The government organized only the New Army for the crisis. The old Army remained in the west, and the War Department practically ignored the Provisional, volunteer, and Eventual Armies. Washington agreed to command the combined old and New armies, but he would not take the field until war commenced. Hamilton, who was his ranking subordinate, really commanded the New Army. President Adams disliked and distrusted the New Yorker, but he appointed him second in command upon Washington’s insistence. Hamilton craved military glory and devoted his considerable skill to mobilizing the New Army, believing he could use it to quell Republican rebellion, repel French invasion, and—so he dreamed—conquer the Floridas, Louisiana, and perhaps all South America. Naturally, Hamilton excluded Republicans from the officer corps, making this the only wholly political army in American history.
The New Army never matched Hamilton’s grandiose expectations. War fever ebbed before serious recruiting began, supplies were inadequate, and, most important, Adams undermined Hamilton’s efforts, believing he was a truly dangerous man. The only opportunity to utilize the Army came in 1799, when farmers in eastern Pennsylvania, led by John Fries, resisted the taxes levied to pay for the new military establishment. Adams proclaimed the area in rebellion and ordered 500 New Army regulars and several volunteer militia companies to restore peace. Hamilton applauded the action, but when the Army arrived on the scene, all was quiet. Federalists thought they had nipped a budding revolution, while Republicans asserted that the massive response to Fries’ Rebellion was another example of Federalist military despotism.
The Federalists also pursued a naval expansion program. Congress appropriated money to send the three nearly completed frigates to sea, to build the other three authorized in 1794, and to acquire another twenty-four warships. The Marine Corps, which functioned during the Revolution but expired in the postwar demobilization, was revived to provide ships’ guards, who could also be ordered to serve on shore. As a maritime reinforcement, Congress permitted merchant vessels to arm themselves and attack armed French ships. The burgeoning land and naval forces imposed an onerous burden on Secretary of War James McHenry, and in April 1798 Congress cleaved his workload in half by creating the Department of the Navy. As the first secretary of the navy, Adams selected Benjamin Stoddert, who requested a building program of twelve 74-gun ships of the line, an equal number of frigates, and twenty or thirty smaller warships, all supported by a system of shipyards and dry docks. Not even the Federalist-dominated legislature could swallow that many masts without choking, but in 1799 it authorized construction of six 74-gun ships and two dry docks, and the purchase of timber lands for naval use.
The first clash in the Quasi-War occurred in July 1798, when the converted merchantman Delaware captured Croyable; the last encounter took place in October 1800 when the frigate Boston defeated LeBerceau. In between these two engagements the Navy escorted merchant convoys in the West Indies, hunted enemy privateers infesting the area, and occasionally fought the few warships France sent to the Caribbean. More than a thousand armed merchantmen augmented the fifty-four warships Stoddert assembled, and they had hundreds of encounters with French privateers. Throughout the conflict the Americans enjoyed considerable success, due in large part to British assistance. The Royal Navy aided in convoy duty, freeing American ships for other tasks, and controlled the Atlantic, preventing substantial French forces from sailing to the New World. American ships used British guns, supplies, and Caribbean bases.
The Quasi-War remained limited and undeclared. When Adams received French assurances that a new peace mission would be properly received, he dispatched another commission, which negotiated the Convention of 1800 ending the Quasi-War. Congress soon dismantled the wartime military establishment, disbanding the New Army and authorizing the president to sell all the ships except for thirteen frigates, only six of which would remain in active service. The convention also aided Jefferson’s election in 1800. The Hamiltonian wing of the Federalist Party refused to support Adams’s reelection bid, having never forgiven him for choosing peace over war and robbing it of an opportunity to crush the Republicans, defeat the French, and conquer a vast American empire. The sudden end to the crisis also gave Republicans an armory of political ammunition by making Federalist preparedness measures appear despotic.
