1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  The British economic system, too, appealed to Hamilton. In spite of her defeat in the American war, Great Britain remained an economic colossus, the world’s dominant nation. The sources of her strength were manifold: she led the world in technological innovation, which sustained a growing manufacturing base that made her the leader of the Industrial Revolution; she had a strong central government that encouraged economic development and protected the free flow of ideas; her manufacturers and traders were preeminent in the world’s commerce, well supported by strong merchant banking houses. Britain’s commercial fleet was the largest in the world, supported by a naval infrastructure of huge proportions, and her navy surpassed all rivals, particularly after Pitt revitalized it during the 1780s.

  It seemed self-evident to Hamilton that friendship with Britain should be the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy. Ninety percent of the republic’s trade, after all, was with the British Isles. American merchants were most comfortable dealing in the same language with British counterparts they had been doing business with for years before the Revolution. And London banking houses, like Baring Brothers, were willing, as they had been in the past, to extend essential credit, which could not be said of Dutch and French bankers, whom American traders had burned too often. The business relationship between America and Britain was not about to change, as far as Hamilton was concerned, and it dictated close ties to London.

  As Treasury secretary responsible for developing plans to put America’s fiscal house in order, Hamilton was ever mindful that customs revenue derived from British imports was critical to the financial health of the fledgling republic. The country was in dreadful financial condition when he came into office. He believed that the United States could never develop solid fiscal underpinnings without a close relationship with the British. It might not even survive.

  Jefferson, unlike Hamilton, maintained a profound distrust of Britain, along with a great love for France. When the French Revolution began halfway through his final year as American ambassador in Paris, he cultivated its leaders and helped write the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, inspired by his own Declaration of Independence. The prospect of France becoming the world’s second great republic alongside the United States thrilled him. He believed deeply that people in every country would thrive if only they could rid themselves of the artificial burdens of useless kings and aristocrats.

  Jefferson had a powerful ally in James Madison, a devoted friend and fellow Virginian eight years his junior. Jefferson’s vast learning, supple mind, and gift for writing appealed to Madison, while his ability to remain a slave-owning despot, even as he passionately advocated for human rights, provided necessary balm for Madison’s sometimes troubled conscience.

  When he became leader of the House of Representatives during Washington’s first term, Madison was widely recognized as the father of the Constitution. He had been instrumental in persuading Washington to chair the Constitutional Convention, and he was a leader during its proceedings in the summer of 1787. Afterward, his brilliant advocacy was critical to getting the Constitution ratified by the state conventions. He was coauthor of the Federalist Papers, and he led the fight against Patrick Henry and the anti-Federalists at the Virginia ratifying convention in the summer of 1788. Following ratification, Madison won a battle against James Monroe—his close friend—to win a seat in Congress, despite strong opposition from Patrick Henry and his cohorts. Once in office, Madison became the leader in the House of Representatives and a confidant of Washington, working closely with the president to establish the new government.

  Washington was as impressed with Madison’s intellectual capacity as Jefferson was. Madison had been educated at Princeton, which was unusual for a wealthy Virginian; most promising young men in Madison’s part of the country went to the College of William and Mary, as Jefferson had. Perhaps his intelligence and erudition were all the more noticeable for the qualities he lacked. Madison was physically unimposing. Slightly balding, with large ears, he was barely five feet six inches tall and weighed only one hundred and forty pounds. His slight frame held a stout heart, however, and although he spoke softly in a low voice, his wellconsidered speeches reflected tenaciously held beliefs and commanded respect.

  Before traveling to New York for the opening of the new government in the spring of 1789, Madison—a bachelor—stayed for a week at Mount Vernon, where he and Washington had long conversations about how to turn the stirring words of the Constitution into a workable republican government. They knew what they were up against; the world had never seen a republic succeed over such a wide expanse of territory.

  As Washington’s first term progressed, he was dismayed to find Madison and Jefferson on one side of a political divide and Hamilton on the other, with the chasm between them growing. The differences between what became known as the Federalist and Republican parties emerged as early as 1790, when Madison and Jefferson opposed Hamilton’s far-reaching fiscal reforms. What Hamilton saw as necessary to establish the public credit of the new republic and create the financial underpinnings necessary for the Constitution to succeed, Madison and Jefferson saw as programs that strengthened the federal government far beyond the intent of the Constitution and opened the way for the tyrannical abuse of power, thereby undermining, not securing, the Constitution. They accused Hamilton of trying to impose the British system on America. Jefferson called him a “Monocrat.”

  Much of Madison and Jefferson’s opposition had to do with the culture in which they were raised; to these two tidewater aristocrats Hamilton’s proposals to establish public credit (by refinancing the country’s foreign, national, and state debts; creating a national bank; and raising internal taxes) favored financiers, speculators, northerner merchants, ship owners, and manufacturers over the landed gentry and ordinary farmers of the South. Hamilton’s programs, the Virginians felt, would create an aristocracy of wealth divorced from, and indeed at odds with, agriculture. They had no desire to increase the power of urban-based traders, bankers, manufacturers, and speculators over farmers. The strength of independent tillers of the soil, they believed, was the best guarantee of the sort of republic envisioned in the Constitution. Public policy ought to support agriculture, in their view; it was the bedrock of the American economy and the indispensable foundation of republican government. “Those who labor in the earth,” Jefferson wrote, “are the chosen people of God if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” Needless to say, Jefferson’s idyllic, self-righteous vision was restricted to white farmers and of greatest benefit to large landholders.

