by Mark Zuehlke
Although Drummond worried that he had insufficient men to defend Upper Canada, he was confident that the Fort Oswego raid would succeed. Spies reported the small fort only recently occupied by 290 regulars, and that it was here most of the guns intended for Superior had been delivered by river for transport to Sackets Harbor. Capturing the guns would render the large ship toothless.
On May 5, Yeo’s fleet hove to off Fort Oswego in the middle of a heavy gale that prohibited landing until the following morning. With the ship’s guns pounding the fortress, about 750 redcoats, marines, and sailors—armed with nothing but pikes—stormed ashore. They advanced up a long, steep hill swept by cannon fire without pause, but losing 18 killed and 73 wounded before the crest was gained and the American commander withdrew into the countryside. He reported 6 dead, 38 wounded, and 28 missing. To Yeo’s frustration only seven long guns were found, the majority of Superior’s cannon having not arrived. But he was able to carry these guns off along with 2,400 barrels of welcome provisions.
Soon receiving word that Superior’s guns had arrived at Oswego Falls and the Americans were planning to move them by boat to Sackets Harbor, Yeo set up a close blockade of the American base. On May 20, Chauncey lamented to Washington that five British ships stood offshore “completely blocking both passes …. This is the first time that I have experienced the mortification of being blockaded on the lakes.”26
At Oswego, Master Commandant Melancthon Woolsey fretfully bided his time, seeking opportunity to slip past the blockade with gun-laden bateaux. He had twenty-one long 32-pounder guns, thirteen smaller cannon, and ten heavy cables for Superior aboard nineteen boats. On the night of May 28–29, Woolsey set out and by daybreak was 20 miles from Oswego with eighteen boats. Of the other boat there was no sign. Gingerly the party moved slowly along the lakeshore, putting another 10 miles behind them during the morning. Just 8 miles from Sackets Harbor they took shelter in the mouth of Sandy Creek, and Woolsey sent for marines to escort them in.
The missing boat had been captured by the British during the night, and under questioning the crew betrayed the operation. Consequently Commander Stephen Popham was prowling the shoreline with three gunboats and several smaller craft. Aboard were 200 Royal Navy personnel. Spotting the masts of the American boats well up Sandy Creek on the morning of May 30, Popham decided to capture them by advancing up the creek by land—despite Yeo’s long-standing directive prohibiting entering creeks to capture suspected stores for fear of ambush. Popham was confident that he enjoyed numerical superiority. But Woolsey had not sailed with just the men crewing the boats. He also had 130 regulars and 120 Oneida Indians, who had advanced alongside the boats on foot. Also that morning a force of marines and dragoons from Sackets Harbor arrived and established a defensive position between the creek mouth and the boats. Popham led his men right into the kind of ambush Yeo feared. Fourteen men were killed, 28 wounded in short order. Popham surrendered the rest.
The American boats slipped into harbour and the guns were hoisted aboard Superior. Maintaining the blockade would only expose the British ships to possible attack, so Drummond and Yeo abandoned it. Yeo was in low spirits. The capture of Popham’s gunboats was a setback, but not as serious as the loss of men. These could not be replaced. Another misstep, Yeo feared, would give the Americans supremacy. Better, he decided with Drummond’s concurrence, to husband his fleet so that it remained capable of carrying out whatever campaign orders Prevost might direct. Drummond cautioned Yeo to do nothing to jeopardize his fleet. Eventually the ship of the line would be completed and then “you may bring the naval contest on this Lake fairly to issue, or by a powerful combined Expedition (if the Enemy, as is probable, should decline meeting you on the lake) we may attack and destroy him in his stronghold.”27
While the British went back on the defensive, the Americans frittered away the spring deciding what part of Canada to attack. Armstrong realized any advantage the United States enjoyed was likely to disappear sometime in the summer. On April 30, he proposed that Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown assemble 5,000 regulars and 3,000 militia and volunteers on Lake Erie, to be ferried to the Canadian shore and then marched on Burlington Heights and York. Once these two objectives were captured, the British would be cut off from their Indian allies and forced to evacuate the Niagara Peninsula.