As the Federalist era ended, the party of Washington and Hamilton had not infused as much military strength into the republic as they desired. Yet military policy as it evolved during the 1790s basically remained intact for a century. The nation would keep a small professional Army, augmented by militia and federal volunteers during wartime. The embryonic system of arsenals, shipyards, dry docks, and coastal fortifications would be expanded. The nation would rely on a small navy to show the flag in peacetime and to protect American shipping while plundering enemy commerce during wartime. In essence, a passive defense policy emerged that theoretically would preserve the country during a crisis until its latent strength could be mobilized.
The survival of the Federalist-established military institutions initially depended on their acceptance by the new president. Jefferson had a defensive conception of United States military power and advocated noninvolvement in foreign affairs, governmental economy, and reduction of the national debt. In his mind none of these goals accorded with a substantial peacetime establishment. But he also believed the international arena was predatory and that military weakness invited aggression, and he had no intention of completely dismantling the Federalist military apparatus. Although Jefferson viewed the militia as the first line of defense, its purpose was to buy “time for raising regular forces after the necessity of them shall become certain.” He urged Congress to reform the militia, making it an effective immediate defense force so that the regulars could be safely reduced, but not abolished.
The Republican-controlled Congress refused to tamper with the Uniform Militia Act, but on March 16, 1802, it passed the Military Peace Establishment Act, which demonstrated Jefferson’s commitment to a regular Army, but one that was “Republicanized.” The administration inherited a Federalist-dominated Army, and Jefferson believed he needed to ensure that it would respond to Republican direction. The 1802 act provided the mechanisms for breaking Federalist control and creating a source of Republican officers. Under the guise of an economy measure, the act “reduced” and reorganized the Army. The reduction was cosmetic. The Army had never attained its authorized strength under the Federalists, and the Republicans simply cut the Army’s authorized size to approximately its actual strength. The reorganization eliminated eighty-eight officers’ positions, allowing Jefferson to remove officers who had been Federalist partisans, but also added about twenty ensigns. The president appointed Republicans to these new positions.
The 1802 act also established the Military Academy at West Point, creating a Corps of Engineers distinct from the artillery and stating that “the said corps . . . shall constitute a military academy.” The president received exceptional powers over the Corps of Engineers and the Military Academy, permitting him to select the officers who would establish the academy and teach there, and the cadets who would attend it. Ironically, since the early 1780s Federalists had supported such an institution, while Jefferson had always opposed this idea. He reversed his position for two reasons. First, the president had wanted a national school that would emphasize the sciences and produce graduates useful to society. Officers trained as scientists and engineers would, for example, benefit the nation as explorers and roadbuilders. Equally important, West Point would be a Republican avenue into the officer corps. In selecting faculty and cadets, Jefferson searched for eligible Republicans and avoided Federalists, furthering the process of “Republicanizing” the Army that would continue throughout his years in office.
Naval retrenchment under Jefferson initially bordered on liquidation, but when war with Tripoli appeared likely, the administration lifted its budgetary ax from the Navy’s neck. At first Republicans discontinued work on the 74s, the dry docks,
and the navy yards, discharged officers and men, and sold ships as rapidly as possible. However, the pasha of Tripoli threatened to unleash his pirates if he did not receive increased tribute, which the United States had been paying since the 1780s. The president detested Barbary corsairs more than an expensive Navy, and in June 1801 he dispatched a small squadron under Commodore Richard Dale with orders to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence” if Tripoli declared war. Dale learned that the pasha had done so, but neither he nor Commodore Richard Morris, who arrived with a replacement squadron in 1802, was very aggressive, and they accomplished little. In 1803 Jefferson sent a third squadron under Commodore Edward Preble, who clamped a tight blockade on the city of Tripoli and subjected it to naval assaults that damaged the town, its fortifications, and enemy ships in the harbor. A fourth squadron under Commodore Samuel Barron followed up Preble’s work with a combined land-naval expedition that forced the pasha to sign a peace treaty in June 1805.
