At this point Hull was spooked. A party he sent south to link up with a party of Ohio militiamen bringing supplies was thwarted by Indians led by Tecumseh and returned empty-handed. He next sent six hundred men, but they too were thwarted in the effort by Indians. Hull responded to news of the fall of Mackinac Island to a mixed force of “more than 1,000 British regulars, Canadian militia, and Indian warriors”9 with retreat across the Detroit River back into Michigan—though he left three hundred men north of the border.10 Brock followed him and laid siege to Detroit. He warned Hull, whose men had begun to grumble about his cowardice, that in case of an assault on the American position, the allied Indians under Brock’s command might be impossible to restrain. Hull, despondent at the thought of what might befall the many civilians (some his own relatives) in his camp, exclaimed, “My God! What shall I do with these women and children?”11 Now reduced to indistinct speech, constant dribbling, and crouching in corners of the fort, the general surrendered his command the next day, going so far as to surrender even those portions of it that had been detached and thus not encircled by the besieging British force. One of Hull’s captains said, “Not an officer was consulted. Even the women was indignant at the Shameful degradation of the Americ[an] character.”12

  Madison remained in the dark about affairs in the Northwest for several days. On August 9th, he sent General Henry Dearborn salutations.13 Dearborn’s presence at Albany, the president thought, would “aid much in doing all that can be done for the reputation of the campaign.” The awkwardness of the recruiting statutes “compel[led] us to moderate some of our expectations” concerning the war’s progress. The plan had been for “invasions of Canada at several points” to “have secured the great object of bringing all Upper Canada, & the channels communicating with the Indians, under our Command; with ulterior prospects towards Quebec flattering to our arms.” Now the United States must do as well as it could ere the campaign season had passed. Madison told Dearborn that fifteen hundred reinforcements had been sent to Hull to facilitate his movement east toward Niagara. Dearborn was to cooperate with New York’s Governor Daniel D. Tompkins in defeating British forces at Niagara and establishing American control of Lake Ontario. Combined with Hull’s success on Lake Erie, this would make possible future American operations on the two main towns in British North America. Dearborn was to endeavor to assemble such militia units as he could, in light of the Massachusetts and Connecticut governors’ obstreperousness. In case he had enough men, he ought then to undertake “a demonstration towards Quebec … in aid of the measures agst. Montreal; which if we can take by means of any sort, we shall find the means of holding.”

  The president closed his missive by apologizing for the shortage of brigadier generals and telling Dearborn he was going to head to Montpelier on holiday; this last he put down to “the accumulating bile of which I am sensible, & which I never escaped in Augst. on tide water.” Several days later Madison wrote to Gallatin, “The Command of the Lakes is obviously of the greatest importance & has always so appeared. I am glad to find it not too late to have that of Ontario. There must have been some mistake as to the effort to obtain it.” He added in a postscript that, “We set off tomorrow morning early.…”14 The clear impression these communications leave is that Madison had to this point failed to communicate, directly or through his military secretaries, even the rudiments of his war strategy to his commanders in the field. So unimportant did he find the results of this failure that he nonetheless absented himself from the capital for an extended period of time as the summer came to an end.

  Dearborn meanwhile became bogged down in quarreling over not only strategic but command matters. He wrote to Eustis asking “who was to have the command in Upper Canada,” which J. C. A. Stagg takes to have meant that he wanted to know who should command the invasion via the Niagara Peninsula. Characteristically, Eustis answered unclearly. Although at Albany, Dearborn remained distracted by the politics of New England military mobilization. He did at last take a significant step, agreeing to an armistice with the governor of Lower Canada on August 8th.15

  Washington rejected this armistice on August 15th. Little did anyone know that as this burlesque of war proceeded on land, the picayune U.S. Navy was winning an epic victory at sea. Ironically the American commander who with his men made his frigate, U.S.S. Constitution, immortal was none other than Captain Isaac Hull, adopted son of General William Hull.16

