12 CAMPAIGNS IN CANADA-BARBAROUS SYSTEM OF WARFARE. [1513. memorable and more disgraceful act of retaliation by the British at Washington. In an attack upon Burlington, the Americans were compelled to fall back upon Niagara, and lost a great part of their army in a series of unsuccessful actions. The British on the Detroit frontier were forced to retreat in confusion. On Lake Ontario our troops, under sir George Prevost, were repulsed in an attack upon Sackett's Harbour. On Lake Erie the superior force of the enemy destroyed our flotilla; and the Americans, obtaining the command of the lake, became masters of Upper Canada. Ten thousand men then marched from different points upon Lower Canada, where the action near Chrystler's Farm took place, and the American army, totally routed, precipitately crossed the St. Lawrence. General Hull sustained another severe defeat on the 25th of December. In this campaign, when the American general evacuated Fort St. George, by the express orders of his government he burnt the Canadian village of Newark. The order said, "The exposed part of the frontier must be protected by destroying such of the Canadian villages in its front as would best shelter the enemy during the winter." When the British troops under colonel Murray defeated the Americans at Buffalo, that village was burnt as well as the village of Black Rock; and the Indians were let loose on the surrounding country to take vengeance for the conflagration of Newark. Sir George Prevost then issued a proclamation lamenting the necessity which had compelled these reprisals, and deprecating a continuance of so barbarous a system of warfare. His retaliation had some effect upon the Americans in putting a stop to what an officer of that government called the "new and degrading system of defence, which, by substituting the torch for the bayonet, furnished the enemy with both motive and justification for a war of retaliation."* The disgrace remained to both sides. The retaliatory spirit was strangely exhibited during this year in another form. Twenty-three prisoners of war were sent to England to be dealt with as British subjects. The American general then ordered into close confinement twenty-three British soldiers, as hostages for the safety of the twenty-three who were liable to be dealt with as traitors. Our government selected forty-six officers and non-commissioned officers-prisoners in England-to be regarded as hostages for the safety of the twenty-three prisoners in America. The affair went off with menaces; and, on an exchange of prisoners, the British who had fought against their country, and the hostages, were silently released. The desultory, indecisive, and useless fightings in Canada had produced not the slightest effect upon the relative positions of Great Britain and America. The English, however, had learnt not to underrate the courage and enterprize of their enemy; the Americans had learnt that Canada could not be conquered in a day's march, and that a handful of disciplined troops might defend the country against numerous bands imperfectly organized. The naval successes of the United States were almost wholly at an end after the first year. Our government learnt a little caution and providence, and gave up the false confidence that any English frigate could fight a vessel whose tonnage was as three to two. The merchant service of both countries sustained severe losses; but American commerce suffered still more from the 1814.] AMERICAN DIFFICULTIES-THREATS OF SECESSION. 13 restrictive measures of the American government. The interruption to the dealings of North and South with neutral states was so serious, that in March, 1814, the President proposed to Congress the repeal of the Embargo and Non-Importation Acts. The British government proclaimed a blockade of the whole Atlantic coast of the United States, nearly 2000 miles in extent, and abounding in harbours and navigable inlets. The President, on the 29th of June, proclaimed that such blockade was not a regular or legal blockade, as defined and recognized by the law of nations, and that it formed no lawful prohibition or obstacle to friendly and neutral vessels to trade with the United States. We have shown that in 1814 the total exports of the United States had fallen to less than a million and a half in value. The government had almost wholly lost, in the excessive falling off of imports, its great source of revenue-the Customs. It resorted in 1814 to taxes on excisable articles, to licences, and to stamps. The system of loans, coupled with the issue of Treasury notes was also adopted; and the public debt was very quickly doubled. The Democratic party was depressed, and almost hopeless. Jefferson himself began to speak with bitterness of the ruin of the planters, of the weight of taxes, of the silly boasts of the press. The personal lot of this distinguished man was truly pitiable. He said, that as for himself, this state of things would compel him to make the sacrifice of all tranquillity, of all comfort, for the rest of his days. From the total depreciation of the products which ought to procure him subsistence and independence, he should be, like Tantalus, dying of thirst, with the water up to his shoulders. The New England States began openly to complain of that preponderance of the Southern States which had forced the Union into war. Very early in the contest Massachusetts and Connecticut had refused to send their contingents to the army of the Union; and now Massachusetts proposed to confer with delegates from other New England States, "to take measures if they think proper, for procuring a convention of delegates from all the United States, to revise the Constitution"-in other words, to break up the Union. Six years later, the question of preponderance between the North and South was again