another unsigned editorial, penned by Monroe, called for an “open and manly” fight, to uphold the honor of the nation. “Let war therefore be proclaimed forthwith with England.”

 

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June 1: President Madison asks for a declaration of war. The House approves on a 79-49 vote. 

Federalists in Congress put forth an amendment, calling for the war to be limited to naval operations. When that fails, they called for a modification, to include possible measures against France. One amendment failed – on a tie vote. The British ambassador hit on the idea of getting Sen. Richard Brent of Virginia, “famed for his affection for the bottle,” as Ammon put it, so drunk that he could not appear again to vote.

 

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June 17: The Senate votes for war, 19-13. (24/280, 299, 302-305, 310) 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: By comparison, the vote for war in 1941 was 82-0 in the Senate, and 388-1 in the House. 

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave President Lyndon B. Johnson, authority to take military action in Vietnam passed the House 416-0, and the Senate 88-2. 

The resolution passed in 2002, to allow President George W. Bush to strike Iraq, passed, but in divided fashion: 296-133 in the House, 77-23 in the Senate. 

 

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The ships were pine-board boxes. 

SEVENTY YEARS after the War of 1812 began, Charles Coffin wrote: 

The United States had been a nation just twenty-five years…In sentiment the United States were not a nation. The people of the several States had no particular love for the Union; they had done nothing for it, and had little comprehension of what it had done or could do for them. (72/148)

 

The United States had twenty vessels – the largest carrying forty-four guns. Great Britain had one thousand and sixty vessels in her navy, some of them carrying one hundred and twenty guns. The newspapers of London ridiculed the navy of the United States, and said that the ships were pine-board boxes, while the British vessels were built of English oak. (72/159)

 

One glaring issue remained the impressment of American sailors, who were often dragged off ships, labeled “British,” and forced to serve in Great Britain’s fleets.

 

Meanwhile, American shipping interests had been badly damaged over the years, with many vessels captured. “England had taken nine hundred and seventeen, and France five hundred and fifty-eight. The loss to Americans was reckoned at $70,000,000.” (72/146-147)

 

“All this was done under pretense of right,” said another historian, “but the Americans felt it was the right of the highway robber.” (56/248)

 

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“You have tempted him to eat of the tree of knowledge.” 

Coffin also remarks on the reluctance of John Randolph of Roanoke to see Canada invaded and perhaps invite retribution from Britain – including efforts to invade the slave states and stir up racial war. 

Warned Randolph: 

“The negroes are rapidly gaining notions of freedom, destructive alike to their own happiness and the safety and interests of their masters. The night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the frightened mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom, not knowing what may have happened.” (72/148)

 

When this blogger goes searching for another source, he finds this, from Benson J. Lossing, writing in the Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812, Chapter XI: 

[Randolph] said the negroes were rapidly gaining notions of freedom, destructive alike to their own happiness and the safety and interests of their masters. He denounced as a “butcher” a member of Congress who had proposed the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He said men had broached on that very floor the doctrine of imprescriptible rights to a crowded audience of blacks in the galleries, teaching them that they were equal to their masters. “Similar doctrines,” he said, “are spread throughout the South by Yankee peddlers; and there are even owners of slaves so infatuated as, by the general tenor of their conversation, by contempt of order, morality, religion, unthinkingly to cherish these seeds of destruction. And what has been the consequence? Within the last ten years repeated alarms of slave insurrections, some of them awful indeed. By the spreading of this infernal doctrine the whole South has been thrown into a state of insecurity. . . . . You have deprived the slave of all moral restraint,” he continued, addressing the Democratic members; “you have tempted him to eat of the tree of knowledge just enough to perfect him in wickedness; you have opened his eyes to his nakedness. God forbid that the Southern States should ever see an enemy on these shores with their infernal principles of French fraternity in the van! While talking of Canada, we have too much reason to shudder for our own safety at home. I speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the frightened mother does not hug her infant the more closely to her bosom, not knowing what may have happened. I have myself witnessed some of these alarms in the capital of Virginia.”

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I retired before I ever saw this passage. If I was still working hard in the classroom (do we ever not work hard, if we care about our business?) I think I could adapt this slightly and use it with students.

 

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“The right of the United States would be supported by the sword.” 

February 7: No doubt, Tecumseh understood the power dynamics of his time. In A Popular History of Indiana, we read that he and Gov. William Henry Harrison had discussions about treaties, but they bore no fruit. 

Mrs. Hendricks writes, 

After this many talks were held, but no agreement was reached, and Governor Harrison finally said that “the right of the United States would be supported by the sword,” if need be. “So be it,” was the stern and haughty reply of the Shawnee chieftain, and soon afterward he drifted down the rivers in his birch-bark canoe to visit the tribes in the southwest and to persuade them to join in the great uprising. He told them that when the proper time came he would stamp his foot and the whole continent would tremble. It so happened that soon after his return to the north there was a dreadful earthquake. (91/91-92)

 

The New Madrid earthquake, as it is known, is actually a series of shocks, the first on December 11, in 1811, the second on January 23, 1812, and an even more powerful quake on February 7. Estimates vary, with the three quakes possibly measuring magnitude 8.1, 7.8 and then 8.8 on the Richter scale. It is said that President James Madison and his wife, Dolly, felt the tremors as far away as Washington D.C. 

