As he sat down, Calhoun said that he hoped his audience would consider what he had said. The Constitution did indeed protect men’s right to criticize their government. A factious opposition, however, was beyond what the Constitution contemplated. “Universal experience and the history of all ages furnish ample testimony of its dangerous consequences, particularly in a state of war.” Only “the good sense and the virtue of the people” could cure this contagion.

  In Europe the first book of Napoleon’s imperial story had reached its sad conclusion. On March 31, 1814, Marshal Michel Ney had led a mutiny of Napoleon’s top subordinates, and when news arrived that Marshal Auguste F.L.V. de Marmont had deserted the French lines before Paris and handed his command over to the Allies, Napoleon saw that he must abdicate. He did so unconditionally by means of a statement he wrote on April 6th.8

  Gallatin wrote to Clay about this immediately upon hearing of it.9 The American position concerning the location at which negotiations with the British were to be conducted should be flexible now. Any neutral locale would do, Gallatin said, and America should accept it “on account of the late great changes in Europe & of the encreased difficulties thence arising in making any treaty.…” The end of the First French Empire meant a “total change in our affairs,” he worried, as there had been a “restoration of universal peace in the European world, from which we alone are excluded.”

  Though not a military man, Gallatin did not miss the import of this development: “A well organised & large army,” he scrawled, “is at once liberated from any European employment, and ready, together with a super abundant naval force, to act immediately against us. How ill prepared we are to meet it in a proper manner no one knows better than yourself, [sic] but above all our own divisions and the hostile attitude of the Eastern States give room to apprehend that a continuance of the war might prove vitally fatal to the United States.”

  What a diplomat posted abroad could see struck the eye of statesmen on this side of the Atlantic even more forcefully. The British delays in entering into negotiations clearly augured another all-out attempt to achieve victory over the North American republic that British elite and popular opinion alike saw as effectively if not forthrightly having been allied with Napoleon not only since the beginning of the war in 1812, but at least since the implementation of the embargo in 1807. In Canada, along the Atlantic coast, and in the Deep South, the next nine months would prove decisive. Along the way, whether Calhoun had been right in saying, “Mr. Madison is wholly unfit for the storms of war,” would be decided once and for all.10

  Gallatin and Calhoun were not alone in accusing Federalists, and particularly New England Federalists, of, as Tennessee congressman Felix Grundy put it, “moral treason” in relation to their opposition to the American war effort.11 There was good reason for that conclusion. Madison’s 1813 embargo, which “the New England states interpreted … as a declaration of war on them,” led Massachusetts governor Caleb Strong to say that the mayhem and destruction resulting from the war were “chargeable upon that government which unreasonably begins the conflict.” Each house of the Bay State’s legislature issued a statement pledging not to support the war. “Forty Massachusetts town meetings sent petitions to the General Court” hostile to the war, Garry Wills notes, with Newbury’s saying “we profess ourselves ready to resist unto blood.” “Governor Strong,” he concludes, “was already mulling over the idea of a separate peace.”12 As 1814 dawned, Strong remained unwilling to provide militia to the Federal Government when requested, and both New England’s coast and its border with British North America were huge emporia for smuggling.

  On Friday, June 3, 1814, Madison wrote Secretaries Armstrong, Jones, and Monroe that he wanted “a consultation with the Heads of Department on Tuesday next at Eleven OClock.”13 The subject of discussion on June 7th would be (as he told Armstrong) “the plan of campaign which our means, military & naval, render most eligible.” Betwixt the two dates, Armstrong was to send him the numbers of soldiers at all American posts, “The numbers on the way thereto respectively,” the number of other men enlisted at that time, the numbers of enemy men at various bases “in Canada or on the frontier of the U.S.” and their locations, and the numbers expected both in Canada and on “our Atlantic frontier.” Jones was to provide analogous data regarding enemy naval dispositions, and Monroe was to “cause to be made out & send over” any such information his department might have. Armstrong and Jones replied before the meeting, each providing the data regarding American forces Madison had required, though Armstrong noted that as the War Department had only military means of obtaining information on enemy forces, what he relayed “m[ight] be very erroneous.”14

  Armstrong’s report to Madison, enclosed with his letter, put the army’s strength at 31,503 men, of whom 27,010 were effective. Armstrong included an explanation that the report included recruits only for the Ninth Military District and an observation that “the difference between the effective and aggregate columns of these Regts. and particularly of those composing the Division of the right confirms Gen. Izard’s representation of the wretched condition in which he found that command.” Seemingly he also forwarded Madison the assistant inspector general’s list showing recruitment of 9,588 men “for 5 years or during the war”—fruit of the January 27, 1814 law raising the enlistment bonus to $124.15

  Secretary of the Navy Jones included eight documents with his response.16 They showed that the odds were good for the U.S. Navy in the Great Lakes region, but that the many British seventy-four-gun ships in the Atlantic outclassed that service. Too, Jones said that sailors were difficult to recruit, and so he awaited American generals’ loaning him army personnel. Finally, Captain Isaac Hull had relayed credible evidence that the Royal Navy planned to attack Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  According to Madison’s notes, the Cabinet meeting of June 7th adopted a four-part plan for the campaign of 1814:

  Eight hundred to a thousand soldiers on four or five naval vessels were to enter Lake Huron with the goal of occupying Machedash and St. Joseph’s. About five hundred men were to occupy Machedash at least. All agreed.