  PRESIDENT WASHINGTON WAS deeply concerned that these two competing political creeds, growing shriller and more tendentious, might threaten the unity of the republic. Factions in general were pernicious, he felt, and these two, under the circumstances, all the more so. With one party favoring Britain and the other France, he worried that competing political passions could draw the United States into the great European war then under way between revolutionary France and reactionary Europe.

  Convinced that if the United States allowed herself to be drawn into the European maelstrom, the republic would be destroyed, Washington issued his famous proclamation of neutrality on April 22, 1793. Keeping out of the Wars of the French Revolution proved far more difficult than simply making a proclamation, however. By the time Washington issued his call for neutrality, extreme elements had taken over the French Revolution and had already begun to make aggressive efforts to involve the United States in their war against monarchical Europe. At the same time, William Pitt, who was still the British prime minister, confiscated hundreds of American merchantmen and impressed American seamen, showing no respect whatever for the United States—treating her as if she were still a colony.

  With most Americans still pro-French and outraged at British aggression on the high seas, Washington found himself being dragged into a war against Britain, a conflict he knew would be suic
idal. Hamilton and other prominent Federalists urged him to try a last-minute negotiation with Pitt in order to avoid war, and Washington accepted their advice. In a last-ditch effort to preserve neutrality, he sent Chief Justice John Jay as a special envoy to London. Washington also urged Congress to begin building a navy. The United States was essentially defenseless; she had had no naval force since the Revolution. Initially Washington asked for only six frigates, though he wanted more, but given the temper of Congress, six were all he felt he could obtain.

  The president’s request met with strong opposition from Republicans, led by Madison and Jefferson. These six frigates, Madison maintained, would inevitably lead to a naval force that would be not only useless but prohibitively expensive. A navy consisting of only six frigates, after all, would be quickly dispatched by the huge British fleet. Even if more ships were added, they could not succeed in any contest with the Royal Navy. All that an American navy would do, he argued, was add to the public debt or create a crushing tax burden. He urged using economic coercion against Britain.

  In the end Congress voted to build six frigates, but with severe restrictions, and the navy Washington wanted, although begun during his tenure, would not materialize until the Adams administration. Fortunately for Washington, by the time he sent Chief Justice Jay to London, the war against France was going so poorly for Britain that Pitt decided to reach an accommodation with the United States. The prime minister’s change of policy resulted in the Jay Treaty, which was signed in London on November 19, 1794. The British foreign secretary, Lord Grenville, said that he hoped the agreement would promote “lasting friendship between our two countries.”

  As part of the Jay Treaty, Pitt agreed to withdraw from the forts along the Canadian border, to extend commercial reciprocity, and to grant trade privileges in India. The rest of the treaty, however, decidedly favored the British, reflecting the fact that the United States was defenseless. Jay agreed to prohibit French warships or privateers from using American ports or selling prizes there, while British ships would be allowed to seize enemy goods from neutral (American) ships. And he accepted Britain’s Rule of 1756, which, in effect, prohibited American vessels from transporting French goods from their colonies in the West Indies to Europe. In addition, American trade with Britain’s colonies in the West Indies, although opened, was severely restricted. No mention was made of British impressment practices, which continued apace.

  Washington was disappointed with the treaty, which he considered one-sided. But he reluctantly accepted it because it kept the United States out of a war for which she was entirely unprepared. Madison, Jefferson, and their Republican followers bitterly opposed the treaty, considering it to be humiliating and, worse, a de facto alliance with Britain against France. The fight over the treaty was so fierce it destroyed whatever remained of the personal relationship between Washington and Madison.

  If the treaty angered American Republicans, it outraged the French. The latest regime in Paris, the conservative Directory, promptly authorized wholesale attacks on American commerce, a decision that led to a quasi-war between the two countries during the presidency of John Adams. Like Washington, Adams sought neutrality, and through deft diplomacy, supported by the building of a strong navy of fifty-four ships, he managed to avoid having to declare war on France. Among the ships he deployed were the original six frigates: the 44-gun super frigates Constitution, United States, and President and the 36-gun Congress, Constellation, and Chesapeake.

  Adams saw no possibility that France would even think about invading the American mainland, so he relied on the navy almost exclusively to support his diplomacy and to fight the Quasi-War. Congress approved his request to separate the navy from the army and establish an independent navy department, whereupon he appointed Benjamin Stoddert as the first secretary of the navy. Stoddert proved to be the most effective of Adams’s cabinet members and one of the finest secretaries of the navy in the nation’s history. Under him, a cadre of officers—John Rodgers, Stephen Decatur Jr., David Porter, Oliver Hazard Perry, Isaac Hull, Thomas Macdonough, James Lawrence, Charles Morris, and many others—received their first training aboard warships under battle conditions. These men would form the core of professionals who made the tiny American navy a potent force during the War of 1812.

