The War of 1812

by Donald R Hickey

  Republican Pleas for Unity

  The Washington National Intelligencer published a reply to the address, but it was so labored and tedious that the editor almost apologized for wasting the space.21 As far as most Republicans were concerned, the time for debate was over. Republicans had always assumed that war would silence their critics, and since the previous winter they had ominously hinted at what Federalists might expect if they refused to cooperate. Once war is declared, said Felix Grundy in the halls of Congress, the only question would be “are you for your country or against it.” Whenever that decision is made, echoed the Washington National Intelligencer, “he that is not for us must be considered as against us and treated accordingly.”22 One of the blessings of war, Niles’ Register asserted, is that it would unify the nation and “weed our country of traitors.” “A war will prevent all clamors except from tories,” added a Philadelphia Republican, “and we shall know how to dispose of them.”23

  After the decision for war was made, Republicans renewed their pleas for unity. “This is no time for debating the propriety of a war,” said the National Intelligencer; “WAR IS DECLARED, and every patriot heart must unite in its support.” “The rightful authority has decreed,” said the Republican-dominated Massachusetts Senate. “Opposition must cease.” The Rubicon has been passed, added the Augusta Chronicle; “he who is not for us is against us.”24

  Many of these pleas carried an open or implicit threat of violence. “When war is declared,” said the Baltimore American, “there are but two parties, Citizen Soldiers and Enemies—Americans and Tories.” The Wilmington American Watchman warned “tories” to watch their step lest they “light a funeral pile on which they themselves will be consumed.” And John G. Jackson, a former Virginia congressman who was the president’s son-in-law, said: “The war will separate the partisans of England from the honest federalists & Tar & Feathers will cure their penchant for our enemy.”25

  Shortly before the declaration of war, Robert Wright, a former governor of Maryland and member of the War Congress, had warned that if “the signs of treason and civil war discover themselves in any quarter of the American Empire . . . the evil would soon be radically cured, by hemp [for hanging] and confiscation [of property].”26 Thomas Jefferson echoed these views in a letter written to Madison shortly after the declaration of war. “The Federalists,” he said, “are poor devils here, not worthy of notice. A barrel of tar to each state South of the Patomac will keep all in order, & that will be freely contributed without troubling government. To the North they will give you more trouble. You may there have to apply the rougher drastics of Govr. Wright, hemp and confiscation.”27 Perhaps Jefferson was speaking in jest, but other Republicans took the matter more seriously. Most saw war in the same light as the Boston Yankee—as a way to “insure peace at home, if not with the world.”28

  Baltimore’s Federal Republican

  Feeling against those who dared to oppose the war ran especially high in Baltimore. A rough and rowdy boomtown founded in 1729, Baltimore was the youngest of the big cities on the eastern seaboard and the only one that was firmly in the Republican camp. By the end of the eighteenth century, the city had become the entrepôt for the export of wheat and flour produced in the backcountry and had developed close ties with France. A large number of French refugees—mainly from Nova Scotia and Santo Domingo—lived in Baltimore, and the city traded extensively with both France and her West Indian colonies.29

  By 1812 Baltimore had some 47,000 people—making it the third largest city in the nation—but it was still growing at an explosive pace.30 A typical boomtown, the city suffered from a shortage of females—only 89 for every 100 males.31 Although French refugees gave the city a veneer of civilization with their balls, dance halls, and finishing schools, underneath the city was turbulent. The many French, Irish, and Germans in the population hated Great Britain, and so too did most of the native-born Americans. These groups periodically rioted against Federalists or others thought to favor the British cause. Prominent Republicans condoned this violence and sometimes even took part. Samuel Smith, the city’s leading Republican, was implicated in more than one political brawl, and Governor Wright once pardoned several people convicted of tarring and feathering a British shoemaker.32 Federalists considered Baltimore a dangerous example of democracy—the “head-quarters of mobocracy”—a reputation that persisted well into the nineteenth century.33

  The principal target of Republican fury in 1812 was the Federal Republican, a spirited Federalist newspaper published by Alexander Contee Hanson and Jacob Wagner. Heir to a distinguished colonial name, Hanson had founded the Federal Republican in 1808 (when he was only twenty-two) and had consolidated it with Wagner’s North American the following year.34 Together these men built their paper into one of the leading prints in the South. “The Federal party,” said a contemporary, “has long regarded it as a Telegraph to announce the movements of the Cabinet, and as an Oracle to pronounce the Sentiments of the wisest statesmen of the party.”35 So intense was the paper’s Federalism and so vitriolic its style that local Republicans referred to it as “His majesty’s paper.”36 “It is the most audacious, shameless, ‘lying Chronicle’ in the U. States,” said the Richmond Enquirer. The “seditious and anti-American” materials that it published, added the Baltimore Whig, “put decency to the blush and civic duty to defiance.”37

  As early as 1808 Hanson had incurred the wrath of Baltimore Republicans with a trenchant editorial against the embargo. A lieutenant in the militia, he was court-martialed by his Republican superiors, who claimed that the editorial was “mutinous and highly reproachful to the President.”38 Although Hanson escaped conviction, it was thereafter rumored that a $200 bounty had been offered to anyone who would tar and feather him.39 Undeterred by such threats, Hanson continued to use his paper to expose Republican folly wherever he found it.