After the February 7 earthquake, boatmen reported that the Mississippi actually ran backwards for several hours. The force of the land upheaval 15 miles south of New Madrid created Reelfoot Lake, drowned the inhabitants of an Indian village; turned the river against itself to flow backwards; devastated thousands of acres of virgin forest; and created two temporary waterfalls in the Mississippi. Boatmen on flatboats actually survived this experience and lived to tell the tale.

 

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Time-Life has some good details, related to the coming war. “The devil himself,” wrote one congressman, “ could not tell which government, England or France, is the most wicked.” When John Randolph begged lawmakers not to side with a tyrant, Napoleon, feeling against him ran hot. 

The town of Randolph, Georgia changed its name to “Jasper.” 

The American navy, small as it might be, was, “ship for ship, as good as any in the world – a  fact the Americans themselves were the last to realize.”

 

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July 18-20: The U.S.S. Constitution had to evade an entire British squadron in a chase that lasted for three days, to get out of Boston harbor and put to sea. Built in 1797, Paul Revere copper-plated her hull six years later. Her towering masts “could carry almost an acre of white canvas.” (Failed to note source.)

 

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Coffin (I believe) describes the chase: 

Off Nantucket one dawn, the Constitution came upon a fleet of eleven enemy ships. There was no breeze to speak of and Captain Isaac Hull had to act quickly. The water was only twenty fathoms. So he ran out the kedge anchor and a small boat carried it half a mile and dropped to the bottom of the sea “and then the sailors on the Constitution go round the windlass upon the run.” A breeze came up briefly and died “and now all through the day, through the night, the race goes on – the Shannon and Guerriere pulling with all their might.

 

The master-mechanic, when he laid the keel of the Constitution; the wood-choppers of Allentown, on the banks of the Merrimac, in New Hampshire, where they felled the giant oaks; the carpenters who hewed the timbers, little thought how glorious would be the history of the Constitution. This was its beginning – a race with eleven vessels trying to catch her – a hare with the hounds upon her track. Brave men stand upon her deck. Every pulse beats high. The shot from the Shannon do not reach them. They are holding their own. Three cheers ring out as they whirl the windlass and pull at the oars. All day, all night, till four o’clock in the afternoon of the second day, the race goes on, when the Shannon, instead of being within cannon-shot, is four miles astern…

 

Dark clouds in the west hint at a storm; the Constitution raises all sails, and “under a great white cloud of canvas, sweeps away, and the hounds give up the chase.” (72/160)

 

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August 16: General William Hull, with 2,500 men, decides to surrender Detroit to a British/Canadian/Native American force roughly half that size. 

Writing decades later, Lossing placed the blame for this sorry affair on President Madison and his Secretary of War. “The blundering administration – blundering in ignorance – made [Hull] a scapegoat to bear away the sins of others – a conductor to avert from their own heads the lightning of the people’s wrath.” 

Congress now set aside money for a buildup of the army to 25,000 regular troops. A million dollars was appropriated for purchase of arms, ammunition and stores for the army, another $400,000 for powder, cannon and small arms for the navy. Including volunteers, the U. S. would soon have 70,000 men under arms.

General Hull surrender's his sword.

 

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“Old Ironsides” teaches the British a lesson. 

August 19: Commodore Isaac Hull [no relation to Gen. William Hull] briefly described the famous battle between the U.S.S. Constitution, later nicknamed “Old Ironsides,” and H.M.S. Guerriere: “In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the [Guerriere] she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her above water.”

 

According to Henry Adams, this single victory at sea “raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first-class power.” (56/284)

 

 

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THE HISTORIAN Coffin tells the same story, in greater detail. Hull and Captain James Dacres had known each other before the war. Coffin says they made the bet of a hat, over who would win if war came, and their ships met. Off Newfoundland, the Constitution spotted Guerriere. When the vessels closed the distance, Guerriere opened fire first, her shots falling short. Closer the British came, firing again. Hull ordered his guns double-shotted, with 32-pound balls and charges of grape. “Another broadside crashes into the timbers of the Constitution,” Coffin explains. 

The sailors are impatient. It is hard to stand silent and motionless by the double-shotted cannon, with the splinters flying, the balls tearing everything to pieces around them, and not to be allowed to fire. Captain Hull stands upon the quarter-deck, calmly waiting till every gun will bear. It is the fashion of the times to wear tight pantaloons, and his are very tight.

 

Finally, Hull shouts for his gun crews to blast the British. 

In the energy and excitement of the moment the captain bends low, and the tight-fitting pantaloons split from waistband to knee. “Hull her! Hull her!” Lieutenant Morris shouts it; and the sailors – comprehending the play on words, that they are to do to the Guerriere what their captain has done to his pantaloons – spring to their work with a hurrah! Keeping up a continual roar of thunder from the double-shotted guns

 

Twenty minutes, and the Guerriere is a helpless wreck – every mast gone, gaping rents in her sides, her cannon silent.

 

When an American officer went aboard, he assured Captain Dacres he could keep his sword, but he would like to trouble him for his hat. 

The Guerriere was filling with water, and was such a wreck that Captain Hull, after tenderly caring for the wounded and removing the men, set her on fire. When the fire reached the magazine a great wave of flame shot into the air, lifting remains of masts, spars, cannon, anchors, ropes, and chains, which rained down into the sea, and all that was left of the Guerriere disappeared forever.

