ment showed no great knowledge, and poverty put its little knowledge out of service. Several futile attempts at invasion were followed by defeat or abortion, until the political officers were weeded out at the end of the year 1813, and Brown, Scott, Ripley, and others who had fought their way up were put in command. Then for the first time the men were drilled and brought into effective Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. condition; and two successful battles in 1814—Chippewa and Lundy's Lane—threw some glory on the end of the war. So weak were the preparations even for defence that a British expedition in 1814 met no effective resistance Washington burnt. when it landed and burned Washington. It was defeated, however, in an attempt to take Baltimore.
State of the Navy.178. The American navy at the outbreak of the war numbered half a dozen frigates and about the same number of smaller vessels. This was but a puny adversary for the thousand sail of the British navy, which had captured or shut up in port all the other navies of Europe. But the small number of American vessels, with the super abundance of trained officers, gave them one great advantage: the training and discipline of the men, and the equipment of the vessels, had been brought to the very highest point. Captains who could command a vessel but for a short time, yielding her then to another officer who was to take his sea service in rotation, were all ambitious to make their mark during their term. “The art of handling and fighting the old broadside sailing frigate” had been carried in the little American navy to a point which unvarying success and a tendency to fleet-combats had now made far less common among British captains.[1]
Naval successes.179. The first year of the war saw five ship-duels, in all of which the American frigates either captured or sunk their adversaries. Four others followed in 1813, in two of which the British vessels came off victorious. The attention of the British Government had by that time been fully diverted to the North-American coast; its blockading fleets made it very difficult for the larger American vessels to get to sea; and there were but seven other ship-combats, in only one of which the American vessel was taken. Most of the work was done by three frigates, the “Constitution,” the “Essex,” and the “United States.” There was fighting also on the Great Lakes between improvised fleets Victories on the Lakes. of small vessels. Perry captured the British fleet on Lake Erie (1813) and Macdonough the British fleet on Lake Champlain (1814). The former victory led to the end of the war in the West. Harrison, the American commander in that section, shipped his army across the lake in Perry's fleet, and routed the British and Canadian army at the Thames.
Feeling in New England.180. The home dislike to the war had increased steadily with the evidence of incompetent management by the administration. The Federalists, who had always desired a navy, pointed to the naval successes as the best proof of the folly with which the war had been undertaken and managed. New England Federalists complained that the Federal Government utterly neglected the defence of their coast, and that Southern influence was far too strong in national affairs. They showed at every opportunity a disposition to adopt the furthest stretch of State sovereignty, as stated in the Kentucky resolutions; and every such development urged the national democracy unconsciously further on the road to nationality. When the New England Hartford convention. States sent delegates to meet at Hartford and consider their grievances and the best remedies—a step perfectly proper on the Democratic theory of a “voluntary Union”—treason was suspected, and a readiness to suppress it by force was plainly shown. The recommendations of the convention came to nothing; but the attitude of the dominant party towards it is one of the symptoms of the manner in which the trials of actual war were steadily reconciling democracy and nationality. The object which Hamilton had sought by high tariffs and the development of national classes had been attained by more natural and healthy means.
181. In April 1814 the first abdication of Napoleon took place, and Great Britain was able to give more attention to her American antagonist. The main attack was to be made on Louisiana, the weakest and most distant portion of the Union. A fleet and army were sent thither, and, after much delay, landed below the city. The nearest settled country was Tennessee; and between New Orleans. it and New Orleans was a wilderness four hundred miles long. Andrew Jackson had become the most prominent citizen of Tennessee, and he was ordered to the defence of New Orleans. His popularity and energy brought riflemen down the river and put them into position. The British assault was marred by hopeless blunders, and the gallantry of the men only made their slaughter and repulse more Peace. complete (January 8, 1815). Peace had been made at Ghent fifteen days before the battle was fought, but the news of the battle and the peace reached Washington almost together, the former going far to make the latter tolerable.
Its terms.182. Though the land war had gone almost uniformly against the United States, and the American naval successes had been just enough to irritate the English mind, and though the British negotiators had nothing to dread and everything to demand, the treaty was quite satisfactory to the United States. It is true that it said not a word about the questions of impressment, search, and neutral rights, the grounds of the war; Great Britain did not abandon her position on any of them. But everybody knew that circumstances had changed. The new naval power whose frigates alone in the past twenty years had shown their ability to fight English frigates on equal terms was not likely to be troubled in future with the question of impressment; and in fact, while not renouncing the right, the British Government no longer attempted to enforce it. The navy, it must be confessed, was the force which had at last given the United States a recognized and cordial acceptance in the family of nations; it had solved the problem of the reconciliation of democracy and nationality. From this time the dominant party shows an
- ↑ The naval officers who came most prominently to notice in the war were Hull and Lawrence (see p. 789) and the following:—Stephen Decatur was born at Sinnepuxent, Md., Jan. 5, 1779, and died at Washington (shot in a duel), March 22, 1820. He distinguished himself in the first Algerine war, 1803-4, by his capture of the British frigate “Macedonian,” while in command of the “United States,” and in the brief war which brought about the final submission of the Algerines in 1815.—Thomas Macdonough was born in Newcastle county, Del., Dec. 23, 1783, and died at sea, Nov. 16, 1825. He was commodore of the American fleet on Lake Champlain, in its victory over the British fleet.—Oliver Hazard Perry was born at South Kingston, R.I., Aug. 23, 1785, and died on the island of Trinidad, Aug. 23, 1819. His great achievement was his victory over the British fleet, 1813, laconically announced in the despatch: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”—David Porter was born at Boston, Mass., Feb. 1, 1780. After service in a merchantman, he entered the navy in 1798, served in the Algerine war and elsewhere, and in 1812 was in command of the “Essex.” His most brilliant service was his cruise in the Pacific in 1813-14, in which he swept that ocean of British whalers, and was finally captured in the neutral harbour of Valparaiso by two British vessels, after the most desperate naval combat of the war. He resigned in 1826, after a difficulty with the navy department, and took command of the Mexican navy. He died near Constantinople, March 28, 1843, while serving as minister to Turkey. See D. D. Porter's Memoir of David Porter (1876), and Irving's Spanish Papers, vol. ii.—John Rodgers was born in Harford county, Md., in 1771. He entered the navy in 1798 as a lieutenant, rose to a captaincy, commanded the Mediterranean fleet in 1805, and the frigate “President” during the encounter with the “Little Belt” in 1811. He was in command of the fleet at New York in 1812, and hurried it to sea, lest his Government should forbid it to leave port. He commanded the fleet in another cruise the same year, but only individual captures were made. He died at Philadelphia, Aug. 1, 1838.