  Alexander Contee Hanson (1786–1819) had built the Baltimore Federal Republican into one of the leading Federalist newspapers in the South when a mob tried to silence it in the summer of 1812. Although he continued to publish the paper and later served in Congress, Hanson never recovered from the internal injuries that he sustained at the hands of the mob. (Library of Congress)

  As the nation moved closer to war in the spring of 1812, rumors began to circulate that the Federal Republican would suffer violence.40 While rival papers like the Whig (which was controlled by Samuel Smith) and the Sun published inflammatory articles, the talk in the coffeehouses was “that if war was declared, the paper was so obnoxious that the editors must either alter its tone, or it must be stopped.”41 Taking note of these threats, the Federal Republican said that Federalists would not be cowed into silence nor frightened into supporting a war that they considered unjust and unwise. Otherwise, “a war would put the constitution and all civil rights to sleep. Those who commenced it, would become dictators and despots, and the people their slaves.”42

  The First Riot: Mob Rule

  On June 20, two days after the declaration of war, the Federal Republican came out squarely against it. Calling the war “unnecessary,” “inexpedient,” and bearing “marks of undisguised foreign influence,” the editors asserted that they would use “every constitutional argument and every legal means” to oppose it. Alluding to the possibility of mob violence, they said they would “hazard every thing most dear” to prevent any attempt to establish “a system of terror and proscription.” If the regular authorities would not protect freedom of the press, the paper concluded, then Federalists would look to themselves.43

  The paper’s defiant stand did not go unnoticed. Almost as soon as this issue hit the streets, rumors began to circulate that there would be violence. The following day, plans were laid at several beer gardens on Fell’s Point (the rougher section of town) to destroy the newspaper’s office on Gay Street.44 The next evening, a crowd of several hundred men—mostly Irish, German, and native-born laborers from the Point—gathered at the office. Spurred on by a
French apothecary named Philip Lewis, the crowd pulled down the frame building and destroyed the contents inside.45

  City officials were apprised of the violence but were reluctant to intervene. Federalists asked one constable for help, but he replied that Wagner was “a rascal,” and that the mob “ought to put a rope round his neck, and draw him out of town, then hang him on the first tree they came to.”46 Other officials, dragged to the scene by angry Federalists, were frightened by the mob. Although appalled by the violence, Mayor Edward Johnson was reluctant to call out the militia. Instead, he wandered through the crowd, timidly addressing one man after another with expressions like: “my dear fellow, you ought not to do so,” or “my dear fellow, you do not know the consequences of what you are doing.”47

  When the mayor approached Lewis, the apothecary said: “Mr. Johnson, I know you very well, no body wants to hurt you; but the laws of the land must sleep, and the laws of nature and reason must prevail; that house is the Temple of Infamy, it is supported with English gold, and it must and shall come down to the ground!”48 Having said this, Lewis returned to the business at hand, while the mayor and other officials retired from the scene.49

  In the weeks that followed, mob violence continued to plague the city. One man was forced to flee town because he had reportedly said: “Damnation to the memory of Washington, and all who espouse his cause”; another, because he had said (whether as wish or prediction is unclear) that “the streets of Quebec would be paved with the bones of those troops who should march from the United States to attack Canada.”50 An Irishman also had to flee because he had reportedly ridden express for the Federal Republican.51 Mobs dismantled several ships in the harbor, convinced that they were loaded with provisions for Britain or her allies.52 The city’s black people came in for a share of the abuse as well. Two houses in the black section of town were pulled down because their owners were thought to be sympathetic to Britain. A black church was also threatened but was saved when a detachment of militia was called out.53

  Public officials were often present at these scenes but usually showed more interest in appeasing the mob than in dispersing it. On one occasion Mayor Johnson served on a search committee, hoping to save a house from destruction.54 On another, customs collector James W. McCulloch refused to let a ship clear for Lisbon, declaring that “he would consider himself as accessory to treason” if he let her sail.55 Except when the church was threatened, city officials refused to call out the militia. They were unwilling to risk their popularity, they were genuinely afraid of the mob, and they considered the militia unreliable anyway.

  The Federalists’ Defiant Response

  Federalists everywhere were appalled by the violence, fearing that it would spread and deter opposition elsewhere. As Major General Henry “Light-Horse” Harry Lee put it: “Mobs [were] justly styled ‘sores’ political by acrimonious Tom [Jefferson], when his pen was directed by truth, and not by ambition. They must not be allowed to take root in our land, or soon will our tall trees be abrupted from their foundation.”56 “Unless the people are immediately roused,” warned another Federalist, “all opposition to the ruling policy will be unnerved, and the influence of these satanic outrages in Baltimore, will spread throughout the state.” If the press can be thus silenced, he added, “we are further gone in the road to perdition than I thought possible.”57

