The War of 1812

by Donald R Hickey

  21. Andrew Bulger to Robert McDouall, September 7, 1814, McDouall to Gordon Drummond, September 9, 1814, Arthur Sinclair to SN, October 24 and 28, 1814, and Daniel Turner to Sinclair, November 1, 1814, all in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:604–7, 645–49; Gough, Fighting Sail on Lake Huron, 107–20; Gough, Through Water, Ice & Fire: Schooner “Nancy” of the War of 1812 (Toronto, 2006), ch. 5.

  22. James L. Basden to Alexander Stewart, March 13, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 2:352–54; Quimby, U.S. Army, 2:729–33; Glenn Stott, Greater Evils: The War of 1812 in Southwestern Ontario (Arkona, 2001), ch. 10.

  23. Stott, Greater Evils, ch. 13.

  24. Campbell to John Walbach, May 18, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 51.

  25. Narrative of Alexander McMullen, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 2:370.

  26. John B. Campbell to John Walbach, May 18, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 51; Arthur Sinclair to SN, May 19, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:487–89; deposition of Mathias Steele, May 31, 1814, opinion of court of enquiry, June 20, 1814, and Narrative of Alexander McMullen, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:16–18, and 2:369–71; Thomas Talbot to Phineas Riall, May 16, 1814, and Drummond to CG, May 27, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:88–92.

  27. Duncan McArthur to SW, November 18, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:311.

  28. Ibid, 308–12; Stuart A. Rammage, The Militia Stood Alone: Malcolm’s Mills, 6 November 1814 (Summerland, BC, 2000); McAfee, History of the Late War, 482–89.

  29. Quoted in Donald E. Graves, “’I have a handsome little army . . .’: A Re-Examination of Winfield Scott’s Army at Buffalo in 1814,” in R. Arthur Bowler, ed., War along the Niagara: Essays on the War of 1812 and Its Legacy (Youngstown, NY, 1991), 43.

  30. Donald E. Graves, Red Coats & Grey Jackets: The Battle of Chippawa, 5 July 1814 (Toronto, 1994), 65–67.

  31. Jacob Brown to SW, July 6, 1814, and Brown, “Memoranda of . . . the Campaign on the Niagara in 1814,” 1–7, in Brown Papers (LC); Peter B. Porter to Daniel Tompkins, July 3, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:26; Graves, Red Coats & Grey Jackets, 67–94; Carl Benn, The Iroquois in the War of 1812 (Toronto, 1998), 160–63.

  32. Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, 2 vols. (New York, 1864), 1: 129. Scott is the source for this widely quoted remark. Where he heard it is unknown, but it is now firmly entrenched in army legend.

  33. Jacob Brown to SW, July 7, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 59; Brown, “Memoranda of . . . the Campaign on the Niagara in 1814,” 8–24, in Brown Papers (LC); Thomas Jesup, “Memoir of the Campaigns on the Niagara,” in Jesup Papers (LC); Phineas Riall to Gordon Drummond, July 6, 1814, and Peter B. Porter to W. L. Stone, May 26, 1840, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:31–32, and 2:362–65; Jeffrey Kimball, “The Battle of Chippewa: Infantry Tactics in the War of 1812,” Military Affairs 31 (Winter, 1967–68), 169–86; Graves, Red Coats & Grey Jackets, chs. 8–10 and Appendices A–B.

  34. See Hickey, Don’t Give Up the Ship, 72–73.

  35. Jacob Brown to Isaac Chauncey, July 13, 1814, in Brown Papers (LC); Brown to SW, July 25, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:553.

  36. Chauncey to Jacob Brown, August 10, 1814, in ND (M125), reel 38. See also Chauncey to SN, August 10, 1814 (2 letters), ibid.; Brown to SW, July 25, 1814, in Brown Papers (LC).

  37. This exchange was witnessed by Captain David B. Douglass. See John T. Horton, ed., “An Original Narrative of the Niagara Campaign of 1814,” Niagara Frontier 11 (1964), 18; and Donald E. Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead! The Battle of Lundy’s Lane, 1814, rev. ed. (Toronto, 1997), 294n44. This is now the motto of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Infantry Regiment.

