CHAPTER XIV
Whilewe were fighting the Algerines, we were suffering from depredations on our commerce by France and England a hundredfold more serious than all we had undergone from the African corsairs. The story is as shameful to the statesmanship of the period as our stand with regard to Barbary was honorable.
Napoleon dominated Europe by land; England by sea. The former’s great aim after subjecting the Continental states, rotten with the decaying feudalism of the past centuries, was to destroy English supremacy by closing all Europe to English commerce, an effort which was to fail through one of the greatest instincts of man, that of trade. Almost universal war thus made neutral America the great carrier; our shipping increased by amazing bounds and covered every sea. But between the two great antagonists it was to be heavily ground. Our losses were in many millions, our ships for a considerable period being seized at an average ofthree a day. It would take a book much larger than this to go into the details of this question which looms so large even to this day. Added to the question of ships was that of impressment of our seamen who were taken out of our merchantmen, and in two cases from men-of-war, to man those of the British navy, on the claim that a British subject was always a subject. In carrying out this dictum, a vast number of Americans were claimed as such from mere appearance or other characteristic or for no reason whatever except that he was a likely man. Over 11,000 were to be so taken before, in 1812, we went to war.
Jefferson was President for the eight years beginning March 4, 1801. His residence as minister in France from 1785 to 1788 had given him as mentioned leanings which affected all his later views, despite the monstrous excesses of the French Revolution. He had very peculiar ideas of the ocean-carrying trade, mentioning it as: “this protuberant navigation which has kept us in hot water from the commencement of the government.” He would “an’ he could,” have made of America a rural community, apparently not being able to comprehend that man is, by nature, a trader; that trade is the real civilizerand missioner beyond all other endeavors combined. Linked with this was a willingness to submit the country to unparalleled insult and injury in the seizure of ships and impressment of our seamen without taking any efficient or reasonable steps to resist such outrages. The extent of our Government’s submission is well shown by Captain Basil Hall in his most interesting reminiscences as a seaman. Describing his life as a midshipman in theLeander, in the middle years of Jefferson’s administration, he says: “Every morning at daybreak during our stay off New York we set about arresting the progress of all vessels we saw, firing off guns to the right and left, to make every ship that was running in heave to, or wait until we had leisure to send a boat on board ‘to see,’ in our lingo, ‘what she was made of.’ I have frequently known a dozen, and sometimes a couple of dozen ships, lying to, a league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide and, worse than all, their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our search was completed.”
A crowning outrage came in 1807 when the frigateChesapeakeflying the broad-pennant of Commodore Samuel Barron was leaving for theMediterranean. She had been preparing for some time for sea, but finally was hurried off in a state wholly unfit to go suddenly into action with any vessel of moderate force, and certainly not with the much more powerful ship which was about to attack her. This ship, theLeopard, of 54 guns, had been lying, along with several other British men-of-war, in Lynnhaven Bay, just within the Capes of the Chesapeake. They were watching for two French frigates then lying off Annapolis. This occupancy, for such a purpose, of our waters, was in itself an insulting abuse of our neutrality, though Jefferson could speak of it as “enjoying our hospitality.”
TheChesapeakepassed out of the capes about noon on June 22, 1807. When about ten miles outside theLeopardhailed saying she had a dispatch for Commodore Barron. This “dispatch” proved to be a copy of an order from the British admiral, Berkeley, to search theChesapeakefor deserters from certain British ships, the order to be first shown to her captain. On Barron’s refusal to submit to such outrage theChesapeakewas fired into by theLeopard, without, in the unprepared state of the ship, being able to return a gun. Twenty-one men were killed and wounded, the ship searched and four of the crew,claimed as British deserters, were taken away. “Of these, one was hanged, one died, and the other two, after prolonged disputation, were returned five years later to the deck of theChesapeakein formal reparation.” A deeper insult to a nation could scarcely have been offered. All the same, it ended only on the part of the administration in what may be called a fit of sulks known as the embargo, which from December, 1807, to March, 1809, took American commerce by the throat and forbade our merchant ships to go to sea. It was much as if a man should reduce himself to bread and water as a revenge against an enemy.
