The Fight for a Free Sea | Page 2

a sovereign and
independent nation.
The War of 1812, like the American Revolution, was a valiant contest
for survival on the part of the spirit of freedom. It was essentially akin
to the world-wide struggle of a century later, when sons of the old
foemen of 1812--sons of the painted Indians and of the Kentucky
pioneers in fringed buckskins, sons of the New Hampshire ploughboys
clad in homespun, sons of the Canadian militia and the red-coated
regulars of the British line, sons of the tarry seamen of the Constitution
and the Guerrière--stood side by side as brothers in arms to save from
brutal obliteration the same spirit of freedom. And so it is that in
Flanders fields today the poppies blow above the graves of the sons of
the men who fought each other a century ago in the Michigan
wilderness and at Lundy's Lane.
The causes and the background of the War of 1812 are presented
elsewhere in this series of Chronicles.[1] Great Britain, at death grips
with Napoleon, paid small heed to the rights and dignities of neutral
nations. The harsh and selfish maritime policy of the age, expressed in
the British Navigation Acts and intensified by the struggle with
Napoleon, led the Mistress of the Seas to perpetrate indignity after
indignity on the ships and sailors which were carrying American
commerce around the world. The United States demanded a free sea,
which Great Britain would not grant. Of necessity, then, such futile
weapons as embargoes and non-intercourse acts had to give place to the
musket, the bayonet, and the carronade. There could be no compromise
between the clash of doctrines. It was for the United States to assert
herself, regardless of the odds, or sink into a position of supine
dependency upon the will of Great Britain and the wooden walls of her
invincible navy.

[Footnote 1: See Jefferson and His Colleagues, by Allen Johnson (in
The Chronicles of America).]
"Free Trade and Sailors' Rights!" was the American war cry. It
expressed the two grievances which outweighed all others--the
interference with American shipping and the ruthless impressment of
seamen from beneath the Stars and Stripes. No less high-handed than
Great Britain's were Napoleon's offenses against American commerce,
and there was just cause for war with France. Yet Americans felt the
greater enmity toward England, partly as an inheritance from the
Revolution, but chiefly because of the greater injury which England
had wrought, owing to her superior strength on the sea.
There were, to be sure, other motives in the conflict. It is not to be
supposed that the frontiersmen of the Northwest and Southwest, who
hailed the war with enthusiasm, were ardently aroused to redress
wrongs inflicted upon their seafaring countrymen. Their enmity
towards Great Britain was compounded of quite different grievances.
Behind the recent Indian wars on the frontier they saw, or thought they
saw, British paymasters. The red trappers and hunters of the forest were
bloodily defending their lands; and there was a long-standing bond of
interest between them and the British in Canada. The British were
known to the tribes generally as fur traders, not "land stealers"; and the
great traffic carried on by the merchants of Montreal, not only in the
Canadian wilderness but also in the American Northwest, naturally
drew Canadians and Indians into the same camp. "On to Canada!" was
the slogan of the frontiersmen. It expressed at once their desire to
punish the hereditary foe and to rid themselves of an unfriendly power
to the north.
The United States was poorly prepared and equipped for military and
naval campaigns when, in June, 1812, Congress declared war on Great
Britain. Nothing had been learned from the costly blunders of the
Revolution, and the delusion that readiness for war was a menace to
democracy had influenced the Government to absurd extremes. The
regular army comprised only sixty-seven hundred men, scattered over
an enormous country and on garrison service from which they could

not be safely withdrawn. They were without traditions and without
experience in actual warfare. Winfield Scott, at that time a young
officer in the regular army, wrote:
The old officers had very generally sunk into either sloth, ignorance, or
habits of intemperate drinking.... Many of the appointments were
positively bad, and a majority of the remainder indifferent. Party spirit
of that day knew no bounds, and was of course blind to policy.
Federalists were almost entirely excluded from selection, though great
numbers were eager for the field.... Where there was no lack of
educated men in the dominant party, the appointments consisted
generally of swaggerers, dependents, decayed gentlemen, and others
"fit for nothing else," which always turned out utterly unfit for any
military purpose whatever.
The main reliance was to be on militia and volunteers, an army of the
free people rushing