  We have a detailed account of the day’s events from a member of U.S.S. Constitution’s crew, Moses Smith. As he tells it, the American ship’s pursuit of H.M.S. Guerrière came to a successful close on August 19, 1812. Steering southeast at 10:00 AM, “the lookout cried: ‘Sail ho!’ ‘Where away?’ inquired the lieutenant in command. ‘Two points off the larboard bow, sir!’ was the reply.” Captain Hull ordered a man aloft, and when asked, the man reported seeing “a great vessel, sir! Tremendous sails.” Before a subordinate could respond to Hull’s command to call all hands on deck, the men appeared from below. “The word had passed like lightning from man to man; and all who could be spared, came flocking up like pigeons from a net bed. From the spar deck to the gun deck, from that to the berth deck, every man was roused and on his feet.”

  Impressed with his own ship’s speed, Moses Smith even at decades’ remove remained impressed with its opposite number as well. “The stranger hauled his wind,” he wrote, “and laid to for us. It was evident that he was an English man-of-war, of a large class, and all ready for action.” Soon enough the American crewmen discerned emblazoned in one of the British ship’s topsails the words “NOT THE LITTLE BELT”—a reference to British propaganda about an encounter in which an American frigate had had its way with a smaller British ship. (The British newspapers echoed Little Belt’s officers and crew in saying that the American ship had fired on her unprovoked and after she had surrendered—all of which was contrary to the sworn accounts of the American officers and crew.)17 Soon enough, the Americans realized they faced the Guerrière.

  “As we came up,” Smith said, “she began to fire. They was evidently trying to rake us. But we continued on our course, tacking and half tacking, taking good care to avoid being raked. We came so near on one tack, that a 18 lb. shot came through us under the larboard knight-head, striking just abaft the breech of the gun to which I belonged.… We immediately picked up the shot, and put it in the mouth of long Tom, a large gun loose on deck—and sent it home again, with our respects.”

  Shortly Hull said, “Why don’t you fire?” “We can’t get our guns to bear,” came the answer, “as she now lies.” “‘Never mind, my boys!’ said he to the men. ‘You shall have her as close as you please. Sailing master! lay her along side!’ We came up into the wind,” Smith said, “in gallant style. As we fell off a little the Guerrière ranged by us her whole length.” Then: “‘No firing at random!’ cried Hull in a subdued tone of voice. ‘Let every man look well to his aim.’” A shot from the enemy, and then, “‘Now close with them!’ cried Hull, raising his voice to its sternest note of command, so that it could be heard on the enemy’s decks.

  “Along side with her, sailing-master.” A whole broadside from our guns followed this command. The Constitution shook from stem to stern. Every spar and yard in her was on a tremble.… We instantly followed the thunder of our cannon with three loud cheers, which rang along the ship like the roar of waters, and floated away to the ears of the enemy. This was a Yankee style which the British had not adopted. The English officers often spoke of it to ours, after the war was over. They said that they were astonished at the spirit of our men in the toil and heat of the battle. Amid the dying and the dead,… the American heart poured out its patriotism with long and loud cheers. The effect was always electrical, throughout all the struggle for our rights.

  When the smoke cleared away after the first broadside, we saw that we had cut off the mizzen mast of the Guerriere, and that her main-yard had been shot from the slings. Her mast and rigging were hanging in great confusion over her sides.… This discovery was followed by cheers from the Constitution, and the cry; “Huzza, boys! We’ve made a brig of her! Next time we’ll make her a sloop!”

  A little later in the fight, Smith reported, “Several shot now entered [Constitution’s] hull. One of the largest the enemy could command struck us, but the plank was so hard it fell out and sank in the waters. This was afterwards noticed, and the cry arose: ‘Huzza! Her sides are made of iron! See where the shot fell out!’ From that circumstance the name of the Constitution was garnished with the familiar title: ‘OLD IRONSIDES.’ By this title she is known around the world.”