The Tripolitan War spurred Jefferson’s fascination with gunboats, which had been useful in the shallow North African waters. Congress authorized construction of fifteen gunboats in 1803, and eight of them crossed the Atlantic to serve in the Mediterranean. In the postwar period the president embraced them as the heart of his naval policy, and by 1807 Congress had authorized another 263 of them. The gunboats were cheap to build, were so simple to operate that maritime militiamen could man them—which coincided with Jefferson’s preference for citizen-soldiers over professionals—and were incontrovertibly defensive. Combined with stationary batteries at strategic coastal locations, mobile land batteries, and floating batteries, he believed gunboats would protect the country from invasion by even the strongest maritime power.
What the gunboats could not do was protect seaborne commerce, which badly needed protection. In 1803, after the brief Peace of Amiens, Napoleon declared war on England, reigniting the contest for European supremacy. Both combatants struck at American neutral trade, trying to strangle each other economically. Having gained command of the sea at the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain was the worst offender. The Royal Navy seized more than 500 American vessels between 1803 and 1807, hovered off the coast imposing a virtual blockade, and impressed American seamen. The ultimate indignity came in June 1807, when the British frigate Leopard fired on the Chesapeake, killing and wounding twenty-one men and impressing four alleged deserters.
Jefferson’s administration responded to these provocations in several ways. It launched an intensive diplomatic effort and supported it with several defensive measures: Increasing the Army’s authorized strength to 10,000 men; appropriating money to complete, repair, and build coastal fortifications; and authorizing $200,000 annually for arming the militia. Diplomacy failed to budge England on the crucial questions of neutral rights and impressment, but rather than go to war, Jefferson undertook an experiment in economic coercion. In December 1807 Congress passed an Embargo Act that prohibited all exports. Jefferson hoped that by depriving the belligerents of American products, he could wring concessions from them regarding neutral rights, but he was wrong. The embargo had little effect on the European antagonists, and British impressment and neutral rights infringements continued unabated.
Although the embargo did not deter the Europeans, it brought the United States to the verge of civil war. Federalist New England mercantile interests saw their local economy ruined, as ships rotted at their wharves and seaborne commerce languished. The Francophobe Federalists also believed the embargo hurt England far more than France. They so strenuously opposed the law that Jefferson had to use both regulars and militia to enforce it, employing military force domestically at least as readily as Federalists had done during the Whiskey and Fries Rebellions. Now it was Jeffersonians who spoke glowingly about the necessity of preserving orderly government and Federalists who screamed about tyranny. Thus the embargo sapped internal unity without alleviating the war-provoking problems with England.
Western concerns as well as maritime grievances pushed the United States toward war. Farmers believed British commercial restrictions depressed grain prices, and some westerners squinted at Canada and Florida with expansionist greed. Most important, although the English had withdrawn across the Canadian border, they continued to aid the Indians, especially Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who tried to revitalize the Indian confederacy quashed at Fallen Timbers. In 1811 the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, defeated the Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe; when British-supplied equipment was found nearby, frontiersmen seethed with anger at British treachery.
By 1812 many Americans believed the country’s options were either to fight or surrender national honor and sovereignty. A group of young congressmen, known as the War Hawks, voiced the public’s frustration over relations with England. Led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the War Hawks, tired of wordy diplomacy and spineless economic sanctions, waxed belligerent in their advocacy of strong war measures. Even Jefferson admitted that “every hope from time, patience, and love of peace are exhausted and war or abject submission are the only alternatives left to us.” His successor as president, James Madison, submitted a war message to Congress on June 1 and, after favorable votes of only 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate, signed it on June 18.
