1812: The Navy's War

by George Daughan

  Meanwhile, General Brock, knowing nothing of the armistice worked out between Dearborn and Prevost, made the critical decision to ignore the threat from the Niagara area for the moment and concentrate on Hull. He also decided to take command at Fort Malden personally. Aided immeasurably by control of Lake Erie, he left Long Point on August 8 with three hundred additional troops and traveled by boat to Amherstburg, arriving five days later on the night of August 13.

  The very same day, Colonel Proctor’s men began preparing a battery at Sandwich to bombard Detroit. As they did, the Ohio militia colonels and many of their men had grown so tired of Hull’s wavering they were seriously considering mutiny. Colonel Miller refused to go along with them, however, and since he was the ranking regular army officer, they backed off.

  At the same time, Hull was growing increasingly despondent, worrying about what would happen to the women and children of Detroit if he were defeated. He envisioned thousands of angry tribesmen eviscerating them. While he brooded, General Brock held a strategy meeting the morning after he arrived at Fort Malden. Tecumseh, who now had 1,000 warriors at the fort, attended. He was delighted when Brock proposed crossing the river and attacking Fort Detroit right away.

  Meanwhile, on August 14, Hull, knowing of the discontent bordering on mutiny in his ranks, sent the two chief malcontents, Colonels Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur, away with four hundred men to bring the supply train on the River Raison forward to Detroit by a more circuitous route. After seeing the Ohio militiamen off, Hull got word of General Brock’s arrival at Fort Malden with reinforcements, and on the fifteenth he hurriedly sent orders to Cass and McArthur to return.

  Directly across the river at Sandwich, Brock was preparing a full-scale attack. On August 15 he sent a note to Fort Detroit, demanding Hull’s surrender. “It is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermination,” he wrote, “but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops, will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences.”

  Brock’s demand seemed an outlandish, arrogant ploy, even to his own officers. Colonel Proctor thought the note was preposterous. Hull rejected Brock’s demand, but he continued to be nervous and depressed about what he viewed as his worsening situation.

  Immediately after Hull’s refusal to surrender, the Provincial Marine’s Queen Charlotte and Hunter moved upriver directly before Fort Detroit and, in concert with the batteries at Sandwich, opened fire. Hull replied with thirty-three pieces of iron and brass ordinance, and an inconclusive artillery duel commenced. One of the British cannonballs struck Lieutenant Porter Hanks, who was awaiting his court-martial, and cut him in two.

  While the bombardment distracted Hull, Tecumseh and six hundred warriors silently crossed the river at night, followed in the wee hours of the morning by Brock with seven hundred fifty regulars. They brought five field pieces with them. Brock had no orders from Prevost to invade the United States, but he thought the situation demanded it. He soon discovered that the American colonels Cass and McArthur were in his rear with a substantial body of men and could possibly be returning to the fort. Brock decided to attack before the Ohioans reached the battlefield. He faced a substantial roadblock, however. Hull had placed two twenty-four pounders on the road, where the British troops had to pass. Brock’s guns were six- and three-pounders. His men would have been cut to pieces. All the while, cannonballs from Sandwich on the other side of the river kept falling into the fort.

  Refusing to back off, Brock exhibited a white flag and sent another message to Hull demanding that he surrender and save the fort and town from a bloody massacre. Brock’s officers were astonished at his audacity. They did not expect to succeed against the fort’s artillery, especially if Cass and McArthur were in their rear—although, as it turned out, they actually were not. (After leaving the fort, the disgruntled Ohio colonels ignored Hull’s order to return, and deliberately stayed away.)

  By this time Hull was more deeply depressed than ever about his position. He believed he was greatly outnumbered, that thousands of Indians were coming from the west, and that Tecumseh’s force was three times the size it was. Brock’s demand did not seem outlandish to him at all. Fearing the entire fort and town would be butchered, he did not delay long before surrendering without a fight. The British officers and Hull’s own troops were astonished.

