Ralph Delahaye Paine

“ Brooding and shaken, like an old man utterly undone, Hull abandoned his pretentious invasion of Canada and retreated across the river to shelter his troops behind the log barricades of Detroit. He sent six hundred men to try to open a line to Ohio, but, after a sharp encounter with a British force, Hull was obliged to admit that they "could only open communication as far as the points of their bayonets extended." His only thought was to extricate himself, not to stand and fight a winning battle without counting the cost. His officers felt only contempt for his cowardice. ”

“ The brig-of-war Reindeer endeavored to put an end to her career but nineteen minutes sufficed to finish an action in which the Wasp slaughtered half the British crew and thrice repelled boarders. This was no light task, for as Michael Scott, the British author of Tom Cringle's Log, candidly expressed it:
In the field, or grappling in mortal combat on the blood-slippery deck of an enemy's vessel, a British soldier or sailor is the bravest of the brave. ”

“ Through the autumn of 1812 the frigate cruised beneath tropic suns, much of the time off the coast of Brazil. Today the health and comfort of the bluejacket are so scrupulously provided for in every possible way that a battleship is the standard of perfection for efficiency in organization. It is amazing that in such a ship as the Constitution four hundred men could be cheerful and ready to fight after weeks and even months at sea. ”

“ A spirit of reckless elation pervaded this bizarre and terrible little army, although it was well aware that during two and a half years almost every other American force had been defeated by an enemy far less formidable. The anxious faces were those of the men of Louisiana who fought for hearth and home, with their backs to the wall. Many a brutal tale had they heard of these war-hardened British veterans whose excesses in Portugal were notorious and who had laid waste the harmless hamlets of Maryland. ”

“ Ship for ship, the American navy was better than the British. This is a truth which was demonstrated with sensational emphasis by one engagement after another. During the first eight months of the war there were five such duels, and in every instance the enemy was compelled to strike his colors. In tavern and banquet hall revelers were still drinking the health of Captain Isaac Hull when the thrilling word came that the Wasp, an eighteen-gun ship or sloop, as the type was called in naval parlance, had beaten the Frolic in a rare fight. ”

“ The gun deck was strewn with bodies, and the waves which broke over the ship swirled them to and fro, the dead and the wounded together. Not an officer had escaped death or injury. The Wasp was more or less of a tangle aloft but her hull was sound and only five of her men had been killed and five wounded. No sailors could have fought more bravely than Captain Whinyates and his British crew, but they had been overwhelmed in three-quarters of an hour by greater skill, coolness, and judgment. ”

“ At sunrise of the 10th of September, a sailor at the masthead of the Lawrence sighted the British squadron steering across the lake with a fair wind and ready to give battle. Perry instantly sent his crews to quarters and trimmed sail to quit the bay and form his line in open water. He was eager to take the initiative, and it may be assumed that he had forgotten Chauncey's prudent admonition: "The first object will be to destroy or cripple the enemy's fleet; but in all attempts upon the fleet you ought to use great caution, for the loss of a single vessel may decide the fate of a campaign." ”

“ The amazing thing is that the navy was able to accomplish anything at all, neglected and almost despised as it was by the same opinion which had suffered the army system to become a melancholy jest. During the decade in which Great Britain captured hundreds of American merchant ships in time of peace and impressed more than six thousand American seamen, the United States built two sloops-of-war of eighteen guns and allowed three of her dozen frigates to hasten to decay at their mooring buoys. Officers in the service were underpaid and shamefully treated by the Government. ”

“ For the ten thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns there was nothing to do but retreat, nor did they linger until they had marched across the Canada border. Though the way had lain open before them, they had not fought a battle, but were turned out of the United States, evicted, one might say, by a few small ships manned by several hundred American sailors. As Perry had regained the vast Northwest for his nation so, more momentously, did Macdonough avert from New York and New England a tide of invasion which could not otherwise have been stemmed. ”

“ The American people of today, weighed in the balances of the greatest armed conflict of all time and found not wanting, can afford to survey, in a spirit of candid scrutiny and without reviving an ancient grudge, that turbulent episode in the welding of their nation which is called the War of 1812. ”

“ Of the engagement a British officer said: "I do not exaggerate when I tell you that the shot, both of musketry and grape, was falling about us like hail . . . Those who were left of the troops behind the barracks made a dash out to charge the enemy; but the fire was so destructive that they were instantly turned by it, and the retreat was sounded. Sir George, fearless of danger and disdaining to run or to suffer his men to run, repeatedly called out to them to retire in order; many, however, made off as fast as they could." ”

