The History of American Military. Richard W. Stewart
service, and human achievement. It succeeded in large measure because it tapped the spirit of the American soldier and the organization, leadership, and courage of the U.S. Army.
Meriwether Lewis Charles Willson Peale, ca. 1807
From the summer of 1803 to the fall of 1806, the expedition was an Army endeavor, officially the “Corps of Volunteers for North Western Discovery.” It led Americans across the breadth of the vast continent for the first time. Its scientific agenda brought back invaluable information about flora, fauna, hydrology, and geography. Its benign intent resulted in peaceful commerce with Indians encountered en route. The expedition was, all things considered, a significant example of America’s potential for progress and creative good.
While Lewis and Clark were exploring beyond the Missouri, General Wilkinson sent out Capt. Zebulon M. Pike on a similar expedition to the headwaters of the Mississippi. In 1807 Wilkinson organized another expedition. This time he sent twenty men under Captain Pike westward into what is now Colorado. After exploring the region around the peak that bears his name, Pike encountered some Spaniards who, resentful of the incursion, placed his party under armed guard and escorted it to Santa Fe. From there, the Spanish took the Americans into Mexico and then back across Texas to Natchitoches, once more in American territory. Despite the adversity, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and those of Captain Pike contributed much to the geographic and scientific knowledge of the country and today remain as great epics of the West.
To march across the continent might seem the manifest destiny of the republic, but it met with an understandable reaction from the Spanish. The dispute over the boundary between Louisiana and Spain’s frontier provinces became a burning issue during Jefferson’s second administration. Tension mounted in 1806, as rumors reached Washington of the dispatch of thousands of Spanish regulars to reinforce the mounted Mexican militiamen in east Texas. Jefferson reacted to the rumors by calling up the Orleans and Mississippi Territories’ militia and sending about 1,000 regulars to General Wilkinson to counter the Spanish move. The rumors proved unfounded; at no time did the Spanish outnumber the American forces in the area. A series of cavalry skirmishes occurred along the Sabine River, but the opposing commanders prudently avoided war by agreeing to establish a neutral zone between the Arroyo Hondo and the Sabine River. The two armies remained along this line throughout 1806, and the neutral zone served as a de facto boundary until 1812.
American Reaction to the Napoleonic Wars
The second round of the great conflict between England and France began in 1803, shortly after the purchase of Louisiana. It was a much more serious affair than the earlier conflict. Both Britain and France adopted policies under which American merchant shipping, whether carrying contraband or not, was subject to search and seizure. The Napoleonic Wars and the consequent depredations on American commerce were less a threat to national security than a blow to national pride. Jefferson responded to the challenge by withdrawing American shipping from the seas. His successor in 1809, James Madison, adopted the even riskier policy of economic coercion. A series of trade and embargo acts from 1807 to 1810 attempted to force England and France to limit their trade restrictions in their dealings with the United States.
Legislation failed to keep the United States from becoming embroiled in the war and was unsuccessful in forcing England or France to respect neutral trade. Neither Jefferson nor Madison recognized that under the new scheme of economic warfare being waged by both England and France the American measures were in effect provocative acts likely to bring the United States into the war on one side or the other. The resultant crippling of American trade so thoroughly disunited the American people that the government could not count on the loyalty and support of a sizable part of the population when conflict did break out.
International tension was so great in the months after the Embargo Act of 1807 that Congress, while rejecting Jefferson’s proposal for recruiting a 24,000-man volunteer force, authorized the recruitment of 6,000 men as a temporary addition to the Army. In the last month of his administration President Jefferson sent more than 2,000 of these men to General Wilkinson to defend “New Orleans and its dependencies” against an expected English invasion. The invasion never materialized, but poor leadership and bureaucratic mismanagement bordering on criminal combined with the tropical heat to accomplish what no British invasion could have done. More than 1,000 men, half of Wilkinson’s army, died in Louisiana.
By January 1810 relations with Britain had so deteriorated that President Madison recommended the recruitment of a volunteer force of 20,000. Congress, apparently satisfied with the existing militia system, again refused to vote for a volunteer force. Not until January 1812 did it increase the Army’s strength, when it added thirteen additional regiments, totaling about 25,700 men, and authorized the President to call 50,000 militiamen into service.
The additional men would soon be needed. On June 18, 1812, Congress declared war against England. At the same time a Senate proposal to declare war against France failed by only two votes.
6 The War of 1812
To Great Britain the War of 1812 was simply a burdensome adjunct of its greater struggle against Napoleonic France. To the Canadians it was clearly a case of naked American aggression. But to the Americans it was neither simple nor clear. The United States entered the war with confused objectives and divided loyalties and made peace without settling any of the issues that had induced the nation to go to war.
Origins of the War
The immediate causes of the war were seizure of American ships, insults and injuries to American seamen by the British Navy, and rapid expansion of the American frontier. The British outrages at sea took two distinct forms. One was the seizure and forced sale of merchant ships and their cargoes for allegedly violating the British blockade of Europe. Although France had declared a counterblockade of the British Isles and had seized American ships, England was the chief offender because its Navy had greater command of the seas. The British further outraged the United States by capturing men from American vessels for forced service in the Royal Navy. The pretext for impressment was the search for deserters, who, the British claimed, had taken employment on American vessels.
The reaction in the United States to impressments differed from that aroused by the seizure of ships and cargoes. In the latter case the maritime interests of the eastern seaboard protested vigorously and demanded naval protection, but rather than risk having their highly profitable trade cut off by war with England, they were willing to take an occasional loss of cargo. Impressments, on the other hand, presented no such financial hardship to the ship owners, whatever the consequences for the unfortunate seamen, and the maritime interests tended to minimize it.
To the country at large the seizure of American seamen was much more serious than the loss of a few hogsheads of flour or molasses. When a British naval vessel in June 1807 attacked and disabled the USS Chesapeake and impressed several members of the crew, a general wave of indignation rose in which even the maritime interests joined. This was an insult to the flag; and had President Thomas Jefferson chosen to go to war with England, he would have had considerable support. Instead he decided to clamp an embargo on American trade. In New England, scores of prosperous ship owners were ruined and a number of thriving little seaports suffered an economic depression from which few recovered. While the rest of the country remembered the Chesapeake affair and stored up resentment against Britain, maritime New England directed its anger at Jefferson and his party.
The seat of anti-British fever was in the Northwest