 

On August 30, the Constitution sailed into Boston. 

What commotion there was…The shopkeepers put up their shutters; the people thronging from their houses down to the wharves; cannon thundering a salute; ladies waving handkerchiefs from the windows; men and boys shouting themselves hoarse. It was not only that the Guerriere had been annihilated, but England was no longer to have things all her own way on the sea – no longer to claim undisputed ownership of the ocean. It was the beginning of the vindication of right and justice for the people of the United States and, through them, for the rest of mankind.

 

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October 13: An American attack into Canada, at Queenstown, near Niagara Falls, failed when only 700 men crossed. The rest of the troops refused to set foot on foreign soil. “This pattern was repeated over and over again throughout the land battles on the northern frontier – at Stony Creek, at Beaver Dams, at Chrysler’s Farm. There were men enough on the American side, but they would not fight.” 

The troops heard rumors that if they did cross into Canada they would become regulars and be liable for five years’ service.

 

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October 18: Wasp, 18 guns, falls in with seven British ships, six merchant vessels, and Frolic of 20 guns. 

A storm has made the seas rough; but the sky is now clear; and the Frolic takes in sail, evidence she is spoiling for a fight. Captain Jacob Jones, of Wasp, notices the waves and reminds his men to fire when the ship is going down into the trough, or else their shots will sail high. The two ships tangle together after a few brutal minutes, most of the American fire pummeling the enemy warship. The British crew of 108 numbers 92 killed and wounded. Wasp has five killed, five wounded.

 

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October 25: Next, the United States, 44 guns, fell in with Macedonian, also 44 guns: 

The battle began, and for half an hour there was such a cloud of smoke rolling up from the United States that Captain Carden, of the Macedonian, thought she was on fire. During the time the mizzen-mast of the Macedonian falls, the main-yard is cut to pieces, the main and fore top-masts tumble to the deck, the foremast is tottering, just ready to fall, the bowsprit is splintered, and the rigging is cut into shreds. Suddenly the cannon of the United States become silent, and the British sailors seeing her sheer off, swing their hats and give a cheer. They have beaten her, and she is trying to escape? Not quite.

 

The man who fought the Algerines is only wearing his ship to take a new position. He comes astern of Macedonian; in a minute he will rake her from stem to stern. Captain Carden sees that he is powerless, and the flag of Macedonian comes down, while cheer upon cheer rolls up from the United States. In half an hour the Macedonian has become a wreck, while the United States has suffered very little. (72/161-170)

 

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December 29-30: Off the coast of Brazil, the British frigate H.M.S. Java, 38 guns, spots a sail. Aboard, she is carrying more than a hundred officers of the East India Service, headed for Calcutta. 

 

“Laying like a log upon the water.” 

The battle begins well for the British, at around 2:00 p.m. on the 30th. A shot from Java breaks the wheel of the U.S.S. Constitution in pieces. Captain Bainbridge rigs up a new system, pours fire into the Java, then steers away, fixes the wheel, returns, and lays alongside Java, “shooting away all three of Java’s masts, dismounting her guns, and making terrible slaughter, killing and wounding more than two hundred, while on her own deck there were only nine killed and twenty-one wounded.” (72/161-170) 

(Below, the captain gives a different number for those wounded on his vessel.) 

Captain Bainbridge later describes the fight:

 

The following Minutes Were Taken during the Action

 

At 2.10 P.M. Commenced The Action within good grape and Canister distance. The enemy to windward (but much farther than I wished).

 

At 2.30 P.M. our wheel was shot entirely away

 

At 2.40: determined to close with the Enemy, notwithstanding her rakeing, set the Fore sail & Luff’d up close to him.

 

At 2.50: The Enemies Jib boom got foul of our Mizen Rigging

 

At 3: The Head of the enemies Bowsprit & Jib boom shot away by us

At 3.5: Shot away the enemies foremast by the board

At 3.15: Shot away The enemies Main Top mast just above the Cap

At 3.40: Shot away Gafft and Spunker boom

At 3.55: Shot his mizen mast nearly by the board

 

At 4.5: Having silenced the fire of the enemy completely and his colours in main Rigging being [down] Supposed he had Struck, Then hawl’d about the Courses to shoot ahead to repair our rigging, which was extremely cut, leaving the enemy a complete wreck, soon after discovered that The enemies flag was still flying hove too to repair Some of our damages.

 

At 4.20: The Enemies Main Mast went by the board.

At 4.50: [Wore] ship and stood for the Enemy

At 5:25: Got very close to the enemy in a very [effective] rakeing position, athwart his bows & was at the very instance of rakeing him, when he most prudently Struck his Flag.

 

Had The Enemy Suffered the broadside to have raked him previously to strikeing, his additional loss must have been extremely great laying like a log upon the water, perfectly unmanageable, I could have continued rakeing him without being exposed to more than two of his Guns, (if even Them)

 

After The Enemy had struck, wore Ship and reefed the Top Sails, hoisted out one of the only two remaining boats we had left out of 8 & sent Lieut [George] Parker 1st of the Constitution on board to take possession of her, which was done about 6. P.M, The Action continued from the commencement to the end of the Fire, 1 H 55 m our sails and Rigging were shot very much, and some of our spars injured-had 9 men Killed and 26 wounded.  

