Six Frigates

by Ian W. Toll

  One of the many remarkable consequences of the Chesapeake-Leopard affair was that Albert Gallatin was brought over to the war party. The Genevan immigrant who had shot like a rocket into the highest ranks of American government, and who had always shunned European-style wars of national aggrandizement, now believed it might be necessary to fight England for the “honor of the nation.” “Our commerce will be destroyed and our revenue nearly annihilated,” he wrote Hanna Gallatin on July 10. “That we must encounter; but our resources in money and men will be sufficient considerably to distress the enemy and defend ourselves everywhere but at sea.” A week later, he told Congressman Nicholson that the British government should be given an opportunity to disavow the act and punish the officers responsible; but if the redress was inadequate, as he expected, the nation would have no choice but to declare war. “Nor do I know whether the awakening of nobler feelings and habits than avarice and luxury might not be necessary to prevent our degenerating, like the Hollanders, into a nation of mere calculators.”

  Gallatin confessed he was troubled by “one subject of considerable uneasiness”—the safety of New York City, where a substantial portion of the nation’s wealth was concentrated and “which is now entirely defenceless, and from its situation nearly indefensible.” He was not alone. New Yorkers middle-aged or older could remember the long, ruinous occupation of the city from 1776 to 1781. Jefferson asked Secretary of War Henry Dearborn to organize the city’s defenses, warning that “the British commanders have their foot on the threshold of war…. Blows may be hourly possible.”

  In Norfolk, the Chesapeake was moored broadside to the main channel of the Elizabeth River, with a line of a dozen gunboats at anchor on either side of her. By Secretary Smith’s orders, Stephen Decatur took command of the ship. The twenty-eight-year-old captain now commanded all naval forces stationed on the southern half of the Atlantic seaboard. Decatur declared he would welcome the privilege of “burning the first Powder” with the British.

  Tensions eased on July 6, when a Norfolk lawyer visited the British squadron under a flag of truce. Commodore Douglas indicated that he had no intention of attacking Norfolk. He actually seemed perplexed that the Americans had interpreted his earlier letter as menacing, and suggested that it was the English who were, in fact, the aggrieved party in the dispute. Soon afterwards, all British vessels withdrew from the lower Roads and returned to their anchorage in Lynnhaven Bay. Jefferson, plainly relieved, observed that the squadron’s intentions were for the time being “manifestly pacific” and surmised that they “do not mean an immediate attack on Norfolk, but to retain their present position till further orders from their Admiral.” He seized the opportunity to escape Washington for the summer, but arranged to have frequent dispatches brought to Monticello by postal service couriers on fast horses.

  JAMES BARRON HAD HOPED HIS JUNIOR OFFICERS would close ranks around him, just as the Philadelphia’s lieutenants and midshipmen had closed ranks around William Bainbridge after the loss of that frigate in Tripoli four years earlier. He would have no such luck. The Chesapeake’s officers asked that Barron be court-martialed for incompetence, if not cowardice, and Secretary Smith was of the same mind.

  Recriminations flew. Barron referred to his lieutenants as “the greatest cowards that ever stood on a ship’s deck,” and complained that his old rival, John Rodgers, was seeking to eject him from the navy by working through his protégé, Lieutenant Allen, whom Barron called “the most infamous and the most Vindictive Rascal of them all.” According to Allen, there were no fewer than seven duels fought over the incident in July and August, including one that wounded Captain Gordon. Under Secretary Smith’s strict orders, Commodore Decatur at last put an end to the gunplay, and in November reported that “all differences between the officers & gentlemen of this place I am informed are adjusted.”

  Among the officers who would sit in judgment were Bainbridge, Decatur, and Rodgers, who had two years earlier called Barron a “two-faced Judas.” The court convened in January 1808 and heard evidence for a month. James Barron made a long, eloquent defense, in which he implied that he had been wrongfully scapegoated for a humiliation that any commander in his position might have suffered. When judgment was rendered on February 8, Barron was cleared of three out of four charges, but on the second charge of “neglecting on the probability of an engagement, to clear the ship for action,” the court found Barron guilty and voted to suspend him from the navy without pay for a period of five years.

  When Stephen Decatur took command of the Chesapeake, he employed reverse psychological methods to drill her crew into a state of high readiness. The frigate, while he commanded her, would wear her disgrace publicly. She would not fire or return salutes, because “a ship without honor can render none.” In any future close encounter with a vessel of the Royal Navy, Decatur told the crew, the Chesapeake would be set on a hair trigger for action. And if she was ever so fortunate as to come upon the Leopard, the Chesapeake would attack preemptively, whether the two nations were at war or not.

  IN INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LONG-SUFFERING James Monroe, who had performed various diplomatic assignments in Paris, London, and Madrid since 1803, and was currently serving as Minister to the Court of St. James’s, Madison spelled out the American demands. First, “A formal disavowal of the deed, and restoration of the four seamen to the ship from which they were taken.” Second, the recall of Admiral Berkeley. Third, the “exclusion of all armed ships whatever from our waters.” Finally, and most controversially, “an entire abolition of impressments from vessels under the flag of the United States.”

