1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  Although Madison would not agree to an immediate armistice, he did arrange for the American chargé d’affaires in London, Jonathan Russell, to remain there, and for British legation secretary Anthony Baker to stay in Washington and keep a channel open for negotiations after Ambassador Foster returned home. Madison also agreed to let British packet boats pass freely under a flag of truce. When he made these decisions, he was confident about the pressure of events moving the new British government. Negotiations with the Liverpool ministry were made more difficult, however, by the fact that the experienced American ambassador to Britain, William Pinkney, had left London back in April 1811, and Madison had not replaced him. Pinkney departed because he felt Perceval would never change his hard-line policies toward the United States.

  When Foster sailed back to London, he carried with him a ciphered dispatch for Chargé Russell, containing Madison’s terms for ending hostilities. “To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous,” the president explained later, “the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifest disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was scarcely out of the scabbard, before the enemy was apprised of the reasonable terms on which it would have been resheathed.”

  The president’s terms were: Repeal the Orders in Council; end illegal, or paper, blockades; provide indemnities for spoliations; cease impressment; and dismiss impressed Americans from the Royal Navy. Russell delivered Madison’s message to Castlereagh on August 24.

  Russell did not need to point out to Castlereagh the obvious: If Britain did not act now to conciliate the United States, the president would be forced into ever closer relations with France. Russell had no way to divine Napoleon’s thinking, of course. No one did, not even his closest advisors. He kept his own counsel and could change his mind with disturbing rapidity. It was safe to say, however, that Bonaparte was pleased to have Britain and America at each other’s throats. But at the same time, he was unhappy that American food shipments to Wellington’s army in Spain were continuing under British licenses. Madison refused to end them for fear of political repercussions in Pennsylvania and other states, where farmers and shipowners were reaping handsome profits from the trade. It was an election year, after all, and Pennsylvania was critical to the president’s reelection. At Madison’s urging, Congress had enacted a ninety-day embargo on April 4 prohibiting shipments to Britain of all kinds, but an exception was made for grain going to Wellington.

  MEANWHILE, WITH THE Napoleonic danger looming ever larger, Lord Liverpool also hoped to have a quick end to a conflict that had begun, in his view, by mistake. On July 22, the British 10-gun brig Bloodhound arrived at Annapolis with official word that the Orders in Council had been withdrawn, and on August 5 Chargé Baker went to the White House and presented the news to Madison, telling him that the Orders were suspended as of August 1. Baker also informed the president that Admiral Sawyer at Halifax was anxious to work out the details of an armistice, as was Governor-General Prevost and the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, Sir John Sherbrooke. Madison’s reaction was that he had sent his terms to Russell, and they would have to be accepted before he would consider an armistice. The president did not want the war effort weakened by premature talk of peace, when the British had not actually agreed to his conditions.

  Madison was right to be cautious, for when Foreign Secretary Castlereagh saw the president’s proposals, he rejected them out of hand. He wrote to Russell on August 29 that His Majesty’s government could not, under any circumstances, “consent to suspend the exercise of a right [impressment] upon which the naval strength of the Empire mainly depends.” Castlereagh believed, with good cause, that if he accepted Madison’s terms, he would be thrown out of office, as would the entire ministry. And those who replaced them would not accept American terms either.

  Anticipating this response, Russell offered “to give assurance that a law shall be passed (to be reciprocal) to prohibit the employment of British seamen in the public or commercial service of the United States.” Monroe had authorized Russell to offer the British, by an act of Congress, a prohibition on the employment of British seamen in the public or private marine of the United States. And Madison wrote an editorial in the National Intelligencer offering to “prevent the employment of British seamen in American vessels if Britain would stop making impressments from them.”

