turned to the States for assistance; in both cases, instead of calling the troops into the field when the enemy's object was first discovered, Congress and the President sought to economize by inviting the States "to hold the militia in readiness to march at a moment's notice;" in both cases, when the critical moment arrived, the militia was powerless in the presence of a disciplined foe, and in both cases the want of an adequate regular army caused the capital to fall into the hands of our enemies. Wherever news of the capture of Washington was received it justly excited the indignation of all parties. The people had given to their representatives, before and during the war, unlimited power to raise and support armies; the trust had been abused; the honor of the nation had been wounded. Unable to trace the real cause of the calamity to the defects of military organization, the people satisfied themselves with laying the blame on the Secretary of War, who was compelled, in disgrace, to retire from the Cabinet. The Secretary of War, like General Smyth, fell a victim to his mistaken reliance on raw troops. The latter, as described by the Secretary, was compelled after his failure in 1812 to flee from the Army, "hissed and hunted"" to his home in Virginia. "The sarcastic Secretary of War, as soon as the conquerors withdrew to their ships, accused of treason, was driven away by what he called a village mob, and not suffered even to resign at Washington, but advised by the President, and forced by popular indignation, to fly to Baltimore to do it." The movement against the capital was followed on the 13th and 14th of September by a combined land and naval attack upon Baltimore, where, being confronted by a line of entrenchments as well as by better dispositions, the enemy withdrew, after suffering a loss of 319 killed and wounded, embracing, among the former, General Ross, the commander of the military forces. In October the British fleet, with the troops on board, left the Chesapeake and sailed for Jamaica. The repulse of the enemy at Baltimore, and the return of our Army from Fort Erie, were the last operations of any magnitude immediately preceding the treaty of peace, which was signed at Ghent on the 24th of December. EXERCISE OF COMMAND BY THE SECRETARY OF WAR. The fall of the Secretary of War suggests another abuse in our military system, from which both the country and the Army have suffered, especially whenever a citizen of military experience has been at the head of the War Department. The law creating this Department and prescribing the duties of its chief leaves no room to doubt that nothing could have been further from the intentions of Congress than to bestow upon a civil officer, subordinate to the President, the right to exercise military command. Nevertheless, the failure to create the grade of General in Chief, tempted, if it did not compel, the Secretary to assume, in the Cabinet and in the field, the position of generalissimo of our forces. During a Armstrong's Notices of the War of 1812, vol. 2, p. 113. 34760° - 16 -9 the first year of the war, in the absence of a competent military adviser to the President, the plans of campaign were mostly determined by consultations of the Cabinet. During the second year the responsibility was assumed by General Armstrong, a new Secretary, whose claim to public confidence was based chiefly on his experience as an officer of the Continental Army. As soon as he assumed office the vast and important duty of organizing our armies and providing their supplies engaged only a share of his attention. He devised all the plans of campaign, submitted them to the approval of the President, transmitted them to the military commanders, and finally, as in the autumn of 1813, repaired to the field to superintend their execution. His first interview with General Wilkinson at Sackett's Harbor was attended by confusion and discord, and gave evidence that so long as he remained, the movements of the Army would be retarded by the ambition and jealousy of the rival commanders." On the 4th of October he insisted upon an attack on Kingston, against which the general "remonstrated warmly and freely." Two weeks later the two commanders changed sides. Wilkinson approved and urged the attack; the Secretary of War as warmly opposed it." This attempt of the Secretary to combine and direct the movements of the armies of Wilkinson and Hampton against Kingston and Montreal, was much less calamitous than his action in collecting the forces before the opening of the campaign. It was his order to Wilkinson to withdraw most of the Regular troops from the vicinity of Fort George, and especially the fatal order to "close" with the proposition of Porter, Chapin, and McClare, who, if allowed to invade Canada with 1,000 to 1,200 volunteers, a few militia, and 4 pieces of artillery had pledged their lives to occupy the peninsula and "either capture, destroy, or disperse all of the enemy's forces in that quarter," that led to a counter-invasion, the capture of Fort Niagara, and the burning of Buffalo. The union of the purse and the sword in the person of the Secretary of War had still other objections. As the chief of military administration it exposed him, through the want of a proper commissariat, to the temptation of maintaining armies and directing their movements in the interest of a horde of unscrupulous contractors. The dependence of the Government upon this class of individuals may be inferred from the fact that as late as 1815 a single individual, John Swartwont, received the contract for supplying provisions for six months, to all of the armies from Niagara to Plattsburg, at the rate of 19 cents per ration. In Louisiana and Mississippi the contract was let to a single firm, Ward & Johnson, for the same period, at 15 to 174 cents per ration.d The arrogance and power of this swarm of