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Home , Alden Partridge, Alexander Smyth, Andrew Jackson Donelson, Arthur Livermore, Battle of Bladensburg, Battle of Chippawa

Importing : Engineering the American Nation, 1814-1821

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The State University

By

Jonathan M. Romaneski, M.A.

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2017

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Mark Grimsley, Advisor

Dr. John Brooke

Dr. Jennifer Siegel

Copyright by

Jonathan Romaneski

2017

Abstract

As the drew to a close, the American nation was economically exhausted and politically upended. The great crisis of the war loomed over the American shorelines from mid-1814 onward, when British reinforcements under a new and more aggressive British commander threatened offensive thrusts into U.S. territory at multiple points. were completely unprepared to meet the British invasion attempts; the

United States parried all British thrusts in 1814 almost in spite of itself. Thus, by the end of 1814, the Madison administration (with strong input from ) began to seek to reform the American military establishment to ensure a more disciplined and uniform system, a better-educated and “professional” corps, and a stout system of seacoast . The reformers looked no further than the Napoleonic military system for all their answers.

In order to convince the American people and their congressional representatives that greater investment in a Napoleonic-style army was necessary, the reformers relied on a narrative of the War of 1812 that emphasized the frailty of the militia and the heroism of the regulars. Complicating the reformers’ narrative was, first, the strong antimilitary ideological traditions that Americans had held so closely since the Revolutionary era, and second, a counternarrative of the war that arose from ’s victory at New

Orleans. Despite the abounding case studies to which reformers could appeal in support

ii of their position—most notably the regulars’ performance at the Battle of Chippewa and the militia’s apparent failure at the —the single case of Jackson at

New Orleans carried greater emotional weight and had the additional benefit of reinforcing Americans’ pro-militia, anti-army biases.

This dissertation covers the difficulties that a relatively small group of men in the executive branch of the U.S. government faced when they tried, between 1814 and 1821, to strengthen the federal apparatus by adopting Napoleonic military practices. It is a study, therefore, of top-down policy implementation and of the role of war’s memory in that process. “Importing Napoleon” proved difficult in the political arena because

Andrew Jackson’s folk-heroism seemed to repudiate the need for such measures, but it was comparatively more successful within the U.S. Army itself because the military structure lent itself better to top-down change. By 1821, when Congress rejected

Secretary of War John C. Calhoun’s “expansible army” concept and the army was reduced in size, it was a political setback for the reformers. Within the regular army, however, a new generation of competently-educated officers was emerging from the U.S.

Military Academy at West Point—they were the agents who would engineer the United

States’ path westward toward its imperial destiny.

iii

Dedicated with love and affection to Jessica, Adlai, Grace, and Anna.

iv

Acknowledgements:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. —Ecclesiastes 12:12

Writing a work of history is in some ways a lonely endeavor. It requires countless hours spent poring over manuscripts, books, and texts, followed by quiet reflection. The end reward for so much preparation is to cloister oneself in a quiet room somewhere and pour out one’s thoughts onto paper. Yet despite the single-mindedness of creating this project, anyone who has ever written knows that the author can never take total credit for the completed project. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the great minds and to the circumstances that have shaped this work, and to express my gratitude to those who have helped in critical material and personal ways. I most emphatically could not have done this project by myself.

I first became interested in the early republican tension between “security” and

“liberty” when, in 2003, I was beginning my undergraduate thesis. At the same time that I was studying the roots of the militiaman as a symbol for liberty in revolutionary America,

I was also watching updates on the war in Iraq on the news. The juxtaposition between the historical America that I was visiting in my research and the America I was watching on the news created a palpable sense of irony. I devoted myself to understanding better how we as Americans had come to such a place, militarily speaking.

v I arrived at Ohio State in 2012, just after the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812. I had come to suspect that the answer to the question I had asked myself as an undergraduate about “how we got here” lay somewhere in the American experience of 1812-1815. I will always remember with fondness my first meeting with Professor

Mark Grimsley to discuss these thoughts with him. I was still living in a hotel room with my pregnant wife and young son, and he met with me and got me truly excited about the project on which I was embarking. He has always been a source of sage advice and encouragement. More important in my opinion, he has challenged me to consider the complexities of academic history. I I have done half as well as he in capturing such historical complexity, I will consider it a success.

While at Ohio State, there have been more friends and mentors who have helped form my thinking than I could name. I do wish to single out Professors Geoffrey Parker,

Jennifer Siegel, Chris Otter, and John Brooke for special recognition. Each of them, in her or his own way, inspired and encouraged me as I formulated my project and began to commit it to action. Sam Watson at the U.S. also played an absolutely vital role in shaping my thinking. He volunteered countless hours to reading my drafts and offering incisive comments; it is a privilege to count him as a mentor. My dear friends at Ohio State, likewise, were a crucial source of strength for me. Whether it was the camaraderie and laughter we shared, the sense of shared experience we had as PhD students, or the critical feedback I received from my peers on my different essays and chapters, it was my fellow graduate students who made my experience an actual pleasure.

Sarah Douglass, William Waddell, Greg Hope, Corbin Williamson, Ian Johnson, and

Zack Fry were particularly important to me in this role.

vi Scholars require funding to complete their projects. I am deeply indebted to the

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which the Mershon Center for International

Security Studies superintends, for its generous support to my research. I also could not have completed my research without the aid of the Omar N. Bradley Historical Research

Fellowship, managed through the U.S. Military Academy’s Department of History.

I would be remiss if I did not devote a portion of my acknowledgements to the way that contemporary American politics has shaped this dissertation. I conceived of and began work on this project well before the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, but I completed the final chapters and refined the overall product with his voice playing in the background. Early American historians can scarce ignore the parallels between Trump’s populist appeal and that of Andrew Jackson; it is a dynamic that many far abler political historians have already articulated well. While I understand the similarities between the two men, there are also significant differences between them and I have emphatically resisted any urge to draw “lessons for today” from my research material. If anything, this dissertation has shown me how slippery “lessons” can be, but I do not doubt for a moment that my own political environment has shaped the tone of my narrative.

I wish, in closing, to thank my beloved family for their support. I regret that my late grandmother, Marilyn Romaneski, could not have lived to see this dissertation completed. She always indulged, for as far back as I can remember, whatever creative energies I was willing to share with her. My parents, Mark and Karalee Romaneski, have likewise been uncompromising in their moral support to me. Thank you for your kind words. Above all, though, I must thank my immediate family. Writing this much for this long a period of time has been an emotional ride for all involved, and it is especially

vii difficult to undertake a project like this with three young children. My youngest daughter,

Anna, joined us right as I was completing my PhD candidacy exam, and she is still a little too young to understand what I have been doing, but I live for the moment when I come home from work to have her run and hug my leg. Grace was born on my very first day of classes at Ohio State. In fact, I had to leave my first class because she was on the way, and she has proven a pleasant interruption to my academic work ever since. Adlai, our oldest, prayed faithfully for me during bedtime that I would finish my “book” soon; my own prayer is simply that I will prove to be half as strong a “Dada Man” as he believes me to be. Finally, but without doubt foremost in my mind, is my wonderful bride Jessica.

With patience and strength, she has managed the howling pack of wild animals that our three children can sometimes appear to be while offering nothing but encouragement to me as I sought seclusion to research and write. She bore long hours away, to include lost evenings, weekends, and research trips. Like all who choose to love historians, she has learned far more about obscure past events than she would have otherwise cared to. She has been my cartographer, my sounding board, my biggest cheerleader, and my occasional proofreader. In all these things, she has carried herself with grace and aplomb—she never complained about the burden I had placed on her. Thank you, Jessica, from the bottom of my heart.

viii

Vita

2005...... B.A., University

2014...... M.A. The Ohio State University

2014-2016 ...... Instructor, U.S. Military Academy

Publications

“Death’s Consolation and Consummation: The Sacrificial Violence of American Culture and Jihadist Rhetoric,” Library of Social Sciences, (20 December 2013).

“The U.S. Invasion of Iraq: 10 Years Later.” Origins. (March 2013).

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

ix

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... v

Vita ...... ix

List of Maps ...... xi

List of Figures ...... xii

Introduction ...... 1

PART I: Fortresses of Stone ...... 23

Chapter 1: The American Crisis, 1814 ...... 26

Chapter 2: “The Friends of a Respectable Army” ...... 70

Chapter 3: The Mutiny of West Point ...... 114

PART II: Fortresses of Wood ...... 155

Chapter 4: Dirty-shirts and Cottonbalers ...... 157

Chapter 5: The Mutiny of Andrew Jackson ...... 202

Chapter 6: An American System ...... 244

Epilogue and Conclusion ...... 281

Bibliography ...... 299

Appendix A: Seacoast Fortifications ...... 310

Appendix B: Secretaries of War ...... 314

Appendix C: Rollcall Votes ...... 315

x

List of Maps

Map 1: The , 1814 ...... 42

Map 2: Approach to Washington, August 1814 ...... 57

Map 3: First System Coastal Fortifications, 1796 ...... 90

Map 4: Second System Coastal Fortifications, 1811 ...... 91

Map 5: Third System Coastal Fortifications, 1822 ...... 92

Map 6: The Campaign, 1814-1815 ...... 176

Map 7: The Spanish , 1813-1818 ...... 212

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Ft. Griswold, CT ...... 99

Figure 2: Fort Trumbull, New ...... 99

Figure 3: Governor’s Island, 1776 ...... 100

Figure 4: Governor’s Island, 1820 ...... 100

Figure 5: “Map of West Point in 1815” ...... 117

Figure 6: Stone Academy Buildings, 1815-1817 ...... 118

xii

Introduction

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded… War is the parent of armies; from these [armies] proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few.1 —James Madison, 1795

…the arduous [war] has unfolded the energies of the American people, the extent of their public spirit, the stability of their political Institutions, and their capacities for war… It remains for us to strengthen these titles…and to provide still further for our external security, as well as for our internal prosperity.2 —James Madison, 1815

On August 28, 1815, Joseph Bonaparte, the former king of and brother to

the imprisoned emperor of , arrived in America. Some were happy to see a

Bonaparte on their shores, but others feared the brand of military tyranny his family represented. Such had been the political atmosphere through the American War of 1812, when Americans questioned how compatible French culture was with their identity.

Joseph, who bore an uncanny resemblance of his brother, now presented the issue to the

American people in corporeal form. It might have been an even starker presentation—

Joseph had meant for his brother to make his escape to the instead. The

brothers, together with some of Napoleon’s closest advisers and friends, had hemmed and

hawed over the question of flight to America in the anxious days after Waterloo.

1 James Madison, “Political Observations,” April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Vol. IV (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1867), 491-492. 2 James Madison to the Republican Members of the Legislature of , March 7, 1815, in idem., Vol. II (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1865), 599-600. 1 Napoleon liked very much the idea of transferring himself westward across the Atlantic,

but he could not abide the thought of fleeing in ignominious defeat. It reeked of

cowardice. The American schooner Pike had lain at anchor in the port of Bordeaux, and

Joseph urged his brother to board it. His destiny, Joseph advised, was “the New World,

where so many opportunities await you! You will then be the hero of two worlds!” But

there could be no question of hiding in an American ship under a false identity. The

emperor instead surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland, of the HMS Bellerophon.

Joseph, himself a wanted man, took flight in his brother’s stead. When he arrived in New

York harbor, he arrived not as Joseph Bonaparte, but as the Comte de Survilliers.3

Survilliers could not call himself a Bonaparte, despite his obvious resemblance to

his more renowned brother and the open secrecy of his identity, in part because parading

too loudly around the United States might excite anti-Bonapartist sentiment and force the

U.S. government into an awkward position both with the European monarchies and with

their own people.4 The American people had been split, since the dawn of the French

Revolution and its ensuing wars, over whether or not to embrace French defiance of

monarchical tyranny. By 1815, the split had nearly rent the American confederacy apart,

and some had grown weary of the European influence in American politics. It was time,

some claimed, to declare independence from both and France.

The story of Joseph Bonaparte’s arrival in the United States and the mixed

reception he received—feted in some quarters, yet forced into quiet seclusion—

3 Emilio Ocampo, The Emperor’s Last Campaign: A Napoleonic Empire in America (Tuscaloosa: University of Press, 2009), 9-15, quoting Joseph Bonaparte, 15; Jesse S. Reeves, The Napoleonic Exiles in America: A Study in American Diplomatic History, 1815-1819 (: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1905), 17. 4 Reeves, Napoleonic Exiles in America, 18. 2 represents in microcosm the complexities of post-1815 American political culture and ideology. Americans were fascinated by their European cousins, but they also sought their own unique identity and a place among the great imperial powers. Bonaparte could come from to America, but he had to do so under a different name, and he had to be relatively quiet about it. The title of this dissertation, “Importing Napoleon,” is thus at once sincere and sarcastic. It is this tension that lies at the heart of this work’s thesis: that after the War of 1812, the administrations of Madison and Monroe sought deliberately to forge a stronger military nation, but they were limited in doing so by the confines of

American identity and rhetoric. In fact, many of their reform attempts ultimately failed, politically speaking, thanks to a rising counternarrative based on Andrew Jackson’s frontier-hero persona. The “importing Napoleon” agenda, as the Madison and Monroe administrations pursued it, included a larger and more disciplined army and militia system (trained according to French-adapted drill manuals), as well as a more competently-trained officer corps, especially in the field of engineering. By 1821, the attempts at instituting these reform measures had taken hold to a far greater degree within the regular army itself than they did within congressional politics. Thanks to critical reforms at the U.S. Military Academy, the army’s officer corps would blossom as a professional force, despite some politicians’ misgivings about military tyranny, and enable American expansionism thanks to the physical structures it engineered. The

Bonapartes came to America, but they had to do so quietly.

The plans of Madison and Monroe to import Napoleon in this context did not, of course, always necessarily involve the most literal meaning of the term, nor would either man have likely admitted to so blunt a description of his vision. But they pursued policies

3 to incorporate the best of Napoleon, adapt him for American use, and engineer a new nation from the scattered pieces that the War of 1812 had left behind. They did so with an eye toward bolstering American territorial security, deterring future European threats, and establishing the proper conditions for what Americans would come to call their Manifest

Destiny. Yet it was hardly easy to bring about such change. In 1815, it was a radical departure from American ideological norms to suggest as large a standing army as

Madison and Monroe would. To push such measures through, potentially reversing the course of the long-established consensus on standing armies in the United States, would require some obvious justification.

The War of 1812 provided just such a pretext for the military and political reforms that would bolster a new, stronger federal government. The war’s memory kindled questions about the United States’ destiny, its status as a union, and above all its glorious exceptionalism. The reformers, from the president down to supportive members of Congress and of the army, tried in their own way to lead the public narrative of the war

toward their desired answers to these questions. They relied on a narrative that

emphasized America’s very narrow escape from total catastrophe. The lesson from this

narrative was that public ardor and civic virtue alone were not enough to defend against the British, and that the United States therefore required a stronger defense system.

Opponents of an expanded federal government believed, however, that the war’s final year had proven just the opposite, since they had “won” only when American citizens awoke to the danger and met the British head-on to defend their homes.

To a large extent, this struggle between competing narratives was grounded in semiotics. Architecture, public art, and anthropogenic terrain all make strong statements

4 about the society from which they arise, and in fact may have the power to solidify or to

fracture an emerging national identity based on the morals and the meaning they

communicate. What kind of structures, then, would characterize the American nation?

French engineer Pierre L’Enfant, who was commissioned to design the new national

capital in the 1790s, understood how important constructing public memory was in

solidifying a nation-state. According to his vision, the federal city in the District of

Columbia required splendor, beauty, and, above all, monuments. He claimed that

monuments “perpetuate not only the memory of such individuals… [who] were

conspicuous in giving liberty and independence to this country, but also…invite the

youth of succeeding generations to tread in the paths of those sages or heroes.”5 He

believed he could engineer American unity.

Military structures can function in much the same way. Human governors have

long understood how armies represent the prestige of . One can, after all, tell a lot

about a nation by what kinds of walls it chooses to build, where it chooses to build them,

and what it uses them to protect. Walls might compose a mighty fortress or they could

protect a group of frightened men making a desperate last stand. They can be ornate or

spartan. They can be in a town’s center or in the wilderness. One can guess how fiscally

strong a state is, what its general outlook on the world is, and what cultural value the

military system has within that state based on how and where it builds its walls. Early

American fortresses—some of which were wooden, some of which were stone—gave

different answers to these questions about military culture in the United States. They

5 Pierre Charles L’Enfant, “Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of t[he] United States,” in Organic Acts for the Territories of the United States (Washington: Govt Printing Office, 1900), 18. 5 symbolized a nation torn over apparently contradictory notions: national security, statehood, and a strong army represented by stone fortresses; or freedom, liberty, and a citizens’ army in wooden fortresses.

The concept of a “fortress” here is not meant in a restrictive sense; it applies as much to the poems that people constructed as it does to outposts. A poem, a play, or a painting can, after all, serve as much to rally a people to a cause as a physical structure might. “Stone-fortress” as a descriptor, then, will refer metaphorically in this narrative to an embrace of more permanent edifices of governance. “Wood-fortress,” on the other hand, refers to the traditional paradigm of anti-standing-army politics in early America that relied on the notions of citizens as guarantors of liberty from oppressive government.

A citizen could build his own wood fortress and thereby take responsibility for his own security. To have an apparently stronger, more imposing stone structure, however, required a strong and competent central government that assumed responsibility for its citizens’ security and well-being.

The United States had two separate military traditions in 1815. American citizens loved to read about both Napoleon’s battles and about Jackson’s frontier adventures.

They celebrated both the militia’s “shot heard round the world” at Lexington and

Concord, and the Continentals’ victory at Yorktown, where “the world turned upside down.” The duality became confusing in the years immediately following the War of

1812. Americans struggled over which of the two images should have preeminence in explaining both the nation’s past and its future.

Those who were of a mind to reform the army and strengthen the federal government might have insisted that the stone-fortress structures (whether they were

6 literally stone or not) had never succumbed to a British attack, but stood resolutely in

permanence and strength.6 Even when the night drew darkest for the American war

effort, the dawn’s early light always shone once more upon those bulwarks. The same

could certainly not have been said for the wood-fortress armies that had blundered their way through the conflict, according to this interpretation. On the other hand, an opponent could rebut by appealing to the glory of Andrew Jackson and his ragged group of backwoodsmen. Everything about the confirmed that no stone on

earth was stronger than an American and his patriotism.

The accuracy of these narratives is not the primary question, but how fully

Americans became convinced of them and the degree to which they used them to understand the war. It is self-evident that a resident of Baltimore would understand the war’s course differently from a resident of the southwestern frontier, but the competition still proved to be, in some cases, door-to-door. In the American northeast’s urban centers especially, the vestiges of the Federalist-Republican split and the utter divisiveness of

“Mr. Madison’s War” left many Americans unsure how to understand their experiences.

Plans for Mr. Madison’s Army, then, had to navigate this treacherous dynamic.

Importing Napoleon further required trans-Atlantic exchange, which meant that

the competing narratives clashed not only in newspaper editorials, books, and presumably

local public houses domestically; it also did so in the streets of postwar and London.

American officers visited Europe (primarily France) on official tours between 1815 and

1817, at the behest of Presidents Madison and Monroe, for what they invariably called

6 See, for example, Christopher van Deventer to and William McRee, June 4, 1816, Thayer Papers, U.S. Military Academy Special Collections (hereafter “USMA-SC”). 7 “professional development” not only for the men who traveled there, but for the military

establishment as a whole.7 The officers selected for travel and study in Europe were

consistently pro-Napoleonic, but when they came into contact with the victorious British

army they felt the fires of American nationalism glow brighter in their chests. The result

of this experience was rhetorical conflict between them and their European hosts over the

American armed forces’ performance.

Army officers’ newfound sense of confidence and pride also ran up against

presidential rhetoric and actions. The reforms, based as they were on the premise that the army’s officers had performed poorly, could have caused a rift between the officer corps

and the executive branch in Washington if the reformers did not manage their actions and

words carefully. Finally, of course, there was the still-considerable matter of getting

Congress to approve of the Napoleonic imports. Pushing bills and other measures through

Congress was certainly less a challenge for the reformers in 1815 than it had been in

1811, but as time progressed the old anti-standing army narrative began to regain much

of its former standing in both the House and Senate.

These different layers of narrative conflict among the American people, their representatives in Congress, the officers in the army, and their leaders in the War

Department and weave together into a complex story of contested change.

For all the efforts that the political and military reformers put into trying to expand the defense establishment and, by extension, the state itself, they made a great deal of initial headway. They increased the size of the force, fixed bureaucratic inefficiencies that had

7 Letter of James Monroe to Henry Jackson, October 12, 1815, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of . 8 plagued the army during the war, and professionalized the officer corps between early

1815 and the end of 1817. The resurgent wood-fortress narrative, in turn, tested how well

the new system could remain in place after 1817. These years marked a period of political

regression from the reformers’ point of view, but they also demonstrated that many of the

efforts to streamline and professionalize the regular army had largely begun to take root,

despite the at-times very loud protests and mutinies from within the army. At the same

time that Congress passed the Reduction Act of 1821 (which reduced the army from

10,000 men back down to 6,000), West Point had begun producing high-quality military

engineers who would forge America’s westward path.

This dissertation explores these dynamics in two parts. Part I traces the origins

and rise of the stone-fortress culture between 1814 and 1817 and includes Chapters One,

Two, and Three. Chapter One examines American perceptions of the last year of the War

of 1812, focusing primarily on the formation of ’s brigade and its

performance at the Battle of Chippewa in July 1814.8 Despite what many Americans

believed to be victories—or at least heroic performances—during this time, there was

also palpable anxiety over future British invasions, and Americans had to account for the

humiliating in August. The Battle of Chippewa, then, served as

useful mythmaking fodder for the reformers’ agenda. 1814 was both a crisis year and a

year that witnessed the solution to the crisis from the reformers’ point of view.

Chapter Two begins the examination of how the Madison and Monroe administrations attempted to import Napoleon between 1815 and 1817 by sending

8 Despite the preferred Canadian spelling “Chippawa,” this dissertation will use “Chippewa” as a reflection of the nineteenth-century American practice. 9 American officers to France and by working closely with the 14th

for legislative reforms. They accepted compromise with Congress over army size, and they faced disaffection from within the army ranks over commissions granted to former

French officers, most controversially in the case of General Simon Bernard’s commission into the U.S. Corps of Engineers. American engineers nearly unanimously perceived this aggressive reform measure as an insult to their honor as a corps.

Chapter Three discusses how Madison and Monroe were able to effect their vision for a better-educated officer corps by reforming the leadership and curriculum at the U.S.

Military Academy. The narrative centers on the mutiny of West Point, in 1817, when

Alden Partridge, the outgoing superintendent, refused to relinquish command to his

presidentially-appointed successor, Sylvanus Thayer. President Monroe had hoped to

replace Partridge with the French-trained Thayer and expected that, as a result, the West

Point cadets would benefit from an education modeled on the École Polytechnique—a

renowned school in France. The resulting conflict within the U.S.

Military Academy might easily have destroyed the institution. The 1817 mutiny therefore reflects just how untidy and chaotic the application of Republican policy could be in a

nation with competing visions for the future of the defense establishment. Sylvanus

Thayer embodied almost all the qualities for the new officer corps and army system that

stone-fortress reformers sought. He was French-trained, competent, and deferential to

Washington leadership, whereas was an incarnation of the old paradigm.

Part II follows the resurgence of the wood-fortress culture and the path American politics took toward the 1821 Army Reduction Act. Chapter Four relates how the Battle of New Orleans added a new narrative dynamic to the war, and why the executive branch

10 felt compelled to embrace a narrative that was at odds with its reform measures. The

anniversary of the battle became a national celebration that rivaled Independence Day,

replacing the Battle of Chippewa as America’s finest hour.9 The legacy and mythology of

frontier heroes like Andrew Jackson were rooted in the old Revolution-era ideal of the

American Cincinnatus. New Orleans’s fortune to have come at the tail end of the war, after the initial shock of Washington’s destruction had subsided, helped boost the appeal

of the myth. The militiamen’s victory against the king’s finest troops posed a serious

narrative challenge to reform measures in Congress, yet Madison and Monroe found the

narrative useful for other reasons. New Orleans proved to Americans that they had won

the war, a conviction that proved politically useful in the Federalist-Republican contest.

Chapter Five focuses on the consequences the reformers faced for embracing the

Andrew Jackson myth. His New Orleans fame made him both an asset and a liability to

the established political order in Washington. It was true that he could be useful to the

administration as a rhetorical tool against the mortally-wounded , but

Jackson proved nearly impossible to control. His various points of defiance against the

governing authorities from the local, state, and federal levels made him unwieldy. As

Jackson unilaterally chose to make war against Spain in and to conclude treaties,

he was virtually a government unto himself. His conduct was downright criminal in

certain cases, yet he emerged mostly unscathed thanks to his appeal among the Western

population. Monroe disapproved of Jackson’s conduct, but he could not risk alienating

Jackson’s base. Monroe’s uncomfortable rhetorical dilemma yielded the initiative to

9 Joseph Stoltz, “‘A Victory as Never Crowned the Wars of the World’: The Battle of New Orleans in American Historical Memory,” (dissertation, Texas Christian University, 2013), 4. 11 Jackson, whose growing popularity was accompanied by a Congress that grew

increasingly skeptical of the Monroe administration’s military proposals.

Chapter Six connects Jackson’s “mutinies” against the federal government, which

were capped off by an apparently illegal war against the Spanish, to the congressional politics of 1818-1821. Besides the stone-fortress reformers in the executive branch, there were also congressional reformers headed by John C. Calhoun (until his appointment as secretary of war in 1817) and by , whose calls for a national bank, protective tariff, and infrastructure spending constituted his famous American System. Like the

Madison-Monroe military reforms, the American System enjoyed initial success. After the dawn of 1819, when Congress debated Jackson’s conduct, the national mood began to change—a movement exacerbated by the twin crises of the Panic of 1819 and the

Missouri Controversy. Jackson became increasingly enmeshed in the politics of federal overreach until, in January 1821, Congress voted to roll back the military reforms. The

Epilogue will show, however, that the stone-fortress reformers were not entirely defeated.

Historiography

This project’s primary theme is the difficulty of leading top-down change given the interplay of material structure and national culture. A secondary theme, closely related to the first, is the connection between this structural culture and military policy.

Lewis Mumford’s 1934 classic Technics and Civilization forged the way for these kinds of analyses. It was the first work to argue the central role of “technics”—a broader term for human creative expression that Mumford prefers over mere technology—in

12 human civilization. Mumford established the centrality of technological systems to how

societies run, and more importantly, the inherently social nature of their development.10

More recently, Chandra Mukerji has further developed the social and political dynamics of technological systems in her analysis of the Canal du Midi’s construction in late 17th-century France. Constructing the canal, which connected the Atlantic to the

Mediterranean in southwestern France, required monumental levels of social coordination

and consolidation of power. As a result, the canal itself served as a symbol of state power

that helped to consolidate the prestige of Louis XIV and to dilute that of the nobility.11 In

pursuit of this thesis, Mukerji borrows Michel Serres’s concept of “impersonal rule”

through material structure. Louis XIV pursued power over material (“logistics”) rather

than rule over persons (“strategics”). By increasing logistical power through the “social

process of shaping the natural world,” Louis XIV achieved a higher form of power than

he could have through brute force.12

The kind of material power that Mukerji ascribes to this canal project may be applied equally well to the role of an army and of military experience. Mukerji’s narrative downplays the Weberian definition of power as a “monopoly on the legitimated use of physical force” and leaves her reader to assume that the social construction of the environment is a stronger form of power.13 In fact, the two types of power can be fitted

10 Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1934); for a brief overview and self-critique, see also Lewis Mumford’s “An Appraisal of Lewis Mumford’s ‘Technics and Civilization’” Daedalus 88, 3 (Summer, 1959): 527-536. 11 Chandra Mukerji, Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 1-30. 12 Ibid., 217-218. 13 Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters quoting Max Weber, Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society: New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 131; see also Mukerji, Impossible Engineering, 217. 13 together. The armies of Louis XIV and the wars that they fought were unprecedented in

size and cost at the time, and they accomplished more than monopolizing legitimated

violence alone. The army itself became a national structure. It brought hundreds of

thousands of men together, forged the shared experiences of war among them, and expanded the concept of what it was to be “French” as opposed to provincial.14 The same

social processes Mukerji finds in canal construction may exist in military experience.

Antoine Bousquet expands Lewis Mumford’s concept of “technics” in a slightly

different, but complementary, direction. In Bousquet’s opinion, technological systems are

the means by which a society “‘reveal[s]’ itself in a certain way so as to order it.”

Technology yields more than control of the terrain and its people; it is the basis for how a

people understands the world.15 He argues, for example, that the central technological

ordering mechanism of the 18th century was the clock. The clock, as a machine, allowed

for automation. One had only to construct it, wind it, and release it in order to measure

regular motion perfectly. Bousquet argues that the clock changed the entire dynamic of

society, elevating “punctuality…to a social virtue.” This ordered outlook would inevitably translate to battlefield action. Bousquet develops a series of metaphors similar to the clock, particularly steam locomotion in the 1820s, which carried with it the concept of friction—a predominant theme in Clausewitz’s interpretation of Napoleonic warfare.

Friction complicated the reigning sociological conception of perfect automation and

14 John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3. Lynn makes the case that the wars of Louis XIV forged the French nation, but concludes that it was also a case of massive financial over-extension that would doom the French kingdom in the long run. 15 Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 12. 14 punctuality, which resulted in a more chaotic system of order.16 The social process of ordering the world through technics, then, makes its way inevitably into how a society views warfare, according to Bousquet.

We may take Bousquet’s “technoscientific regimes of order,” as he refers to them, and expand them to include Mukerji’s “logistical power” through public structures and imagine techno-semiotic regimes of military nationalism. As noted in the discussion above, the shape of terrain surrounding a people will shape perceptions of society. The

Canal du Midi and Pierre L’Enfant’s Washington City were supposed, in theory at least, to overawe citizens and visitors with the state’s grandeur. Rustic and improvised frontier military architecture built by and for the militiaman, on the other hand, portrayed a weak state whose primary strength was its citizens’ virtue. Thus, there existed two competing techno-semiotic regimes between 1814 and 1821.

Other historians have noted the concept of two American military traditions, most explicitly T. Harry Williams in his 1952 essay “The Macs and the Ikes: America’s Two

Military Traditions.” But Williams’s essay focuses on civil-military relations, drawing out separate types of generals and their differing relationships with the White House.

Those generals in Williams’s “Macarthur” tradition were brash, loud, and at odds with the executive; those of the “Eisenhower” tradition were more soft-spoken and compliant.

Williams includes Winfield Scott as a “Mac” based on Scott’s conduct during the

Mexican War of 1846-1848.17 Under the taxonomy of wood-fortress versus stone-fortress generals, however, Scott was solidly stone-fortress, and his chief wood-fortress nemesis

16 Ibid., 38-39; 5-6. 17 T. Harry Williams, “The Macs and the Ikes: America’s Two Military Traditions,” in T. Harry Williams, The Selected Essays of T. Harry Williams (Baton Rouge: State University Press, 1983), 173-176. 15 was Andrew Jackson. Contrary to Williams’s categorization, Scott was actually far more

nested with the executive during his younger years of 1814-1821.

Still other historians have previously noticed the two vying American military

traditions, though they have less explicitly differentiated the two. Russell Weigley in

1973 published his landmark book The American Way of War. In it, Weigley emphasizes

stone-fortress interstate conflict against European-style armies to draw conclusions about

how Americans prefer to fight wars.18 John Grenier has attempted to improve upon

Weigley’s methodology in his 2005 study of what he calls the “First Way of War.”

Grenier believes that Americans developed a strong proclivity for attacking noncombatants, destroying villages and crops, and a host of other atrocities, forming a

military cultural preference for so-called unconventional (from the Eurocentric

perspective) tactics.19

Grenier problematically disregards the European-style tactics in use during his

time period. He complains that other studies that focus on the are

“disjunctive,” but he discounts such important factors as the long European traditions of

colonial ; the fact that a Continental Army was formed in the first place and that it

placed enormous emphasis on “conventional” strategy like protecting fortresses and

major cities; or the decided lack of scalping that took place on the battlefields of Saratoga

and Yorktown. Weigley, on the other hand, focuses somewhat teleologically on the

coming and underplays the American antimilitary tradition and the

18 See Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), Part One, et passim. 19 John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 12. 16 citizen-soldier. Both agree, however, that a liminal shift occurred after 1815 toward more

conventional strategy, but neither explains why and how this shift occurred.20

Political and social historians of the early American republic have tended, in general, to agree that 1815 began a major shift toward greater American nationalism and expansion of the state, usually thanks to such factors as the new market economy, political mobilization, and transportation and communications technology. What is missing from these narratives is the role of battle and military nationalism in these developments. The West Point engineers who were the progeny of the Republican military reforms built the canals, railroads, and highways that facilitated economic and communications expansion; the American nationalism that folklorists built around

Andrew Jackson facilitated the political and social willingness to invest in these movements.21

Charles Sellers’s The Market Revolution, for example, emphasizes the economy

and the social pushback that Jacksonian democrats led against the new national market

structure. The capitalist market, argues Sellers, was a revolutionary force that competed

with its conservative counterforce: the land.22 Sean Wilentz has offered a similar

approach, but with a political focus on events and on actors. Instead of Sellers’s national

capitalist market, the great juggernaut is the rise of American democracy over orthodox

20 Grenier, 15; Weigley, 55-60. 21 Samuel J. Watson’s Jackson’s Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the , 1810-1821 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012) and Wooster’s The American Military Frontiers: The in the West, 1783-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009) represent two of the best volumes integrating American military history with political policy, but as we shall see, they focus on the periphery at the expense of the center. 22 Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 4. 17 Jeffersonian republicanism.23 Daniel Howe, offering a more pro-Whig treatment than

Wilentz’s, refers to the “transformation” of American society after 1815. Instead of

Sellers’s revolution in capitalism or Wilentz’s revolution in democracy, Howe finds that the true revolution was in communications primarily, and transportation secondarily.24

In Sellers’s, Wilentz’s, and Howe’s narratives, as thorough, masterfully crafted,

and ambitious in scope as they are, the authors rely on secondary and tertiary movements

in American society that truly took form in the late 1820s and 1830s to explain

transformation after 1815. Economics, politics, communications technology, and

transportation infrastructure were all genuinely important during this latter time period,

but the roots of the movements lie in the Republicans’ postwar efforts to expand the

government and in the mythmakers’ postwar efforts to construct a narrative of American

triumph. Sellers’s capitalist market and Howe’s communications network were both thanks to Monroe’s military reform agenda; Wilentz’s rise of democracy was dramatically spurred by Jackson’s personal military mystique from the .

Sources and Methodology

This manuscript addresses perceptions of the American military establishment among three different groups: the American general public, army officers, and the political and military decision makers in the United States. The first category, the perceptions of the American army among citizens, depends upon newspapers and

23 Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005), 4-5; 181-182. 24 Daniel Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3-5. Howe’s enormous volume contains a more nuanced argument. He has a firm understanding, for example, of how congressmen politicized the Battle of New Orleans (chapter 2) and he correctly paints Andrew Jackson as a dark figure in American political history. 18 popular literature. Contemporary newspapers were unafraid to publish emotional

editorials and, in many cases, to align themselves explicitly with specific political parties

and outlooks.25 Examining these newspapers’ varying accounts of the war opens a window into American public discourse on the war and its legacy. Works of literature, history, and political publications, moreover, speak volumes about what ideas Americans

were consuming.

Understanding the viewpoints of army officers requires archival collections of

those officers, available from the manuscript divisions of the ,

National Archives and Records Administration, U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Army

Military History Institute, and the University of Michigan Clements Library. Key leaders

within the U.S. Army itself, and the U.S. Corps of Engineers in particular, debated the

future direction the army should take, but the one thing most of these officers agreed on

was that the War of 1812 had proven beyond any doubt that the gallimaufry of a militia

system and weak federal army needed to be relegated to the past. There emerged, after

1815, a strong sense among these officers that they were “professionals.” As for the

opinions of American statesmen, official state documents such as congressional motions,

speeches to the House and Senate, and official correspondence demonstrate that however

convinced the War Department was that the future of the United States’ national security

lay in the Napoleonic model of , congressmen kept the standing army

debate alive in Congress.

25 See Jeffrey L. Pasley, “‘The Tyranny of Printers’: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002). 19 What, then, is one to make of the apparent conflict between War Department

reformers and their wood-fortress opponents? The reformers in this story were in strong

leadership positions. They were presidents, secretaries of war, and generals. They

believed deeply in the necessity of effecting change, but they were not always completely

successful and, even when they were successful, they found their policies contested. This

sociological phenomenon requires some understanding. Michel Callon and Bruno

Latour’s concept of the actor-network theory, which is a concept culled from sociology

and science and technology studies, is an appropriate starting point for a description of

social change in early American culture. The actor-network theory helps reconcile the

notions that individual actors can dictate cultural change with the notions that culture is

far too rigid for anything other than gradual evolutionary change.

The respected French sociologist Alain Touraine’s theory of social movements

states that class conflict drives change, but not in the Marxist sense. Rather, Touraine

detects a class of technocrats who “manipulate the needs and aspirations” of the

consumer class.26 Thus, one might use a Tourainian approach to suggest that the U.S.

Corps of Engineers forced a certain amount of militarism upon the American people by

making military structures more visible and desirable in society during the 1810s and

1820s. The objection one might offer in response to such a proposition is that the consumer class is not so pliable. After all, examples of failed attempts by technocrats to change the consumer class are present in every failed invention, bankrupted technology

26 Michel Callon, “Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis,” in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 87. 20 firm, or even in lost elections. Pierre Bourdieu has codified this tension with a model he

has named “structuralist constructivism.” He explains that

By structuralism…I mean that there exist, within in the social world itself and not only in symbolic systems (language, myths, etc.), objective structures independent of the consciousness and will of agents, which are capable of guiding and constraining practices… By constructivism, I mean that there is a twofold social genesis, on the one hand of the schemes of perception, thought and action…and on the other hand of social structures.27

This scheme of perception, or the habitus, is “the engine of social action,” which manifests itself through the second of Bourdieu’s conceptions: the field. The field is defined as “a ‘network’ or a ‘configuration of objective relations’ between ‘positions’ that

are occupied by the social agents within the field.”28 The Bourdieuan model would state

that American military culture was too deeply embedded in its habitus to be manipulated

so easily by technocrats. Instead, social change and schemes of perception evolve more

slowly through the intercourse of the fields within society.

Michel Callon has suggested that the actor-network theory reconciles Tourainian

class conflict with Bourdieuan fields.29 The actor-network theory allows for a certain measure of social constructivism, but also allows for limited agency within the material.

According to this concept, various “actors” can include technocrats such as the U.S.

Corps of Engineers; materials such as fortresses and the necessary technologies that form

them as systems; literature and art; and social groups. The question of a new social

movement can thus be answered by examining the consumer class (the American general

27 Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory 7, 1 (Spring, 1989): 14. 28 Peter Jackson quoting Bourdieu, “Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘Cultural Turn’ and the Practice of International History,” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 155-181, 166. 29 Callon in Bijker, et al, eds., “Society in the Making,” 87-92. 21 public), technocrats (army officers and politicians), and the material structure (anything from stone fortresses in major eastern cities to poems published in a newspaper) to determine how they interrelate.

This type of analysis yields an understanding of the transformative growth of the

United States federal system after 1815 that accounts both for agency and for structure.

Agents and their policies in this time period mattered a great deal, but they had to

surmount structural obstacles in the path of their policy decisions. The U.S. military

structure, based as it was on subordination to commanders, was more receptive to directive policy. The increasingly democratic political structure after the rise of Andrew

Jackson, on the other hand, resisted these agents. This resistance yielded disappointing political results for the hawkish reformers by 1821, but the changes that had already taken root in the American military system would endure the political backlash of the

1820s. The result was that, in 1821, the stone-fortress reformers had reshaped the military system, but not the American political landscape. Over the coming decades, as many

Americans condemned federal power and the “military aristocracy” emerging from the

U.S. Military Academy, this new system built the foundation for the new American state.

22

Part I: Fortresses of Stone

Early August of 1814 was a disquieting time for Americans living on the eastern

seaboard of the United States. There were reports of British sails in the Chesapeake and frenzied discussions about their ultimate target. On August 18, Washington socialite

Elizabeth Parke Custis sat down at her writing desk to write to her dear friend David

Warden, who was serving at the U.S. consulate in Paris. “[O]ur soldiers are brave,” she noted, “but we suffer from want of experienced officers – if the war continues the army must be increased & we must get a few french officers – that has always been my opinion.”1 Less than a week later, the landed and humiliated the American

profession of arms by routing a force composed largely of militiamen in Bladensburg,

Maryland. As that battle unfolded, Secretary of War John Armstrong had prophesied

sardonically to Madison that “as the battle would be between Militia and regular troops,

the former would be beaten.”2 As President James Madison returned to the smoldering

remains of the now-not-so-White House that the British invaders had ransacked and

burned, Madison himself might have been inclined to agree with Custis had he seen her

letter.

In response to the crisis year of 1814, Madison became more proactive about

military policy in Congress. In essence, he began to do the very thing that Custis had

1 Elizabeth Custis to Warden, August 18, 1814, Custis-Lee Papers, Box 2, Custis-Warden Letters, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division (hereafter “LC”). 2 James Madison paraphrasing John Armstrong, Memorandum of August 24, 1814, Madison Papers, series 3, vol. 27, LC. 23 suggested: bringing in a few French (and French-trained) officers to help lead an

increased regular army. Madison was not alone in his way of thinking—his new secretary

of war, James Monroe, agreed entirely, as did many others within the army and the War

Department. In February 1815, President Madison clearly laid out these measures to

Congress in four parts.3 First, he asked Congress to retain as large a force of regulars as

possible. Second, he demanded a greater system of discipline and uniformity for the

militias. Third, he wanted to bolster coastal defensive works by creating more and better stone fortifications. Fourth, and perhaps most critically, he believed that without more

competently trained officers—particularly engineers—none of these measures would be

possible.4

Part I of this dissertation is dedicated to the course of these reform measures in

Congress and in the army. To justify the measures that Madison and his secretary of war

were submitting to the American people, stone-fortress reformers had first to establish the

axiom that regular troops were better for American security than militiamen. The

reformers, including a young general named Winfield Scott, relied on a narrative from

the late war that emphasized the militia’s failure to protect Washington City from British

ransacking and that offered, by way of contrast, the performance of disciplined regulars

in the of July 1814. Chapter One argues that this “lesson” was not

immediately apparent to every American; the more predominant view of the crisis of

1814, in fact, had been that Americans were now fighting a revolutionary war, not a

Napoleonic one. Chapters Two and Three trace the reformers’ efforts to realize their

3 His platform also included measures for naval expansion, of course, but that is outside the scope of this project. 4 James Madison, “Peace Message,” February 20, 1815, Annals of Congress, Senate, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 255-256. 24 proposed policies for army size, militia standardization, systems, and a better

educated officer corps. Chapter Two focuses primarily on the narrative conflict over the

war’s lessons in Congress, among the citizenry, and even within the army. Chapter Three concludes the with a case study in top-down policy implementation at West Point.

Ultimately, Part I demonstrates that despite the cries of mutiny and resistance from within

the army’s officer corps, the reformers were able to create the professional officer corps

that they sought, even while questions of the army’s size and of militia standardization

floundered politically.

25

Chapter 1: The American Crisis, 1814

It is surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country… Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses: they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short: the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.1 —, 23 December 1776

We have slumbered in apathy… We have quarreled among ourselves, while the enemy has approached… [This disaster] lights up the flame of patriotism, and makes us feel as our fathers felt [in the Revolution].2 —“A True-born American,” 1814

1814 was a year of American crisis. The British offensives of 1814 had cast a pall

over the American public mood, and Americans responded by describing their

experiences using romanticized comparisons to the American Revolutionary War. Such

language and imagery did not, however, yield universally accepted lessons. The military reformers attempted, therefore, to create shared meaning from the experience of 1814 by emphasizing the apparent failure of the militia to protect the national capital and juxtaposing that failure with the performance of Winfield Scott’s disciplined soldiers at the Battle of Chippewa in July. This narrative would become the bedrock justification for

reform proposals, but like the revolutionary imagery it appropriated, historical realities

did not always align perfectly with the myth.