The War of 1812
Rarely have nations gone to war so reluctantly. At war with Napoleonic France, the British did not want a North American conflict. Despite the War Hawks’ verbal bellicosity and a decade of acute tension, the United States had made few warlike preparations, so the declaration of war and preparations for war came almost simultaneously. Legislation enacted early in 1812 increased the Army to 35,000 and provided for 50,000 volunteers and 100,000 militia. While these numbers were awesome on paper, when war began the regulars numbered only 12,000 and the volunteers and militia remained unorganized. The Navy consisted of only sixteen ships, seven of them frigates inherited from the Federalists, including three superb heavy frigates.5 By contrast, the Royal Navy had about 1,000 warships.
Aside from its tardy preparations, the country had four other handicaps. Madison was a weak commander in chief. A poor judge of men, he filled many positions with incompetents. For example, his general officers were Revolutionary veterans, now averaging sixty years of age. Although they had been good soldiers in their youth, time had sapped their vigor and ability. Also, Madison claimed to govern by Republican principles, including minimal government cheaply run, a distaste for standing forces, and opposition to a national debt. The war made all three principles impossible to follow, but the Madison administration never quite adjusted to this reality and, for instance, failed to formulate an adequate taxation system. Therefore the nation went to war on a financial shoestring, resulting in inadequate logistical support for the armed forces.
A third difficulty was the factionalism that pervaded all aspects of waging the war. In the field, generals rarely cooperated with one another, and Navy and Army officers paid little attention to each other’s concerns. No government agency existed to plan, much less impose, intra- and interservice coordination. Personal and political rivalries rent Madison’s cabinet, reflecting the deep divisions even among Republicans as to the war’s wisdom and the most effective measures for waging it; meanwhile the Federalists opposed the war almost unanimously.
Finally, conflict between national and regional strategic concerns also hampered the war effort. From the administration’s perspective, the crucial strategic task was to conquer Canada in the hope that Britain would make concessions on the maritime issues to regain it. Though a Canadian offensive was Madison’s primary goal, American coastal localities were more concerned about naval raids, the southwest considered the Creek Indians a primary threat, and the northwest believed Tecumseh’s confederacy to be the foremost security problem. The government’s weakness and the slow, primitive means of transportation and communication resulted in the war becoming so regionally oriented that national strategy was often irrelevant. Imp
osing the administration’s will on the war effort was impossible; local leaders simply ignored its injunctions. But regionalism could be a strength as well as a weakness. Local strategists understood regional realities and could adopt appropriate measures; and because they were so autonomous, defeats in other theaters did not shatter their morale.
Factionalism and regionalism united in Federalist-dominated New England, where the war’s unpopularity not only hamstrung the war effort but threatened national unity. Every Federalist in Congress voted against the declaration of war. Traditionally pro-British, the Federalists believed that the United States should help, not hinder, Britain against France. In the fall of 1814 the Federalist governor of Massachusetts sent an agent to Halifax to probe for prospects of a separate peace; the Federalists’ collective disaffection culminated in December at the Hartford Convention, a conclave that seemed so ominous the Madison administration prepared to use force to crush any secessionist movement that might burst from behind the meeting’s closed doors. Although the convention only proposed certain defensive measures and a series of constitutional amendments that would strengthen New England’s position in national affairs, it implied that if the demands were not met New England might secede from the Union.
Deleterious consequences flowed from Federalist opposition. New England Federalists (and even some Republicans) carried on illicit trade with England, providing supplies to enemy armies in Canada, and withheld financial assistance for “Mr. Madison’s war.” Since Republicans failed to impose sufficient taxes, they resorted to loans and borrowed $40 million, of which less than $3 million came from New England, the nation’s richest section. Federalist governors also refused to mobilize their militias when Madison called for them. Under the Constitution the militia could be called into national service only for specific purposes. The governors insisted that they, not the president, had the right to determine when these exigencies existed, and they denied their existence.6 They also argued that militia could not be used outside the country for a Canadian invasion. Since New England’s militia system was the country’s best, the obvious invasion route via Lake Champlain bordered New England, and the small Army needed militia reinforcements to conduct an invasion, the governors’ refusal to cooperate was near crippling.
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