by Mark Zuehlke
Three of Drummond’s six siege guns were disabled. He also lost 115 soldiers killed, 178 wounded, and 316 missing. The Americans counted 79 dead and 432 wounded or missing. But they had checked Drummond’s efforts.21 To Prevost on September 21, Drummond reported that because of sickness amongthe troops and “their situation … of such extreme wretchedness from the torrents of rain … I feel it to be my duty no longer to persevere in a vain attempt to maintain a blockade of so vastly a superior and increasing force of the enemy.”22 Drummond lifted the siege and retreated to the Chippawa that night.
The Americans, reinforced by 3,500 men under command of Maj. Gen. George Izard, who had marched overland for weeks from Lake Champlain to reach Brown, now numbered 6,300. This was the strongest and undoubtedly most efficient force the United States had yet managed to deploy inside Canada. With Izard in command, they set off on September 28 in pursuit of Drummond, who could do little but delay them by destroying bridges as he surrendered ground without offering a fight. Soon the Americans were again camped at Sandy Creek, intent on forcing the Chippawa the next morning. In a few days Izard expected to carry Fort George with supporting fire from Chauncey’s fleet.
Once again fortune turned against the Americans. Commodore Yeo hoisted his flag aboard the mighty 120-gun St. Lawrence and Chauncey immediately fled to the safety of Sackets Harbor. The lake was again British.
In despair, fearful that his line could easily be turned by amphibious forces if he ventured anywhere near Lake Ontario, Izard straggled back to Fort Erie. On November 5, he blew up the fort and crossed to Buffalo. From there he wrote Armstrong that his health was failing and to endure a northern winter might be his death. He headed south to recuperate. America’s last campaign against Canada was over.23
It had been Armstrong’s ill-advised decision to send Izard from Lake Champlain. His fixation on the Niagara region led him to disregard Izard’s warning that the Champlain corridor was being left open, a route used over hundreds of years by native, French, British, and American forces to attack either the St. Lawrence region or upstate New York. “I will make the movement you direct,” Izard wrote on July 27, “but the lately erected works at Plattsburg and Cumberland Head will, in less than three days after my departure, be in the possession of the enemy.” Izard had offered a spoiling attack on Montreal to pin British forces that might otherwise be transferred to Niagara, but Armstrong dismissed his fears. On August 29, Izard had dutifully marched off at the head of 4,000 men. Left behind were 1,500 regulars and a matching number of militia and volunteers commanded by Brig. Gen. Alexander Macomb.24
It seemed incomprehensible that Armstrong would order the Champlain garrison reduced by more than half its strength when July had seen the British take the offensive along the American coast and from Nova Scotia into Maine. First there had been the expedition early in the month from Halifax against the long-disputed Passamaquoddy Bay that resulted in Eastport on Moose Island being quickly captured and the eighty-eight-man garrison there taken prisoner. The bay was declared annexed to New Brunswick.
More astounding was Armstrong’s failure to countermand his orders after August 18, when a large British fleet entered Chesapeake Bay with about 4,000 troops aboard. Half of these men were Peninsular veterans, and their commander, Maj. Gen. Robert Ross, had been one of Wellington’s best officers. During July this force had gathered in Bermuda. On August 3, they boarded ships commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. Ross’s instructions from Lord Bathurst had been simple: he was to “effect a diversion on the coasts of the United States of America in favour of the army employed in the defence of Upper and Lower Canada.”25
While Cochrane was in overall command, he left coordination of the naval and army units to Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn. The forty-two-year-old Cockburn had garnered much experience raiding the American coast and was Cochrane’s favourite for such ventures. Five years older than Cockburn, Ross had never served in North America. He had little idea what resistance to expect or how the landscape would influence events, so he relied on Cockburn’s strategic and tactical advice. Cockburn’s plan was audacious. He would deliver a blow that would realize the very worst of President James Madison’s fears—a dual attack against Washington and Baltimore.26
Neither Cockburn nor Cochrane intended to spare these cities from destruction. They well remembered the winter devastation of the Niagara Peninsula, and in late May an American force had crossed Lake Erie to burn the village of Port Dover. Even though an American court of enquiry had disavowed this destruction of private property and the government was at pains to deny that the burning of villages on the Niagara Peninsula had been officially sanctioned, the British Admiralty formally approved a general order from Cochrane to “lay waste” to towns whenever possible. Unarmed civilians were to be spared, but anyone resisting was fair game. Cochrane hoped to frighten the coastal populace into neutrality, but it cleared the decks for Cockburn and other naval commanders to do their worst.27
Attacking Washington was bold, but also politically and militarily sound. Politicall’y capturing the American capital would affirm British control of the American coast—proving that the Royal Navy could do as it pleased. Cockburn knew the city was poorly defended, literally defenceless, so victory was virtually assured.