Madison was reluctant to endorse the operation. Reports from Lake Ontario showed that the British fleet was at least for now supreme. How could Brown concentrate troops anywhere along its shores without exposing them to combined attack by British troops and ships? Especially as American intelligence indicated that Drummond had 5,000 redcoats on the lake that could “be moved at pleasure by their fleet.”
Ignoring the president’s concerns, Armstrong fired off instructions to Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott, who commanded the Lake Erie front, outlining the campaign rather than sending it through channels first to Brown in Sackets Harbor. At the same time as he authorized Scott to “go to Burlington and destroy the land communication” with York, Armstrong asked Brown what forces he could move to support Scott’s operation. Brown was incensed and Scott embarrassed by this breach of protocol.28
The secretary of war quickly confessed his impetuosity, but he never told Brown that his orders had been issued without presidential approval. After some minor fussing over details, however, Madison could do little but approve Armstrong’s scheme and hope that Chauncey would prove able to support the operation with his fleet. The only serious change made to the plan was that Maj. Gen. George Izard’s army at Plattsburgh would march toward Montreal in a feint to pin Prevost’s forces there while Brown carried off the Upper Canada attack. Armstrong, however, either forgot or omitted to issue any instructions to Izard, so the feint never transpired—an oversight that Yeo later declared an act of such “extreme stupidity” that it cost the Americans the war.29
The always strained relationship between Madison and Armstrong was breaking into open animosity. In a directive to all executive “heads of departments,” Madison issued the clear reminder that in the United States there was no such thing as government by cabinet. He was commander in chief, the others merely advisers and functionaries. On June 7, Madison demanded an accounting from Armstrong and Jones on the precise numbers of American land and naval forces and their distribution, with comparative estimates of British forces.
Armstrong, who had been tossing about figures in the many thousands, dourly confessed that he had 20,000 effectives and about 7,000 recruits expected to report any day. But the effectives were draining away as thousands of one-year men headed home. Half of the effectives were required for coastal defence. On the Niagara frontier were 2,121 men, about 5,000 were with Izard at Lake Champlain, and Brown had 3,000 concentrated at Sackets Harbor. The recruits were to be divided so that 4,000 went to Izard, 3,000 to Brown.
Looking at these grim numbers, Madison said Brown’s attempt to capture Burlington Heights would have to “depend on Commodore Chauncey’s gaining the command of the lake.” In the meantime, while the army waited for Chauncey to finish constructing Superior, Armstrong was to instruct Brown to establish a toehold on the Niagara Peninsula by capturing Fort Erie and the bridge over Chippawa Creek, near Niagara Falls. Success in these two ventures would enable him to seize Fort George and gain access to Lake Ontario for further operations in concert with Chauncey’s fleet. Capture of Burlington Heights and York should then follow. And that was the sum of the proposed campaign in Canada for 1814. If successful, Madison admitted, it was hardly going to pressure the British to negotiate on American terms.
Not that Madison had any idea what was transpiring across the Atlantic, for there had been little but silence from the commissioners there since Clay and Russell sailed from New York City. A few letters from individual members had trickled in aboard this or that ship, giving the impression that they were to have assembled in Gothenburg sometime in May. When negotiations would finally begin was anybody’s guess. For all the president knew, the negotiations migh
t have already failed. Had the instructions Madison and Monroe given to Clay and Russell been too confident and demanding? Over two days in June—the 23rd and 24th—Madison and his five-man executive discussed what they should seek in a treaty.
