Chapter VII

THE UNITED STATES AT SEA; OR, MADISON’S CRUISE.
1809–1817.

The Captain and Officers of the “Seventeen Sisters” which put to Sea in
a Gale.—Diplomatic Talks.—Difference between one’s own Cows gored, and
one’s own Bull in a Neighbor’s Field stoned, exemplified.—Cave
canem.—Bonaparte improves the Code Napoleon.—Executions before
Trials.—Horace Greeley fights benevolently into the World.—Louisiana
and her Vivacious Debts taken in; what sweetened them.—Witch-Hazel
Rods of Clay, Cheves, etc., dip to the National Mines of Feeling.—Our
Second Wrestling-Match with England.—The Hull-sale Surrender
of Michigan.—Colonel Cass breaks his Sword, and gets an
Anglo-phobia.—Better Hulls on the Water.—America marries the Sea.—A
Wasp on a Frolic.—Marine Flirtations and Engagements.—The
Constitution, an Old Sea-Flirt; her rapid Winning and Wooing of the
Java.—South Carolina loses a Presidential Candidate.—Of the Three
Armies afield.—Harrison at Tippecanoe and the Thames.—Colonel R. M.
Johnson’s life-long Chase for Tecumseh’s Scalp.—Toronto emptied and
filled.—General Brown, a Real Man, in Spite of his Name.—General Wade
Hampton.—Court-Martials, and how they touch off Military Charges.—The
United States at Sea on Land.—The Hornet on a Peacock.—An Immortal
Word wrung from a Mortal Moment.—Commodore Perry.—General Scott
improves the Niagara Frontier for Hack-Drivers.—Macdonough charges
Lake Champlain with Heroic Ingredients.—English Marine Parades.—Cotton
Breastworks at New Orleans.—Their Feminine Adoption.—The Treaty of
Peace and its Wonderful Omissions.—Costs and Gains of the War.—The
Hartford Convention and its Equestrian Exploits.—Mr. Calhoun and
Invisible Ink.

James Madison, who for eight years past had been first mate on our national craft, was in 1809 promoted by its owners, the people, to be Captain,—Mr. C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, receiving a complimentary vote, as a Palmetto fillup. The captain’s principal officers were: first mate, or Secretary of State, Robert Smith; second mate, or Secretary of War, William Eustis; purser, or Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin; boatswain, or Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton; and Cæsar A. Rodney, piper, or Attorney-General. Much need was there of a judicious set of officers on the quarter-deck, as well as of a good crew in the forecastle; for the Seventeen Sisters were about to put to sea, with high storms blowing off and on the coast.

Much talk was there, as soon as Mr. Madison entered upon his duties, between British envoys, Mr. Erskine first and Mr. Jackson afterwards, on the one side, and our Mr. Smith on the other, about our Non-intercourse Act. Of course the Britons did not like to have their own commercial cows gored by our bulls; although they had enjoyed immensely the sight of their own unmuzzled Durhams pushing wildly among our young cattle. The British government—or, rather, their accredited agent, Mr. Erskine—promised to repeal the obnoxious orders in council. Taking the principals at their agent’s word, our government good-naturedly proclaimed the renewal of commercial intercourse with England. Thereupon, George III.—now entering the fiftieth year of king-craft, without any improvement of his crass German notions by a cross with British principles of shop-keeping—repudiated the acts of his agent. The friendly hand we had offered we now took back, giving a perceptible contraction to its muscles as we drew it in. For three years we pocketed our fists and indignities.

In 1809 England had stationed cruisers off our coast to seize our merchantmen, and send them in as prizes to her ports. Every American ship-owner saw mosaicked at the outlet of every American harbor the warning, _cave canem_, without being at liberty to stone the dog which flew at him. Bonaparte, blood red with Spanish and Portuguese victories, turning in cold, dynastic selfishness from the heart-faithful but childless Josephine, and drawing to her place the reluctant, refrigerating Maria Louise, undismayed by the fear of our junction with the fifth coalition formed against him by England, Austria, Spain, and Portugal, imitated for a time the swaggering injustice of England towards us. In March, 1810, improving upon the Code Napoleon, by execution before suit, he decreed the seizure and summary condemnation of all American vessels entering French ports. This boyish, pouting, and self-extinguishing policy he gave up in November following. England was left alone in keeping unneighborly mastiffs.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the effervescence of national sediment thus foaming up in yeasty ebullition, Horace Greeley, February 3, 1811, fought into life. Ever since that successful contest, the world has advanced with quickened forces. Benevolence felt reinforced by combative intellect, which borrowed the club of logic and strong adjectives to persuade error to keep the ways of tribunitial thought. Soon after Mr. Greeley’s birth, Mr. Smith gave up the State Department to James Monroe, who, for the three years following, found ample employment for his executive abilities, in the double duties of this branch added to those of the War bureau.