  38. Letter from Halifax newspaper, reprinted in Niles’ Register 7 (February 25, 1815), 410.

  39. Letter of James Miller, July 28, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:105.

  40. Jacob Brown to SW, [August 7, 1814], in WD (M221), reel 59; Brown to Judge Barker, August 7, 1814, in Brown Papers (LC); Brown, “Memoranda of . . . the Campaign on the Niagara in 1814,” 24–50, in Brown Papers (LC); Jesup, “Memoir of the Campaigns on the Niagara,” in Jesup Papers (LC); letter of James Miller, July 28, 1814, and Gordon Drummond to CG, July 27, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:87–92, 105–6; Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead, chs. 6–12.

  41. Richard V. Barbuto, Niagara 1814: America Invades Canada (Lawrence, 2000), 234–44; Joseph Whitehorne, While Washington Burned: The Battle for Fort Erie 1814 (Baltimore, 1992), 41–49.

  42. John Tucker to Henry Conran, August 4, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:120.

  43. Gordon Drummond to CG, August 4, 1814, and John Tucker to Henry Conran, August 4, 1814, ibid., 116, 120; Lodowick Morgan to Jacob Brown, August 5, 1814, in Brannan, Official Letters, 383–84; Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead, 214.

  44. Alexander Dobbs to James Yeo, August 13, 1814, Edmund P. Kennedy to SN, August 15, 1814, and Augustus Conckling to Kennedy, August 16, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:588–91.

  45. Secret Orders of August 14, 1815, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:139–41.

  46. Edmund P. Gaines to SW, August 23, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 61.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Gordon Drummond to CG, August 15, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:142.

  49. Jesup, “Memoir of the Campaigns on the Niagara,” in Jesup Papers (LC); Gordon Drummond to CG, August 15, 1814, and Eleazar W. Ripley to Edmund P. Gaines, August 17, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:141–44, 156–58; Gaines to SW, August 23, 1814, in Brannan, Official Letters, 394–99; Ernest A. Cruikshank, “Drummond’s Night Assault upon Fort Erie, August 15–16, 1814,” in Zaslow, Defended Border, 154–64; Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead, 215–21; Barbuto, Niagara 1814, 247–53.

  50. Brown to SW, September 29, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 59,

  51. Jacob Brown to SW, September 29, 1814, and Peter B. Porter to Brown, September 22, 1814, ibid.; Gordon Drummond to CG, August 21, and September 2 and 17, 1814, and Louis de Watteville to Drummond, September 19, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:183, 190–91, 201–4; Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead, 225–27; Barbuto, Niagara 1814, 273–79.

  52. Jesup, “Memoir of the Campaigns on the Niagara,” in Jesup Papers (LC).

  53. Brown to Daniel Tompkins, September 20, 1814, in Brown Papers (LC).

  54. Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead, 222–23.

  55. Barbuto, Niagara 1814, 286–96.

  56. Christopher Myers to [Gordon Drummond], October 19, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:224–26; Donald E. Graves, ed., Merry Hearts Make Light Days: The War of 1812 Journal of Lieutenant John Le Couteur, 104th Foot, (Ottawa, 1993), [October 20,1814], 209; Barbuto, Niagara 1814, 296–301.

  57. George Izard to SW, November 8, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 62; Whitehorne, While Washington Burned, 88–89.

  58. For this important change, see John R. Grodzinski, “The Constraints of Strategy: Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost as Commander-in-Chief of British North America during the War of 1812” (PhD dissertation, Royal Military College of Canada, 2010), 218–19; Robert Malcomson, Lords of the Lake: The Naval War on Lake Ontario, 1812–1814 (Annapolis, 1998), 242–43.

  59. Robert Malcomson, “HMS St. Lawrence: The Freshwater First-Rate,” Mariner’s Mirror 83 (November, 1997), 419–33; Malcomson, Lords of the Lake, 341–42; Malcomson to author, July 29, 2006. Malcomson is the source for the figures presented here. See also C. Winton-Clare [R.C. Anderson], “A Shipbuilder’s War,” Mariner’s Mirror 29 (July, 1943), 139–48; and Nicholas Blake and Richard Lawrence, The Illustrated Companion to Nelson’s Navy (Mechanicsburg, 2000), 25.

