1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  The Ticonderoga and the Preble pressed the Finch and four gunboats hard. Lieutenant Budd was forced to cut his cable and run the Preble inshore, firing his broadside to keep the Finch and the four gunboats at bay. While he did, Lieutenant Cassin in the Ticonderoga kept firing at the Finch. After being pounded for an hour, the Finch was pulverized. She drifted onto the rocks near Crab Island, where some of the men in the hospital there fired a six-pounder at her, and she struck her colors. The Ticonderoga continued battling the four active gunboats. Midshipman Hiram Paulding used his pistol to fire the guns when it was found that the slow match didn’t work. Three of the gunboats were sunk and the other badly damaged.

  By 10:30 Lieutenant Henley was having trouble aboard the Eagle. The Linnet and one-third of the Confiance’s guns had been pounding him for well over an hour, and he could no longer bring his guns to bear. In desperation, he cut the Eagle’s cable, sheeted home the topsails, and ran down and anchored by the stern between Saratoga and Ticonderoga, and a little inshore of them, which allowed him to fire his port guns at the Confiance without being hit by her. That was fine for the Eagle, but Henley left the Saratoga exposed to the deadly fire of both the Confiance and the Linnet, which Commander Pring was handling superbly.

  Henley’s ill-timed, unauthorized maneuver nearly caused Macdonough’s defeat.

  By this time, all thirteen of Macdonough’s starboard guns were either dismounted or unmanageable. He had to bring his port guns to bear or strike his colors. Fortunately, he had planned for just such an event. He let go the stern anchor, cut the bow cable, and, using his kedges, wound the ship and brought his larboard guns to bear, firing a fresh broadside into the Confiance.

  The big British frigate was in desperate condition from the pounding she had taken and from Macdonough’s new assault. On the side facing the Saratoga, Lieutenant Robertson had nine long guns disabled. Only two carronades and the pivot gun were serviceable. Three long guns and two carronades were dismantled on the other side, but if he did not bring the rest of the guns on that side to bear, he would be forced to surrender. He managed to get a spring on the cable and tried to turn the ship as Macdonough had, but his battered crew “declared they would no longer stand to their quarters, nor could the officers with their utmost exertions rally them.” With the ship making water fast, the rigging, spars, masts, and hull shattered, upwards of forty men killed, and the wind not admitting the slightest prospect of escaping, Robertson struck his colors. It was eleven o’clock.

  The redoubtable Pring kept fighting for another twenty minutes. Macdonough had to wind his ship by hauling on the starboard kedge hawser. He brought his broadside to bear in this fashion, and around 11:20, Pring was forced to strike his colors as well. The battle lasted two hours and twenty minutes. Fifty-two Americans were killed and fifty-eight wounded, while the British had eighty-four killed and one hundred and ten wounded.

  Macdonough wrote to Secretary Jones, “The Almighty has been pleased to grant us a signal victory on Lake Champlain.” The surviving British officers came aboard the blood-soaked Saratoga and presented their swords to Macdonough, but he refused to take them, saying, “Gentlemen, return your swords into your scabbards and wear them. You are worthy of them.”

  Macdonough took special care of the British wounded, bringing them to Crab Island initially. He then put the more seriously injured on parole and sent them to their own hospital on Isle aux Noix. Pring reported to Yeo, “I have much satisfaction in making you acquainted with the humane treatment the wounded have received from Commodore Macdonough. They were immediately removed to his own hospital on Crab Island, and were furnished with every requisite. His generous and polite attention also to myself, the officers and men, will ever hereafter be gratefully remembered.” The American and British seamen who died were buried side by side in unmarked graves on Crab Island, while the officers on both sides were buried with great ceremony in Plattsburgh.

  THE SARATOGA HAD 55 round shot in her hull, the Confiance 105. “The enemy’s shot passed principally over our heads,” Macdonough recalled. The Confiance’s poor shooting was a key factor in her defeat, and it was undoubtedly caused by Prevost rushing her into battle before she was ready.

  Macdonough was particularly critical of Lieutenant Henley. He accused him of quitting his station when he did not have to. “He behaved like a brave man,” Macdonough wrote, “[but] . . . he is a stranger; his disposition I take to be malicious.” Macdonough was not the only superior who found Henley incompetent and hateful. In 1812 Captain John Cassin at the Gosport Navy Yard in Virginia had gotten so fed up with him he requested that Henley be transferred, which Secretary Hamilton did, moving him to Lake Champlain.

  WHEN THE NAVAL action started, Prevost began attacking Macomb. Wellington’s generals, Brisbane, Power, and Robinson, saw no difficulty securing victory within a few hours. But when Prevost saw the Linnet strike her colors, he called off the attack and initiated a precipitous retreat, leaving his wounded for Macomb to care for. Prevost wrote to Bathurst, “The disastrous and unlooked for result of the naval contest by depriving me of the only means by which I could avail myself of any advantage I might gain, rendered a perseverance in the attack of the enemy’s position highly imprudent, as well as hazardous.” General Robinson, who disagreed with Prevost in every particular, wrote that “the expectations of His Majesty’s ministers and the people of England will be utterly destroyed in this quarter [unnecessarily].” On the hurried march back to Canada, 234 soldiers were reported as having deserted. The actual number was undoubtedly much higher.