In April, 1812, our French sister, Louisiana, brought her vivacity, gayety, and debts into the family. Her high spirits were needed to stimulate the action, and her sugar to sweeten the waters of strife, now effectually stirred between America and England, whose bottomless pretensions had become intolerable. Our public debt had become reduced to about $45,000,000, and our population augmented to seven and a half millions. It needed not the witch-hazel rods of the eloquent Clay, Calhoun, Langdon, Cheves, and others, to dip to and find the mines of national wealth and national feeling. Both were ready. At last, June 4, 1812, after the lapse of twenty-nine years, we found ourselves in a second wrestling-match with Great Britain. Our first grapple was near Detroit, and on the Canadian frontier, where a defeat, under Colonel Van Horne, and a success, under Colonel Miller, equalized losses and gains, through July and August. But the base Hull-sale surrender, without a blow, of Detroit, of an army of two thousand men, and the entire Territory of Michigan, by its cowardly or treacherous governor, caused our captain, officers, and entire crew to explode in very indignant terms. Colonel Lewis Cass, then commanding one of the regiments, snapped his sword in two pieces, rather than surrender it whole to the British General Brock. He took such an Anglo-phobia at this time, that the next fifty years could not cure it.

Fortunately we had better hulls on the water than on the land.

August 19, 1812, Captain Isaac Hull, in the frigate Constitution, fought the British Guerriere, and after knocking down every mast and spar and one third of her crew, compelled her to throw up the sponge. The mourning put on three days before for the loss, by General William Hull, of Michigan, and the army of the Northwest, was now put off for the bridal-wreath presented by Captain Isaac Hull to America, on her marriage to the sea. Like her spouse, the Ocean, the bride hastened to cast her weeds. The pallor of defeat gave place to the summoned roses of joy. Upon the crimson flushes the British bees now sought to light and to extract their carnation.

In October, the British tars, in a Frolic, set out to tease the delighted groom, but a Wasp, hovering near, made for the frolicsome bee, and in three quarters of an hour so stung it, that its shattered wings were only fit for microscopical studies. All the officers and crew of the Frolic, four only excepted, were killed or wounded; while the Wasp, although carrying fewer guns, had only ten killed or injured. A few days afterwards the frigate United States, commanded by Decatur,—whom we left eight years since before Tripoli, clearing out its wretched Bey,—engaged the British Macedonian, and took such a fancy to her that, after some violent flirtation, she completely won her. This engagement went hard with the proud, stiff old people in England, but a repetition of this sort of match-making did much to reconcile them to the first. The second engagement took place on Pacific ground, off the coast of Brazil, between that old sea-flirt, the Constitution, looking out, not for coffee or sparrows, but for a marine flirtation, and the Java, a buxom frigate, long-waisted and well padded with materials, adorned with heavy war jewelry, constituting very attractive charms, at her waist. In less than two hours after their acquaintance, these ardent strangers became so entangled in each other’s fortunes, that the Java gave up, like a true mistress, all her future to her fond and persistent lover. When the news of this wooing reached the stuffy old parents at home, they were frantic with rage. The family pride was alarmed and wounded. They immediately sent out a large fleet to watch that new and fashionable American promenade, the sea, to prevent any more flirtations and engagements like poor Guerriere’s and the unfortunate Java’s.

Meanwhile Mr. Madison was re-elected Captain by one hundred and twenty-eight votes; De Witt Clinton receiving eighty-nine. Mr. C. C. Pinckney, now sixty-six years old, and convinced that his capital was too small, abandoned the business; and as Mr. Calhoun was yet only thirty, and constitutionally ineligible, South Carolina was reduced to the humiliation of voting either for a Virginian or a New-Yorker.

Notwithstanding her successes on the water, America by no means abandoned the land.