  60. George Mitchell to Jacob Brown, May 8, 1814, and Brown to SW, May 9, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 51; Gordon Drummond to CG, May 7, 1814, and James Yeo to FSA, May 9, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:52–57, 61–63; Rufus McIntire to John Holmes, May 9, 1814, in John C. Fredriksen, ed., The War of 1812 in Person: Fifteen Accounts by United States Army Regulars, Volunteers and Militi
amen (Jefferson, 2010), 129–32; Richard V. Barbuto, Long Range Guns, Close Quarter Combat: The Third United States Artillery Regiment in the War of 1812 (Youngstown, NY, 2010), 77–85.

  61. Stephen Popham to James Yeo, June 1, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:509–10; Melancthon Woolsey to Isaac Chauncey, June 1, 1814, and Chauncey to SN, June 2, 1814, in ND (M125), reel 37; William Carpenter to Peter B. Porter, June 1, 1814, in Porter Papers (BEHS), reel 3; Gordon Drummond to CG, June 2, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:73–75.

  62. N.W. Hibbard to A. Hunt, February 10, 1859, and Nat Frame, “The Battle of Sandy Creek, and the Carrying of the Cables for the Superior,” in Transactions of the Jefferson County Historical Society 3 (1895), 29–31, 38–40; Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book, 800–801; Patrick Wilder, Seaway Trail Guidebook to the War of 1812 (Oswego, 1987), 57–59.

  63. Quoted in C. P. Lucas, The Canadian War of 1812 (London, 1906), 196–97.

  64. [Frederick Robinson] to Merry, September 22, 1814, in Francis Bickley, ed., Report on the Manuscripts of Earl Bathurst, Preserved at Cirencester Park (London, 1923), 291; SSWC to CG, June 3, 1814, in J. Mackay Hitsman, The Incredible War of 1812: A Military History (1965; updated by Donald E. Graves, Toronto, 1999), 289–90.

  65. Allan S. Everest, The War of 1812 in the Champlain Valley (Syracuse, 1981), 161–62.

  66. SW to George Izard, July 27 and August 12, 1814, in Izard, Official Correspondence, 64–65, 69–71. See also SW to Jacob Brown, August 16, 1814, in Brown Papers (LC).

  67. General Orders of September 5, 1814, in Plattsburgh Republican, September 24, 1814.

  68. Macomb to SW, September 15, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 64. See also Macomb to SW, September 8, 1814, ibid.

  69. Alexander Macomb to SW, September 15, 1814, ibid.

  70. For the capture of the Eagle and Growler, see chapter 6: The Campaign of 1813.

  71. Testimony of Henry Cox, in Wood, British Documents, 3:421; Roosevelt, Naval War, 2:109–15.

  72. Niles’ Register 7 (October 1, 1814), 48.

  73. Mahon, War of 1812, 324–25; Roosevelt, Naval War, 2:128.

  74. Quoted in Matilda Edgar, Ten Years of Upper Canada in Peace and War, 1805–1815 (Toronto, 1890), 324.

  75. James Robertson to Daniel Pring, September 12, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:374.

  76. Thomas Macdonough to SN, September 11, 1814, in ND (M125), reel 39. See also Charles Budd to Macdonough, September 13, 1814, and Macdonough to SN, September 13, 1814, ibid.; Daniel Pring to James Yeo, September 12, 1814, James Robertson to Pring, September 12, 1814, and statement of Robertson, in Wood, British Documents, 3:368–77, 468–75; Rodney Macdonough, Life of Commodore Thomas Macdonough, U.S. Navy (Boston, 1909), 157–93; Everest, War of 1812 in the Champlain Valley, 179–85; Michael J. Crawford, “The Battle of Lake Champlain,” in Charles E. Brodine, Jr., et al., Against All Odds: U.S. Sailors in the War of 1812 (Washington, DC, 2004), 53–72.