1 Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (London: R. Carlile, 1819), 12. 2 “Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Gen. Winder’s camp, dated Aug. 24 at 1 o’clk in the morning,” by “A True-born American,” Columbian vol. 5 no. 1480, Aug. 27, 1814. 26

In 1814, for the first time in the war, the British were on the offensive in a serious

way, and many feared for the survival of the young republic. On the evening of August

24, 1814, all these patriots’ worst fears seemed to come to life as Washington burned. It

was arguably the worst military debacle in the entirety of the United States’ history, but

as word spread throughout the nation of the disaster, soldiers and civilians alike reacted

in a surprising way: they began to feel more emotionally invested in the war effort, and

their language about the war itself became more brightly colored in revolutionary hues. It

was as if their fathers who had embodied the rage militaire of 1775 and who had since

become something like the greatest generation were smiling upon them from heaven,

having found them worthy of trials and suffering. One officer articulated this attitude

perfectly in his written prayer to a deceased American deity. “Spirit of Washington, in

this momentous hour hover over thy beloved Country,” he wrote from his encampment in

Plattsburgh, “bless us with Union…and in this glorious Cause alone shall we arm.”

Having finished his invocation, the officer began his sermon. “We fight indeed pro aris et

focis. We have no Ambition to ravage our neighbour’s lands and houses… we sought not

the war.”3

This officer’s apparent obliviousness of the Americans’ conduct toward their

neighbor’s lands and houses was not atypical of Americans in the late summer of 1814.

As news began to make its way from Washington to the major urban centers in New

York and , editorialists set hard at work rationalizing the humiliation of

Washington’s ransacking. One editorialist suggested that only “savages” would be so

3 John Claude to Dennis Claude, August 31, 1814, John Claude Letters, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan (hereafter “CLUM”). 27

inhumane as to destroy a city with fire. He then adjured his readers to take the destruction

with a noble and quiet dignity befitting the righteousness of America’s cause and closed with a reminder that Burgoyne and Cornwallis, the best Britain had had to offer in the

Revolutionary War, had come to grief in their attempts to subdue a proud, independent, and free people.4

Americans had little room, as we shall see, for such sanctimonious indignation

over the burning of Washington. But in a time of crisis and cognitive dissonance, a

citizenry can rationalize away even the most stubborn facts. Reality becomes far more

easily distorted; truth is more difficult to pin down. It is an ideal climate for mythmaking.

The crisis year of 1814, when the people were panicked and felt the weight of anxiety

pressing in on them from virtually every mile of coastline, was thus an opportunity for

the reformers to till the soil of memory and sow the seeds of change. Unfortunately for

the reformers, the British onslaught in 1814 left no unanimity among the American people about the lessons of the War of 1812. Most Americans instinctively cast their gaze backward in time to the Revolutionary War, rather than across the Atlantic to their

Napoleonic future. If the War of 1812 was a Napoleonic war, few Americans were aware of the fact in 1814. To the contrary, the war that Americans fought in 1814 was a revolutionary war—a dynamic that made reformers’ efforts to import Napoleon later all

the more complex. The narrative these reformers sought did not, therefore, originate ex

nihilo from the ashes of the Washingtonian federal buildings. It had to be carefully constructed and managed.

4 “The Progress of Our Enemies,” Boston Patriot vol. XI no. 50, Aug. 31, 1814, 2. 28

To do so, they appealed to two critical campaigns of the war in 1814: the July battles along the Niagara, and the August campaign that ended in Washington’s depredation. Their narrative of these battles did not always perfectly with historical reality. The purpose of this chapter is not to craft a comprehensive account of the entire scope of military operations in 1814, or to deny the importance of other

American military victories and defeats in that year. Many worthy historians have undertaken that task admirably.5 This chapter is less about the maneuvers and combatants themselves and more about how the actors forged their version of the war’s legacy in order to influence the American military structures. They had to engineer the narrative because Americans were not drawing the desired conclusions on their own. Chippewa, for example, was not necessarily “more important” than, say, the ; it was simply more useful.

The useful myth of Chippewa informed the historiography of the battle almost immediately and endured among American historians through much of the twentieth century. Chippewa was, according to this historiographical strain, a “decisive” battle in the sense that it transformed the American army into a fighting force that could rival

Europe’s best. Henry Adams, in his multivolume history of the United States published between 1889 and 1891, succinctly packages the orthodox position by claiming that “The was the only occasion during the war when equal bodies of regular

5 Robert S. Quimby’s The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study 2 vols. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997) is the most exhaustive operational study of the war; see also Richard V. Barbuto, Niagara, 1814: America Invades (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000); David Fitz-Enz, The Final Invasion: Plattsburgh, the War of 1812’s Most Decisive Battle (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001); and Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998) for more focused studies. 29

troops met face to face…without advantage of position; and never again after that combat

was an army of American regulars beaten by British troops.”6 This charming account of

the battle at Chippewa went mostly unchallenged until the early 1990s. The first historian

to examine the battle’s great hero critically was Donald Graves, who argues in a 1991

article that Winfield Scott’s military competence at Chippewa was overblown.7 After

Graves’s inquiry, other historians adopted this slightly revisionist take on Chippewa’s

significance, but they have done so half-heartedly.8

Historian Michael Bonura has recently argued, however, that the Battle of

Chippewa itself was indeed a decisive point in American military history. It allowed for

the adoption within the American army of what he calls the French “intellectual

framework of the battlefield.” An intellectual paradigm can shape public opinion and

methodology for generations, until something—usually an exogenous factor—causes it no longer to be valid. For Bonura, the Battle of Chippewa was just such a paradigmatic shifting point for the American army. Bonura claims that “[Winfield] Scott introduced

French ideas into the American military tradition in 1814” and that his victory “gave legitimacy to” the French model and “created a consensus large enough to incorporate this French way of warfare into the American military tradition.”9

6 Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison, Rev. Ed. (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Distributed by the Viking Press, 1986) 938. 7 Donald Graves, “‘I Have a Handsome Little Army…’: A Re-examination of Winfield Scott’s Camp at Buffalo in 1814,” in R. Arthur Bowler, ed., War along the Niagara: Essays on the War of 1812 and Its Legacy (Youngstown, NY: Old Fort Niagara Association, 1991), 43. 8 John Elting, Amateurs, to Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812 (New York: Da Capo, 1995), 179- 180; Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998), 44; Allan Peskin, Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms (, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 37. 9 Michael A. Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon: French Influence on the American Way of Warfare from the War of 1812 to the Outbreak of WWII (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 2, 8. 30

As Bonura correctly implies, the American military culture as it existed prior to

1814 had been hewn out of decades of perceived experience, shared beliefs, and

confirmation bias. A culture so embedded in the national psyche and within the military

establishment itself, however, would prove difficult to unseat. Regular army officers

argued a great deal over the war’s legacy, and at first almost none of them noticed the

“Frenchness” of Scott’s victory, preferring instead vaguer terms like “disciplined.” The

battle was nevertheless tremendously important in shaping the future of the armed forces.

For one, it was clearly a tactical success for Americans who desperately needed a

battlefield victory. Even more critically, though, was the extent to which it served as a

counterpunch to the debacle of the Battle of Bladensburg the following month, in which

militiamen failed to halt the British advance toward Washington. The impact of the

battles came not as much from the tactical engagements themselves, therefore, but from

the extent to which commentators memorialized the battle.

Americans rationalized the dramatically different battles along the Niagara and the Potomac during late summer 1814 using memory of the . To

invoke the Revolution was ironically appropriate, since it was another conflict that

Americans had largely whitewashed and sanitized in their written and oral traditions. As

historian Michael McDonnell has argued, four main problems plagued the American

proto-nation between 1775 and 1783: localism, state rivalries, aversion to the Continental government, and “a lack of attachment” to the cause.10 All four of these problems also

10 Michael A. McDonnell, “War and Nationhood: Founding Myths and Historical Realities,” in Michael A. McDonnell, Clare Corbould, Frances M. Clarke, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, eds., Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), 21-22. 31

applied fittingly to the second Anglo-American war, yet they were not the similarities

that most Americans noticed. McDonnell’s edited volume on the memory of the

Revolution as a nation-building event demonstrates that, by the time of the War of 1812

and its aftermath, the American people had already idealized the Revolutionary War,

viewing its heroes as a paragon of civic virtue. Memory-making, the editors remind us, is

an inherently political activity and, therefore, different factions drew different moral

lessons to suit their political biases.11

Of themselves, the Battle of Chippewa and the burning of Washington no more caused reform than destruction causes rebuilding. The most that can be said is that agents appealed to events to justify their actions. The reformers thus attempted to cultivate and guide a national discussion through appeals to these events in ways that suited their own interests. In their minds, Chippewa proved a useful positive example of what a competent government could achieve, and Bladensburg was its most obvious counterexample. The reality, as this chapter will demonstrate, was not so clear-cut.

Winfield Scott and the “Camp of Instruction”

One of the first men to try to redirect the course of American military thought after mid-1814 was Brigadier General Winfield Scott, who sought to capitalize on his fame from the , 1814 Battle of Chippewa and promote his reputation for military brilliance. Scott was a Virginian who had enlisted during the war scare of 1807 and had since risen through the ranks. He was largely self-taught as a tactician and as an officer, but he had come to believe deeply in the importance and value of professional military training. He was a thoroughly stone-fortress man. When he was given command of a

11 McDonnell, et al, eds., Remembering the Revolution, 10. 32

brigade in western New York, then, he treated the post as an opportunity to prove his ideas about military discipline. According to the story that he would help in no small way to create, he arrived at his post and set to work training his men according to the most rigorous standards of the French army. His July 5 engagement with British regulars on a plain just west of the Niagara convinced him of the superiority of his methods.

Scott appears to have wanted nothing less than for the nation to acknowledge his special tactical expertise, which he had derived from his professional acumen and his knowledge of the French 1791 manual, which Scott himself claimed to have been the first to use.12 Scott so successfully propagated this version of his story that, as early as 1815,

chroniclers of the war were already insisting that he had “taught those tactics… which

had never been displayed on this continent, either by British or American troops. The

French Tactique of the and the line was adopted.”13 Twenty years later, another

historian was even more emphatic: Scott’s camp “was the first introduction in extenso, of

the French tactics, into the American army.”14 Yet Winfield Scott, contrary to the version of his own story that he crafted and that historians and mythmakers propagated, was not a pioneer who adopted French drill for the first time. Nor was his perceived victory at

Chippewa truly the product of French drill per se. Nor, finally, did American officers initially conceive of it as a French-style victory.

Army reformers had attempted to import French military regulations and incorporate them into the U.S. military establishment long before 1814, but those attempts had failed for political and social reasons. Neither American ideology, nor

12 Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1864), 119. 13 Brown, Authentic History of the Second War of Independence, II:135. 14 Hindman, “The New Tactics,” Army Navy Chronicle 1 (1835): 332. 33

politics, nor the army, nor military doctrine existed in isolation. Drill manuals, as dry and

pedantic as they may seem today, mattered to early Americans—not because of some

strong emotional belief in how many steps a soldier should march per minute, but

because of what that doctrine represented. It was a common language; it was a

centralized structure that, in theory, should unite all the states’ militia systems with the

regular army. Such a concept as one single standard manual had the potential to offend

some Americans’ localist-republican sensibilities.

Moreover, many American officers had no reason to believe that the system they

had been using since the early 1790s was now obsolete. It stood to reason to them that

Columbia had defeated mighty Albion once before with no pre-existing standing army or

federal government. Why should Americans not continue to trust in the free security that

the provided? The answers to those questions, of course, lay in the differences between 1775 and the conditions in in the early nineteenth

century. Foremost among those who saw the need for reform in the years leading up to

conflict were Secretary of War , Alexander Smyth, Secretary of

War John Armstrong, and Colonel William Duane. But their efforts to restructure the

American army fell silently onto the indifferent ears of congressmen and military men

alike who saw little financial, military, or political value in creating a French-style army.

For Colonel William Duane, the need for improvement to the

American military establishment was urgent enough for him to author his American

Military Library in 1809. The last three decades of peace and apparent safety, he argued,

had made military studies a dead discipline, and individual states had allowed their militias to fall into disrepair. It was only in the wake of recent events, presumably the

34

1807 Chesapeake-Leopard Affair and its ensuing war scare, that Duane now considered

his countrymen at least “partially awakened…to the danger of [their] situation.” This

peril, which Duane claimed to have foreseen for many years, was nothing short of a

“crisis.” Duane considered his treatise to be an anthology of the finest military tactics and

discipline systems in the world at the time, namely “the French system, which has…by its

success demonstrated its superiority.” The French system had, in Duane’s estimation,

upset the very balance of war. It was therefore obvious and prudent for all nations to

adapt to Napoleonic systems or face defeats similar to those of the Austrians and

Prussians between 1805 and 1806.15

The “French system” was and still is shorthand for the 1791 Règlement—written

by the Comte de Guibert—which was, appropriately enough, itself the product of military

reforms following the disastrous performance of the French army in the Seven Years’

War. Modern military historians have made something of a cottage industry out of

analyzing the 1791 regulations and Guibert’s other essays on tactics, and there is an overwhelming amount of literature dedicated to why France started winning its battles

after 1791.16 It is sufficient to say for the purposes of the present discussion only that a

major distinction of the 1791 system was the ability of the French to combine columns of

men with more traditional linear formations. Columns ensured optimum speed for

maneuvering on the battlefield, but lines provided the most lethal firepower. The French

15 William Duane, American Military Library, or Compendium of the Modern Tactics, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: S.P., 1809) i-ii. 16 The best single source remains John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94, rev. ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996); for a more thorough treatment of the Napoleonic campaigns, the classic text is David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Scribner, 1966), especially part three, “Napoleon’s Art of War;” or, for a more recent treatment, Jonathan Abel’s Guibert: Father of Napoleon’s Grande Armée (Norman: University of Press, 2016). 35

had learned employ both types of formations in what Guibert had called l’ordre mixte, which allowed them to move rapidly to a decisive point and deploy into lines as necessary. The bottom-line implication for American forces is that this kind of maneuvering required intense discipline, a significant amount of training, and standardized drill across the entire force. All three of these requirements were anathema to many American commanders and soldiers during the War of 1812.

In fact, it was probably because of these requirements for drill and standardization that militia officers did not do more to integrate Duane’s manual into their training.

Commanders during this time period believed strongly in the freedom to decide what each thought best for his own unit.17 To be told to adopt a French system would have

struck many as obtrusive and offensive to the honors of command. The same, as it turns

out, largely held true within the regular army during the War of 1812. Writing in 1835, a

commentator using the pseudonym “Hindman” wrote on “The New Infantry Tactics” in

the Army and Navy Chronicle, stating that army commanders chose their own course of

instruction, drill manual, and system of discipline for their units. Some chose on their

own to institute the French system, while others preferred the 1788 manual written by

British General Dundas. According to Hindman, Dundas’s drill manual was “more

bulky,” but its appeal to some American commanders was that it was similar to Steuben’s

Blue Book, which had been the Continental Army’s standard and was, like Dundas’s

manual, largely based on the theories of .18 That some officers would

17 Scott, Memoirs, 119-120; George Izard to John Armstrong, May 7, 1814, in George Izard, Official Correspondence with the Department of War… (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1816), 3; Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon, 49. 18 “Hindman,” “The New Infantry Tactics,” 332. 36

have preferred an older Frederician model of military discipline that was more

cumbersome to employ in drill and in battle almost certainly was the result of political

proclivities, given the sharp split between Anglophiles and Francophiles in 1800s

American politics. As for Duane’s handbook of 1809, which Duane had intended for the

militias’ adoption, it received no official sanction from the U.S. government, and “fell

still-born from the press.”19

Duane’s stillborn manual may not have received the government’s official seal on

its cover, but not because no one in the War Department was concerned about the problem of standardized drill. When William Eustis assumed his post as secretary of war

in 1809, he almost immediately began to lobby for military reforms. In 1810, he

commissioned Alexander Smyth to translate Guibert’s 1791 manual and adapt it for an

American army. The resulting Regulations for the Field Exercise, Manoeuvres, and

Conduct of the Infantry of the United States was published in March 1812. Smyth’s intent

was to translate, adapt, and perhaps most importantly abridge the 1791 regulations for

American use, but he also integrated aspects of the Steuben Blue Book that covered camp

administration, policing, sanitation, and so on.20 Smyth doubtless hoped that he had created a hybrid regulations manual that all officers could accept, but few in command at the war’s dawning seemed to have noticed.21

Alexander Smyth’s career took an even more unfortunate turn once the war began

in 1812. Stationed in Buffalo, New York—where Winfield Scott would later take his own

19 Ibid. 20 Donald Graves, The Battle of Lundy’s Lane on the Niagara in 1814 (Baltimore: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co., 1993), 31. 21 Scott, Memoirs, 119-120; George Izard to John Armstrong, May 7, 1814, in Izard, Official Correspondence, 3; Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon, 49. 37 command—Smyth attempted to unleash fiery rhetoric on the people around him. The

American humiliations in the first months of the war, he claimed, were owed to commanders who were “‘destitute alike of theory and experience’ in the art of war.”

Naturally, Smyth believed he was destitute of neither. Soon his men “will plant the

American standard in Canada,” he claimed. “They are men accustomed to obedience, silence, and steadiness. They will conquer or they will die.” He meant these words as a recruiting call. They did not have the desired effect. He was derided and scorned as

“Alexander the Great” and “Napoleon the Second.”22 James Madison would later admit that commissioning Smyth and granting him a field command was a mistake.23

Duane and Smyth were both army men, and William Eustis had, as secretary of war, endorsed the French method for use in the U.S. Army, and yet they had failed to influence the conduct of American soldiers in any meaningful way during the first two years of war. They failed to overcome the preexisting biases of their epoch because they did not have the rhetorical advantage that Winfield Scott would have by 1814. It is important to note, however, that the army did have an official drill manual, and it was in all meaningful ways an adaptation of the same system Napoleon had used to such great effect in his years of victory. The French influence lay dormant, recessive, and veiled behind a of ignominious defeat for the American armies, but it was there.

Smyth was almost certainly correct on many points, despite the derision with which he was greeted. Two major issues had plagued the American armies in the first two

22 Frank H. Severance, “The Case of Brigadier General Alexander Smyth,” in Frank H. Severance, ed., Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society Vol. 18 (Buffalo: BHS, 1914), 226-229, quoting Smyth, proclamation of November 10, 1812. 23 James Madison to Henry Lee, February 1827, in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison 3:526. 38

and a half years of the War of 1812: poor discipline and entirely incompetent generals.

The point was certainly not lost on Winfield Scott. In 1814, he was as frustrated as any

American over the way the war had been conducted to that point. In previous campaigns,

American soldiers had seen little else but humiliation, privation, and false starts in this

second war against Britain. In Scott’s mind, the commands that had been entrusted to “a

dull man” or “a coxcomb” who had joined only out of his “splendid vanity” explained the

American armies’ poor performance.24

Many civilian observers agreed, blaming the poor conduct of soldiers “without

heads to lead them” on poor officers, which in turn underscored the “futility of armies without discipline.”25 Scott noted the perception of those outside the army in the

December 1814 issue of Analectic Magazine, in which the author lamented that “The patriot…turn[s] away his eyes from the northern frontier—‘heartsick of his country’s shame.’”26 But Scott detected a hidden benefit to the poor performance of the armies

prior to 1814. “It was scarcely suspected by the public,” he averred, that the crucible of combat had so far served only to refine the army and to separate “the pure metal from the dross.” Those vainglorious peacocks whose presence in the officer corps Scott and citizenry alike detested were expunged and replaced by those more competent.27 The army, it seemed to him, was poised to perform much better this year.

The optimism Scott insisted he felt was incongruous with the actual military situation. At the beginning of 1814, Americans had little to hope for out of the war

24 Scott, Memoirs, 111. 25 “Carrying on the War,” Daily National Intelligencer no. 325, January 17, 1814. 26 Gulian Verplanck quoted in Scott, Memoirs, 111-112. 27 Scott, Memoirs, 112. 39

against England. The military campaign had begun with more blundering and more

American lives lost as a result. Long before the British fleet arrived in the Chesapeake

Bay to attack Washington and Baltimore, Americans felt the emotional weight of fighting

a losing war. The “calamitous scene on the frontiers,” the lack of energy from the troops,

and the general malaise throughout the countryside left many fearing that the war would

“inevitably terminate in disgrace.”28

Not only disgrace, but the republic’s very existence seemed to be imperiled.

“England wishes to recolonise us. She is now at liberty to try to do it,” claimed one

Bostonian who added sneeringly that the Englishmen were the descendants of the Tories who had first tried to destroy American liberty.29 In April 1814, an army chaplain

admonished his listeners to “think of our brave ancestors, who made a noble stand for

religion and liberty, against the violence of arbitrary power; …let us entertain a noble

concern to have our names remembered with like honor.”30 The panic was so palpable

that Canadians detected it. A Montreal newspaper declared that “it appears that the

American public are not altogether insensible of their situation—alarm appears to extend

along the seaboard.”31

News from Europe was not boding well for those Americans who understood that, whatever one’s personal feelings about Napoleon as either a tyrant or a guarantor of

liberty against European monarchies, it would better serve the United States’ purposes to

have him and his armies victorious. Napoleon had lost his grip on Spain, Dalmatia, and

28 “Manlius No. XI,” Columbian no. 1286, January 8, 1814. 29 “For the Columbian,” Columbian no. 1430, June 28, 1814. 30 “Extract from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Ellicott,” Plattsburgh Republican vol. IV no. 2, April 16, 1814. 31 Re-printing from the Montreal Herald, 2 July 1814, in idem, no. 1439, July 11, 1814. 40

the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; his once-subdued adversaries in Austria, Prussia, the

German states, and Russia now all had their blood up and were clearly pressing Napoleon

for final victory.32 News from Europe over the next half-year would only get worse for

Americans who were of this understanding, and many in Congress began openly to

question the wisdom of continuing the war. The Americans were not winning, and the

war was never more than an unfortunate nuisance to the British. Was not now a hopeful

time to make peace?33

Few in the War Department believed there was room for such peace. Fewer still

had a clearly articulated plan for victory or even mere denouement. The ’s

increasingly tight stranglehold on the American coast, the British reinforcements on their

way to Canada, and the continued disenrollment of soldiers from the already half-strength

army made it clear that this year would pose significant challenges.34 For at least the first

half of the year, Canada remained the American military objective; the “liberation” of

Upper Canada would not only serve American military and diplomatic purposes, but

would validate the American ideology that cast this conflict as a sequel to the American

Revolutionary War. To add Canada to “our confederacy” would add “republican

representatives…willing and able to repel the colonial ideas of English precedent.”35

One of the more outlandish schemes to add Canadian republicans to the American confederacy was the enlistment of the into U.S. service, beginning in mid-1813. They were meant to defeat the “Tories” in , but they set into

32 “The Emperor Loves the Americans,” Gazette and Political Intelligencer Vol. LXXI Issue 52, January 5, 1814. 33 “Debate on the Army Bill,” National Intelligencer Issue 337, January 31, 1814. 34 Quimby, The U.S. Army in the War of 1812 1:497; 505-506. 35 “Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer Issue 328, January 20, 1814. 41

motion the chain of events leading not only to Winfield Scott’s campaign on the Niagara,

but (in part) to the burning of Washington as well. Joseph Willcocks, an Irish-born

Canadian with a colorful history in politics, had become so disaffected that he accepted a

commission as major (later lieutenant colonel) of U.S. Volunteers in July 1813.36

Map 1: The Niagara Peninsula, 1814.

36 John Armstrong to Joseph Willcocks, April 19, 1813, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), RG107, M6, volume 7. 42

Willcocks’s command was marked by accusations of atrocities, and the Canadian citizenry understandably received his efforts against them poorly.37

On the American side, Willcocks was closely associated with General George

McClure, commander of New York forces at the end of 1813, who himself was assigned to Fort George on the Niagara Peninsula. McClure received orders from Secretary of War

John Armstrong to order Willcocks to burn the town of Newark, which lay to the north of

Fort George and was across the river from Fort Niagara. McClure, who felt the strain of the depleted troop levels, was all too eager to have Willcocks’s assistance.38 The resulting action against Newark, carried out on the night of the December 10-11, 1814, became one of the most infamous episodes of the war for the Canadians, who were only more incensed as they heard stories of women and children freezing to death after having been expelled from their homes in the night. The American public, as outraged by the action itself as they were by McClure’s concomitant decision to abandon and destroy Fort

George, sensed that the British army would not delay in seeking retribution.39

The fallout from George McClure’s disastrous decision to use Joseph Willcocks and his notorious band of Canadian traitors to burn Newark was nearly immediate. Less than a fortnight after abandoning Fort George and overseeing the burning of Newark,

McClure’s small garrison of militiamen was caught asleep in their tents as a force of

British regulars and Indians slipped across the . The element of surprise

37 Hitsman, The Incredible War of 1812, 172. 38 John Armstrong to George McClure, October 4, 1813, NARA RG107, M6, volume 7; Elting, Amateurs, to Arms!, 152. 39 “To the Public,” Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer vol. LXXI no. 55, January 15, 1814; idem., “The burning of Newark, by general M'Clure, has been attended with the most disastrous consequences to many of our citizens on the frontier;” “On the Burning of Newark, &c.,” Daily National Intelligencer Issue 329, January 21, 1814. 43

was, according to McClure, complete. “[T]he enemy rushed in and commenced a most horrid slaughter,” he explained to the secretary of war. The survivors of the initial attack made their way to the interior of the fort and exchanged musket fire with their assailants until they ran out of rounds and were forced to capitulate. McClure, apparently believing

it the better part of honor and nobility to blame his subordinate, opined that “the disaster

is not attributable to any want of troops, but to gross neglect in the commander of the

fort, Capt. Leonard,” who had not prepared for what should have seemed an inevitable

attack.40

British General Riall’s follow-on incursion into the Niagara peninsula had met

almost no resistance from the local militiamen who had been stationed there to defend it.

The task now fell upon and his subordinate Winfield Scott to assume command from the disgraced McClure in western New York.41 The troubles facing Scott

in the early part of the campaign were only those common to the war: the perennial lack

of money to purchase supplies and equipment, and not enough trained men to fill the

musters. Scott had to spend the first three months of 1814 in Albany overseeing material

production for the coming campaigns.42

By March 24, Scott rendezvoused with Jacob Brown, his commander, at Buffalo,

and it was there that Scott began a campaign that would change the course of the war for

the American mind, if not necessarily the American military situation itself. Scott’s

40 George McClure to John Armstrong, December 22, 1813, NARA RG107, M6; Daily National Intelligencer vol. II no. 319, January 10, 1814. 41 Brigadier General Scott reported to Major General Brown, who in turn ostensibly reported to the northern division commander, Major General Wilkinson (until April) and then Major General George Izard. 42 Scott, Memoirs, 115-116. 44

successes in building a disciplined force and winning tactically against the British army earned him the adulation of the citizenry and War Department leadership alike, but

Scott’s long-term renown was probably more the result of his own making than anyone else’s. Scott claimed that Brown was “not a technical soldier: that is, [he] knew but little of organization, tactics, police, etc., etc.,” and it was for this reason that Brown placed

Scott in direction of training the army forming there.43 As men filed in for muster at

Scott’s camp in Buffalo, Scott further insisted that he lost no time in teaching them the

finer points of drill and discipline. According to Scott’s memoirs, he had no official book

of instruction from his own government, so he chose to use his own copy of Guibert’s

regulations of 1791 to train his soldiers.44

Scott’s interpretation of his own significance is problematic because, on the one hand, many contemporary observers in both the British and American armies did note that Scott had formed a uniquely effective army but, on the other hand, much of Scott’s own account of that process is highly suspect when compared to the historical record.

Veterans of Scott’s training regimen were nearly unanimous in their praise for the discipline and activity within the camp. According to one private soldier, “Constant

exercise, wholesome provisions, and strict discipline soon made our regiment have

another appearance.”45 Another member of Scott’s ranks, an captain named

Rufus McIntire, concurred. The Battle of Chippewa, as well as the follow-on battle at

Lundy’s Lane, was in his estimation one of the “best fought battles we have had this war

43 Scott, Memoirs, 115-118. 44 Ibid., 119. 45 Alexander McMullen quoted in Jeffrey Kimball, “The Battle of Chippawa: Infantry Tactics in the War of 1812,” Military Affairs 31, 4 (Winter, 1967-1968): 175. 45

and has furnished a fine specimen of great improvements this season. Genl. Brown is a

very industrious officer but I consider Genl. Scott as the life and soul of that army.” He

then made special note of how critically important “police, discipline, &c.” were within

the camp, which resulted in the army’s being “unusually healthy.”46

The British commander at Chippewa, , did not necessarily disagree

that the American opponents he faced on July 5 were disciplined and formidable.47 In fact, a writer for the Niles Weekly Register claimed to have seen a letter published in a

Halifax newspaper defending Sir George Prevost, the British commander in Canada, by insisting that the Americans under Brown and Scott were some of the most impressive the British army had ever seen. “An officer who has been in all the action on the peninsula told me…that he never witnessed such obstinate courage as they [Brown’s army] shewed.”48

On the other hand, as historian Donald Graves has meticulously demonstrated,

there remain myriad discrepancies between Scott’s account in his memoirs and the

historical record. Graves takes Scott to task for embellishing the amount of time he spent

drilling the officers in his camp and for overstating the immediacy with which he put his

men to work.49 Even more damning, Graves belies Scott’s claim to have had no government drill manual by using Scott’s own words against him. On the April 22 order in which Scott instituted his training regimen, he ordered that “Everything respecting

46 Rufus McIntire to John Holmes, August 1, 1814, NYSL, Papers of Rufus McIntire, box 1, folder 9. 47 Phineas Riall to , July 6, 1814, BAC RG 8 I; Kimball, “The Battle of Chippawa,” 182; Graves, “‘I Have a Handsome Little Army…’,” 43. 48 “Compliment to Americans,” Niles Weekly Register vol. 7 (1814-1815): 410. This letter refers to the fighting at Lundy’s Lane on July 25. 49 Graves finds that training did not start, according to Scott’s own orders, until April 22, whereas his memoirs invite the reader to assume it was almost immediate upon Scott’s arrival in late March, (see “‘I Have a Handsome Little Army,’” 46). 46

camp duties and the service of the Guards will be governed by the Regulations of the War

Office.” Scott later instructed his officers to follow Smyth’s regulations on numbering tents.50 Scott insisted, however, in his memoirs that even for camp administration, “No book of general regulations…had been provided.” Scott was unable to resist adding that it

was he who would go on to write the texts on all these matters.51

Graves’s thorough inquiry helps to prove further that Scott did not “introduce”

French drill into the U.S. Army, but that is not to say that Scott’s performance in the

spring of 1814 was banal. He did not necessarily break any new ground, but he

unequivocally demonstrated superior competence in administering his brigade. Scott was

one of the most effective American generals of the war in terms of improving the health,

welfare, and discipline of the men with whom he was charged. He fastidiously

maintained all aspects of sanitation and discipline within camp while procuring his

army’s famous gray uniforms when regular army uniforms were not forthcoming.52

Scott’s care to meet the material needs of his division evokes images of George

Washington’s letter-writing campaigns with Congress as well as with private citizens who may have been of use. Scott worked aggressively to fix “the wants of this army,” and confessed that the supply abuses that left his men without proper regular army uniforms “has been a cause of this most serious distress to me. The evil is radical & pervades almost every corps in the service.”53 Despite the dire conditions, Scott was able

to clothe his men in proper uniforms—albeit not with the regulation blue coats—and

50 Ibid., 47, quoting Winfield Scott, General Order, April 22 1814, Order Book, NYPL. 51 Scott, Memoirs, 120. 52 Scott to John Armstrong, April 27, 1814, NARA RG 107, M221. 53 Scott to C. Irvine, Esq., May 27, 1814, CLUM, Scott Papers, Box 41, Folder 5. 47

administer his brigade with true military discipline.54 It is for these reasons that his men cohered into a true military organization and performed as well as they did on the fifth of

July at Chippewa.

Brown had received orders from Secretary of War John Armstrong to cross the

Niagara River; his operational objective was to make his way up the peninsula toward

Burlington to link up with Commodore Isaac Chauncey’s naval squadron.55 Within a few

weeks’ time, on July 3, Brown’s division had crossed the river and overwhelmed

the British garrison at Fort Erie with sheer numbers. When Phineas Riall moved his army

of 1,400 redcoats, 200 Canadian militia, and 300 Indian allies to block the American

invaders’ advance downriver to the shore of Lake , Brown and his

decided to try to move west around the British right flank.56 On July 5, Porter’s brigade

came under fire from the Canadian and Indian forces, and Brown ordered Porter to clear

the woods from which the firing came. When Porter found Riall’s main force on the

south side of the Chippewa River, Brown ordered Scott’s and Eleazar Ripley’s brigades

into action.

Riall surveyed the battlefield and watched men in militia-gray coats form opposite

him upon . He was reported to have scoffed that he was facing mere militiamen,

and that they were “a set of cowardly untrained men…who will not stand the bayonet.”57

Scott’s men, who had been preparing to parade as part of a belated Independence Day fete, filed onto the field and advanced upon the British lines in good order. It was at this

54 Scott to Jacob Brown, April 30, 1814, CLUM, Brown Papers, Box 1, Folder 2. 55 John Armstrong to Jacob Brown, June 9, 1814, NARA RG107, M6, vol. 7. 56 Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 283. 57 Ibid., 285. Latimer cites the diary of British Private Ferguson, who recorded Riall’s response. 48

point that, according to legend, Riall was supposed to have cried something to the effect

of “these are regulars, by God!” There is no direct evidence that Riall actually made this

exclamation; it was Scott himself who showcased the quote.58 What we do know,

however, is that Scott’s brigade closed to within 100 yards of the British line and

exchanged multiple volleys of musket fire, forcing the British to withdraw to the north.

Brown’s army made no pursuit, content to have taken the field.

Unable to press farther into Canadian territory for want of the naval support John

Armstrong had promised, the American army tarried on the Niagara peninsula for the

next twenty days, until Scott’s brigade fought a second battle just above Chippewa at

Lundy’s Lane. There was little to distinguish this battle from the first in terms of

maneuver. Here, as at Chippewa on the fifth, Scott’s men advanced over an open field

toward British lines. The critical difference this time, however, was that the British had

selected a formidable position on high ground, and the ensuing battle lasted well into the

darkness of night, with both sides exchanging murderous fire and bayonet charges. At

long last, the Americans had taken the high ground, and the British counterattacked until

both armies were exhausted. By midnight, Scott himself was seriously wounded, Brown

likewise was shot, and 511 casualties from the U.S. forces lay dead and wounded; the

British had suffered remarkably symmetrical losses, with two generals wounded and with

a similar casualty total of 516. Both sides simply stopped fighting.59 Brown’s division, now bled white, would not “liberate” Canada in 1814 after all.

58 Ibid., 285-286; Scott, Memoirs, 129. 59 Graves, Lundy’s Lane, 201. 49

As well as Scott’s brigade performed in combat, the battle was hardly a complete

victory. The engagement was certainly a tactical victory for the Americans in the

Frederician sense of having held the field at the cessation of fighting, but there is no

military reason to call the Niagara battles anything more. Even the most ardently flag-

waving historians have acknowledged that the “battle was unimportant in military

results.”60 What is more, these battles could hardly be described as models of the French style. The engagements along the Niagara would have looked familiar to someone of

Frederick the Great’s generation, but there was nothing Napoleonic about them. Unlike

French victories, there was no , and the artillery, though murderous, was used as

little more than very large muskets. There was little maneuver, no penetration of lines, no

encirclement, and no pursuit or exploitation. Instead, Chippewa achieved little more than

to transfer ownership of a patch of land next to the Niagara River, and Lundy’s Lane only

resulted in hundreds of young men on both sides lying prostrate in agony, their flesh torn

and their lifeblood pouring out into the soil.

The value of Scott’s battlefield performance on the Niagara therefore lay almost

entirely in its emotional appeal to Americans. What is remarkable about the initial

reactions of many Americans to the battles is that any mention of French drill, influence,

and so on are conspicuously absent from the commentary. The Battle of Chippewa was,

at least in 1814, a distinctly American victory whose lineage was traced to the

Continental Army more than the Grand Armée. Winfield Scott was an American von

Steuben, Buffalo was Valley Forge, the regulars were the Continentals, and Chippewa

was the proving grounds of Monmouth combined with the prestige of Saratoga. After the

60 Adams, History of the United States, 938. 50

battles of Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane, a commentator in the Buffalo Gazette stated that

“those who fought, those who bled, those who fell…will justly be added to that brilliant

catalogue of…the heroes of the revolution.” He then added that the engagements would

be remembered “with the same sensations as those of Hill and Saratoga.”61

Inspired citizens took to singing “The New Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a refrain of which boasted that “Brave Brown and Scott next taught the foe, / And taught ’em mighty quick, sirs, / That we had still kept up the breed / Of our old Seventy-Sixers!”62 Likewise, another editorial triumphantly implored the American citizen to “Teach these boasting

Britons, that as your sires beat them in ’76, you can beat them in 1814.”63

Among military men, the rise of Brown’s Left Division and its glory at Chippewa

and Lundy’s Lane was a matter of finally seeing a disciplined army take the field against

these boasting Britons—it was irrelevant how much of a bloodbath Lundy’s Lane may or

may not have been. With near uniformity, army officers’ complaints about their country’s

performance in the war coming into 1814 circled around poor officers and a seemingly

apathetic federal government, which was unwilling to supply their recruits properly.

Frustrated by the “most palpable causes of disaster and objects of reprobation” that had

dominated the conduct of the war until 1814, many lashed out over the soldiers who

remained in the field “without heads to lead them, and without authority to enforce

subordination.” Compounded with this sense of exasperation was the perception that U.S.

61 “The Battle at Bridgewater, near Niagara Falls,” taken from the Buffalo Gazette (28 July 1814) in Daily National Intelligencer vol. II Issue 499, August 9, 1814. 62 Graves, Lundy’s Lane, 19. 63 Ibid., 2. 51

congressmen were either unaware of the poor state of discipline in the U.S. Army, or

were incompetent to fix it.64

The same discussions had occurred within the War Department. “The report you

make of our Troops is painful. When will our Regimental Officers learn their duty, and

practice it?” Secretary of War Armstrong asked General George Izard, who at the time

was undertaking a command of raw recruits much like Scott had done. Armstrong knew

the answer to his own rhetorical question: “Whenever the Commanding General shall do

his.” He further stressed the importance of abiding by published regulations, which he

believed would fix “the many deep laying causes of insubordinations.”65 It was during

this same spring season of 1814 that Armstrong was corresponding over the court-martial

of another officer named , a one-time Spanish lackey and spy, for gross

negligence in battle. He was also accepting resignations from various officers who felt

their honor slighted in whatever way, and even trying to tamp down incidents of dueling,

which had “become so prevalent in our Army...as to have drawn upon it the most marked

disapprobation of the Executive Department.”66 The secretary of war, like his commanders in the field, believed that discipline was the sine qua non of an army and

that it was the one thing the U.S. officers most clearly were failing to institute.67

After Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane, however, army officers spoke admiringly of the discipline that the division had shown there. Officers described Lundy’s Lane, which

64 “Carrying on the War,” The Daily National Intelligencer, vol. II issue 325, January 17, 1814. 65 John Armstrong to George Izard, May 18, 1814, NARA RG107, M6. 66 John Armstrong to Izard, May 25, 1814; Armstrong to . Gen. McArthur, May 28, 1814; Armstrong to James Wilkinson, May 23, 1814; John Armstrong to Daniel Parker, March 1, 1814, all in idem. 67 Armstrong to Izard, June 5, 1814, and Izard to Armstrong, June 25, 1814 in George Izard, Official Correspondence with the Department of War… (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1816), 31, 39. 52

was militarily a disaster for Brown and Scott’s forces, as a brave and disciplined charge.68

Even those who were critical of the Americans’ performance at Lundy’s Lane in particular could not deny that the Americans had finally made a decent showing of themselves in the face of the enemy, and that the soldiers now had competent leadership.69 Nor did civilian observers fail to draw these same conclusions about the

American soldiers’ performance in July 1814. Opinionated men breathlessly spoke of the

army’s performance as the best of its kind, and that finally American arms had proven a

match for the British regulars.70 Americans rarely discussed what implication the battles along the Niagara carried for the army’s structure, composition, or training programs. It was not until after the British invaded the United States that opinion makers began to change the terms of that discussion.

Bladensburg and the Burning of Washington

The debate over the American military system that unfolded following the Battle of Bladensburg and the burning of Washington was not entirely spontaneous. Reformers shaped the tone of public discourse dramatically. The loudest critics of the military system emerged from the executive branch following the debacle, and the citizenry began open debate over the militia system in response to these provocative testimonies of the secretary of war, the president, and other cabinet members. The debate came as the result of the narrative that federal leadership crafted during the disaster’s fallout. This narrative

68 J.B. Varnum to George Izard, July 27, 1814, in Izard, Official Correspondence, 62; Izard to Armstrong, September 28, 1814, idem, 93. See also Rufus McIntire to John Holmes, August 1, 1814, NYSL, Papers of Rufus McIntire, Box 1, Folder 9. 69 Letter of Henry Leavenworth, January 15, 1815, in Eleazar Ripley, ed., Facts Relative to the Campaign on the Niagara in 1814 (Boston: The Patriot-Office, 1815), 25. 70 “Battle of Niagara,” Boston Patriot vol. XI no. 19, August 27, 1814. 53

emphasized the failure of the militiamen to defend the national capital, implying a lack of

blame for the nation’s top leaders. It was certainly a poor showing by the militia, but their

performance actually reflected poor leadership. These leaders—from the president down

to the field commander—had a very direct role in the unfolding debacle. The executive

tried to lay its sins upon the militia scapegoat and banish it into the wilderness of history.

With news of Napoleon’s first abdication having arrived in the United States, and

with Sir , the new commander of all British forces in North

America, anxious to pursue a more aggressive military approach against his enemy,

President Madison began to take defensive precautions. He created a new military

district, covering Washington and Baltimore, and appointed Brigadier General William

Winder to the command. Winder, not by any stretch a military man, was a Baltimore

lawyer whose primary qualification to command was his accidental relationship to his uncle, Levin Winder, the Federalist .71

Cochrane’s strategy was to exploit American disunity. He even encouraged

disgruntled Americans to defect using language reminiscent of overtures to loyalists in

the Revolutionary War.72 Cochrane found an eager accomplice in Rear Admiral George

Cockburn, who agreed that a blow to the nation’s capital would further divide, dishearten, and degrade the American war effort as a whole.73 Cockburn would attempt a raid against

the capital under the command of Major General Robert Ross—a well-respected veteran

of the Duke of Wellington’s campaigns against Napoleon in Spain. If this force were to

71 Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 18. 72 “British Proclamation, by the honourable sir Alexander Cochrane,” April 2, 1814, in Niles Weekly Register vol. VI (March-September, 1814): 242. 73 Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 20. 54

sack both Washington and then Baltimore, perhaps the revolutionary republican

experiment would fall asunder entirely. On the August 19, Ross’s soldiers and marines

came ashore at Benedict, Maryland.

The militia system itself did not deserve much of the blame for the debacle in and

around Washington. John Armstrong had considered the city safe, infamously insisting to

President Madison that the British would prefer Baltimore as a prize, and that therefore

the capital would not be the invaders’ target. Armstrong, who had been such a champion

of an improved military establishment and a more prepared army, controversially kept

General Winder’s forces undermanned and was unable to oversee fortifications

improvement along the approach to the city.74 Absurdly, it was the citizens of

Washington themselves who ended up taking measures to fortify the approaches into

town, although such works would, of course, prove ineffective against the British

regulars.75

While Winder has received his fair share of criticism for failing to fortify

approaches with the soldiers he had available to him, it is worth noting that it was he who

had tried to convince Armstrong that the British could well attack the capital city, and yet

he was deprived of the manpower it would have required to put up a proper defense.76

Politically, Armstrong remained aloof, supposing that the militia his department had requisitioned would be able to assemble at a moment’s notice and fight off British

74 “Report on the Capture of the City of Washington: Correspondence of the Secretary of War and General Winder,” ASP-MA 1:524. 75 Ibid., 1:527. 76 Elting, in Amateurs, to Arms! 199-200, paints Winder as an incompetent political appointee. He was certainly a political choice, but it is difficult to dismiss him as incompetent when his legs were swept out from under him. 55 soldiers. The War Department, in conference with the applicable state governors, assumed that it would entail too many “unnecessary inconveniences” and too much “vast expense” to do anything beyond mustering troops and assigning them into companies.77

The War Department infected militia leaders and field commanders with its lackadaisical approach to defense. When the British forces finally landed in Maryland to begin their overland push against Washington, the Americans were dramatically unready for what would follow. Underprepared and very poorly fortified, some of the people of

Washington City chose to arm themselves with braggadocio. The tatterdemalion army that marched out to meet Ross to the northeast was undermanned, poorly trained, and outgunned, but they felt some measure of comfort that they had superior patriotism.