Jefferson, meanwhile, with the British practically blockading our ports and taking men from vessels entering New York and other harbors, was seized with a passion for gunboats, and shortly after theChesapeakeincident, which cried aloud for ships-of-the-line instead of the two hundred petty toys he devised and caused to be built, and which could not go to sea without striking their one gun into the hold, we find him saying: “Believing, myself, that gunboats are the only water defence which can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which promises toimprove them.”[26]It was a mind far better fitted to deal with the manipulations of a political party than with the care of a nation which he was not so very far from wrecking by an insensate policy of peace at any price. Peace, however, cannot be kept by one only of the interested parties declaring such a preference. One must be in a position to command peace, and this failure was Jefferson’s great mistake, a mistake which from every point of view was to cost us dear. “Whether with or without a war, a navy would have saved us the six years of humiliation which were to intervene between 1806 and 1812; it would have saved the embargo which was to tie to the wharves in rotting idleness more than a million tons of shipping which had been engaged in foreign trade; to bring grass-grown streets to our greatest ports, and strain the sentiment of the several sections of the Union to the point of separation. It would have saved the War of 1812, the capture and burning of Washington, and the shameful ineptitude, with one brilliant exception, of our army commanders in that contest.... There would have been a cessation of British impressmentand there would have been no such orders in council as those directed to the destruction of American commerce; or had these come before America was ready with her navy there would have been quick renunciation.”[27]
Gallatin, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, pressed to apply the surplus of two millions a year (“and,” said he, “it is a very low calculation”), which he considered would be lost in case of war, wholly “to the building of ships of the line.”[28]Said Gouverneur Morris in the Senate (and it was the expression of one of the ablest minds of the country): “When we have twenty ships-of-the-line at sea, and there is no good reason why we should not have them, we shall be respected by all Europe.... The expense compared with the benefit is moderate, nay, trifling. Whatever sums are necessary to secure the national independence must be paid.... If we will not pay to be defended, we must pay for being conquered.”[29]
Instead of a fleet which would have commanded respect, the United States had built in the years 1801-1811 “two sloops of 18 guns andtwo brigs of 16, and out of twelve frigates had permitted three to rot at their moorings”; and this while 917 American ships had been seized by the British, many more than this number by the French, and our men taken from our vessels by the thousand and impressed into the British service. There is an official record of 6,257 of these, but it is known that the number ran to over 11,000. Such things, if we were to survive as a nation, could only bring war, whether Jefferson and Madison wished war or not. The instigators of such conditions had not long to wait to repent their folly.
The affair of theChesapeakehad stirred the soul of the little navy, at least, to its depth. There were now, in 1810, in commission, thePresident, 44;Constitution, 44;United States, 44;Essex, 32;John Adams, 24;Wasp, 18;Hornet, 18;Argus, 16;Siren, 16;Nautilus, 12;Enterprise, 12,Vixen, 12. The whole list is given, as nearly all these were to make names for themselves. Attention, too, began to be turned to the lakes, for war was now foreseen by all naval officers and at least some of the administration. The British had a considerable force upon the American coast, but they were now more chary of giving offence. The danger was emphasized on May16, 1811, when thePresident, carrying Commodore Rodgers’s broad-pennant, and at sea on account of having heard of the impressment of a seaman near Sandy Hook, sighted a strange man-of-war which stood away. ThePresidentgave chase but did not come near until about 8:30 in the evening when, on a hail from thePresident, the stranger fired a gun which struck thePresident’smainmast. The latter at once fired a broadside, and recognizing shortly that her antagonist was disabled ceased fire. The other began anew but was soon silenced. At daylight thePresidentsent a boat and found that the ship was the British sloop-of-war,Little Belt, of 18 guns. She had suffered severely and thirty-one of her people had been killed and wounded. Offers of aid were given but declined, and the British cruiser stood for Halifax.
Naturally the strong tension already existing was increased and matters moved rapidly. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war.
At the moment of America’s declaration of war against England Napoleon was on his way to Russia with an army destined never to return. Spain was being desolated by the struggle of the French and British in the peninsula; all the Spanish provinces in South America were in revolution.With the entry of the United States the whole western world was at war.
Our population at this time, excluding negroes, was about 7,500,000; that of Great Britain was about 15,000,000. We had a navy of three large and one small frigate, one sloop-of-war, and seven smaller vessels, with 500 officers, of whom twelve were captains. There were 5,230 men in the enlisted force, of whom 2,436 were destined for the cruising ships, “the remainder being for service at the forts and navy yards, in the gunboats, and on the lakes.” In the British navy were over a thousand ships.
There can of course be no comparison between such forces; nor could there in the long run be any doubt as to the result, but the American navy was to achieve, in the unequal struggle, a series of victories which brought results psychically the equal of victories of great fleets. It is not that we were continuously victorious, but in the main our success was so great and of a character to which the British navy and public were so unaccustomed that our victories were a staggering blow to Britain’s self-sufficiency. It must be remembered that the French navy of Louis XVI’s time had been, so far as officers and morale were concerned, swept out of existenceby the French Revolution. The French fleet of the Consular and Napoleonic period was now not only ill-officered, but through the constant blockades of the British had but little of the sea habit by which only a navy can be efficient. The Spanish navy had no real organization or other qualities of success under circumstances of even much worse neglect. The British ships, well officered, well manned, and with constant sea practice, had no real antagonists, for it is absurd to compare in efficiency such organizations as that which fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and those under Villeneuve and Gravina in the same battle. The American navy was to show a different standard.