She raised and set on foot, although some of course, as usual, got on horseback, three armies. The first of these was the Army of the West, under General William Henry Harrison, whose business it was made to chastise back into submissive quiet the Indian tribes, which England had enticed out to the pillage and harrying of our frontier settlers; a business which he successfully prosecuted at Fort Meigs, at Tippecanoe, and again, in October, 1813, at the Thames. At this last engagement somebody killed Tecumseh, and thus gave Colonel R. M. Johnson employment for the rest of his life in vindicating his right to the Shawnee’s scalp. The red chief thus, like Homer and others, caused after his death more contention than during his life. Soon after the Thames battle, General Harrison repaired to Buffalo, where, in consequence of some unexplained reason,—perhaps overcome by its vigorous Board of Trade, or seized by its enterprising forwarders,—he was transported into a resignation, and to Ohio.

The second army was that of the Centre, under General Dearborn, Jefferson’s Secretary of War, and now Commander-in-Chief of all the forces deployed along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and the Niagara frontier. A portion of this army, in April, 1813, left Sackett’s Harbor, and landing at York, now Toronto, took hold of it, and, shaking it empty of British and Indians, left it so dry, that vigorous drinking since has scarcely sufficed to absorb back any considerable numbers of the brick-colored originals, although something has succeeded in getting up very successful exhibitions of English red and white skins. While General Dearborn was absent from Sackett’s Harbor, Sir George Prevost thought it a good time to sail in. He landed with one thousand men; but General Brown,—a real, actual man, although disguised by this mythical name,—rallied the local militia, and, setting on the baronet and his thousand, took a large number of them, and held them as mutilated specimens of soldiers at leisure. General Dearborn soon after resigned, and General Wilkinson—who had been tried and acquitted for his too great intimacy, while in command at the Southwest, with the American Cain and his schemes—succeeded him; the only success that he ever had, as he always had the ill-assorted habit of never agreeing or co-operating with any one, especially on critical occasions. Like a rocking-chair in moving time, he took up more room than could be spared, and was pretty sure to be broken when required for use.

The third army was that of the North, placed under General Wade Hampton, grandfather of that leader of the Confederate black cavalry in the late Rebellion, who waded to his horse’s bits in the blood of his loyal countrymen, in order to keep the black bipeds in the South bridled and saddled to carry the unwading Hamptons. The army of the North, twelve thousand strong, was stationed on Lake Champlain, and was destined to co-operate with Wilkinson’s for the reduction of Montreal, then holding only a small garrison of six hundred; but the mutual enmity of the generals, growing out of old quarrels at New Orleans, frustrated all co-operation. Each drew himself into warm winter quarters, nursing his private grievances, as Mrs. Gamp did her special infirmities, while the poor unnursed, suffering patient, the campaign, took care of itself. Of course Montreal was not reduced, except to a satisfactory smile over the military pouting of the unco-operating commanders. The Secretary of War preferred charges against Wilkinson. The charges, as usual when touched by court-martials, went off in flashes in the pan. The campaign of 1813, rammed down with the double loads, the armies of the Centre and the North, went off in the same way.

The United States were now more at sea on land than on the sea itself.

LOOKING FOR A SCOUT.
(p. 390)
]

Early in the year 1813, the sloop Hornet, roaming at will over the green fields of water, pricked on by Captain James Lawrence, lit on the British Peacock, and so worried her, that in fifteen minutes she fluttered down, down into the opening green gulfs below, with all her bright, well-spread colors. Promoted to the Chesapeake, manned or rather unmanned by an undrilled, miscellaneous crew which had drifted on her decks, the brave Lawrence, counselled more by a chivalric honor than by a cool prudence, accepted the murderous, Burr-like challenge of the well-practised Shannon, carrying a picked and veteran crew and corps of marines. The ill-handled, entangled, and disabled Chesapeake was boarded, and the intrepid commander, carried below with a mortal wound, stammered out that immortal order which hurtles hotly through histories and navies, “Don’t give up the ship.”

On Lake Erie, Commodore Perry, in September, 1813, with a small squadron embraced and took a superior British fleet, announcing his resisted possession in another lively, well-planted message, which floats like a buoy in the crowded harbor of historical anchorage,—“We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

During this year, as in the preceding, American privateers swept from the wavy floor of the ocean hundreds of merchantmen. Forthwith English courts, English premiers, and English writers on international law bristled with freshly sharpened horror at the sin of privateering,—a most un-Christian practice they averred, as it tended violently to abridge the marine wealth of England.

In 1814 a varied war business was transacted between the United States and Great Britain. In July—that month for excursions to Niagara Falls—Generals Scott and Ripley crossed the hurrying river near the cataract, and took Fort Erie, which, fortunately for the hackmen, they left like a toll-gate, to entice yearly from travellers its original cost. As if to increase the wonders of this taking neighborhood, two days after the capture of Fort Erie, the battle of Chippewa was fought, in which bayonets were actually crossed,—a rare checker-work, although often talked of in those select romances, the despatches of raw militia generals, who, in their first sight of glancing steel and first smell of villainous saltpetre, see many things crosswise and crooked. Fifteen days later, Winfield Scott made a ghostly spectacle, at Lundy’s Lane, of great numbers of well-seasoned British Regulars.