“Troops from all quarters were pouring in to our assistance,” one of those men noted, and the “most patriotic feelings” around the city led him to conclude that “we consider the city safe.”78

General Ross did not agree with this assessment of the city’s safety. As for the

American troops pouring in from all quarters, and as for the notion that the country was animated for the capital’s defense, Ross found the first few days’ activity to be remarkably peaceful. “On the 20th inst., the army commenced its march, having landed the previous day without opposition,” Ross coolly noted in his report of the excursion.79

On the twenty-fourth, he and his men were lined up near Bladensburg, Maryland, against

77 Report of the War Department, 12 July 1814 in Niles Weekly Register vol. 7, 2. 78 “The enemy,” The Columbian issue 1478 (24 August 1814). 79 Report of Robert Ross, August 30, 1814, reprinted in “Capture of Washington,” Journal no. 3482, October 5, 1814. 56

Map 2: The Approach to Bladensburg, August 1814.

57

For the Americans, August 24 was a time of confused panic. So concerned was

President Madison by the news that the British had broken off from their landing site to the southeast of Washington and headed to within five miles of the federal city that he mounted his own horse—as did his secretary of state, James Monroe—to visit Winder’s headquarters. He found General Winder in the midst of his frenzied attempts to direct his still-assembling forces and array them to meet the threat. As Madison’s cabinet assembled into the room at the headquarters, they began to discuss the reports they had received of the enemy’s movements toward Bladensburg. At long last, Armstrong himself arrived, whereupon he learned for the first time of the enemy’s position.

According to Madison’s public recollection of the day’s events, Armstrong was stupefied and, when asked what preparations he had made for such an eventuality or what advice he could offer, he could only say that he had nothing to submit, except that he had little hope that the militia would be able to withstand the British attack.80

Despite all the confusion, disorganization, and pell-mell mustering of troops, an uninformed observer standing within eyesight distance of the battle about to unfold would probably have given the attacking British forces small odds of success. Since the

British force’s landing, the militia had indeed finally sprung into action and begun to assemble at points east of the to parry the British column’s thrusts. Within three days’ time, the Americans had assembled at least 3,000 men and stationed them along the Eastern Branch; by the twenty-fourth, the force had grown to at least 6,000 against Ross’s 4,500 soldiers and marines.81 Winder had placed Brigadier General Tobias

80 James Madison, “Memorandum: Aug 24 1814,” Madison Papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 81 Armstrong to Winder, August 22, 1814, NARA RG107, M6. 58

Stansbury in command of the troops at Bladensburg, and Stansbury had actually chosen a position that would have proven nearly impossible for the British to penetrate—if the troops had been properly trained and competently led.

The president and his cabinet were not uninformed observers, and they apparently had very little confidence in the abilities of the forces assembled at Bladensburg to hold the river crossing. President Madison himself had gone out to inspect the troops’ dispositions. Secretary of State James Monroe had preceded him there and had personally served as a mounted scout to inform Winder and Stansbury that the British were on their way to Bladensburg. In perhaps one of the most absurd moments of American military history, the president, secretary of state, and secretary of war found themselves well ahead of friendly lines on the Bladensburg side of the Eastern Branch as the enemy approached with sight distance. If they had ridden any farther, or had they not had the fortune of meeting a horseman who had just come back from spotting the marching columns of redcoats, General Ross might have been able to take the American seat of governance in a far more literal way.82

Furthermore, the reason the president had chosen to ride out personally to

Bladensburg in the first place, according to the U.S. attorney general’s testimony, was that he feared arguments between Winder and the secretary of war would delay the proper disposition of troops and he wanted to be there to adjudicate those disagreements.83 The reason Armstrong had gone to Bladensburg, in turn, was President

82 William Simmons’s letter to R.M. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee of Investigation, November 28, 1814, ASP-MA 1:596; Madison, “Memorandum,” Madison papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 83 to Johnson, November 3, 1814, ASP-MA 1:542; also in Quimby, The U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 680. 59

Madison’s belief that Winder needed “aid.” Madison added that in so doing, Armstrong

would know “that if any difficulty on the score of authority should arise,” Madison would

“be near at hand to remove it.”84

In a continuation of the absurdity, Secretary of State James Monroe then began to direct and rearrange Stansbury’s regiments on the field, all while new units of militia and marines continued to pour in piecemeal. Stansbury, still technically the commander of troops, found in his presence at least two ranking officers: the secretary of war, and the commander-in-chief. As a result of all this confusion, no one understood, at the time or

since, how precisely the American troops were in fact arrayed by the time the firing

started.85 It is impossible that the soldiers and marines present were unaware of the

palpable uneasiness coming from such high-level leadership. One lieutenant present had

General Winder approach him with instructions on what road to take when he retreated.86

Winder was mentally defeated before the first shot was fired, and self-defeated men

seldom end up carrying the day.

The battle itself proved a relatively simple affair for the British under Ross’s

command. The troops entered the town of Bladensburg unopposed and began a relatively

brief artillery duel with the Americans while the British prepared for their assault.87

Madison, seated on his horse next to his principle cabinet members, suggested to his companions that perhaps now might be a “proper [time] to withdraw to a position in the

rear.” They had done quite enough. The president, apparently forgetting their previous

84 Madison, “Memorandum,” Madison Papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 85 Quimby, The U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 682. 86 Ibid., 685; John Law to Johnson, November 10, 1814, ASP-MA 1:586. 87 George Robert Gleig, The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans, Third Edition (London: John Murray, 1827), 120-121. 60

meddling, added without embarrassment that they should leave “military movements now

to the military functionaries who were responsible for them.”88

As they galloped off, Ross began to press the American position. After surveying

the bridge and the high ground beyond the river on which his opponents stood, he more

or less marched directly toward them. Ross credited the speed and “impetuosity” of his

light brigade with breaking the Americans’ first line and securing the bridgehead across

the river, which he followed with a bayonet assault against the second American line.89 A third position still followed, occupied by a still-unengaged brigade and an manned by sailors and marines under the command of Commodore .

Despite the determined performance of the marine artillerymen, the British were able to surround them and force their capitulation. The road to Washington lay open for the taking.

Back in Washington, Dolley Madison frenetically prepared for the evacuation that her husband had warned her would be necessary. She set to work stuffing war records and cabinet papers into trunks and readying herself for the British onslaught. With an enemy army marching within ten miles of the nation’s capital, it would have been imprudent not to prepare for a potential evacuation, but Dolley Madison’s instructions from her husband exceeded prudent measures. They betrayed utter panic and a complete resignation to the inevitability of defeat. Even before the two armies had met at

Bladensburg on the twenty-fourth, Dolley had been receiving worried dispatches from her husband warning her that the enemy would almost certainly overwhelm the American

88 Madison, “Memorandum,” Madison Papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 89 Ross, “Capture of Washington,” Aberdeen Journal no. 3482, October 5, 1814. 61

defenders, and that she had to be ready to abandon the White House at any moment. So

alarming were these reports that one White House servant wondered aloud if he should

rig an explosive booby trap to kill the British soldiers when they entered the executive

mansion. Dolley Madison refused permission to set booby traps in the White House

entrance, but understood the sense of panic that had elicited such ideas. Everyone with the ability to do so seemed to be fleeing the city, leaving Dolley to note dolefully that

“Disaffection stalks around us.”90 The next morning, her irascible anxiety for her city’s fate was further piqued by the sight of “groups of [American] military, wandering in all directions, as if there was a lack of arms, or of spirit to fight for their own fireside.”91 The

defeatism of the leadership from President Madison all the way through General Winder

had pervaded an entire city and countryside.

Ross’s army marched unopposed into Washington, whereupon he arrived at

around 8 o’clock in the evening and found the city largely abandoned by all but private

citizens. John Armstrong’s insistence that Ross’s true intent was to march on Baltimore,

not Washington, was now proven humiliatingly inaccurate, but only halfway so. Ross

knew that he could not tarry long in Washington, and that his actual operational objective

lay to the northeast in Baltimore harbor. He had intended to take Washington only in a

raid, perhaps to capture government prisoners and parole them in exchange for a ransom,

not to mention the ransom that could be exacted for the public buildings themselves. The

choice would have been simple: pay a comparatively small toll now and avoid

90 Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, August 24, 1814, Dolley Madison Papers, box 1, reel 1, LC. Dolley Madison’s letter was begun on the 23rd and continues on the 24th; this portion comes from the section written on the 23rd. 91 Ibid., from the portion written on the 24th. 62

destruction, or pay more later to rebuild the government. Now that Ross was there, he

feared a larger grouping of American reinforcements trapping him along the banks of the

Potomac. Unable to take anyone of note hostage or to demand remittance from the federal treasury for the city itself, Ross apparently lost little time deciding that the best course of action was to set fire to the public buildings, to the Navy , and to two ships of war being assembled there.92 As for the White House itself,

When the detachment, sent out to destroy Mr. Maddison’s house, entered his dining parlour, they found a dinner-table spread, and covers laid for forty guests...They sat down to it, therefore, not indeed in the more orderly manner…and having satisfied their appetites…they finished by setting fire to the house which had so liberally entertained them.93

The British soldiers created a spectacle there upon the Potomac. Besides the burning public buildings, they set fire to a powder magazine at the Navy Yard. The resultant explosion created a perfect cacophony of war. The force of its explosive shock shattered windows, and the debris flying from the force of the detonation pierced walls and roofs. , a lieutenant with the British forces there, recalled with satisfaction the conduct of his comrades in arms, who he believed had every right to act out on their frustrations with the Americans in such a way. According to Gleig’s account,

an American partisan had fired from a house upon a British flag of truce, killing General

Ross’s horse. This violation of propriety was enough, in Gleig’s opinion, to justify his

contented sighing at what he witnessed that night. “It would be difficult to conceive a

finer spectacle than” the holocaust unraveling before him. “The sky was brilliantly

illumined by the different conflagrations… I do not recollect to have witnessed, at any

92 Ross, “Capture of Washington,” Aberdeen Journal no. 3482, October 5, 1814; Gleig, Campaigns of the British Army, 128. 93 Gleig, Campaigns of the British Army, 135. 63

period of my life, a scene more striking.”94 The night sky was aglow, burning in shades

of crimson that reflected the arsonists’ uniform coats, and could be seen for miles around.

There was open despair among the American populace after hearing news of the

destruction. One officer expressed his conviction that “the Country, I fear, will fall. There

is a rottenness in this people: If the country is invaded, they will be divided.”95 Elizabeth

Parke Custis, residing across the river from Washington in Arlington, greeted the attack

with her characteristic melodrama. Noting that the denizens of the area were astir with

rumors, which had overblown the news of the destruction, she concluded that “an eternal

stigma rests upon our name.” Washington, the man whose name the city bore, and who

was the husband of her grandmother, had never been happier than when he saw “the

keystone of the national edifice” first laid there, and now it had been “trampled on by

Ruthless Invaders.”96

In the wake of the ruthless invaders’ trampling, the Americans most responsible

for the debacle began to do what any politician or general does in the wake of disaster: they spun the narrative to exonerate themselves. Although there was, as we have seen,

plenty of blame to go around for the poor showing at Bladensburg, the actors involved

tended to direct their censure downward, primarily toward the militia. James Madison

had the added convenience of placing part of the blame on his secretary of war, whom he

carefully portrayed as hesitant, absent, and incompetent. Not that these portraitures were

unwarranted, but Madison was careful to omit any of the politicizing for which he was

94 Ibid., 132. 95 John Smith to James Monroe, August 28, 1814, Monroe Papers, LC. 96 Elizabeth Custis to David Warden, August 28, 1814, Custis-Lee Papers, Box 2, “Custis-Warden Letters, 1811-1833,” LC. 64 responsible, such as Winder’s appointment to command despite Armstrong’s wishes.97

Madison’s frustration with Armstrong’s leadership of the War Department had begun well before the British landed on the Maryland shore, and was further stoked in the aftermath of the burning of Washington when the British conducted a follow-on raid against , Virginia.98 Madison, having clearly lost whatever confidence he had had left in Armstrong’s leadership, accepted Armstrong’s resignation in early September.

Few in the public network regretted the news of Armstrong’s having been relieved of his duties. John Jacob Astor, writing from New York where he was working with leaders of the financial sector to re-establish the Bank of the United States, wrote his friend James Monroe to admit that the only silver lining the citizens could find after the debacle was the word that Armstrong had resigned. Astor added in an additional jab at the administration by noting that “federalists seem to have foreseen this.”99 Elizabeth

Custis concurred. “I consider Armstrong the author of all,” she concluded exactingly before ascribing to Armstrong far darker motivations for the conflagration. Madison

“knew not the Demoniac Soul of A[rmstrong] – he was M[adison]’s enemy – he sought to injure him – he hoped by managing the War Office as he has done – to ruin the

Republican cause.”100 The Federalists in New England, who had according to John Astor foreseen this disaster, were every bit as livid. Angry at the president’s cabinet in general, and Armstrong in particular, they charged Madison’s administration with being “totally

97 Elting, Amateurs, to Arms!, 199. 98 James Madison to John Armstrong, August 13, 1814, in Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900-1910); James Madison, “Memorandum, 29 Aug 1814” in Madison Papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 99 John Jacob Astor to James Monroe, September 2, 1814, Monroe Papers, LC. 100 Custis to Warden, September 8, 1814, Custis-Lee papers, “Custis-Warden Letters,” LC. 65

unqualified to discharge with propriety the duties of their offices” in a scathing editorial

that they aptly titled “The Crisis!” It was time, they concluded, to replace the old with new, more qualified men.101

Compared to Armstrong, General Winder received a comparatively small lashing

in the press and elsewhere; the true flaying was reserved for his men. Madison passive

aggressively hinted that militia were to blame for the poor performance. The capital had

been “defended by troops less numerous” than the British, which was patently untrue,

“and almost entirely of the militia,” which according to the antebellum Republican

orthodoxy ought to have been irrelevant, if not beneficial.102 The implications of the

militia’s perceived failure were obvious. Even before the heroism of the Battle of

Baltimore, the poetry of in Baltimore’s harbor, and the resolute

defense of Fort McHenry, some Americans were becoming aware that the militia system

as it had existed was now obsolete based on the regulars’ performance on the Niagara in the preceding month. One anonymous contributor opined that

the present war clearly evinces the inutility of exposing a raw undisciplined militia, formed on the spur of the occasion, to a skillful, brave, deliberate foe. It is discipline that inspires courage, and causes a multitude to act as one man. The late battle of Chippawa incontrovertibly supports the assertion. When the force of volunteers [at Bladensburg]… were furiously charged by the British regulars, they fled in every direction, and even the personal bravery of their commander could not rally them… But how different were the British met by the column of regulars, commanded by the gallant Scott.103

101 “The CRISIS!” Boston Patriot, vol. XI no. 584, September 3, 1814. 102 James Madison, “A Proclamation,” printed in Boston Patriot vol. XII no. 586, September 10, 1814. 103 “A True-born American,” “Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Gen. Winder’s camp, dated Aug. 24 at 1 o’clk in the morning,” Columbian vol. V no. 1480, August 27, 1814. 66

Armstrong, perhaps still licking his wounds from the whole experience, was only too

willing to lay the blame at the feet of the soldiers. In his own history of the war,

Armstrong revealed to his reader that the trouble at Bladensburg was the result of

indolence on the part of the volunteers who stood idly by, comforting themselves that

their spirit of patriotism would ward off the invaders. Had the militia set immediately to

constant harassing attacks, both day and night, against the British forces’ supply trains,

they would have worn down the invaders’ patience.104

Not everyone was entirely convinced that the blame lay at the militia’s feet, of

course. Some citizens felt that the militia system was getting undue blame, and that there

were plenty of counterexamples wherein the militia had conducted themselves well.

Perhaps, these dissenters argued, the problem was with the leadership and their inability

to provide the militia with clear guidance.105 The ubiquitous comparisons to the

American Revolutionary War continued to mount up on both sides of the militia debate.

“And as to this mistaken idea,” said one veteran of the first war against Britain, “that

American militia are unequal to the contest against British regulars, I am living witness to the contrary.” He then called on every citizen to become a soldier, as his generation had done.106 His contrarian urging demonstrates that the American people he had encountered

were subscribing to the belief that the militia system was failing. Even calls to join the

U.S. Volunteers, who were far more akin to regulars than they were to militia,

104 John Armstrong, Notices of the War of 1812 vol. II (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846), 150-151. 105 See “Important and Glorious Victory!” The Boston Patriot vol. XII no. 588, September 17, 1814, which describes the militia’s splendid conduct at ; “Heroism of the Militia” in idem., no. 590, September 24, 1814; “Baleful Croakings,” Columbian no. 1498, September 17, 1814, castigates a printed letter in Poulson’s Advertiser (Phila.) that besmirches the conduct of militia; Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer vol. LXXII no. 32, August 25, 1814, 3. 106 “Patriotism of Age,” Providence Patriot Columbian Phenix vol. 12 no. 33, August 27, 1814. 67

engendered “an ardent desire to emulate the public virtue and bravery of our gallant

ancestors of the Revolution.”107

More generally, and as noted at the opening of this chapter, many Americans

comforted themselves with the knowledge that they were in the right, and that the crisis

they now had faced since at least April of 1814 would only serve to strengthen the ties of

patriotism that bound them together as a nation. Gone would be the old petty political

rivalries, calumnies, and discord. Discredited now were the American citizens who had

celebrated British victories in the streets of New York and had openly spoken of their

hope that the British Crown would reclaim its hold on the American states.108 It all made

for a wonderful story indeed.

* * *

When the British decided to go on the offensive against the United States in 1814,

they were taking a risk. North America was, as a general rule, a very difficult place to

wage wars of conquest. The United States in particular was too large for the small British army to control, its people too fiercely independent, and the geography too prohibitive for

large-scale military operations anyway. Britons had learned these lessons through the

difficult experience of their first war against the Americans. Admiral Cochrane had

believed, however, that there was a way around the military dilemma he faced when he

took command of all British forces in North America. If he could get the United States to collapse in on itself, he would not need to wage a war of conquest; American political dissention would wage that campaign for him. The idea was not illogical: if there are

107 “The Standard Unfurled!” Raleigh Register and Gazette vol. XV no. 780, September 2, 1814. 108 “The English Celebration,” Columbian vol. V no. 1430, June 28, 1814. 68 already actors within a network actively working to tear down a structure, outside pressure applied to a critical point on that structure could indeed cause it to collapse. To paraphrase what another invader would say in a later century, sometimes all one has to do is kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure comes crashing down. It was not without precedent, either. Recently, the last vestiges of the old Holy Roman Empire had finally dissolved under the constant external pressure of war mixed with the internal fracturing of the political confederation. One could argue the same for the French ancien regime that had broken apart between 1783 and 1792.

Unfortunately for Cochrane and his government, he had misunderstood the nature of the structure he was trying to attack. With the British decision to attack, Americans who supported the war could now claim that the British were trying to undo the

Revolution, and it seemed a feasible argument to Americans. It was no longer Mr.

Madison’s War of conquest against Canada, but the Second War of Independence. This crisis afforded the reformers an opportunity to shape the narrative of the war effort itself.

Now that part of the structure had been sacked, burned, and otherwise torn down, the reformers had rhetorical leverage to introduce their plans to rebuild.

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Chapter 2: “The Friends of a Respectable Army” The Madison-Monroe Reform Measures, 1815-1817

No gentleman would employ our soldiers in opening roads, or making canals, as the Romans did theirs; they could therefore perform no labor or service, unless it was in building forts, repairing garrisons, or mere military parade.1 —Representative Solomon Sharp, 1815

Good roads and canals judiciously laid out, are the proper remedy. In the recent war, how much did we suffer for want of them! …But on this subject of national power, what can be more important than a perfect unity in every part[?]…Whatever impedes the intercourse of the extremes with this, the centre of the Republic, weakens the Union… Let us then bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space.2 —John C. Calhoun, 1817

As the War of 1812 drew to a close, the U.S. government lay, in a very real sense, in smoldering ruins. It was now time to rebuild. This effort required American leaders such as James Madison, James Monroe, and Winfield Scott to control the narrative of the war and convince Americans of the failure of the militia at Bladensburg and the superiority of the regulars at the battles on the Niagara. It was critically important, moreover, that the narrative be nested with revolutionary rhetoric. Thus, as 1814 was drawing to a close, Madison and his political allies had the challenge of convincing

Congress to rebuild a stronger structure, one that would not appear so weak and thus

1 Argument of Solomon Sharp, “Military Peace Establishment,” February 25, 1815, Annals, House of Representatives (hereafter HR), 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 1202. 2 John C. Calhoun, “Internal Improvement,” February 4, 1817, Annals, HR, 14th Congress, 2nd Session, 852-854. 70

tempt would-be attackers like the British navy. Madison, perhaps more than any other

American, felt the full weight of how near-run the war had been, and he now had to

translate his urgency into terms that Congress would adopt.

Washington City, after all, was supposed to have been an extravagantly grand city

of monuments that embodied America’s greatness. In 1814, ironically, it did embody

America’s greatness: it was a lackluster city that reflected a lackluster republic. Richard

Rush described Washington that year as a “meagre village, a place with a few bad houses

and extensive swamps.”3 But less than four years later, Elizabeth Custis was able to remark that “Washington is progressing rapidly,” and that new houses and buildings were being erected everywhere, “mak[ing] it a very desirable place.”4 Rebuilding the national

government and its military institutions required the destruction of the old structure. If

James Madison and James Monroe were to rebuild the structure according to their

Franco-nationalistic desires, they would have to convince the people of an acceptable

alternative. The reformers had developed the blueprints for a new military system; it

remained for that system to be built.

This chapter is about the specific measures the reformers sought and the manner

in which they attempted to enact them in the immediate aftermath of the 1814 crisis. As

noted in the introduction to Part I, the Madison-Monroe reform measures included four

specific goals concerning the army. First, the militias should be standardized and better

disciplined. Second, the peacetime army should remain as large as possible—preferably

20,000 men at least. Third, the United States would need a better-integrated network of

3 Richard Rush to , September 5, 1814, Richard Rush Papers, LC; quoted in Pitch, The Burning of Washington, 29. 4 Custis to Warden, April 3, 1818, Benham-McNeil papers, “Custis-Warden letters,” LC. 71

stone coastal fortifications in the country’s major urban areas. Finally, and undergirding the former three goals, there needed to exist a better, more professionally-educated officer corps.5 The administration was most aggressive in pursuit of the latter two goals.

Without an officer corps trained according to French methods, all other reforms would be for naught if entrusted to unqualified men. Similarly, without a French-inspired fortification system, the American citizens would only continue to rely on themselves, rather than on a stronger federal government, for local security.

In all four cases, the reformers sought something tangible—something that the citizenry could see and feel. Stone seacoast fortifications were the most visible and obvious symbols of the federal government’s power, but even the seemingly mundane adjustments to militia drill and to the regular army’s officer education could impact a citizen’s everyday world. A citizen-soldier in a militia would have a greater sense of belonging to the national military establishment when he saw, on the cover of his drill manual that he had to commit to his intimate knowledge, the federal eagle and the words

United States. Further, the increased regular army garrisons, commanded by increasingly competent West Point-trained officers and linked together by the roads and canals the

reformers foresaw, would remind his neighbors of the government’s important role in

their security.

Pressing such ideas meant pushing the boundaries of the very revolutionary myth

the reformers had nurtured—Madison was calling for unprecedented expansion of the

American military system. As long as the Madison-Monroe political coalition stayed

5 James Madison, “Peace Message,” February 20, 1815, Annals, Senate, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 255- 256. 72

within the bounds of this new military myth, they tended to be successful. It was when

they exceeded the bounds of the myth that they received pushback, not only from

Congress, but even from within the ranks of military reformers. As it turned out, others

did not universally share Madison and Monroe’s “lessons” of the last war.

The question facing these societal and institutional engineers in early 1815, then,

was how to proceed with the construction. Between 1815 and 1817, Madison and Monroe

struggled to determine just how far they could redirect the course of the walls they were

building without their popular base giving way. To build a stone fortress requires not

only a high degree of technical acumen on the part of the engineers constructing it; it also

requires immense resourcing of time, material, and personnel—all of which can be

readily depleted. A wood fortress, by contrast, may be as simple a project as heaping

timber to form a log wall. Because wood can be hewn quickly with hand tools and is not

as dense as stone, it requires little training to manipulate. Stone, of course, is a far denser

material, and therefore there are more risks of collapse if an engineer fails to stack the

bricks carefully. But if done properly, a stone structure will stand indefinitely, nearly impervious to rot, decay, or external pressure. The top-down reformer seeking to alter a network has to approach his project with equal care. If the engineer attempts to direct the fortress walls too far from the base of the structure, the base will fail to support it.

The popular base here refers to the people’s congressional representatives who had to approve, reject, or alter the measures that Madison and Monroe laid before the legislature. Historian Carlton Smith has offered a brief analysis of this relationship between the branches of government in 1815 onward. His 1976 article argues that the debates in Congress over these reforms “marked a transition from the semi-amateur”

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prewar army to a professional force that relied much less on the militia.6 C. Edward

Skeen builds on Smith’s optimism about the military build-up of 1815-1816, though he

broadens the scope of his analysis to the entirety of congressional politics in 1816. Skeen

calls 1816 a “pivotal year” for American national growth, arguing that despite some

political scars from the war years, Americans largely set aside their poor feelings and

came together to forge a new American identity.7

Such optimism about postwar politics leads to conclusions that require some

caveats, such as Skeen’s claim that the 10,000-man army that Congress approved in 1815 was “a positive step towards a professional army” or that the state governors’ calls in

1815 to improve their state militias equated to an endorsement of standing-army

professionalism.8 Michael Fitzgerald’s essay on the national defense establishment comes

closer to the mark when he pushes back on the idea that postwar reforms in Congress

reflected the lessons that the War of 1812 had “demonstrated.” Fitzgerald emphasizes the

severe opposition in Congress to a standing army. Instead of looking backward to the last

war, he argues, the peacetime army reflected the current presidential and congressional

concerns over a continued European threat; Monroe required the army for diplomatic

purposes.9 This explanation has tremendous merit—Congress would not have likely approved a 10,000-man army without the sense of a looming European crisis. Diplomatic

6 Carlton B. Smith, “Congressional Attitudes toward Military Preparedness during the Monroe Administration,” Military Affairs 40, 1 (February 1976): 22. 7 C. Edward Skeen, 1816: America Rising (Lexington: University Press of , 2003), xi, 18. 8 Ibid., 136. 9 Michael S. Fitzgerald, “‘Nature Unsubdued’: Diplomacy, Expansion and the American Military Buildup of 1815-1816,” in Samuel J. Watson, ed., Warfare in the USA, 1784-1861 (Trowbridge, UK: The Cromwell Press, 2005), 206-210. C. Joseph Bernardo and Eugene H. Bacon offer an even gloomier portrait of congressional attitudes in American Military Policy: Its Development since 1775 (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1961), stating that wartime fervor wore off quickly and that Congress was too self-interested to invest in a larger army (p. 146). 74

considerations alone, however, do not fully explain Congress’s approval of so large an

army or the executive’s urging for so much larger an army than the House was willing to approve. Earlier European crises did not yield such measures, and the deliberateness with which Monroe pursued Napoleonic reform suggests more than mere short-term interests for the national defense establishment. The postwar army debate actually reflected past

“lessons,” present diplomatic tensions, and future dreams.

“Adding Discipline…to the Militia”: The Scott Manual

The first reform measure that Madison attempted to implement was to increase the government’s regulatory control over militia and regular forces by publishing a new tactical manual. Out of political and practical necessity, Madison understood that the

United States would continue its tradition of reliance primarily upon militia. Given this reality, the reformers sought at least to imbue the militia with greater discipline, interoperability with the regular army, and an expanded degree of federal control.10 In doing so, the reformers attempted to coopt the myth of Scott’s camp of instruction in

Buffalo leading up to the 1814 Niagara campaign, but the results were mixed. Many state militias were slow to adopt the manual, citing familiar objections about the impropriety of a European system for American citizen-soldiers.

Before and during the War of 1812, the drill manuals that William Duane and

Alexander Smyth had written and attempted to profligate had run up against pro-French and pro-English political proclivities. After the war, the great question had become local versus central control. When John C. Calhoun gave his speech to Congress on a measure

10 James Madison, “Peace Message,” February 20, 1815, Annals of Congress, Senate, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 255-256. 75

for building roads and canals in the expanding United States, connecting the disparate parts of a republic into an actual physical network was a major concern of his.

Republicanism, he reminded the House, was not supposed to have worked beyond the polis of Greek tradition according to the philosophers of yesteryear, never mind across a continental empire. Republicanism was too anarchic to hold together. The political discord that the United States had experienced during the war had nearly proved the old philosophers right, Calhoun warned. It was time to stop deferring to the local governments on matters of infrastructure.11

To connect a country together, to bind it up as one union, would cement the

varying factions of people as one. It was more than just an ideological issue for these

reformers; it was a military necessity. In a nation so spread out and thinly populated, it

was critically important that the people be able to come together and move quickly to

meet a threat.12 If some future enemy were to land once more on American shores, and

the people were to overwhelm the attackers, they would need to have a common military

language with which to operate—a factor that the Americans had been sorely lacking in

the late conflict. It was this latter point about the war’s lessons on which reformers

implicitly relied.

Unsurprisingly, then, Winfield Scott’s camp of instruction myth was to play a

central role in the formation of a new drill manual for combined use of the militias and

regular army. One civilian commentator had noted during the crisis period of 1814 that

“If we ever improve, it will be when, under the lash of bitter experience, we not only see

11 John C. Calhoun, “Internal Improvement,” February 4, 1817, Annals, HR, 14th Congress, 2nd Session, 853. 12 Ibid, 852. 76

but feel—feel universally, the necessity of improvement.”13 The statement may have been

true enough, but only a relatively small percentage of Americans had truly felt the bitter

lashing of war. Besides, how to go about improvement remained an open question, but

the Madison administration believed it knew the answer. In late 1814, the stone-fortress administration raced against the clock to build a manual around its foremost hero before peace broke out—the conflict’s end would obviate the manual as a war measure.

In early 1814, the secretary of war was already questioning what the value of

Duane’s or Smyth’s handbook was if no one was using it.14 Duane himself, aware of the

dubiety surrounding his manual, protested and set himself to writing a second tactical

treatise, a task that he was undertaking as the British landed in Maryland to burn

Washington. “I am satisfied [that I will] put an end to the silly notions which have disturbed some persons on the subject” of military regulations and drill, Duane insisted to

Secretary of War Armstrong.15 As Duane crafted his rebuttal, however, Scott was convalescing from the wounds he received at Lundy’s Lane and was basking in his own glory. That autumn, Scott received a Congressional Gold Medal with a commendation for

“his uniform gallantry and good conduct in sustaining the reputation of the arms of the

United States.” Scott noted with immense satisfaction that this honor “contains a

compliment not bestowed by Congress on any other officer whatever,” despite

Congress’s having bestowed the same medals on Jacob Brown and his other subordinate

generals from the Niagara campaign. Duane could not compete with Scott’s reputation

13 “After a Storm the Air Is More Pure,” The Boston Spectator vol. 1 no. 38, September 17, 1814. 14 Circular Letter, January 24, 1814, NARA RG107, M6. 15 Duane to Armstrong, August 18, 1814, NARA RG107, M6; quoted in Donald E. Graves, “‘Dry Books of Tactics’: U.S. Infantry Manuals of the War of 1812 and After,” Military Collector & Historian 38, 2 (Summer, 1986): 58. 77

for military glory; if the Madison administration were going to strengthen the national

army, it would require the hero of Chippewa’s name to do so. In December 1814, it was

Scott, not Duane or Alexander Smyth, who was appointed president of a board of tactics.16

On November 10, 1814, the Senate’s Committee on Military Affairs had asked

Secretary of War James Monroe—John Armstrong had been relieved of his cabinet

position in September—whether there existed any uniform system of training for the

American army, and, if so, why it had not been better implemented. Monroe answered

only the first part of this query, and even that part he answered circuitously, when he

submitted his opinion that “no uniform system of discipline has heretofore been practised

in training the armies of the United States.” He did not bother mentioning Smyth’s

handbook or the revised manual Duane had been crafting. Instead, Monroe suggested

convening a board of experienced field officers to create a new manual for the army’s

use.17 It was William Lowndes of who apparently liaised with Monroe

and who wrote the congressional resolution approving the formation of a board of tactics

with Scott at its head. Lowndes, interestingly enough, had not only authored the Gold

Medal resolution to honor Scott’s salvation of the army’s reputation at Chippewa and

Lundy’s Lane, he would also prove a strong supporter of the larger peacetime army in the

congressional debate.18 When the army adjutant, General Daniel Parker, wrote the order

16 Scott, Memoirs, 152-153. 17 James Monroe to the Speaker of the House, “System of Discipline for the Army,” November 22, 1814, ASP-MA, 1:523. 18 Hindman, “New Infantry Tactics,” 332; Scott, Memoirs, 152; “Military Peace Establishment,” February 25, 1815, Annals, HR, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 1204. 78

for Scott to convene the board, Parker explicitly stated that the product was to be a

specific translation of the French manual, lest there be any confusion on the matter.19

Under Scott’s presidency of the board of tactics were other distinguished veterans, most notably Brigadier General Joseph Swift, the chief of engineers for the army, and

Colonel John Fenwick who, like Scott and two of Swift’s subordinates, would later travel to France to study the Napoleonic military art.20 It was no secret to the board members as

they met in the last month of 1814 that the peace negotiations with the British were well

underway in Ghent, and the prospect of an imminent end to the war necessitated quick

work. Indeed, the board’s work was still unfinished when, in February 1815, the news of

peace came to Washington. Scott’s board quickly unveiled its finished project. It was little more than John Macdonald’s 1807 translation of the 1791 Règlement with minor adaptations for the American army. Like those who had criticized Smyth’s manual in

1812, Scott’s critics failed to see enough difference between the 1791 French manual and

the American adaptation.21 According to this critique, the French system was not

necessarily destined to work for the Americans, since matters of geography and political

culture did not translate as easily as words on a page.

The object of the board of tactics was not necessarily effectiveness, completeness,

or even suitability as much as it was uniformity.22 The old days of each brigadier and

regimental commander developing his own system had to end. To standardize drill was,

19 Daniel Parker, General Order of December 27, 1814, reprinted in Rules and Regulations for the Field Exercise and Maneouvres of Infantry… (Philadelphia: Anthony Finley, 1824). 20 Hindman, “New Infantry Tactics,” 332; Scott, Memoirs, 154; Monroe to Henry Jackson, October 12, 1815, Monroe papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. 21 Hindman, “New Infantry Tactics,” 332; Allan Peskin, Winfield Scott, 62. 22 Peskin, Winfield Scott, 62. 79 in effect, to create interchangeable parts for the army. To create such an industrial system long before the wheels of industry had begun to turn in the United States would have been a tremendous accomplishment. If uniformity was Scott’s (and Madison’s) foremost goal, however, the 1815 manual did not immediately achieve that objective for the militia. It would take at least another five years for many states to enact Scott’s reforms.

“The great difficulty,” according to an 1819 report of Congress, “…is the application of a system of discipline” across so many states, territories, and communities. The author of this report, Representative , believed that some states had rejected the 1815 manual because of the associated expenses and difficulties in implementing such a training system for the militia.23 Like John C. Calhoun’s roads and canals, it was one thing to desire them, and a far more difficult thing to engineer them.

Creating a national network would not prove as simple as publishing a book and presenting it to the states for adoption. The militia was an entirely different force, as the argument went, and was constituted for an entirely different purpose than that of the regular army. Napoleon’s tactics were not suited for townsmen, and certainly not for frontiersmen. Not to adopt the 1815 manual, therefore, was to forgo the uniformity it symbolized in favor of an American individualistic ideal. The pro-Napoleonic reformers had assumed, based on their biases, that the superiority of French drill was self-evident based on France’s astounding tactical victories.24 To “improve,” then, obviously meant to learn those practices. But the diverse groups of Americans outside the center were not so quickly convinced.

23 “Report of Mr. Harrison, of the committee upon the improvement of the organization and discipline of the militia,” January 22, 1819, ASP-MA 1:824. 24 Duane, American Military Library, 1:i-ii. 80

“The Maintenance of an Adequate Regular Force”: The Peace Establishment in Congress

As U.S. politicians began to contemplate the peacetime military establishment upon the war’s end, President Madison and his secretary of war had to leverage revolutionary language carefully when presenting their ambitious reform measures to

Congress and to the American people. James Monroe first articulated his bold set of recommendations in his report to Congress of October 17, 1814. He noted that the armies of the United States had consistently failed to meet their authorized strength of 62,448 men, and that it was critical to recruit to full strength as rapidly as possible. More astonishingly, though, Monroe demanded that “a permanent force” of no fewer than

40,000 men, be raised “in addition to the present military establishment,” implying an army of over 100,000 men. These additional 40,000 would have been specifically for local “defence of our cities and frontiers,” something like a full-time national guard to free up the regulars for campaigns.

Such a proposition doubtless would have seemed outrageous in a nation whose permanent force had never amounted to more than a few thousand men under arms.

Monroe tried to explain his position by leveraging appropriate rhetoric. “[T]he nature of the crisis in which we are involved…claim[s] particular attention,” he said. The British government was attempting “to destroy the political existence” of the republic. “Forced to contend again for our liberties and independence, we are called on for a display of all the patriotism which distinguished our fellow-citizens in the first great struggle.” He closed this thought by stating that the British depredations along the American coast and the increased danger of 1814 could only serve to stiffen American resolve, and that the

81

American war effort would therefore be even “more successful and glorious.”25

Unsurprisingly, Congress did not agree to expand the standing army to 100,000. Monroe

was asking for too much, and for all his attempts at rationalizing the measures within the

revolutionary framework, his pleadings were unconvincing.

In Madison’s peace message to the nation, which he wrote on February 18, the president necessarily took a more conservative—and realistic—approach than Monroe had. Since there could be no question of army expansion now that the war was over, the best for which he could hope was to maintain as many regulars as possible and to increase their professional competence; his goal was a 20,000-man regular force. On the day after a senator on the Committee on Military Affairs had motioned to reduce the military establishment, Madison outlined his platform using rather disingenuous terms that he couched in language familiar to antimilitary traditionalists.26 He insisted that

America had reluctantly wielded the sword against its mother nation once more only to

assure its continued independence. The war was successful, Madison told Congress,

because “of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the

valor of the military and naval forces.”27

Madison continued in his peace message to Congress with measured words that emphasized the need to maintain readiness for Britain’s next attempt to undo the

revolution. He acknowledged the fiduciary importance of armed forces reduction, but

urged against too drastic a drawdown. “Experience has taught us,” Madison argued, “that

25 James Monroe to William Giles, Committee on Military Affairs, October 17, 1814, ASP-MA 1:514. 26 “Proceedings,” in idem., 252. 27 James Madison, “Peace Message,” February 20, 1815, Annals of Congress, Senate, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 255-256. 82 neither the pacific dispositions of the American people” nor its government could exempt the nation from its obligation to stay prepared for war. “Congress will, therefore, I am confident, provide for the maintenance of an adequate regular force,” Madison concluded, adding as tactfully as he could that he hoped also to add “discipline to the distinguished bravery of the militia.”28 As Monroe had done in October, Madison was attempting to clothe a fairly radical idea in familiar fabric, and here again, his logic was not entirely convincing to all members of Congress. Why, a congressman could ask, is it necessary to retain a standing army when, by Madison’s own admission, America had won the war primarily because of the people’s patriotism and the militia’s stalwart spirit?

Indeed, almost immediately after the conclusion of the peace, Congress began to raise these very questions about the memory of the war. Fortunately for Madison and

Monroe, their military preparedness argument convinced enough congressmen to save the army from a near total return to the pre-war status quo. The debate opened with a bill to reduce the army to 10,000 men, which although a drastic cut from 62,558, would still make it the largest peacetime force in American history to that point.29 Its sponsor argued that the British army and navy still loomed on their frontiers, and that a war-ready force was necessary to give the United States diplomatic leverage in negotiations.30 The thought of a 10,000-man army, even at a time when the crisis of 1814 was so fresh in memory, made many congressmen squeamish. One representative countered with a motion to reduce the force to 6,000 men, claiming that “we have a better security than

28 Peace Message, idem, 256. 29 Fitzgerald, “‘Nature Unsubdued,’” in Watson, ed., 206. It was the largest, that is, in terms of actual enlistments. The 1811 army was authorized to a strength of 10,000, but never rose to more than 7,000. 30 “Military Peace Establishment,” February 25, 1815, Annals, HR, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 1196-1198. 83

ten, or even fifty, thousand regulars. The yeomanry of the country is the great security.”31

Other congressmen demanded fewer still; proposals came in for as few as 2,000 men on

the idea that “This is a Government of the people, and…the burdens you impose on them should be made as light as possible.”32

Clearly, it was not entirely evident to every member of the House that the War of

1812 had proven the need for a standing army. Congress’s support for the 10,000-man

peace establishment was the result of an “animated and deeply interesting debate” in

which some antimilitary congressmen waxed emotional about the societal dangers of a

large standing army.33 One representative offered yet another line of logic against a large peacetime army. Republican Representative Solomon Sharp argued that the peace establishment officers of 1811 had failed once actual war came in 1812 because peacetime officers were, by their nature, less competent. That the officer corps had improved by 1814 showed that “officers of [the former] Peace Establishment were by their habits fitted” only for garrison duty, and not for actual combat. Garrison life was so mundane, he felt, that no gentleman of talent and merit would bother officering a peacetime army.34 Scott, Monroe, and Madison believed that the prewar army had failed

because of a lack of competence and training; Sharp believed that the prewar army had

failed because of the nature of peacetime armies. The two competing narratives on each

side had at least surface-level validity, but more importantly, they fit in with each side’s

biases.

31 Remarks of Rep. Desha in idem, 1200. 32 Argument of Solomon Sharp, February 25, 1815, idem, 1202. 33 Peace establishment proceedings in idem, 1210. 34 Argument of Solomon Sharp, February 25, 1815, idem, 1202. 84

Even congressmen who supported the larger army size did not oppose the traditional anti-professional logic directly. So locked in were most to the idea that a standing army was incompatible with republican virtue that there was little point in doing so. Instead, they framed their arguments in terms of the necessity to maintain a war footing while renewed war with Britain remained a distinct possibility. According to the orthodox position, a larger force was justified when there was a specific threat to meet, and there could be little room for trusting the machinations of the European kings, each of whom still had massive reserves of wartime troops ready to march. This argument eventually won out, despite the House’s initial vote favoring a reduction to 6,000 men.

On March 3, as the Congress adjourned, the House approved a 10,000-man army (5,000 fewer than what the Senate had approved).35 Madison and Monroe could comfort themselves knowing that the army was now significantly larger than it had been in 1811.

In fact, to have secured such a large peacetime army was, in itself, a considerable political victory given the national mood toward armies, but the pushback they received in Congress demonstrated that the wood-fortress mentality was still alive and well. That the debate, as it had played out in Congress, was centered around the tension between resisting British military might while also preserving conservative notions of liberty speaks to the endurance of the narrative obstacles the reformers had to overcome.

“Improving all the Means of Harbor Defence”: Stone Fortresses

Another one of Madison’s reform measures that he had introduced to Congress in his peace message was improving coastal fortifications. This goal was closely intertwined with his added desire to advance military professionalism, since engineering a

35 Idem, 1200-1204; 1271. 85 fortification required education and training. These fortifications obviously would serve the important function of protecting the U.S. coast from the kind of attacks that had so disquieted the American people in 1814, but their position in and among the major eastern seaboard population centers would serve an added benefit. It would normalize the

U.S. defense establishment by literally building it into the American landscape.

Stone fortresses were, of course, not new to the United States after 1814, but the reformers had used the threat of invasion to place renewed emphasis on improving and increasing these bastions. When Madison and Monroe had attempted to reform the army by keeping a large peacetime force and increasing the discipline of the militia, the resistance had been from politicians who rejected their narrative of the war’s lessons. In an ironic reversal, the Madison-Monroe reform measures for seacoast fortification were comparatively easy politically, and the pushback now came mostly from within the army itself when the administration commissioned a French engineer to assist in the construction.