  Brock’s unexpected triumph produced a windfall for him. Hull forfeited not only the soldiers at Fort Detroit but the troops under Cass and McArthur and even those under Captain Henry Brush at the River Raisin—2,200 regulars and militiamen. In addition, Hull surrendered 33 pieces of artillery, 2,500 muskets, 5,000 pounds of gunpowder, and all the fort’s other supplies, as well as the 6-gun brig Adams, tied up at Detroit’s waterfront. The British later rename her Detroit in honor of their victory.

  Adding to Hull’s disaster, on August 15 a large force of Potawatomi massacred the American soldiers and civilians evacuating Fort Dearborn (Chicago). Afraid of just such an attack, Hull had ordered the evacuation, but it came much too late. The fort was burned, ending the last vestige of American authority west of the Maumee River. A few days later, similar Indian attacks were repulsed at Fort Harrison on the Wabash and at Fort Madison on the upper Mississippi. The battle at Fort Harrison went on for ten difficult days, from September 4 to 14. Captain Zachary Taylor was commander of the tiny American garrison, and he emerged as a hero. Hull’s evacuation order had prevented Fort Dearborn from mounting a similar defense.

  Immediately after taking Detroit, General Brock annexed all of Michigan Territory in the name of George III. It was the biggest loss of territory in American history. Tecumseh’s dream of expelling the Americans from Indian lands north of the Ohio now came closer to reality.

  ON AUGUST 28 President Madison and his wife were on the road, traveling to Montpelier, their plantation in Orange, Virginia, unaware of the momentous events at Detroit. The president was seriously ill with a recurring stomach ailment and in need of a long rest. Dolley feared for his life. As they approached the village of Dumfries, where they planned to stay for the night, an express rider galloped up unexpectedly and handed Madison an urgent message from Secretary Eustis, informing him of Hull’s surrender. The president was dumbfounded. His entire war plan and his political future were suddenly in peril. In spite of his health, he returned to Washington the following morning.

  Not surprisingly, as they were engaged in a tight reelection fight against DeWitt Clinton of New York, the president and his closest political allies thought the first order of business was to deflect blame away from the commander in chief and place it entirely on General Hull. Madison felt that accepting any responsibility for what happened at Detroit would be politically disastrous. Jefferson reflected the administration’s approach when he wrote, “The treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot be a matter of blame to our government.” Monroe called Hull “weak, indecisive, and pusillanimous.” Colonel Lewis Cass wrote a scathing report of Hull’s surrender, which Madison had printed in the National Intelligencer.

  Much later, long after the election, the discredited Hull, who had returned on parole from captivity in Canada, received a court-martial that lasted from January 3 to March 26, 1814. The presiding judge was the president’s close friend Henry Dearborn. With two-thirds of the members concurring, the court convicted Hull of cowardice and neglect of duty and sentenced him to be shot, but the general’s age and outstanding service during the Revolutionary War moved the court to recommend clemency to the president. On April 25 Madison solemnly pardoned Hull and cashiered him from the service. The culpability of the president, Secretary Eustis, and General Dearborn in the Canadian fiasco of 1812 was covered up.

  Assigning exclusive blame to Hull, however, did not mitigate the dislike of the war that now spread over the entire country. Enthusiasm for invading Canada had never been strong, except in a few states, and it now sank to a new low, making recruitment for the army even more difficult. Madi
son’s ability to lead the war inevitably came into question. Had it not been for the wildly popular victory of the Constitution over the Guerriere, happening at the same time, Hull’s defeat probably would have cost the president reelection.

  Naturally, Brock’s wholly unexpected victory delighted the British. The news reached London the first week of October—before reports of the Guerriere’s defeat. The Times wrote that General Hull’s surrender “was a glorious occurrence.” But when news of the Constitution’s success arrived only hours later, the Times could scarcely believe it. “The disaster . . . is one of that nature, with which England is but little familiar,” the editors lamented. “We would gladly give up all the laurels of Detroit, to have it still to say, that no British frigate ever struck to an American.”