  77. [Frederick Robinson] to Merry, September 22, 1814, in Bickley, Manuscripts of Earl Bathurst, 292; David G. Fitz-Enz, The Final Invasion: Plattsburgh, the War of 1812’s Most Decisive Battle (New York, 2001), 165–67.

  78. Quoted in Everest, War of 1812 in the Champlain Valley, 187.

  79. Alexander Macomb to SW, September 12 and 15, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 64; CG to SSWC, September 22, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:364–66; Everest, War of 1812 in the Champlain Valley, 185–90; Donald E. Graves, “‘The Finest Army Ever to Campaign on American Soil?’ The Organization, Strength, Composition, and Losses of British Land Forces during the Plattsburgh Campaign, September 1814,” Journal of the War of 1812 8 (Fall-Winter, 2003), 6–13

  80. SSWC to Henry Goulburn, September 1, 1814, in Goulburn Papers (UM), reel 1; Dudley Mills, “The Duke of Wellington and the Peace Negotiations at Ghent in 1814,” Canadian Historical Review 2 (March, 1921), 22.

  81. Alicia Cockburn to Charles Sandys, October 20, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:387–88; London Morning Chronicle, November 18, 1814. See also speech of Samuel Whitbread, November 18, 1814, in Parliamentary Debates, 29:364–65; The Annual Register . . . for the Year 1814 [General History], (London, 1815), 191; LL to FS, October 21, 1814, in Duke of Wellington, ed., Dispatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of Field Marshall Arthur, Duke of Wellington, 15 vols. (London, 1858–72), 9:367.

  82. AC, 13–3, 23, 387, 1962–63; Macdonough, Thomas Macdonough, 193.

  83. Quoted in Glenn Tucker, Poltroons and Patriots: A Popular Account of the War of 1812, 2 vols. (Indianpolis, 1954), 2:636. Macdonough had actually been promoted from lieutenant to master commandant in July 1813.

  84. Proclamation of Alexander Cochrane, April 25, 1814, in Niles’ Register 6 (May 14, 1814), 182–83; Wade G. Dudley, Splintering the Wooden Wall: The British Blockade of the United States, 1812–1815 (Annapolis, 2003), 117–18.

  85. Proclamation of James Madison, June 29, 1814, in Carlton Savage, Policy of the United States toward Maritime Commerce in War, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1934–36), 1:287–88. See also SS to American commissioners and ministers, May 24, 1814, in SD (M77), reel 2.

  86. Nettels, Emergence of a National Economy, 385, 396.

  87. Ibid., 399.

  88. For more on the war economy, see chapter 9: The Crisis of 1814.

  89. Niles’ Register 6 (July 9, 1814), 317.

  90. Ibid.

  91. William Williams to John Cotton Smith, April 9, 1814, and Selectmen of Saybrook to Smith, April 12, 1814, in Thompson R. Harlow et al., eds., John Cotton Smith Papers, 7 vols. (Hartford, 1948–67), 2:226–28, 235; Naval Chronicle 32 (July-December, 1814), 171.

  92. See James Tertius de Kay, The Battle of Stonington: Torpedoes, Submarines, and Rockets in the War of 1812 (Annapolis, 1990), chs. 1, 10–12.

  93. Hartford Connecticut Courant, August 16 and September 6, 1814; Reginald Horsman, “Nantucket’s Peace Treaty with England in 1814,” New England Quarterly 54 (June, 1981), 180–98; Edward Byers, The Nation of Nantucket: Society and Politics in an Early American Commercial Center, 1660–1820 (Boston, 1987), 277–89. The war ended before any of the Nantucket prisoners were released.

  94. Walter M. Whitehill, ed., New England Blockaded in 1814: The Journal of Henry Edward Napier (Salem, 1938) (July 9, 1814), 33; John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, From the Revolution to the Civil War, 8 vols. (New York, 1883–1913), 4:134.

  95. Proclamation of John O. Creighton, October 8, 1814, in NASP: NA, 4:246. See also Niles’ Register 7 (November 19, 1814), 167–68.