  The most celebrated hero of the Quasi-War, Captain Thomas Truxtun, skipper of the USS Constellation, was especially influential in training the new officers, paying special attention to their education aboard his ship. Through his example during combat and the books he wrote, Truxtun had a significant impact on the entire officer corps. Retired Vice Admiral George Emery would call Truxtun the “first mentor of the Federal Navy.”

  The new navy was expensive, and President Adams insisted on imposing taxes to finance it, a decision for which he would pay a heavy political price. The Republicans, led by Jefferson, who was now vice president, fought Adams every step of the way, vigorously opposing the Quasi-War, the new navy, and the new taxes alike. Madison, who by this point had left the House of Representatives and returned to Virginia, lent his support to the opposition.

  By the time Adams stood for reelection in 1800, the tax increases had cooled whatever enthusiasm remained in the country for the Quasi-War and contributed to his defeat. The Federalist Party, which Adams had never actively associated himself with, had by this time become less potent. Its divisions, elitism, and emphasis on a strong central government, a big navy, and high taxes lessened its appeal. Federalists continued to believe that government should be entrusted to wealthy individuals with high moral standards and significant education who would exercise authority over a public that was often misguided and sometimes dangerous. Federalist leaders like Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris of New York and George Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts associated democracy with the uncontrolled mobs and Jacobin massacres of the French Revolution.

  Republicans, on the other hand, represented the agrarian interests of the South and West, as well as those in the northeast and the middle Atlantic states. They were angry about tax increases, which would only be used, they felt, to support an enlarged central government. They viewed Federalists as representing moneyed urban interests seeking to impose a plutocracy on agricultural America. The Republicans put their faith in farmers, the vast majority of the population. Jefferson was their leader, and in 1800 they elected him president, albeit by a narrow margin.

  When Jefferson took the oath of office on March 4, 1801, the Wars of the French Revolution, which began in 1792, were continuing, and it was his avowed policy to remain neutral. To that extent, he was following the policy of his predecessors. Staying out of the ongoing conflict, however, was even more difficult for Jefferson than it had been for Washington and Adams. They had not had to contend with Napoleon Bonaparte.

  Having seized power on November 9, 1799, Napoleon immediately showed an outsized appetite for expanding the French Empire. Federalists like Hamilton had long predicted that the French Revolution, by carrying democracy too far, would end in dictatorship. Jeffersonian Republicans, on the other hand, still clinging to the belief that British imperialism was a greater danger to the United States than that of France, were shocked and saddened by the turn of events.

  When Jefferson took office in March 1801, he had no idea that the first of Napoleon’s grand projects was reestablishing the vast French Empire in North America. To achieve this, the French dictator had to crush the armies of the Second Coalition in Europe, which he did with stunning victories over the Austrians at Marengo on June 14, 1800, and again, under French general Moreau, at Hohenlinden, twenty miles east of Munich, on December 3 of the same year.

  Napoleon also had to neutralize the Royal Navy. This proved unexpectedly easy. Pitt had resigned in 1801 because of differences with King George III over Catholic Emancipation, which the prime minister advocated and the king did not. The new ministry of Henry Addington, seeking a respite from the war with France, agreed to peace in
the fall of 1801 and then signed the Treaty of Amiens on March 25, 1802, ending hostilities between the two countries.

  By the time Napoleon reached an accord with Britain, he had already secretly acquired Louisiana from a hapless Spain and was preparing a large army to secure Haiti, which he planned to use as a base from which to occupy New Orleans. Once on the North American mainland, he could easily absorb Spanish Florida and even attack the United States.

  As early as the summer of 1801, Jefferson and his new secretary of state, Madison, became aware of Napoleon’s lust for the Floridas and Louisiana. In spite of this direct threat to the United States, they were demobilizing, drastically cutting back President Adams’s navy and placing reliance for an army almost entirely on unproven state militias. As a substitute for military force, Jefferson tried using diplomacy against Bonaparte, threatening him with an Anglo-American alliance. This would have come as a surprise to Prime Minister Addington, who never contemplated such a thing. A strong American navy would have spoken far more loudly to Napoleon than empty threats about a British alliance, but Republicans had always opposed building a fleet.

  Luckily for Jefferson, Bonaparte’s troops never made it beyond Haiti. Haitian rebels, who refused to be reenslaved (which Napoleon announced he would do), as well as disease crushed the French expeditionary force and, with it, Bonaparte’s grandiose scheme for North America. He then completely reversed himself—a characteristic trait—changing course without consulting anyone and selling all of Louisiana to a bedazzled Jefferson, turning potential disaster for the president into his crowning achievement. Most Americans applauded the miracle-working Jefferson for his wondrous feat, accomplished at so little cost. No mention was made of the actual reasons—Haiti’s former slaves fighting for their freedom and blind luck—Jefferson was able to acquire Louisiana. Although the Republicans were enthralled, the Federalists were not; they maintained that buying Louisiana was unconstitutional. Federalists expected the vast new territory to further dilute their political power while providing a huge area for the extension of slavery, which northern Federalists steadfastly opposed.