  If Commodore Chauncey could establish command of Lake Erie, General Brown’s force was to move to Burlington Heights en route to advancing on York. Monroe expressed reservations, though he did not object.

  “14 or 15. Armed Boats” were “to be built at Sacket’s Harbour” to cut off British communication between Montreal and Kingston. All agreed.

  General Izard’s main force was “to make demonstrations towards Montreal” with the purposes of distracting the enemy from American initiatives farther west “& affording a chance of compelling Prevost to fight disadvantageously.” All agreed.17

  The next day Jones wrote asking the president to name the three seventy-four-gun ships-of-the-line then being built. Madison scribbled “1. Independence / 2. Union / 3. Franklin (the Constitution wd. have been the name for the 3d. but for the Ship already of that name) / 4. Washington.” Two of the four were launched by the war’s end, and the Union never was.18 Madison apparently did not know when he held the meeting that Secretary of War Armstrong and Major Generals Wilkinson and Hampton had already decided there should be another Niagara campaign in 1814.19

  Opposition to the war continued to mount. Massachusetts’s celebration of Napoleon’s defeat was followed by word to Monroe from Representative Charles Jared Ingersoll that Pennsylvania Republicans wearied of fighting off criticism of the administration’s half-hearted war.20 No doubt the picture would have soured further if the public had seen Secretary Jones’s prognostication of “a bloody and devastating summer and autumn.”21 Though Louis XVIII’s government accepted Minister to France William Crawford’s credentials, the Bourbons were highly unlikely to buck Britain in relation to the United States.22 Having characteristically mulled the situation over some more, Madison met with his Cabinet to pose three questions:

  “Shall the surrender by G.B. of the practice of impressment, in a treaty, limited to a certain period be an ultimation?” All but Attorney General Rush said no, and he leaned yes.

  “Shall a treaty of peace, silent on the subject of Impressment be authorized?” The war and navy secretaries said yes, the others no.

  “Shall a treaty be authorized comprizing an article referring the subject of impressment along with that of Commerce to a separate negotiation?” Four said yes, “Rush for awaiting further information from Europe.”

  The weak posture in which the Americans found themselves was recognized most clearly by the military secretaries, and the Cabinet in general had developed substantial flexibility on the issue Republican leaders had always said was a sine qua non of any peace treaty: British agreement not to impress Americans into the British navy. When Gallatin relayed news that fifteen to twenty thousand British veterans would soon be en route to North America and that the U.K. contemplated doing “very serious injury” to the United States, Madison responded by giving his commissions in Europe complete discretion regarding the impressment issue.23 It seems that the Madison administration simply wanted a face-saving way out of its war.

  In 1814 problems in Madison’s war Cabinet dogged the government. Campbell was not up to the task of doing Gallatin’s job, which during a war funded chiefly by borrowing required numerous new expedients. Monroe was competent, but jockeying for position between him and Armstrong, each of whom looked to succeed Madison as president, proved highly divisive. When Armstrong drove William Henry Harrison into resignation with inquiries into his private supply system for his army, then promoted Andrew Jackson to major general in his place, he and Madison butted heads.24

  The summer’s campaign began in earnest on the Lake Erie front, where Major General Jacob Brown’s order to Brigadier General Winfield Scott—“company drills … in the morning, regimental drills in the afternoon and evening”—yielded a significant force of troops prepared to face British soldiers in combat.25 Though disappointed by Commodore Chauncey’s refusal to coordinate operations (he expected direct naval conflict with British forces, which would be his first priority2)6, Brown forged ahead.

  Brown first faced British forces under Major General Phineas Riall at Chippewa on July 5th. Though outnumbered, Brown won the day.27 Brown ordered Scott to attack, and as the two sides exchanged cannon fire, Scott’s men coolly deployed under the barrage and exchanged several volleys. Assuming that Scott’s men’s gray uniforms marked them as militiamen, Riall exclaimed, “Why, these are regulars!”—still another statement the memory of which would long outlive this war. Seeing his right recoil before Scott’s cool men, Riall retreated into Fort George. American losses were “325 killed, wounded, and missing, the British about 500.” As the historian of the war Donald R. Hickey notes, this was “the first time that an American force had defeated a British force of equal strength on an open battlefield.” In time the U.S. Military Academy at West Point picked up on Scott’s mistaken notion that the Academy’s cadets wore gray uniforms because his men had by saying that the color did indeed honor Scott’s men.28