  The debacle at Detroit and the loss of Michigan Territory did not mean Madison was giving up his plan to invade Canada. He was more determined than ever to carry it out. Once fixed on a design, particularly one as important as the Canadian invasion, he stuck with it. This mild-mannered man, who had never seen military service, was a stubborn fighter. He viewed General Hull’s surrender as merely an unfortunate episode. In the middle of September he found another general to recover Detroit and resume the invasion. Secretary of State Monroe had volunteered for the job, but pressured by Henry Clay and the War Hawks, Madison appointed another Virginian, thirty-nine-year-old William Henry Harrison. Harrison was enormously popular in Kentucky, where the president hoped to raise a large contingent of militiamen.

  Harrison was on the move quickly, trying to prevent a further deterioration of the American position in the Northwest. He dispatched an initial force of 900 from Piqua, Ohio, to relieve Fort Wayne in northeastern Indiana, which was under Indian and British attack. He then followed with 2,000 reinforcements. They drove the Indian besiegers away with no trouble.

  Matters were proceeding so well in the fall that Harrison began thinking about a quick strike on Detroit. In preparation for it, he sent men to burn and butcher the inhabitants of as many hostile Indian villages as possible, but his raiders found that most of the inhabitants had already evacuated to the protection of Fort Malden.

  Harrison then began running into the same difficulties that had bedeviled Hull—atrocious weather, lack of supplies, difficult terrain, and, above all, British control of Lake Erie, which permitted them to transport men and supplies with relative ease. Moving soldiers and equipment overland through thick forests and extensive swamps was next to impossible. Harrison soon became less confident about the Canadian invasion. Detroit and Fort Malden remained his objectives, but it was now obvious that capturing them would be far more difficult than the president had hoped.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Canadian Disasters Accumulate

  EVEN BEFORE APPOINTING General Harrison, the president—finally realizing how important naval supremacy was to his Canadian invasion—began a crash program to dominate lakes Ontario, Erie, and Champlain. On August 31, fifteen days after Hull’s surrender, Secretary Hamilton wrote to the talented navy veteran, forty-year-old Captain Isaac Chauncey, at the New York Navy Yard, “The President . . . has determined to obtain command of the Lakes Ontario and Erie with the least possible delay, and the execution of this highly important object is committed to you.” Hamilton also wrote to naval hero Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, giving him command of the moribund program on Lake Champlain.

  Captain Chauncey had been in the navy since September 1798 and had served continuously through the Quasi-War with France and the war with Tripoli. During the Quasi-War he superintended construction of the 44-gun President, which Captain Thomas Truxtun pronounced “the finest frigate that ever floated on the waters of this globe.” Before joining the service, Chauncey had sailed and traded around the world as skipper of merchant vessels owned by John Jacob Astor. Except for a brief period when he sailed to China for Astor, Chauncey remained in the navy after the war with Tripoli, being promoted to captain in 1806. During his naval career he had not attained the notoriety of other officers like Decatur, Rodgers, or Preble, but his peers respected him as a brave, competent skipper, a solid administrator, and a wizard at the building and refitting of warships.

  Lieutenant Macdonough was also an experienced seaman and known for his fighting ability. He began his naval career during the later stages of the Quasi-War with France. His father had been a hero during the Revolutionary War, and his brother James was a wounded hero of the Quasi-War. Macdonough was intelligent, studious, thoughtful, but also, like his mentor, Stephen Decatur, a fearless warrior. It was during the conflict with Tripoli, while Macdonough was serving under Decatur as a midshipman, that he showed his audacious fighting qualities. He was part of Decatur’s crew aboard the tiny ketch Intrepid on February 2, 1804, when they slipped into the well-guarded harbor of Tripoli, boarded the captured American frigate Philadelphia through trickery, and, after a brief, fierce fight, drove the Tripolitans off the ship and burned her. Decatur, Macdonough, and their crew then jumped back into the Intrepid and escaped, as the Philadelphia became a giant ball of flame and the Tripolitans fired at them from their extensive shore batteries and warships. As the Americans inched their way out of the harbor, balls flew over their boat, but only one came near them. Miraculously, no one aboard the Intrepid was hit.