  Still the Constitution continued to bombard the enemy vessel. “In a few moments the foremast was gone, and our prediction was fulfilled. The great Guerriere had become a sloop. Soon after the mainmast followed, rendering her a complete wreck.” Constitution suffered very little in the fray. “As an intended insult, the English had hoisted a puncheon of molasses on their main stay, and sent out word: ‘Do give the Yankees some switchel. They will need it, when they are our prisoners.’” To their surprise the Yankees soon shot the puncheon full of holes, thus bathing the deck of the British ship in the slippery stuff.

  Then, out of the blue, the Guerrière’s captain “appeared in one of our boats, and immediately surrendered himself as a prisoner of war.… The delivery of his sword to Hull by Dacres was a scene never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. ‘Captain Hull! what have you got for men?’ ‘O,’ replied Hull, with a sly smile, ‘only a parcel of green bush-whackers, Captain Dacres!’ ‘Bush-whackers! They are more like tigers than men. I never saw men fight so. They fairly drove us from our quarters.’” The American officers decided to blow up the defeated British ship, and the sight struck Smith as remarkable. “Thus ended the capture of the Guerriere.”

  This significant victory over a British ship, no less, made great impressions both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. People in both places found news of it remarkable, not to say unbelievable. America’s naval forces would win other victories in the war, though in the end Britain’s gargantuan advantage in number of ships assigned to New World stations meant that America’s options in the area of naval strategy were tightly constrained.18

  When General William Hull returned to the United States, he faced a court-martial. Despite his insistence that Dearborn’s failure to mount an invasion to the east accounted for Brock’s ability to concentrate two thousand troops around Detroit, he was found guilty. After noting that Hull’s surrender entailed “the greatest loss of territory that ever before or since befell the United States,” the historian Henry Adams counted this an absurd result: “The storm of public wrath which annihilated Hull and shook Eustis passed harmless over the head of Dearborn. No one knew that Dearborn was at fault, for he had done nothing; and a general who did nothing had that advantage over his rivals whose activity or situation caused them to act. Dearborn threw the whole responsibility on the War Department.”19

  The court sentenced Hull to death for cowardice and neglect of duty. President Madison accepted the court’s recommendation that he pardon Hull in recognition of his record during the Revolution and in light of his age.20

  38

  Madison understood the significance of these developments. On August 17th he wrote Jefferson that the New England governors’, particularly Caleb Strong’s, refusal to cooperate in war measures—specifically, in providing him with militia units for coastal defense so that he could use his regulars in Canada—likely would ruin his strategy.1 Arguably the decisive event in the War of 1812 was Elbridge Gerry’s electoral loss to Strong, whose leadership of the Bay State made him the most powerful man in New England. Before the war began Madison’s plan was thwarted.

  As Madison told it, “The seditious opposition in Mass. & Cont. with the intrigues elsewhere insidiously co-operating with it, have so clogged the wheels of the war, that I fear the campaign will not accomplish the object of it.” Even universal cooperation in enlisting volunteers likely would have come up short, he said, but “the discouragements substituted and the little attraction contained in the volunteer act” meant the U.S. Army almost certainly would be inadequately manned. That would “leave us dependent, for every primary operation, on militia, either as volunteers or draughts for six months.” Hull, it seemed, would be forced by the loss of Fort “Machilimackinac” either to join with the two thousand reinforcements Madison had ordered sent to him to take Malden, or to move to the other end of Lake Erie and join Generals Dearborn and Tompkins in occupying central Upper Canada.

  Thus news of what had befallen Hull’s force fell upon Washington like a thunderclap. It meant the conclusive disappointment of Americans’ expectations for a quick, essentially costless victory in the war. As Secretary Monroe explained to Speaker Clay in a letter of August 28th,

  We have just heard with equal astonishment & concern, that Genl. Hull, has surrendered by capitulation the army under his command at detroit, to the British force opposed to him. The circumstances attending this most mortifying & humiliating event are not known, but so far as we are inform’d on the subject, there appears to be no justification of it. I cannot suspect his integrity; I rather suppose that a panick had seized the whole force, & that he & they became victims, of his want of energy, promptitude of decision & those resources, the characteristic of great minds in difficult emergencies. we understand that after passing the river, he suffered his communication to be cut off with the states of Ohio & Kentucky, and without making any active movement in front to strike terror into the enemy, he remain’d tranquil, thereby evincing a want of confidence in his own means, and giving it time to collect its forces together. no intelligence justifies the belief that he gave battle in a single instance.