  Hanson fully agreed with these sentiments. “In the course of human events,” he told a friend, “I shall be in Baltimore to assert my rights with effect.”58 Determined to resurrect his paper, he made arrangements to have it printed in Georgetown and shipped to Baltimore for distribution. Wagner, who had moved to Georgetown to get out of harm’s way, subleased a three-story brick building on Charles Street in Baltimore to Hanson for use as an office. Seeking pledges of support, Hanson toured the Maryland countryside in the company of John Howard Payne, a young actor who later gained fame for composing “Home, Sweet Home.”59

  On July 25 Hanson and Payne entered Baltimore to take possession of the Charles Street house. In the days that followed scores of Federalists visited Hanson to welcome him back to the city and to encourage him in his campaign against the war. A number of the visitors—mainly young men from the countryside, scions of Maryland’s finer Federalist families—agreed to stay in order to defend the building from possible attack. Henry Lee, who was in the city to discuss the publication of his memoirs, also offered to help. Because of his Revolutionary War experience, he was put in charge of the defensive preparations.60

  The Second Riot: Mayhem

  Around 9:00 in the morning on July 27, the Federal Republican reappeared in the streets of Baltimore. Under a masthead that boldly proclaimed “Baltimore, July 27, 1812—Published at No. 45 So. Charles-Street,” the paper carried a caustic and searching editorial on “Mobocracy.” Denouncing the violence that afflicted the city, the editorial said that the attack on the newspaper had been planned for months. Republican newspapers in the city had repeatedly warned that when war was declared “the office would be demolished and the proprietors thrown into the fangs of a remorseless rabble.” Those who took part in the rioting were merely the “misguided instruments” of more powerful men in Washington: “terrorists upon the floor of Congress,” who denounced opposition to the war, and the editors of the Washington National Intelligencer, who sought to turn a foreign war into a civil contest.

  Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee (1756–1818) had distinguished himself as a cavalry officer during the American Revolution and was the father of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. In Baltimore to arrange for the publication of his memoirs in July 1812, he organized the defense of the Federal Republican office that was assaulted by a mob. Lee sustained injuries that left him an invalid. (Portrait by William Edward West. Wikimedia Commons)

  Who gave “the specific intimation” for the attack, the paper said, was unknown, but the evidence pointed to “the monster in Baltimore [Samuel Smith], whose corruption, profligacy and jacobinical heart, were well suited to place such orders from his superiors, in a train of execution.” City and state officials were culpable, too, because they had done little to suppress the lawlessness. The assault on the Federal Republican was “a daring and desperate attempt to intimidate and overawe the minority” and “to destroy the freedom of speech and of press . . . through a system of French revolutionary terror.” Denouncing the despotism of the mob, the editorial defiantly announced that the paper would continue to be published at Baltimore as well as Georgetown.61

  Incensed by the newspaper’s reappearance in their city, Republicans resolved to silence it permanently. Early in the evening of July 27, a group of boys gathered at “Fort Hanson” (as the Charles Street house was called) and began stoning the building and taunting the Federalists inside. The boys were soon joined by adults, mainly Irish, German, and native laborers. The mob was enraged by the appearance of a carriage of arms for the defenders, and the assault continued until most of the windows, shutters, and sashes were broken.62 The occupants warned the mob to disperse, but the reply from the street was: “Fire, fire, you damned tories! Fire! we are not afraid of you.”63 About 10:00 p.m. the Federalists fired a warning burst into the air. This scattered the mob, but only temporarily, for most of the people returned armed with weapons of their own.64

  A half block north of the house, a doctor named Thadeus Gale rallied the mob for a fresh assault on the house. “That ball,” he said of the warning burst, “was aimed at me—the Tories ought to be hang’d upon this tree.” Crying “Follow me,” he led the mob back to the house and forced open the front door.65 As the mob pushed through the doorway, the Federalists inside opened fire, killing Gale and wounding several others. Once again the mob dispersed, but once again it returned, and for the rest of the night it kept the building under siege.66

  Hoping to save the house from destruction, the son of the widow who owned it went to Brigadier General John Stricker’s home, which was located nearby. When asked for help, the brigadier re
plied contemptuously: “I am no disperser of mobs.”67 Later, other Federalists urged Stricker to call out the militia, but he refused to do so without an order signed by city officials.68 Not until 11:00 p.m., when the mob extended all the way to his house and shots could be heard, did Stricker order Major William Barney to summon his troop of cavalry. Barney managed to round up about thirty men but refused to march to the scene of trouble until 3:00 a.m., when two magistrates who would sign the order were at last found.69

  At the appearance of Barney’s force, cries rang out “the troop is coming, the troop is coming,” and the mob scattered.70 But when Barney (who was running for a seat in the House of Delegates) showed more interest in talking than fighting, the people returned. “I come here to keep the peace, and I will keep it,” Barney told them. “I am sent here by superior orders, or I would not be here. You all know, that I am of the same political sentiments with yourselves. I pledge you my word and honor, that I will take every man in that house into custody.”71 The mob gave Barney three cheers, after which he entered the house to parley with the Federalists. He apologized for speaking harshly of them and promised to do his best to protect them. But to their demands that he disperse the mob he lamely pleaded lack of authority.72