by Mark Zuehlke
By 1812, three out of every five Upper Canadian settlers were American. Despite their pledge of allegiance, few thought themselves British subjects or even Canadians—that distinction they left to the French Canadians. The oath was an insignificant matter of convenience.15 After all, many had earlier forsaken allegiance to the Crown by fighting for American independence or had parents who had done so. Most continued to consider themselves Americans. The War Hawks so blithely believed Upper Canada would easily fall partly because these settlers would surely welcome their liberators with open arms or at least offer no resistance.
While Canada was considered ripe for picking, the main argument for its invasion was more strategic than imperialistic. Neither the War Hawks nor Madison’s administration could conceive of any other means of effectively making war on Britain. Conquering Canada would drive the British out of North America. And, if Halifax could be taken, the Royal Navy’s ability to enforce the orders-in-council upon American shipping would be greatly reduced for lack of one of its two key harbours on the western side of the Atlantic. Even if the invasion did not go as well as Clay imagined it must and only the Canadas or just Upper Canada fell into American hands, what was conquered could be used as a bargaining chip to force Britain to repeal the orders-in-council and impressment.
In the House, it fell to one of Randolph’s allies to summarize the lack of strategic options open to the United States. During the debate over raising the size of the regular army, Virginian Republican Hugh Nelson put it simply. All the War Hawks could advance to gain recognition of America’s neutral rights, he said, was the invasion of Canada. Nelson refuted the idea that Canada could be conquered. And even if it could, would that somehow enforce America’s rights? “Certainly not. The way to enforce these rights [is] by way of a great maritime force, which the nation [is] incompetent to raise and support.”16
“Ever since the report of the committee on foreign relations came into the house,” Randolph cried, “we have heard but one word—like the whip-poor-will, but one eternal monotonous tone—Canada! Canada! Canada! If you go to war it will not be for the protection of, or defense of your maritime rights. Gentlemen from the North have been taken up to some high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the earth; and Canada seems tempting in their sight. That rich vein of Genesee land, which is said to be even better on the other side of the lake than on this. Agrarian cupidity, not maritime right, urges the war …. Not a syllable about Halifax, which unquestionably should be our great object in a war for maritime security …. Are there no limits to the territory over which a republican government may be extended?”17
Randolph had missed the point that Clay, at least, had Halifax clearly in his sights. He just intended to get there by land rather than by sea, which showed little more than that the Kentuckian had a poor sense of British North America’s geography. Marching a large army from Upper Canada to Nova Scotia was not a proposition deserving serious consideration.
But Clay was a man of ideas rather than details, and that ultimately was the problem that stymied the House. All but a handful of congressmen agreed that the nation had just cause for initiating hostilities, but how to prosecute a war without unduly discomfiting the average citizen or the country’s vital business interests? There was also the issue of how to conduct a war without repudiating any of the human liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
On December 17, 1811, Langdon Cheves, chairman of the select committee studying naval matters, presented Congress with a bill to build ten additional frigates to add to the navy’s current strength of five and repair five out-of-service frigates that were slowly rotting away. This was a compromise on Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton’s request for construction of twelve 74-gun ships of the line and twenty frigates to be added to the existing ten.
An immediate furor erupted, with congressmen expounding loudly that the bill violated the long-standing policy that America should not have a permanent navy. Cheves found himself under fire from most of his fellow War Hawks, who feared that construction of a navy would draw money and resources away from any land war. The Federalists inclined to endorse the bill because it would require federal expenditures sure to be unpopular and might consequently erode public support for Madison’s government.
No sooner had this bill been advanced than Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin tabled a long-delayed report on the projected costs of the war. Although he had earlier tried to convince Jefferson and his administration that war was necessary, Gallatin had begun to have second thoughts when Madison showed him an advance copy of his intended address to the opening of Congress. In essence it sought congressional authority to declare war on Britain. Deeply alarmed, Gallatin had cautioned the president against issuing “an outright recommendation of war” and quietly counselled him to follow a more cautious course. “Is it more eligible to resort to war than to rely on the effect of non-importation?” he asked. And if so, is “it proper and consistent with policy to recommend it?”
Gallatin answered no to the first proposition, not out of any belief that non-importation could succeed but more out of “the uncertainty in every respect of the effect of a war.” Gallatin’s estimates for the cost of war and the resources required to win were alarming, and more than he believed the nation could afford.
Not only were the costs worrisome, Gallatin feared that “the measures necessary to carry on the war must be unpopular and by producing a change of men may lead to a disgraceful peace, to absolute subserviency hereafter to Great Britain and even to substantial alterations in our institutions.” Correctly anticipating that the Federalists in both the Senate and Congress might support measures guaranteed to heighten federal spending in order to spawn such unpopularity that the government fell, Gallatin believed that a Federalist president would immediately negotiate a peace on British terms. Madison, he suggested, should leave it to “the body with whom our Constitution has exclusively vested the power of making war” rather than present it as a presidential recommendation.