The history of seacoast fortifications has received less scholarly focus than the frontier army of the early nineteenth century, but the eastern saltwater frontier was every bit as important to and indicative of American military thinking as the western frontier was.36 From the colonial era through the Revolutionary War, American seacoast fortifications were reflections of the wood-fortress military mentality. On the western

36 The standard text on the history of U.S. seacoast fortification is Robert S. Browning, III, Two If by Sea: The Development of American Coastal Defense Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983). See also Mark A. Smith, Engineering Security: The Corps of Engineers and Third System Defense Policy, 1815- 1861 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009); Samuel J. Watson, “Knowledge, Interest and the Limits of Military Professionalism: The Discourse on American Coastal Defence, 1815-1860,” War in History 5, 3 (1998): 280-307; and Arthur P. Wade, Artillerists and Engineers: The Beginnings of American Seacoast Fortifications 1794-1815 (Baltimore: Coast Defense Study Group Press, 2011). 86

frontier and seacoast alike, locals would assemble a wooden structure to guard against

whatever threat lay before them and, whenever the conflict was over, would abandon or

disassemble the structure.37

Such a system was inexpensive, temporary, and best of all, it required no central

direction or governing bureaucracy. It worked well, or well enough, for 18th-century

colonial wars, but during the Revolutionary War the Continental leadership had keenly

felt the American deficiency in the technical branches of engineering and artillery. It was at this juncture in American history that made use of foreign

experts—most famously Tadeusz Kościuszko, whose field works at the Battle of

Saratoga were probably critical to the battle’s outcome.38 It was Kościuszko who built the

United States government’s first major stone fortification system along the banks of the

Hudson River at the strategically vital bend at West Point, where the U.S. Military

Academy would later be established to ween Americans off such foreign engineers.

The U.S. Congress approved measures in 1794 and 1807 to construct more seacoast fortifications, known historiographically as the First and Second Systems, respectively. President George Washington, one of America’s first and most prominent stone-fortress reformers, argued during the war scare of 1792-1794, which came upon the advent of the 25-year Anglo-French war, that the United States’ prestige as a nation depended upon its ability to project the image of power.39 Fortresses, he understood, were

a visual representation to domestic as well as international observers of the state’s power.

37 Browning, Two If by Sea, 5-6. 38 Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 353-355. 39 Browning, Two If by Sea, 7. 87

Congress approved a resolution to construct sixteen seacoast fortresses in February 1794;

they were to be built of earth, not stone.40

In 1805, when Europe once more descended into all-out war, the United States

again found itself balancing delicately between Britain and France, not only the two chief

belligerents but also the United States’ two chief trading partners. The U.S. Corps of

Engineers, formed by congressional statute in 1794 and reformed in 1802, was now

without the preponderance of French officers who had made up the corps in the previous

decade, and the newly-formed military academy at West Point had not produced enough

homegrown engineers to fill the void.41 President believed that one expedient to solve the problem would be a gunboat navy, but not everyone on his cabinet believed a gunboat force would be enough to defend the American coast.

Remarkably, it was Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, , who penned one of the most competent responses for the president’s consideration. He argued to his chief that if the Royal Navy devoted its full weight to attacking the American coast, there could be little question of defeating them on the littoral waters.42 “Washington will

be an object” of attack in such a war, Gallatin stated, warning that such a naval strike

“would…attach disgrace to us. The Potomac [itself] may be easily defended. But an active enemy might land at Annapolis, march to the city, and re-embark before the militia could be collected to repel him.”43 Jefferson’s gunboat navy was an attempt to push

40 “Fortifications,” February 28, 1794, ASP-MA 1:61-62. 41 “Fortifications, Munitions, and Increase of the Army,” April 9, 1794, ASP-MA 1:120. 42 Arthur P. Wade, “Artillerists and Engineers: The Beginnings of American Seacoast Fortifications, 1794- 1815,” (dissertation, Kansas State University, 1977), 202. 43 Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson, July 25, 1807, “Memorandum of Preparatory Measures,” in Henry Adams, ed., The Writings of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1879), 340. 88

military defense away from the population to preserve liberty against a standing

American force. Madison would later attempt to emplace military defense amid the

population to preserve liberty against European tyrants. Gallatin had discovered a

practical reality that would vex both conceptions: the enemy had sailing ships that could

bypass gunboats and fortresses alike.

The sixteen First System fortifications that were meant to protect American cities had, by 1807, fallen into disrepair for lack of funding, and were now practically useless in certain areas.44 The United States was not ready for a war against the British Empire. The

collective measures that Congress adopted in 1807 became the so-called Second System.

The resulting effort increased the number of U.S. fortifications to thirty-one by 1809.

Their designs varied from place to place, thanks in part to the lack of standardization and

professional, centralized oversight. For the most part, these new fortifications were

similar to the low earthworks-based bastions of the 1794 system, but with an increased

use of stone walls to reinforce the earthworks and, in some cases, they stood alone as

stone structures.45 It was this series of thirty-one fortresses and no fewer than twenty- three supplemental batteries (which varied in design from simple earthen mounds to protect an artillery piece to more elaborate stone walls) that the United States meant to guard its maritime frontier in the coming War of 1812.46

Despite the poor state of readiness that characterized many of the American

fortifications, the U.S. Corps of Engineers boasted at the war’s conclusion that no federal

44 “Fortifications and Gunboats,” December 15, 1806, ASP-MA 1:204. 45 Browning, Two If by Sea, 16-17. 46 See appendix A; also “Report on the Fortifications and Defences of the United States,” December 17, 1811, ASP-MA 1:308-311. 89

Map 3: First System Coastal Fortifications, 1796 (see also Appendix A).

90

Map 4: Second System Coastal Fortifications, 1811 (see also Appendix A).

91

Map 5: Third System Coastal Fortifications, 1822 (see also Appendix A).

92

coastal fortress had been taken by the enemy.47 Although the engineers certainly deserved credit for an overall strong performance, this claim overlooked the destruction of Fort

Washington, which lay astride the Potomac River and was supposed to have guarded the federal city from the very type of raid that Albert Gallatin had presaged in 1807.

Technically, the enemy had not taken Fort Washington; the commander had abandoned it

when he saw the hopelessness of the situation.48 This special pleading may have allowed the engineers to retain some sense of dignity after the burning of Washington, but a

fortification system has not achieved its purpose if all the enemy has to do in order to

take a fortress and the city it protects is to land elsewhere and march around it.

The fortifications were supposed to have protected American cities from attack,

and while in most cases they helped accomplish that goal—most spectacularly at Fort

McHenry, which protected Baltimore from a ransacking similar to Washington’s—the

capture of Washington highlighted a weakness of the Second System. There was no

systemization for defense, nor was there a clearly articulated plan for how to integrate the

entire seaboard’s fortification network toward one defined goal. The War Department’s

goal of providing an “effectual defence of the maritime frontier,” was too large an objective. Since the coastline was obviously very large and no set of thirty-one fortresses could hope to defend it as a frontier in its entirety, there were gaps in fortification coverage.49

47 See Sylvanus Thayer to Joseph Swift, August 12, 1816, Thayer Papers (hereafter TP), USMA-SC; Swift, Memoirs, 145. 48 “Capture of the City of Washington,” September 23, 1814, ASP-MA 1:525 49 William Eustis to Langdon Cheves, December 3, 1811, ASP-MA 1:307. 93

The bulk of these gaps lay south of Maryland’s coastline, since the majority of the

fortifications lay along the northeastern coast, particularly from New York to .

When engineering officer Joseph Swift inspected defense sites in South Carolina on the

eve of war in 1812, he remarked on the “defenseless state of the coast, from the

Chesapeake to Tybee.”50 By the crisis time of 1814, citizens and U.S. engineers alike

were well aware that there were tremendous gaps in their coastal defense plans. Even in

bastion cities like New York, the chief engineer found himself having to direct new

fortifications throughout , sometimes as rudimentary as laying felled

timber along embankments to guard artillery.51 In New Haven, Connecticut, ordinary

citizens came out and took it upon themselves voluntarily to construct “strong works” to

protect their harbor.52 In Providence, , citizens raised their own money to do

the same, complaining as they did so that their works would not be “scientifically

directed.”53

The problem facing the Madison administration upon the war’s conclusion,

therefore, was how to create the appearance, if not necessarily the reality, of a

scientifically-directed system. In a potential future war against the British, both Royal

Navy officers and American citizens alike had to feel that American harbor defenses

were impregnable. When American citizens stacked wood logs and piled earth against

them to defend their own cities, they were taking responsibility for their own defense,

rather than relying on the government. It was the traditional militia-style American

50 Swift, Memoirs, 100. 51 Swift to John Armstrong, July 17, 1814, NARA RG107, M6, vol. 7. 52 “Defense of New-Haven.” The Columbian no. 1483, September 31, 1814. 53 “Since our last…” Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix issue 26, July 9, 1814. 94

method of defense. As Robert Browning has observed, local defense “was in perfect

harmony with the…political theories” of the United States since its colonial

foundations.54 On the other hand, to have awe-inspiring stone walls at the entrances to populated harbors would serve as a perpetual reminder to the urban dwellers that the federal government was responsible for them.

Madison therefore made these fortifications a reform priority after the war, despite the U.S. engineers’ argument that they were the only branch of service to perform their wartime mission competently and that Fort Washington was a systemic failure that probably reflected more poorly on the regular army than on the engineers themselves.

Monroe was of one mind with his president on this issue. The two men believed that their self-selected task would be best accomplished by French engineers. They sought to hire any Napoleonic engineer they could find who still had a strong head on his shoulders after the Bourbon Restoration and was looking for work on the other side of the Atlantic.

Congress informed them, however, that they were limited to only one of these “skilled assistant[s].”55

When Madison declared to Joseph Swift his desire to attach a French expert to the

Corps of Engineers, Swift was shocked. Nevertheless, after some politicking from Swift,

Madison commissioned Simon Bernard, who arrived in New York in the summer of

1816, as a brigadier general of engineers. Bernard, a 1799 graduate of the École

Polytechnique, was accomplished both as an engineer of coastal fortifications and as a combat officer, most recently in the . Swift received him as politely as

54 Browning, Two If by Sea, 5. 55 Proceedings, April 24, 1814, Annals, Senate, 14th Congress, 1st Session, 344. 95

he could, and pursuant to the president’s intent, turned over “all our plans and reports” to

him. Swift sarcastically remarked that in doing so, he was enabling the Frenchman “to

acquire a knowledge of the military defences of the country, in order that so skillful an

engineer…might suggest the correction of any error that our young corps of officers

might have committed.” Swift believed the measure was “humiliating” and it made him

“very unhappy.”56

It was not terribly difficult for Madison or Monroe to ascertain the chief

engineer’s feelings about Bernard’s presence in the corps, but Monroe held Bernard to be

nothing less than the finest engineer in the world at the time, and he could not resist the

allure of bringing in his expertise to assist in building up the fortifications network.57 To

Swift, as well as to other American officers, the wound cut deep into their professional pride. Bernard’s appointment was part of a tradition since the American Revolutionary

War of bringing in foreign experts, but there was a critical difference between Bernard’s commission in 1816 and Baron von Steuben’s in 1778: the American officer corps no longer felt any need for such a level of foreign assistance.

Christopher van Deventer, Swift’s aide-de-camp, stated as much when he argued that “the events of the Revolutionary War would determine against the employment of exotic talent.”58 He was arguing that such overreliance on “exotic talent” was responsible

for keeping Americans unprepared to stand on their own when it came to military

science; Americans needed to declare independence from Europe. Sylvanus Thayer, an engineer who had been sent abroad to study Napoleonic military science, agreed. “[O]ur

56 Swift, Memoirs, 144. 57 Monroe to Andrew Jackson, December 14, 1816, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 43, LC. 58 Van Deventer to Sylvanus Thayer and William McRee, June 4, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 96

standing must depend entirely on ourselves,” he argued.59 Van Deventer, however, was

not content to leave it at that. His tirade is worth quoting at length:

The nation have uniformly made this corps an exception from the censure bestowed on the Army; and all parties seemed to unite in acknowledging the necessity of educating the most promising youths in the country to the higher grade of the Military profession. Whenever the Army has been assailed for ignorance and deficiency in Science, the Corps of Engineers have always been excepted. To it the friends of a respectable Army have constantly pointed as a proof of the usefulness of well educated officers.

Van Deventer went on to complain that “French opinions will be all in all with our rulers,

and we know enough of French…modesty in America to guess the result—Our

Government seems…determined to prefer Frenchmen! They are already the idols of our

War Minister.”60

Andrew Jackson, who had just recently won the Battle of New Orleans using the

older method of temporary earthen embankments, was not terribly impressed with the

plan either. His reasons were slightly different from those of the engineers. Swift, van

Deventer, and the rest of the corps with them all believed that the Americans had finally come of age and that it was time to plot their own destiny. Jackson believed that the

French were too ostentatious, and that they built forts that were too large, too grandiose, for an American army. “I have been so much deceived in the ostensible talents of French

Engineers, warmly recommended and found to be grossly ignorant of their profession,”

Jackson added ruefully, “[that] I must confess I am not sanguine, that in this instance, the expectations of the government will be realized.”61 Jackson may have misunderstood the

59 Thayer to Swift, August 12, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 60 Van Deventer to Thayer and McRee, June 4, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 61 Jackson to Crawford, June 9, 1816, in Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, Sharon MacPherson, and John H. Reinbold, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson Main Series, vol. 3, 1814-1815 (Knoxville: University of Press, 1991), 43-44. 97

government’s expectations. The purpose of the fortification system was not to build for the old army, but for a new, larger, more professional army. If the French did indeed build fortifications that were too grand, that was a benefit, not a liability. Sure enough, after Bernard had spent time touring the American fortification system, his only consistent objection was that they were all too diminutive.62

The grumblings throughout 1816 proved difficult to contain, and the engineers openly contemplated mass resignation in protest. When van Deventer informed Thayer

and McRee that Swift intended to resign in protest of the perceived slight, Thayer

implored Swift to stay the course. “If resignation becomes necessary,” he advised, “it will

be as the last resort and should be done by the whole corps in a body.”63 The Madison

administration tried to salve the wound by insisting that Bernard would always be second in rank to Swift, that he would never command the corps, and that the president held the

American engineers in the highest regard possible. In a further effort to appease the

offended, Madison and Monroe created the Board of Engineers and structured it in such a

way that the highest-ranking American engineers would always outnumber the French

engineer in committee. “In this way, it is thought that the feelings of no one can be hurt.

We shall have four of our Officers, in every consultation, against one foreigner.” Their

task was to form an expert cohort to study the entirety of the U.S. coast and develop a

deliberate, systematic plan for its overall defense.64

The Americans were not as impressed with the arrangement as Madison and

Monroe had hoped. In November 1818, after more than two years of politicking and

62 Swift, Memoirs, 179. 63 Swift, Memoirs, 146; Thayer to Swift, August 12, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 64 Monroe to Andrew Jackson, December 14, 1816, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 43, LC. 98

Figure 1: Fort Griswold, CT (Courtesy Groton Public Library).

Figure 2: “Fort Trumbull, New London,” (pencil drawing by Reynolds Beal, July 4, 1887, the Connecticut Historical Society, 2008.67.2). 99

Figure 3: Governor’s Island, 1776, (NYPL).

Figure 4: Governor’s Island, 1820 (NYPL).

100

fretting over his command relationship with Bernard, Joseph Swift made good on his

threat to resign from the Corps of Engineers. Only months later, William McRee, the next

highest ranking engineer, followed suit. The Board of Engineers, meant to be a relatively

quick collaboration of the best engineers available to improve upon the seacoast defense,

had floundered through 1819 thanks to these disruptions from the American officers. It was not until early 1821 that the board was finally able to submit to the War Department its plan for a coherent system.65

Bernard was not the only French expert Madison imported; he also hired Claude

Crozet shortly thereafter, another accomplished Napoleonic engineer whom Swift

assigned directly to the West Point faculty in September 1816.66 Swift was not averse to

French engineers as professors at West Point (especially in the case of Crozet, who was a

mere captain), as he agreed that they were eminently more qualified to instruct than many

Americans. In fact, he had hoped that Bernard might likewise be attached to the academy

to instruct cadets. His angst in the case of Bernard was his being assigned second in

command of the Corps of Engineers.67 These French additions to the American

engineering corps would prove another overstepping of the narrative boundaries Madison

and Monroe could exploit, and it nearly spoiled the second part of their plan to improve

American fortifications on the French model.

“Cultivating the Military Art”: Americans in Paris, 1815-1817

While various military men and politicians grappled with the future of the U.S.

military structures, the executive branch explicitly tasked a young captain of engineers

65 Browning, Two if By Sea, 29-30; Swift, Memoirs, 178-179. 66 Crawford to Swift, September 14, 1816, NARA RG107, M006, vol. 9. 67 Swift, Memoirs, 145. 101 named Sylvanus Thayer with the study of French systems for incorporation into the

American military network. In May 1815, he traveled with another accomplished and combat-experienced engineer named Lieutenant Colonel William McRee to France for the express purpose of learning Napoleonic military science and importing it to the

United States. Although McRee was the senior officer of the two, it was Thayer who would go on to play the most critical role in the process—Thayer was fated to command and superintend the U.S. Military Academy. His orders from acting Secretary of War

Alexander Dallas in 1815 were very clear:

In consideration of the advantages which the United States may derive, by the increased experience and scientific improvement, of its officers—the President is pleased to afford you, an opportunity for professional improvement… [Y]ou will proceed to the Continent and Prosecute enquiries and examination, calculated for your improvement in the military art. The military schools and work-shops, and arsenals, the canals and harbours, the fortifications, especially those for maritime defence will claim your particular attention.68

During the expedition, McRee and Thayer learned only through written correspondence about the infighting within the War Department, particularly the controversy within the Corps of Engineers over the hiring of General Simon Bernard. The reaction of both men to the news of Bernard’s hiring, as well as their reaction to the political climate in Ally-occupied France, provides insight into the deeper ideological current upon which they sailed to France. Thayer’s admiration for the French military system brought him to Europe, but while he was there he discovered a deep and genuine pride not only in his profession, but in his country. Compared to the alternative of hiring

French officers such as Bernard and bringing them to the United States, the McRee-

68 Alexander Dallas to Sylvanus Thayer, April 20, 1815, NARA RG107, M006, vol. 9. 102

Thayer expedition to France in 1815 represented an attempt to improve the military

institution in a way consistent with the new American national pride.

Within two weeks of Congress’s ratifying the , Napoleon landed back on French shores and began his Hundred Days. When Sylvanus Thayer received word of Napoleon’s resurgence in mid-March, he sprang from the bed in Norfolk where he had lain sick and made his way to Washington to meet with Swift about traveling to

France and seeing Napoleon in action. Unfortunately for Thayer, Swift was nowhere to

be found. Thayer then sat and penned a letter to his superior to enlist his support in

realizing “a scheme which I have long cherished in my mind.” Thayer emphasized that

now, with the American war ended and Napoleon back in command of France, was “a

most favorable moment” to accomplish the trip.69 Swift received Thayer’s letter

favorably and forwarded his recommendation for the expedition to acting Secretary of

War Alexander Dallas; Swift recommended Thayer and McRee as the two officers to

send. Dallas almost immediately agreed and, in May 1815, the newly breveted Major

Thayer was en route to Boston for transport to Europe.70

James Monroe, now acting once again as the secretary of state, wrote letters of

introduction on behalf of Thayer and McRee to diplomats and French contacts urging

them to assist the pair in increasing a knowledge of their profession. Invariably, Monroe

described Thayer as an especially meritorious officer with tremendous talent. Thayer,

who had spent most of the war stationed at Norfolk, helped oversee a robust system of

69 Thayer to Swift, March 23, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 70 Dallas’s orders to Thayer for the expedition are dated April 20, but Dallas’s letter to General Swift endorsing the plan and approving Thayer’s promotion to major is dated April 12, presumably very shortly after having received Swift’s letter of March 30. All letters available in TP, USMA-SC. 103

harbor defenses and fortifications that, unlike some of the defenses to the north, had put

citizens’ minds at ease. Thayer and his commander, General Porter, formed close relations with the people of Norfolk and helped promote “harmony and a high

confidence” in the engineers there.71 His ability to project such confidence on the people

under his charge, along with his willingness to absorb French military science, made him

an ideal candidate for the mission to Europe.

In Boston, Thayer ran into delays from the U.S. Navy, the War Department, and

even his traveling companion. Commodore had sailed for the

Mediterranean from New York before the two army officers could arrive. In Boston,

Commodore Bainbridge openly defied orders from the Secretary of the Navy directing

him to provide passage for the engineers.72 But finding transportation across the Atlantic

seemed the least of Thayer’s worries. Even less clear to him was how he was going to

fund his expedition. Swift and Dallas went back and forth throughout May 1815 about the difficulties in securing credit from European bankers. By early June, the problem was still not resolved. In the meantime, Thayer had secured alternate passage on the USS

Congress, but as the days dragged on through May, McRee was still nowhere to be found. “On my departure from New York, Col. McRee assured me that he should follow on the succeeding Friday [May 14],” Thayer complained on the twenty-ninth, “Why he has failed to do so I am at a loss to conjecture.”73 McRee finally arrived on the evening of

June 8, roughly 36 hours before the Congress’s departure on the morning of the tenth, but

71 “Events of the War,” August 6, 1814, Niles Weekly Register VI:388. 72 Thayer to Swift, May 13, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 73 Thayer to Swift, May 29, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 104 the two officers still had neither pay on hand nor bills of credit secured.74 Fortunately for them, Thayer and McRee’s advance pay awaited their arrival in the Netherlands.

Unfortunately for them, so did unspeakably terrible news: peace had broken out in

Europe, and Napoleon was again dethroned.

When Thayer disembarked in the Netherlands on July 12, the Bourbon

Restoration was only four days old. Arriving in Paris on July 29, Thayer was horrified by what he saw. “The situation of this country, so different from our expectations,” posed

“insurmountable obstacles to the pursuit of the principal objects of our tour. France is in every respect a conquered country,” wrote Thayer amid the throngs of Russian and

British soldiers marching through the streets of Paris. “The Military Schools are suspended &…occupied as ,” he added woefully.75 Thayer and McRee spent the entirety of 1815 and most of 1816 in Parisian bookstores cataloguing prospective textbooks, but never buying any for lack of funds.

Astonishingly, there is absolutely no evidence that Thayer and McRee considered at any point during from 1815 through 1816 that, in light of France’s defeat, it might be worthwhile to examine other European military systems. Despite having letters of introduction to government and military officials from Sardinia to , it is clear that it was Thayer’s intent to spend the overwhelming majority of his effort in France.

Additionally, although his expedition was at various times described as being to

“Europe” or “the Continent” in general, with few exceptions France was singled out at some point. In Dallas’s original orders to Thayer, he ordered Thayer to report to the

74 Thayer to Swift, June 9, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 75 Thayer to Swift, October 10, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 105

“American Minister in France;” Dallas further informed Swift and Thayer that the

secretary of state would send letters to American ministers throughout Europe, but “also to some of the most distinguished Military officers in France.”76 In James Monroe’s

surviving letters of introduction—all of which were written to French officials—Thayer’s

trip is described as a visit specifically to France in order to view French military

institutions. Thayer’s introduction letters for other destinations in France came from outside the State Department.77

France was always the true objective of the expedition, with other destinations in

the Low Countries and England as an afterthought; Thayer’s attachment to French culture

provides a clue as to why. Thayer was, in all aspects of his life, a serious man devoted to

his work. Yet in late 1815, a rare sense of sarcastic humor came to life within him, most

particularly when he observed with satisfaction the mood against King Louis XVIII in

France. Thayer, making no attempt to conceal his sneering delight, observed that

Not longer ago than last Sunday…when the King condescended to shew his royal person to the longing eyes of (as he thought) his loving subjects who had assembled under his windows, at the moment when he presented himself for the gratefull sounds of love & loyalty the royal ears were most un-mercifully outraged by the general shout of “Viv[e] Napoleon.”

In another anecdote that Thayer shared, “my grace the Duke of Wellington” tried to

watch a performance from the king’s box, but after incessant shouts of à bas les

anglais! Vive le roi! (“down with the English! Long live the king!”), “the hero of

Waterloo made his retreat & sneaked home.”78 The two anecdotes underline not only the strangely contradictory French mood of supporting and not supporting King Louis as

76 Dallas to Swift, April 12, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 77 See Thayer’s various letters of introduction, April 24-25, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 78 Thayer to Swift, October 10, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 106

circumstances warranted, but Thayer’s ability to relate personally to the popular

temperament. Together with the French people, Thayer would have preferred Napoleon’s

glory to the Allied occupation; worse still would it have been to associate himself with

the hero of Waterloo and to try to learn lessons in military craft from a man who defeated

Napoleon.

Thayer’s identification with the French did have some limitations: the controversy

over Bernard in the summer of 1816 began a subtle shift in Thayer’s attitudes. Thayer

and McRee, both having met Bernard in France before his departure in August 1816,

wrote Swift independently to assure him that Bernard was a fair man who would not

usurp the Americans’ authority over their own engineers. Thayer could not, however,

abide the “ignominious treatment” of his corps. “The information contained in your

letters…could not but excite our astonishment in the highest degree,” he wrote. “A

similar treatment was least of all to be expected immediately after a War in which the

Corps has never lost an occasion to distinguish itself.”79 The Americans’ disdain was

somewhat contradictory; they should have had every reason to seek General Bernard’s

expertise given their reason for traveling to Europe. Indeed, Thayer and McRee had

sought him out extensively as a military contact in the earlier months of their

expedition.80

Thayer’s response to Bernard’s commission demonstrated the growing sense of

institutional pride that the officers had wrought in the regular army, specifically in the

Corps of Engineers. If, as Christopher van Deventer had insisted to Thayer, Frenchmen

79 Thayer to Swift, August 12, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 80 McRee to Swift, September 14, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 107 were the idols of the war minister, they were no less the idols of the two engineer officers in Paris. But van Deventer and Thayer did agree on one thing: they believed that they were now a part of an American “military profession,” one in which there was already a rising sense of institutional loyalty and nationalistic pride.

Thayer set aside his distaste for commissioning a foreigner and continued to pursue his objective of learning as much as he could from the French, until he had another run-in with the Duke of Wellington. On August 24, 1816, several British regiments in Paris that had sacked and burned Washington held a gala ball to celebrate the anniversary of the feast they had enjoyed at President Madison’s abandoned dining table. General Winfield Scott, who had by then joined the Americans in Paris, was appalled. That the veterans of the campaign against Washington, led by “that freebooter”

Admiral Cockburn, would celebrate “the anniversary of their vandalism” was downright shameful.81 Four and a half months later, Scott, who was “fired with indignation,” coordinated with Thayer and McRee to host their own gala event in honor of the first anniversary of the British defeat at the Battle of New Orleans. The officers selected a hotel in Paris where the social elites of Europe regularly gathered to drink together. This specific hotel, Scott had observed to his fellow compatriots, was directly across the street from a favorite gathering spot for Englishmen in particular, especially British army officers who had come to Paris to revel in their victory over “Old Boney.” More than seventy Americans and their guests gathered in plain view of the European dignitaries to eat a fine meal with only the fanciest dinner service available. After a band played “the national airs of America and France,” the event culminated with a public toast to the

81 Scott, Memoirs, 163. 108

heroic army of Andrew Jackson, “who, this day a year ago, near New Orleans, defeated

thrice their numbers of the best British troops, commanded by Sir , the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington.”82

On the same day that the American officers defended their martial honor against

Arthur Wellesley, McRee had been hard at work securing official permission to visit

fortifications and postgraduate military service schools in Metz, Strasbourg, Lille, Brest, and Cherbourg. The book-buying portion of the expedition had come to a close—Thayer

and McRee had now collected and bound just under 1,000 books for the U.S. Military

Academy—and it was time to begin exploring fortifications and schools.83 Nine days

later, the École Polytechnique reopened and Thayer was suddenly busy with visiting

classes, forming friendships with instructors, and purchasing what instructional

implements he could.84

Of particular interest to Thayer, though, having now sated his curiosity about the

École Polytechnique, was the School of Applied Artillery at Metz. Time was running

short—they had orders to return home by May 1—and they had to get as much accomplished in the short time available as possible. Although the Duke of Richelieu, the

French Prime Minister, denied the engineers official permission to inspect fortifications and schools to the level that they would have liked, informally they were assured with a

wink that the local French officers would have no objections to allowing the men full

access.85

82 Idem, 164, 166-167. 83 McRee to Swift, January 8, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 84 Thayer to Swift, February 12, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 85 Ibid. 109

On February 17, the two officers finally left Paris on a short tour that would ultimately take them beyond the French boundaries for the first time since July 1815.

After stops in Strasbourg and Metz, the pair arrived in Brussels on March 5, and then proceeded to London. The roughly two weeks in London from March 18-31 were largely uneventful in terms of military professional development, although Thayer did fall victim to a pickpocket there who relieved him of the burden of $200.86 Thayer purchased several military history volumes in London and proceeded back to France. On April 24, he finally embarked for New York after almost two years of travel.

Winfield Scott likewise ended his European tour with an extended layover in

England, though he did so a year earlier than Thayer and McRee. Also like Thayer and

McRee, Scott did not glean as much that was useful to him professionally from his

British hosts as he had from the French. In fact, it appears that Scott’s primary benefit from the British portion of his tour, intellectually speaking, was to come to a deeper understanding of how much he disdained British military thinking. On one occasion,

Scott enjoyed a dinner party with Lord Holland, a prominent voice in British politics.

Scott enjoyed Holland’s company because of his liberal politics, perhaps best demonstrated by his taking an American wife and his opposition to the 1811 Orders in

Council that had helped spark the Anglo-American war. One of Scott’s fellow guests at

Holland’s house, however, failed to impress the American general. The man in question was the “loud and rude” Royal Navy captain who had commanded the HMS Bellerophon, which had taken Napoleon to England as prisoner. After the ladies in attendance had

86 Thayer and McRee’s itinerary is available on Thayer’s passport, in ibid. Thayer’s account of being pick- pocketed is available in Thayer to Swift, March 30, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 110 retired from the dinner table, “this fop,” who “had to lisp and…stammer between words,” asked Scott if Americans were still deceitfully labeling ships-of-the-line as , thus cheating the rules of war. Scott answered that if the American navy did such a thing, it had only learned to do so from its mother country.87

In another liaison Scott had with a British man and his American wife, Scott visited the home of Sir Henry Johnson, who had fought in the War of American

Independence and had married a Philadelphia loyalist. Lady Johnson, now old and infirm, came in to meet Scott, whereupon she exclaimed, “Is this the young rebel!”

“My dear, it is your countryman!” Her husband protested, worried that she had offended their guest.

“Yes it is,” she acknowledged, “…and [he has] taken the liberty to beat his majesty’s troops… Would to God I, too, had been a patriot.” Scott’s legendary performance at Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane had now, it would seem, cured an old loyalist of her unfortunate sympathies. Scott was so proud of himself that his eyes were glistening with tears.88 As Scott voyaged home to the United States, he found himself filled with patriotic awe over the potential the emerging nation of his birth held. Later, as

Thayer and McRee likewise returned home, the reformers now had the French-trained military engineers they sought to lead the remaining structural changes they had in mind.

* * *

The reformers sought changes to the military establishment first through expansion of the regular army, then through standardization of the militia and regular

87 Scott, Memoirs, 169. 88 Scott, Memoirs, 171, 173-174. 111

forces. If successful, they believed their reform measures would improve the place of the

armed forces in society and increase the prestige of the United States government. To press this set of reforms, Monroe and Madison attempted to convince Congress that, in order to prove themselves the worthy inheritors of their fathers’ sacrifices on behalf of the republic, they had to invest in the military structure required to protect it. Congress

did not accept this argument as readily as the Madison administration had hoped, since

many members had drawn radically different conclusions about how best to honor their

fathers’ sacrifices. These attitudes also made their way to the militias, whose state

governments did not universally accept the federal government’s attempts to standardize

their formations according to Scott’s model.

To protect the eastern frontier, the reformers overruled the opinion of the

members of the U.S. Corps of Engineers and argued that increased effectiveness against a

potential future adversary required the direct importation of French engineering experts.

This perceived slight to the engineers nearly brought mutiny among even the most

committed Francophiles among them. In the end, the executive branch did not back down

from its decision to hire the Simon Bernard from France, but it did compromise to some

degree with the American engineers by promising that an American would command the

corps. Moreover, the executive branch offered opportunities for American officers to

travel to Europe to improve in their profession so that in the future such foreign expertise

would be entirely unnecessary. This final measure would prove tremendously

consequential for Captain Sylvanus Thayer in particular, since Monroe expected him to

take that acquired expertise to the U.S. Military Academy and bring about a new

evolution of American army officers.

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In all cases, the executive branch was attempting to build a new model that, in its

members’ opinion, would prevent future catastrophe and improve the United States’ position within the community of nations. Not only so, but it would increase the presence of the federal government in ordinary Americans’ lives. If a member of a local militia

trained according to a manual with the words United States on it, and if he received equipment and direction in time of crisis from Washington, he could not help but to think of himself increasingly as an American soldier as opposed to a local militiaman.

Likewise, an urban landscape punctuated by federal stone edifices would assure the

citizenry that a competent and strong government was protecting them against the British

“depredations” they had experienced or feared in 1814.

Taken together, the federal government was attempting slowly to take

responsibility for defense out of the hands of local communities. They sometimes

exceeded the bounds of their narrative base as they attempted to build in this direction.

Congressmen continued, to a significant degree, to believe in the myth of the American

militiaman; army officers had begun, correspondingly, to believe in the myth of the

American profession of arms.

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Chapter 3: The Mutiny of West Point, 1815-1818

The history of nations demonstrates to civilized man, the impossibility of giving stability to government without the aid of a military force… military knowledge is therefore of the utmost importance… The rising importance of the Academy, which the wisdom of past Legislators has established, cannot but stimulate the present [Legislators] to extend to it a little of their attentions… [since] our army has to be supplied with officers from this Institution. No experience nor labor should be spared to give it every improvement.1

[West Point] does not, in the most remote degree, aid in the discipline of the militia, or in the dissemination of military science… The organization of the seminary is also in direct violation of the fundamental principles of our republican institutions… What, then, is the use of it? We answer, to form military pedants and military dandies. What, then…should be done with the institution? We answer, abolish it—totally abolish it.2

In September 1812, Cadet Charles Merchant scaled a granite plateau along the

Hudson River—located roughly fifty miles north of —to begin his army

career at West Point. It was an isolated post that offered breath-taking views of the river

valley, but little else. Its only stone structures were a small dock house and the low

granite bastions that Tadeusz Kościuszko had designed to protect the Hudson River

corridor.3 Merchant had arrived to attend the military academy there, but he was in for an

unwelcome surprise. Upon his arrival, he found no other cadets and only one officer, an

engineering captain named Alden Partridge. By December, only five other cadets had

1 Journal of a March Performed by the Corps of Cadets of the United States Military Academy… (Newburgh, NY: Uriah C. Lewis, 1819), USMA-SC, 28-29. 2 Alden Partridge, et al, “Memorial of a Committee of the Military Convention at Norwich, Vermont…” 24 February 1840, in Public Documents: The Senate of the United States. First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress vol. 5, document 238, 18-19. 3 Swift, Memoirs, 28-29. 114

reported to the few wooden buildings that constituted the academy.4 By 1815, however,

the population would expand to nearly 300 cadets, and work was beginning on the first

stone structures to house the academy itself. By 1817, these first three stone buildings—

two barracks and an academic building—were complete.5 At the same time, the reformers were solidifying their vision for the academy’s place in the new military nation.

West Point was vital to the reform plan, since the continuity of the proposed

system depended on officer education. This chapter tells the strange story of how the

reformers (mostly James Monroe) began to install their first stone structures on West

Point beginning in 1817, when Sylvanus Thayer, fresh from touring France, was appointed superintendent. Thayer was almost a complete personification of the new system Monroe wished to have in place at the U.S. Military Academy; Alden Partridge,

Thayer’s predecessor, embodied the army’s bad old days of indiscipline. The showdown

between the two systems came to a head when Partridge refused to cede his position to

the incoming stone-fortress man.

Outside the quiet world of West Point in 1815, as politicians reignited well-worn

debates over the future structure of the army, states rejected Scott’s new French-style drill

manual, and army officers feuded with the War Department over command structures, the

outlook may have looked bleak to the reformers. Yet to the administrations of James

Madison and James Monroe, there was opportunity to push the French model of

professional training onto the regular army. If the U.S. Military Academy at West Point

could be restructured and bolstered, there was hope that the new generation of army

4 Ernest Dupuy, Where They Have Trod: The West Point Tradition in American Life (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1940), 65-66. 5 John Crane and James F. Kieley, West Point (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), 38. 115 officers would be competent French-style professionals. The idea was logical enough: the army is a top-down, authority-based structure, so reforming West Point might seem a comparatively simple task.

In the end, the executive did indeed benefit from the top-down structure, but the transition proved to be hard fought. Pushback came not only from civilians who had very different visions of West Point’s role for the national military system, but even from some army officers. Nevertheless, the executive branch was committed to importing

Napoleon, and the men they chose for critical appointments reflected this devotion. In no place was this shift in military policy more evident than at West Point during the contested transfer of command from Alden Partridge to Sylvanus Thayer between 1815 and 1818. Partridge, an antebellum fixture at West Point, refused to cede his post to the

French-trained Thayer, who was the president’s personal choice. When Partridge did so, he was strangely caught between the two worlds of American military philosophy.

Partridge ran afoul of both his civilian faculty who sought to re-create West Point as a national scientific university and the presidents who wanted an American École

Polytechnique. The tumult of Partridge’s mutiny in 1817 demonstrates that instituting change, even in a hierarchical, authority-based structure, was not such a straightforward prospect, even if it did ultimately work.

* * *

In December 1815, Madison argued to Congress that, in addition to his other reform proposals, the U.S. Military Academy needed to be enlarged and improved.6 By

6 James Madison’s message to Congress, December 5, 1815, Annals, 14th Congress, 1st Session, 15. 116

Figure 5: “Map of West Point, 1815, by Cadet John A. Webber, Traced from the Original by Lieut. Henry C. Smither, 15th U.S. Cavalry, U.S.M.A. 1897.” North is up. (The Centennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, 1802-1902, vol I [Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1904], 15.)

117

Figure 6: Stone Academy Buildings, 1815-1817 (Centennial, I:242-243).

118

1816, James Madison, James Monroe, and Acting Secretary of War William Crawford

had all made up their minds that the current superintendent at West Point was not the

right man for their scheme. Implementing policy in this manner is not always a

straightforward proposition. In some cases, it is possible that change fails to “trickle

down” in the way the reformer hopes, since the policy is vulnerable to corruption on its

way downward. By virtue of how the reformers approached their policy implementation

problem, however, it is clear that they subscribed to a top-down theory for structural

change at West Point.

Political scientists have attempted to explain this phenomenon through a rich

body of literature on policy implementation studies that has only been growing stronger

and more varied since the 1980s, albeit with a strong focus on empirical data collection.7

In the 1970s, political scientists tended to describe policy implementation within the confines of two main schools of thought: top-down and bottom-up.8 Top-down theorists

describe structural change in terms of centralized policy, whereas bottom-up theories

emphasize “local flexibility.” According to this latter viewpoint, centralized actors cannot

manage implementation of a policy as it disperses outward into the network.9 Thus,

according to bottom-up theory, it is naïve to assume that “once a policy has been ‘made’

7 See Harald Saetren, “Facts and Myths about Research on Public Policy Implementation: Out-of-Fashion, Allegedly Dead, But Still Very Much Alive and Relevant,” Policy Studies Journal 33, 4 (November 2005): 559-582. 8 Richard E. Matland, “Synthesizing the Implementation Literature: The Ambiguity-Conflict Model of Implementation,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 5, 2. (Apr., 1995): 146-150 offers an introduction to these two schools of thought. 9 Andrew Whitford, “Decentralized Policy Implementation,” Political Research Quarterly 60, 1 (2007): 17- 18. 119

by a government, the policy will be implemented and the desired results of the policy will

be near those expected by the policymakers.”10

The case of instituting top-down policy change at the U.S. Military Academy

illustrates the naïveté of such an assumption in dramatic fashion, yet that is not to say that

top-down change did not end up “working.” Military networks are indeed well suited for

top-down change, but there remains a necessary process of communication between the

actor and the network. To facilitate such communication, policymakers must offer clearly

defined goals that also account for the unique conditions that local actors will encounter

as they attempt to realize policy. Richard Matland has observed that the levels of

ambiguity and conflict, therefore, determine the model by which policy change may be

effected.11

In the difficult transition of authority from Alden Partridge to Sylvanus Thayer in

1817, conflict over an ambiguous policy was the foremost complicating factor.

Fortunately for Thayer and for the centralized policies he represented, conflict is

manipulable, especially in a military environment where open conflict and resistance to

policy can result in a court-martial. Moreover, the academy at West Point was unique

among the networks the reformers tried to influence because it was a comparatively closed, isolated, and small system, rendering it far simpler to influence than the U.S.

Congress, for example. It was these aspects of the West Point actor-network combined

10 Thomas B. Smith, “The Policy Implementation Process,” Policy Sciences 4, 2 (June 1973): 198; Carl E. Van Horn and Donald S. Van Meter, “The Policy Implementation Process: A Conceptual Framework,” Administration & Society 6, 4 (February 1975): 450. 11 Matland, “The Ambiguity-Conflict Model,” 147-148, 156-157. 120

with Thayer’s strong leadership that made it the most uniformly successful of the

Madison-Monroe reform projects.

The narrative that follows emphasizes the relationships of Alden Partridge and

Sylvanus Thayer, as local actors, to both the central planners in the War Department as

well as to the academy’s network of cadets, garrison soldiers, and civilian faculty. The

environment that Partridge created during his tenure at the academy had, by 1815, largely

endeared him to most of the cadets while simultaneously estranging him to the civilian faculty who, as mentioned above, had different visions for the academy’s future.

Partridge, in turn, had different ideas than his supervisors in the War Department. Thus,

when Thayer took command of the academy, he met sharp resistance from within the

academy as he began to implement the new policies. But for the support he had from the

central planners in the War Department and his ability, therefore, to exert authority

despite local protestations, Thayer may very well have proven unable to change West

Point. Alden Partridge put up a spirited resistance to Sylvanus Thayer, and he had the advantage of the cadets’ support.

Little scholarly work has been devoted to the army career of Alden Partridge, less still to how Partridge impacted the broader military reform program undertaken after

1815. Stephen Ambrose devotes an entire chapter to Partridge’s superintendency and reflects the more orthodox interpretation of his tenure as first set forth by Elizabeth

Waugh.12 Partridge was, according to Ambrose, important for making some strides in

12 Stephen Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, chapter 3; Elizabeth D.J. Waugh, West Point (New York: Macmillan, 1944). Waugh was the first modern historian to describe Partridge as cruel and entirely inept, but her narrative was a reflection of the pro-Thayer folkloric myth that students and faculty had carefully cultivated at West Point for the previous century. 121

improving the academy, but overall, he lacked fundamental leadership skills and was a harsh disciplinarian. The only major revisionist challenge to this harsh image of Partridge comes from Lester Webb. Webb contends that Partridge was the victim of a “dastardly and diabolical plot” by “schemers” in the academic to oust Partridge.13 Webb’s

argument is impossible to take seriously in its entirety—the reader will be amazed at

Webb’s characterizing professors at the academy as melodramatic villains hatching an

evil plan to depose the saintly Partridge. Webb does correctly note, however, the respect

Partridge commanded from his cadets during his command. The cadets overwhelmingly

supported their superintendent, and did not at all feel they were being abused—a point

that Ambrose misses. On the other hand, Webb drastically overstates Partridge’s potential

to reform the academy and the extent to which the faculty had formed a cabal against

him. Since Webb and Ambrose in the 1960s, historians have rarely taken notice of the

rocky transition from Partridge to Thayer at West Point, often relegating this incredible

episode to a brief passing mention before emphasizing how Thayer then implemented

French-style pedagogy and military training.

Captain Alden Partridge and the Military Academy, 1814-1816

Alden Partridge’s command and superintendency of the U.S. Military Academy

was controversial and halting. Partridge, the object of numerous accusations of nepotism,

embezzlement, physical abuse, and general incompetence, was also the first officer to

make substantive attempts at improving the academy as a training ground for army

officers. His challenge, unenviable for any man, was that he was at the helm of a

13 Lester A. Webb, Captain Alden Partridge and the United States Military Academy, 1806-1833 (Northport, AL: American Southern, 1965), 51. 122

professional military institution torn between ideological camps and run by a still-feeble government. On one hand, he had to manage an academic staff who wanted to turn West

Point into a civilian national scientific university. On the other hand, he had to liaise with a largely indifferent Congress and an executive branch that was bent on professionalizing the academy on the French model. Each camp had differing visions for West Point as either a civilian engineering school or a professional military academy, and Partridge was inadequate to fulfill either side’s wishes for want of strategic vision and appropriate social skills. He was in the middle of a tug-of-war in which he had no inclination to join one side and no ability to join the other.

