For Honour's Sake

by Mark Zuehlke

  Adams lingered in Ghent, pottering over the papers and records, putting them in order, reluctant now to leave a city he admitted to having grown fond of. On January 26, after seven months and two days in what he deemed “the most memorable period of my life,” Adams climbed into a carriage loaded with many trunks of papers and effects for the journey to Paris.19 None of the men would ever return.

  In North America, President Madison fretted for news. No word from New Orleans, nothing from Ghent. The government was in crisis, near bankrupt, and only feeble preparations were under way for a spring campaign against Canada. He had no reason to believe it would succeed where the others had failed. An attempt by Capt. Stephen Decatur to slip the frigate President out of New York harbour on January 14 had ended in disaster, proving the effectiveness of the British blockade. Intercepted, President had fought a long engagement that ended with Decatur striking her colours after one-fifth of his crew were killed and wounded and the ship badly holed.20 That other frigates had eluded the blockade and were on the rampage was scant consolation, and the symbolism of the captured ship’s name was not lost on the anti-war press.

  Federalists in New England were dangerously close to insurrection. On January 9, Madison had instructed Monroe to draw secret plans to raise an army of New York volunteers to “put rebellion down” in the northern states.21 Three days later his fears seemed warranted when a series of constitutional amendments was released by twenty-six delegates who had held a secret conference in Hartford, Connecticut. The Hartford Convention demanded a two-thirds vote by Congress be required to declare war, curb commerce, or admit new states; denied foreign-born citizens from holding federal office; limited presidents to one term; and prohibited the immediate predecessor coming from the same state.

  Rumours swirled on the windy Washington streets that Jackson had surrendered, the negotiations failed. Predictions were high that Madison would resign. Better that than the disgrace of impeachment. Even friends thought it unlikely his presidency could survive more defeats. Some worried for the man himself. The last year he had been ill as often as not and looked weak and tired, older than his sixty-three years.

  Madison’s demeanour would have been grimmer still had he learned that the British had carried out two landings on American soil other than at New Orleans. On January 13, troops off a small fleet commanded by Capt. Robert Barrie had assaulted and captured a fort on Point Peter, on the southern Georgia coast. From there they marched inland and occupied the town of St. Marys. Then, on the night of February 7–8, the force from New Orleans forced the surrender of Fort Bowyer and opened the way for occupation of Mobile. Only the arrival of a ship bringing news of the treaty prevented the troops at both St. Marys and Fort Bowyer from conducting further operations. They each withdrew on February 13.

  It was at this bleakest hour in Madison’s presidency that a courier galloped into Washington on February 5 and in minutes jubilation reigned. Jackson victorious! New Orleans saved! Nine days later the celebrations verged on delirium as word spread that two men from Ghent had landed in New York and even now the president had in hand a peace treaty. Unable to contain his curiosity, Pennsylvania senator Jonathan Roberts raced to Octagon House, where he found Madison sitting alone in his parlour, the room “still and dark.” Roberts apologized for bursting in on the basis of what must have been an unfounded rumour. “I believe there is peace,” Madison told his friend in a soft voice.22

  The next day the treaty went to the Senate, where it was ratified on February 16 without a dissenting vote. On February 17, in his curious Octagon House study that occupied a room above the turret-like portico, Madison ratified the treaty and sent it to Congress with a covering note stating that the conclusion of the war was highly honourable to America. It was, he declared, “the natural result of the wisdom of the legislative councils, of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the valor of the military and naval forces of the country. Peace, at all times a blessing, is peculiarly welcome, therefore, at a period when the causes of the war have ceased to operate, when the Government has demonstrated the efficiency of its power of defense, and when the nation can review its conduct without regret and without reproach.”23

  Two years and eight months after it began, the War of 1812 was at an end.

  EPILOGUE

  Honour Preserved

  Once the war concluded, the primary question became whether the Treaty of Ghent provided a good peace. Response in the United States was largely favourable—nothing much given up and no penalty incurred for starting the war. Specific clauses and their import were hardly examined by the popular press or federal politicians of either stripe. Federalists tried to tarnish it. A “Treaty, which gives us peace, is represented as glorious, when it has given us nothing else. And it is attempted to make us believe that all the objects of the war have been obtained, when every thing, for which it was declared has been abandoned.”1

  True, but most Americans cared not. The influence of the Federalists was on the wane, the party destined to oblivion and few sorry to see its passing. America faced one-party rule as Republicans realized a “glorious opportunity … to place themselves permanently in power” for decades to come.2 In reality, the Republican Party largely ceased to be, too, as interest groups rallied behind one or another presidential candidate claiming to be the true Republican. A decade passed before a semblance of party politics re-emerged, with the rise of Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party met by the National Republicans led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. Later, the Whigs emerged with an anti-Jacksonian platform opposed to anything Old Hickory favoured.

  Jackson’s victory at New Orleans captured the popular imagination far more than dry pages of a treaty. Overnight, savage Indian fighter became national celebrity—the country’s most legendary war hero. Soon all the failed campaigns were forgotten, the myth emerging that out of one victory the United States won the war. Nationalism ran rampant; even New Englanders climbed aboard the Union fidelity wagon. Anglophobia was at least as strong in the years immediately following the war as had been the case after independence.