Such an approach ensured that final responsibility for war would rest with the House and the Senate rather than the president. As a consequence of Gallatin’s counsel, Madison had struck from his speech any reference to what he believed America should do in response to the evidence of Britain’s “war on our lawful commerce” that he cited at length. Instead he said only that “the period has arrived” without clearly stating what the import of this moment necessitated. Had it not been for Gallatin’s intervention, Madison’s message to Congress would have directly called for a declaration of war.
In advancing an argument for moderation, Gallatin was not outright attempting to prevent the war. Although haunted by concerns about how it would be funded and prosecuted, he believed that a recommendation by Madison for war would cost the United States any element of surprise over the British and might well precipitate a pre-emptory strike. “If war is certainly to ensue it is better,” he said, “as soon as we are sufficiently ready, to make it at once instead of announcing beforehand that determination and thereby enabling the enemy to strike at once, to sweep our commerce, to send a fleet and reinforcements on our coast and vicinity.”
Gallatin’s intervention had persuaded Madison to tone down the rhetoric in his message, but when it was delivered the treasurer still thought the president had advocated war over any other options. Non-intercourse or renewed attempts at negotiation were not mentioned and neither option was considered by Congress. Disappointed, Gallatin confided to William Lowndes in a rare moment of candour that “he was dissentient from the President’s message at the opening of Congress because he was averse to war.”18
When Gallatin presented his financial news about its cost he offered no position either for or against war. He merely stated its price—$50 million. The United States would have to borrow heavily while introducing new taxes and raising those already in place to foot the bill. Gallatin also made public the sobering news that America had produced almost $45.3 million in
domestic products the previous year, and, in the absence of the embargo, had exported $38.5 million of this to Great Britain and her allies Spain and Portugal while only $1.194 million had gone to France and Italy. The unasked question was whether it made sense to make war on one’s major trading partner.
Gallatins report panicked Congress. Even though the estimate of the cost of the war was ridiculously lower than what Gallatin believed was likely, the pro-war lobby declared the figures inflated. The War Hawks also called the treasurer to task for suggesting that taxes would be necessary to fund a war.19
Senator James Asheton Bayard, who staunchly opposed war, noted on January 25, 1812, in a letter to his cousin, Andrew Bayard, that nothing “has depressed the war spirit here more than the frightful exhibition made by Gallatin of War taxes. Many who voted for the army will not vote for the taxes and I much doubt whether any one proposed by the Secretary can be carried [through] both Houses of Congress. They are not such fools at the same time as not to know that war cannot be carried on without money. And when they have arrived at the point—no money no war—even they who are now panting after war if they can’t have it without taxing the people and of course ruining their popularity will abandon the object.
“I shall consider the taxes as the test, and when a majority agree to the proposed taxes, I shall believe them in earnest and determined upon war, but till then I shall consider the whole as a game of juggling in which the presidency and the loaves and fishes belonging to it are the objects they are contending for.”20 The following day, in another letter, Bayard sarcastically referred to a colleague who had approached him to say “he had no objection to going to war, but did not want it to cost anything.”21
Federalists such as Bayard fell upon Gallatin’s grim estimates with glee. Massachusetts congressman Samuel L. Taggart thought it must surely “cool the war fever and disabuse the public that it would be easy to take Quebec.” Some Republicans, meanwhile, accused Gallatin of having done nothing to discourage the war movement in the House until it had advanced so far that to step back now from war would disgrace them all. Outside the House, Gallatin faced slanderous attacks in the pro-war newspapers. One headline described him as “The Rat—in the Treasury.”22
Brushing aside criticism, Gallatin pressed home the fact that it was impossible to make war without paying the piper of higher taxes and increased duties to cover the costs. Nor would it be possible to avoid incurring public debt. War was expensive, and Congress would have to wake up to that fact or the entire adventure would necessarily fail. Not above pressing his case through back channels, Gallatin enlisted the assistance of one of the elder War Hawks, forty-year-old Jonathan Roberts of Pennsylvania. A bachelor, Roberts was happy to accept Gallatin’s frequent invitations to dinner and was soon converted to the necessity of the treasurer’s prescription. Carrying this message repeatedly back to the War Mess over the tavern, he slowly won over some of the young westerners. Most important, he convinced Clay that Gallatin’s recommendations were correct.23
By early 1812, Gallatin no longer believed war could be avoided, which made it all the more important that Congress adopt the taxation, borrowing, and duty-raising measures. Were they to fail, the treasurer was convinced America would lose this war that it seemed hell-bent on starting.