Alden Partridge graduated from West Point in 1806 as the academy’s fifteenth graduate and was commissioned a first lieutenant of engineers on October 30, bypassing the rank of second lieutenant—either an extraordinary personal honor, or a symptom of the massively disorganized army personnel system, depending on whom one asked.14

Only three places behind him on that graduation day was his brother, William Partridge, who was to go on to serve in combat as the engineer-in-chief for the under Major General William Hull. When Hull, infamous for his poor showing at in 1812, announced his intent to surrender to the British forces there, William was so upset that he left the infirmary, where he had been bed-ridden with the grippe, and literally broke his sword in front of Hull, casting its pieces in front of him in disgust.

William would die six weeks later as a prisoner of the British.15 Alden, however, would remain at West Point for the entirety of his military career. He was immediately assigned

14 Cullum’s Register 1:69-70. 15 Ibid., 74-75; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 42; Waugh, 54. 123

as assistant professor of mathematics in 1806 and held a professorial post in some form

through the War of 1812.

In 1813, after the resignation of Jonathan Williams, the academy’s first

superintendent, Partridge assumed the role of acting superintendent. General Joseph

Swift, Chief of Engineers, remained the de jure superintendent, but his wartime duties as

the ranking engineer in the army precluded his managing the everyday affairs at the

academy, leaving Partridge responsible for superintending the institution in his stead. The

system of command for the U.S. Military Academy was so confusing that even

contemporaries failed to understand it. The lack of consolidation of power from 1813 to

1815 certainly did not help Partridge. Jonathan Williams had, in fact, intended for Jared

Mansfield to direct the academy after his retirement, but Mansfield was conducting the

wartime duty of surveying Ohio in 1813, leaving Partridge the ranking officer. In January

1815, Partridge was established as “permanent superintendent” by order of the secretary

of war; he was thus the first man to be superintendent of the academy without also being

the chief of engineers. But as we will see, even after 1815 he did not quite have the full

measure of command authority on that installation, as most officials continued to think of

Swift as the “real” commander of West Point.

For all Partridge’s faults as an officer, poor personal discipline was not one of them. What his idea of “discipline” meant, though, requires some clarification. He was humorless, always in uniform, and spartan in every aspect of his life. Partridge had to deal with cadets who more or less came and went as they saw fit, some of whom were married, one of whom was missing an arm, and all of whom lacked uniformity in nearly every sense of the word. The cadets in his charge remained a ragtag group, ranging in age

124

from twelve to thirty-five, but he did make substantial steps in instituting the beginnings

of military discipline. Whereas some cadets used to live off post, for example, Partridge

finally restricted them to barracks. Further, Partridge saw to it that each boy and man

under his charge understood what was expected of a cadet. There would be no swearing,

card playing, or disrespecting duly-appointed officers. Cadets were not to leave post

without special permission from the superintendent himself, and above all, cadets were

expected to drill. Cadets under Partridge’s system would stand in formation and march at

least five times a day: before each meal, during afternoon drill, and in an evening

parade.16 Partridge’s discipline presented itself on the parade field, not in the school room.

Partridge could manage the cadets quite well, but was less adept in managing his faculty. For reasons not completely clear, Partridge simply never trusted them. Perhaps he mistrusted them because they were not of the same ilk as he. Partridge emphasized his ideal of military discipline often at the expense of liberal education. “The Institution…is a Military one,” Partridge declared to his faculty, adding that without military discipline,

“it will never flourish… If its Academic Staff were composed of Bacons, Boyles, and

Lockes, and it could boast at the head of these the name of Newton...still, without… discipline, all their genius…and all their efforts would be exerted in vain to promote its prosperity.”17 Partridge’s treatment of the great thinkers no doubt grated at the faculty, but he was also at odds with them over more material factors. If Partridge was spartan, his faculty members were quite the opposite. It became clear immediately to two very

16 Regulations for Commons, 1815, Alden Partridge Papers, USMA-SC; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 47. 17 Partridge quoted in Webb, 96-97. 125

influential professors at the U.S. Military Academy—Jared Mansfield and Andrew

Ellicott—that Partridge was never going to make the remote post in the Hudson River

Valley livable according to their standards.

Mansfield, a civilian with a commission as a lieutenant colonel, had served as a

topographical engineer in Ohio during the war (thus giving him more field experience

than Partridge), and in 1814 arrived at West Point to instruct cadets in mathematics. After

a twelve-hour journey, he arrived at West Point only to find his assigned quarters

“occupied by Doctor [Samuel A.] Walsh,” post surgeon, who brusquely informed him

that “he could not admit us at present, as he had company, & could not spare any part of

the house.” Walsh suggested finding some nearby tavern. Eventually the post surgeon

yielded to the pressure of a travel-weary man and his teamsters, but Mansfield reported

continuing abuses. “They seem determined to pursue their malevolence still farther,”

Mansfield complained to General Swift, who had assigned Mansfield the quarters. “The

idea of orders, or commands from you had not the least effect.”18 Partridge’s response,

rather than to arrest his surgeon for insubordination, was to write a letter from his office

on the southwestern corner of the Plain to a young lieutenant stationed a half-mile away

at Fort Clinton—he was Partridge’s nephew, incidentally—who had escorted Mansfield

from the dock on the Hudson River to his appointed quarters. One month later, Partridge

received his nephew’s response, which confirmed nearly all of Mansfield’s complaints

about the evening’s events.19 It is difficult to understand why it should have taken slightly more than a month for Partridge to resolve an issue through mail when all persons

18 Jared Mansfield to Joseph Swift, August 26, 1814, TP, USMA-SC 19 John Wright to Alden Partridge, September 27, 1814, TP, USMA-SC. 126

concerned were located on the same forty-acre plot of land that is West Point’s Plain.

Mansfield was apparently quite a proud man; he never would forgive the slight to his

honor as a gentleman.

Ellicott, a first-rate surveyor and civilian professor at West Point as of 1813, was

particularly unimpressed by Partridge’s refinement of the post. “You must come and

reside here,” he pleaded to General Swift, the chief of engineers, while the war was still

raging. “Captn. Partridge is almost unrivalled in the management of Cadets, and if his

duty was confined to that object he would be one of the most useful men connected with

the institution; but you know my dear sir he has no idea of ornamenting, and beautifying

a place.” He went further and implored General Swift, who at that time was concerning

himself with coastal fortifications to defend against British invasions of the United States,

“I wish you to [come] early in the season—much wants doing about the house and garden

which will require your own particular attention.”20

As keen as Mansfield and Ellicott were for their better homes and gardens, there

were other ways in which it was clear that they and Partridge were cut from different

cloth, and both parties perceived it. Whereas many of the faculty had grandiose plans for

the future direction of the academy at West Point, Partridge provided little in the way of a

long-term vision. To be fair to Partridge, he had more immediate and pressing issues on

hand than the future direction of military officer training. He took command of a post that had no sense of its present, let alone its future. But, from the professors’ perspective, once Partridge managed to install some semblance of much-needed order within the

Corps of Cadets, he failed to go further. Partridge, on the other hand, seems to have

20 to Joseph Swift, February 10, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 127

viewed his professors as too liberal, pressing as they did for an expanded curriculum of

coursework with little relevance to military training—namely, instruction in the classical

languages.21

Thus, Partridge saw his faculty members as civilian charlatans who did not fully

appreciate the need for military discipline, and the faculty saw Partridge as a philistine

and a micromanager who regularly overstepped his bounds as acting superintendent (as

they believed him to be). For one, he personally made lists of recommended promotions

to lieutenant without vetting those recommendations with the Academic Board.22 For

another, he made decisions without any consultation from his staff and faculty. Ellicott

complained to Swift that Partridge was neglecting the legally required three-month

summer encampment, the purpose of which was to instruct cadets on military tactics and

policing, and he was ordering professors and assistants to resume classes. “[T]he law establishing the military academy prescribes at least three months for the Cadets to remain in camp,” explained Ellicott, “instead of which they were but twenty days. In this case the law is imperative, it leaves no discretion either to the commanding officer, or any other officer of government.”23

Partridge’s failure to consult with his faculty was egregious in their eyes. Jared

Mansfield and Andrew Ellicott were highly qualified instructors—proud men with

21 See p. 2, “The following branches of science and instruction shall be considered as comprizing a complete Course of Education at the Military Academy at West Point, New York,” Madison Papers, series 1, reel 18, LC. 22 See Secretary of War James Monroe’s response to Mansfield, Ellicott, and Zoller (January 25, 1815, NARA RG107, vol. 8) in response to a letter that those three men had submitted to the War Department. “Your views relative to the examination of cadets meet mine,” Monroe responded, “and I should be happy to receive from you a draft of a regulation, thro’ general Swift, on that subject.” 23 Andrew Ellicott to Joseph Swift, July 31, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. See also Ellicott’s letter of February 10, 1815 to Swift, also in the Thayer papers, concerning Academy regulations that, in his opinion, would interfere “with the duties and prerogatives of the academic staff.” 128

opinions and ideas for how a military academy should be run. From their perspective,

Partridge did not think progressively enough. Ellicott’s vision was for multiple military

academies—one in Washington and another in Pittsburgh “or such other place as shall be

deemed most convenient for the Western States.” If the federal government created these academies and structured them as universities, there could be corps of cadets comprising not only officer candidates but also privately-funded civilian students who would, upon

graduation, create a cadre of world-class civil engineers. Ellicott supposed that each

academy could have 150 federally-funded cadets in training for army or navy

commissions, and then an additional 250 cadets each who would pay tuition and receive

engineer training.24

Above all, the instructors simply did not care for Partridge personally. Partridge

lacked fundamental social skills. He was irksome, and at least one of his contemporaries noted that “his aspect was uncouth,” and that he had “a want of what is called genteel carriage, and awkwardness of manner that gave a repulsive first impression.”25 The

tensions against Partridge mounted to a climax within the first half of 1816 and resulted in allegations of misconduct on his part.

The first problem West Point’s inhabitants endured from Partridge was his apparent nepotism. Partridge had appointed Isaac Partridge, his uncle, as the storekeeper for the post. Isaac moved on post with his herds of sheep and allowed them to graze on the Plain. “West Point is comparatively…a desert camp of Arabs,” Mansfield wrote, claiming that wherever he looked, “hogs, Dogs, Cattle, & Horses are spreading their

24 Andrew Ellicott to Alexander Dallas, May 25, 1815, TP, USMA-SC. 25 Swift, Memoirs, 170. 129

litter, even into our houses.”26 Isaac Partridge’s sheep were particularly troublesome. His animals suffered from what was called “the rot,” a disease that made them smell especially nauseating.27 The superintendent, preferring to use his uncle’s mutton at meals, met with several near-mutinies from disgruntled cadets who, after being marched into the mess hall, found the disgusting cuts of mutton almost inedible. One evening, all cadets arose and left the mess hall together rather than eat the mutton; on another, a cadet angrily hoisted his mutton aloft on a fork and demanded another cut of meat (in violation of multiple rules of conduct for cadets in mess). The cadets’ ultimately effective answer

for the insufferable sheep was to wait until one or two had ventured near the edge of the

Plain on the east side, and then push them over the edge of the cliff.28

Other cases of perceived nepotism were accompanied by more sinister charges

than malodorous victuals; they took the form of fraud and embezzlement as well.

Lieutenant John Wright, Partridge’s nephew, commanded the company of bombardiers

stationed at West Point, whose soldiers were also Vermonter associates of the Partridge

family. Partridge was said to have allowed the bombardiers to appropriate wood from federal land and sell it as an emolument in lieu of pay. He did in fact cut firewood from

federal land, but it was years before in 1813, and it was when a furious blizzard had cut

off resupply to the academy and there was little other option for firewood but to cut it

from the surrounding military reservation.29 The charge went, however, that it was a

26 Mansfield to Swift, March 27, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 27 Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 52. 28 Ibid.; Cadets Morrison, Hoyt, Orr, and Perkins testimony, Dec. 1816, Partridge Court-martial Proceedings of 1817; letter of Cadet Wooley to Partridge, June 10, 1816, Alden Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 29 See pp. 2-5 of Partridge’s April 1816 statement to the Court of Enquiry assembled at West Point (Partridge papers, reel 1, LC). 130

habitual practice whereby the bombardiers were exploiting federal wood for profit.

Partridge was also accused of favoritism toward certain cadets.30 Cadets complained of partiality on Partridge’s part not only in granting passes to go to New York, but even in recommending promotions to second lieutenant.31

Captain Samuel Perkins, another instructor at West Point who found Partridge even more vexing than did Mansfield and Ellicott, picked up on these rumors and recorded them for the benefit of the secretary of war, whom he hoped to convince to replace Partridge with a more suitable candidate. Swift, who saw Perkins’s letter, forwarded it back down to Partridge. “[T]hese invidious papers will enable you to determine the propriety of requesting a Court of Enquiry,” the chief of engineers stated tersely.32 Officers frequently requested courts of inquiry—which, as the name suggests, is

a less formal proceeding than a court-martial and can, at worst, result only in censure—to

defend their honor against allegations of incompetence or wrongdoing.

President Madison, likely still happily unaware of the particulars of firewood

embezzlement and rotten mutton, nevertheless had problems of his own with the

leadership of the academy. He had a financially uncooperative Congress, and a

commander at West Point who was quickly losing control of his post. In response to his

calls for increased funding and support for the academy, Congress largely floundered.

The resultant lack of congressional pecuniary support frustrated Partridge’s efforts to

30 See charge 1, specification 1, Jacqueline S. Painter, ed. The Trial of Captain Alden Partridge, Corps of Engineers: Proceedings of a General Court-Martial Convened at West Point in the State of New York on Monday, 20th October, 1817, Major General Winfield Scott, President (Northfield, VT: Friends of the Library, 1984), 4; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 52-53. 31 Henry Berryman to Alden Partridge, November 2, 1816, Partridge papers, LC, reel 1. 32 Swift to Partridge, January 18, 1816, Alden Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 131

improve the academy. Partridge wanted desperately to standardize the cadets’ academic

year or improve the school’s buildings, nominations process, report dates, and military

training.33 It all appeared to be to no avail.

Madison’s patience was waning, and Partridge’s complaints about the lack of

financial support from Congress seems to have done little to salve the president’s misgivings. The academy was simply not academic enough, in the French sense of the word, and Madison believed that the only way to make it more so was to change its faculty and leadership. Swift recorded that he “had many communications with the

President and Secretary of War during the month of January [1816], upon improvements and extension of the Military Academy, with a view to inviting to that institution some officers from the military schools of France.”34 The bill to bring these improvements

about hung in Congress through that month, until in February Swift again found himself

in Washington to survey new fortification sites.35

The two men paced around the banks of the Potomac, observing the destroyed remains of Fort Washington, which had been blown up in August 1814, and discussed how to rebuild the nation’s defensive system. The president had other matters pressing his mind than the fortification alone. He “expressed an opinion that Captain Partridge might be detailed on the duty connected with this contemplated work, or on some other duty that would relieve him from West Point.” Swift protested that one cannot simply

relieve Partridge without better justification. Madison tactfully agreed, but added

33 Memorandum of Jared Mansfield, February 5, 1815, LC, Partridge Papers, reel 1; circular message of Capt. D.B. Douglas, October 30, 1815, idem.; Swift to Partridge, January 18, 1816, idem. 34 Swift, Memoirs, 141. 35 Swift to Partridge, January 18, 1816, Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 132 indirectly that “Captain Partridge is not deemed by the Secretary of War the most suitable officer of engineers for duty at the Academy.” Swift then visited William Crawford, the secretary of war, to ask him what was meant by all this. Crawford assured Swift that he would not infringe upon Swift’s command. If Partridge was to be sacked, Swift himself should do it. Crawford then very directly told Swift that he would “prefer” to have “some officer of engineers to relieve Captain Partridge.”36

Swift refused. “Mr. Crawford,” Swift answered sardonically, “superintending at

West Point [is] not desirable to any officer of the corps.” Swift then traveled to West

Point two months later, where he awkwardly resided alongside Partridge during the court of inquiry but felt honor-bound not to disclose any of the goings-on in Washington or the machinations against him, except to tell him that “he had enemies at Washington.”37

Captain Samuel Perkins’s “invidious papers” and the resulting court of inquiry was perhaps a missed opportunity to relieve Partridge, but unfortunately for Madison and

Crawford’s designs, Partridge was largely exonerated. The court rebuked Partridge for recommending commissions to cadets who had not undergone academic examinations, for the selling of firewood, and for certain methods of discipline he had instituted, most notably the so-called “Black Hole.” The Black Hole was a small pit dug into the grounds of the Plain, covered with a wooden lid, in which cadets would be confined for comparatively short periods (half an hour to a couple hours at most) in the darkness.

However, it is important to note that, overall, the court found that “the Correction of

Faults and Offences [by Partridge] has been uniform, punctilious, Dispassionate, and

36 Swift, Memoirs, 141-142. 37 Ibid. 133

Forbearing.”38 Given the largely trumped-up nature of the charges against Partridge and

the unflinching support he had from the chief of engineers, getting the right man to

command West Point was proving politically difficult. Madison was at this time already

dealing with a near mutiny among his engineers over the commission of Simon Bernard

as Swift’s deputy commandant of engineers.39 To undercut Swift even further by relieving Partridge without offering a satisfactory cause might have proven disastrous.

Yet as the summer of 1816 wore on, the Madison administration had had enough.

On September 9, 1816, General Swift received the letter that he had been dreading and

that Alden Partridge had been expecting: “the Secretary of War wrote me that Captain

Partridge did not conduct the Military Academy satisfactorily to the President.”40 The

secretary of war chose his words far more carefully, but there was no mistaking the

message:

The consideration of the opinion of the court of enquiry lately instituted for the investigation of certain charges exhibited to this department against Capt. Patridge [sic], has led to a strict examination of the laws regulating the military academy. This examination has produced the conviction, that the principal officer of the corps of Engineers, and, in his absence, the next in rank, can alone exercise the office of superintendent of that institution. …I would suggest the expediency of your assuming the temporary charge of the Academy, for the purpose of introducing the most perfect order.41

The secretary was ordering Swift to relieve Partridge, but left Swift the choice of

assuming superintendency himself or appointing the next ranking officer in the Corps of

Engineers, Colonel William McRee. Since McRee was still in France with Sylvanus

38 NARA, RG 153, Records of the Judge Advocate General, K-3, “Court of Inquiry of Captain Alden Partridge,” 28. 39 Although Bernard would not actually arrive in America until November 1816, the president’s intent to hire him (or someone like him) was clear to Swift far earlier in spring 1816. 40 Swift, Memoirs, 144. 41 Crawford to Swift, September 9, 1816, NARA RG107, M6, vol. 9. 134

Thayer learning the French engineering system, Swift had little other option. Swift was

not, however, the president’s permanent solution to the West Point problem. That same

month, Madison wrote to Sylvanus Thayer and informed him that he would be the next

superintendent at West Point.42 On November 2, Swift arrived in West Point and informed Partridge that he was assuming command. It would not be the last time

Partridge was unceremoniously relieved.

Alden Partridge was an abrasive man, but although his much-sullied reputation

was partly deserved in the end, his command was not entirely without merit. Although

the academy was not particularly well organized under his watch, he at least had

attempted to improve it in some ways. But Partridge was caught between the

machinations of his faculty and the president’s determination to avoid the debacle he had

witnessed from his “professional” officer corps during the War of 1812. Partridge failed

to cast his lot with either camp, and besides he was personally irksome to those who had

the displeasure of working and living with him, so he was hated on all sides. The faculty

attempted to rid themselves of Partridge through muckraking and campaigning; President

James Monroe would eventually succeed in ridding himself of Partridge by virtue of his

being the commander-in-chief of the army. In the meantime, President Madison took

measures to create an American incarnation of the École Polytechnique. It was only a

matter of finding the right man for the job.

West Point as an Engineering Problem, 1816-1817

In 1816, there was unceasing rivalry and infighting within Congress, the War

Department, and the Corps of Engineers over the future direction of the American

42 Thayer to Swift, February 17, 1854, TP, USMA-SC. 135

military establishment. Whether it was Alden Partridge’s conflict with the West Point

faculty or Swift’s enduring the insult of having his work suspended until a Napoleonic engineer could supervise it, the debates remained at an impasse. Swift was opposed to

Bernard’s commission on principle and appeared wholly unwilling to compromise.

Likewise, it was becoming clear to all parties involved with West Point that Partridge was not going to forge an academy like the one the reformers had in mind. Thayer and

McRee, on the other hand, had a very concrete task and understood better than most other engineers what it was the Madison administration wanted. They were American engineers, and they were learning from those whom they perceived to be the best in the world. The course they were charting was based upon the deeply-held sense of professional identity they had already had by 1815, and it demonstrated a way forward not only for America, but for a presidential platform mired in internecine politics. If

Madison could emplace either Thayer or McRee (preferably Thayer) at the U.S. Military

Academy, the problems facing the American engineers might evaporate in a matter of years as a new, French-style officer corps would emerge in the United States. No longer would Americans grope ham-handedly for their own system; neither would they employ

“exotic talent” from outside the country, as Van Deventer had put it.43

Alden Partridge, on the other hand, only sank into deeper pits at West Point while

Thayer was abroad in France. Partridge’s bizarre conduct from the time of his 1816 court

of inquiry through September 1817 made it clear that a new superintendent was required.

Given Thayer’s relatively low rank within the Corps of Engineers, his appointment as the

new superintendent was not a clear matter of precedence; it was the direct wish of both

43 Van Deventer to McRee and Thayer, June 4, 1816, TP, USMA-SC. 136

President Madison and, later, President Monroe. Madison had warned Thayer that he was

to become the next superintendent in November 1816, and then Monroe peremptorily

ordered Thayer to the post in May 1817, only six days after Thayer’s arrival in New York

from France.44 Thayer’s appointment was in direct contradiction to existing laws “that the principal officer of the corps of Engineers, and, in his absence, the next in rank” should command the academy, because at least two officers were senior to Thayer within the

Corps of Engineers.45

Monroe chose Thayer to remodel the U.S. Military Academy based on Monroe’s

high regard for Thayer professionally and, it stands to reason, because of his experience

in France. Monroe would later admit to Thayer that Thayer’s conduct during the War of

1812 at Norfolk had impressed him greatly. “[Y]our conduct [during the late war],

inspir’d me with great confidence in your capacity to manage a military institution

embracing the sciences,” Monroe wrote.46 The fame and glory of Fort McHenry

notwithstanding, Norfolk had been the best example of engineering during the war, since

the stalwart works there had inspired so much confidence in the citizenry.47

44 Thayer to Swift, February 17, 1854, TP, USMA-SC; Thayer arrived in New York on May 14, 1817 (Swift to Graham, May 14, 1817, TP, USMA-SC) and was ordered to the superintendency on May 20, 1817 (Graham to Swift, May 20, 1817, in idem.). 45 Crawford to Swift, September 9, 1816, NARA RG107, M006, vol. 9. In terms of Thayer’s seniority within the Corps of Engineers, William McRee was unambiguously senior to Thayer. The system of permanent and brevet rank obfuscated matters. In lineal rank, Thayer was also junior to Alden Partridge, but Secretary of War Crawford made it clear enough that “it is believed, that the construction of the law may properly embrace brevet rank, especially in relationship to the corps of Engineers, where brevet rank, pay and emoluments, are almost invariably operative” (Crawford to Swift, Sept. 9, 1816 TP USMA-SC). At any rate, Thayer was clearly not the “next in command” within the Corps of Engineers. 46 Monroe to Thayer, November 1, 1826, TP, USMA-SC. 47 “Events of the War,” August 6, 1814, Niles Weekly Register vol VI, 388; see discussion of fortifications and civilian confidence in Chapter Two. 137

Partridge, on the other hand, commanded confidence from no one but General

Swift. Partridge’s court of inquiry in 1816 left him even more bitter toward his unruly

faculty, and his exoneration left him feeling all the more inveterate in his authority over

the post. The court of inquiry, far from clearing the air and binding up wounds,

exacerbated the leadership conflict at West Point. Mansfield continued his vehement

attacks against Partridge, and his complaints increasingly fell upon sympathetic ears within the War Department. Secretary William Crawford even went so far as to accuse

Partridge of “egotism and arrogance” in the way he carried himself in correspondence.48

The Madison administration was quite simply weary of the quibbling. It was in this light that Swift was finally cajoled into relieving Partridge of the superintendency on

November 25, 1816.49

As noted above, Thayer received orders that same month instructing him to return

to the United States by late spring 1817 and to assume the superintendency. In 1854,

when Swift was preparing his memoirs for publication, he sent a transcript to Thayer for

review. Thayer, hoping to correct the part of Swift’s narrative that portrayed President

Monroe as having decided to relieve Partridge in June 1817, insisted in a letter back to

Swift that

my appointment to the superintendency [was] decided on many months prior [to June 1817,] …as I am going to shew. In Nov. 1816 at Paris I [received] an official communication (which I have preserved) informing me that I had been designated by President Madison to be the permanent Superintendent of the U.S. Mily. Acady. at West Point & directing me to return to the U States in the ensuing Spring at latest, in order to assume the special duty assigned to me.50

48 Crawford to Mansfield, October 7, 1816, NARA, M344. 49 Swift, Memoirs, 144. 50 Thayer to Swift, February 17, 1854, TP, USMA-SC. 138

Although Madison’s “official communication” to Thayer is nowhere to be found within

his papers, Thayer certainly received instructions in November to return to the United

States by May 1817, and he was almost immediately ordered to the post upon his

arrival.51 At any rate, it is clear that Thayer was also Monroe’s choice for the command,

as we shall see later.

Swift’s command of West Point from November 1816 through January 1817 was

half-hearted at best. Partridge’s dismissal as superintendent was supposed to be

permanent, but Swift was preoccupied with the politics of Bernard’s commission within

the Corps of Engineers and eventually returned the post to Partridge. Swift viewed his

command at West Point as if he were being sidelined after Bernard’s arrival. Swift

recalled to Bernard that “all of the corps who had been in the field had been honored by

brevets” and that “it was a fact that all the principal forts had kept the enemy at bay during the late war.” The crisis that Swift perceived was nothing less, therefore, than the honor of his corps. He took steps to mitigate Bernard’s influence as a brigadier general, including an unsuccessful attempt to assign Bernard as a professor of engineering at the academy.52 Faced as he was with these greater tasks, Swift quietly allowed Partridge to

return to West Point after a brief furlough, and by New Year’s Day at the latest, Partridge

51 James W. Kershner, Sylvanus Thayer: A Biography, (New York: Arno Press, 1982), 360, n.2. Kershner concludes that Thayer was mistaken and that, looking back after nearly 40 years’ time, he confused the content of the orders in his mind, but Kershner bases his conclusion on the March 24, 1854 letter to Swift, and has missed Thayer’s February 17, 1854 letter in which Thayer claims to have the official orders still in hand. Given the certainty of Thayer’s tone in the earlier letter, it is prudent here to give him the benefit of the doubt. 52 Swift, Memoirs, 145. 139

was once again in de facto control of the Academy, which was made official by January

13. Swift busied himself with fortress inspections along the Atlantic seaboard.53

Mansfield, far from weary of lobbying against Partridge, continued his letter- writing campaign. Most of his complaints were seemingly cut-and-pasted from the court of inquiry’s proceedings: Partridge was embezzling firewood, he was teaching classes even though he was no professor, the academy grounds were woefully in need of beautification, and so on. Partridge likely felt little concern over such instigating. For one, he had been found innocent already and, despite having been relieved, had amazingly maneuvered his way back to his old desk.

Besides, Partridge knew that he enjoyed immense popularity among the cadets.

On the eve of Partridge’s leaving on November 24, the Corps of Cadets presented him with a series of letters, collectively signed by more than half, expressing gratitude for his

“generous treatment” of them. “We…find it difficult to express ourselves, suitably to our feelings…when we take into consideration the favors we have [received] from you, not as

Superintendent of the Academy, but as our Friend.” The letters were all very affirming, but any mention of Partridge’s having challenged them intellectually as professional officers was conspicuously missing. Instead, the cadets focused on terms of “friendship” and “favors,” emphasizing Partridge’s unofficial conduct particularly.54 As the court of

inquiry had shown, Partridge was, in fact, comparatively light on disciplining the young

cadets. It was likewise clear that the academic load was far from intolerable, since many

53 Swift, Memoirs, 146-147. Partridge’s de facto command is seen as early as his memorandum of , 1817 (TP, USMA-SC), in which he announced, as superintendent, the tragic death of Cadet Vincent Lowe in an artillery fire mishap during a salute firing. 54 Letters of November 23 and 24, 1816. Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 140

cadets graduated within a year, provided they were among Partridge’s preferred students.

The cadets—and their families alike—therefore met Partridge’s return to the superintendency, once it became official, with widespread approbation.55 The reason for

Partridge’s popularity among this group is not difficult to surmise. At least one historian

has noted regarding Partridge’s popularity that “immature students tend to favor easy

teachers,” which is a surprising but well-taken point given the faculty’s charges against

Partridge of abuse.56 The cadets’ fathers and the citizenry generally would have approved

of Partridge’s performance thanks to the growing public perception of West Point as a respectable school in which “order, system, regularity, and discipline” had “pervade[d] every branch of the institution.”57

The stage was thus set by the time Thayer returned from Europe. Partridge

seemed invincible. He had emerged victorious against both the machinations of his

faculty and pressures from the secretaries of war. He was cleared of charges of

malfeasance, and when relieved anyway, he simply took a brief furlough and returned to

his post. He was able to ignore orders, and he could count on the support of Swift and the

cadets as he did so. As a result, Partridge became convinced that the superintendency was

immutably his post, and that his honor as an officer was bound up in that office. This

attitude not only blinded him to the truth that Monroe had determined to install another

man in his place, but it would also drive him out of the army in disrepute.

55 The LC Partridge Papers collection (reel 1) is composed primarily of letters to Partridge from cadets’ fathers. Throughout November 1816 to January 1817, there is letter after letter variously lamenting Partridge’s being released and/or congratulating him on his being reappointed. 56 Kershner, Thayer, 134. 57 Niles Weekly Register, September 9, 1815, quoted in Kershner, 108. 141

On May 20, 1817, Thayer was still in Brooklyn recovering after his trans-Atlantic

voyage home from France when he received a copy of a letter that Secretary of War

George Graham had sent to Swift. Graham had written that he was “instructed

by…President [Monroe] to request, that Major Thayer may be ordered to West Point, for

the purpose of superintending the Military Academy during your absence.”58 Thayer, despite having spent two years procuring textbooks, instruments, curricula, and other teaching materials for West Point while in France, demurred. He did not have firm orders in hand to take the post, only a copy of a “request” for orders sent to Swift. Swift did not give Thayer such orders because, according to Swift, he never received the letter from

“that very imbecile man Geo. Graham.”59 Perhaps Swift truly had not received the letter,

but it is unlikely he was unaware of the president’s intent. More likely, Swift was

deliberately dragging his feet, hoping that the president would change his mind and that a

contentious regime change at West Point would not prove necessary.60 Besides, Thayer

himself felt a “strong disinclination” to relieve Partridge, not because Thayer believed

Partridge to be the right man for the job, but in deference to Swift; Thayer knew that

Swift believed that Partridge was “admirably qualified” for the post.61

The president had scheduled an inspection of coastal fortifications in the northeast

for June and July 1817; it was Swift’s desire that Monroe’s stop at West Point would

convince the president to let sleeping dogs lie. To the contrary, however, when Monroe

58 Graham to Swift, May 20, 1817. TP, USMA-SC. 59 Hand-written note on ibid. Recall that Swift and Thayer corresponded from 1854 to 1855 on Swift’s memoirs. 60 Swift defended Partridge till the end, despite his understanding of Partridge’s faults. See Swift, Memoirs, 157. 61 Thayer to Swift, February 17, 1854, TP, USMA-SC. 142

arrived at West Point on June 14, he received from Mansfield and his co-conspirators a

formal petition against Partridge’s leadership. Monroe angrily turned to Swift and

demanded not only that Thayer be instated as superintendent, but that Partridge also be

court-martialed. Swift attempted a certain measure of diplomacy with the president, but it

was clear Monroe meant precisely what he had said. Swift’s only limited success was to

ameliorate the president’s wrath enough to allow consideration of a court of inquiry,

rather than a full court-martial. However, Monroe, “after mature reflection,” decided on

July 17 to convene the threatened court-martial after all.62 By mid-July the hearing was a

certainty for Partridge, as was his removal from the superintendency of West Point. Had

Partridge seen the hopelessness of keeping his job and acquiesced peacefully, he might

have been acquitted a second time, allowing him at least to stay in the army. Instead, he

chose to add more serious charges to the ones already being brought against him.

Partridge’s response to his troubles was prodigious and staggering; he dismissed

the Corps of Cadets for summer leave, breaking up their summer encampment early, and

arrested his entire faculty. He was, in effect, circling the wagons in preparation for a

fight, sending off the innocent children to a safe distance and bundling the mutinous

horde in the center of his indolent fortress. “Dear Sir,” he wrote Swift, “I have the honor

to inform you that I have this day arrested Professors Mansfield and Ellicott, and also Mr.

Snowden the military Storekeeper at this Place.” The remaining professors, he explained,

62 Swift to Thayer, July 17, 1817, TP, USMA-SC; James Monroe, A Narrative of a Tour of Observation, Made during the Summer of 1817, by James Monroe, President of the United States, through the North- Eastern And North-Western Departments of the Union: With a View to the Examination of Their Several Military Defences. With an Appendix (Philadelphia: S.A. Mitchell & H. Ames, Clark & Raser Printers, 1818), 63; Swift, Memoirs, 157; Partridge to Swift, 29 June 1817, TP USMA-SC; Graham to Mansfield, July 1, 1817, NARA M6, vol. 9. 143

were unavailable for arrest since they were absent. “I feel that more than two years I have

been an object of the most base and underhanded persecution,” he continued, “because I

have endeavoured faithfully and independently to discharge my duty.” Partridge

continued to admit to his breaking up the cadet encampment early, but provided no further explanation except to say that he was now awaiting Thayer’s imminent arrival,

after which time he would repair to his native Vermont. Partridge then added in

conclusion, with striking dramatic irony, that he felt “confident the course I have taken

will meet your approbation, and I rely on your support in carrying it through.”63

Three days later, Thayer made his trip up the Hudson from Brooklyn, disembarking at the dock on the north side of the Plain and making the exhausting climb

up the hillside to the academy grounds. Partridge coolly received the brevet major and

quit the post quietly enough. He had been relieved once before in November 1816;

perhaps this time around would be no different. Partridge was experienced in this sort of

thing. He left for Vermont, as promised, knowing full well that he would return in late

August once the cadets had begun to trickle back in for the new academic year. It is

possible that he had deliberately misled the cadets into thinking that his relief was, in

fact, only temporary, and that when he did return in August, he would re-assume

command. Mansfield, who recorded the rumor, added by way of ad hominem attack that

the “Quibbling Jesuit will try to escape by some such acts; I hope the Government,

however, will crush the fellow.”64

63 Partridge to Swift, July 24, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 64 Mansfield to O’Connor, September 3, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 144

Mansfield was right. By early August, as the cadets had begun to trickle back to

West Point from summer leave, Partridge’s nephew, Lieutenant Wright, reported to

Partridge that he still had friends at West Point, and that the cadets were loyal to him.

“[Y]our [immediate] return to this place would be of great advantage to you,” he winked,

“as you would be present to counteract the movements of this junto and…throw them in

disorder.”65 Wright later sneered about Thayer, saying that he “would court a unit in a

French Ball room much better than in the American Army[,] but our Government [is] as

fond of Frenchmen as a Frenchman is of Soup.”66

Thayer settled in to his new office and assessed the situation at West Point,

immediately seeking ways to improve the institution. First on his docket was this

business of his faculty members being under arrest. Another problem, somewhat related

to the first, was not having enough staff and faculty. He immediately wrote letters

concerning the professors. The army adjutant general, Daniel Parker, responded with

instructions to release the current faculty from arrest.67

Thayer then did something unprecedented in the years since Partridge had begun to control the academy: he asked the faculty for their advice and input on how better to

instruct the cadets. Since 1815, the faculty had been trying to bring the curriculum to a

formal, four-year course of instruction. Partridge, apparently not minding the haphazard

system in which cadets reported at all times of year and rarely needed more than a year’s

instruction before promotion to second lieutenant, did little to advance the method of

65 John Wright to Partridge, August 11, 1817, Alden Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 66 Wright to Partridge, April 10, 1819, Alden Partridge Papers, reel 1, LC. 67 Thayer to Swift, July 28, 1817 and Parker to Thayer, August 2, 1817, TP, USMA-SC 145

instruction, despite an 1816 regulation laying out four-year requirements.68 Thayer,

having seen the effectiveness of the standardized educational system at the École

Polytechnique, asked each department head to outline standards of learning for his subject field, which Thayer then compiled into a four-year curriculum. He requested new billets for a personal aide, a quartermaster, and instructors of tactics, artillery, and French.

He was particularly mortified by the poor state of the French department, and bemoaned most cadets’ abject ignorance of the “language which may be considered as the sole repository of Military science.”69

Above all, he began to regiment the Corps of Cadets and to enforce existing

regulations requiring a standard report date for all cadets. Requesting an early general

order for cadets to report back to West Point in early September, Thayer wrote with

unshielded exasperation that “As the regulations designate the day on which the vacation

shall expire[,] it will doubtless appear unaccountable that any misapprehension should

have existed in that respect.”70 Most dramatically, Thayer began to purge the Corps of

Cadets of dead weight. Beginning in August and continuing through September, Thayer

rounded up forty-three cadets to expunge from the muster sheets, about half of whom had

“been here more than three years & some of them much longer without having advanced

beyond the first years course.”71

In all his reforms, Thayer received the committed support of the secretary of war.

The only request Graham could not fulfill for Thayer was the need for a quartermaster,

68 Madison Papers, series 1, reel 18, LC. 69 Letters of Thayer to Graham, August 1, TP, USMA-SC and August 28, 1817, NARA M221 Roll 76, T122. Letter of August 28 quoted. 70 Thayer to Graham, August 4, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 71 Thayer to Graham, September 28, 1817, NARA M221 Roll 76, T140. 146

and that was for want of congressional money. Thayer even received War Department

funds for new buildings and improvements to the academy grounds, for which

Partridge—and Mansfield—had asked many times over.72 Thayer was more effective in

securing funds from the War Department than Partridge because Thayer asked for them

directly, whereas Partridge made requests through Swift. Thayer, as the administration’s

personal appointee, had the privilege of reporting directly to the president and the

secretary of war.73

Additionally, Thayer was more effective in disciplining the Corps of Cadets. To

Partridge, discipline meant parades and close order drill. Thayer’s definition of that term

was far more holistic. Swift believed that the reason for Partridge’s being relieved “was

not his want of ability…it was because his aspect was uncouth.”74 Swift was only

partially correct in this opinion. As personally repugnant as Partridge may have been, the

president would not have involved himself over such trivial matters. It was Partridge’s

want of ability, in a certain manner of speaking—Partridge had not visited the École

Polytechnique. Thayer had. Partridge could not engineer a structure to the president’s liking. Thayer could.

The Mutiny of West Point, 1817-1818

Partridge then amplified the precariousness of his position by his actions of late

August 1817, when he openly defied Monroe’s orders. On August 28, Partridge met with

Swift in Brooklyn for breakfast and informed Swift of his intent to return to West Point

72 See Graham to Thayer, August 6, 1817, NARA M006 vol. 9. 73 See Thayer to Graham, August 4, 1817, TP, USMA-SC, and Graham’s reply to Thayer, August 6, 1817, NARA M006, vol. 9. 74 Swift, Memoirs, 170. 147

“for study,” and requested Swift’s permission to do so. Swift, taken aback by the sheer stupidity of the request, firmly told Partridge he had no such permission. Such a move would not only be in direct disobedience to the president, but would also destroy any hopes Partridge could have for rescuing the rest of his career in the army. The two men dropped the issue and Swift was satisfied that he had convinced Partridge of the

foolishness of returning to the academy.75 Partridge then arose, thanked Swift for his company, and left, immediately boarding a boat for West Point. It was the exact voyage up the Hudson that Thayer had taken a month prior. When he landed, some nearby cadets and a young lieutenant took note of his arrival and cheered him. To Partridge, the scene must have felt a lot like his reinstatement of December 1816.

Partridge, grateful for the warm reception, then reported to Thayer and demanded his former quarters, including the furniture that had been removed. Thayer informed him that those quarters had been assigned to Captain Douglass, who was set to arrive soon for duty at the academy. Partridge, unimpressed, did not budge one mite. “I (undoubtedly) had a right to [the quarters] and…my personal rights could not be yielded,” he said with unchecked hubris, claiming further that he “had a legal right to the Superintendance of the Academy as being the Senior officer of Engineers present.”76 Thayer, equally

intransigent, did not yield. Partridge decided to give Thayer a night to cool off. But on the

morning of the 29th, when Partridge renewed his claim to his rights, Thayer maintained

his original position. Partridge felt he was backed into a corner. He knew no other

recourse. He could not “tamely…Surrender his undoubted right and submit to

75 Swift, Memoirs, 167; see also Swift to Thayer, September 1, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 76 Partridge to Swift, August 31, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. Partridge believed himself senior by permanent captain’s rank; he did not recognize Thayer as a major. 148

degradation” at the hands of Thayer. “I felt myself bound to take upon myself the

Command and Superintendancy of the Academy, as belonging to me by law, for the purpose of maintaining my rights, this I accordingly did.”77 Partridge then hand-wrote an

order stating to the cadets and faculty that he was now back in command, and the cadets

erupted into a series of loud huzzahs at the news.78

Thayer, who had seen the cadets cheering Partridge and had listened to the West

Point band serenade Partridge the night before, decided not to press the issue and traveled

north to Newburgh, from where he tersely informed Swift of the day’s events.79

Partridge, in turn, took the time to write Swift his version of the story, adding that he was

preferring charges against Thayer for “conduct unbecoming an Officer & a Gentleman” and “Violation of the established Regulations of the War Department relative to the distribution of quarters,” among other specifications. Partridge added a post-script to his narrative of the mutiny: “I know, Sir, my Enemies will…make a great Scandle of what I have done… Do not fail to urge a general and full investigation into my conduct, as well as into the conduct of all those against whom I have preferred charges—this ought to be done immediately.”80

Swift granted only half of Partridge’s closing request. Ordering Partridge’s immediate arrest, Swift personally traveled to West Point to ensure Thayer’s resumption of his post. Partridge was no doubt relying on Swift’s personal support in this matter, as

77 Partridge to Thayer, August 31, 1817; Partridge to Swift, August 31, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 78 Jacqueline S. Painter, ed., The Trial of Captain Alden Partridge, Corps of Engineers: Proceedings of a General Court-Martial Convened at West Point in the State of New York, on Monday, 20th October, 1817, Major General Winfield Scott, President (Northfield, VT: Friends of Norwich University, 1987). 79 Thayer to Swift, August 29, 1817, TP, USMA-SC; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 60. 80 Letters of Partridge to Swift, August 31, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 149

he had had the previous January, but he was sorely mistaken. When Partridge realized

that Swift was not going to attempt to countermand the commander-in-chief of the U.S.

armed services, Partridge tried another tactic. The terms of his arrest were confinement to

New York; Partridge attempted to dodge these terms by arguing that

I have been unwell for several days, and even when in good health a residence for any [length] of time in New york as a General Rule provides sickness. I wish the privilege of remaining at this place until my trial shall come on. …I will give such security as may be perfectly Satisfactory both to yourself and to the Comdg. officer that I will not in any respect either directly or indirectly interfere or meddle with the concerns of the Post or of the Academy or of any one connected therewith.81

As nauseating as New York surely was, Swift was not duped by Partridge’s deft maneuvering. Partridge sailed a few days later to New York; the band, under the command of his nephew, Lieutenant Wright, sent him off with a musical salute.82 He would not return until his court-martial convened in late October. As a last resort,

Partridge added to his formal charges against Thayer additional accusations, this time against Swift as well.83

The court-martial board found Partridge guilty on two of the four specifications of

mutiny brought against him, as well as guilty on all counts of disobedience of orders. A

concurrent court of inquiry investigating the conduct of the faculty toward Partridge

found them likewise guilty of misconduct. Mansfield, Ellicott, Douglass, and another

instructor named Claudius Berard (instructor of French since January 1815) were

censured, and Partridge was to be cashiered out of the army. The board’s decision

notwithstanding, Major General Scott, the president of the court, recommended to

81 Partridge to Swift, September 6, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 82 Thayer to Swift, September 11, 1817, TP, USMA-SC. 83 Swift, Memoirs, 168; Kershner, Thayer, 133; Ambrose, 61. 150

President Monroe that Partridge’s sentence be remitted, and Swift convinced the

president to allow Partridge to resign his commission in lieu of cashiering him.84 After his court-martial, but just prior to his resignation, Partridge visited John C. Calhoun, the new secretary of war, and asked him to reconsider whether he might not be a better choice for superintendent. Calhoun, astonished, declined after receiving Partridge’s request formally in writing.85

Thayer’s troubles were not quite over after he secured top-down control of the

U.S. Military Academy. Partridge was an upstart, but it was the cadets’ bottom-up

support for Partridge’s system that had primarily convinced Thayer to yield when the

August 1817 revolution first took place. Thayer now had to earn the respect and buy-in of the Corps of Cadets, which was difficult for him as long as Partridge’s former cadets remained at the academy. The majority of the 260 cadets at the academy at the time were

unwilling to conform to Thayer’s new system of strict discipline. About a year into

Thayer’s command, the new commandant of cadets Thayer had appointed interrupted a

parade to rebuke a cadet who was deliberately ignoring orders. The abused marcher then

formed a cabal of five other cadets and crafted a petition, which garnered 180 signatures

to present to Thayer. When Thayer rejected their demands, the cadets left post and sailed

up the Hudson River to Newburgh, where they published a pamphlet publicly denouncing

Thayer and demanding a congressional inquiry. One of these cadets, interestingly

84 Painter, ed., The Trial of Captain Alden Partridge, vii, 103. 85 Kershner, 132-133. 151

enough, was Andrew Jackson Donelson, whose uncle and namesake was at this point was

recovering from the War in Florida.86

In an ironic reversal of the problem Partridge had faced with his professors,

Thayer’s early challenges also extended to some of the faculty at West Point who believed that Thayer’s curriculum improperly emphasized theory and science, as opposed to more practical military training.87 These faculty who opposed Thayer were not the same men who had opposed Partridge’s narrow focus on drill and tactics. Now,

incredibly, the superintendent was not focusing enough on tactics. “Tacticks are not so

much attended to as the other branches of studies,” an engineer named Alexander

Macomb complained to Thayer. “You are aware that the character of the institution is

Military and not Philosophical,” he continued, “and while the several branches of the

sciences…are deemed highly important…in forming Scientific Officers, the main object

of the institution is to predominate over all others.”88 Claudius Crozet, a Napoleonic

officer and an associate of Simon Bernard’s, had come to teach mathematics at West

Point and generally aligned himself with this group of professors, leading Thayer to press charges against Crozet in 1819, during the year-long fall-out from the 1818 mutiny.89

Sylvanus Thayer would gain popularity and respect throughout the course of his tenure, but in 1818, it was all he could do simply to prevent the Corps of Cadets from rioting, never mind instituting a brilliant new curriculum that forged the new, adaptive officer

86 Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 77-78; John Hester Ward, The West Point Mutiny of 1818 and Its Aftermath: Five West Point Cadets and Their Quixotic Crusade Against West Point, the Commandant, the Superintendent, the Army, the Secretary of War, and the President of the United States (s.p., 2008). 87 Hsieh, West Pointers and the Civil War, 24. 88 Alexander Macomb to Thayer, August 22, 1822, TP, USMA-SC. 89 James Monroe to John C. Calhoun, September 20, 1819, Monroe papers, box 2, U.Va. Special Collections. 152

corps that would build the canals and roads of the Market Revolution and conquer new

territories in the West.