parasites, who fattened upon every reverse to our arms and who necessarily had the ear of the Secretary, although to his honor no charges of fraud were made against him, were manifested as early as the campaign of 1812, when General Smyth, after his fiasco, partly explained his expulsion from a American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 470. the Army by stating in his official report, "the volunteers, and neighboring people, were dissatisfied, and it has been in the power of the contractors' agent to excite some clamor against the course pursued; he finds the contract a losing one at this time, and would wish to see the Army in Canada, that he might not be bound to supply it."" The evils and dangers of a supply system which enabled a contractor, whenever he disapproved of the actions or conduct of a military commander, to appeal to a war minister, who assumed the right to order and dispose armies as he saw fit, were further presented by General Scott in a letter submitted to Congress by Mr. Monroe: In time of war contractors may betray an army; they are not confidential and responsible agents appointed by the government. The principal only is known to the war office, and therefore may be supposed to be free from this objection; but his deputies and issuing agents are appointed without the concurrence or knowledge of the general or the government. The deputies or issuing agents are necessarily as well acquainted with the numerical strength of the army to which they are attached as the adjutant-general himself. For a bribe they may communicate this intelligence to the enemy, or fail to make issues at some critical moment, and thus defeat the best views and hopes of the commander in chief. The present mode of subsisting our armies puts the contractor above the general. If a contractor corresponds with the enemy, he can only be tried by the civil courts of the United States, as in the case of other persons charged with treason (courts-martial having decided that contractors do not come within the meaning of the sixtieth article of the Rules and Articles of War); and if a contractor fails to make issues, he can only be punished by civil actions. I speak of cases arising within the limits of the United States. In the enemy's country I suppose a general who knows his duty would not fail to hang a contractor who should, by guilty neglect or corruption, bring any serious disaster upon the army. General Gaines at the same time expressed himself still more positively: I have uniformly given the best attention in my power ever since the commencement of the war to the supply of rations and the conduct of contractors, and if I were called before heaven to answer whether we have not lost more men by the badness of the provisions than by the fire of the enemy, I should give it as my opinion that we had; and if asked what causes have tended most to retard our military operations and repress that high spirit of enterprise for which the American soldiers are preeminently distinguished, and the indulgence of which would not fail to veteranize our troops by the annoyance and destruction of the enemy, I should say the irregularity in the supply and badness of the rations have been the principal causes. Original contractors seem to be a privileged order of men, who, by virtue of the profits of the contract, are elevated above the drudgery which a common-sense view of the contract would seem to impose on them. They take care to secure to themselves at least 1 cent per ration, leaving a second, and sometimes a third, order of miserable under-contractors to perform the duties, and each of these must calculate on making money. Thus the contract, after being duly entered into at Washington, is bid off until it falls into the hands of men who are forced to bear certain loss and ultimate ruin, or commit frauds, by furnishing damaged provisions; they generally choose the latter, though it should tend to destroy the Army. I know the opinion of no officer on this subject who does not think with me. c While for the want of proper organization of the supply departments, abuses like the above constantly jeopardized our success, there were other errors in the management of the War Department, equally destructive of unity and vigor in military operations. The assumed power to command the Army carried with it an arbitrary defiance of the well-established rules governing the transaction of official business a Fay's American War, p. 65. American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 600. c American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 601. and necessarily led to conflict between the Secretary and military commanders. The latter, who alone should have been the medium of communication between their subordinate and the War Department, and the reverse, were not only ignored in the transmission of orders, but often found that important expeditions had been set on foot within their departments without the courtesy of an official notice. These irregularities, which had the ill-advised sanction of the President, led in 1814 to the enforced retirement of General Harrison, who up to that time had been one of the most successful and popular commanders in the Army. The controversy which led to this result is related by Ingersoll as follows: The military districts into which the United States were divided were necessarily very extensive. We have already seen that there was a project in the west, urged by Governor Shelby and favored by General Harrison, for establishing there a board of war. The President, however, thought that all the various channels of public communication centering at the seat of Government, much more accurate knowledge of affairs could always be had there than by any commander of a military district, at whatever station he might happen to be. It was deemed essential that the War Department should