Flight of the Eagle. Conrad Black
The British had scored a great propaganda victory of little straight military significance, but their attempt to take Baltimore three weeks later failed. The Americans prepared thoroughly and repulsed the British from what was then one of America’s largest cities. The unsuccessful British bombardment of Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
6. THE END OF THE WAR
The peace conference at Ghent continued through the autumn. The British opened by demanding a rewriting in their favor of the Canadian border through the northern New England states and Michigan and Minnesota, and the establishment of an Indian buffer state in the Northwest. The Americans demanded reparations and an end of impressments and the blockade. They rejected any changes of territorial boundaries from the start of the war, and claimed none. They had been faithful throughout to their demands, and it must be said that despite Madison’s bumbling, and the frightful indignity of having their capital razed to the ground, they had shown considerable pluck, and fought their corner quite well after the initial debacle of their 1812 invasion of Canada. Madison, though he provoked acute nostalgia for the steady and formidable Washington as a war leader, showed remarkable honesty, partly naïve and partly the result of creeping resignation and the disillusioning cynicism of experience. When news of the burning of Washington reached the Congress of Vienna, the British stiffened their demands. When news of the American victory on Lake Champlain arrived, it was sobering.
The Duke of Wellington, the world’s most illustrious military commander with Napoleon in involuntary retirement, was offered the command in Canada. He was not eager for it, as the United States now had over eight million people, and there was no possibility of subduing the whole country, or permanently gouging large parts out of it. The British had been at war for 21 of the previous 22 years, and had supported an immense navy constantly in action throughout that time, and armies of 75,000 to 90,000, most of the units steadily in action for the last six years in a very costly and severe war in Spain. (The duke had been Sir Arthur Wellesley when he departed for Spain in 1808, and when he returned he had the unprecedented pleasure of having his patents read in the House of Lords as baron, viscount, earl, marquis, and duke, recognizing his successive victories in that very long war in Spain and Portugal.)
Wellington was more interested in jointly leading the British in the Vienna discussions that rewrote the map of much of Europe than in embarking for a nebulous mission in Canada. He had commanded armies in India as well as Spain, and preferred not to do it again. This was all for the best, as Napoleon famously returned from Elba in March 1815 and conducted one more campaign, narrowly lost at Waterloo, where Wellington won one of the most important and closely contested battles in the history of the world. His absence could have been decisive, as the Prussian Blucher and whomever the British would have named in Wellington’s stead could not have defeated Napoleon, generally reckoned the greatest military commander in history. (Waterloo was, after Leipzig, his only defeat in scores of battles, many of them won against heavy odds and by tactical tours de force of genius.)
The duke advised his government that after the American victory on Lake Champlain, the British were not entitled by the results on the ground to demand territorial concessions. On November 26, 1814, the British abandoned their demand for territorial concessions and an Indian buffer zone in the Northwest. As the world would now be at peace, impressments and blockades seemed, and were, a stale-dated issue. The British were not going to pay reparations and indemnities and the Americans didn’t seriously expect them to, as the chief victor in Europe and now the most powerful nation in the world. The Americans made some uncontroversial fishing concessions, but that was all.
The long British struggle with France going back 500 years to Joan of Arc, and accentuated after the Reformation and the rise of national governments, and especially by Louis XIV and then the almost departed emperor, had finally been resolved in favor of Britain. The island nation was tired and strained by costs and casualties and the first stresses of the industrial age, and it didn’t want an endless war in America, but it was not going to do more than end the war and leave things as they had been. And if the Americans tried to chase the British out of Canada now, they would find Wellington and his army tramping down the shores of Lake Champlain and across the Niagara River, and they would not remind anyone of General Burgoyne or Governor Prevost. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24 and peace soon broke out.
True to its frequently absurd nature, and symmetrically with the fact that America declared war as the casus belli of the British blockade was being removed, the greatest battle of the war occurred two weeks after the peace was concluded, and so did not influence the results at all, but was important for other reasons. General Andrew Jackson had been named commander of the military district from New Orleans to Mobile, by Monroe, and characteristically ignored Monroe’s orders not to disturb Spanish Florida, and seized Pensacola. When he learned of British forces approaching, he retired to Baton Rouge to be ready to repulse British landings wherever they appeared on the Gulf coast. The British landed 7,500 men under General Sir Edward Pakenham (the Duke of Wellington’s brother-in-law) 40 miles east of New Orleans, starting on December 13.
Jackson bustled down to New Orleans starting on December 15 and was able to attack the British on December 23. He furiously constructed defensive positions around New Orleans, and Pakenham attacked Jackson’s 4,500 men with 5,300 of his regulars on January 8, 1815. Jackson placed Tennessee and Kentucky marksmen with long rifles in forward trenches, and advantageously placed his artillery to smash the British line as well. The advance of the British, walking upright in tight formation, presented a splendid target. There was a second British advance after the first was driven back. It was a madly unimaginative attack plan by Pakenham, who was killed as his army was badly defeated and took over 2,000 casualties, compared with only eight American dead and 13 wounded. Jackson became America’s greatest hero, its greatest warrior since Washington, and its most successful political leader since Jefferson, and eventually, with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, one of the four most important American presidents in the first 140 years of its history.
News of the Battle of New Orleans reached the still fire-ravaged capital of the United States before the news of the Treaty of Ghent, and greatly salved American sensibilities after the scorching there and the inelegant flight of the government. The treaty arrived on February 11, was ratified unanimously by the Senate (meeting in temporary quarters) on February 15, and proclaimed by Madison on February 17. It had been a silly little war in many ways; it should have been fought earlier and more wisely by the Americans, yet they suffered only 1,877 dead and 4,000 wounded. The economic cost had been heavy and the strain on national unity had been considerable. It was an opportunity lost and Madison went far too long with the foolishness of Jefferson’s notions of economic war. Yet the United States had accomplished something in fighting successfully to keep its head up against the greatest powers in the world, and particularly the overwhelming master of the world’s seas. The Royal Navy was deployed across all the world’s oceans, “wherever wood could float” as Napoleon grudgingly said (with as large, in numbers of ships, and as far-flung a fleet as the United States would deploy at the end of World War I, when Admiral Nimitz’s mighty Pacific Fleet took 400,000 men to sea when it sailed). The war’s farcical aspect had been diluted by Madison’s lack of pomposity and endearing preparedness to acknowledge error.
The Americans, though without so skillful a propagandist as Jefferson to tart up a rather squalid little war, apart from the successes of Perry and Jackson, still managed to present it as a milestone on the road to full national maturity. Gallatin, no Jefferson or Paine or Hamilton, but a formidable talent in a less-crowded field, declared: “The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and characters which the Revolution had given. The people . . . are more American; they feel and act more as a nation.”4 In the end, the last of the nation’s founders to retire had finally, and reluctantly, done the honorable thing to defend the nation’s honor and sovereignty, and, in his way, had done so successfully. Washington and Adams and Hamilton would have taken over Canada and ended up buying peace with a cash settlement. But it was just that, an opportunity lost, not a defeat, and considering the power of the opponent, it lightly enhanced America’s status in the world. Ancient and mighty France had to endure the British army in Paris for a prolonged period. They didn’t burn anything but they stayed as long as they pleased, and the Duke