1813

 

__________ 

“We have met the enemy, and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.” 

Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry

__________

Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie.

 

January 1: Congress decides to reduce the bounty for enlistments in the U.S. Army from $40  to $16, which means most volunteers continue to prefer militia service. The ability of the army to fight effectively is hampered throughout the war.

Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of the Navy, has to be replaced – being regularly reported to be drunk by noon – after he appears, clearly intoxicated, at a public ceremony aboard the USS Constitution.

 

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“Two Virginians and a foreigner.” 

January 5: Josiah Quincy, a Federalist, rises in Congress to complain. He declares that it is “a curious fact…for these twelve years past the whole affairs of this country have been managed, and its fortunes reversed, under the influence of a cabinet little less than despotic, composed to all efficient purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner.” 

Meanwhile, General James Wilkerson is given command of the Northern region – despite the fact that his second-in-command, Wade Hampton, like most officers, considers him “a disgrace to the army.” Monroe and Secretary of War John Armstrong Jr. seemed, to other cabinet members, to be engaged in a battle for the next party nomination as president, and Armstrong let it be known he believed Madison had been incompetent during the war emergency. (24/315, 318)

 

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January 21: The Battle of the River Raisin turns into a debacle and then a massacre for U.S. forces. 

Eleven hundred British and Indians under General Proctor crossed the river to Frenchtown (now Monroe, Michigan). They had five cannon. Just before daybreak, on January 21, 1813, a rifle shot signaled the attack. General Winchester and the Americans were caught by surprise. Many of the Americans panicked and fled across the River Raisin but were cut off by Indians – more than a hundred being killed and scalped despite surrendering.

           

Two regiments of American troops fought well, sheltered near a house and behind a garden fence. Proctor had General Winchester, now a prisoner, stripped, as if the Indians were preparing to torture him. Then he promised the American commander that property and the lives of his men would be spared if he signed an order to his own men, calling on them to lay down their weapons. The Americans received this order under a white flag and obeyed it.

 

Then the massacre began, the Indians tomahawking and scalping the wounded. Proctor made no effort to stop it. He was so inhuman and treacherous that Tecumseh looked down upon him with scorn. (72/172-173)

 

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February 24: Off the coast of South America, the brig U.S.S. Hornet, eighteen guns, takes on H.M.S. Peacock, twenty guns. In fifteen minutes fire from the American warship wrecks the Peacock, 

the main-mast gone, rigging cut to pieces, and water pouring into her hold. Down came her flag, and up went a signal of distress. The crew of the Hornet manned  their boats, and began to take the men from the Peacock; but suddenly she went down, carrying thirteen of her own crew and three Americans. The American sailors had defeated the British, and now divided their clothing with them.

 

Humanity and kindness of heart on the deck of the Hornet; tomahawking and scalping on the banks of the river Raisin. The world noted the difference. (72/172-173)

 

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The Noble Red Man. 

Whereas Gen. Proctor was seen as a murderer by Americans, his ally, Tecumseh was often held up as an example of the “noble red man” and we find this story in A Popular History of Indiana: 

Of many anecdotes illustrating his nobility of character we shall give but one. After one of the victories won by the British and Indians, the country having been pillaged of almost everything by the invading armies, it transpired that an old man who was lame had managed to conceal a pair of oxen, with which his son was able to make a scanty living for the family. But one day while the man was at labor with the oxen Tecumseh, meeting him in the road, said: “My friend, I must have those oxen. My young men are very hungry; they have had nothing to eat. We must have the oxen.”

 

The son told the chief that if he took the oxen his father would starve to death.

 

“Well,” said Tecumseh, “we are the conquerors and everything we want is ours. I must have the oxen. My people must not starve, but I will not be so mean as to rob you of them. I will pay you $100 for them and that is far more than they are worth.”

 

Tecumseh got a white man to write an order on the British agent, Colonel Elliott. The oxen were killed, large fires built and the forest warriors were soon feasting on their flesh. But when the order was presented to Colonel Elliott he refused to honor it. The young man sorrowfully returned to Tecumseh who said: “He won’t pay it, will he? Stay all night and to-morrow we will go and see.” The next morning the two went to the British agent, to whom Tecumseh said: “Do you refuse to pay for the oxen I bought?”

 

“Yes,” said the colonel.

 

“I bought them,” said the chief, “for my young men were very hungry. I promised to pay for them and they shall be paid for. I have always heard the white nations went to war with each other and not with peaceful individuals; that they did not rob and plunder poor people. I will not.”

 

“Well,” said the colonel, “I will not pay for them.”

 

“You can do as you please,” said the chief; “but before Tecumseh and his warriors came to fight the battles of the great king they had enough to eat, for which they had only to thank the Master of Life and their good rifles. Their hunting grounds supplied them with food enough; to them they can return.” The colonel knew that the withdrawal of the Indian warriors from the British forces would be disastrous, so he yielded to Tecumseh, saying: “Well, if I must pay, I will.”

 

“Give me hard money,” said the chief, “not rag money.” Tecumseh handed the $100 in coin to the young man and then demanded “one dollar more” from the colonel, and, giving that also to the young man said: “Take that; it will pay for the time you have lost in getting your money.” (91/97-99)

 

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April 27: American forces cross over Lake Ontario to attack York (now Toronto). General Zebulon Pike – famous for his deeds as an explorer – leads a force of 1,600. Outnumbered British and Canadian forces surrender. But one defender laid a train of powder and five hundred kegs to blow up the fort. The man charged with lighting the fuse rushed his job. 