  96. Whitehill, Journal of Henry Edward Napier (May 29, 1814), 18.

  97. See Andrew Pilkington to John Sherbrooke, July 12, 1814, and Articles of Capitulation for the Surrender of Moose Island, July 12, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3: 301–3, 305–7; Perley Putnam to Henry Dearborn, July 12, 1814, and John Brewer to SW, July 16, 1814, in WD (M221), reels 59 and 61; Stanley, War of 1812, 363–69; Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book, 890.

  98. Quoted in Barry J. Lohnes, “A New Look at the Invasion of Eastern Maine, 1814,” Maine Historical Society Quarterly 15 (Summer, 1975), 9.

  99. Charles Morris to SN, September 8 and 20, 1814, in ND (M125), reel 39; John Sherbrooke to SSWC, September 10, 1814, Henry John to Sherbrooke, September 3, 1814, Robert Barrie to Edward Griffith, September 3, 1814, and Andrew Pilkington to Sherbrooke, September 14, 1814, in Wood, British Documents, 3:308–18, 323–27, 329–31; William D. Williamson, The History of the State of Maine, 2 vols. (Hallowell, 1832), 2:640–51.

  100. Proclamation of John Sherbrooke and Edward Griffith, September 21, 1814, in Niles’ Register 7 (October 29, 1814), 117–18; Williamson, History of Maine, 2:650–53; John Abbott, The History of Maine (Boston, 1875), 420–23.

  101. Salem Essex Register, August 3, 1814.

  102. Caleb Strong to SW, December 9, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 66.

  103. SW to Henry Dearborn, November 14 (filed under November 22) and December 19, 1814, SW to Caleb Strong, December 1, 1814, and SW to William King, Janua
ry 2, 1815, in WD (M6), reels 7 and 8; SW to King, December 26, 1814, in WD (M7), reel 1; Strong to Harrison G. Otis, Thomas H. Perkins, and William Sullivan, January 31, 1815, in Otis Papers (MHS); Lohnes, “Invasion of Eastern Maine,” 17; Williamson, History of Maine, 2:653–54.

  104. SSWC and CG, quoted in Adams, History, 2:997–98. See also CG to Cochrane, July 30, 1814, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 1:176–77.

  105. Cochrane to commanding officers (two letters), July 18, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:140–41.

  106. Joshua Barney, Defence of the Chesapeake Bay, July 4, 1813, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 2:373–76. Quotation from p. 374.

  107. AC, 13–1, 2680; SN to Joshua Barney, August 20 and 27, 1813, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 2:376–78.

  108. Donald G. Shomette, Flotilla: The Patuxent Naval Campaign in the War of 1812, rev. ed. (Baltimore, 2009), ch. 3.

  109. Robert Barrie to George Cockburn, June 1 and 11, 1814, and Joshua Barney to SN, June 3, 9, 11, and August 21, 1814, and Cockburn to Alexander Cochrane, August 23, 1814, all in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:76–81, 84–85, 88–91, 194–97; Decius Wadsworth to SW, June 26, 1814, in WD (M221), reel 67; Shomette, Flotilla, chs. 5–6, 9, and 18.

  110. Georgetown Federal Republican, August 11, 1814.

  111. Armstrong, quoted in John P. Van Ness to Richard M. Johnson, November 23, 1814, in ASP: MA, 1:581.

  112. Letter of John Armstrong, October 17, 1814, in ASP: MA, 1:539.

  113. Edward Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr., 1758–1843: A Biography (Syracuse, 1981), 187–90. See also John S. Williams, History of the Invasion and Capture of Washington (New York, 1857), 15–123.

  114. John Harvey to Edward Baynes, June 11, 1813, in Cruikshank, Niagara Frontier, 6:68; General Order of July 2, 1814, in ASP: MA, 1:549; Adams, History, 2:996.

  115. Skeen, John Armstrong, 191–97; Walter Lord, The Dawn’s Early Light (New York, 1972), 22–27.

  116. Joseph Nourse to George Cockburn, July 23, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:159.

  117. Alexander Cochrane to George Cockburn, August 22, 1814, in Dudley and Crawford, Naval War, 3:197.