be able always to issue instantaneous commands, to every post, quarter, and officer, without delaying them to pass through the hands of the commander of that military district. The practice, therefore, was established of transmitting them wherever the Executive thought proper, accompanying them with mere duplicates to the commander of the district. In this way Colonel Croghan was charged with the unsuccessful expedition against Mackinaw, in the autumn of 1812, which I have not thought it necessary to dwell upon, as it produced no result to the hostilities on either side. Other such orders sent into General Harrison's district, he protested against so vehemently that it became the subject of correspondence and Executive consideration. The President finally made known to General Harrison his determination to persevere in a system which the general denounced as inconsistent with subordination, and, thereupon, tendered his resignation. As his reputation and influence at the time were imposing, he perhaps flattered himself that he would have been requested to keep his commission, and that some satisfactory arrangement would have ensued between him and the President. Mr. Madison not being at Washington when the tender of General Harrison's resignation arrived there, the Secretary of War, General Armstrong, who did not esteem General Harrison, and had the President's authority to persevere in the obnoxious system of orders, instantly accepted General Harrison's resignation, and suggested General Jackson to supply the vacancy. Thus closed the military career of William Henry Harrison. @ The unauthorized acceptance of the resignation of a general officer who was commissioned in the Army, not by the pleasure of the President alone, but by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, was simply in keeping with the assumption by the Secretary of the other military prerogatives of the President. Those who care to investigate the relations of the Secretary of War to the personnel of the Army will find by a reference to the American State Papers that from February, 1813, to August, 1814, he rarely referred to the authority of the President; that to Dearborn, Wilkinson, Harrison, and Hampton he issued orders in his own name governing the movements of their armies, and that in every respect he held them in the relation of strict military subordinates. This assumption of authority he continued till the battle of Bladensburg, where, after having taken an active part in disposing the troops, his usurpations were brought to a close in a manner best explained by himself: Arriving on the retreat at Capitol Hill, a meeting and consultation took place between the Commanding General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of War, a Ingersoll's Second War, vol. 1, pp. 189, 190. in which the person last mentioned recommended a speedy occupation of the Capitol and adjacent houses as a position capable of a powerful defense, and even redoubtable against a force coming, as the British did, without artillery, baggage, or provision train, and, of course, meditating only a coup de main. The proposition was promptly and even peremptorily rejected by the general, on two grounds-the great diminution of his force and the fatigued and exhausted condition of what remained. Mr. Monroe supported the opinion of the general, adding his belief (from having seen a column of the enemy moving on the western road to the capital) that they would drive us into a cul de sac unless we took the position recommended by the general, which left open the west for retreat. Finding the majority of the council two to one, and having that morning received the President's order "to leave to the military functionaries the discharge of their own duties, on their own responsibility," the Secretary of War no longer opposed the retreat to Georgetown."a The above order, whereby, on the eve of a great national catastrophe, the President resumed the Constitutional powers, which Congress never intended he should delegate to a subordinate, was but a repetition of the written directions he had given as early as the 13th of August," that the Secretary of War should give no order to any officer commanding a district, without previously receiving the Executive sanction." OPERATIONS OF THE NAVY. The operations of the Navy during the year 1814 entitled it to the continued applause and gratitude of the nation. In April the Peacock captured the Epervier; in July the Wasp captured the Reindeer, and shortly afterwards sank the Avon; in September McDonough destroyed the enemy's fleet on Lake Champlain. These victories were partially offset by the loss of the Essex and the Presi dent, the former being captured by the Phoebe and Cherub, and the latter compelled to surrender to a large English squadron. NUMBER OF TROOPS EMPLOYED IN 1814. The troops called out during this fruitless campaign numbered: Total c 38, 186 197, 653 235, 839 Of the militia 46,469 from the State of New York were employed on the Canadian frontier, while more than 100,000 from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia were called out to repel the incursions of the 3,500 British along the shores of the Chesapeake. Notwithstanding these enormous drafts, such were the faults of our organization and recruitments, that the utmost strength we could put forth on the field of battle, was represented at Lundy's Lane by less than 3,000 men. Nor was this evidence of national weakness our only cause of reproach. Boasting at the outset of the contest that Canada could be "captured without soldiers, that a few volunteers and militia could do the business," our statesmen, after nearly three years of war, had the humiliation of seeing their plans of conquest vanish in the smoke of a burning capital. a Armstrong's Notices of the War 1812, vol. 2, p. 231, 232, Appendix. • Adjutant-General's Office. |