History, with the stability one moment of a stone mountain and the next all the buoyancy of quicksand, is presently the target of allegiance by both fervent believers and disbelievers.
Unfortunately, whether one likes it or not, history marks not only who we are and can be, but to an alarming degree presents limitless barriers, yawning abysses as well as paths to discovery. It was in similar, if immeasurably grave, circumstances that the United States‘ “Second War for Independence” was launched, conducted and ended. In a patched together manner, with clumsy hesitations poorly disguised, the fledgeling, militarily unprepared United States declared war one of the world’s two great powers, Great Britain, on June 18, 1812.
A similarly marred attitude regarding history revealed itself last week by some hotly patriotic U.S. citizens who were surprised to learn that James Madison, one of their nation’s founders, was president in 1809-1817. He was the one who declared war. Thus, that encounter was called “Mr. Madison’s war” and characterized as “a silly war.”
Not an auspicious beginning. The war of 1812, (like America’s 1940 Pacific War against Japan) leans its problems, disasters, luck and battles won, most heavily on the off-again, on-again existence of America’s often hesitantly financed Navy.
The Navy was disbanded after the Revolution, but not before some 2,200 British ships were taken by Yankee privateers, (privateer: an armed ship privately owned and manned, commissioned by a government to fight/harass enemy ships). John Paul Jones, for instance, captured the HMS Serapis during his voyage around the British Isles. In mid-battle, the rigging of the of two ships having become entangled and several of Jones’ cannon put out of commission, the British commander called for him to surrender. Jones’ famed reply: “I have not yet begun to fight.” The British were slow to report the defeat of Serapis, and shy to mention it. The U.S. Navy was turned over in good shape to Thomas Jefferson (1801) by outgoing President John Adams. But Jefferson, believing navies led countries into reckless foreign adventures, let it wither.By 1812 the U.S. Navy had only 12 ships, only three qualifying as ships of the line, capable of adeptly engaging the enemy in mid-ocean, heavy-cannon duels. The British had become the “Queen of the Seas” in 1588 by defeating the over-rated seamanship of the Spanish Armada. In the 1800s Britain possessed 1,000 ships in all, and could put to sea 500 ships of the line, every captain battle experienced.
The U.S. Navy marks its official establishment as October 13, 1775. But some historians see its slide into neglect, government indifference and misuse as moments of non-existence, nourishing the tendency to refer to a series of U.S. Navy “foundings.” The Navy was disbanded in 1785, and its remaining ships sold off. Besides the lack of money, the recklessly loose confederation of the American states encouraged the impression that since they could not demonstrate enough unity to act like a nation, the U.S. Navy was a myth. Thus, America tried a neutral position during the English-European conflicts – until pirates from the Barbary Sates had captured 11 ships and more than 100 U.S. seamen. In 1794 the U.S. Naval Act authorized six frigates be built; three eventually were.
Next, France began seizing American vessels and crews. This led to the 1798 creation of the Department of the Navy. That brought on naval engagements with the French, followed by a period of peace, during which the United States for the first time (briefly) maintained a small peacetime navy. Most of the Naval Department ships were again sold off. Then the Moors besieged the American Embassy, and captured the USS Philadelphia. It was destroyed by an American raid led by Stephen Decatur and the U.S. Marines who stormed the “shores of Tripoli” and captured the city of Derna. The Barbary sea raiding of U.S. vessels ceased. Once again, the Navy was greatly reduced for lack of funds. Instead large warships and small gunboats were employed to guard the U.S. coast.
This did not work. The Royal British Navy continued its long-standing practice of boarding American vessels on the open sea, ostensibly to look for English citizens – meaning British sailors who deserted to escape the infamously harsh treatment of the Royal Navy, or to impress U.S. seamen. In 1807, Secretary of State James Madison had condemned not only the kidnapping of U.S. seamen, but the entire concept of impressment as an “abominable” abuse. The British foreign secretary scoffed at the idea that “the American flag should protect every individual sailing under it.” This led to a battle between the US Chesapeake and the HMS Leopard.
As president, Madison declared war on Britain in June 1812. He continued to remember the foreign secretary‘s dismissive arrogance, and the fact that Britain’s conduct clearly smacked of neo-colonialism.
One of the reasons the war was termed “silly”: The fact that the United States kept unsuccessfully trying to invade Canada, absolutely certain that Canadians, two-thirds of whom of whom had been residents of the Thirteen Colonies before the Revolution, were awaiting liberation from the British Empire. Canada was a fool’s errand, and repeatedly a costly failure.
On the other hand, the British badly misjudged the resolve and resourcefulness of the Americans to once again defeat the British Empire. Even after the American capital and the president’s residence had been burned – even with the many setbacks, with mis-planning, military bumbling and defeats, New England’s treasonous acts, the British ability to blockade most of the Atlantic coast – Madison remained determined that America would prevail. As a much younger man, he had contended in debates regarding the fit of a republican form of government for a nation of America’s size. That very size, he contended, would protect it from the politics of demagoguery. Now he contended the America’s size would protect it from an isolated defeat here and there. They could not destroy a country so large and so resilient. Those elements meant that the United States could loose battles in Niagara, Detroit, even Washington. On the ground U.S. troops kept winning just enough to keep the British off balance. At sea, while Britain’s big ships and veteran commanders often seemed about to deliver a conquering blow, American victories shocked British admirals ... and the king. A British cannonball bounced off the thick hard-wood side of the American frigate Constitution, which had challenged a British war ship to a duel. The Constitution’s name soon was lost. It became famed as “Old Ironsides,” the winner in a duel no Englishman believed a Yankee ship could possibly emerge triumphant. There was the U.S. Wasp over the mis-named Frolic, the warship United States over the Macedonian,
The British were stunned by these defeats at sea. That the world’s greatest navy was getting pretty well shellacked by a tiny fleet conjured up by this former group of backwoods colonies seemed impossible. Foreign Secretary George Canning told Parliament that the defeat of the Guerriere by the Constitution tolled the threat of deep-sixing “the sacred spell of the invincibility” of the Royal Navy. The Duke of Wellington, before he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, was offered the command of an enlarged British force in North America. He declined, questioning whether the American continent could ever be conquered, citing the same reasons given by Madison. One historian wrote that Wellington, after he had vanquished Napoleon, “advised Britain’s prime minister that Britain hadn’t fought well enough to deserve keeping any American territory. British diplomats soon were told “to get rid of what the foreign secretary called ‘the millstone of the American war as fast as possible.’” Yankee persistence and exceptional patience helped those diplomats fulfill that command. The Treaty of Ghent (Belgium) officially ended the war February 8, 1815.