Brig. Gen. William Winder had not enthusiastically assumed responsibility for defending the city. Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River provided ample spots for troops to land and then march on Washington. Both were winding watercourses riddled with inlets. The Patuxent River pointed like the tip of a bayonet from the bay toward the capital. With hundreds of miles of confused shoreline to guard, where was he to begin? Having no idea, Winder spent much of July riding about surveying the coast in hopes of divining where the British would put ashore.28 His movements were so frantic that mail seldom caught up to him and he remained almost continually out of communication with superiors and subordinates alike. No sooner did someone catch wind of his location than he was already gone elsewhere. While industriously carried out, the effort was fruitless. Winder’s command was a chimera. He had no troops to construct fortifications.
Armstrong had refused to authorize calling out the militia in July to prepare for possible attack. The secretary of war instead allowed the general to deploy the militia only once it was clear a British attack was under way. Winder thought this madness, but was unable to change Armstrong’s mind. Complacently waiting until a British attack to “disseminate through the intricate and winding channels the various orders to the militia” would ensure he would be able to meet the crisis only with “a disorderly crowd without arms, ammunition or organization.”29
There was also the problem of Baltimore, which lay up Chesapeake Bay to the north of Washington. Winder was supposed to defend it as well. If he concentrated what regular troops he had to cover approaches to the capital, Baltimore would be unprotected. In the end Winder scattered his troops ineffectually about, trying to defend everything while actually defending nothing.
Consequently, when the British fleet appeared in the bay on August 18, Winder and Armstrong were caught flat-footed. Both men had gone out of their way to persuade authorities in Washington, Baltimore, and Maryland’s state government that the probability of attack was remote, so when the British did appear there was not only no military readiness but also a lack of psychological preparedness. Typifying the overall lassitude was the fact that Madison did not become aware that Washington faced danger until August 20. Two days later he was preparing to evacuate the government from the city, which was swept by panic.30 The disorderly crowd Winder had feared was exactly what he now had to try to stave off the British with. That task was beyond him.
TWENTY-TWO
A Sine Qua Non
AUGUST 1814
Three days after the British fleet sailed from Bermuda, coaches bearing the British commissioners clattered through the streets of Ghent and delivered the three men and their entourage to the doorstep of the Hôtel Lio
n d’Or. Unlike the Americans, who each had at least one private secretary, the British brought only Anthony St. John Baker, the former attaché to Washington. Also amid their number was Henry Goulburn’s wife, Jane, and fifteen-month-old child, Harry, plagued with infantile fever since birth. Desiring not to be separated from his wife for what could be months and worried by the child’s frail condition, Goulburn had insisted he would go to Ghent only if his family accompanied him. Knowing that the young man would not unreasonably put family ahead of duty, Bathurst consented.1
Barely a week had passed between Viscount Castlereagh’s providing instructions to the commissioners and their arrival in Ghent. The foreign secretary’s challenge had been to write clear directions for topics not yet determined. The war declaration had cited several offences as justifying resort to arms, but were these the only issues at play? And which issues really mattered?