  The Battle of Plattsburgh, like the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War, was a turning point. Macdonough’s wholly unexpected victory and Prevost’s headlong retreat gave an immense boost to Madison’s morale. After the humiliation of Washington, Macdonough’s triumph was desperately needed to counteract the fast-growing defeatism that was spreading across the country. When combined with the successful defense of Baltimore and General Brown’s repulse of the British at Fort Erie, the triumph on Plattsburgh Bay generated renewed hope in Madison and his depressed supporters. It now seemed possible that the British assault on America would be turned back. To be sure, there was still much to worry about. The British had a large army in Canada, a huge fleet offshore, and plans, which were widely suspected in Washington, to invade New Orleans. And Madison had continuing problems raising money and men. Yet there were now solid grounds for believing the country would avert disaster.

  In London, Prime Minister Liverpool and his colleagues would be thunderstruck when they heard the news from Plattsburgh. The British public would be as well. A major reappraisal of Britain’s strategy in North America, however distasteful, would then be called for. Liverpool, the supreme pragmatist, would have to lead the way in what was sure to be a painful process of changing Britain’s fundamental policy toward the United States.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A Peace Treaty

  THE NEWS OF Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and the successful defense of Fort Erie reached London the third week of October 1814 and Ghent shortly thereafter. Henry Clay wrote to Monroe that the victories were of great importance: “for in our own country, my dear sir, at last must we conquer the peace.” Clay made sure that Goulburn received the newspapers giving accounts of the battles.

  The British people were deeply shocked. The defeat of a Royal Navy squadron and the shameful retreat of Wellington’s best troops were astonishing and impossible to believe. After the burning of Washington, the British had been expecting an uninterrupted string of victories. Suddenly, the war against America became hugely unpopular. The urge to punish the United States, while it hadn’t entirely disappeared, was replaced by war fatigue. Liverpool was quick to note the new mood. Continuing to fight in the face of strong public disapproval would be extremely difficult. Asking for more sacrifice from an unwilling country that had been at war for as long as the British had was next to impossible.

  At the same time that Liverpo
ol was suffering setbacks in America, he was facing mounting problems in Europe. In France, Louis XVIII’s government was weak, disunited, and despised. The French military was disaffected; a sudden coup was a constant threat. At the other end of the political spectrum, Jacobins, men out of work, and Republicans in general wanted to subvert the government as well. Paris, and indeed all of France, was ripe for an explosion. A single spark could ignite a crisis in which the royal family would be massacred. The Duke of Wellington, now the British ambassador in Paris, was himself in danger.

  Liverpool had 40,000 troops in Belgium. If France changed regimes, Britain would inevitably be sucked into the maelstrom of another European war. The prime minister wrote to Castlereagh, “You will have heard from many quarters of the combustible state of the interior of France and the expectation of some explosion.... If the war . . . were to be renewed, there is no saying where it would end.”

  Nothing gratifying was happening in Vienna at the great congress to settle Europe’s boundaries either. British and Austrian unwillingness to accept Russian dominion over Poland continued to be the main issue standing in the way of a settlement. Castlereagh’s fundamental objective was to achieve a workable balance of power by creating a strong Prussia in Central Europe allied with a strong Austria to balance France in the west and Russia in the east. Allowing Russia to control all of Poland, Castlereagh believed, would upset the balance. He had already secured support from the powers on other issues Britain regarded as essential to her interests. In the peace treaty signed with Louis XVIII on May 30, the boundaries of France as they existed in 1792 were agreed to with minor modifications, along with an enlarged Holland that included Antwerp and the Scheldt estuary, which was deemed vital to Britain’s security. Having the Prince of Orange as ruler of the new Holland was an added guarantee, as was the promise of marriage between his son and Princess Charlotte, the heir to the British throne. In addition, all maritime issues, such as the rights of neutral countries on the high seas, were excluded from discussion, which was a sine qua non for the British.

  Castlereagh hoped that getting Prussia to side with Britain and Austria would move Czar Alexander to compromise and solve the Polish problem. Prussian minister Hardenberg, Metternich, and Castlereagh preferred dividing Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia to having Russia possess the entire country and bring Russian power into central Europe. In October, Hardenberg kept insisting that in order to break with the czar over Poland, Prussia would need all of Saxony and the fortress city of Mainz. Castlereagh was willing to accept this arrangement, and he succeeded in getting Metternich to grudgingly agree.

  Castlereagh’s hopes for a settlement were dashed, however, when King Frederick William of Prussia, who remained under Alexander’s spell, told Castlereagh that he would not hear of breaking with the czar over the Polish question, even though he did not agree with Alexander on the issue. Thus, the negotiations broke down. By November matters appeared especially bleak. “Unless the Emperor of Russia can be brought to a more moderate and sound course of public conduct,” Castlereagh wrote to Liverpool on November 11, “the peace which we have so dearly purchased will be of short duration.”