The 1818 mutiny against Thayer did had positive consequences for the reformist

measures, however. The cadets’ behavior resulted in President Monroe’s formally placing

cadets and, just as importantly, the professors, under the articles of military law so that

they could be court-martialed. “I suspect that the present temper is to be imputed” to

Partridge’s old regime, Monroe added, “…and [it] originates principally, with the former

Superintendent, or his friends.”90 Herein lay the great advantage for the top-down system

Thayer was trying to lead: after the 1818 cadet mutiny, Thayer had the authority to crush

dissent within his system. Monroe ordered Thayer to read an order to all members of the post, officers and cadets alike, stating that “If Military orders are not promptly obeyed all discipline is at an end.” Monroe allowed the mutinous cadets clemency for their previous

usurpation of authority, but sternly warned that future depredations of such nature would

be met with the full measure of military law.91

* * *

Sylvanus Thayer was thus free, after 1819, to enforce his vision for West Point

and the military system it represented; but that military system might have gone in a

radically different direction had Partridge had his way. Partridge went on to establish the

American Scientific, Literary, & Military Academy, which was the precursor to Norwich

University, the first civilian military academy in the United States. He was instrumental

through the 1830s and 1840s in building new military training programs, particularly

90 Ibid. 91 General order, November 10, 1819, TP, USMA-SC. 153

through the South. He never forgave the top-down policymakers for the slight he had

received. He spent the next three decades publishing vociferously against the U.S.

Military Academy and leading the charge against the professional army.92

The reformation of West Point between 1815 and 1818 had become a top-down

triumph for technocrats by 1819, but it had not been a particularly smooth one, since

West Point was not an entirely closed system, but instead was subject to influence from

and manipulation by third-party actors in Washington and elsewhere. Partridge had had

bottom-up support from the Corps of Cadets, and he enjoyed success for as long as he

also had top-down support from Chief of Engineers Joseph Swift. By the end of 1816, the

Madison and Monroe administrations had begun to erode this top-down cover that

Partridge enjoyed. When Partridge refused to quit “his” post in August 1817, he began a

contest of bottom-up resistance against top-down directives. Here, more than anywhere,

the president’s men were able to prevail. The question became, however, whether this

top-down implementation would overcome resistance from the larger context of

American standing-army politics after 1819.

92 Alden Partridge, “Lecture on national defense,” July 18, 1821, Partridge Collection, Norwich Archives & Special Collections (hereafter A&SC); Partridge et al, “Memorial of a Committee of the Military Convention at Norwich, Vermont…” February 24, 1840, in Public Documents: The Senate of the United States. First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress vol. 5, document 238; Partridge, Manuscript of “The Military Academy at West Point, Unmasked: or, Corruption and Military Despotism Exposed,” 1830, Partridge Collection, Norwich A&SC. See further discussion in the Epilogue and Conclusion. 154

Part II: Fortresses of Wood

Separate from and in contradiction to the stone-fortress narrative that the reformers attempted to construct to buttress their measures in the army and Congress was the heroic militiaman who claimed final victory in the War of 1812. The militia had, of course, not fared well at the Battle of Bladensburg, but Bladensburg represented only one

of three major British thrusts into U.S. territory in late 1814. Advocates for the militia

could claim, without blushing, that Bladensburg notwithstanding, the militia had, by

January 1815, played a primary role in defeating all three of those thrusts: at the Battles

of Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and New Orleans.

As important as the engagements at Plattsburgh and Baltimore were in September,

the true glory came from the Southern Theater, where Andrew Jackson defeated the

redcoats’ drive toward the Crescent City. While regulars formed part of Jackson’s line,

the aspect of the battle that captured most Americans’ imaginations was the ragtag group

of Western militia who had accompanied Jackson to Louisiana. Tales of creoles, of

pirates, and of black Americans who had rushed to join the hero’s lines fleshed out the

myth’s appeal. That such a battle would prove problematic for the reformers’ platform

should seem intuitively obvious, yet the administration largely supported the myth of

Andrew Jackson’s victory despite this tension.

Chapter Four examines the battle itself and addresses the question of why it was

that the reformers latched onto such a troublesome counterexample to their own

155

narrative. Andrew Jackson’s victory, though not generally understood in a manner

compatible with their calls for a better, more disciplined militia to supplement a larger

professional standing army, was still politically useful for the Republican Party. The

battle was proof, after all, that America had won the war under a Republican’s watch.

Monroe hoped, moreover, that the battle’s mythos could bring unity—politically and

socially—to the loose American confederation. Chapter Five continues the story of

Andrew Jackson’s relationship with the executive and demonstrates that Madison and

Monroe could not use Jackson for their own ends after all; he could not be controlled.

Jackson discovered quickly that the popular appeal of his victory could serve his own

purposes, a fact that he rapidly began to exploit. He publicly and openly defied the War

Department and created a sense of Western and Eastern factions. All the while, Monroe

was politically hamstrung by Jackson’s popular appeal.

By 1819, as Chapter Six demonstrates, when Congress attempted to censure

Jackson for his illegal war against Spain and the in Florida, the Hero had become a truly formidable political force on his own. 1819 proved a bad year for the reformers who sought a stronger federal government. The Panic of 1819 was proof to counter-reformers that Henry Clay’s American System was not working; the slaveholding population reacted to the Controversy with anger and suspicion toward their

Northern neighbors. The seeds of discord had been sown anew, and the continued climate through 1820 nurtured the new growth of the old antimilitary rhetoric and ideology in

Congress. All these factors culminated in late 1820 through January 1821, when the

House voted to reduce the military budget and the army’s size. It was a major setback to the stone-fortress platform.

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Chapter 4: Dirty-shirts and Cottonbalers Andrew Jackson and the Resurgence of Wood-Fortress America

Who would not be an American? Long live the republic! All hail! last asylum of oppressed humanity! Peace is signed in the arms of victory!1 —H. Niles, 18 February 1815

Who, of all the martial host, / That has fought with val’rous might, / ’Gainst the flower of Britain’s boast / In this second war of right, / Claims the loudest shout of praise / From Columbia’s thankful states? / Whose honor’d head now wears the richest bays, / And future glorious fame no injury awaits? / He, to whom the nation bows, / And hails its noblest champion. / The victor’s deed New-Orleans shows, / And vanquish’d fate of Albion.2 —“Ode to General Jackson,” 1816

On 8 January 1815, Andrew Jackson repelled the invading British forces at the

famous Battle of New Orleans from behind muddy earthworks reinforced by timber using

artillery pieces stabilized by bales of cotton. Among his ranks, Jackson commanded

Western militiamen in their own everyday costume, regular army regiments of infantry, citizen-soldiers who in many cases were neither citizens nor soldiers, and laborers from the environs. Every hue of clothing and shade of melanin was present among the combatants who stood victorious in their mud-soaked pantaloons over “the heroes of

Wellington.”3 The nation was in a state of euphoria over this quintessentially American

1 “Glorious News!,” February 18, 1815, Niles Weekly Register vol. 7 (September 1814-March 1815): 385. 2 N.K.G.O., “Ode to General Jackson,” printed in the Daily National Intelligencer vol. IV no. 958 (February 2, 1816): 3. 3 A. Lacarrière Latour, Historical Memoir of the War in and Louisiana, 1814-1815 (Philadelphia: John Conrad, 1816), 201. 157

victory. “Gen. JACKSON will be immortalized—” proclaimed a broadside in Salem,

Massachusetts. “[T]he bravery of the Kentuckians, the Tennesseans, &c. shall be handed

down to the latest posterity—if there ever was a stain upon ‘raw militia,’ it was wiped

away on the 8th of January” when Jackson’s ragtag force turned back the invaders. The

broadside concluded that the “result of this day’s contest is of more importance in a national point of view, than any occurrence since the war.”4

Not everyone in the United States shared the conclusion that the stain upon raw militia had been wiped clean, of course, but the logic behind the broadside was irrelevant next to the battle’s emotional impact. That New Orleans could come to plague military professionalists by reviving the American Cincinnatus (who had been beaten and left for dead on the field at Bladensburg) was not hard to detect immediately, as the broadside

shows. What, then, were military reformers to do in response to the “glorious news” of

victory? To criticize the militia too severely would invite the reproach of an exuberant

nation. To acknowledge too generously the successes of the militia was also obviously

problematic given the Madison and Monroe administrations’ messages to Congress about

military preparedness.

The 7th U.S. Infantry Regiment, one of the regular units under Jackson’s

command at New Orleans, illustrated this tension perfectly when it adopted the nickname

“Cottonbalers” after the battle.5 The nickname, of course, referred to the stubborn myth

that the defenders of New Orleans had fought behind bales of cotton—it is a myth that

4 “Glorious News from New Orleans! Splendid Victory over British Forces!,” [Broadside], (Salem, MA: Essex Register Office, 1815, ©American Antiquarian Society). 5 It is a nickname the regiment continues to hold today; indeed, its regimental crest has seven bales of cotton incorporated into its design. See John McManus, American Courage, American Carnage: The 7th Infantry Regiment’s Combat Experience, 1812 through vol. 1 (New York: Forge, 2009), 20. 158

endures to this day, despite the efforts of every academic historian of the battle to dispel

it. The bales of cotton were themselves a testament to the wood-fortress paradigm of hastily-constructed, improvised military lines manned by citizen-soldiers. For a regular army regiment to take this nickname, then, was incongruous with the institution it represented. To be a Cottonbaler was to be a walking contradiction: a regular wrapped in

the militia tradition. That incongruity mattered little compared to the morale and prestige

benefits of sharing in—and possibly usurping—the victory of the militia. This

paradoxical union of regulars with the frontier militia, or “dirty-shirts” as British Vice

Admiral Cochrane was said in American folklore to have called them, was a paradox

with which the regulars were nearly uniformly comfortable at the time.6

Similarly, office-holding “Cottonbalers” in the executive maneuvered within the

same paradox in the political sphere without any outward sense of discomfiture.

Republican politicians attempted to harness the mythos of New Orleans and use it as a

tool to rein in the passions of the people and the machinations of would-be political

opponents. The Niagara campaign and the burning of Washington may have “proved” the

superiority of federally-trained and -controlled soldiers to state militia, but New Orleans

“proved” that a Republican president and secretary of war had led the United States to

victory against Britain by the war’s end. The latter conclusion was every bit as useful as

the former to a president attempting to lead a fractured nation into an era of good feelings

with a new Republican consensus. New Orleans, despite its danger to the reformers’

military narrative, was therefore useful as a means to expand both American nationhood

6 There is no reason to believe that Cochrane actually referred to the militia in this way, though he may have espoused the attitude the term portrays. Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 94, claims that the British used the epithet. 159

and Republican power at the federal level. The problem facing the president and his allies was how to harness these useful aspects of the New Orleans image without allowing the deleterious implications of a militia victory to undermine their defense measures in

Congress. Republicans and military reformers therefore had a tight balance to maintain in

moderating their messages, and like all good legends, those of Andrew Jackson took on a

life of their own as time went on. Through 1817, the reformers had gained limited victories by leveraging the allure of Andrew Jackson and his glory at New Orleans to

encourage American nationalism and consolidate political hegemony, but the American

frontiersman would prove too slippery for the Washingtonian executives to grasp.

This chapter traces the rise of a competing narrative to that of the reformers through three main points. First, although Andrew Jackson was a true wood-fortress commander in almost every sense of the term, the Battle of New Orleans was not a genuine victory for the militia as much as it was a victory of the challenging southern

Louisianan terrain and of artillery. The battle did not, despite what pro-militia counter- reformers claimed, prove the validity of the old revolutionary military paradigm. Second, one of James Madison and James Monroe’s foremost hopes early on in the New Orleans campaign was that Andrew Jackson would be able to bring order to the raucous American periphery—Louisiana was still a creolized territory with few political, social, or cultural connections to the American nation. To a large extent, it worked. New Orleanians would come to insist on a tendentious reading of history whereby they were eager and willing defenders of American ideology. In actuality, they had largely either been forced to fight, or they fought for their own reasons (which had nothing to do with American freedom).

After the war’s conclusion, moreover, Jackson had a continued role to play on the

160

southwestern frontier, where there was still territory requiring stabilization to make the

area safe for “civilized” white settlers. Finally, as a jubilant people heard tell of the

victory, the battle’s legacy almost immediately became political fodder. While some tried

to make the argument that New Orleans had proven the old military system’s efficacy,

the Republicans effectively embraced it as a means to kill off the remnants of the

Federalist Party while also subduing the southwestern frontier and nationalizing its

people.

Central to the narrative that follows is how memory of the Battle of New Orleans

affected American society in the 1810s and 1820s. Joseph Stoltz has written a detailed

work on the memory of New Orleans in his recent dissertation, which describes the

foundation of the New Orleans myth and documents its decline and near extinction over

the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His chapters on the battle itself and

on its early use as a narrative against federal expansion are particularly germane to the

discussion at hand. He correctly observes, for example, that Republicans needed some

way to reverse most of their prewar policies against military build-up, a national bank,

and so on. The politicians’ commemoration of New Orleans, Stoltz finds, provided

exactly the legerdemain necessary to distract an ebullient people from these awkward

political reversals.7

Stoltz is not the only, or even the most recent, scholar to examine the phenomenon of New Orleans’s memory in the 1810s. Donald Hickey’s volume Don’t

Give up the Ship!: Myths of the War of 1812 has become the standard corrective to many oversimplifications and legends associated with the war in general, and New Orleans in

7 Stoltz, “New Orleans in American Historical Memory,” 10. 161

particular. Laura Lyons McLemore’s recent volume of essays on New Orleans in history

and memory weaves together analyses from both Hickey and Stoltz; it also includes

helpful essays on the roles of black Americans, Andrew Jackson’s psyche, and his role as

an American icon.8 Yet there is even more to the story of Andrew Jackson’s role as a

narrative device. Much as Winfield Scott came to be the embodiment of stone-fortress

politics within the army after 1814, Andrew Jackson was a wood-fortress man through

and through. Much like Scott, the executive found utility in the myth-making Jackson

provided.

Jackson’s mythological role was problematic for the executive from the start.

Scott on the Niagara was supposed to prove the need to expand the regular army,

standardize a more disciplined militia system, and increase federal presence in

Americans’ everyday lives. That these same reformers, both Scott and Republican

politicians alike, would initially embrace a “militia victory” like New Orleans may seem

contrary to this agenda, and indeed it was to a certain degree. At the same time that

Madison and Monroe had to press Congress for reforms and military expansion due to the

armed forces’ poor performance, they also had to convince the American people that the

Republicans had won the war. The Battle of New Orleans unquestionably assisted in

proving this latter point. It was perhaps the most clear-cut American victory of the war.

Even the Battle of Baltimore, America’s other non-debatable victory, paled in

8 Laura Lyons McLemore, ed., The Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016). Donald Hickey’s “What We Know That Ain’t So” is a helpful redux of his 2007 Don’t Give Up the Ship! thesis. Mark Cheatham explores the mythology of Andrew Jackson himself, specifically his hatred of the British. Gene Allen Smith’s “Remembering ” describes the effect of the conflict on American racial relations. Finally, Leslie Gruesbeck’s “Continually Heroic” describes the iconography of Jackson. 162

comparison to the one-sidedness of Jackson’s glory at New Orleans. Furthermore, the

Battle of New Orleans had a direct and real role to play in the nationalists’ attempts to

expand a shared sense of American nationality.

Nationalism, a sense of belonging to what Benedict Anderson has famously called

“imagined communities,” is difficult if not impossible to force upon a group of people.

The ties that bind a national community must be forged carefully in order to convince a

people that they do indeed belong to a national structure. According to Anderson, the

“origins of national consciousness” in the Western Hemisphere first lay in the rise of

capitalism and printing during the sixteenth century, which enabled the spread of ideas

from center to periphery. He also notes, however, that the isolation of pre-industrial

creole communities (that is, persons of European descent born in the Americas) led to a

sense of nationality long before most Europeans truly embraced nationalism. Anderson

suggests that creole communities reacted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

to a combination of Enlightenment ideas and attempts by European imperialists to

reassert control of the Americas.9 Thus, there is a delicate balance to be struck when

assimilating a people into a common identity.

Anderson’s analysis focuses on Latin American communities primarily, but his

model also lends itself well to the failure of British nationalism in the Thirteen Colonies

between 1763 and 1776. The attempt by London to assert control over its North

American colonies after victory in the Seven Years’ War provides an important parallel

to the opportunity Washington had after 1815 to create “America” along the southwestern

9 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 2006), 24, 52-53. 163

frontier. One of the most powerful tools for developing a sense of community, and one

that Anderson underemphasizes, was and remains military victory. When a battle is won

on the periphery and peripheral actors can claim a role in it, the metropole has a

tremendous opportunity to foster a greater sense of political unity, but it is not automatic.

After 1763, for example, Americans in the Thirteen Colonies felt tremendous pride in

their recent victory over the French and a resultant wave of British nationalism swept

across the colonies. When the American colonials—who were themselves peripheral

“backwoodsmen” and “ragamuffins” in much the same way as Jackson’s army—felt

disrespected on a social and political level by British policies and attitudes toward them,

the London metropole lost its opportunity to “conquer” its own subjects.10 Similarly, the

Battle of New Orleans brought a U.S. victory to a region that had recently not been

“U.S.” in any sense and remained a mixture of languages, cultures, national preferences,

and political pursuits. If the Republicans were to denigrate the militia’s performance and

insist that the eastern seaboard were somehow superior, they would risk alienating the

people of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky. If it remained a Western victory,

however, the people would have reason to imagine themselves as a contributing part to

the greater United States community.

The Rise of Old Hickory

Andrew Jackson himself, as an American icon, has been enshrouded in legend and controversy. Born to Irish immigrants who had settled in Waxhaw, South Carolina,

10 See Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in , 1754-1766 (New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2000), xix-xxiii, 746; and Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers & Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1984), 14-25, esp. 23. 164

Jackson was famously captured during the Revolutionary War when he was serving in a

local militia at only thirteen years of age. Much like George Washington’s cherry tree

legend or Honest Abe’s walking six miles to return a few pennies, stories of this future

president’s youth would help form the mystique surrounding him in later years. The

young Jackson was said to have received a scar during his captivity from a British officer

who slashed him with a cutlass for refusing to polish his boots; this story was present in

the earliest biographies of Jackson.11 It has since been said that this formative event, along with his older brother’s death at the Battle of Stono Ferry in 1779, created in

Jackson an even more intense hatred for the British. Whether or not an officer actually slashed him with a sword for refusing to polish boots, the scar that he bore was very real.

The resultant myth—accompanied by stories of him learning from a very young age to shoot a musket and a bow, and to decipher Indians’ bird calls as they approached to

ambush whites—has proven hard to remove from popular memory.12

The early military career of Jackson was no less apposite to the image of a rustic

American Indian-fighting folk hero. After resettling in Tennessee, Jackson became a

successful lawyer, politician, and militia commander. His first wartime action came in

1812 when Secretary of War Eustis sent him on an expedition to Spanish West Florida,

where he had to suffer subordination to James Wilkinson, the same man who had commanded in the New York theater prior to Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott’s arrival

11 John Henry Eaton and John Reed, The Life of Andrew Jackson in the Service of the United States… (Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817), 12. 12 Mark R. Cheatham, “‘I Owe Britain a Debt of Retaliatory Vengeance’: Assessing Andrew Jackson’s Hatred of the British,” in McLemore, ed., The Battle of New Orleans, 28, 41-45; cf. David Fitz-Enz, Hacks, Sycophants, Adventurers, & Heroes: Madison’s Commanders in the War of 1812 (New York: Taylor Trade, 2012), 33. 165

there. While on this expedition, which resulted in a snub from the War Department and

an unpaid march all the way back to Nashville, Jackson earned his nickname “Old

Hickory” and the strong reputation among the militiamen he had led.13

His personal appeal to his men aided him tremendously when, in response to an

Indian massacre at Fort Mims in August 1813, Jackson called out the militia and led them

into the field. Jackson still had a duelist’s bullet lodged in his shoulder, received during a

tussle in Nashville after he had arrived home from his aborted expedition, when he began

a punitive campaign against the Red Stick Creeks. Jackson’s army, which had among its

ranks the future Western heroes Samuel Houston and David Crockett, slaughtered nearly

500 of the at the Battle of Talladega in November 1813 at the cost of 22

Americans killed. The army followed this victory with an equally one-sided battle at

Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, where another 800 Red Sticks perished compared to

50 Americans killed.14 Jackson was not only a beloved hero among his men, he was now

an accomplished Indian fighter. He relished killing, and did not shy away from violent

language in his correspondence.15

Jackson’s performance in this campaign earned him his regular army commission

as a brigadier general with a brevet to major general, and he was soon appointed commander of the 7th U.S. Military District. Secretary of War John Armstrong lauded

Jackson’s commission as a “reward for your able & gallant conduct during the campaign

13 John C. Fredericksen, The United States Army in the War of 1812 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 52- 53; Fitz-Enz, Madison’s Commanders, 40-41. 14 Fredericksen, The United States Army in the War of 1812, 53. 15 See Jackson to , March 31, 1814, in John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, I:493; 166

[against the Red Sticks], & in testimony of the public respect these have obtained.”16

James Madison, who did not entirely approve of Jackson’s conduct, was evidently not

consulted before Armstrong made this appointment. On August 13, mere days before

Armstrong’s disastrous handling of the British threat against Washington City would

evince itself, Madison chastised his secretary of war for taking such liberties. He

reminded Armstrong that “the Secretary of War, like the Heads of the other Depts.…by

express statute as by the structure of the constitution, acts under the authority & subject to

the decisions & instructions of the President.”17

Jackson’s willingness to act without formal authorization from the leadership in

Washington had thus secured his position; a follow-on act of disobedience to the federal

government would further fix his glory on the eve of the battle at New Orleans. In

November 1814, Old Hickory attacked the Spanish garrison at Pensacola without authorization and, indeed, contrary to orders and the clear intent of the War Department.

His incursion was not the first time a commander in the Southern Theater had taken it

upon himself to expand U.S. territory at the expense of the technically-neutral Spanish,

and it would not be the last. James Wilkinson, when he was still commanding in

Louisiana, had previously written that he intended to attack Pensacola and Mobile

without orders. Wilkinson would later seize Mobile, though he did so with congressional

approbation.18 It was left to Jackson to make good on the second half of Wilkinson’s

16 John Armstrong to Jackson, May 22, 1814, NARA RG107 M6, vol. 7; a follow-on letter of May 28 informs Jackson that William Henry Harrison’s resignation from the army created the vacancy that afforded Jackson his new billet. 17 Madison to Armstrong, August 13, 1814, Madison Papers, series 3, reel 27, LC. 18 Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 65. 167

threat. On November 7, 1814, Jackson’s troops stormed Pensacola, overwhelming the

Spanish garrison and chasing off the British who had been amassing there.19

Historian Samuel Watson, in his exhaustive study of the officer corps on the frontier, has aptly demonstrated that American westward expansion came at the end of a

sword wielded by strong-willed men in uniform.20 Paradoxically, therefore, the federal government could benefit from frontier vigilantism, even when it undercut federal authority. Andrew Jackson was a beloved folk hero to the men under his charge, and a useful usurper to the government of the United States as he focused his efforts on defending New Orleans, the next obvious point of attack. It was typical British fashion to defeat a large continental enemy by means of economic strangulation, and New

Orleans—like Baltimore before it—was a major trade city whose capture or sacking would have devastated what little remained of the U.S. economy in late 1814. Even the looming threat of British amphibious raids along the coastline dogged U.S. congressmen.

The extended blockade the British continued to enforce into January 1815 required activation of militiamen seemingly everywhere at once. It was a situation that taxed not only the federal coffers but, as some in Congress feared, the will of the people also.21

Discord: The Unruly Federalists, the Unruly Frontier

The will of the people certainly appeared to be failing. The political importance of

New Orleans was thus bound up in the U.S. sectionalism and political discord that preceded it. It is impossible to appreciate fully the political usefulness of the Battle of

New Orleans, therefore, without understanding the less-remembered British invasion of

19 Fredericksen, The United States Army in the War of 1812, 54. 20 Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 64. 21 “Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. 3 no. 628, January 11, 1815. 168

Maine in the autumn of 1814 and the political recriminations that followed in its wake.

After the British invasion and annexation of Maine in the latter half of 1814, northeastern

disaffection grew in bounds until it culminated in the infamous Hartford Convention, a

New Englander delegation that, according to its political detractors, was formed to

disband the Union itself. At the same time as the Republican administration was dealing

with these developments in the northeast, Secretary of War Monroe perceived the serious threat that the British amphibious forces posed to the great port cities of Mobile and New

Orleans on the Gulf Coast, whose inhabitants were, in many cases, of dubious loyalties

thanks to their varying backgrounds. In the end, it was Andrew Jackson who came to be

the solution to both the problems in the northeast and in the southwest.

The American victories on the Niagara and in Plattsburgh and Baltimore, such as

they were, did not heal a deeply divided and bitter nation. Sectionalism between New

England, the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West had been simmering since the war’s

beginning, but in the latter half of 1814 it was threatening to boil over. On August 26, as

residents of Washington City were sheepishly returning to the smoldering ruins of the

city they had fled two days prior, Lieutenant General Sir John Sherbrooke set sail from

his home base in Nova Scotia to invade the District of Maine.

Sherbrooke’s force landed on the banks of the Penobscot River on September 1

near a fortress guarding Castine, Maine, on the eastern bank of the river. After the

Americans exchanged a few shots with the attackers, the militia blew up the fort’s magazine and “dispersed immediately upon our landing.”22 On the morning of the

22 Sherbrooke to Bathurst, September 10, 1814, in William Wood, ed., Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812 vol. III, part 1 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 309. 169

second, a force of not more than 700 British soldiers and marines that had landed on the

western bank attacked a strong position north of the town of Frankfort that was manned

by at least comparable, if not superior, numbers of New England militiamen. The

American citizen-soldiers melted away in the face of the British attack. King George III

now owned Maine, and “The inhabitants of several Townships East of this place…sent

deputations” to the British command “to tender their submission to British Authority.”23

Within weeks of these events, New England politicians began calls for a convention of states to protect New England’s regional interests. At the same time as

Jackson was beginning to turn his attention to the Gulf Coast, representatives from the

New England states were convening the Hartford Convention to discuss how to seek redress against a federal government that they felt no longer represented them.24 In the wake of the Hartford Convention, many northeasterners felt little obligation to support the federal government in any capacity; some promised active interference with federal officers’ performance of their duties. In response, a Washingtonian complained that

Bostonians “appear determined [that] New Orleans shall be taken, and that the western militia will not fight.” This writer noted the Massachusetts militia’s “inactivity” during the British invasion of Maine the previous August and inferred that these New

Englanders hoped “to find a counterpart in the south to lessen their disgrace by sharing it.” Ignorant of the victory that had already happened as he wrote, he concluded with a

23 Rear Admiral Edward Griffith to Admiral Alexander Cochrane, September 9, 1814, in idem, 322; the preceding narrative was based on the letters of Sherbrooke and Griffith previously cited, as well as Quimby, The U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 595-597. 24 The best text on the Hartford Convention and political discord during the war is Richard Buel, Jr., America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 170

prediction that victory in the South would silence these dissenters.25 Maine was

hermetically sealed by the Royal Navy, New York was under threat from ,

and now so was New Orleans. All the while, the regular army and the War Department were proving unable to meet the rising calamity. Unless the militia rose to the occasion, argued one Massachusetts politician, the United States “will soon as naturally fall asunder, as ripe fruit falling from our trees.”26

The fate of the nation seemed to be on Andrew Jackson’s shoulders, therefore, as

he prepared to meet the British throughout December 1814, and the war’s outcome— despite the resolution of the peace conference in Ghent—was not yet certain. The British had already recolonized parts of Maine, would they be able to wrest the frontier from the

United States as well? The city of New Orleans was one of the most socially disjunctive

areas in a tenuous republic, and the British invaders and the U.S. government alike knew

it. The British, knowing that many of the region’s inhabitants had stronger loyalties to

Spain or France than to the United States, were adjuring the people to support the

British.27 Secretary of War Monroe, knowing that the mixed loyalties along the Gulf

Coast presented a vulnerability, ordered Jackson to assume command of the defense of

Mobile and New Orleans. Monroe knew Jackson would have a difficult time organizing

the defense, particularly considering how ill-equipped his force was for the task ahead.28

25 “Resistance of the Laws,” from the Essex Register, printed in Daily National Intelligencer, vol. 3 no. 635, January 18, 1815; quotes from “The Boston editors appear determined New Orleans shall be taken,” in idem. Samuel Eliot Morison’s “Our Most Unpopular War” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society Third Series, 80 (1968): 38-54, argues convincingly that the Republicans charged the convention unfairly with seeking disunion and secession. 26 Leverett Saltonstall quoted in Morison, “Our Most Unpopular War,” 46. 27 See General Orders, Headquarters, 7th U.S. Military District, December 16, 1814, printed in Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette vol. XV, no. 800, January 20, 1815. 28 Monroe to Jackson, October 10 and 19, 1814, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 25, LC. 171

The people of New Orleans, all the while, had been anxious about their fate. Their

reactions to Jackson’s arrival in New Orleans and his accompanying force were mixed to

begin with. Jackson looked sickly and gaunt, and “although well acquainted with

the…cold-blooded massacre and extirpation meted out to the savage race,” his lack of formal training in warfare against a European enemy did not impress every citizen. Nor, for that matter, did the “feeble force” of 1,500 men who accompanied Jackson. They appeared to have “no idea whatever of military organization and discipline.”29 Such was

the impression of a European-American businessman who had taken up residence in New

Orleans. The creoles were generally more cautiously optimistic and, according to one

chronicler, “everyone wanted to fight” the British once Jackson arrived. It is worth

noting, however, that the creoles were not particularly motivated by American

nationalism to do so. “One cannot be French or of French origin without despising

English dominion,” the Francophone mused. The United States, in his opinion, was

merely less undesirable than Spanish (or the threat of British) imperial rule.30

The people who fought did so primarily for their own purposes, whether it be to

protect hearth and home, to achieve greater freedom as men of color, or to avoid prison.

To coordinate, unite, and organize such a city for defense would have been

overwhelmingly difficult. As Bernard Marigny, a creole city leader, admitted, defective

governance and a social incapacity for unified effort had caused the Louisiana militia to

29 Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, or, Reminiscences of the Life of a Former Merchant (New York: Redfield, 1854), 207-208. 30 Bernard Marigny, Réflexions sur la campagne du Général André Jackson, en Louisiane, en 1814 et 1815 (New Orleans: J.L. Sollée, 1848), 4, (quotes translated from the original French). Marigny’s memoir is a polemic against the charges that creoles and other locals were lethargic in supporting the campaign. 172

wallow in “malaise.”31 It did not help that the United States government had failed to

lend Louisiana financial and military support. Many at the time felt, according to

Jackson’s chief engineer, that “Louisiana was considered as a bastard child of the

American family.”32 In the years after the battle, however, Marigny would insist that the

Francophones in southern Louisiana had by no means fallen into lethargy, contrary to the

many “calumnies” spoken against his people. He claimed, clearly exaggerating, that “all

the population rose up together.”33

Jackson did not perceive any levée en masse. “[T]he utmost disunion of sentiment

prevailed among the inhabitants,” he recalled in a report to the secretary of war. As was a

typical problem in the American South, the white population feared a slave revolt and,

therefore, felt their energies were better suited to keeping blacks from being able to

organize. Jackson addressed these men of color directly with an appeal, “adapted as I

thought to their feelings and prejudices,” in order to sway them over to the American

side. It worked.34 Blacks enlisted into the 2d Regiment of Militia, hoping that their service would improve the quality of life for freedmen and for those still enslaved.35 They would

fight well, but in the end the rewards for their service would not live up to their hopes.

Jackson and the federal government cared only about the short-term benefits of their

service amid the bayous.

Jackson, frustrated by his lack of control over the countryside, which harbored

some Spanish creoles who favored the British, declared martial law and asked Louisiana

31 Marigny, Réflexions, 4. 32 Latour, Historical Memoir, 63. 33 Marigny, Réflexions, 2, 5. The original French reads “[on] se leva en masse” (p. 5). 34 Jackson to Monroe, February 13, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 28, LC. 35 Latour, Historical Memoir, 67. 173

Governor William Claiborne to suspend habeas corpus. He then ordered men conscripted

into the militia for labor and directed everyone’s efforts to improving the shoddy

defenses along the most likely British approach to New Orleans.36 Marigny was correct that the creoles would mobilize in defense of the city and would eventually play a critical

role in the victory, but many of them had this greatness thrust upon them. Even so, as

businessman Vincent Nolte recalled candidly, “many of the young inhabitants of New

Orleans would have liked [to have avoided military service] with flimsy pretexts.”37

The Battle of New Orleans

Few might have guessed, when observing the chaotic conditions of the southern

Louisianan countryside, the disorganized American forces assembling there, and the

mighty British forces arraying against them, that victory was possible. Yet the Battle of

New Orleans proved in the end to be one of the most colorful stories of the War of 1812.

The tactical engagement itself was remarkably straightforward. The Americans built

earthen ramparts along a straight canal, and the British tried unsuccessfully to break

through that line with a frontal assault. But the battle was not spectacular in Americans’

minds because of tactics. Surrounding this simple battle was a folkloric tapestry of

creoles, freedmen, pirates, and frontiersmen—the very heterogeneity that so deeply

concerned the Americans at the outset. The battle became an archetypical wood-fortress

victory in the most positive sense.

In reality, the Americans there won almost in spite of themselves. The battle

featured federal officers who had little understanding of their own territory, an at-times

36 Latour, Historical Memoir, 70-71; Jackson to Monroe, February 13, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 28, LC. 37 Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 205. 174

hostile local government, and residents who did not exactly rush to fill in the ranks as

quickly as Jeffersonian-minded polemicists would have had their audiences believe. The

British commander, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, lost not because of the

American militia’s bravery or Jackson’s competence, therefore. He lost because of a

combination of poor terrain, slow tempo on his army’s part, and, above all, an overmatch

in artillery power that favored the Americans.38

Jackson knew he was in trouble as he assembled his army in and around New

Orleans. The one principal advantage that he did have leading into the campaign,

however, was that the Mississippi Delta may have been one of the most difficult places

on the U.S. coastline for a nineteenth-century army to attack. “Though in itself

unfortified, it is difficult to conceive a place capable of presenting greater obstacles to an

invader,” admitted Robert Gleig, a veteran of the Chesapeake campaign who was now

struggling through the bayous of southern Louisiana in December 1814.39 Though written

after the fact with perhaps an eye toward explaining away the remarkable defeat, Gleig

was not exaggerating in this case. Swampy and prone to flooding, with very few good

roads and poorly charted terrain, and with waterways whose course, current, and depth

changed on a whim, Jackson had many advantages.

Jackson also had much cause for worry. He was trying to defend against an

amphibious assault by the world’s mightiest navy, and his British opponents had options

for where to land. Once ashore, he would be fighting veterans of the

38 For single-volume treatments of the Battle of New Orleans itself, see Charles Brooks, The Siege of New Orleans (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1961); Samuel Carter, Blaze of Glory: The Fight for New Orleans 1814-1815 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971); and Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans (New York: Penguin Books, 1999). 39 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 263. 175

Map 6: The New Orleans Campaign, 1814-1815.

176

under the command of Arthur Wellesley’s able-minded brother-in-law, Edward

Pakenham, who had also distinguished himself with merit during the Peninsular War,

where he had driven Napoleon’s troops from a fortified position.40 The men of the British

army had seen American militia melt away from before them at Bladensburg. There, the

Americans had held a strong position on terrain that canalized the British across the

bridge over the Eastern Branch. It had required only a preliminary cannonade and a

frontal assault to rout those forces. The redcoats had reason to believe that New Orleans

would soon be in their possession despite the forbidding countryside.

General Pakenham was still on his way to assume his new command in Louisiana.

In the meantime, it was General John Keane who made the initial landing of troops by

way of a daring attack against five U.S. gunboats that had run aground in Lake Borgne.

Thanks to the shallow waters in Lake Borgne, the British force attacked with fifty

jollyboats, each one holding around 28 men and a single six-pounder in the

front. Having overwhelmed and destroyed these American naval vessels, the British

soldiers and marines went ashore on Pea Island, from where they would eventually ferry

to the mainland below New Orleans on December 23.41

In the wake of the disastrous loss of the American gunboats on Lake Borgne,

Jackson had no more than a single battalion of militiamen who were actually armed and ready to fight in addition to his original 1,500-man force.42 He also lacked seamen willing

to man the navy’s remaining two vessels and, more critically, he lacked arms.43 Jackson

40 Remini, The Battle of New Orleans, 87. 41 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 261-263. 42 Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 205. 43 Latour, Historical Memoir, 67-68. 177

was worried. “I could not have wielded more than 2,500 [men] and neither arms [nor]

flints,” he complained. To rectify both issues would require support from the people

there, because the government had nothing to give him. Writing from Washington,

Secretary of War James Monroe made it clear to Jackson that part of his mission was,

aside from the obvious goal of defeating a British attack, to stir up the people in support

of the federal government. “[Your presence] will inspire the Inhabitants with

confidence,” Monroe assured Jackson, “and animate them to vigorous exertions.” He

added that a military victory would, he hoped, “reflect new honor on the American

arms.”44 Where Jackson was supposed to get these American arms off which to reflect

new honor, however, was anybody’s guess.

A local pirate named Jean Lafitte believed he was Jackson’s salvation. Lafitte,

whose band of merry men had been operating out of Barataria Bay, had engaged in piracy

against the slave traders into New Orleans. Governor Claiborne, in an attempt to bring law and order to the new territory, ordered Lafitte and his men arrested in March 1813.45

It would be nearly ten months until Claiborne accomplished his goal. In the meantime,

Lafitte had received an offer from the British for clemency and asylum in return for his

help as a guide during the coming attack, but Lafitte saw more benefit in siding with the

Americans. Despite Jackson’s known disgust for the criminal banditti, Lafitte approached

Jackson directly and offered up his men as seamen aboard the two remaining American

sloops of war and, most critically, access to his cache of weapons and ammunition. In

44 Monroe to Jackson, December 10, 1814, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 28, LC. Jackson’s complaint about men and muskets is written on the margin. 45 Proclamation of Governor William C.C. Claiborne, March 15, 1813, in The Niles Weekly Register vol. 4 (March-August, 1813): 142. 178

return, of course, Lafitte wanted clemency for himself and his cohort. His assistance as an

expert navigator came as an added benefit, since American engineers and topographers had not yet mapped the backwaters of the Delta region adequately.46

Now, with men who were well equipped, what Jackson required was time to engineer the terrain for his defense. Finding the federal fortifications of the Second

System to be “in a very defenceless condition,” Jackson had ordered all known canals

and navigable waterways obstructed from British use, and was still trying desperately to

arrange his troops when he learned of the British landing on the mainland on December

23. Jackson, losing none of the bellicosity that had guided him his whole life, whether

against British officers desiring clean boots (according to his legend) or against upstart

Creeks, decided to attack.47 His plan had all the finesse of an angry toddler at play. “I will

them!” Jackson is reported to have said, with no “computation of relative force,

and not much idea of tactics.”48

The resulting night attack of December 23-24 was a tactical stalemate at best, and

a waste of lives at worst. Jackson’s men, still underprepared and not uniformly armed or

equipped, attempted a difficult attack against the British position along the banks of the

Mississippi. The resulting fight was a confused mess as men on both sides groped blindly

for each other in pitch blackness, seeing nothing beyond a few paces’ distance and

hearing little but the cracking of musket balls, the whining of grape shot, and the agony

of the men who lay in the cold mud with macerated flesh. After an intense hand-to-hand

scrum, the Americans simply withdrew.

46 Remini, The Battle of New Orleans, 48-49. 47 Jackson to Monroe, February 13, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 28, LC. 48 Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 209-210. 179

Jackson and the troops under his command put on a brave face. “I was not

ignorant of the inferiority of my force, nor of the hazard of night attacks with

inexperienced troops,” Jackson reported to Monroe, but not to attack would have been

disastrous. Jackson claimed that he wanted to bloody the redcoats’ nose quickly, putting

them on the defensive and thereby buying some time. If he could not gain this time to

prepare his fighting position, New Orleans’s fate would depend on an open-field battle that Jackson knew he could never win. He also claimed he wanted to prove to his men

that he was a fighter. In Jackson’s own opinion, he could not have been more successful.