There were four overarching headings under which all the possible issues at hand could be categorized. Firstly, maritime rights, of which the most important in His Majesty’s eyes was the right to “enforce in war the allegiance and service of his subjects; [seco]ndly, the protection which the Indians, as allies, are entitled to claim at our hands; [third]ly, the regulation of the frontier to prevent hereafter, as far as possible, jealousy or collision; and [fourt]hly, the question of the Fishery.”2
Castlereagh knew the American commissioners might not be empowered to agree to terms on all aspects of these issues, so Gambier, Goulburn, and Adams were to draw out what they were able to treat on without committing Britain to anything. While conceding little, Castlereagh wanted his commissioners to assert an array of non-negotiable stipulations.
The Americans wanted an end to impressment and searching of ships. Britain, he emphasized, “can never recede from the principle of holding their own subjects to their duty to allegiance.” At best he might consider some system of indulgences to individuals naturalized as United States citizens. As for right of search and withdrawal of British seamen, this could “never be given up.” However, Britain could agree to limits to “check abuse.” Castlereagh acknowledged that the whole issue was complex and messy, so perhaps it might be better to “waive this discussion altogether” given the issue had been laid to rest “by the return of peace.” The threesome was, therefore, to deny having authority to discuss it without reference to Castlereagh.
The foreign secretary considered that Indian and border issues surpassed maritime matters in importance. It would be an absolute, or, as he phrased it, a sine qua non, that the treaty secure the boundaries of Indian territory. Britain and the United States must “place their mutual relationships with each other, as well as with several Indian nations, upon a footing of less jealousy and irritation.” This could be accomplished by “a mutual guarantee of the Indian possessions, as they shall be established upon the peace, against encroachment on the part of either State.” If both governments regarded “Indian territory as a useful barrier between both States” each would “have a common interest to render these people … peaceful neighbours.” America could end the costly and bloody Indian wars while its seemingly insatiable desire for expansion would be checked to the satisfaction of the Indians and Britain. Given that the United States already controlled vast parts of North America, this need for continued expansion baffled Castlereagh. It was more logical to accept limits and avert further Indian wars.
America’s seizure of much of the Floridas and repeated invasions of Canada led Castlereagh to seek revision of the frontier boundaries between the United States and British North America. He did not, however, detail how those boundaries were to be configured. Rather, Castlereagh merely stated that the Treaty of 1783 determining the present boundaries had been “very hastily and improvidently framed in this respect.”
That same treaty regulated fishery rights between the two nations in an article consisting of two parts. The first clause had related to open-sea fishing and merely recognized rights of all nations to fish international waters. The second part, which allowed American fishing vessels to fish inside British waters and dry catch ashore, Castlereagh considered annulled by the war.
His final admonition was that the commissioners should determine what the Americans were empowered to negotiate and “the spirit in which they appear to you disposed to conduct the negotiation.” Castlereagh would then provide more detailed instructions to guide their forthcoming discussions.3
August 7, the morning after their arrival, Baker reported the commissioner.’ arrival to the Americans. At Hôtel des Pays-Bas, he found only James Bayard’s secretary, Col. George Milligan, who escorted Baker to the house on the Rue des Champs. Greeted by Bayard, Baker proposed meeting at one o’clock the next afternoon at the Hôtel Lion d’Or to exchange credentials and decide on the conduct of proceedings. Remaining noncommittal, Bayard promised an answer that evening.4
Having given up on waiting for the British and sick of “this dull hole” of a city, Jonathan Russell had gone to Dunkirk.5 In his absence, the other four commissioners met at noon to consider the British invitation. John Quincy Adams was incensed at this “offensive pretension to superiority.” When excited, he paced or flailed his arms about, sometimes pointing a blunt finger at the subject of his attention. He did all of this now, before grabbing from a shelf in his room the seventh and final volume of Hanoverian diplomat Georg Friedrich von Martens’s Recueil des traits—the definitive collection of world treaties. Riffling to the summary section outlining international protocols, Adams cited chapter 4, section 3. According to this authoritative source, he declared, the British proposal cast them in the role of ambassadors receiving diplomats of inferior rank. Not to be outdone, Bayard hauled out R. Ward’s An Enquiry into the Foundations and History of the Law of Nations in Europe and cited a case from the 1600s when the British commissioners negotiating with Spain resisted the very “pretension now advanced by the English.” But Bayard and Albert Gallatin cautioned against clogging “the negotiation with any question of mere ceremony.” Henry Clay was little concerned. When you sat down to cards it was the game that mattered, not the locale. After two hours of heated discussion that frayed nerves, they adjourned for dinner. Over cigars and drinks, they finally agreed to send Christopher Hughes—the mission’s senior secretary—to decline the British invitation and propose the Hôtel des Pays-Bas, which, with the Americans gone, could be considered neutral ground.