The resulting explosion sent “timbers, cannon, shot, and shells into the air. Forty British and fifty-eight Americans were killed. One of the Americans was General Pike, who was crushed by a falling timber, and after whom many counties and towns in the Western States have been named.” (72/174)

 

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April-May (The siege of Fort Meigs): Proctor soon marched on Fort Meigs, located on the Maumee River, with a force that included 1,500 Indians. For five days his artillery pummeled the defenders. General Harrison had his men dig deep; but he had only three big guns, and limited ammunition. For that reason he promised a gill of rum for every ball his men could find, and they dug them up whenever they plowed the ground, 2,000 in all. 

Harrison sent part of his army across the river with instructions to march on the British guns, spike them, and then immediately retreat. Defenders of Ft. Meigs saw their comrades pull down the British flag, and the guns went silent. But the American commander, Colonel Dudley, had not made it clear his troops were to fall back at once. “In a few moments more than one thousand Indians were upon them, and more than two-thirds of his force were captured, the Indians splitting open their skulls.” General Proctor did nothing to stop the killing. According to Coffin, Tecumseh (“Tecumtha,” he calls him), 

…was too honorable to see men slaughtered in cold blood who had surrendered.

 

“Why don’t you stop the killing?” he shouted to Proctor.

 

“I cannot control your warriors.”

 

“Go put on petticoats – you are no general,” said Tecumtha.

 

Eighty Americans were killed in the debacle, 270 wounded, 470 captured. Proctor had lost 100; but without his guns he had to give up the siege. (72/175-177)

 

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May 3: At Havre de Grace, Maryland, British landing parties burn 13 houses, 10 stables and two taverns.

 

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June: At Hampton, Virginia, enemy forces landed, several women were raped, and an old man killed in his bed.

 

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August 30: A force of 1,000 Creeks attacks Ft. Mims, in Alabama, just as drums are beating for dinner. 

According to Coffin, two slaves gave the commander of Fort Mims (he calls it Nims) warning that the woods nearby were full of Indians. Major Beasley sent out scouts who returned and said there were no warriors in sight. 

“‘I’ll teach you to lie,’ said Major Beasley, who tied up one of the negroes and had his back cut to pieces with a whip.” 

Noon came…The soldiers were at dinner; the gate of the fort was wide open – suddenly the people heard the war-whoop and beheld the Indians rushing in. The other negro, who had not been whipped but who was tied up to a post, was the first shot. Major Beasley, who had refused to believe his story, went down. The fight began, and lasted from twelve to five. When it was ended more than four hundred men, women and children were lying upon the ground, mangled by the Indians. Only twelve white men escaped. The Indians spared the negroes and made them their slaves. The Indians made their way to Pensacola, the scalps of women and girls dangling at their belts, and received their reward from the British Government – five dollars given for every scalp! (72/208)

 

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September 10: At 11:30 a.m. two fleets, one American, the other British, are in sight of each other on Lake Erie. Commodore Oliver Perry sends a signal from his flagship Lawrence to the rest of his American fleet, “Give the men their dinner.” 

Fifteen minutes later musicians on Detroit, the British flagship strike up, “Rule, Britannia.”

 

* 

THE NEXT NOTES come from an American Heritage story, “The Battle of Lake Erie” by Richard F. Snow. First, we will supply the background story, to how an American fleet was built and let loose on the lake. 

Daniel Dobbins was in Washington by late summer, 1812; but he had had great difficulty getting there. On July 12 General William Hull had invaded Canada with 2,200 men. By August 8, however, Hull had retreated to Detroit, where he surrendered a week later to a force half the size of his own. 

Snow says his performance was “variously ascribed to cowardice, senility, and treason.” Dobbins was one of the prisoners, and having already violated a parole (or so the British believed) he was scheduled to hang, but escaped in a thunderstorm. 

Snow describes his escape: 

A reward was offered for his scalp, and so, having anticipated this, he hid in a wrecked boat on the shore of the Detroit River. At length he made for the river’s mouth, where he found an abandoned Indian dugout. He paddled across Lake Erie to Sandusky and there got hold of a horse, which he rode to Cleveland. Then, again in a canoe, he pressed on to the harbor of Presque Isle…

 

From there he carried his message on “the long, dangerous forest road to Pittsburgh and then headed east.” 

President Madison asked his advice about building a fleet on Lake Erie and they agreed on Presque Isle. Dobbins was made a sailing master and ordered to proceed to Erie and get busy. He had $2,000 to spend. The town of Erie had 47 homes, one blacksmith shop, and a few men who knew how to use whipsaws. “There was no metal to speak of within a hundred miles, nor was there any rope or sailcloth to be had.” Dobbins set the price of timber at $1 per tree; he paid sawyers $1.25 per day, axe men 62 ½ cents. “Hauling was worth $4.00 a day to those who had horses or oxen.” 

Snow describes the virtues of the harbor he has chosen: 

His destination, Presque Isle, was a narrow finger of land six miles long, hooked out into Lake Erie and enclosing a superb natural harbor three miles long and more than a mile wide. A sandbar across the entrance to the bay presented some difficulties, but once inside, a ship was safe from any storm that might blow up.