  Some months later, on August 3, 1804, Macdonough was again with Decatur in gunboat number four when Commodore Preble sent six gunboats as part of a small squadron to attack Tripoli’s nineteen gunboats and galleys and assorted other craft in Tripoli harbor. Both Decatur and Macdonough distinguished themselves in the fierce hand-to-hand fights that followed. Preble organized more attacks in the month that followed, but he was ultimately unsuccessful. His countrymen, however, appreciated his gallantry and the heroic efforts of his men. Macdonough was recognized by Preble, Decatur, and the entire officer corps as one of their finest officers, and that opinion had not changed by the time he was put in charge at Lake Champlain.

  IT WAS OBVIOUS from the correspondence that passed during the next few days in August that although the administration was on fire to get its new project moving, Madison and his advisors knew next to nothing about the lakes. Fortunately, Daniel Dobbins appeared in Washington at the time to enlighten them. He was a master lake mariner and shipwright, intimately acquainted with lakes Ontario and Erie. He knew where vessels suitable for conversion to warships might be obtained, and the best harbors to use. He also had a good idea of British naval strength on the lakes.

  The president would need all the help he could get. When Chauncey received his orders, it was already September, and Madison wanted to achieve naval dominance before winter set in. It was a daunting assignment, but Chauncey was happy to have it. He did not want to be stuck in the New York Navy Yard and miss his chance for the glory other officers were acquiring. Isaac Hull’s great victory had set the ambitions of the whole officer corps on fire.

  The only suitable place for a naval facility on Lake Ontario was Sackets Harbor at its eastern extremity. Other possible sites farther west, such as Mexico Bay, the mouth of the Oswego River, Sodus Bay, Irondequoit Bay at the mouth of the Genesee River, or the mouth of the Niagara River, were not suitable for one reason or another. Fortunately for Chauncey, thirty-year-old Lieutenant Melancthon T. Woolsey had already established a small naval base at Sackets Harbor, and he had a potent brig, the Oneida, with eighteen twenty-four-pound carronades ready to go. More importantly, he had a trained crew that could fight. No comparable base existed on Lake Erie, however. Secretary Hamilton directed Chauncey to organize one at Buffalo, but after Daniel Dobbins had a chance to enlighten the secretary, he ordered Chauncey to set up a base at Presque Isle (Erie), Pennsylvania, where the harbor was spacious and deep.

  While Madison was rushing to catch up on the lakes, the British were building more warships at Kingston to strengthen their hold on Lake Ontario. Kingston was only thirty-five miles from Sackets Harbor. The British were also building warships at York.

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nbsp; Chauncey was in an arms race, and he didn’t lose any time getting to work. With remarkable speed, he stripped the New York Navy Yard of equipment, tools, skilled workmen, and every article of war, including cannon, carriages, shot, power, and small arms, shipping them to Sackets Harbor. He also took officers, sailors, and marines off the frigate John Adams and the gunboats in his command and sent them to Sackets as well.

  Incredibly bad roads forced Chauncey to transport everything via a tortuous, time-consuming water route, made more difficult because Robert Fulton’s steamboats were unavailable. Chauncey had to rely on sail alone. His supply vessels worked their way laboriously from New York up the Hudson and then the Mohawk, where varying depths of water made the going treacherous. From there, they navigated over Wood Creek and then a portage to Oneida Lake, across the lake and down the Oneida River, which brought them to Oswego on Lake Ontario. Finally, they had to sail almost fifty treacherous miles north, hugging the coast until they reached Sackets Harbor. Along this final leg of their journey, they were subject to British attacks out of Kingston.

  On September 7 Chauncey dispatched his able subordinate Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott to construct the base on Lake Erie, purchase three merchantmen for conversion to warships, and begin building two three-hundred-ton warships. Seven days later, Elliott arrived at Buffalo and decided, in spite of Dobbins’s advice, that Black Rock—just north of Buffalo on the Niagara River—was a better place for a base, even a temporary one, than Presque Isle.