“ Spectacular as were the exploits of the American navy on the sea, they were of far less immediate consequence in deciding the destinies of the war than were the naval battles fought on fresh water between hastily improvised squadrons. On Lake Erie Perry's victory had recovered a lost empire and had made the West secure against invasion. Macdonough's handful of little vessels on Lake Champlain compelled the retreat of ten thousand British veterans of Wellington's campaigns who had marched down from Canada with every promise of crushing American resistance. ”

“ The tidings he bore were enough to amaze an American people which expected nothing of its navy, which allowed its merchant ships to rot at the wharves, and which regarded the operations of its armies with the gloomiest forebodings. New England went wild with joy over a victory so peculiarly its own. Captain Hull and his officers were paraded up State Street to a banquet at Faneuil Hall while cheering thousands lined the sidewalks. A few days earlier had come the news of the surrender of Detroit, but the gloom was now dispelled. Americans could fight, after all. ”

“ Captain Dacres struck his flag, and the American sailors who went aboard found the guns dismounted, the dead and dying scattered amid a wild tangle of spars and rigging, and great holes blown through the sides and decks. The Constitution had suffered such trifling injury that she was fit and ready for action a few hours later. Of her crew only seven men were killed and the same number hurt. ”

“ Procter's guns were already pounding the walls of Fort Meigs on the 5th of May when eight hundred troops of this fresh American force arrived within striking distance. They dashed upon the British batteries and took them with the bayonet in a wild, impetuous charge. It was then their business promptly to reform and protect themselves, but through lack of training they failed to obey orders and were off hunting the enemy, every man for himself. ”

“ Of the British historians, William James undertook the most diligent account of them all, calling it A Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States of America, 2 vols. (1818) . It is irritating reading for an American because of an enmity so bitter that facts are willfully distorted and glaring inaccuracies are accepted as truth. As a naval historian James undertook to explain away the American victories in single-ship actions, a difficult task in which he acquitted himself with poor grace. ”

“ The harsh and selfish maritime policy of the age, expressed in the British Navigation Acts and intensified by the struggle with Napoleon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate indignity after indignity on the ships and sailors which were carrying American commerce around the world. The United States demanded a free sea, which Great Britain would not grant. Of necessity, then, such futile weapons as embargoes and non-intercourse acts had to give place to the musket, the bayonet, and the carronade. ”

“ The tide turned in the summer of 1814 with the renewal of the struggle for the Niagara region where the British had won a foothold upon American soil.
In command of a vigorous and disciplined American army was General Jacob Brown, that stout-hearted volunteer who had proved his worth when the enemy landed at Sackett's Harbor. He was not a professional soldier but his troops had been trained and organized by Winfield Scott who was now a brigadier. After two years of dismal reverses, the United States was learning how to wage war. Incompetency was no longer the badge of high military rank. ”

“ If it is a sound axiom never to despise the enemy, it is nevertheless true that excessive prudence has lost many an action. Farragut's motto has been the keynote of the success of all the great sea-captains, "L'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace."
It was not until the lesson of Hull's surrender had aroused the civil authorities that Captain Chauncey of the navy yard at New York received orders in September, 1812, "to assume command of the naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario and to use every exertion to obtain control of them this fall." ”

“ This was the reason why American naval vessels and privateers left their own coasts and dared to rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had done in the Ranger a generation earlier. It was discovered that enemy merchantmen could be snapped up more easily within sight of their own shores than thousands of miles away. First to emphasize this fact in the War of 1812 was the naval brig Argus, Captain William H. Allen, which made a summer crossing and cruised for a month on end in the Irish Sea and in the chops of the Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her shameless audacity. ”

“ It expressed the two grievances which outweighed all others—the interference with American shipping and the ruthless impressment of seamen from beneath the Stars and Stripes. No less high-handed than Great Britain's were Napoleon's offenses against American commerce, and there was just cause for war with France. Yet Americans felt the greater enmity toward England, partly as an inheritance from the Revolution, but chiefly because of the greater injury which England had wrought, owing to her superior strength on the sea. ”

“ On the 6th of September Sir George Prevost with his army reached Plattsburg and encamped just outside the town. From a ridge the British leader beheld the redoubts, strong field works, and blockhouses, and at anchor in the bay the little American fleet of Commodore Thomas Macdonough. To Prevost it looked like a costly business to attempt to carry these defenses by assault and he therefore decided to await the arrival of the British ships of Captain George Downie. A combined attack by land and sea, he believed, should find no difficulty in wiping out American resistance. ”

