1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  Figure 17.1: Oliver Hazard Perry transfers from his flagship Lawrence to continue the Battle of Lake Erie aboard the Niagara (courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Collection at Hyde Park, New York).

  At 2:45 Perry made the signal for “closer action” and immediately set after the British squadron in the undamaged Niagara. His luck continued to hold as the wind picked up, allowing him to reach his targets in fifteen minutes. “I determined to pass through the enemy’s line; bore up, and passed ahead of their two ships and a brig,” he wrote in his report, “giving a raking fire to them from the starboard guns, and to a large schooner and sloop from the larboard side, at half-pistol shot distance. The smaller vessels at this time, having got within grape and canister distance, under the direction of Captain Elliott, and keeping up a well-directed fire, the two ships, a brig, and schooner surrendered, a schooner and a sloop making a vain attempt to escape.”

  The victorious Perry now returned to the stricken Lawrence. “Every poor fellow raised himself from the decks to greet him with three hearty cheers,” Sailing Master William Taylor reported. “I do not hesitate to say there was not a dry eye on the ship.”

  It was over. Perry’s courage, and his incredible luck, had won the day—in spite of Elliott’s treachery. “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” Perry wrote to General Harrison. His words, like Captain Lawrence’s “Don’t give up the ship,” would become immortal. To Secretary Jones he wrote, “It has pleased the Almighty to give to the arms of the United States a signal victory over their enemies on this Lake.” Perry’s triumph would have far-reaching consequences. It opened the way for the United States to regain the entire northwest territory lost by General Hull, and it effectively ended the alliance between the Indians and Great Britain. “[Perry] has immortalized himself,” Commodore Chauncey wrote to Jones. Indeed he had.

  Perry made certain that the severely wounded Barclay was well cared for, probably saving his life. In his report on the defeat, Barclay wrote that having the weather gauge gave Perry an edge by allowing him to choose his position and distance, which had an adverse effect on the ability of the Queen Charlotte and the Lady Prevost to make more effective use of their carronades. Barclay’s greatest handicap, however, was manning. “The greatest cause of losing His Majesty’s Squadron on Lake Erie,” he wrote to Yeo, “was the want of a competent number of seamen.” His criticism of Yeo’s management could not have been plainer, and it was deeply felt. Prevost agreed with Barclay. He wrote to Earl Bathurst, the secretary of state for war and the colonies, that Yeo had appropriated for his own use on Lake Ontario all the officers and seamen sent from England, leaving Barclay to make do entirely with soldiers.

  Perry’s stunning, wholly unexpected triumph electrified the country. Elliott’s duplicity was overlooked amid the celebrating. Lieutenant Yarnall, however, wrote a letter on September 15 to the Ohio newspapers condemning Elliott, but his complaints were drowned out by the widespread acclaim for Perry. He was the man of the hour, lionized everywhere, and no more so than in Washington, where President Madison desperately needed a victory.

  AFTER BARCLAY’S DEFEAT, General Proctor knew he had to evacuate Fort Malden immediately and march east along the Thames River toward Burlington at the head of Lake Ontario, where he’d have protection not only from the Americans but from his Indian allies. Proctor’s supplies had nearly run out, and most of his heavy guns had been on the Detroit, which Perry had captured, along with two hundred of Proctor’s best soldiers.

  Tecumseh strenuously objected to retreating. He wanted to remain at Fort Malden and have a showdown with General Harrison, his longtime foe. But Proctor was convinced that he had to escape as quickly as possible. Since he had no supplies, and none could reach him, he thought staying at Amherstburg was suicidal. For Tecumseh, however, abandoning Amherstburg and Detroit meant leaving all the Indians of the Northwest to the mercy of the voracious Americans. The British had deserted their Indian allies before—most notably after the American Revolution but also in the Jay Treaty—with disastrous consequences for all the tribes. To appease Tecumseh, Proctor made a promise (which he never meant to keep) to make a stand at the forks of the Thames. Having no alternative, Tecumseh was forced to go along.