 

A few days after his arrival Dobbins wrote a letter to: 

Commodore Chauncey or the commanding officer of the lake at Buffaloe

 

SIR : I have the honor to transmit to you … a coppy of my instructions from the Secretary of the Navy and assure you, Sir, that I stand ready to execute any orders you may be pleased to issue. …

 

A return letter arrived, not from Chauncey but Lt. Jesse Duncan Elliott, who, in modern terms, blew Dobbins off. Elliott completely discounted Dobbins’ ideas: 

It appears to me utterly impossible to build Gun Boats at Presqu’ile; there is not a sufficient depth of water on the bar to get them into the Lake. Should there be water, the place is at all times open to the attacks of the Enemy. … From a slight acquaintance I have with our side of Lake Erie … I am under the impression [it] has not a single Harbor calculated to fit out a Naval expedition, and the only one convenient I am at present at. … I have no further communication to make on the subject.

 

Dobbins kept building anyway, laying down the keels for two brigs and three gunboats. Supplies trickled in from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Dobbins spent $200 for masts for his vessels, $92.25 for sweeps and 14-foot oars. Winter blew in and many of his workers deserted. Money ran out. He wrote to his superiors, asking for help. He predicted that the vessels he was building would be “fast sailors.” But did they wish him to keep building? Luckily, Dobbins was a better shipwright than a speller. “Pleas give me orders…I have expended a considerable sum more than the two thousand dollars…I have brot the iron from Pittsburgh which comes high [in price] the Roads have been so bad if I am directed to go on with the work Pleas let me hear as soon as Posible.” 

Chauncey soon visited Presque Isle and agreed the harbor was more than sufficient. Noah Brown, who Snow describes as “a superb New York shipbuilder,” arrived in January 1813 and went to work. Meanwhile, Oliver Hazard Perry was asking Chauncey for a command on the Lakes. 

Perry came from a Quaker background; but his father had fought in the American Revolution. At age 14, his father took him on as a midshipman on his frigate. Together, they fought the French in 1799 in the Caribbean. Oliver also saw duty in the Mediterranean, fighting pirates in 1805. In 1809, he was given command of the schooner Revenge, with orders to cruise the Atlantic coast, looking for British warships stopping American merchant vessels. In January 1811, however, the Revenge  ran aground in thick fog while making for harbor in New London. The pilot was in charge at the time; and Perry was deemed not to be at fault; but his vessel had been sunk and he was back in charge of a lowly gunboat, operating out of Newport. 

Once war erupted, an “arms race” on Lake Ontario began. Both Chauncey and Sir James Lucas Yeo, worked hard to build stronger and stronger fleets. But neither man did much to actually bring on battle. By the end of the war, Snow notes, Chauncey “had nearly finished a 130-gun ship of the line, a vessel three times larger than anything America had on salt water.” 

In any case, Perry soon had his orders: Head for Presque Isle and get to work. He wasted no time, gathering 50 carpenters and sailors, and sending them on to Erie. He himself set out by sleigh, arriving on March 27, two weeks after Noah Brown. Dobbins, Brown, and Perry never really had enough men to do all the work; but Brown had a plan to speed the process. Once he came across a carpenter who was taking too long on a task. “We want no extras; plain work, plain work is what we want,” he explained. The ships would only be “required for one battle.” If the Americans won that would be all that they were needed for; and if they lost, and the ships were captured, then no need to make them fancy. Perry often left Erie to visit Pittsburgh or Philadelphia foundries casting round shot and cannon. On April 15, the Americans launched their first pair of gunboats, each mounting a 32-pounder cannon. Many workmen came down with fevers that spring. Those who could worked double shifts, sawing and hammering. Supplies came from Pittsburgh: shot, sails, anchors and, most importantly, guns. By mid-July, Perry had the fleet he wanted. Two brigs, Lawrence and Niagara, each carrying 20 guns, made up the two fists with which he would try to pummel any British opponent. 

The Department of the Navy sent men to Commander Chauncey, assuming he’d send some of the rest to Lake Erie. But Chauncey kept them all and Perry had to try to drum up enough sailors to man his vessels. Dobbins was sent around, offering $10 a month to anybody willing to serve four months or until one decisive battle was fought. This brought in only 60 men. The British managed to get a fleet of their own ready and put out to sail in mid-July. 

Perry now wrote desperately to Chauncey: 

The enemy’s fleet of six sail are now off the bar of this harbour. What a golden opportunity if we had men. … I am constantly looking to the eastward; every mail and every traveller from that quarter is looked to as the harbinger of the glad tidings of our men being on their way. … Give me men, sir, and I will acquire both for you and myself honour and glory on this lake, or perish in the attempt. … Think of my situation; the enemy in sight, the vessels under my command more than sufficient, and ready to make sail, and yet obliged to bite my fingers with vexation for want of men.