  But Castlereagh would not be moved. British seamen could easily obtain American papers (bogus or real) by purchase or theft, making it impossible to determine who were British subjects. Castlereagh considered impressment so vital to British interests that only a guarantee that the Royal Navy could retrieve British seamen from American ships would suffice. This could only be accomplished, in his view, by the Royal Navy searching the vessels. He emphasized that no British government could rely on the United States, no matter what legislation was passed, to retrieve her deserters. Few in Britain disagreed with him. The Times wrote that giving up the impressment of British subjects on American ships is to “demand of us the sacrifice of our very existence.” Castlereagh was willing to admit that in practice overly zealous British officers had committed abuses, and he was willing to talk about putting a rein on them but not about the necessity of stopping and searching American ships for deserters.

  Castlereagh’s rejection of Madison’s terms made it clear that impressment was at the heart of the dispute between the two governments. It would remain so throughout the war. Madison pointed out later that Castlereagh’s attitude left him no alternative but to fight. “Still more precise advances were repeated,” the president wrote, “and have been received in a spirit forbidding every reliance not placed on the military resources of the nation.”

  At the same time that he was trying to negotiate a quick settlement with the British, Madison was taking a tougher line with Napoleon, threatening that if the United States reached a settlement with Britain, she would turn on France for the depredations Bonaparte had committed over many years and was continuing. The French dictator was unimpressed. Ambassador Joel Barlow did his best to convey the president’s messages to the emperor and, in fact, later died trying to do so, but Barlow failed to make an impression.

  No matter how badly Napoleon treated the United States, however, Madison was determined to uphold the country’s honor by fighting Britain. He knew he could not fight both the British and the French at the same time; he chose the one he considered the more serious threat.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blue-Water Victories

  WHEN COMMODORE JOHN Rodgers spotted H.M.S. Belvidera on June 23 and began the first naval action of the war, he was operating far beyond the orders given to him by Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton, who had instructed Rodgers to remain close to New York with his squadron and await further orders. Even though war had been declared five days earlier, the president still had not decided how to employ his miniscule fleet.

  During the first three weeks of June, Rodgers, expecting war to be declared, had waited in New York for specific orders. But none came. As the days passed, he grew more anxious, fearing a superior British fleet might sail down from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and trap his squadron in New York. The commodore had the President and her crew set to weigh the moment he received new orders from Washington. What he received instead was a letter from Secretary Hamilton warning that hostilities were likely (which Rodgers already knew) and urging, “For God’s sake get ready and let us strike a good blow.”

  Rodgers didn’t need prodding; he had his men and ship well prepared. What he lacked was specific orders tied to an overall strategy. Being told to “strike a good blow” was not a substitute. Madison had known for months that hostilities were likely. Early in the year, he had held discussions with his advisors on how to deploy the fleet, but as war approached, he still had not settled on a strategy. Instead, he ordered what few warships were ready for sea to assemble in New York under Rodgers’s command and await further instructions. Rodgers was still waiting f
or them when, on Saturday, June 20, Revolutionary War hero Brigadier General Joseph Bloomfield, commander of the army in New York, told him that war had been declared. Early the next morning, a signal gun sounded from the President, alerting all officers and men to repair on board. Before long, the entire crew mustered on the big frigate’s weather deck. “Now lads,” the stern-faced Rodgers told them, “we have got something to do that will shake the rust from our jackets. War is declared! We shall have another dash at our old enemies. It is the very thing you have long wanted. The rascals have been bullying us these ten years, and I am glad the time is come at last when we can have satisfaction. If there are any among you who are unwilling to risk your lives with me, say so, and you shall be paid off and discharged. I’ll have no skulkers on board my ship, by God!”

  Their patriotic instincts aroused, the crew greeted Rodgers’s words with spontaneous cheers. Every man declared his willingness to remain aboard and fight. As on all American warships, the crew was made up of a variety of men. Many were foreigners—often British citizens from Ireland. Some of the foreigners were naturalized Americans, but most were not. Those who had served in the British navy, whether they hailed from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or England, were happy to be in the far more benign American service, even though they risked hanging if they were caught. The majority of Rodgers’s crew, however, were Americans, including a number of free African Americans.