agitated, upon the discussions on the admission of Missouri to the Union; in which struggle the great question was involved, whether slavery should be established in that State, or excluded by the terms of admission. The confidence of many thoughtful persons in the United States in the duration of the Union had been shaken by the divisions of Federalists and Republicans, which had reached a climax in the war of 1812. Jefferson, one of the most foreseeing of the founders of the Republic, did not regard these divisions with alarm, because they existed in the bosom of each State. What he regarded with alarm was the coincidence of a line of demarcation, moral and political, with the geographical line. The views of a sagacious statesman are sometimes prophetic. The idea of a line of geographical demarcation involving a different system of politics and morals, once conceived, he thought could never be effaced. He believed that this idea would appear, on every occasion, renewing irritation, and kindling in the end bate so mortal, that separation would become preferable to eternal discord. He * Letters of Jefferson, in the sixth volume of his Works. 14 PENINSULAR TROOPS SENT TO AMERICA. [1814. had been, he said, of those who had had the firmest confidence in the long duration of the Union; he began much to doubt it.* On the 31st of May, 1814, two thousand four hundred gallant troops, the soldiers of Wellington in the Peninsula, were on board a fleet in the Garonne, waiting a favourable wind to sail for America. They consisted of the Forty-fourth and the Eighty-fifth regiments, and had marched from Bayonne when the white flag hoisted on the citadel had announced that the war with France was at an end. The squadron sailed for Bermuda, where they were joined by other forces. The troops, amounting to about 3500 men, were under the command of general Ross. Admiral Cockburn commanded the fleet. These officers were experienced and energetic. Their political discretion may be doubted, although their first dangerous and unjustifiable measures might have been under the positive direction of the government at home. Having taken possession of the Tangier Islands in the Bay of Chesapeake, they invited the negroes in the adjoining provinces, with a promise of emancipation, to join the British forces. Seventeen hundred men fled from their plantations, and were marshalled in the English ranks. This incitement of the negro population to revolt was a measure that the most uncompromising hostility and the nearest danger could scarcely justify. The British government had to pay a heavy fine to the owners of the slaves; the amount of which was referred at the Treaty of Ghent to the emperor of Russia. He awarded a compensation of 250,000l. On the 14th of August admiral Cockburn officially announced to Mr. Monroe, the American Secretary of State, that it was his purpose to employ the force under his direction "in destroying and laying waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable." He added that this was in retaliation for a wanton destruction committed by the army of the United States in Upper Canada.† The announcement was afterwards withdrawn. The spirit of it was unhappily preserved, to diminish the lustre of a brilliant attack upon the capital of the United States.‡ The British squadron having ascended the river Patuxent, the army was disembarked at the village of Benedict, with the intention of cooperating with admiral Cockburn in an attack on a flotilla of gunboats. The army commenced its march on the 20th of August, and in three days had advanced to within sixteen miles of Washington. Admiral Cockburn had during this time taken and destroyed the whole of the flotilla. On the 23rd general Ross determined to make an attempt to carry Washington. He put his troops in motion on the evening of the 23rd, and on the 24th * Works, vol. vii. quoted by De Wit. See Miss Martineau, "History of the American Compromises." Alison, in quoting this announcement, makes admiral Cockburn say, that it became his duty to do this "under the new and imperative character of his orders." The duke of Wellington had ever scrupulously respected private property, and had spared defenceless places. When the Prince de Joinville, in 1844, suggested the bombardment of Brighton in the event of a war, the duke wrote to Mr. Raikes--"What but the inordinate desire of popularity could have induced a man in his station, a prince of the blood royal, the son of the king, of high rank and pretensions in that profession of the service, to write and publish such a production-an invitation and provocative to war, to be carried on in a manner such as has been disclaimed by the civilized portions of mankind."-(Raikes' "Correspondence," p. 366.) 1814.] ATTACK UPON WASHINGTON. 15 defeated the American army, amounting to between eight and nine thousand men. The catastrophe is related in few words by general Ross:-" Having halted the army for a short time, I determined to march upon Washington, and reached that city at eight o'clock that night. Judging it of consequence to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that the army might retire without loss of time, the following buildings were set fire to and consumed :—the Capitol, including the SenateHouse and House of Representatives, the Arsenal, the Dockyard, Treasury, War-office, President's Palace, Rope-walk, and the great Bridge across the Potomac in the dockyard a frigate nearly ready to be launched, and a sloopof-war, were consumed. The object of the expedition being accomplished, I determined, before any greater force of the enemy could be assembled, to withdraw the troops, and accordingly commenced retiring on the night of the 25th." The indignation of the American people was naturally extreme at an event which was not unjustly characterized in a proclamation