  While Liverpool worried about another war in Europe, he saw no hope for success at Ghent. “I see little prospect of our negotiations at Ghent ending in peace,” he wrote to Castlereagh. And he warned about the horrendous expense of another year of fighting. “The continuance of the American war will entail upon us a prodigious expense, much more than we had any idea of.”

  The American conundrum was important enough for Liverpool to hold a full cabinet review on November 3, in preparation for the opening of Parliament. The prime minister pushed the idea of asking—not ordering—the Duke of Wellington to assume command in America. Doing so would solve a number of problems. It would get the duke out of France and out of immediate personal danger. More importantly, after the humiliations at Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and Fort Erie, the duke’s prestige would reinvigorate the army and, indeed, the whole American enterprise. Wellington’s standing with the public was so high that the country would go along with anything he suggested. The cabinet wholeheartedly supported the idea.

  Liverpool wrote to Wellington telling him of the anxiety the cabinet felt for his safety and offering him a choice of either going to Vienna to assist Castlereagh or taking command in America with “full powers to make peace, or to continue the war.” Of course, Liverpool hoped Wellington would choose America. There was nothing for him to do in Vienna. Castlereagh did not need him, and Wellington was well aware of that. He and Castlereagh kept in close touch.

  Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh on November 4, explaining his reasoning: “The Duke of Wellington would restore confidence to the army, place the military operations upon a proper footing, and give us the best chance of peace. I know he is very anxious for the restoration of peace with America if it can be made upon terms at all honorable. It is a material consideration, likewise, that if we shall be disposed for the sake of peace to give up something of our just pretensions, we can do this more creditably through him than through any other person.”

  On November 7, Wellington wrote back to Liverpool that he had no “disinclination” about going to America, although that was hard to believe. But, he emphasized, “you cannot at this moment allow me to quit Europe.... You already know my opinion of the danger at Paris. There are so many discontented people, and there is so little to prevent mischief, that the event may occur on any night; and if it should occur, I don’t think I should be allowed to depart.”

  The duke wrote to Liverpool again on November 9, emphasizing that he did not feel threatened in Paris and that if war broke out in Europe, he would be needed there far more than in America. He admitted that Paris continued to be unstable. He did “not see what means the King [had] of resisting the brisk attack of a few hundred officers, determined to risk everything.... It is impossible . . . to conceive of the distress in which individuals of all descriptions are.”

  Wellington then went on to give a frank appraisal of conditions in North America and how they related to the peace negotiations in Ghent. In the first place, he thought reinforcements already sent to Canada would assure its defense against another American invasion. He would not be needed to defend Canada. The only justification for sending him would be to invade the United States. He had unlimited confidence in his veterans from the Peninsula War; no American army could withstand them, he thought. There was one very large caveat, however. No invasion of America could succeed without command of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. “That which appears to me to be wanting in America,” he wrote, “is not a general, or a general officer and troops, but a naval superiority on the Lakes: till that superiority is acquired, it is impossible, according to my notion, to maintain an army in such a situation as to keep the enemy out of the whole frontier, much less to make any conquest from the enemy. . . . The question is, whether we can obtain this naval superiority on the lakes. If we cannot, I shall do you but little good in America.”

  As to the current negotiations at Ghent, Wellington suggested that Liverpool settle for the status quo ante bellum: “I confess that I think you have no right, from the state of the war, to demand any concession of territory from America.... You have not been able to carry . . . [the war] into the enemy’s territory, notwithstanding your military success and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the point of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power. . . . Why stipulate for uti possidetis [a peace treaty based on land the respective armies occupied]? You can get no territory; indeed, the state of your military operations, however credible, does not entitle you to demand any.”

  It was obvious the duke was not going to America unless formally ordered to, which Liverpool had no intention of doing. Given that fact, and all the pressures, both foreign and domestic, t
he prime minister was confronting, he decided to completely reverse his previous policy and end the war with America as quickly as possible. He wrote a letter to Wellington that must have surprised him. “I can assure you,” the prime minister said, “that we shall be disposed to meet your views upon the points on which the negotiations appears to turn at present.”

  Liverpool then wrote to Castlereagh. “We have under our consideration at present the last American note of their projet of treaty [a proposed treaty], and I think we have determined, if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory.

  “We have been led to this determination by the consideration of the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, and by that of the alarming situation of the interior of France. We have also been obliged to pay serious attention to the state of our finances, and to the difficulties we shall have in continuing the property tax.”

  Liverpool failed to mention the defeats at Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and Fort Erie and how they had turned the public decidedly against continuing the war. If he didn’t know before, he got an earful when Parliament opened on November 8. British debt was the largest in history. Interest alone was now £30 million a year. “After such a contest for twenty years,” he wrote to Wellington, “we must let people taste of the blessings of peace before we can fairly expect to screw them up to a war spirit, even in a just cause.”

  The British negotiators at Ghent had no idea Liverpool was liquidating the war. Goulburn wrote to Bathurst on November 14, “The American projet, I think, evidently shows that we shall have no peace with America unless we accede to their proposition of placing things upon the same footing, in point of privileges as well as rights, as they stood before the war was declared, to which I presume we are not ready to accede.”