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  Later that month British lieutenant general Gordon Drummond reinforced Fort George. He soon sent sixteen hundred men to Lundy’s Lane. Seeing them, Brown ordered Scott to attack. At the head of twelve hundred men, Scott did as he had been told. Reinforcements came in on both sides, until the contending forces numbered around three thousand each. Seeing Scott’s force under heavy cannon fire, Brown sent a detachment under Lieutenant Colonel James Miller to attack the British artillery. One British veteran of the Peninsular War said he had never seen the French—famous for fearlessness—do anything so intrepid. “The Americans charged to the very muzzles of our cannon and actually bayonetted the artillerymen who were at their guns,” he recalled. After repeated British attacks, the two sides withdrew in exhaustion. Miller called the Battle of Lundy’s Lane “one of the most desperately fought actions ever experienced in America.” Hickey says it “was the bloodiest battle of the war.” Brown, Scott, Drummond, and Riall were all wounded, and the casualties numbered 860 on the American side, 880 on the British. In a kind of summary of the war, this bloody conflict ended in a draw.1 Though the British staged two ill-fated attacks on the Americans later on in the campaign, “The British retained possession of the Niagara peninsula, and … the front was quiet for the rest of the war.”2

  The overarching concept of the American campaign was to take one more shot at advancing down the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain toward Montreal. In the end redeployment of ten thousand of Wellington’s Peninsular veterans to North America and the U.S. Navy’s failure to establish dominance of Lake Ontario meant that this plan never came to fruition. No significant strategic gain was achieved. Madison, learning that Armstrong had ordered the theater commanders to communicate with each other through him, blamed his war secretary.3

  Meanwhile, in his usual not-very-insistent way, Madison had been trying to prod Armstrong into making provision for potential British attacks along the Atlantic coast. The difficulty of doing so, already great enough, loomed still larger after Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane’s announcement of April 2, 1814, that “persons now resident in the UNITED STATES” desiring to “withdraw therefrom” could enlist in the British military or emigrate “as FREE Settlers to the British Possessions in North America or the West Indies, where they will meet with all due encouragement.”4 Madison learned of this by May 20th, when he told Armstrong that it “admonish[es] us to be prepared for the worst the Enemy may be able to effect agst. us. The date concurs with the measure proclaimed, to indicate the most inveterate spirit against the Southern States, and which may be expected to shew itself agst. every object within the reach of vindictive enterprise. Among these the Seat of Govt. can not fail to be a favorite one.”5

  No later than July 1st the issue of Washington, D.C.’s defense claimed the attention of the president and Cabinet.6 Madison had just created a Tenth Military District including both Baltimore and Washington, putting Marylander Brigadier General William Winder, the Federalist governor’s nephew, in command of it.7 The president’s “Memorandum on Defense of the City of Washington,” compiled in a Cabinet meeting held on that day, includes figures for available cavalry, infantry, artillery, and marines from Washington and nearby and for Captain Joshua Barney’s navy personnel, besides a fanciful figure of ten thousand “Militia to be designated & held in readiness.”

  Yet when Madison raised the issue of the capital’s defense, no member of his Cabinet agreed with him.8 Armstrong instead offered several considerations that indicated the British were unlikely to try to attack the capital and probably would fail in the attempt even if they did. They could have done so in 1813, he noted, and had not bothered. Far more sensible would be to attack one of America’s seaside cities. If they opted to attack Washington, he insisted, they would have either to sail up the Potomac, which would be difficult for large ships, or to come via the Patuxent, from which they would have to march over easily defended terrain to reach the District of Columbia. Besides that, the British were unlikely to be able to land a force sufficient for the task.

  Madison did not hear what Armstrong intended for him to hear. Instead he instructed Armstrong the next day to “digest & report to the President, corresponding precautionary means of defence, in reference to the other more important and exposed places along the Atlantic Frontier; particularly Boston, New York, Wilmington, Norfolk, Charlestown, Savanna, and N. Orleans.” Besides providing ready caches of weapons, the relevant governors were also to provide “convenient designations of adequate portions of their Militia, with every other arrangement depending on the State Executives for having them in the best readiness for actual service in cases of emergency.”9 After this the process broke down. Armstrong sent the governors a letter telling them to prepare forces totaling 93,500 men, but he took no steps to ensure they knew where to concentrate them. He also did not coordinate defense of Washington with Winder. Madison assumed Armstrong would handle these details—without which the secretary’s Cabinet observations about the difficulty of traveling up the Potomac and the ease with which the land between the Patuxent and Washington could be defended would be meaningless. Armstrong, on the other hand, let more than a month go by without doing much of anything about it at all, somehow assuming that the president, rather than he, would handle the details of coordinating what was clearly a War Department function.10

  Not only did he not take the reins of preparing the town’s defense, but Armstrong seems also to have omitted to impress on the president and Congress the urgency of providing him with funding to take the necessary steps to fortify the approaches to the capital. As William Tatham, described by Armstrong’s biographer as “a consultant for the War Department’s topographical branch who had studied the area about Washington,” put it, “My belief is, we cannot defend Washington, because Congress have such a mistaken notion of public economy that they will not allow us the where-with-all!” In case the British navy sent a force to destroy the city, he predicted, “the result will be that, we shall fail; and popular clamour will shelter the real pitiful cause, by an abuse of John Armstrong, for being less than omnipotent.”11