Fortunate Niagara! in owning so many wonders,

“The moving accidents of flood and field.”

Human phosphates are here most advantageously diluted with large parts of uncounted water.

Meanwhile, the veteran English squadrons which had served under Wellington, in Spain and Portugal, glorified by victories over Ney, Massena, Marmont, Soult, and Joseph Bonaparte,—their bullet-slitted flags inscribed “Torres Vedras,” “Talavera,” “Ciudad Rodrigo,” “Almeida,” “Salamanca,” “Madrid,” and “Vittoria,”—mustering fourteen thousand men, and led by Sir George Prevost, pushed down from Canada upon Plattsburg, where General Macomb had assembled fifteen hundred men. Crossing the little river Saranac, on one side of which Plattsburg stood, in modest, village quiet, Macomb posted his men. Like cedar posts, these unseasoned troops stood rooted to the soil, stubbornly refusing to bend before the furious storm of grape and canister which swept through them for four days. While this heroic endurance was maintained on the land side, in front of the village and on the vitreous surface of Lake Champlain, Commandant Thomas Macdonough, on the morning of September 11, with a squadron of fourteen small vessels, carrying 86 guns and 850 officers and men, anchoring in the bay and awaiting the approach of a British fleet of sixteen ships, with 95 guns and 1,000 men, so charged the common trading waters of the lake with soul-lifting influences, that even commerce seems to bear there its pennons more stiffly ever since, and ordinary smacks to kiss the wind with a lover’s trancing relish.

Worsted in square fighting, squadron to squadron, and vessel to vessel, the enemy—not having the fear of this History before their eyes, and finding it easier to harass unarmed merchantmen and to pillage unprotected coasts—ravaged the Chesapeake, burned the Capitol at Washington,—whose corner-stone had been laid by the great American himself in 1793,—and laid in ashes the President’s house. Unfortunately, the Washington Monument was not yet begun; and thus by its escape made the destruction as unpardonable by taste as it was by the code of nations. Baltimore pluck defended Baltimore beauty from attacks by land and water; but the dry goods and shipping of Alexandria were bravely captured and taken prisoners. Weary of the marine parades before New York, Newport, and Stonington, at the North, and Mobile, at the South, a descent upon the city of New Orleans was finally planned by the British military commander, with fifteen thousand hardy and well-seasoned veterans, led by Sir E. Pakenham. To two thousand of them it was a sudden descent to Avernus. Their shades, on every recurring 8th of January, have since been vexed by the sad rites of oratory, poured out on every American stump and platform. Cotton for the first time was here invested with belligerent rights, from its use by General Jackson and his six thousand troops as breastworks. It has ever since been roundly employed by American ladies in the same way against their ardent admirers. The result in the latter case, however, has usually been, not to repel but to heighten the vivacity of the attack; and, unlike that at New Orleans, to procure the surrender of the party with the cotton-works.

The battle of New Orleans was fought in ignorance of the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, signed twenty-five days previously, December 14, 1814, at Ghent,—an agreement which, like frequent make-ups of other quarrels, was wholly silent upon the questions which had caused the long and harassing contention.

On these questions the United States were left at sea.

The war had cost thirty thousand lives and over $100,000,000; but we gained flags, fame, self-confidence, a fine crop of candidates, and subjects for speeches. Through the annealing flames we came out blue steel.

During the December descent on New Orleans, delegates from five of the New England States took Hartford and used it to pass some resolutions against the mode in which, as they asserted, those States had been left out in the cold, bare and unprotected by the government. Many conventions have been since held at the same place and gathered up denunciations with characteristic American fervor; but this one has got somehow astride of history, and ridden it without bridle or stirrups.

In 1816 the second national bank was chartered, with a capital of $35,000,000, lifting the country from suspension to specie payments. Mr. Calhoun, its projector and the supporter of a high tariff, lived to denounce both. Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, his triangulating rivals, also survived to balance with changing faces the changed front of their Presidential competitor. The strong heats of party, in all times and countries, bring out characters and lines invisible before.

In December, 1816, Indiana, the nineteenth State, came to Washington bearing in her hands a-maize-ing reasons for her admission.