 

Three days later, he wrote Chauncey again, pleading, “For God’s sake and yours, and mine, send me men and officers, and I will have them [the British ships] in a day or two.” But no men came. The enemy ships could be seen close by every day and Perry could not put out to fight. At night he worried the British might try to raid his base and burn his new warships. The Pennsylvania militia troops ordered to guard Presque Isle refused to stand guard in the dark. Chauncey finally relented and sent Perry a few more men; With more than a tinge of racism perhaps, Perry complained, “The men that came…are a motley set, blacks, soldiers and boys…” 

Chauncey replied, 

“I regret that you are not pleased with the men sent you…for, to my knowledge, a part of them are not surpassed by any seamen we have in the fleet; and I have yet to learn that the color of the skin, or the cut and trimmings of the coat, can affect a man’s qualifications or usefulness.”

 

Had Perry known, he might have felt better; but the British commander on Lake Erie was having the same kind of problems manning his ships. Sir Robert Herriot Barclay had lost an arm at the Battle of Trafalgar. Now he found that the typical sailor sent by Yeo from Lake Ontario, was “a poor devil not worth his salt.” 

For many months now, a sandbar at the mouth of Presque Isle had kept the British from sailing in and blasting the new American fleet. And at the end of July, the enemy sailed away for some reason. Perry and his men tried to cross the bar; but Lawrence and Niagara stuck fast. For four days the sailors, black and white, young and old,  labored to get them across. All heavy guns and ammunition had to be taken off, rowed ashore, and the lightened vessels finally put out on Lake Erie. Just in time, Lt. Elliott arrived with two more schooners and 99 officers and men. 

Perry had had his fill of frustrations and delays. In yet another angry letter to the Secretary of the Navy, he threatened to resign his command. “I cannot serve longer,” he wrote of Chauncey, “under an officer who has been so totally regardless of my feelings.” Luckily, the authorities in Washington, D.C. decided to ignore his request to be replaced. 

For several weeks, Perry cruised the lake, giving his men as much practice manning the new ships as he could. A new base at Put-in-Bay was ready. General William Henry Harrison, in command on land, sent Perry a hundred Kentucky soldiers with their famous long rifles. They weren’t much for sailing; but they now gave Perry 490 men to fight his nine ships. 

Barclay, too, was having serious problems. He had a fine new brig, the Detroit, ready to fight; but getting guns was a problem. He borrowed several field guns from the British army; but in all six different types of cannon made up Detroit’s 19 guns. This would mean all kinds of problems with ammunition once an actual battle began. On September 9, he weighed anchor and went looking for a fight. On board he had barely enough flour to feed his men. 

Perry now prepared for battle. Elliott had command of Niagara, a detail that would prove to be a serious problem. The winds swirled most of the morning on Lake Erie. Then they steadied and blew from the southeast, giving the Americans the “weather gauge.” 

Snow gives us the makeup of the two opposing fleets: 

On that night Perry called his officers aboard his ship and discussed the battle he knew was imminent. Barclay’s strongest ships were the Detroit and the Queen Charlotte, which mounted seventeen guns. These would be engaged by the Lawrence, Perry’s flagship, and her sister ship, the Niagara, which Perry had placed under the command of Jesse Elliott. Perry drew up a line of battle and then, paraphrasing Nelson’s great dictum, said: “If you lay your enemy alongside, you cannot be out of place.” The officers returned to their ships, and a full autumn moon came out and rolled across the sky. Living things chittered and peeped on the shore of the harbor, and the ships lay motionless on the water in the bright, still night.

 

The next morning at sunup the lookouts sighted the British fleet, and Perry stood out for open water. It was a fine, cloudless day, with fluky breezes that eventually steadied and swung around to the southeast, giving the American ships the weather gauge – the important ability to force or decline battle as they chose. The schooner Chippewa led the enemy line, followed by Barclay’s flagship, the Detroit, the brig Queen Charlotte, the brig Hunter of ten guns, the schooner Lady Prevost, and the sloop Little Belt. Perry accordingly arranged his line so that the Lawrence was in the van, with the schooners Ariel and Scorpion standing by her weather bow, the Caledonia next, to fight the Hunter, and then the Niagara, with which Elliott was to engage the Queen Charlotte. The gunboat-schooners Somers, Porcupine, and Tigress and the sloop Trippe would take on the Lady Prevost and the Little Belt. Dobbins should have been there in the schooner Ohio, but he had been sent to Erie to pick up supplies.

 

Aboard both fleets, cutlasses were put out on deck, in case the enemy ever came close enough for men to jump from one ship to the other. Shot were place near the guns. All hatches were closed, save for one left open, so that ammunition could be brought up from below. Perry placed his most important documents in a pouch weighed down with lead. If Lawrence were forced to surrender, he told the ship’s doctor, he should toss the pouch into the lake. Up went the flag over Lawrence, too, “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” 

Perry soon turned to a nearby officer and said, “This is the most important day of my life.” In the distance, British musicians aboard the enemy fleet could be faintly heard playing the tune, “Rule Britannia.” Barclay and Perry made for each other. When still a mile away, the Detroit fired a shot to get the proper range. A second shot struck the Lawrence. All but two of Perry’s guns were powerful 32-pound carronades, short-barreled and deadly, but only at close range. So he held his fire and headed for the Detroit. For the next few minutes, Perry was at the mercy of his enemy. The British, Snow says, “picked his ship apart in a ghastly sort of target practice.      

“After half an hour the Lawrence’s rigging was almost useless, but Perry was close enough for his guns to take effect.” 