“ It has pleased the American mind to regard the War of 1812 as a maritime conflict. This is natural enough, for the issue was the freedom of the sea, and the achievements of Yankee ships and sailors stood out in brilliant relief against the somber background of the inefficiency of the army. The offensive was thought to be properly a matter for the land forces, which had vastly superior advantages against Canada, while the navy was compelled to act on the defensive against overwhelming odds. ”

“ Within ten minutes they had saved Captain Jacob Jones the trouble of handling sail, for they shot away his upper masts and yards and most of his rigging. The Wasp was a wreck aloft but the Frolic had suffered more vitally, for as usual the American gun captains aimed for the deck and hull; and they had been carefully drilled at target practice. The British sailors suffered frightfully from this storm of grape and chain shot, but those who were left alive still fought inflexibly. It looked as though the Frolic might get away, for the masts of the Wasp were in danger of tumbling over the side. ”

“ Isaac Brock, the British general in Canada, had the genius to comprehend the meaning of this naval exploit. "This event is particularly unfortunate," he wrote, "and may reduce us to incalculable distress. The enemy is making every exertion to gain a naval superiority on both lakes; which, if they accomplish, I do not see how we can retain the country." And to Procter, his commander at Detroit, he disclosed the meaning of the naval loss as it affected the fortunes of the western campaign: "This will reduce us to great distress. ”

“ Never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike to an American, and though we cannot say that Captain Dacres, under all circumstances, is punishable for this act, yet we do say there are commanders in the English navy who would a thousand times rather have gone down with their colors flying than to have set their fellow sailors so fatal an example. ”

“ Unclothed, unfed, uncared for, dirty, and wretched, they proved themselves worthy to be called American soldiers. They fought until there was no more ammunition, until they were surrounded by a thousand of the enemy, and then they honorably surrendered.
The brutal Procter, aware that the Indians would commit hideous outrages if left unrestrained, nevertheless returned to Amherstburg with his troops and his prisoners, leaving the American wounded to their fate. That night the savages came back to Frenchtown and massacred those hurt and helpless men, thirty in number. ”

“ That September day of 1814, when Macdonough won his niche in the naval hall of fame, was also the climax and the conclusion of the long struggle of the American armies on the northern frontier, a confused record of defeat, vacillation, and crumbling forces, which was redeemed towards the end by troops who had learned how to fight and by new leaders who restored the honor of the flag at Chippawa and Lundy's Lane. Although the ambitious attempts against Canada, so often repeated, were so much wasted effort until the very end, they ceased to be inglorious. ”

“ Washington wrote in retrospect:
Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning, which by the continuance of the same men in service had been capable of discipline, we never should have had to retreat with a handful of men across the Delaware in 1776, trembling for the fate of America, which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could have saved; we should not have remained all the succeeding winter at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable at every moment to be dissipated if they had only thought proper to march against us ”

“ As soon as he jumped on deck, Perry took command of the Niagara, sending Elliott off to bring up the rearmost schooners. There was no lagging or hesitation now. With topgallant sails sheeted home, the Niagara bore down upon the Detroit, driven by a freshening breeze. Barclay's crippled flagship tried to avoid being raked and so fouled her consort, the Queen Charlotte. The two British ships lay locked together while the American guns pounded them with terrific fire. Presently they got clear of each other and pluckily attempted to carry on the fight. But the odds were hopeless. ”

“ When Procter announced that he proposed to seek refuge in retreat, Tecumseh told him to his face that he was like a fat dog which had carried its tail erect and now that it was frightened dropped its tail between its legs and ran. The English might scamper as far as they liked but the Indians would remain to meet the American invaders.
It was a helter-skelter exodus from Amherstburg and Detroit. All property that could not be moved was burned or destroyed, and Procter set out for Moraviantown, on the Thames River, seventy miles along the road to Lake Ontario. ”

“ When the Englishman was climbing up the side of the Constitution as a prisoner, Isaac Hull ran to help him, exclaiming, "Give me your hand, Dacres. I know you are hurt." No wonder that these two captains became fast friends. It is because sea warfare abounds in such manly incidents as these that the modern naval code of Germany, as exemplified in the acts of her submarine commanders, was so peculiarly barbarous and repellent.
On board the Guerrière was Captain William B. Orne, of the Salem merchant brig Betsy, which had been taken as a prize. ”

“ The grim force of circumstances was beginning to alter the naval policy of the United States. Notwithstanding the dramatic successes, her flag was almost banished from the high seas by the close of the year 1813. The frigates Constellation, United States, and Macedonian were hemmed in port by the British blockade; the Adams and the Constitution were laid up for repairs; and the only formidable ships of war which roamed at large were the President, the Essex, and the Congress. ”