  Nationalism marched hand in hand with vigorous expansionism. Spanish West Florida, annexed in 1813, was retained without apology to the neutral power from which it was wrested. The Indian confederacy, hopelessly fragmented by the war and Tecumseh’s death, was doomed. Within three years all the continent south of the 49th parallel and east of the Mississippi, save what remained of Spanish Florida, had been granted statehood or territorial status. Growing numbers of settlers, gold prospectors, buffalo hunters, fortune seekers, and freebooters of all kinds had pushed outward to the Missouri River and well beyond by the end of the decade. The Indian nations in their path fled westward as refugees, moved to assigned reservations, or faced slaughter by the army. This pattern would continue until Americans declared the west won. Only a remnant of the peoples from whom a continent was taken survived.

  As the nation expanded, as the north’s commercial and industrial wealth increased and the agrarian south found vibrant markets for its cotton and other crops, America enjoyed a rare period of unity dubbed the “era of good feelings.” The role of the federal government increased, bringing limited taxation and an enlarged army and navy. This fed the myth that the lasting consequence of the war was an America with a clear vision of itself as the one nation, indivisible under God, intended by its forefathers. This myth prevailed even after the lie of it was exposed by a civil war from 1861 to 1865 that pitted American against American in the ranks of armies larger than those fielded in any European war, the butchery on the battlefields also far greater due to advances in the means of killing that outpaced the tactics of generals. In the aftermath of such a cataclysm, the War of 1812 receded into the shadows of history to almost disappear from the American conscience.

  Not so for British North America. At first, public reaction to the peace was mainly negative. Although cessation of war was desirable, the treaty failed to secure th
e colonies from future American aggression. On the southern shores of the Great Lakes, U.S. troops still manned fort ramparts and American warships plied the waters. It seemed the hostilities could begin anew on the slightest excuse.

  There was also the Indian issue. The fur trade was still important to the economy of the Canadas, and abandonment of the Indian confederacy at Ghent could only spell the gradual demise of this vibrant industry. Yet even in 1815, that economy was being displaced in importance by agriculture, timber harvesting, and fishing. People pursuing these ways of life had little in common with the Indians and were often at odds with them, so appeals for protection of native peoples from American displacement were subdued. Soon enough the frontier would be pushed back in British North America as well, although with minimal bloodshed. Disease, famine, and less-than-voluntary consignment to reserves more efficiently cleared the way at less economic cost than war.

  At the war’s outset the British colonies had consisted of an uneasy mix of French Canadians, native-born British subjects, Empire Loyalists who had fled the Revolution to the south, and American migrants who had crossed a border seeking economic gain. During the course of the war these groups developed a vague sense of commonality based more on an exclusionary definition of identity. If they were not yet Canadian, they were not American. Had they desired to be so, the war provided ample opportunity to align themselves with the invading forces, and against insurgency the British could not have prevailed. They had not done so. Instead, a majority had supported the British resistance to American invasion. The myth that the militia almost single-handedly saved Canada from conquest was born. After the war, a wary eye was kept on America lest she try again. In the century that followed the war, Canadians did not look southward for inspiration, institutions, or forms of government. They looked instead across the Atlantic to Britain. So it was natural that the federal government created in 1867 when the colonies confederated into the Dominion of Canada hove to the British parliamentary model.

  The War of 1812, of course, never held much importance to Great Britain. Yet, when its details were released by Lord Liverpool, the treaty was subject to much criticism. It was, the London Times accused, a “deadly instrument,” a “degrading manner of terminating the war” by imposing a “premature and inglorious peace.”3 Most of the nation’s newspapers issued similar pronouncements. The peace enabled America to escape rightful punishment for its temerity in challenging British might and for serving as lackey to Napoleon. The outpouring of rage was, however, short-lived.

  While the House of Commons opposition openly criticized the cabinet and, more vehemently, the three commissioners for incompetently negotiating the treaty, they were not adverse to its outcome. Nobody had wanted a war with the United States, few cared about the Indians, and the peace seemed to have secured British North America from future American incursion. During the sputtering debates on the matter, the House benches were largely empty.

  No doubt the treaty might have incurred greater scrutiny had it not been for the crisis brought on by Napoleon’s return from exile on March 1. Who could think of matters in North America when the French were mobilizing? The Hundred Days were upon Europe, and more than a few wondered what might have happened had Britain sent thousands of its troops and also Wellington overseas. When the Iron Duke faced Napoleon and broke the French army at Waterloo on June 18, the wisdom of his being retained at home rather than sent to the colonies seemed divinely inspired. By the time of Napoleon’s abdication four days later, the ramifications of the Treaty of Ghent had ceased to be of importance to all but the commissioners tasked to carry out the resolution of issues left outstanding.