  Feeling more and more anxious as the days passed, Proctor retreated as fast as he could, worrying all the time that Harrison would be right on his heels. By September 23 Proctor had evacuated to Sandwich and burned Amherstburg and Detroit. Four days later, he began to panic when Harrison, working closely with Perry, started debarking thousands of troops at Amherstburg. Harrison’s army included troops from Fort Meigs under General McArthur, and 3,000 Kentucky militiamen led by Governor Isaac Shelby, a hero of the Battle of King’s Mountain during the War of Independence. At the same time, Kentucky congressman Richard M. Johnson, one of the War Hawks, was riding to Detroit at the head of 1,000 mounted infantrymen.

  Harrison pursued the retreating Procter along the Thames River, and Perry, with a strong contingent of tough sailors, accompanied him. Tecumseh reluctantly stayed with Procter, but he was disgusted with him, as indeed were Proctor’s own officers and men, who were unnerved by his panic. Many of Tecumseh’s warriors had already melted away into the forest, along with British deserters.

  On October 5 Harrison caught up with the enemy near Moravian Town on the Thames, fifty miles east of Detroit. By then Proctor’s force had dwindled to 1,000, including 500 Indians. Harrison had 3,500 men, including Johnson’s mounted infantry. Harrison had left most of his regulars to garrison Amherstburg and Detroit. What became known as the Battle of the Thames now ensued. It was over in half an hour. Given the disparity of forces and Proctor’s poor leadership, a British defeat was inevitable. Tecumseh fought to the death. When he fell, any chance—admittedly slim to begin with—for the Indians to preserve their ancient way of life in the Northwest, or indeed east of the Mississippi, died with him.

  Having always been most concerned with saving himself, Proctor managed to avoid surrender and, in unseemly haste, escaped from the battlefield with one quarter of his men to the safety of Burlington at the head of Lake Ontario. His performance did not go unnoticed by his superiors. A court-martial convicted him of misconduct and deprived him of his rank and pay for six months, after which the British army found no further use for him.

  For Governor Shelby the victory was the realization of a dream that Kentucky and the entire Northwest had had since the days of Daniel Boone—the end of Indian and British power in those vast regions and the undisputed ascendancy of the United States. America was now free to exploit the entire territory unimpeded. Since Shelby had accomplished his great objective, he took his Kentuckians home. Harrison wanted to press on to Lake Ontario and play an important part in the general movement to wrest all of Upper Canada from the British. But most of his force was composed of Kentucky militiamen, and when they returned home, he had to fall back on Detroit and Amherstburg.

  FOLLOWING THE BATTLE of the Thames, Perry, still angry with Chauncey, requested a transfer to Rhode Island. A grateful administration allowed him this indulgence. On September 29 Secretary Jones sent Perry a letter telling him he was promoted to captain and approving his transfer back to Newport. Chauncey was furious about the new assignment but not about the promotion, which he admitted was richly deserved. He wrote an angry letter to Jones, who understood Chauncey’s objections but did not change his mind about moving Perry. Jesse Elliott became the new commandant on Lake Erie.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Attack on Montreal

  IN THE SUMMER of 1813, at the same time that Perry and Harrison were planning to secure the Northwest, Madison was preparing to attack Kingston and Montreal, something he had intended to do back in the spring, before Dearborn and Chauncey had talked him out of it. Even if he succeeded, the key British strongholds at Quebec and Halifax would remain, but taking Upper Canada would strengthen the president’s diplomatic hand immeasurably. With Napoleon in trouble, seizing Canada, or a substantial
portion of it, was the only way Madison could gain enough leverage to move Liverpool and his colleagues. Nothing had been heard from the British about negotiations, although it was clear they were not rushing to accept the czar’s offer to mediate. The operations against Canada were therefore critical. At the moment, all the president had to bargain with was Amherstburg.

  Unfortunately, Madison was sick for five weeks in June and July, suffering a debilitating illness (similar to the one that had struck him the previous summer). Dolley again feared for his life. Direction of the war fell to the president’s department heads, and they were agreed that putting off the attacks on Kingston and Montreal earlier in the year had been a huge mistake. Secretary Armstrong wanted to make up for it now by striking both places during the late summer. He hoped that by then Commodore Chauncey would have naval supremacy on Lake Ontario. Secretary Jones, not a great admirer of Armstrong, nevertheless agreed with the plan and did everything he could to support Chauncey. But time was running out; winter in that part of Canada arrived in late October.