Britain’s ending impressment would no longer be an ultimatum, they agreed, but the subject must somehow be addressed in the treaty even if only to refer the issue and that of commerce to a separate negotiation. Deferment of major grievances and issues such as those regarding fisheries and Louisiana’s boundaries could be deferred if an article stating that “the essential causes of the war between the United States and Great Britain, and particularly the practice of impressment, have ceased” were inserted to explain the deferment.30 Begging to be asked was how such a treaty could justify having gone to war at all. And there was the worrisome point that the British commissioners might logically wonder why, if the causes of the war no longer existed, they should be mentioned in a treaty. But without such a clause America would have to admit that the war had failed in its purpose.
These new instructions were incorporated into a dispatch on June 25 that was to be carried to Europe aboard France’s Olivier, whose sailing the French minister Louis Sérurier had delayed for this purpose. The next day, however, Monroe requested that its sailing be again delayed as a communiqué written by Albert Gallatin and James Bayard, who reported they were in London and soon on their way via Amsterdam to Gothenburg, had arrived. Its news disturbed Madison and his executive, for it seemed peace on anything resembling American terms might be impossible. In fact, the British might not wish to negotiate at all.
TWENTY
Great Obstacles to Accommodation
APRIL–JULY 1814
Albert Gallatin had gone to London on April 9 as a private citizen rather than a government representative soon after he and Bayard concluded their 1,500-mile trek from St. Petersburg. Lacking anything better to do, Bayard tagged along. London streets thronged with jubilant crowds. Just three days before, Napoleon had abdicated. Gallatin’s son, James, thought the city dull after Paris and St. Petersburg. He also found their position “not a very pleasant one; we have many kind invitations, and I think all mean to be civil and kind, but there is always a feeling of constraint …. The only house where we seem to be really welcome is Mr. Baring’s.”
Despite the chilly treatment, Gallatin proposed shifting the negotiations from Gothenburg to London so that he could “be in direct touch with Lord Castlereagh.”1 Alexander Baring, still acting as an unofficial conduit, reported that British peace commissioners would be appointed only when the U.S. commissioners were officially announced and a location agreed. As the political landscape of Europe had undergone an abrupt change, Castlereagh no longer considered Gothenburg appropriate. Rather, London or someplace in the Netherlands would better suffice.2 Unspoken was the fact that either location ensured the British cabinet, particularly Castlereagh and Lord Bathurst, could easily follow the course of negotiations.
Both Gallatin and Bayard were alarmed that rather than being weary of war, “the English people eagerly wish that their pride may be fully gratified by what they call the ‘punishment of America.’ ” Gallatin noted in a letter to Washington. “They do not even suspect that we had any just cause of war, and ascribe it solely to a premeditated concert with Bonaparte at a time when we thought him triumphant and their cause desperate.” He was little surprised, as various Federalist congressmen and senators had fed this view in speeches and editorials. While Gallatin was sure that Lord Liverpool’s cabinet did not share this belief, “it will certainly require an effort on their part against popular feeling to make peace with America. It must be added that even there a belief is said to be entertained that a continuance of the war would produce a separation of the Union, and perhaps a return of the New England states to the mother-country.” While the government would certainly move to reduce “the immense military and naval establishments” built up during the war with France so that war taxes could be cancelled, “a prosecution of the war against the United States would afford a convenient pretence for preserving a much more considerable standing force than is necessary and would otherwise be allowed by Parliament.”3
In an April 20 letter, Bayard echoed Gallatin’s concern. The “great augmentation of their disposable force presents an added temptation to prosecute the war. You must also know that the temper of the country is highly excited against us and decidedly expressed in favor of the continuance of hostilities.”4
“The numerous English forces in France, Italy, Holland, and Portugal,” warned Gallatin, “ready for immediate service, and for which there is no further employment in Europe, afford to this government the means of sending both to Canada and to the United States a very formidable army, which we are not prepared to meet with any regular, well-organized force; and they will also turn against us as much of their superabundant naval forces as they may think adequate to any object they have in view.”5