“From every point on which we assailed [the enemy], he was repulsed; and we should

certainly have succeeded in capturing the whole of his advance…had not a thick fog

which now arose, encreased by a very heavy smoke, rendered it unsafe” to continue the

attack.49

The British officers would have been shocked to learn that it was Jackson’s attack

that had halted them, and Jackson’s claim to have been within a hair’s breadth of total victory was downright absurd. General Keane, unsure of the numbers he faced and not wishing to lead his men into a massacre, halted his army nearly five hours prior to

Jackson’s attack. “Andrew Jackson, Esquire,” a British officer named Henry Cooke wrote mockingly of the unschooled general, “briefly gathered his men into some order; and…now seized as it were a sledge-hammer, and after the manner of grasping a truncheon, invoked Mars to waive military forms or etiquette, and at once resolved to figure as a war general.” Cooke assured his reader that, however confused the redcoats were during the melee, the American attackers were equally disordered. The American

49 Jackson to Monroe, February 13, 1814, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1 vol. 32, LC. 180

infantry proved no difficulty at all for the British; in fact, the real killer that night had

been naval artillery, thanks to the pirates’ cache. After three hours of back-and-forth fighting, the Americans gave way and fell back.50 In the morning after the fight, Robert

Gleig surveyed the aftermath. Those who had simply died of a bullet wound on a

European battlefield could look serene enough, he recalled—one could pretend them to

be asleep. But the savagery of this fight had left heads split open, guts spilled out, and

“the most…ghastly expressions” on the faces of men whose passage had been so

violently painful.51 The American militiamen had proven that they could fight bravely,

and that their bodies could be ripped apart as grotesquely as a regular’s could, but little

else. Jackson’s insistence that the night attack was some strategic coup on his part does

not hold up to scrutiny. Up to this point in his career, he had never done anything except

frontal attacks. Now, when he had tried the same maneuver against professionals, it had

not worked.

Jackson and his men fell back and, on the insistence of his aide, Colonel Edward

Livingston, established his position along a canal that ran perpendicular to the

Mississippi and cut the dikes in the field in front of it to delay the British advance.52 “At that period,” wrote Major Latour, Jackson’s engineer, “New Orleans presented a very affecting picture to the eyes of the patriot, and of all those whose bosoms glow with the feelings of national honor.”53 Latour’s memory of events was saccharine and very

moving indeed, but it ran completely contrary to the conditions on the streets of New

50 John Henry Cooke, A Narrative of Events in the South of France and of the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815 (London: T. & W. Boone, 1835), 189, 191-196. 51 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 290, 298. 52 Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 213. 53 Latour, Historical Memoir, 73. 181

Orleans in late December, 1814. As reports trickled in to the Louisiana legislature that the

ever-choleric Jackson intended to burn New Orleans should he be out-maneuvered (rather

than allowing it to fall into enemy hands), most Louisianans were debating whether or not to make a separate peace with the British in such an exigency. Jackson ordered any such seditionists arrested, and he continued to impress any able-bodied man into service digging mud and piling it up as a rampart along his canal line.54 This rampart followed the northern edge of the straight canal for nearly a kilometer, at which point it ran into a

thick, impassable swamp. Within the first day’s work, it was already apparent to the

British that an attack across a flooded field against an enemy firing from behind an

embankment and a canal could not succeed. A flanking maneuver was nearly impossible.

The only hope for the British was to bring up enough artillery to pierce the earthworks.55

In the lead-up to the main battle of January 8, the British made two major attempts to prod American lines and find a weakness to exploit. In both cases, the resulting engagements were overwhelmingly decided by American artillery superiority.

During this time, as the British prodded the American lines, Latour and Jackson learned where their rampart was weakest and made the necessary adjustments, making the British situation worse with each day. It was at this point that Latour suggested stabilizing the artillery platforms along the line with bales of cotton. The true “Cottonbalers,” therefore, were the artillerymen, and not the U.S. infantry. In the meantime, the British endeavored to increase their own firepower capacity and make their attack on the American line.

54 Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, 214-215. 55 Remini, The Battle of New Orleans, 99-100. 182

The first engagement came on December 28, when Pakenham—who had arrived

at his command on Christmas Day—ordered a general advance against the American

line, focusing on the western edge. Robert Gleig complained of the accuracy of American

artillery and admitted that “the contest was in every respect unequal, since their artillery

far exceeded ours, both in numerical strength and weight of metal.”56 When the British

tried again on New Year’s Day—this time on the eastern end of the American line—they

were very nearly successful in breaking the American lines when they opened a

cannonade that caught the defenders entirely off guard.57 The Americans collected

themselves and, for the next three hours, engaged in a cacophonous artillery duel that

only ended when the British ran out of ammunition and were forced to withdraw from the

field.58

Prior to this point in the campaign, one British officer admitted that neither he nor

his comrades had expected so much trouble from the Americans. All they would have to

do, they had thought, was effect a landing ashore, and “the [British] troops were then to

use their arms and bayonets…and from the known character of the Americans, there

[was] little doubt that blood would flow,” he had scoffed.59 Had the Americans not found

and engineered such an unassailable point, or had the British found some other way around, this officer’s boasting might have proven accurate. As it was, thanks to Jackson’s

willingness to collude with the pirate Jean Lafitte, it was the Americans who possessed the superiority of firepower necessary to check the British advance. American artillery,

56 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 314. 57 Remini, The Battle of New Orleans, 107-108. 58 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 321. 59 Cooke, A Narrative of Events, 179. 183

Louisianan terrain, and uncharacteristic British blundering defeated the British; it was

neither superior generalship on Jackson’s part nor the swelling collective heartbeat of

freedom that thundered inside every true American’s chest on January 8.

Perceiving the American line to be most vulnerable on its flanks, General

Pakenham devised an attack on both ends of the American lines on the early morning of

January 8. A simultaneous attack, undertaken by a force of 1,400 men on the western

bank of the Mississippi, would complete the rout. The British plan of attack looked

impressive, but it almost immediately fell apart. One of the great controversies of the

battle for the British side would be the failure of the leading regiment to deploy the

ladders and fascines necessary to approach the American redoubt and storm it. Nor were

the boats available for the men who were supposed to cross the river and make their

assault; the banks of the waterway had eroded and made the passage impossible for the

larger boats. Only about 350 men would cross, and they would do so later than planned.

The confusion and the resulting inability of the British soldiers to advance over the tops

of the enemy works placed the attackers in a precarious situation wherein their panicked

fire either struck earth or sailed harmlessly over the American defenders’ heads.60

The American volunteers were now exploiting the horrific killing field in front of

them. Pakenham, trying in vain to rally his men, rode forward and cried out “for shame, recollect [that] you are British soldiers[!]” After being wounded twice by grapeshot and

again by a musket ball, Pakenham was carried off the field, where he died of his

wounds.61 The British command was upended, and the exhausted, demoralized, and

60 Gleig, Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army, 325-326, 328-330. 61 Ibid., 330; Pakenham quoted in Quimby, The U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 904. 184 effectively disintegrated British right wing knew it would not carry Jackson’s works that day.

On the western bank of the Mississippi, however, the American dirty-shirts did not fare as heroically as their well-positioned comrades on the eastern bank did. The

British force that had crossed, under William Thornton, to the opposite bank had arrived late and undermanned, but they were able to storm the American position held by

Kentuckian militia. Andrew Jackson, observing the Kentuckians’ performance, was incensed. The Kentuckians had “ingloriously fled” at precisely the moment when, in

Jackson’s opinion, the “entire destruction of the enemy army was now inevitable.”62

Watching from the river, the American naval commander, Commodore Daniel Patterson, was no less furious. “I had the extreme mortification and chagrin to observe… [the militia] abandon their breastwork and flying in a most shameful and dastardly manner, almost without a shot,” he lamented. Fortunately for the American cause, the dastardly retreat of the Kentuckians would not affect the outcome of the battle or New Orleans’s safety. The British, unsupported from the eastern bank and with no naval firepower on the river—the American guns they had captured were spiked—were too few and had too little momentum to re-cross the river and take New Orleans.63 The British drive against the valuable Southern port city had failed.

Fortifying the New Orleans Mythology

Immediately, the reality surrounding the military campaign at New Orleans began to be obscured. It is to be expected that Americans should have been overjoyed by the

62 Jackson to Monroe, January 9, 1815, in Latour, Historical Memoir, appendix no. XXIX, liii. 63 Daniel Patterson to the secretary of the navy, January 13, 1815, in idem, lxii-lxiii. 185

news of victory—they had once again parried one of Admiral Cochrane’s potentially decisive thrusts into the United States—but they went beyond celebration of a military victory and made it a victory of American ideology. Once again, the tyrant’s mercenary

“hirelings” had been humbled by “every bosom which glows with patriotism and virtue,” as Jackson himself would describe it.64 Competing with this ideological interpretation of

the battle was, of course, the inconvenient realities of the militia’s performance. As noted

above, the militia did not perform with universal aplomb, and even on the gloriously

victorious eastern bank, the victory was not the militia’s as much as it was the terrain’s

and a battery of, technically speaking, illegal guns. The Republicans may or may not

have all been aware of these narrative problems, but they used the battle to further their political power all the same.

The first and most immediate problem for interpreters of the aftermath of New

Orleans was the tension between the supposedly glowing patriotic bosoms and the reality of conditions on the streets of New Orleans. Language about patriotic virtue was

embedded in a general order from Andrew Jackson’s headquarters even as its author

admitted that there was “great consternation and alarm pervad[ing] your city” and that the

enemy had enticed some of the citizenry to sedition, “from a supposition that some of you

would be willing to return to your ancient government.”65 Later on, while Americans on

the eastern seaboard remained ignorant of the results of the showdown in Louisiana, the editors of the National Daily Intelligencer boasted that “the people of Louisiana have already shewn a noble ardor which would grace the character of older States in the

64 General Orders, Headquarters, 7th U.S. Military District, December 16, 1814, printed in Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette vol. XV, no. 800, January 20, 1815. 65 Ibid. 186

Union,” adding that they had lent General Jackson their “utmost possible confidence.”

Below this introductory remark, a December 22 letter from a New Orleanian painted a

very different picture of the ardor gracing the youngest state of the Union: it was one of

martial law, Negroes being pressed into labor on fortifications, and “impressment of

those found in the streets” to fight. “All this you may consider has produced a good deal

of alarm,” the New Orleanian stated.66

Only days after the news of Jackson’s victory had reached Washington,

congressmen had already begun subtly to politicize the victory. On February 6,

Representative Troup of motioned that a Congressional Gold Medal be struck for

Andrew Jackson, who had “thrice beaten and driven back” the disciplined, well-led, professional redcoats. Troup added that Jackson had done so with “a militia force hastily collected to the defence of that city, aided by a small body of regular troops; thus illustrating the patriotic defence of the country with brilliant achievement.”67 It was

Troup who, less than three weeks later, would argue passionately as a member of the

House Committee for Military Affairs that the U.S. peace establishment should be

maintained at as large a level as possible.68 That Troup could seemingly contradict

himself by celebrating the militia’s brilliant accomplishments below New Orleans while

almost simultaneously calling for less reliance on the militia in future wars should not

come as any surprise. Emphasizing sacrifice and civic achievement could shame a

lethargic federal government into action. In the face of such brave and noble sacrifice by

the people, should not Congress set aside frivolous political differences and work to

66 “From New Orleans,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 638, January 21, 1815. 67 Resolution of Rep. Troup, “Battle of New Orleans,” Annals, HR, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 1124. 68 “Military Peace Establishment,” February 25, 1815, in idem, 1196-1197. 187

honor the memory of the nation’s heroes? On February 15, the Senate resolved that

“Congress entertain a high sense of the patriotism, fidelity, zeal, and courage, with which

the people of the State of Louisiana…stepped forth.” Such virtues required that Congress act with “generosity…in voluntarily affording the best accommodations in their power.”69

Even those who were not particularly inclined to support a stone-fortress

interpretation of the battle bolstered the executive’s prestige, however inadvertently, in

their discourses. One Louisiana congressman made this connection in his deliberations

before the House in February 1815. Overlooking the genuine disaffection that required

Jackson to declare martial law, suspend habeas corpus, and implore the citizenry to uproot sedition, Representative Thomas Robertson scoffed at the attempt by the British to undermine popular support for the American republic. “The English dared to speak to them of peace and fraternity,” Robertson sneered, “[while] holding in their hand a sword reeking, as it had reeked for centuries, with the blood of Frenchmen.” He stated, correctly, that Jackson was hardly an expert in tactics. Jackson, after all, was no professional soldier, his regular army commission notwithstanding. Instead, Jackson possessed “something more valuable than discipline,” Robertson emoted; he was armed with patriotism.

On the 8th of January, [Robertson continued,] a day destined to form an era of history, this army of invincibles [the British], led on by gallant chiefs, advanced to the charge with firm step, according to methods most approved—trenches hastily thrown up, defended by what they considered a mob, a vagabond militia, promised an enterprise destitute alike of hazard and of honor.

69 Proceedings of February 15, 1815, idem, 238. 188

Despite all this wood-fortress, Jeffersonian-style revolutionary rhetoric, Robertson was

still able to go on and claim that he approved whole-heartedly of Secretary James

Monroe’s leadership of the War Department. Robertson closed by crediting Monroe with wasting no effort to supply the defenders of New Orleans.70 This last claim on

Robertson’s part was probably more remarkable than any, given the complaints Jackson

and the New Orleanians lodged about the poor state of federal support. A major reason

for Jackson’s success, we may recall, was the weapons cache of Jean Lafitte.

Jackson himself would have agreed whole-heartedly with Representative

Robertson’s understanding of the long odds he and his men faced on January 8. After the

battle and the withdrawal of British forces from New Orleans’s doorstep, Jackson ordered

a congratulatory message be read to all his men. “Reasoning always from false

principles,” he began, the British “expected no opposition from men whose officers even

were not in uniform…and who had never been caned into discipline—fatal mistake!” As

the British had advanced “according to the most approved rules of European tactics,”

they had been cut down by these ragamuffins and their incessant fire. Jackson made it

very clear that, despite the worthy efforts of the regular soldiers and marines who served

with no less distinction, the victory clearly belonged to the militia.71 In a separate report

to Monroe, on the other hand, Jackson confessed that

a considerable Regular force [will be] necessary here…to keep all things quiet and in a proper condition at home. Notwithstanding the great unanimity which appears, very generally to have prevailed among the inhabitants since my arrival, I am fearful that if reverses had overtaken us, or if disaffection could have hoped for favour I should have been

70 Testimony of Rep. Robertson, “Defence of New Orleans,” February 16, 1815, idem, 1157-1159. 71 Andrew Jackson, “Address Directed by Major General Jackson to Be Read at the Head of Each of the Corps Composing the Line Below New Orleans, Jan. 21st, 1815” in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III, no. 669, February 27, 1815. 189

compelled to witness a very different scene. I am fearful I should have witnessed it, where it ought least to have been looked for.72

Despite Jackson’s rhetoric in front of his men, he had a very clear understanding of how

narrowly he had escaped a complete disaster, and how fragile his popular support had

been initially. He knew better than anyone how tenuously he had entrenched himself on

the political and social fields in front of New Orleans. Had the British outflanked the

position and made a better attack directly on the people of New Orleans, Jackson might

have been as much disgraced as the Kentuckians on the west bank who had cut and run.

Patriotism, as anyone who had experienced actual combat should have known, does not

fell a single enemy soldier by itself, but the battle being fought in American public

discourse after war’s end did not require cold steel; it required rhetoric.

Much of the rhetoric was supplied by Jackson himself. Andrew Jackson almost immediately began establishing in his official reports, accounts of the battle, and public

congratulations to his own forces, that it was their zeal that had driven the enemy from

the field.73 The public, starved for information about the spectacle, voraciously read

every word Jackson wrote.74 Jackson’s account of the battle to Secretary Monroe on

January 19 made it clear, for example, that the murderous fire that his men had poured

upon the attackers on January 8 had rendered the ladders and fascines with which the

British intended to scale his ramparts useless. Jackson’s exaggerated description painted a

picture of men bravely maintaining musket fire against an advancing professional army

72 Jackson to Monroe, February 13, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 28, LC. 73 “Address Directed by Major General Jackson to Be Read at the Head of Each of the Corps,” Daily National Intelligencer no. 669, February 27, 1815. 74 See ibid.; “New Orleans preserved,” February 18, 1815, Niles Weekly Register vol. VII (September 1814- March 1815): 385; “Letter from General Jackson to the Mayor of New Orleans,” January 27, 1815, Daily National Intelligencer no. 672, March 2, 1815. 190

and conveniently failed to mention the marked advantages in terrain that his forces

enjoyed.75 Letters such as this one invariably made their way into nearly every major

paper throughout the United States.

With Americans being bombarded with such language while already

overwhelmed by a sense of triumphalism, and with such a healthy appetite for details,

citizens began quickly to fill in details of the engagement of their own. The Boston

Yankee, noting that Jackson’s men had lacked federally-supplied weapons and ammunition, yet ignorant of how the defenders had reconciled the deficiency, offered a bold theory as to how “the western boys” had nevertheless killed up to 2,600 redcoats.

“We suppose they must have taken them by the throat as they leaped into the entrenchments, and choaked them unto death. What savages these Kentucky men are!”76

The supposition was clearly tongue-in-cheek, but the attitude behind it was sincere.

More frequently, however, it was the redcoats who were the savages, and it was

the frontiersmen who were not only morally upright, but fought with God on their side.

By May of 1816, a ballad by “Uncle John” was already making its circulation throughout

the United States in which the British commanders were said to have rallied their men to

battle with invitations to rape and plunder. “‘Storm their works and the city shall be your

reward, / Remember that “Beauty and Booty’s the word.”’ / Disgrace to thy country!—

thou monster accurst! / To inflame thy foul soldiers with av’rice & lust.” By contrast, the

Americans were “freemen all hearty and bold, / who fight not for booty, rape—rapine &

75 Jackson to Monroe, January 19, 1815, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1, vol. 30, LC. 76 “The Behest of Providence,” from the Boston Yankee, n.d., reprinted in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 660, February 16, 1815. 191

gold.” The ballad then portrayed Jackson beseeching the Almighty.77 Another anecdote

that Americans shared was of a British subaltern who had come into American lines

under a flag of truce and had bragged, according to the story, that the British force was

commanded by lords: “‘lord Pakenham… lord Cochrane… and many more of the ablest

Generals in Europe.’ To this [an American soldier] replied indignantly, ‘on our side we

have the Lord God Almighty, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the hero Andrew Jackson.”78

These newspaper stories barely sated the Americans’ thirst for details, anecdotes, and accounts in the short term throughout 1815, and from 1816 onward historical memoirs and biographies began to emerge from the printing presses. A. Lacarrière

Latour’s Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15, though not published until 1816, had excerpts and teasers published in December 1815.79 Not surprisingly, Latour’s memoir, which remains one of the most well-read sources of the campaign to this day, was friendly toward Jackson. The very first words Latour laid out for his readers, before giving the minutest detail about historical background or anything else, was his personal dedication of the memoir to General Jackson directly. “The voice of the whole nation has spared me the task of showing how much of these important results are due to the energy, ability and courage of a single man,” Latour wrote Jackson in August 1815, begging him to receive this humble tribute to his greatness.80

Jackson, of course, did receive it, but he was not satisfied with an account merely of his campaign. He wanted an account of his life. To this end, he turned to two of his

77 “The Battle of New Orleans,” printed in Supporter (Chillicothe, OH), vol. VII no. 341, May 2, 1815. 78 “Events of the Late War,” Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. 13 no. 13, April 8, 1815. 79 “Memoir of the War in Louisiana,” from the Port Folio, reprinted in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 906, December 2, 1815. 80 Latour, Historical Memoir, v. 192

subordinate officers, John Reid and , the two of whom compiled a chronicle of

Jackson’s life throughout the course of 1816 and into 1817. (Reid began the project, and

Eaton continued it after Reid’s untimely death.) Jackson was not the author, of course,

but he was intimately involved in the material. He corresponded regularly with Eaton

about his progress and provided assistance in the form of records, reports, and even an

image of himself that he considered to be his best likeness.81 Predictably, Reid and

Eaton’s product, which arrived in bookstores in mid-1817, also painted a highly favorable image of General Jackson.

The executive could benefit from the emerging narrative about New Orleans and

General Jackson, provided it was accompanied by quiet, sometimes subtle admissions

that the militia was not a panacea for all military problems. With such political

ammunition, the reformers could leverage the collective euphoria in their favor. It is

when the miser is in high spirits that one can manipulate his purse strings, but the

executive branch did so at tremendous risk to its long-term military agenda. One

anonymous man who identified as “a militiaman” explained this reality in a letter to the

editors of the Daily National Intelligencer. Militiamen were, as individuals, as brave and

capable as any European soldier that a king could put to the field, the writer explained.

What they lacked was discipline, experience, and training. The belief that militia had

truly bested Wellington’s Immortals was a pernicious myth. On the utterly flat killing

field of Chalmette, south of New Orleans, victory was not a question of skill or

discipline. It was a question of knowing how to load a musket, hold it above the rampart

briefly, and pull the trigger. He also noted, trenchantly, that Jackson was genuinely

81 See Jackson to Abram Maury, April 22, 1817, Andrew Jackson papers, series 6 vol. 159, LC. 193 apprehensive about having to face the British on anything like equal terms. How

Congress could contemplate reducing the army (he was writing as Congress was debating the 10,000-man army) given these facts was beyond comprehension.82

The “militiaman” certainly perceived the potential destructiveness of the New

Orleans myth to the pro-standing army agenda. Why raise an army of Cottonbalers when dirty-shirts did the same job just as well? To prove the point, right behind his editorial letter was another opinion piece, recalling the great Southern militia hero Francis Marion who, like Jackson, had proven that millions of American militiamen are better than any standing army. The author of this follow-on article advised his readers that, if they were interested in learning more about how unnecessary standing armies were, they could pick up his history of Francis Marion for one dollar at the nearest bookseller.83

For President Madison and his successor, James Monroe, the opportunity for a middle way between these two extremes printed in the National Intelligencer presented the best way to satiate their own political party’s traditional positions on national defense while simultaneously adopting the Federalists’ defense platform as their own. Since

Jackson had distinguished himself as a national hero of the revolutionary frontiersman ilk while also advocating for greater security measures, he was an ideal candidate for continued command along the American southwestern frontier. Just as Monroe had hoped that Jackson’s presence in Louisiana in December 1814 would incline the locals toward

U.S. governance and American nationalism, so the secretary of war and his president

82 “A Militia-man,” “The Army,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 673, March 3, 1815. 83 Anonymous, “Another Hero of the Revolution! General Francis Marion,” idem. 194 hoped Jackson could continue to stabilize the population there after the war and extend federal control.84

The case of Jean Lafitte and his assistance to Jackson when federal aid was not forthcoming is a perfect illustration of how inept federal control of the situation along the

Gulf Coast had actually been. Madison and Monroe reinterpreted the story of Jean Lafitte to suit their political needs. In announcing Lafitte’s presidential pardon, the two

Republicans took credit for having apprehended the pirate in the first place, claiming that

“The government of the U. States caused the [pirates’] establishment to be broken up and destroyed.” The president and secretary then emphasized how penitent Lafitte and his men had become and how fervent they were in defending their country. They claimed that the pirates “have exhibited, in the defence of New Orleans, unequivocal traits of courage and fidelity.” The president insisted he was offering a “generous forgiveness” to heroes of the nation.85

Conspicuously absent from this proclamation was any mention of the tit-for-tat agreement Jackson had made with the Lafitte clan; conspicuously absent from the historical record is any reason to believe Lafitte was even present at the battle, let alone with unequivocal courage. Madison and Monroe were clearly taking more credit than they deserved for the events that had transpired along the Gulf Coast that winter—a fact that was not lost on Jackson, who kept a lid on his bitterness for the time being.86 Now,

84 See the proclamation of James Madison, September 9, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 37, LC. 85 James Madison and James Monroe, “Proclamation of the President of the United States of America,” printed in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 653, February 8, 1815. 86 Years later, in the midst of Jackson’s political rise, he would unleash his fury on the federal government over Monroe’s inability to supply him properly. See Jackson to Samuel Houston, October 23, 1826, in PAJ 6:230. 195 similarly, they wished to present the appearance of federal control in a region still plagued by the politics of transnational connections, creole loyalties, and Indian attacks originating in . They were especially concerned about the proclivity of

Louisianans to take it upon themselves to attack the Spanish positions in Florida and hoped Jackson, and the aura of heroism about him, would help quell the type of anarchic vigilantism that had allowed the Baratarian pirates’ operations to flourish in the first place.87

The Republicans sought to consolidate the United States as a national entity. To bring such expanded federal control under the auspices of the Republican leadership required the myths of nationalism, but it also required political pragmatism. 1816 was, after all, an election year. Politicians found the New Orleans battle to be an effective rhetorical device to discredit the Federalists who had, at the same time as the campaign, been meeting in Hartford, Connecticut to discuss resistance to the federal government and, as their opponents added malignantly, to strategize on how to bring about a complete dissolution of the Union. “Previously to our late contest with Great Britain, it was the constant endeavor of the leaders of the federal party to bring into contempt and discredit the worthiest and best men of the country,” according to a pro-Republican campaigner in

Boston. While the British hordes were desecrating the capital, and while New Orleans was “expected to fall” before the unstoppable British juggernaut, “the great and patriotic leaders” of the Federalist skulkers “made a noble, generous and chivalric effort to dissolve the union,” the partisan added sarcastically.88 When the state legislature of North

87 Proclamation of James Madison, September 9, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 37, LC. 88 “Who Shall Be Our Governor?,” from the Boston Patriot, printed in Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. 14 no. 2, January 20, 1816. 196

Carolina debated a bill to thank Madison formally for his service as president,

Republicans responded passionately to the protestations of three Federalists who objected. Madison had won the war for us, they reminded the Federalist dissenters. “Mr.

Madison, a true American… without any regard to the high-sounding Hartford

Convention…continued steadily in the performance of his duty.”89

John Dickinson, writing in the Democratic Press, asked his readers to consider the service that the Republican nominee for president had rendered the nation. In 1814, when Monroe first assumed his post as secretary of war, “The republic was shaking to its centre. A convention in the east gave signs of intestine explosion, at the same moment that the host of Britain was steering for our shores… We shivered at the thoughts of an empire rent in twain” after an anticipated defeat at New Orleans. It was Monroe who, as secretary of state and simultaneously acting secretary of war, “had saved his country.”90

James Monroe won the election by a landslide against Rufus King, his opponent. By

1820, the Federalists’ tenuous position in American politics had not improved. The juxtaposition of the Hartford Convention and the New Orleans campaign was too perfect for partisans to continue to ignore, and by Monroe’s reelection year, the Federalist party had all but ceased to exist.91

89 “General Assembly: Debate on the Vote of Thanks to Mr. Madison,” 14 December 1814, Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette vol. XVI no 853, January 26, 1815. 90 John Dickinson, from the Democratic Press, in Daily National Intelligencer vol. IV no. 1181, October 21, 1816. 91 On the legacy of the Hartford Convention and the politicization of it, see “Remarks on the Hartford Convention,” Daily National Intelligencer no. 2209, February 10, 1820; William Smyth, “Mr. Smyth’s Speech — Concluded,” Daily National Intelligencer no. 2221, February 24, 1820, characterized the Hartford Convention as a “universal regret,” and compared the sectionalist rivalry of 1814 to the one confronting the United States in 1820 over the question of Missouri’s admission to the Union as a slave or free state. 197

The most straightforward explanation of the Republicans’ embrace of the

dangerous New Orleans myth came from President-elect Monroe himself. “That some of

the Leaders of the Federal Party, entertained principles, unfriendly to our system of

Govert. I have been thoroughly convinced,” Monroe conferred to Jackson shortly after

his election was secured. Monroe believed with every ounce of his being that the party

system was bad for the republic, and that the nation would not truly thrive until there

were a Republican consensus.

You saw the height to which the opposition was carried in the late war [Monroe continued]; the embarrassment it gave to the Govt; the aid it gave to the enemy. The victory at New orleans, for which we owe so much to you, and to the gallant free men who fought under you, and the honorable peace which took place at that time, have checked the opposition, if they have not overwhelmed it.

Not only had Jackson’s army fought off the British and killed General Pakenham, they

had also fought off the conniving Federalists and politically killed their leaders, too.

Now, Monroe added, it was time to convert the Federalists over to the new party, and

prevent the reconstitution of the old system.92 Years later, Monroe would reiterate the

same point to his former chief and fellow Virginian, James Madison: the Federalists’

“misconduct in the late war, & the success of that war”—a success that was attributable almost solely to New Orleans—“broke them as a party,” he noted.93

* * *

The Battle of New Orleans was a genuinely astounding victory for the young

American republic. A feeble force of 3,200 untrained Americans had turned back a

British force of more than twice their numbers, and it was the final major confrontation of

92 Monroe to Jackson, December 14, 1816, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 43, LC. 93 Monroe to Madison, May 10, 1822, Madison Papers, LC. 198 the Anglo-American war. The mythologizing of the battle was inevitable. Andrew

Jackson was painted as a youthful, dashing, and confident commander. His soldiers were frontiersmen heroes. Andrew Jackson did, in fact, typify many of the virtues of the

Jeffersonian military philosophy. He was an amateur soldier, but he was also a magnetic, charismatic leader who could rally men to follow him in a time of crisis. These traits suited him well when it had come to killing Indians in the —they were an enemy he understood. When he arrived at New Orleans, he was facing an entirely different enemy, and he had a difficult set of problems to face when it came to the local population. He had relatively few men, and they were untrained and poorly armed.

However magnetic a leader Jackson may have been, he could not have hoped to defeat a force of professionals that outnumbered him so dramatically.

As fortune would have it, though, Jackson benefitted from a set of British commanders who felt uneasy on the Louisianan terrain, a creole pirate who could adequately arm the American army with ammunition, and a local aide named Edward

Livingston who, along with Latour, convinced Jackson to fight along a life-saving piece of engineered terrain. General John Keane’s caution, and General Pakenham’s equal carefulness after his arrival, may have seemed reasonable at the time, but it afforded

Jackson the time to rectify the deficiencies he faced. By the time the British under

Pakenham committed to a full-scale attack against the Americans, the American advantages in terrain and artillery were practically insurmountable, especially given the hard luck and low spirits plaguing the crimson-clad host.

The War of 1812, then, would be an American victory as far as any American was concerned. Any protestations about how the Treaty of Ghent did not rectify any of the

199 original American grievances from 1812 miss the point entirely. Madison and Monroe, who by the time of the Battle of New Orleans were already well underway in their efforts to reform the army along Napoleonic lines, chose to ignore the threat to their plan for military reform and instead emphasized the heroism of Andrew Jackson and the spirit of victory that pervaded the entire republic.

Ironically, it was federal incompetence leading up to 1815 that afforded President

Madison the opportunity to unify the country and improve the span of federal control.

The American government’s inability to field an adequately sized and well-trained army, to construct sufficient permanent federal fortifications, or even to equip the volunteers who did take the field under Jackson all contributed, in the end, to the epic qualities of the American victory. Had the U.S. government managed the war well, Pakenham’s force may have been deprived of any acceptable landing sites because of overbearing federal strongpoints along the coast. Perhaps they might have managed a landing somewhere out of the way with the intention of marching to take New Orleans from the landward side, but then they could have been swatted aside by a strong force of regulars trained to the standards of someone like Winfield Scott. Had the battle unfolded this way, though, it would have been a less remarkable ending, and Americans might not have been so convinced of ultimate victory over King George’s tyranny.

Madison, Monroe, and their party leveraged this narrative to destroy the remnants of the “traitorous” Federalist Party. In fact, Monroe had done so self-consciously. The

Republicans basked in the national euphoria that had propitiated for all their previous sins. The rising American nationalism after the Battle of New Orleans was no accident.

200

Greater proliferation of the battle’s memory in popular media and public commemoration both received the federal government’s full support.

All was not well for the Republicans and their platform, however. It was all the military reformers could do to keep control of the myth. The elevation of Andrew

Jackson and his frontiersmen heroes raised uncomfortable questions for those insisting on a more French-style army. Andrew Jackson had almost no formal military training and he was a Westerner, a rural man who believed the greatest threats to American security were those who were brown and copper colored, not white. He and those like him served the administration’s purpose, but they were far from the ideal solution in the long term. The

Republicans had created a Frankenstein’s monster: grotesque, maybe, but unnaturally strong. Before long, their creation would loose its bonds and come after its former .

201

Chapter 5: The Mutiny of Andrew Jackson

Gen. Jackson, our ambassador to the Creeks and Spaniards; he speaks a language which needs no interpreter.1 —Fourth of July toast, 1819, Morristown, NJ

From the beginning of his military career, Andrew Jackson had proven to be a government unto himself, so it was naïve for the executive ever to think that it could truly control him. He displayed his defiant sense of initiative as early as the spring of 1814.

After he had defeated the Red Stick Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, he came upon the site of Fort , an old French outpost that had fallen into ruin. Jackson chose to settle there, building up earthen ramparts, watery , and wooden walls. It was a classical frontier fort, and it took the name of its commander: . This garrison was the location from which Jackson presented his one-time Creek allies with a treaty that he had crafted himself. In the , as it came to be called,

Jackson demanded that the Creek confederation cede all its territory to U.S. control, an unexpected demand to make of the Creeks who had sided with the United States against the Red Sticks. The U.S. government had given Jackson no such instructions, and the

Creek representatives, aghast, protested the document, but Jackson had made up his mind, and he could not be moved.2

1 “Public Sentiment,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1721, July 17, 1818. 2 Frank Lawrence Owsley, Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1981), 86-94. 202

Congress did not react enthusiastically to Jackson’s unilateralism at first, but the

lure of New Orleans changed Jackson’s position. “[I]t appeared to us, dangerous to

submit that treaty for ratification—great opposition seemed to exist against [it],” wrote a

friendly Tennessean senator to Jackson. “Since the news of the unparralled victory

obtained by you and your brave band” at New Orleans, however, “…all opposition to that

treaty has subsided.”3 No one could now challenge the Hero of New Orleans politically.

He had the frontiersman as his instrument of power, and he knew how to wield this

weapon. Acting as his own secretary of war and secretary of state from within his wood

fort, Jackson had just subjugated an entire people—as well as millions of acres—with a slash of his sword and a stroke of his quill. Jackson exploited this advantage time and

again in the years that followed. It was not enough to subdue Creek lands in the

Mississippi Territory; Jackson now turned his gaze toward Florida and, to protect his

flank, toward the executive in Washington. He would attack both head-on, as he had

attacked everything in his life, and he would win.

Jackson’s conduct as the commander of the postwar Southern Division of the U.S.

Army should have resulted in censure and reprimand from civil leaders and the American

public alike. Between January 1815 and November 1817, Jackson clothed himself in

controversy. To begin with, he refused to relinquish martial law in New Orleans after the

victory there had lifted the need for it. Next, he almost unilaterally attacked the so-called

“Negro Fort” in Spanish West Florida. Third, he “mutinously” (as many described it) ordered his division not to obey the War Department’s orders unless he approved them.

3 to Andrew Jackson, February 16, 1815, in Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, Sharon MacPherson, and John H. Reinbold, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson Main Series, vol. 3, 1814-1815 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 280. 203

All these smaller rebellions against the establishment and verbal sparring

with those who represented it set the stage, by the end of 1817, for Jackson’s greatest

insubordination of all when he led the United States into a new war in Florida against the

wishes of his government. These controversies might have unseated Jackson’s popularity

and given Winfield Scott and the reformers an opportunity to steer American society

away from the culture Jackson represented, but Jackson would emerge politically

victorious. The reason Jackson was able to weather these storms was because he was so

adept at controlling public opinion. Jackson entrenched himself as a national hero, a fact

that he would use as leverage against those who would challenge his power. Whether he

was facing an unfriendly New Orleans judge, General Winfield Scott, or the War

Department itself, Jackson brought the contest before the court of public opinion and

reminded the people of his status as national savior. The executive had hoped to harness

Jackson for their own ends, but Jackson proved impossible to control.

* * *

The preponderance of Jacksonian historiography has emphasized his rise to presidential politics and the “era of Jackson” in the 1830s. Andrew Jackson the man, then, is overshadowed by Andrew Jackson the president. Harry Watson’s excellent political history of , for example, has very little to say about

Jackson’s military origins, implicitly favoring the Market Revolution as a causative factor.4 David Grimsted has analyzed Jacksonian politics as they were expressed through

rioting and concludes, similarly to Watson, that rioting was an act of popular political

4 Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006) is a particularly thought-provoking account of the political tension between liberty and power in the 1830s. Jacksonian Democrats created the dichotomy between liberty and power that continues to today. 204

expression. The masses had, under Jackson, become the law itself and were thus not

bound by controlling writs.5 Grimsted and Watson have both described an important

aspect of Jacksonian politics: one now had to account for the people in a way that James

Madison’s Federalist-based system of magistrates did not account for. Where did this

threat of rioting, so closely associated with Andrew Jackson, arise?

There was antecedent to the rise of populism that thrusted Jackson into the White

House in 1829. John William Ward has offered one of the best examinations of the

Jacksonian movement that began not in the mid-1820s, but in 1815. Jackson was,

according to Ward, the manifestation of what Americans wanted to believe about

themselves. He was a man of action, a truly American self-made man. He did not

pontificate; he seized. Ward views Jackson as doing so by leveraging the goodness of

Nature and acting within the benefits of Providence by the sheer determination of Will.6

Andrew Burstein, likewise, has correctly portrayed Jackson as the product of New

Orleans fame.7 Burstein’s volume is a worthy effort to unveil Jackson as a man, and

Ward has placed Jackson’s popularity in its cultural and ideological context. It is the

effort of this chapter, then, to demonstrate that Jackson learned how to manipulate culture and ideology actively for his own ends. Jackson was neither passive nor a mere product

of his environment. Using the common man as his weapon, Jackson the “doer” seized

what he willed and watched the political and legal systems adapt to him.

5 David Grimsted, “Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting,” The American Historical Review 77, 2 (Apr., 1972): 361-397. 6 John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 8- 10. Ward divides his analysis into parts labeled Nature, Providence, and Will. 7 Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), xiii. 205

King Andrew and the “Crown which Piety Has Prepared”

The significance of the victory at New Orleans, as we have already seen, is that it

allowed Americans to claim victory in the war—a feat that no other previous victory, no

matter how impressive, could have accomplished. Jackson, as the architect of this victory,

was therefore catapulted into the national spotlight. Much of Jackson’s fame arose from

popular media that he did not directly control, but that is not to say at all that Jackson was

the passive recipient of the praise he received in 1815. The ballads, plays, prints, and

public celebrations were all based on popular perceptions of the victory that Jackson had

cultivated. The central myth that lay at the heart of the post-New Orleans narrative was

that the War of 1812 had been won, in the end, no thanks to military rules and discipline, but because of the American woodsman’s character.8 Jackson quickly learned to leverage

that myth in order to protect himself from the political and social consequences of his

apparent contempt for government authority.

Very early on, therefore, Jackson’s ability to control the public narrative and to

stir up the people with his own image had granted him immense social capital. He was

able not only to survive attacks on his character, but to overwhelm those attacks and,

indeed, redirect them back onto his accusers. Even while he was still in New Orleans

celebrating his own victory, Jackson was able to leverage his public persona to avoid

prosecution when he had arguably operated outside the law. The story of his brief trial for

abuse of martial law in New Orleans would set a pattern that he would repeat during his

later public controversies.

8 Ward, Symbol for an Age, 9; and see the discussion in Chapter Four of New Orleans’s immediate legacy. 206

Still fresh from his victory, Jackson relished the attention he was receiving in the

city of New Orleans and in the national media. The general addressed his men using

language that, consciously or not, was strikingly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s St.

Crispin’s Day speech. He referred to them, in an address that he drafted on February 2,

1815, as a “band of brothers.”9 Later, when Jackson was farewelling his men after the

conclusion of the peace, he spoke in an emotional flourish about “The man who

slumbered ingloriously at home, during your painful marches…will envy you” for having

been part of the country’s salvation.10 If this band of brothers had been the nation’s

salvation, as Jackson insisted, then he was nothing less than their victorious king. King

Andrew made no effort at humility in this regard. On February 3, Jackson was publicly

feted in New Orleans during a city-wide day of thanksgiving, during which he was

“complimented in a way that only Gen. Washington had before been honored in

America—by a triumphal entry” into the city. Young women cloaked in white robes with

laurel wreaths threw flowers at his feet, and he was publicly toasted in a series of

speeches.11 Jackson responded to his praises by stating that “I receive with gratitude and

pleasure the symbolic crown which piety has prepared[;]… to have been instrumental in the deliverance of such a country, is the greatest blessing that Heaven could confer.”12

In March 1815, after Heaven had conferred peace upon the land and the last

British troops had departed U.S. soil, it was time to discharge Jackson’s force and

9 Andrew Jackson, drafted speech, February 2, 1815, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1 vol. 31, LC. 10 Andrew Jackson, General Orders, March 14, 1815 [broadside], Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 24, Folder 12, LC. 11 “The Fair Honoring the Brave,” Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. 13 no. 25, July 1, 1815. 12 “An address delivered to the Commander in Chief of the 7th Military District…” February 3, 1815, in Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. 13 no. 10, March 18, 1815): 1, emphasis added. 207

transition into the peace establishment. It was also time, Jackson found, to lift his military

rule in Louisiana and reinstate habeas corpus. There were still those in New Orleans who had not found Jackson’s actions to be entirely benevolent, prudent, or militarily necessary. In fact, Jackson had been downright tyrannical in some New Orleanians’ opinions. Almost immediately after martial law had been lifted, Judge Hall of New

Orleans accused Jackson of arbitrarily delaying the reinstatement of habeas corpus beyond a reasonable time. Hall was irritated, at least in part, by Jackson’s decision to arrest a state senator for speaking out against the continued state of military rule in the city. When Hall had demanded that senator’s release, Jackson responded by arresting him as well—Hall was clearly not a disinterested judge.13

Jackson was summoned to court on March 27, whereupon he was charged with contempt for civil jurisprudence and for violating the people’s civil liberties. Jackson

attempted to submit a written defense, but Hall rejected it and began to badger Jackson’s

council pugnaciously over the course of several days.14 Hall was clearly set against

Jackson—ironic, given the charges he was leveling against the general. Hall allowed the

prosecutor to speak at length and with great eloquence about the dangers of martial law,

Jackson’s abuse of it, and so on. When Jackson and his counselors tried to defend

themselves, presumably by emphasizing military necessity during the crisis, Hall silenced

them over trivial matters of protocol and asked disingenuously if they had anything else

they wished to say in their defense. By March 31, Jackson had grown weary of the

proceedings and was exasperated by his inability to defend himself. It was at this moment

13 “New Orleans, March 31,” from the Philadelphia Gazette, reprinted in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 719, April 27, 1815. 14 Ibid. 208

that he weaponized his popularity for the first time against a legal attack. He told Hall

that he would not participate in this kangaroo court any longer and that he had no need to explain his motives to him anyway. “I was then [when martial law was instituted] with these brave fellows in arms,” he said, motioning dramatically to the public onlookers in

the courtroom, “you were not, sir.” Judge Hall then told Jackson that his penalty was a

fine of $1000. Jackson accepted the judgment, turned toward the courthouse door, and said “it will be my turn next” as he left to face the cheering crowds outside. Addressing

the public directly, he brought the case before them. “Fellow citizens and soldiers, behold

your general under whom, but a few days ago, you occupied the tented field,” he orated.

He pulled on their hearts, played on their emotions, and painted himself expertly as a

victim of a vindictive judge who had only now become brave once all the dangers to his

home had been removed under Jackson’s watch.15 The public, their hearts pouring out to

Jackson, began collecting $1 donations from private individuals until, within only a few

hours’ time, Jackson’s fine had been fully paid.16

Several important characteristics of Jackson’s conduct at his March 1815 trial

would repeat themselves in future personal crises. First, Judge Hall had a legitimate

complaint against Jackson, but the manner in which he prosecuted Jackson proved

counterproductive. Jackson’s suspension of habeas corpus and institution of martial law

in New Orleans was extreme of itself. Jackson might have been able to justify his actions

had they been confined to December and January, but to carry them into March, well

after the immediate threat to New Orleans had clearly passed, and to arrest citizens

15 “Trial of Gen. Jackson,” The Scioto Gazette vol. XV no. 739, May 1, 1815. 16 “New Orleans, March 31,” from the Philadelphia Gazette, reprinted in Daily National Intelligencer vol. III no. 719, April 27, 1815): 3. 209

without trial for arbitrary reasons like violating curfews, was probably worth questioning

in court. Judge Hall did himself no favors, however, by refusing to allow Jackson even to

make his defense. Attacking Jackson too aggressively led to the second distinction to make about this case: Jackson was able to grab hold of the words leveled against him and, using his “savior of the nation” status with the people, swing the rhetorical momentum back against his attacker. Jackson stood accused of violating the people’s civil liberties; he responded with a legal non-sequitur. He reminded those in attendance that he had served in combat, and the judge had not.