  Even though Rodgers could be a choleric taskmaster, his officers and crew respected him as an experienced leader who could bring them glory and prize money. Before joining the navy in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France, Rodgers had been in the merchant marine for eleven years, learning his trade and rising to become a captain, sailing out of Baltimore. President Adams appointed him to be second officer aboard the famed frigate Constellation, under Captain Thomas Truxtun. Rodgers was twenty-four years old and soon became the first lieutenant, playing a major role in the Constellation’s victory over the French frigate L’Insurgent, the most famous battle of the Quasi-War. He absorbed invaluable lessons from Truxtun in how to manage a warship. Rodgers was already a tough disciplinarian, but Truxtun, who was also a stern skipper, showed Rodgers how to avoid becoming a martinet. Truxtun believed that physical punishment should be used sparingly aboard an American man-of-war. Having to whip a man demonstrated the absence of leadership. Rodgers rarely administered a beating aboard the President.

  After the Quasi-War with France, Rodgers played a leading role in the war against Tripoli. In June 1805 he brought an end to the conflict by threatening an all-out attack on the capital of Tripoli with a large American fleet. And two months later, Rodgers used his fleet to force a settlement on the ruler of Tunis. After the war Rodgers suffered through the navy’s lean years during Jefferson’s second term and Madison’s early presidency, remaining committed to the service and its high standards.

  HEARTENED BY THE crew’s enthusiasm for getting to sea, Rodgers weighed anchor at 10 A.M. on June 21 and saluted New York. The 16-gun sloop of war Hornet, under Master Commandant James Lawrence, pulled her hook at the same time and saluted the city as well. The two ships then dropped down the Upper Bay with a fair wind, passed through the Narrows to the Lower Bay and then to Sandy Hook, arriving early in the afternoon. Waiting for them were three additional warships that had come up from Norfolk under thirty-three-year-old Commodore Stephen Decatur.

  Secretary Hamilton had ordered Decatur to take what ships were available at the Norfolk naval base and join Rodgers in New York, but for what purpose the secretary did not say. Decatur could muster only his flagship, the 44-gun United States; the 36-gun Congress, under John Smith; and the 16-gun brig Argus, under Lieutenant Arthur Sinclair. At the same time, Hamilton had ordered Captain Isaac Hull, skipper of the Constitution—then refitting at the Washington Navy Yard—to join Rodgers as soon as possible and Captain David Porter, commander of the 32-gun Essex—undergoing repairs at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn—to join Rodgers when his ship was ready.

  Decatur had been anchored at Sandy Hook for two days, waiting impatiently for Rodgers. He wasn’t happy that Madison had decided to assemble all of the navy’s serviceable men-of-war in one place, risking entrapment or destruction by the Halifax squadron. Decatur had written to Hamilton on June 8 suggesting that instead of concentrating the navy’s few ships in one area, he should send them “out with as large a supply of provisions as they can carry, distant from our coast and singly, or no more than two frigates in company, without giving them any specific instructions as to place of cruising, but to rely on the enterprise of the officers.... If war takes place, it will . . . be of greatest importance to the country that we should receive our instruction and be sent out before the declaration shall be known to the enemy—it would no doubt draw from our coast in search of us, the greater part of their cruisers.”

  Despite this advice, the president remained undecided about what to do with the navy, and his confusion was heightened by the fact that Rodgers was giving him markedly different counsel from Decatur’s. Rodgers thought the fleet should be kept together, not sent out singly. He envisioned his squadron attacking large convoys and scattered warships before the British knew a war was on. He thought that having a potent American fleet offshore would force the British to keep their Halifax squadron together, away from the coast, looking for the American fleet. This would allow the huge number of American merchantmen then at sea to return home safely. The Royal Navy did not have enough ships at their North American base to go after Rodgers’s squadron and at the same time blockade the coast.

  The American navy’s principal target ought to be British commerce, Rodgers argued. He urged attacking the great merchant fleets sailing between the West Indies and England and those near the coasts of Britain itself, “menacing them in the very teeth, and effecting the destruction of their commerce in a manner the most perplexing to their government, and in a way the least expected by the nation generally, including those belonging to the Navy: the self styled Lords of the Ocean!!” Rodgers assured Hamilton that Britain’s home islands were poorly defended, that her huge fleets were deployed far from her shores.