  Lord Grenville’s “All Talents” ministry had given way to a Tory ministry headed by the Duke of Portland. (The change in regime had been prompted by the en masse resignations of Grenville’s cabinet to protest George III’s harsh policy toward Irish Catholics; Henry Adams described the new ministry as “a creature of royal bigotry trembling on the verge of insanity.”) George Canning, the new foreign secretary, argued that Napoleon’s unscrupulous conduct had released England from any obligation to comply with the strictures and traditions of international maritime law. The Tories were determined, above all, to preserve England’s maritime and naval superiority. To this end, they were resolved to suppress the growth of American trade and take back the thousands of British seamen they knew to be employed in it.

  Early in September 1807, a British fleet laid the city of Copenhagen under bombardment. Denmark was a neutral power, but threats of a French invasion left the British concerned that the Danish fleet would fall into Napoleon’s hands. When the Crown Prince of Denmark refused an ultimatum to deliver the Danish navy into England’s “custody,” the British fleet opened fire. There was no formal declaration of war. The objective of the shelling was simply to demolish Copenhagen, one neighborhood at a time, until the Danes capitulated. After three days, more than two thousand civilians lay buried under the rubble of their homes, and the Danish fleet surrendered. Simultaneously, the Royal Navy swept what was left of the Danish merchant marine from the seas, adding about $10 million worth of property to English coffers.

  When Jefferson and his advisers learned what had happened at Copenhagen, they realized that the Leopard’s attack on the Chesapeake was the least of their concerns. Copenhagen was better fortified than New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. If England was prepared to terrorize seaports in order to impose its will on neutral powers, Americans had much to fear.

  Leading British newspapers applauded the Leopard’s attack on the Chesapeake and called for more of the same. The Morning Post charged that American policies were aimed at “striking at the very vitals of our commercial existence…humbling our naval greatness and disputing our supremacy,” and added: “It will never be permitted to be said that the Royal Sovereign has struck her flag to an American cockboat.” The editors called for war: “Three weeks blockade of the Delaware, the Chesapeake, and Boston Harbor would make our presumptuous rivals repent of their puerile conduct.” Th
e Times, reflecting angrily on the belligerent editorials in the American newspapers, remarked that “If the Government of the United States were to take its tone from what seems to be the habitual pettishness and impetuosity of myriads of adventurers of all nations who have inundated that country, it would be impossible to preserve peace with America for six months together.”

  A powerful combination of British interests stood to profit by a war with the United States. The capture and condemnation of American vessels in British prize courts subsidized a broad constituency, including every man in the Royal Navy from the admirals down to the humblest ordinary seamen, as well as the entire hierarchy of Admiralty judges and lawyers. Merchants and shipowners would gain by the suppression of a maritime rival. England’s prowar party, Monroe told Madison, was “composed of the ship owners, the navy, the East and West Indian merchants, and certain powerful characters of great consideration in the State. So powerful is this combination that it is most certain that nothing can be obtained of the government on any point but what may be extorted by necessity.”

  But the Portland ministry did not wish to add the United States to the ranks of England’s enemies, at least not at that moment. Days after news of the Chesapeake-Leopard incident reached London, Foreign Minister Canning wrote Monroe to “assure you that his Majesty neither does nor has at any time maintained the pretension of a right to search ships of war in the national service of any State for deserters.” In subsequent meetings, Canning indicated that the British government planned to recall Admiral Berkeley, as he had acted outside the scope of his authority. This fulfilled one of the American demands, though the foreign minister emphasized that the recall would have occurred in any case. But Canning dismissed as a non-starter Monroe’s demand that England renounce its right to press seamen from American merchant ships. Search and impressment, he told Monroe, were rights that had “existed in their fullest force for ages previous to the establishment of the United States of America as an independent government.” If Monroe’s instructions required him to link settlement of the Chesapeake-Leopard affair to the broader subject of impressment, further negotiations were “for the present rendered unavailing.”

  As if to underline the point, on October 16, King George issued a proclamation “For recalling and prohibiting British seamen from serving foreign Princes and States,” which commanded officers of the Royal Navy to “seize upon, take, and bring away” all native-born British seamen found aboard foreign merchant ships. On November 11, a new Order in Council required American merchant vessels to stop at a British seaport and apply for a British license before touching at any continental European port. Because all vessels sailing from a British port had been excluded from Europe by Napoleon’s Berlin Decree, the effect of this new policy was to eliminate any safe route of commerce between America and Europe. Under any set of circumstances, American ships would be subject to capture and condemnation by either England or France. In defiance of every principle and tradition of international maritime law, neutral trade, in effect, had ceased to exist.