  These took years to resolve. After some rancorous negotiation, in late 1815 the British withdrew from the forts on the Mississippi and Fort Michilimackinac on Lake Huron. Congress moved to cement this victory by passing legislation in 1816 that barred British trade with American Indians. In 1817, the Passamaquoddy islands were divided. Britain got most of them, but not Moose Island. The British garrison there left the following year. Potential for a naval rearmament race on the strategically vital lakes was defused by the Rush–Bagot Agreement in April 1817 that limited each side to one warship on Lake Ontario, two on the upper lakes, and one on Lake Champlain. Albert Gallatin was among a team of commissioners who negotiated and ratified the Convention of 1818, which renewed commercial agreements that he, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay had negotiated in 1815 with, among other British representatives, Henry Goulburn and Dr. William Adams. The 1818 agreement went further than the first. It settled the 49th parallel from Lake of the Woods to Stony Mountain, with the area west of the Rockies jointly shared for ten years and a boundary settled then. America gained rights to fish and dry catch along limited Canadian coastlines, while the British gave up any right to Mississippi navigation.

  It is doubtful any of the Ghent commissioners saw the negotiation as a crowning achievement in their careers. Vice-Admiral James Gambier was so distraught over the allegations that the British commissioners had failed in their duties that he applied to Lord Liverpool for compensation. Cabinet quietly awarded him a handsome £2,250 and William Adams £2,000. Henry Goulburn declined similar compensation.

  Gambier retired to his estate and pansy-propagation pursuits. On July 22, 1830, at age seventy-three, by right of seniority he was raised to the just-emptied position of Admiral of the Fleet. As per custom it was not expected he would actually raise his flag and assume the duty. On April 19, 1833, he died.

  William Adams was among the lawyers involved in preparing the government’s defence of a bill in 1820 aimed at dissolving the marriage between Queen Caroline and King George IV—the former Prince Regent—that after a four-month hearing was abandoned by the House of Lords. His health broken from the long hours, Adams resigned his profession in 1825. Retiring to Thorpe in Surrey, he lived to the age of seventy-nine, dying on June 11, 1851.

  Henry Goulburn’s public career was long and distinguished. In 1821 he became a member of the Privy Council and chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, then chancellor of the exchequer in 1828. He held this position until the government’s fall in 1830. Apart from a brief interlude in 1827, Goulburn had been a member of every government since 1810. Dogged by poor health, his time in opposition was little more restful, and in 1834 he returned to cabinet as part of a resurgent Tory Party and assumed the post of home secretary—the very office where his public service career had begun. In 1841, he was again chancellor of the exchequer, under the third prime minister that he loyally served. Still on the government side of the House in 1856 but out of cabinet because of his age and uncompromising conservative values, Goulburn contracted pleurisy and died on January 12, 1856, at age seventy-one.

  Goulburn’s early mentor, the Earl of Bathurst, continued as secretary for war and the colonies until 1827, when Lord Liverpool resigned. He then served as lord president of the council in the Duke of Wellington’s government to 1830. Four years later he died at seventy-two years old.

  The mercurial Viscount Castlereagh was both celebrated and impugned by his countrymen after 1815. His brilliant diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna and later conferences checked Russian ambitions in Europe while strengthening the then weak central powers of Germany and Italy. For this and other achievements in international affairs he was hailed. But as leader of the House of Commons he could not escape being tarnished as chief architect behind repressive policies introduced at home between 1815 and 1819 to which he was largely opposed. After a failed plot to assassinate the cabinet, Castlereagh carried a pistol at all times and claimed that his life was in jeopardy. Excessive suspicion gave way to open paranoia that manifested itself in unsupported belief that he faced blackmail from unidentified conspirators holding fraudulent evidence that he was homosexual. Just before Castlereagh was to have departed for a major conference in Verona, his doctors confined him to his country home. His razor confiscated, the fifty-three-year-old Castlereagh slit his throat with a
penknife on August 12, 1822. Castlereagh was entombed in Westminster Abbey, but he was also scorned in verse by Romantic poets Shelley and Byron.

  Expected to preside over merely a caretaker government, Lord Liverpool served continuously as Britain’s prime minister for almost fifteen years. Had not a paralytic stroke forced his retirement on February 17, 1827, at age fifty-six, Liverpool might have continued in office until he deigned to leave it. In part, his long tenure was due to a lack of charisma that rendered him dogged administrator rather than dynamic leader. Less than two years after the stroke, Liverpool died in London on December 4, 1828.

  President James Madison was constitutionally limited to two terms in office and so took his leave on April 6, 1817. He retired to his Virginia estate, Montpelier, closing a political career that spanned forty-one years and dated back to the birth of America. He died at age eighty-five on June 28, 1836. His loyal secretary of state, James Monroe, succeeded him as the nation’s fifth president—fulfilling by fact rather than design the Federalist gibe that Virginia had imposed on America a dynasty of three Jameses.

  When Monroe’s presidency ended in 1824, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson threw their hats into the ring. William Crawford, the American minister to France during the war, also ran, with Albert Gallatin his vice-presidential running mate. In a close contest, Jackson carried the popular vote but failed to win a majority. Adams was next in line, with Clay trailing at the tail end. It fell to Congress to decide the winner. While Clay still carried a grudge against Adams, he despised Jackson. His weight in Congress carried sufficient sway to tip the decision in Adams’s favour, and Clay was rewarded with the secretary of state post.