  In preparation for the attacks, Armstrong appointed new leaders for the northern army. In May, he promoted fifty-six-year-old Brigadier General James Wilkinson to major general, and after accepting General Dearborn’s resignation in July, Armstrong appointed Wilkinson to lead the assault on Kingston and Montreal. Wilkinson was given command of Military District 9, which included the Niagara region, Sackets Harbor, and Lake Champlain. His headquarters would be at Sackets Harbor. Armstrong had already appointed Major General Wade Hampton of South Carolina to lead the army gathering at Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain. Hampton was expected to combine with Wilkinson in a joint attack on Montreal.

  Choosing Wilkinson was, to say the least, baffling. What the inscrutable Armstrong was thinking is hard to imagine. Winfield Scott described Wilkinson as an “unprincipled imbecile,” a characterization that most army officers would have agreed with. Wilkinson had been the most controversial and hated figure in the service for many years; Armstrong certainly knew this. Their relationship went back to the Revolutionary War, when both were ambitious young men working under the even more ambitious—and duplicitous—General Horatio Gates, notorious for his efforts to undermine General Washington.

  A tireless self-promoter, Wilkinson was the darling of many uninformed Republicans. In March 1813 he had attained notoriety by leading the successful occupation of the rest of West Florida, which included the Mobile area and ran to the Perdido River. He was military commander of Louisiana at the time. Before then, his career had been marked by abject failure and well-founded charges of corruption. An inveterate intriguer, he had been closely associated with Aaron Burr, until he turned on him and became the prosecution’s chief witness against him at Burr’s trial for treason in 1807. Although Burr was acquitted, President Jefferson, who hated Burr, was grateful to Wilkinson. Earlier, the general had been secretly in the pay of the Spanish government while a senior American officer, and that treasonous relationship persisted. Spain even gave him a pension of $2,000. Prior to his elevation by Armstrong, Wilkinson’s graft and incompetence in Louisiana had led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of his men. Both senators from Louisiana had demanded the secretary of war remove him.

  The appointment of sixty-year-old Major General Wade Hampton was just as puzzling. In the later stages of the Revolutionary War, Hampton became a hero in South Carolina, serving under the famed guerrilla leaders Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. Afterward, he became a rich plantation owner with thousands of slaves and a powerful Republican, serving in Congress for a time. His hatred for Wilkinson was no secret. He made it clear to Armstrong that he would follow Wilkinson’s orders only if the forces at Sackets Harbor and those at Lake Champlain were joined in an attack on Montreal. Hampton’s inability to work with his superior—indeed, his loathing of him—should have disqualified him. His lack of combat experience as a general officer and addiction to hard liquor were further reasons. But Hampton’s shortcomings did not seem to matter to Armstrong.

  The appointments of Wilkinson and Hampton were all the more mystifying when one considers the promising general officers that the army now had available who could have led the invasion, such as Brigadier Generals Jacob Brown and Ralph Izard or talented colonels like Winfield Scott, Alexander Macomb, Eleazer W. Ripley, Edmund P. Gaines, and Leonard Covington, whom Armstrong could have promoted. But once again Madison and his advisors, for reasons that remain obscure, selected elderly incompetents for vital positions.

  Appearing in no hurry, Wilkinson reached Sackets Harbor on August 20 and held his first council of war six days later. Among those attending were General Jacob Brown, Wilkinson’s second in command, and Commodore Chauncey. Wilkinson’s orders were to attack Kingston and then Montreal, but he doubted that he could accomplish these objectives so late in the season. He preferred attacking in the Niagara area. Secretary Armstrong thought this was a sideshow, however, and quickly vetoed the idea. “You will make Kingston your primary object,” he wrote to Wilkinson, “and you may choose (as circumstances warrant), between a direct and indirect attack upon that post.” It was left to Wilkinson to construe what “direct” and “indirect” meant. He decided to interpret it as meaning a “strong feint” on Kingston before sending the army against Montreal, a city of 30,000.