For some reason, Elliott hung back from the fight. Queen Charlotte then joined and Lawrence was hit by fire from both ships. Snow says, “The destruction on the decks of the Lawrence was appalling. The air was filled with iron and great jagged splinters of wood…” The surgeon, Usher Parsons, had more wounded than he could possibly handle. John Brooks, in charge of the marines, “the handsomest man in the fleet,” Snow writes, had his hip smashed by a cannonball and lay in agony on the deck, begging for a pistol to kill himself. Parsons was helping a wounded midshipman to his feet after dressing his arm, when a cannonball tore through the hull and killed the man. Five shots in all tore through the cabin. On the decks, men slipped in blood. A black spaniel howled. 

Oddly enough, Snow writes, “It is said that Perry suffered a psychopathic fear of cows and would splash across a muddy road to avoid going near one of the innocuous beasts.”

 

Now, as the battle raged, six times Perry appeared at the skylight above Parsons and asked him to spare one of his assistants to man the guns. Finally, none remained. Perry asked next if any of the wounded could return to the fight and help. Several did; but by 2:30 p.m. not a gun remained in service on Lawrence’s decks. Four out of every five men aboard were dead or wounded. Parsons later said many of the wounded cursed Elliott for refusing to enter the fight. 

Perry now lowered the “Don’t Give Up the Ship” flag, but not the American, left Lt. Yarnell in charge with nine men still fit to serve. He and a handful of other sailors took a small boat, miraculously undamaged, and rowed for fifteen minutes, under fire, to reach Niagara. Moments later, with “unspeakable pain,” as Perry remembered it, he saw the flag on Lawrence go down. But the British never had a chance to take her; and the flag soon went up again. 

The enemy, too, had suffered terrible losses. There was not a spot bigger than a hand on the side of Detroit, a sailor later testified, that had not been splintered or cracked by American fire. Barclay’s one good arm had been shattered and he had other wounds too. Worse, Detroit and Queen Charlotte had become tangled and could not be freed. Now the Niagara came on  hard, sailing between Hunter and Detroit, blasting broadsides in two directions. The rest of the American fleet was now coming up to batter the British vessels; and at 3 p.m. Barclay finally surrendered. 

British losses numbered 41 killed, 94 wounded. Perry lost 27 dead, 96 wounded, only four men having been killed aboard the late-arriving Niagara. 

General Proctor received news of the defeat and began his retreat from Ohio; but Harrison caught him and delt him a decisive defeat at the Battle of the Thames.

 

Perry actually mentioned Elliott favorably in his official report; and the two captains split the $225,000 prize money for the capture of Barclay’s fleet. Later, Perry retracted his compliment. In 1818, Elliott challenged Perry to a duel. Perry filed charges against him; but President Monroe let the matter die. Perry died in 1819, a result of a fever he had contracted while on duty along the S. American coast. 

Snow concludes: 

As for Daniel Dobbins, he spent the rest of his life on the Lakes, navigating them for forty years and never, he liked to boast, losing so much as a spar. When the President awarded a sword to each midshipman and sailing master who served well on Lake Erie, Dobbins wrote saying that he would like one too. But he was told that since he had not been in the battle, he was not eligible, and he never got his sword.

 

* 

COFFIN also provides a brief description of the fight: 

The Lawrence is the fastest vessel, and first into the fight with the enemy. The British concentrate their heavy fire on the flagship. Most of the sailors aboard the Lawrence are cut down. Lt. Yarnell sends a sailor to ask Perry for a few more men to man the guns. “A few minutes later he stands before his commander with the blood streaming down his face from a wound caused by a splinter which has passed through his nose.” Yarnell is told there are no men to spare – he returns to the guns – and a second splinter tears his scalp, “but he wipes away the blood and sights his gun once more.” 

Coffin continues: “A shot crashes through the pantry and smashes all the plates, cups, and saucers. A little dog, which has been hiding there, leaps upon the deck and sets up a furious barking at the British.” 

By 2:30 p.m., “The Lawrence is a helpless wreck. In a few minutes there will not be a man left.” 

There are supreme moments in men’s lives; such a moment has come to Oliver Hazard Perry. Though his decks are running with blood, though he has but one gun left, though his ship is a wreck, he will win the victory! It is only a great soul that can come to such a determination. Astern, half a mile away, is the Niagara, with as many guns as the Lawrence had at the beginning. Scarcely a shot has struck her. Captain Elliott, for some reason, has not come into the battle. The other vessels of the fleet are but little injured. Commodore Perry decides to go on board the Niagara and begin the battle anew. He has worn a plain blue jacket, but now pulls it off and puts on his uniform.

 

“Lower the boat!” The order is executed, and, with his flag under his arm, accompanied by his little brother, Commodore Perry steps into it. He stands erect. The oars dip, and the boat shoots out from the Lawrence. Captain Barclay beholds it, and comprehends the meaning. His own ship, the Detroit, is almost a wreck from the pounding which it has had from the great guns of the Lawrence, for, though silent now, they have been worked with terrible effect. He knows that if Perry gains the deck of the Niagara the battle will rage more furiously than ever.

 

Perry soon splits the enemy fleet, pouring in broadsides right and left. By 3 o’clock every U.S. vessel is involved in the fight, except the wrecked Lawrence. At eight minutes after the hour Commodore Barclay is forced to lower his flag and all other enemy vessels follow suit. 

On the back of an old letter, Perry writes: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.” (72/188-193)