Now it was the British who needed time to consider. When Baker arrived, Bayard, “to sound and ascertain their feelings,” spontaneously proposed holding the meeting at the American residence and offered to show the secretary an excellent room for it. Baker declined to even look. It would be the Pays-Bas or start over.
At one o’clock the next afternoon, the Americans found the British already seated on one side of a long table in a room the hotelier had set aside. Gambier was as resplendent as a peacock in his admiral’s uniform, Goulburn and Adams like dour starlings in dark suits on either side of him. Everyone stood. Hands were shaken, courteous bows exchanged, copies of credentials examined and appropriately added to the formal files each commission began to accumulate. Then the Americans sat across from the British.
Gambier opened, assuring the Americans of his government’s “sincere and earnest desire that this negotiation might terminate in a successful issue, and the ardent hope of the British commissioners that we might all have the satisfaction of restoring the blessings of peace to our respective countries.”
As head of the American commission, Adams offered similar assurances “to bring to these discussions the disposition to meet every sentiment of candor and conciliation with the most cordial reciprocity, concurring, as we did, with the utmost earnestness and sincerity, in the hope that we might eventually have the happiness of reconciling the two nations whose true interests could best be promoted by peace and amity with each other.”6
Goulburn then said “that his colleagues had devolved upon him the task of opening on their part.”7 I
t quickly became apparent that this intense, dark-haired young man, seeming irritated at times by every American response or proposal, was the key British player. Goulburn offered “the most explicit declaration that nothing that had occurred since the first proposal for this negotiation would have the slightest effect on the disposition of Great Britain with regard to the terms upon which the pacification might be concluded.” Not a man in the room could fail to heed this reminder that since Castlereagh’s offer of negotiations the previous fall, peace had returned to Europe, the British army was free for North American service, the Royal Navy sailed the American coastline at will and blockaded the nation’s ports. The dark spectre of defeat hung over the United States. Goulburn added that “it would be most conducive to … discard all retrospective considerations with regard to anything that had taken place.”8 Instead they should all look to the root causes of the war, and therein he was instructed to raise four points for discussion. After outlining these, Goulburn asked the Americans to advise whether they could discuss each point and to also raise any issues they wished negotiated.
Each of Castlereagh’s four points was advanced and detailed. Goulburn made clear that impressment was included only because it was expected that the Americans would wish this discussed. There was no British desire to resolve this matter by treaty between the two nations. The treaty must include the Indians, and fixing boundaries for Indian territory was a sine qua non that must be “definitively marked out, as a permanent barrier between the dominions of Great Britain and the United States.”9 Britain also sought to revise the boundary line between America and British North America. Responding to a question from Bayard, Goulburn assured the Americans that Britain “did not contemplate an acquisition of territory.”10 As Castlereagh had provided no instructions, Goulburn did not define the proposed Indian boundary or Canadian border revision. In fact, Goulburn—more familiar with the geography of North America and its current boundaries than the foreign secretary—pressed this issue more forcefully than Castlereagh’s instructions had suggested.11 He was determined that any treaty stifle further imperialistic designs America might entertain. He did not, however, express this intention. Instead, he closed by adding that the previous “concession” to America permitting her citizens to “land and dry fish within the exclusive jurisdiction” of Britain would not be renewed.12
