Chapter V Pages: 62-67

The urgency for expediting enlistments caused a modification of the law of January 20, 1813, (84) and offered each man enlisting for five years a bounty of $124 in lieu of the $16 and three months' pay previously granted.

The amount of cash thus obtained upon enlistment was more than tripled (85) much to the detriment of the national exchequer (86) but even this increase was rendered nugatory by the sums paid by many of the militia for substitutes. (87) The Act of February 10th added five regiments of rifles enlisted for five years or "during the war," and the Act of March 30th, re-organized the Army (88)__all of these measures being taken too late, as usual, for the men secured to be of any use during the campaign.(89)

"Although the paper aggregate reached 62,773, (90) an increase of more than 5,000 over the previous year, despite the actual tripling of the bounty, the strength of the Army in September was but 38, 186 men. In December the grant in land, due after the soldier's discharge, was doubled, making it 320 acres; yet, notwithstanding this encouragement, the Army dwindled away until it was only 33,424 strong in February, 1815. This falling off was largely due to desertion, which, as was the case during the Revolution, every increase of the bounty seemed to stimulate.

"The figures just given are but another proof that VOLUNTARY ENLISTMENTS, EVEN WHEN AIDED BY EXTRAVAGANT BOUNTIES, CAN NOT BE DEPENDED UPON IN A WAR OF ANY DURATION. Forced to devise various schemes for raising men, the Government, in this instance, was only able to avoid a draft by the speedy termination of the war." (91)

Military Operations On The Niagara Frontier

The Regulars at Buffalo spent the winter and spring in drill and instruction, the effect of which was shortly evident. On July 3rd the army crossed the Niagara, captured Fort Erie that same day, won the battle of Chippewa on the 5th, (92) and fought a drawn battle at Lundy's Lane twenty days later. (93) General Brown then fell back to Fort Erie, which he proceeded to strengthen immediately, and on August 2nd the enemy under General Drummond appeared and invested the place. Early on the morning of the 15th he endeavored to carry the fort by storm but met with a bloody repulse. The siege was continued, however, until a successful sortie was made and the fort demolished by the Americans, who crossed to the New York side and went into winter quarters at Buffalo. (94)

Military Operations on the Northern Frontier

The opening invasion of Canada in 1814 was planned to begin from the northern theatre, and on March 30th General Wilkinson, notwithstanding a grandiloquent exhortation to his troops the day before, (95) permitted his force of nearly 4,000 regulars to be checked at La Colle Mill (96) by 180 men in a stone building, and his invasion came to an abrupt end. (97)

Wilkinson was succeeded by General Izard but, just when the Governor-General of Canada, General Sir George Prevost, was preparing to advance up Lake Champlain with 11,000 veterans, mostly from Wellington's Peninsular army, he was ordered to march to Sackett's Harbor with 4,000 troops, thus reducing the American force at Plattsburg to 1,500 effectives under General Macomb. (98) On September 11th Prevost began his attack, (99) but the total destruction of his fleet by Commodore Macdonough that day sent him packing back to Canada and saved the American land forces from annihilation. (100) At the beginning of the month Macomb had appealed to Governor Chittenden "for aid, not to invade Canada, but defend Vermont." A second appeal met with equally small success, his answer being "that he had no authority to order the militia to leave the state." (101) While the governor skulked in his house at Jericho, many of the Vermont militia, hearing the cannonade at Plattsburg, crossed the lake without orders, joined Macomb in the fight and were rewarded by a share in the booty captured during the British retreat. (102)

The Capture of Washington

In spite of the presence of a British fleet with 3,000 troops on board in the Chesapeake for nearly a year, no attention was paid by President Madison and his cabinet to the danger that threatened the capital. It was not until July first that any steps were taken for defense. A succession of measures followed, (103) almost childlike in their feebleness and all looking to raw troops, but on August 20th approval was given to a call of the militia en masse made by General Winder. On the following day the troops (104) were assembled and the articles of war read to them. On August 22nd this so-called army, which its commander described as "suddenly assembled without organization," devoid of discipline and of officers with any knowledge of service, (105) was reviewed in state by the President and his Cabinet. Two days later, in the presence of the same high officials, it was hopelessly routed at Bladensburg, Maryland, by less than 1,500 British, (106) the militia fleeing ignominiously and so rapidly that the American loss was only 8 killed and 11 wounded. (107) The British occupied Washington that evening, burned many public buildings, decamped next day and on the 29th were safely back on board their warships. (108) The President and his officials fled to be responsible for the disaster, (109) was forced to take refuge in Baltimore where he resigned his portfolio, (110) and chaos reigned generally. The British made a combined land and naval attack on Baltimore on September 13th and 14th but were repulsed, (111) and in October their fleet sailed for Jamaica. The new Secretary of War, James Monroe, proposed to raise men by drafting, a measure which would have been inevitable had not a treaty of peace been signed at Ghent on December 24th. (112)

Creek War (113)

Meanwhile, a levy of three months' militia had been ordered by the governor of Tennessee, thus producing 2,500 men, General Jackson had been joined by the 39th United States Infantry and by the end of February he found himself at the head of nearly 5,000 assembled at Fort Strother. Advancing with 3,000 men, he inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Indians at the Horse Shoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River on March 27th, thus terminating a war which would have been ended long before had it not been for the use of raw troops enlisted for too short service. (114)

Troops Employed in 1814.

"The troops called out in this fruitless campaign numbered:

Regulars (38,186)
Militia (197,653)
____________
Total...(235,839) (115)

"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 '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." (116)

In marked contrast to the continual disasters on land was the almost unbroken succession of splendid victories achieved at sea, (117) thus affording abundant proof of the merit of the system used with respect to the Navy and the folly of the method employed for our land forces. Indeed even Jefferson who, as governor of Virginia in the Revolution, had utterly failed to offer the slightest opposition to the capture and burning of Richmond by Benedict Arnold, (118) and who throughout his public career had continually advocated dependence upon a citizen-soldiery, (119) became so disgusted with the inefficiency of the militia during the first two years of this war that, fourteen months before the climax was reached in the disgraceful rout at Bladensburg, he wrote to James Monroe that

"It proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. Where there is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings. WE MUST TRAIN AND CLASSIFY THE WHOLE OF OUR MALE CITIZENS, AND MAKE MILITARY INSTRUCTION A REGULAR PART OF COLLEGIATE EDUCATION. we CAN NEVER BE SAFE TILL THIS IS DONE." (120)

Drastic as was the measure proposed, his assertion was quite in harmony with a similar outburst on his part thirty two years previously when he, as governor of Virginia, found himself at his wit's end owing to his inability to procure the necessary militia to check the British inroads, and so harassed by their refusal to respond to his calls, their insubordination, mutinies, desertions and utter worthlessness, (121) That he had vented his spleen in a letter dated March 1, 1781, to Richard Henry Lee, the Speaker of the House of Delegates, in which he said:

"Whether it be practicable to raise and maintain a sufficient number of regulars to carry on the war is a question. That it would be burdensome is undoubted yet it is perhaps as certain that no possible mode of carrying it on can be so expensive to the public, so distressing and disgusting to individuals as the militia." (122)

In view of two such candid statements, both made under the stress of war, it is surprising that in the years which intervened he should have advocated such dependence as he did (123) upon the very class of troops that he condemned so unreservedly.

FOOTNOTES (84-123) ON CHAPTER V THE CAMPAIGN OF 1814 Pages: 62-67 (Continue Page: 2)