  CONGRESS, RESPONDING TO THE PRESIDENT’S CALL, returned to Washington a month early, convening on October 26. For the first time, the House of Representatives met in its newly completed chamber in the south wing of the Capitol. It was the work of the English-born architect and engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who had earlier collaborated with Jefferson in the abortive plan to build a dry dock capable of sheltering the entire navy. The new oval chamber was framed by fluted sandstone columns, dressed with sumptuous red drapes, and flooded with light from glass panels in the ceiling. Congressmen agreed that their new home was very handsome, but some complained of poor acoustics. In debates, members’ voices were liable to be drowned in a sea of echoes.

  The Capitol’s great dome would not be completed for several decades. For the present, the House and Senate were housed in separate buildings, which were connected by a ramshackle boardwalk. The grounds were still overgrown with brambles and littered with construction materials. From a distance, one contemporary remarked, the complex appeared crumbing and dilapidated, like “the ruins of a castle.” The neighborhood had changed very little since Jefferson’s first inauguration in 1801. There were a few more boardinghouses, a few more stables, and a few new commercial establishments, including a saddlemaker, a bakery, a notary, a liquor store, and a couple of bookshops. According to Margaret Bayard Smith, the slope west of the Capitol was “covered with grass, shrubs and trees in their wild and uncultivated state.” On this hill, close under the walls of the Capitol itself, hunters shot snipe and partridge. In Goose Creek, at the foot of Capitol Hill, John Foster of the British legation found fish so plentiful “that by shooting in among them one may get a good dish-full, for as many will leap on shore from fright probably as can be killed with the shot.”

  In the four months since the Chesapeake-Leopard incident, the public’s zeal for war had cooled perceptibly. Jefferson’s special message to the Congress on October 27 took a far more moderate tone than his public statements of the previous summer. He cited “injuries and depredations committed on our commerce and navigation upon the high seas for years past” and the “long and fruitless endeavors” of American diplomats to obtain redress. He recited American grievances, but in a weary, almost melancholy tone. In hinting that Congress might eventually be called upon to declare war, Jefferson’s phrasing was so roundabout that he seemed embarrassed by his own suggestion: “The love of peace so much cherished in the bosoms of our citizens, which has so long guided the proceedings of their public councils and induced forbearance under so many wrongs, may not insure our continuance in the quiet pursuits of industry.”

  Fissures within the Republican ranks were more apparent than ever before. The northern, urban wing of the party cried out for federal assistance in fortifying the seaports. Referring to the Royal Navy’s frequent incursions into Raritan Bay, Congressman Mumford of New York warned his colleagues that the great city was vulnerable. Whereas other major seaports were protected by “sandbars, shoals, and rocks in our harbors and rivers,” New York was “only 27 miles from the sea, almost in a direct line, carrying up twenty-four feet of water and no obstruction…. Thus we are exposed Winter and Summer to the insult of the first marauder that chooses to lay us under contribution.”

  But to a hard core of “old Republicans,” chiefly from the southern states, it would be folly to even attempt to defend the seaports against the mighty British navy. “When the enemy comes,” said Nelson of Maryland, “let them take our towns, and let us retire into the country.” Hadn’t this strategy won the American Revolution? Randolph of Virginia predicted that any attempt to defend New York would end in a military debacle, as it had in 1776. Even if the harbor could be fortified against attack by sea, he said, the British could simply land an invasion force elsewhere on the coast and take the city from the north. Holland of North Carolina went further, declaring that the vulnerability of the northern seaports was a good thing, because it discouraged their citizens against agitating for war. “Our commercial towns are defenseless, and that is our only safety at present,” he said. “I want to see not a single ship, or any preparation for war.”

  On one point all could agree. After the Chesapeake’s humiliating failure to defend herself, there should be no more money wasted on the frigates. Not all would go so far as Congressman Randolph, who was “reluctant to vote large sums for the support of our degraded and disgraced Navy”—but the future of America’s oceangoing fleet appeared very much in doubt. Constitution arrived in Boston on October 14. She had been away for four years and two months, since Preble had taken her to the Mediterranean in 1803. With all the frigates safe in port, Jefferson issued an order relegating them to the status of receiving ships:

  The Constitution is to remain at Boston, having her men discharged…the Chesapeake to remain at Norfolk; and the sending of the United States frigate to New York is reserved for further consideration, inquiring in the meantime how early she could be
ready to go. It is considered that in case of war these frigates would serve as receptacles for enlisting seamen, to fill the gunboats occasionally.

  Leading authorities, including Edward Preble, told the president what he clearly wanted to hear: that gunboats and shore fortifications could put an end to the Royal Navy’s bold incursions into American waters. On November 1, Jefferson told Virginia governor Cabell that Congress “will authorize a complete system of defensive works…[and] a considerable enlargement of the force in gunboats. A combination of these will, I think, enable us to defend the Chesapeake at its mouth, and save the vast line of preparation which the defence of all its interior waters would otherwise require.” On November 8, Secretary Smith asked Congress to appropriate $850,000 for the construction of 188 additional gunboats, which would bring the total number of vessels in service to 257. He made no mention of the frigates. The Department of the Navy, as one contemporary wag put it, had become the Department of Gunboats.