Bayard and Gallatin expressed these anxieties in a joint letter to James Monroe on May 6. Requiring that the British agree to end impressment would assure failure, they insisted. “We think that … for our government the alternative only remains either to resolve on a vigorous prosecution of the war under an expectation of probable success or to forego for the present the assertion of our rights on what was the principal remaining object of the war.” They urged Washington to agree to negotiate in England or, if that was unacceptable, somewhere in Holland.6
Gallatin was uneasy over the seeming lack of urgency that prevailed among Liverpool’s cabinet members. Even when dining privately with Gallatin, Bathurst remained “stiff and formal.” On April 30, a Saturday, he and James dined with Liverpool, but the prime minister never allowed the discussion to stray toward business.7
“Unfortunately, whilst the greater part of the civilized world rejoices at the restoration of a general peace, the United States alone remains at war, and are placed in a more critical situation than ever they were since the first years of their revolution. Pride, avarice, and ambition will throw here great obstacles to an accommodation for which there has ever been, on our part, the sincerest disposition,” Gallatin wrote his friend the Marquis de Lafayette.8 He could imagine that the British deliberately stalled in anticipation of military successes over the summer campaign. Each day passed could reduce the American commissioner.’ negotiating power.
Clay responded from Gothenburg. Russell was in Stockholm presenting credentials to the Swedish court. He had no news of John Quincy Adams’s whereabouts save that he was en route from St. Petersburg to Stockholm and expected in early May. About the change of venue, Clay would agree to relocate to Holland only if the Swedish government were notified that this was “at the instance of Great Britain.” As to negotiating in London, Clay refused “to submit to further condescension, especially when we have yet to see in British history the example of their haughty people having been conciliated by the condescension of their enemy … we shall best promote the objects of our mission and acquit ourselves of our duty by preserving a firm and undismayed countenance.”9
Clay forwarded papers officially accrediting the five American commissioners, which Gallatin and Bayard presented to Bathurst on May 16 along with a proposal that the negotiations transpire either at Amsterdam or The Hague. Bathurst countered with the old Flemish capital of Ghent. Recently liberated from French rule, the Flemish provinces were about to unite with Holland. The two men replied that Ghent was acceptable to them as Gothenburg had been. They would advise the other commissioners “to repair immediately to Ghent.” Bathurst assured them that the Prince Regent would promptly appoint his commissioners.10
When Adams, prevented from sailing from Reval, Estonia, to Stockholm for two weeks by unfavourable winds, arrived on May 25 and learned of this change, he was infuriated. He thought the journey to Sweden from Russia a wasted effort. On May 28, he wrote Monroe from Stockholm: “I cannot entertain a doubt that our conferences, wherever held, will be a
rrested at the threshold by an utter impossibility of agreement upon the basis of negotiation.”11
Resigned to going through the motions, Adams hastened to Gothenburg, where on June 6 he found Clay had departed for Ghent five days earlier via coastal packet to Copenhagen and then overland coach. Clay had left John Adams to transport Adams and Russell, who reached the city four days later. In the early hours of June 12, the ship sailed on a fair breeze.12
From London, Gallatin reported to Monroe that Bayard had left London on May 23 with plans to visit Paris before proceeding to Ghent. Gallatin remained, fretfully waiting for word from Castlereagh as to when the British commissioners would travel to Ghent. Although the Prince Regent had confirmed three commissioners proposed by the foreign secretary, there was no sign they were going to depart any time soon. On June 9, Gallatin advised Castlereagh that Clay had departed Gothenburg, Adams and Russell would soon leave Sweden, Bayard was gone. All that held him in London was a desire to know when the British commissioners would repair to Ghent. The note languished at the Foreign Office for more than a week before one of Castlereagh’s undersecretaries replied that he expected the British commissioners to depart London about the first of July. Satisfied that he had done all possible to hurry the British along, Gallatin and James left for Paris on June 21 with plans to remain there a week.