  General Brown was willing to do whatever Wilkinson wanted, but Chauncey was strongly in favor of attacking Kingston first. A mere feint would leave a substantial enemy force—including Yeo’s fleet—in Wilkinson’s rear when he attacked Montreal, placing Sackets Harbor in danger of assault from Kingston while the American forces were occupied in the St. Lawrence River. Nonetheless, even if his advice were ignored, Chauncey still intended to “afford the Army every facility of transport and protection” on its way to the St. Lawrence. But he refused to remain in the river and cooperate with Wilkinson. Chauncey felt that his primary duty was protecting Sackets Harbor, and he “deemed [it] unsafe to be in that river after the 1st of November, on account of the ice.” After talking at greater length with Wilkinson, however, Chauncey became convinced that Armstrong’s original plan was still intact and that Kingston was the general’s first objective.

  Of course, Kingston would be a much easier target if Chauncey first destroyed Yeo’s warships. On August 29 he received word that Yeo’s fleet had exited Kingston and was abroad on Lake Ontario. Chauncey went looking for him. His fleet of eleven vessels had been substantially strengthened by the 16-gun schooner Sylph, which Henry Eckford had built at Sackets Harbor in just twenty-three days.

  On September 7 Chauncey discovered Yeo “close in with the Niagara River” and went after him with his heavy schooners in tow, which slowed him down considerably. Chauncey kept Yeo in sight, but he could not close with him. The British squadron remained just beyond his grasp. After days of fruitlessly chasing Yeo “round the lake day and night,” Chauncey managed to engage him from a distance on the eleventh of September off the Genesee River near present-day Rochester, New York. Chauncey had an advantage in long guns; Yeo had mostly carronades. Chauncey also had the weather gauge, but he failed to deliver a decisive blow, claiming that Yeo ran away from him and escaped after a running fight of over three hours. Yeo in his report maintained that “it was impossible to bring them to close action.” It seems that neither commodore wanted to hazard their precious fleets until they had an overwhelming advantage. Yeo escaped to the protection of Amherst Bay near Kingston, where the American fleet could not follow. Chauncey’s pilots did not have detailed knowledge of the bay’s deadly shoals.

  On August 30, while Chauncey was chasing Yeo, Wilkinson left his command at Sackets Harbor in the hands of Jacob Brown and sailed to the Niagara area to acquire 3,500 additional troops from the army guarding Fort George and Fort Niagara. During the voyage Wilkinson became seriously ill, and he did not recover for a month. While he was away, Chauncey was again out after Yeo. They met on September 28 near Burlington Bay at the western end of Lake Ontario. After du
eling at long range for three hours, Yeo broke off and raced for the protection of the batteries at Burlington Heights. Chauncey followed until gale force winds forced him to claw back to the protection of the Niagara River. Some vessels had been damaged on both sides, but there were few casualties. When the storm abated, Chauncey convoyed Wilkinson’s troops from Niagara to Sackets Harbor. While he was doing so, Yeo returned unnoticed to Kingston. On the fourth of October Chauncey was out again looking for Yeo when he spotted four British troop transports making for Kingston and captured them. Two of the prizes were the schooners he had lost earlier, the Growler and the Julia.

  When Wilkinson returned to Sackets Harbor the first week of October, he was still sick. To relieve his pain he took large doses of whiskey laced with laudanum. During the third week of October, while he was trying to recover his health and get an attack organized, snow began falling. The dreaded winter had begun.

  On October 29 Chauncey visited Wilkinson at his headquarters on Grenadier Island, midway between Sackets Harbor and Kingston, where 7,000 troops were gathering for the attempt on Montreal. Chauncey had protected all the movements of the troops from Sackets Harbor to Grenadier Island, often in severe weather. Chauncey was “mortified,” as he told Secretary Jones, to hear for the first time that Wilkinson was not going to attack Kingston after all but would only make a feint and then proceed to Montreal.