Meanwhile Congress was determined to keep its head buried in the sand. Although it passed the bill to increase the size of the army, that was about the only concrete preparatory step it authorized. Even Clay’s powerful rhetoric failed to save the navy bill. In a series of motions, Congress whittled down the number of new frigates from ten to six, then to five, four, three, and finally to none at all by a vote of sixty-two to fifty-nine. Stockpiling building materials was narrowly approved, but the Senate then scuttled fully repairing the decommissioned frigates by slashing the number to be rehabilitated by a third. Not to be outdone, Congress rejected a bill to arm and to classify the militia as subject to federal control and deployment to wherever the administration so desired—it being a long-standing policy that state militias could not be requiredto serve outside U.S. boundaries and, in some cases, not even outside the state in which they were raised.
Congress’s unwillingness to prepare for war infuriated Madison, even as his failure to recommend war exasperated many congressmen. Federalist Senator Nicholas Gilman blamed Madison’s “want of manliness and candor” for destroying “the confidence that ought always to subsist between the different branches of government.”
Madison had clung to the slender hope that Britain might indicate willingness to repeal its orders-in-council when the Prince Regent took over from mad King George III. But the Prince had made it clear in a speech delivered in London that resumption of normal trade with America would occur only when practicable. He went on to tell Parliament that any attempt at conciliation with America must be consistent “with the due maintenance of the maritime and commercial rights and interests of the British Empire.” Madison complained to his old friend Thomas Jefferson on February 7: “All that we see from Great Britain indicates an adherence to her mad policy towards the United States.” Gloomily, he added of Congress: “With a view to enable the Executive to step at once into Canada they have provided, after two months delay, for a regular force requiring twelve [months] to raise it, and after three months for a volunteer force, on terms not likely to raise it at all for that object.”24
By February’s end, Madison and his administration were committed to war. It was agreed, however, that no declaration would be made until the return of the American sloop-of-war Hornet from Europe. Hornet had sailed to Europe in late 1811 and had been held there pending the outcome of negotiations with France over a possible commercial treaty. An accommodation with France would strengthen America’s international position and the British might be pressured to cancel the orders-in-council.
That was a faint hope, however, and having decided that war was almost inevitable, Madison implemented a bizarre scheme intended to whip up popular support throughout the nation for such an enterprise. On March 9, he set before Congress documents purported as proof that in 1808 Canadian governor Sir John Craig had hired a spy named John Henry to recruit a force of traitors, particularly among the Federalists, to mastermind a rebellion in New England to secede from the Union. Madison and his secretary of state, James Monroe, had been enticed into buying these reputedly seditious documents by a French-Canadian con man posing as a French count. Eager for what they hoped would be evidence not only of British intrigue but also of Federalist disloyalty, Madison and Monroe had forked over $50,000 (the entire annual secret service fund) in February and then waited until the timing was right to release them.
It seems unlikely either bothered to read the documents before the purchase or after. They proved worthless. No conspirators were named, no specifics of rebellious plots revealed. Henry was quickly exposed as a sleazy opportunist. Several American journalists noted that the papers contained nothing that could not be learned by reading any Boston newspaper.25 After an initial flurry of outrage in both the popular press and on the Congress floor, the matter largely fizzled out.
Meantime the tone of debate in both Senate and Congress reflected growing support for war and some recognition that the administration needed the means to prosecute it. On March 14, Congress authorized an $11-million loan but refused to impose taxes on the American people or on business transactions conducted within the boundaries of the country. That left Gallatin increasingly dependent on declining customs duties and export taxes for government revenue.26
Clay and Monroe met the morning after Congress approved the war loan and agreed that matters had to be brought to a head. Their idea was that America should again impose an embargo upon itself for thirty days and that upon its termination war would automatically follow. In a note Clay sent Monroe that afternoon, he argued that an embargo would “above all powerfully accelerate preparations for the War. By the expiration of the Embargo the Hornet will have returned with good or ba
d news, and of course the question of War may then be fairly decided.”
In the margin of the note, he scribbled, “Alth.’ the power of declaring War belongs to Congress, I do not see that it less falls within the scope of the President’s constitutional duty to recommend such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient than any other which, being suggested by him, they alone can adopt.”27
On March 31, Monroe huddled with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in what were supposed to be secret proceedings. John Randolph, however, refused to be bound by secrecy and read to Congress some of the notes he took during the meeting. Monroe, he revealed, opened the meeting by saying that “without an accommodation with Great Britain Congress ought to declare war before adjourning.” The only reason for not issuing an immediate declaration, Monroe had continued, was that the country was unprepared. He therefore proposed an embargo not exceeding sixty days “as preparatory to war.” There was also the need to await the return of Hornet. Monroe added: “Without war, public expectations would be defeated and our character destroyed abroad.”28
Two days later Congress passed an embargo bill by a vote of seventy to forty-one. The following day, April 3, Senate approval was given but the embargo’s length extended to ninety days. Madison signed the bill into law three days later.