issued from Washington on the 1st of September. The President therein accuses the invading force, that during their possession of the capital of the nation, though only for a single day, "they wantonly destroyed the public edifices, having no relation in their structure to operations of war, nor used at the time for military annoyance; some of these edifices being also costly monuments of taste and of the arts, and others repositories of the public archives, not only precious to the nation, as the memorials of its origin and its early transactions, but interesting to all nations, as contributions to the general stock of historical instruction and political science." In England there was a general feeling that, however brilliant had been the attack upon Washington, the destruction of non-warlike buildings was something more than a mistake. It was an outrage inconsistent with civilized warfare, which was not likely to produce "on the inhabitants a deep and sensible impression of the calamities of a war in which they have been so wantonly involved." Such was the thoughtless and undignified language of the Prince Regent's speech on opening the Session of Parliament on the 8th of November. A more sober view of this demonstration of the calamities of war was taken by a high military authority at the Horse Guards. "It may tend to disunite and to spread alarm and confusion, but I incline to think that it will give eventually more power to the Congress. A nation may be overpowered and compelled to peace, but it must be a most contemptible set to be frightened into one."* Lord Grenville, with dignified earnestness, lamented a departure from a system of forbearance which had been pursued even by Napoleon during a conflict of twenty years, in whose hands nearly all the capitals of Europe had been, and in no instance, except in that of the Kremlin of Moscow, were any unmilitary buildings destroyed.† We had done, said Mr. Whitbread, what the Goths had refused to do at Rome, when Belisarius represented to them that to destroy works of art was to erect a monument to the folly of the destroyers. He maintained that the outrage at Washington had con Sir Willoughby Gordon, Letter to the Speaker, October 1st, 1814-Lord Colchester's "Diary," vol. ii. p. 520. + Hansard, vol. xxix. col. 17. See Gibbon, chap. xliii., A.D. 506. 16 FAILURE OF SIR JOHN PREVOST AT PLATTSBURG. [1814. ciliated to the American government those parts of the United States which were before hostile to it; had put in motion battalions of militia which before were not allowed to march. It had united all. It had made determined opposition to England a common interest.* Whether to the destruction of the public buildings of Washington may be attributed the extraordinary vigour which seemed now to be infused into the military character of the American democracy, it is certain that after that event the course of the war was one of almost unvarying success to their arms. In a battle on the 11th of September, which was the prelude to an attack upon Baltimore, general Ross was mortally wounded; and colonel Brooke who succeeded to the command, although gaining a victory, was compelled the next night to retreat to the ships which were intended to co-operate in the assault. The Americans had sunk twenty vessels in the Patapsco river, which effectually prevented the British squadron rendering any aid. But a more serious blow was inflicted upon the army in Canada. Our forces there, under sir George Prevost, had been augmented till they had reached sixteen thousand regular troops, who had arrived from the South of France, with the full conviction on the part of our government that the war would be speedily concluded by this array of veterans against undisciplined masses. Nine thousand of the soldiers of the Peninsula were to act in co-operation with a flotilla on Lake Champlain. This little fleet of a frigate, a brig, a sloop, and twelve-gun boats, was ill-manned and equipped. The American squadron on the lake was very superior in strength. The troops under Prevost were to attack the redoubts of Plattsburg, whilst our flotilla was engaged with the vessels in the bay. Captain Downie led his ship the Confiance gallantly into action; but when a heavy fire opened from the American line, the gunboats, which had few British sailors on board, took flight like scared wild fowl. The frigate, brig, and sloop were left to bear all the brunt of the contest. The Confiance made a brave fight, as did the brig and sloop; but they were finally compelled to strike. Meanwhile, Prevost lingered in making the land attack; and his troops did not reach the point of assault till the fleet had surrendered. He had been thus instructed by earl Bathurst: "take care not to expose his Majesty's troops to being cut off; and guard against whatever might commit the safety of the forces under your command." He obeyed his instructions to the letter. The command of the lake was lost; and therefore it was useless to attack Plattsburg. A violent outery was raised against our commander of the forces in Canada. He resigned; and demanded a court-martial. Wellington thought Prevost was right to retire after the fleet was beaten. He died before the court-martial commenced. His defence of Canada, with a small force, against repeated incursions of an enemy whose numbers were long thought by the Americans to be irresistible, ought to have saved his memory from the obloquy which has been attempted to be thrown upon it by some writers.‡ On Christmas Day, 1814, general sir Edward Pakenham, one of the most brave and skilful of the officers who had served under Wellington in Spain, Hansard, vol. xxix. col. 47. +"Despatches," vol. xii. p. 224. A writer in the "Quarterly Review," No. LIV. is amongst the bitterest of his accusers. Alison has ably and generously defended him. |