  At three o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-first, while he was waiting off Sandy Hook, Rodgers received another message from Secretary Hamilton dated June 18: “I apprize you that war has been this day declared.... For the present it is desirable that with the force under your command you remain in such position as to enable you most conveniently to receive further, more extensive, and more particular orders, which will be conveyed to you through New York. But, as it is understood that there are one or more British cruisers on the coast in the vicinity of Sandy Hook, you are at your discretion free to strike them, returning immediately after into port.... Extend these orders to Commodore Decatur.”

  The title of commodore was not a permanent rank in the navy; it was an honorary title assigned to the commander of a squadron. Rodgers was senior to Decatur and would be in command of the five- to seven-ship squadron assembling at New York. At age forty Rodgers was the navy’s second ranking officer. Fifty-seven-year-old Revolutionary War veteran Commodore Alexander Murray, commandant of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, was senior to him, but Murray was nearly deaf and considered too old for sea duty, which made Rogers the fleet’s senior officer in command.

  Rodgers would have preferred more specific orders long before now, but he could not wait for them. His first priority was simply getting to sea, where he’d be safe from a blockade and where his location would be unknown. This would affect the calculations of Vice Admiral Herbert Sawyer, the British commander at Halifax—once he knew a war was on. Rodgers hoped Sawyer would not find out for a while and might have his men-of-war scattered, allowing the American squadron to pick them off in detail (one at a time). “We may be able to cripple and reduce their force,” Rodgers explained to Secretary Hamilton, “. . . to such an extent as to place our own upon a footing until their loss can be supplied by a reinforcement from England
.”

  WITHIN TEN MINUTES of receiving Hamilton’s latest message, Rodgers hoisted the signal to weigh anchor, and shortly thereafter the potent American squadron glided past the lighthouse on Sandy Hook and stood out into the Atlantic. If Rodgers remained at sea for any length of time, he would be acting contrary to Hamilton’s instructions. Nonetheless, he ignored his orders and set a course to intercept a huge Jamaica convoy of perhaps one hundred and ten merchantmen that regularly sailed during June and July from the Caribbean to England. Rodgers and Decatur agreed to split prize money evenly—a common practice.

  The Jamaica convoy’s general route was well-known. Using the Gulf Stream and the prevailing southwesterly winds, the convoy would work up the Atlantic coast until it caught the westerlies north of Bermuda and use them to power it to England. The convoy would have escorts, of course. Since Parliament passed the Convoy Act in 1798, all British merchantmen were required to sail in protected convoys. But that didn’t faze Rodgers: His squadron would normally be much stronger than the men-of-war guarding the Jamaica convoy. If all went well, his fleet would capture or sink the escorting warships and then destroy or take much of the convoy as prizes. It would be the rousing start to the conflict that the administration hoped for but scarcely expected. And it would create a row in London; Parliament would want to know why the government had not anticipated war breaking out and positioned a squadron off New York to blockade Rodgers. At a minimum, disrupting the convoy would embarrass the Liverpool ministry.

  WHILE RODGERS WAS putting out from New York, Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin wrote a hasty note to the president expressing concern that a significant percentage of the American merchant fleet—whose captains had no way of knowing war had been declared—were at sea and would be vulnerable to British attacks, particularly when they approached their home ports. Back on April 4, when Madison and Congress passed the ninety-day embargo on all shipments to Britain in order to pressure London, large numbers of American merchantmen put to sea before the law went into effect. Gallatin worried about the effect on the U.S. Treasury if it were deprived of the customs duties from these ships. He expected that “arrivals from foreign ports will for the coming four weeks average from one to one-and-a-half million dollars a week.” He considered it of the first importance that Madison direct the navy “to protect these and our coasting vessels, whilst the British have still an inferior force on our coasts.... I think orders to that effect, ordering them to cruise accordingly, ought to have been sent yesterday, and that, at all events, not one day longer ought to be lost. I will wait on you tomorrow at one o’clock.”