  Both well informed about what had happened and clearly sick about it, Monroe concluded by saying he wished Madison would find some way to put him to use in the army, where “I wod in a very few days, join our forces assembling beyond the Ohio, & endeavor to recover the ground which we have lost.”2 Madison opted instead to elevate William Henry Harrison to command in that theater, where he made him a major general.3 He could have used a competent general, and perhaps Monroe would have been one, but a competent secretary of state he already knew him to be. Madison had had enough experience with an incompetent foreign minister. A bird in the hand …

  With Hull defeated and Dearborn dithering at Albany, the initiative (such as it was) among American commanders passed to the commander of the force on the Niagara River, Federalist patroon of Rensselaerswyck Stephen Van Rensselaer, commander of the New York militia. This land baron’s chief qualification for the position was his political prominence, more particularly his position atop what remained of New York Federalism nearly a decade after the death of Alexander Hamilton and the retirement of John Jay. He had no military experience, but unlike Hull and Dearborn, Van Rensselaer demonstrated initiative. He was sent 1,650 U.S. Army regulars under the command of Virginian Brigadier General Alexander Smyth, the Inspector General, and 2,000 Pennsylvania militia volunteers to assist him, and he soon put them to use.4

  Dearborn’s omission to state clearly which of these two generals should be in command would haunt their forces. When Van Rensselaer ordered his men to attack Queenstown Heights on the Niagara Peninsula, they pushed the enemy back, killing General Brock in the process. American forces seized the heights across the river, but, as New York militiaman Lieutenant Jared Willson recalled, the Americans were captured by enemy forces “in fair view of two thousand militia on the opposite shore (poor dastardly wretches) who would not come to our assistance—had they come we might have held our ground untill this time. Oh! shame on them—there surely must be a severe punishment in reserve for these poor, ignoble, base-born wretches.” Worst of all, “The indian war-hoop even echoed through their camp and still they could not be prevailed upon to mingle with their associates in arms to oppose the inhuman foe.”5

  One might have thought the Pennsylvanian militia to blame, yet that is not how this man saw it. “But I still think our commander in Chief [Van Rensselaer] is answerable for our ill success. He knew the militia would not all cross—He ought then to have ordered on Gen. Smyth’s regulars in season to help us.” The general’s error supposedly lay in having taken the advice of his cousin, Lieutenant Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, “who, allured by the prospects of acquiring unfading Laurels, wished to make a firm stand in Canada with a few regulars and a few militia. This ambitious creature was to take the command, but in the first of the engagement, he was carried off the field severely wounded—Thus has the ambition of one man and the folly of another brought disgrace upon our country.” General Van Rensselaer did not simply stand by and watch as the militiamen refused to join in the fighting, however: he later reported that “To my utter astonishment, I found that at the very moment when complete victory was in our hands, the Ardor of the unengaged Troops had entirely subsided.… I rode in all directions—urged men by every Consideration to pass over, but in vain.” About nine hundred Americans were cut off and surrendered, among them Captain Winfield Scott. He did not assign blame as Lieutenant Willson did. “These vermin,” he said of the New York militia, “who infest all republics, boastful enough at home, no sooner found themselves in sight of the enemy than they discovered that the militia of the United States could not be constitutionally marched into a foreign country.” General Van Rensselaer, disgusted “with militia punctilios and the strutting General Alexander Smyth,” resigned from the army.6 Smyth succeeded him, “wasted his time composing bombastic proclamations that even the British found laughable,” found that the Pennsylvania militiamen would not cross the border for him, and failed in his attack on Fort Erie. Mocked by his men and dropped from the list of American generals by Congress, he rode home to the Old Dominion, forgotten.7