The reason for Jackson’s having brought up Judge Hall’s combat record to the court underscores the third and perhaps most critical element of Jackson’s legal and political elusiveness: he did not worry about the legal consequences of his actions because he knew popular opinion was the only “courtroom” that had true legitimacy. In fact, he more or less dared Judge Hall to hold him in contempt. Jackson’s appeal to combat records was a warning to Hall. When Hall did not heed that warning and ruled against Jackson anyway, Jackson made his appeal directly to the people. The end result was that Hall now looked like the villain even among those critical of Jackson.17

Jackson’s actions had enervated the judicial system Hall represented. Having thus established his own popularity and armed, perhaps, with a sense of social invulnerability,

Jackson began his postwar army career in Nashville, from where he would defy the civilian leadership at the national level and nearly hurl the United States into a second war against a European power.

17 Ibid. The author of the “March 31” letter acknowledged that many considered Jackson “tyrannical.” 210

The Negro Fort

For at least a decade prior to his victory at New Orleans, Jackson had fantasized

about clearing the southern frontier of Indians and making the territory safe for white

occupation. Jackson was far from alone in this fantasy. It had been central to Jeffersonian

Republican political ideology and had influenced government policy since the early

1800s, with Jefferson’s conclusion of the . In 1806, moreover, Aaron

Burr had been charged with treason over a scheme to invade Spanish territory with

Jackson’s Tennessee militia and, according to the charges, establish a separate territory.

Jackson had eagerly and enthusiastically sided with Burr at the time, believing as he did

in the purity of Burr’s intentions. In the decade following Burr’s trial for treason, Jackson

grew increasingly frustrated over the prevaricating policies of a federal government that

had the good sense to want possession of Florida, but lacked the moral resolve to seize it.

Jackson had stood entirely ready to do so long before the Anglo-American war began.18

When the threat of war began to loom as early as 1807, Andrew Jackson was

nearly hysterical over the idea of Britain using Spanish territory as a staging base for

operations against the United States. For Jackson, clearly no friend to either the British or

the Indians, the prospect of British meddling in got his blood up. He

lamented the timorous “lethargy” of the Congress, predicting with remarkable accuracy

that it would require the British “[setting] fire to some of our Seaport Towns” to reignite

“the spirit of 76.”19 During the war scare of 1811 with Great Britain, while James

18 David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Old Hickory's War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1996), 4-5. 19 Jackson to , February 10, 1810, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 8, LC. 211

Map 7: The Spanish Floridas, 1813-1818.

212

Madison was railing against British depredations at sea, Jackson celebrated the chance to participate in “war, savage war” on land against the British-influenced “Tomahawk and scalping knife.”20 Jackson had mobilized his men in 1812 to attack West Florida; he spent the latter half of 1813 overthrowing the Creeks in modern-day Alabama and exiling them to Florida; and he had taken it upon himself in November 1814 to capture Pensacola.

Even as Jackson was moving toward New Orleans, he continued to array his forces along the Florida border to protect against British-backed Indian excursions.21 War against the tomahawk, the scalping knife, and the Spaniard had always been Jackson’s first priority, and the chief means by which he intended to secure glory for himself. His intentions, though not his methodology, suited James Madison and James Monroe and their shared desire to create strong borders that were open to expansion and cleared of meddling

European influence.

Monroe wanted Florida as a means to secure the United States’ boundaries and to extend the fortified wall around its territory. Jackson wanted Florida for more sinister reasons, and a major factor that motivated him was his bloodlust. Monroe believed in securing more land for the U.S. government in principle, but his relationship with

Jackson was troubled from the start over how to achieve this goal. When Jackson urged the seizure of Pensacola in 1814, for example, Secretary of War Monroe had written him a letter that forbade his attack on the Spanish bastion. It was against President Madison’s wishes and may have compromised the peace process; besides, there was intelligence from Europe that a British force of at least 12,000 men had set sail for New Orleans from

20 Jackson to James Winchester, November 28, 1811, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 9, LC. 21 Andrew Jackson, General Order of November 16, 1814, in Bassett, ed., CAJ, 2:100; Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 47-48. 213

Ireland.22 By the time Jackson received the letter, he had already captured the Spanish garrison.23 Monroe, even before receiving news of Jackson’s attack, sensed that his letter may not have come to Jackson in time to prevent a potential international crisis; Monroe had to send Jackson instructions to evacuate Spanish Florida, assuming he had in fact invaded.24 After the formal conclusion of peace in March 1815, the federal government would continue to offer half-hearted and confused policy statements that supported the annexation of Spanish lands in principle but vaguely urged caution and diplomacy. Yet even in the face of indisputably clear guidance to the contrary, Jackson would take action and seize what he wanted by force. One pair of historians has accused the U.S. Army of

“acting as though it were an independent branch of government,” with power to make war and conclude peace.25 This characterization is unfair to the army as an institution. If anyone was acting as a branch of government, it was Old Hickory himself.

If Old Hickory were an independent branch of government, that branch’s task from the president was not necessarily to seize Spanish territory, but to help consolidate federal control over the diverse population west of Georgia and south of Tennessee.

Although Monroe struggled to control Jackson’s actions, which were hardly diplomatic or subtle, it was far better, from Washington’s perspective, to have the area under the watch of an iconic federal general. The alternative was the angry white mobs who were forming their own armies to fight Seminoles and maroons in Florida. Much like the difference between permanent stone fortifications and temporary citizen-built ramparts, it

22 Monroe to Jackson, October 21, 1814; Monroe to Jackson, October 10, 1814, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1, vol. 26, LC. 23 Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 67. 24 Monroe to Jackson, December 7, 1814, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1, vol. 27, LC. 25 Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 32. 214 was less a question of what it accomplished and more a statement of the federal control it portrayed.

The federal government needed to control the white population in two critical ways. First, on the American side of the Florida border, it had to discourage and prevent white squatters from settling in the Creeks’ former territory. This issue was more than a simple question of governance and land distribution; it carried severe military risks and consequences. White Americans had long displayed a disturbingly consistent pattern of settling “open” land extralegally, and then crying foul when the Indian inhabitants retaliated violently. No war, campaign, or political measure against Indian peoples could ever be the fault of the United States or its peaceable citizens; it was always self-defense against savage attacks.26 When whites settled in the Creek cession, they risked provoking war against the Creeks who had refused their expulsion orders. It was a dynamic that deeply concerned the secretary of war in 1815 and 1816, who pleaded with Jackson to use his military presence to control the white opportunists. Those wishing to settle needed to wait until the government could bring into effect a comparatively peaceful and political solution the question of Creek lands.27

The second issue of control the federal government had to face was cross-border vigilantism into the Floridas. Even if the federal government could convince Jackson to apply resources to keeping whites off Creek land—an impossible proposition—an even greater danger lay to the south of the artificial border between the United States and

Spanish Florida. Since at least 1812, the Spanish governors in the Floridas complained

26 See, for example, James Monroe, the message of the president to the Senate, March 25, 1818, in “War with the Seminoles,” doc. 153, ASP-IA 2:154. 27 William H. Crawford to Jackson, May 21, 1816, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 40, LC. 215 about “armed banditti” coming across the border from Georgia to fight Seminoles, in retaliation for Indian raids against white settlements. According to the white Americans, the British and Spanish were instigating the Indians to violence, even going so far as to arm and train them. Now, even with the War of 1812 supposedly concluded, many white

Americans believed that this unsavory European influence endured.28 From the Spanish perspective, conversely, the Americans were lawless brigands trying to foment insurrection and revolution in the provinces of New Spain.29

Most problematically for white Americans, the Spanish-held Florida was not truly held by the Spanish. Florida, therefore, was a refuge and a haven for dark-skinned fugitives who could, theoretically, build a substantial military threat over time. The same white fears of black revolt that had challenged Jackson’s ability to field an army during the New Orleans campaign now threatened the opposite problem: Jackson could not quit the field while such a threat loomed. To add to the problem, American perceptions of

British instigation were not completely unfounded. Many maroons had received military training from the British in 1814 during the Gulf Coast campaign. In 1815 these same maroons had, under the care of a Royal Marine officer named Edward Nicholls, even garrisoned the so-called “Negro Fort,” a former British post on the Apalachicola River near the Gulf Coast. They had more than enough motivation and capability to attack across the border against American settlements.30 This situation was insufferable to whites, who organized raiding parties to harass the Seminoles and pressed for

28 John Servier to James Madison, April 27, 1815, Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 35, LC; Alexander Dallas to James Madison, June 19, 1815, idem, vol. 36. 29 Luis de Onís to James Monroe, December 30, 1815, printed in the Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer vol. LXXIV no. 6, February 8, 1815. 30 Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 269. 216 government protection. It appeared difficult, under such circumstances, for the U.S. government to maintain peace with Spain.

Secretary of War William Crawford tried in vain to give Jackson orders to resolve these issues.31 When Crawford instructed Jackson to suppress white usurpation of Indian land, Jackson may well have audibly scoffed. Emplacing whites on Indian land was precisely the point, in Jackson’s opinion—never mind the Indians’ feelings on the matter.

As for the secretary’s sensitivities for the Indians’ land claims, Jackson was unmoved.

There were no claims to consider—the Indians possessed no rights to the land. The

Indians were not sovereign; they were subjects. It was “absurd,” Jackson wrote, “for the sovereign to negotiate by treaty with the subject.”32 Instead, Jackson argued, let us take all the more forcefully the land before us. Building national military roads, fortifications, and white settlements will further disintegrate the Indian confederacies and force them into subjugation and cultural assimilation.33 The reformers had sought road networks to connect Americans and for their defense; Jackson sought them to secure more white land.

As for the question of the Negro Fort and attacks against Seminoles and maroons in Spanish territory, Jackson’s instructions from Crawford were to liaise diplomatically with the Spanish and to seek their assistance in reducing the threat. If the Spanish refused to enforce law and order in their own territory, Crawford instructed Jackson to let the president determine the best course of action. Jackson’s response was to send an intimidatingly-worded letter to Governor Mauricio de Zuñiga advising him that if he did

31 Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 59. 32 Jackson to Monroe, March 4, 1817, in Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, and George H. Hoemann, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson Main Series, vol. 4, 1816-1820 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 95. 33 Jackson to Monroe, May 12, 1816, in Moser, et al, eds., PAJ, 4:28-30. 217 not direct the forces at Pensacola to destroy the fort and return the reported 250 runaway slaves to U.S. possession, Jackson would be forced to take matters into his own hands and attack it himself—out of self-defense, of course.34

Crawford and Zuñiga both responded to Jackson with appeals to the rule of law, and to the conduct of officers of a civilized government. Crawford, defending the rights of Indians to legitimate land claims, protested that “In an enlightened nation, submission to the laws is the fundamental principle upon which the social compact must rest.”35

Zuñiga responded to Jackson’s threats with an abundance of polite language about their shared desire to reduce the Negro Fort, but the Spaniard begged Jackson to understand that he could not act without orders from his superior, adding with unintentional irony that Jackson “knows the limits of the powers of a subordinate officer.” Zuñiga closed his response with a flowery appeal to his king’s sovereignty.36 It would be to no avail.

Jackson craftily seduced Monroe with flattery while delivering a subtle political threat based, as usual in Jackson’s case, upon popular opinion and Jackson’s personal appeal among his Tennessean brethren. The Volunteers had fought long, hard, and valorously to liberate this land from the Indian menace, Jackson informed the future president, and it would simply not do to anger these brave souls. The government could never expect to control such an angry mob of white men, Jackson counseled, contending that the perceived injustice “will have a banefull effect upon their former spirit of patriotism” and will prevent them from providing future national service. Jackson offered

34 William Crawford to Jackson, March 15, 1816; Jackson to Zuñiga, April 23, 1816, in idem, 4:15-16, 22- 23; also in NARA RG107 M6. 35 Crawford to Jackson, June 19, 1816, quo. in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:36. 36 Zuñiga to Jackson, May 26, 1816, idem 4:41-43. 218

Monroe a ray of hope: the people had not lost their respect for Monroe himself, at least

not yet. Jackson warned him not to follow Crawford’s example, who “has [now] forever

forfeighted in this act the confidence of the people of this section of the country.”37 The same warning had not worked on Crawford, who insisted that if the Tennesseans rebelled against the president’s wishes, they would have to bear the consequences of their foolishness.38

As for the Negro Fort, slaughtering dark-skinned partisans pent up in a stronghold

happened to be a specialty of Jackson’s, as he had demonstrated at Horseshoe Bend.

Edmund Gaines, Jackson’s principal subordinate, proposed to provoke the occupants of

the Negro Fort to attack first, allowing the Southern Division commander to order the

fort’s destruction—out of self-defense, of course. Gaines coordinated with the navy,

under Commodore Daniel Patterson of New Orleans fame, to sail gunboats from New

Orleans and then up the Apalachicola to resupply the newly-constructed Fort Scott, just

on the other side of the Floridian border upriver. The course would take them directly

past the Negro Fort, but it was to be emphasized that the navy was not attacking—it was simply experimenting in waterborne logistics. If, however, the maroons at the Negro Fort

chose to attack, the American navy knew how to respond. A land force, under the

command of Colonel Duncan Clinch, was to rendezvous with the gunboats below the

Negro Fort.39

The plan went off almost perfectly according to Jackson’s broad strategic intent.

The Negro Fort defenders did indeed fire the first shots at the white assailants (according

37 Jackson to Monroe, May 12, 1816, idem, 4:28-30. 38 Crawford to Jackson, July 1, 1816, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 41, LC. 39 Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 67. 219

to official accounts), and the naval patrol responded with terrible vigor on July 27. The

navy fired eight shots at the fort, while the defenders struggled to find accuracy with their

own guns. The ninth shot was a cannonball heated to a glow. It landed in the midst of the

fort’s powder magazine and, in an instant, the entire fortification, along with almost all of

its occupants, was blown sky high.40 Jackson presented the fait accompli to Secretary

Crawford in his report of September 7, blithely noting that “it would appear, that a War with Spain may take place.”41

The Duel

Fortunately for the United States and its army, war with Spain did not come in

1816 as a result of Jackson’s actions in Florida. Instead, Jackson watched as the U.S.

government spun his actions in the most positive light possible. Once again, Jackson had defied “rule of law” and had proceeded with his own agenda, threatening authority with his power over the populace. Once again, Jackson had acted brazenly and virtually dared the authorities to prosecute him. Once again, Jackson had emerged on top. Within months of the Negro Fort incident, Jackson would initiate another challenge to the War

Department’s authority. A verbal sparring match over civilian control of the army developed into an all-out feud with Winfield Scott.

For Winfield Scott, New Orleans had dimmed the splendor of his Niagara campaign. He considered the battle a threat to his designs for a more professional,

Napoleonic-style American army. Publicly, however, he kept a brave face and conceded that it was a great American victory. Scott had, after all, toasted the defeat of

40 Ibid., 70-74. 41 Jackson to Crawford, September 7, 1816, Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:60. 220

Wellington’s brother-in-law at the ball he and Sylvanus Thayer had hosted while visiting

Ally-occupied Paris in 1816.42 Yet within two years of his toast to Jackson, Scott’s

relationship with him had soured to open hostility. Scott accused Jackson of holding the executive branch in contempt, and Jackson, in frontier antiestablishment fashion, called

Scott impudent, arrogant, and suggested that he was an east-coast fop.43 The conflict that arose between Scott and Jackson had its own unique proximate causes, but on a deeper level, it reflected the clash between two military philosophies vying for dominance after the War of 1812. Winfield Scott’s and Andrew Jackson’s verbal pugilism in 1817-1819 was not simply a quaint conflict of honor between two egotistical officers; it was a conflict over subordination of the periphery to the center.

Andrew Jackson and Winfield Scott were among the highest-ranking generals in

the army after the war, behind Jacob Brown. Jackson, as we have seen, was a thoroughly

frontier-style general. He was brash, unrefined (in a certain manner of speaking), and

quick to take matters into his own hand. Scott, whose ambition may well have been

matched by his talents, shared Jackson’s penchant for self-promotion and egoism, but

little else. Scott considered himself more educated, professional, and well-traveled, and

he envied Jackson’s higher rank. A clash between the two was almost inevitable. They

maintained an uneasy balance initially, but by late 1817, when Scott was presiding over

Alden Partridge’s court-martial in West Point and Jackson was beginning a frontier war

against the Seminoles in Florida, the great fissure opened. The two generals waged a war

42 See Chapter Two and Scott, Memoirs, 166-167. 43 Winfield Scott to Andrew Jackson, October 4, 1817 and Jackson to Scott, December 3, 1817, Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 221 of words, and they did so publicly, bringing to the surface all the tensions between the two and the worlds they represented.

In the wake of Scott’s signal victories on the Niagara, he had hoped for promotion and even greater honor. Preferably, he would have liked to have gained such renewed laurels in the New Orleans campaign as it began to unfold in late November 1814.

According to Scott’s memoirs, he sought actively to be assigned to Jackson’s command as it formed in New Orleans.44 Scott was aware of his inferior rank to Jackson, and he understood that he would therefore have to be subordinated to him. Presumably, he had in mind something like what he had managed in the Niagara campaign, where he had been

Brown’s subordinate and yet had come away as the public face of victory. Jackson was not, however, the same man as Jacob Brown. To imagine Scott working under Jackson’s command in New Orleans elicits a fascinating picture indeed. If Scott’s performance with his army in New York serves as any indication, he would have tried to regulate Jackson’s army according to French rules of discipline and European-style drill. Perhaps Scott would have commanded a division of regulars and militia trained to European standards.

Scott would have been anxious to defeat British professionals head-to-head. Such an approach would have been at odds, to say the very least, with Jackson’s style of command—involving as it did the levying of any man off the street to labor or to hold a musket. New Orleans was too grotesque a battle, requiring too little precision and tactical finesse, for Scott.

Perhaps fortunately for both generals and for the city of New Orleans, the two men were kept separate from each other when Scott’s doctors insisted he had still not

44 Scott, Memoirs, 153. 222 healed enough from his wounds at Lundy’s Lane to assume a field command. “Thus the soldier of the Niagara lost the opportunity of sharing in Jackson’s brilliant victories near

New Orleans,” Scott lamented. He consoled himself, at the time, with thoughts that

Jackson would not have the last word in the war. He had hoped to resume the offensive against Canada in 1815, and had been lobbying for precisely this operation in

Washington. Scott did not want peace. He wanted the war to continue so that he could receive a much-coveted promotion to the grade of lieutenant general (albeit alongside

Brown and Jackson). To his mortification, Jackson’s crushing frontier-style “militia victory” came only days before news of the concluding peace of Ghent. Scott made no attempt to conceal his disappointment over the lost chance for promotion and renewed martial glory.45

Not only did Jackson’s military victory rob Scott of his own chance for further self-promotion, Scott also perceived, correctly, that the event could be used as a counterexample to his military philosophy. “Jackson and the Western militia seem likely to throw all other generals and the regular troops into the background,” Scott worried.46

Although the executive understood Scott’s disappointment and sympathized with his lost glory, Madison himself understood only too well how dangerous it would have been to continue the war against Britain. Such a campaign in 1815 as Scott had envisioned put the United States at serious risk of an expanded war against Spain as well. New Orleans had saved the nation from this disastrous course.47

45 Ibid., 153-154. 46 Winfield Scott to James Monroe, February 4, 1815, quoted in Peskin, Winfield Scott, 57. 47 Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March 12, 1815, Madison Papers, series 1, reel 17, LC. 223

Scott swallowed his sadness. The battle of New Orleans’s mythological implications may have been politically useful and expedient for men like Madison and

Monroe, but it was nothing but noxious for Scott. Fortunately for him, though, he was in position throughout much of 1815 (prior to his departure for France) to influence the future course of the army and to try to set conditions to preserve the regular, professional force. Thanks to his geographic positioning in Washington, Scott presided over most of the boards and the efforts to shape the new U.S. Army’s training and its officer corps.

Jackson was, on paper, also a member of Scott’s boards, but the two generals never met one another.48 Jackson remained on the frontier, and Scott remained on the eastern seaboard—the two officers lived within entirely different versions of the regular army.

In March 1817, when Acting Secretary of War George Graham ordered Major

Stephen Long, an engineer officer under Jackson’s command, to be transferred to the east coast, he unwittingly set into motion a chain of events that would break the détente between Jackson and Scott.49 Once their conflict over hurt feelings and clashing egos went public in the Niles Weekly Register, it became subsumed into the larger struggle for public opinion. Scott was acutely aware that the vision he had for the American military establishment was bound up in his public reputation, and that he was verbally dueling— and presented with the opportunity to duel literally—with the Hero of New Orleans.

George Graham’s order to transfer an officer under Jackson’s command to the eastern seaboard initially resulted only in a tussle between Old Hickory and the War

Department. It should have had nothing to do with Winfield Scott. Jackson, whose

48 Scott, Memoirs, 155-156. 49 Johnson, Winfield Scott, 87. 224 command stretched many thousands of miles and who operated at a time when communications were still inhibited by the pace of hooved travel, never received orders concerning the loss of his officer. He learned about the transfer only by reading a report of the adjutant general’s office.50 Jackson, in a manner reminiscent of Alden Partridge’s tenacious attitude at West Point or of the many field commanders in the War of 1812 who believed that drill and discipline were entirely their prerogative, considered the Southern

Division to be his realm. He did not, typically of the old mentality, fully appreciate the concept that the soldiers under his command were United States soldiers, and that the secretary of war and president were the ultimate authorities over the army.

On April 22, 1817, Jackson issued an order for distribution throughout his command instructing his soldiers not to obey any order from the War Department unless it had Jackson’s endorsement. Jackson berated the civilian leadership of the armed forces to his men and publicly criticized what he considered a usurpation of his authority.

Without any apparent awareness of inconsistent logic, Jackson began his general order by stating that he “considers it due to the principles of subordination which ought and must exist in an army, to prohibit the obedience of any order emanating from the department of war.”51 Unsurprisingly, the order left many civilian constitutionalists confused as to how the principle of subordination in the army could produce such a declaration. When the newly-elected President James Monroe asked Jackson about this untoward order, Jackson lectured his commander-in-chief about “the improper interference of the Department of

50 Jackson to George Graham, January 14, 1817, in Moser et al, eds, PAJ, 4:84-85. 51 Andrew Jackson, “General Order,” April 22, 1817, printed in Niles Weekly Register vol. XII (March- September 1817): 320; and see Winfield Scott’s correspondence with Andrew Jackson, draft pamphlet, in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 225

War” in Jackson’s division, “which I trust viewing your Constitutional duty ‘to see the

Laws faithfully executed’ in connection with your duty as Commander in Chief of the

‘Army and Navy’ you cannot justify,” Jackson added condescendingly.52 One historian

has remarked that Winfield Scott was haughty and that he lectured those he considered

inferior “like a schoolboy,” but Jackson was no less supercilious.53

Winfield Scott, headquartered in New York, read the order in the local

newspapers, the circulation of which had made it the talk of the town. Around June 9,

Scott went to a dinner party where he spoke with DeWitt Clinton, the newly-elected

, during which the subject naturally came up. According to

Winfield Scott’s recollection of the evening—Scott was not always the most

dispassionate chronicler of events—Scott was largely indifferent about the matter and

would not have said anything except that his fellow celebrants at the dinner pressed him

to make a comment. In fact, Scott insisted, it was the governor-elect who first suggested

to him that Jackson’s behavior was mutinous.54 Although it is difficult to believe that

Scott was as aloof as he claimed to be when it concerned Jackson’s insubordination, it is

possible that the civilians around him at this dinner party had chosen the word “mutiny”

on their own. Jackson’s attack on civil control of the armed forces did not sit particularly

well with civilian commentators in the printed media.55

52 Jackson to Monroe, October 22, 1817, Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 45, LC. 53 Johnson, Winfield Scott, 88. 54 Scott, “Origin of the Correspondence,” in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 55 See, for example, “We publish the following order from general Jackson, and cannot avoid expressing our surprise and disapprobation of its nature and character…” in National Review vol. V no. 1414, July 9, 1817; Johnson, Winfield Scott, 88; Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 342. 226

Winfield Scott had an opportunity to benefit from Jackson’s impetuous insubordination. He might have done well to answer the governor-elect diplomatically before changing the subject. Instead, he agreed that Jackson’s order was indeed mutinous and that it impugned the proper chain of command from the president to commissioned officers in the field. As it turned out, the walls in New York had ears, and the gossip spread wildly until, in the August 14 edition of The Columbian, an anonymous writer condemned Jackson’s mutiny. A friend of Jackson’s in New York sent him a copy of the article and remarked that although much of the town was abuzz over his controversial order against “the War office gentry and their adherents,” none was more vocal about his opposition to it than Winfield Scott, who “goes so far as to call the order in question, an act of Mutiny.” This informant suggested to Jackson that it was Scott who had written the anonymous letter in The Columbian, and he further suggested with no small amount of paranoia that the government was probably spying on Jackson. He noted in closing that

“The Eastern Federalists, having now become all good republicans, and pledged to the support of the President, as he to them, [the] government can now do well without the aid of Tennessee &c. &c.”56

The political implications of the conflict between Andrew Jackson and the War

Department “gentry” were lost neither on the informant nor on Jackson himself. The eastern Republicans had needed the rustic Western commander to advance a political position, but now with the Federalists subdued, perhaps it was time to let Jackson wither on the vine. Scott was, according to the anonymous tip, involved in serious political machinations against Jackson and, for that matter, against Jacob Brown as well. The

56 Anonymous to Jackson, August 14, 1817, in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 227

Columbian article itself was politically charged. “A. Querist,” the author, was concerned by a state of affairs in which the president can give a military order and a general can conveniently have it “pocketed, laid aside, delayed, and not executed.” This author, whom Scott believed to be a young officer stationed in New York, then asked whether or not “this case prove[s], that Government, when restricted, according to the dictatorial system of General Jackson, may not only be tricked and insulted, but absolutely nullified?”57 Monroe had hoped that Jackson could help expand the government; A.

Querist feared Jackson would subvert it.

Jackson did not take this kind of criticism particularly well, and the Columbian article and accompanying note had him downright apoplectic. Jackson immediately wrote

Scott and, enclosing the damning source material, remarked that he was certain Scott would never actually say such things. If that were true, of course, Jackson probably would not have bothered with the correspondence in the first place. He begged Scott to

“say how far they [the article and letter] be incorrectly stated.”58 Scott replied on October

4 and assured Jackson he was, indeed, not the author of the article, and he admitted that he had been critical of Jackson’s mutinous general order. This straightforward reply should have only required a couple paragraphs, but then Scott went on a long invective about the principles of subordination and lectured Jackson patronizingly about the philosophical nature of chains of command.59

Jackson did not appreciate Scott’s tone. His original letter had been written to a gentleman and a person worthy of dignity, Jackson snarled, but his response used

57 “A. Querist,” “General Jackson’s doctrine of obedience,” in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 58 Jackson to Scott, September 8, 1817, Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 59 Scott to Jackson, October 4, 1817, in idem. 228

“language so opprobrious and insolent” that Jackson now regretted even attempting to communicate. “If you have lived in the world thus long in the entire ignorance of the obligations and duties which honor impose, you are indeed past the time of learning.” In what world, Jackson asked incredulously, is it permissible to give an answer “couched in pompous insolence and bullying expression?” Jackson raved on in this manner for a while, angered by Scott’s “overweening vanity.” Toward the end of his missive, Jackson condemned the “intermedling [sic] pimps and spies of the War Department” within his command, echoing his anonymous tipster’s paranoid suggestions. He closed the letter with a thinly-veiled invitation to challenge him to a duel.60

There are three important points to make about the exchange between Scott and

Jackson until this point. First, this conflict was clearly more than a spat between two egoists or a matter of personal honor, although it certainly was those things as well.

Amazingly, even with the United States’ westward expansion, the nation was still not large enough a territory to contain the two egos these men had, but neither was it large enough to contain the military-political philosophies the two held. The conflict, like the one developing at the same time at West Point, was also over the way the American armed forces should be run. Jackson was struggling to assert what he considered his rights, honors, and privileges as a commander. Scott, representing the policy of James

Monroe, believed in stronger and more centralized federal control of the military apparatus.

Secondly, it was especially clear to Jackson that he was an outsider in the War

Department. There was an “us and them” dynamic that was very much at play in his

60 Jackson to Scott, December 3, 1817, in idem. 229 hostile response to Scott’s admittedly snooty tone. In some ways, Jackson was correct to think of himself as a War Department misfit, but his alienation was probably more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. Scott noted in his 1819 publication of the correspondence that he had never done anything but praise Old Hickory’s conduct at

New Orleans prior to 1817, which is almost certainly true.61 Madison and Monroe both thought very highly of him as well, and of course they did—he had given them victory.62

Whatever alienation Jackson felt that estranged him from the War Department and the executive, it was within his own mind.

Third, it is important to note that Scott believed the article by A. Querist was a response to the mutiny at West Point as much as it was about Andrew Jackson. The article discussed an officer being told to remove a protégé or favored subordinate from his position, and that senior officer refusing to do so for as long as a year’s time. The description comes remarkably close to General Joseph Swift’s dragging his feet for so many months—it was not quite a year—over Madison’s and Monroe’s separate and equally unmistakable orders to relieve Alden Partridge.63 By referencing the tension between Swift and the executive and then connecting it in parallel to Jackson’s “doctrine of obedience,” A. Querist was drawing a remarkable observation. Swift, who had threatened resignation over the controversial commissioning of French General Simon

Bernard in addition to his attempts to push back against the administration’s vision for

West Point, was something of a “mutineer” himself. At risk when Swift, Partridge, or

Jackson defied the federal government was the ability of the United States to function,

61 Scott, notes on the enclosed article and letter, in idem. 62 See Arthur P. Hayne to Jackson, March 27, 1816, Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 40, LC. 63 Scott to Jackson, October 4, 1817, Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 230 according to A. Querist. These were heavy stakes indeed for the conflict unraveling between Scott and Jackson.

Scott faced a dilemma in how to respond to Jackson’s challenge. Jackson had challenged Scott to a death match. If Scott accepted, one of two terrible consequences would be his to suffer. If he won, he could suffer the condemnation of the American people for having killed the great national hero. If he lost, he could suffer death.64 The latter outcome, obviously, was unacceptable, but to win would also be tremendously counterproductive for Scott, who would then risk becoming the great villain. In similar fashion, James Monroe could not afford, politically, to crush Jackson for his insubordination, even if he were inclined to do so. Both Scott and Monroe allowed

Jackson’s aggressiveness to go unanswered, while also trying their best to contain it. In

Scott’s case, he reasoned that “a brace of pistols could add nothing to the character of either.” When tortured by visions of Jackson’s accusations of cowardice, Scott consoled himself by reasoning that Jackson had hidden behind a rampart at New Orleans instead of facing the enemy bravely on the open field as Scott had done.65

Jackson did not respond to Scott for ill or for good, and the issue was left to fester between the two men, but both were deeply concerned about the implications of the issue on the public mind. One of the first things Jackson chose to do upon receipt of Scott’s letter was to forward it to his friends who had experience in print media. Jackson understood the importance of public opinion on this issue, and seethed about “a great

General in the East, [who] has been acting the Pimp & spy…no doubt to make an

64 Eisenhower notes Scott’s dilemma in Agent of Destiny, 114. 65 Scott’s reflection on Jackson’s December 3, 1817 letter, in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 231 unfavourable impression on the publick mind.”66 Writing to his biographer, John Eaton,

Jackson wrote that Scott’s letter’s “novelty, and nondescript charactor may afford you a little amusement and a little reflection to discover how many various feelings pervaded his mind whilst he was engaged in its composition.” He promised to treat the letter with

“silent contempt,” but then immediately asked Eaton to show the letter to his friends.67

Scott’s letters to Jackson thus had a strange way of finding their way into newspapers across the country, particularly those sections of his letters that painted him in a negative light, such as his refusal to face Jackson in personal combat. For Scott, these libels were a “poison already infused in the public mind, to my prejudice,” and were growing more difficult for him to bear.68 He probably need not have worried. Most newspaper editorials sided with Scott on principle, or at least maintained Scott’s and

Jackson’s shared honor. Such a rebellious order, noted the National Advocate, was highly prejudicial to proper government, and “has never been heard of in the annals of any nation; and if general Jackson is desirous of fighting every citizen who holds that opinion, he will have his hands full.” This reaction was fairly typical.69

Scott, however, was far too devoted to his public image to cede any initiative. Not willing to lose in a contest of reputation and myth, Scott sought an opportunity to publish his correspondence in a pamphlet, despite a War Department injunction against doing so.

He had considered that “a vindication of his character before the public, was a

66 Burstein, Passions, 130; Jackson to Butler, December 6, 1817, Moser et al, eds., PAJ 4:156-159. 67 Jackson to Eaton, February 5, 1818, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1 vol. 47, LC. 68 Scott to Calhoun, March 8, 1819, quoted in Johnson, Winfield Scott, 90. 69 “From the Savannah Republican,” in The National Advocate vol. VI no. 1698, June 11, 1818; see also idem no. 1702, June 16, 1818; idem no. 1707, June 22, 1818, which covers the reaction of the Richmond Inquirer; “Gens Jackson and Scott,” Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer vol. LXXVI no. 25, June 18, 1818; “Generals Jackson and Scott,” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette vol. XIX no. 978, June 19, 1818. 232 preliminary step of the first necessity,” and took the risk of deliberately defying the secretary of war himself in order to publish his side of the story.70 Frankly, by the time

Scott had his version of the conflict published, the issue had passed and whatever damage had been done was done. All his publication of the pamphlet could do now was to reopen old wounds and, in fact, create new conflicts. Scott had, in his pamphlet, accused

Governor Clinton, without any convincing evidence, of instigating the feud between the two generals. Clinton angrily responded that he had done no such thing, and added that

Scott’s accusation was disgusting and contemptuous. “I feel a confident persuasion,”

Clinton added, “that I did not make use of any expressions incompatible with the high respect which I entertain for Gen. Jackson.”71 Scott had made the situation even worse for himself.

As for James Monroe and Secretary of War John Calhoun, there would have been little point in trying to assert dominance over Jackson. After attempts to rebuke him failed, the executive mollified him with assurances that they would try, in the future, to ensure all orders were routed through Jackson’s headquarters. At first, Monroe had admonished Jackson’s general order, assuring him that “Whatever might be said of the right of a commander…to command within his district & division, applies with full force to the President as commander in chief of the army.” The admonishment being stated with full force, Monroe tried to redirect Jackson’s rage back toward something useful: killing Indians. Stating that he had received Jackson’s advice on how to subdue the

70 See p. 1 of the draft pamphlet, Scott Papers, USMA-SC; or Niles Weekly Register vol. XVI (March- August 1819): 122. 71 De Witt Clinton, “To the Public,” April 6, 1819, from Federal Gazette, published in Supporter (Chillicothe, OH), vol. XI no. 549, April 28, 1819. 233 southwest frontier and that he found it valuable, Monroe reasoned that a “savage state” must necessarily yield to “civilized life” or else “become extinct.” Since one cannot reason with savages as one reasons with a European state, Monroe figured, “A compulsory process seems to be necessary, to break their habits, & to civilize them.”72

Monroe was speaking in terms that resonated deeply with Jackson, and while Jackson did not fail to appreciate that fact, neither would he budge on his controversial order. He had dug in, and he planned on holding his position.

On December 2, Monroe accepted defeat. “My earnest desire is, to terminate this unpleasant affair, in the most honorable manner for you,” Monroe said, adding that he and Calhoun had agreed to send all future orders affecting Jackson’s command to him first.73 Jackson accepted Monroe’s terms and cheerfully moved on with the business of military affairs, admitting that now, after having received Monroe’s concession as well as seeing his message to Congress, he would delay his decision to resign from the army.74

As it turned out, contrary to Jackson’s anonymous correspondent who had sent him A.

Querist’s article, the government still had a use for “Tennessee &c. &c.” after all.

Much like the affair with Judge Hall in New Orleans, Jackson had pushed the boundaries of what was legally and politically acceptable in a society that deeply feared military tyranny. He had defied the War Department and, when pressed on his conduct,

72 Monroe to Jackson, October 5, 1817, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:145-147. 73 Monroe to Jackson, December 2, 1817, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:155; Monroe also enclosed his annual message to the Senate (“President’s Message to Congress,” Annals, 15th Congress, 1st session, 14), which touched on the separate issue of Amelia Island, off the Florida coast near Georgia, of which the Spanish had lost complete control and that was now owned by rebellious Spanish colonists. Monroe would order the island’s seizure out of concern over illicit slave trading, a move that Jackson wholly supported. For more on the Amelia Island expedition, see Richard G. Lowe, “American Seizure of Amelia Island,” Florida Historical Quarterly 45, 1 (July 1966): 18-30. 74 Jackson to Monroe, December 20, 1817, Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 46, LC. 234

Jackson not only refused to apologize, but doubled down on his position. Scott’s opinion that Jackson’s general order was mutinous held a great deal of merit. It was certainly detrimental to proper military subordination, if nothing else. But Scott went about defending the War Department’s honor in a counterproductive way. Scott acted rashly himself, and Jackson believed he could use Scott’s words to discredit him and score a public opinion victory. To a certain extent, Jackson miscalculated his ability to act with impunity; editorialists’ condemnations of his order proved that he was not entirely above reproach. But Scott had chosen to lower himself into the muckraking ring right alongside his opponent, and as a result he came out no cleaner.

For Jackson, the issue extended beyond his personal pride alone. He was convinced that he was battling “intermeddling” dandies and east coast “gentry.” He was very aware of the sectional and ideological issues at play. The New Orleans myth promoted the “inexpert” and the “ignorant”—which were not derogatory terms—over the professionally schooled. Rawness was a virtue according to this mindset.75 Jackson made precisely the same argument against Scott. “My notions, sir, are not those now taught in modern schools, [or] in fashionable high life; they were imbibed in ancient days,”

Jackson told Scott with a smug note of iconoclasm.76

An Unwanted War

Andrew Jackson’s notions, culled as they were from ancient days, were to use force to take what he wanted. Neither diplomacy, nor governance, nor public morality guided Jackson’s steps. Instead, Jackson practiced the ancient, if not necessarily

75 Testimony of Rep. Robertson, “Defence of New Orleans,” February 16, 1815, Annals, HR, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 1157-1158. 76 Jackson to Scott, December 3, 1817, Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 235 fashionable, art of sheer brutality, and his rage had long been directed southward against the Indians in the expanses that lay beyond white control. While he was still battling

Winfield Scott using pen and parchment, Jackson was prosecuting the far more serious business of building an American empire at the expense not only of the Seminoles, but once again at the risk of embroiling America into a trans-Atlantic war with Spain and, possibly, Great Britain at its aid. Contrary to the president’s wishes and the War

Department’s explicit instructions, Jackson began a series of movements that would, early the next year, lead to his masterpiece of insubordinate defiance when he attacked the Spanish directly and seized Spanish Florida on his own authority.

The affair began in earnest in November 1817, in the midst of Jackson’s squabble with the War Department and with Scott, with an attack against an Indian town in

Georgia. But Jackson and his subordinate officers had been spoiling for a fight against the Spanish before then. Colonel had reported to Secretary of War George

Graham that three U.S. citizens had been apprehended by the Spanish in Pensacola. He was ready to march upon their works with an army to demand their release, he wrote, “by force, unless otherwise instructed by the General.” Jackson’s pugnaciousness had trickled down to his subordinates. Graham, mortified, reported these words to Jackson and pleaded naively to restrain any instinct for “retaliatory warfare, as would place the country in a state of actual hostility with a foreign nation, to which the power of Congress only is competent.”77 Graham (and his successor, Calhoun) would before long learn just how competent Jackson was at creating a state of actual hostility with a foreign nation.

77 Graham to Jackson, November 5, 1817, (quoting Jesup to Graham, October 3, 1817), in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:72-73. 236

By the time Graham’s words arrived on Jackson’s desk, the Seminole War had begun at the hands of General Edmund Gaines, who had also devised the Negro Fort coup for

Jackson the previous year.

The Indians, still smarting from the loss of their land and the incursions of white settlers there, had never truly abandoned their military struggle against Jackson’s

Southern Division. Throughout the autumn of 1817, Gaines had been tracking renegade

Seminoles who had attacked and killed several U.S. citizens. Secretary Graham instructed

Gaines on October 30 to deploy forces to Fort Scott, Georgia, mere miles from the

Floridian border, as a means of deterrence. He was not, however, to cross into Florida without the express consent of the War Department.78 Fortunately for Gaines, there was opportunity enough for bloodletting on the U.S. side of the border. Gaines had received reports of hostiles at the Creek village of Fowltown, northeast of Fort Scott. Their leaders warned Gaines that they would attack any soldier who dared cross the Flint River. Gaines energetically accepted the challenge and attacked on November 21, killing at least four warriors and a woman, in whose possession the Americans found a crimson British officer’s coat.79 Gaines was disgusted by what he perceived as the Indians’ unjust warmongering, but comforted by his own uprightness. “The savage must be taught and compelled to do that which is right… The poisonous cup of barbarism cannot be taken from the lips of the savage by the mild voice of reason alone; the strong mandate of justice must be resorted to and enforced” he wrote ominously.80

78 Graham to Gaines, October 30, 1817, in ASP-MA, 1:685-686. 79 Gaines to Jackson, November 21, 1817, idem, 1:686. 80 Gaines to the Secretary of War, December 5, 1817, idem 1:688. 237

The executive apparently agreed. After the hostile Seminoles responded to the attacks with an ambush of 7th U.S. Infantry “Cottonbalers” along the Apalachicola on

November 30, there was no sheathing the American sword until it had drunk its fill of copper-colored blood. Gaines’s report of the “massacre” of thirty-four U.S. soldiers and seven women (soldiers’ wives) made its way to Washington, whereupon President

Monroe gave Gaines permission to pursue hostile Indians on the other side of the border, if necessary.81 John C. Calhoun, Monroe’s new secretary of war, placed Jackson in command of the overall effort with orders dated December 26 and informed him that his mission was “to adopt the necessary measures to terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of the President, from considerations of humanity, to avoid; but which is now made necessary by their Settled hostilities.”82

It is here that the intent of the executive with respect to Jackson’s conduct becomes confusing and controversial. What did Calhoun mean by “the necessary measures?” Did the secretary and the president secretly want Jackson to attack the

Spanish in Florida? Many historians have concluded so. Samuel Watson argues that

Monroe’s “convenient lapses of attention” toward Jackson, his consistently ambiguous language, and his “failure to rebuke” the general all suggest strongly that Jackson was hardly working as a free radical on the southwestern frontier between 1814 and 1818.83

Robert Remini argues the point even more forcefully. Citing the vague language in correspondence between Jackson and the executive, Remini strongly indicts Calhoun and

81 Gaines to Jackson, December 2, 1817; Jackson to Monroe, January 6, 1818, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:153-154, 166-167. 82 J.C. Calhoun to Jackson, December 26, 1817, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:163. 83 Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 67-68. 238

Monroe alike for nudging Jackson toward war while disingenuously condemning his

actions in public.84 These arguments certainly appear to have merit. Jackson repeated the

pattern of disregarding restrictions and directives so frequently that it is worth asking

why Monroe and Calhoun should have used such permissive language. We cannot know

what Monroe and Calhoun were actually thinking, unfortunately, or what was said

through back channels, or what confidential letters may have existed prior to their being

burned. The documentary record on hand, however, portrays a rogue Jackson and an

executive apprehensive about the consequences of Jackson’s fecklessness.85

The two primary pieces of evidence historians have advanced to argue Monroe’s

complicity in Jackson’s war are the failure of the executive to censure Jackson and the

vague, open-ended orders Jackson received. The former factor is best explained in light

of Monroe’s complicated political relationship with Jackson. Secretary Monroe had

become President Monroe thanks in no small part to Jackson’s New Orleans mythos.

Monroe still needed Jackson’s support for his platform, and it would not have made

practical sense, politically or diplomatically speaking, to discipline Jackson once the

attack had been made.86 Monroe had always wanted Florida—that much is beyond

doubt—and he had called for Jackson to chasten the Indians there. Monroe’s desire for

84 Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 117-118. For other examples see also Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson, 129-130, which also calls Jackson a passive spectator of Washington politics; William Earl Weeks, “’s ‘Great Gun’ and the Rhetoric of American Empire,” Diplomatic History 14, 1 (January 1990): 27-28; Spiller, in “John C. Calhoun as Secretary of War,” 3-4, also emphasizes the executive’s interests in Spanish territory. 85 Heidler and Heilder, Old Hickory’s War, 168 (et passim), provide one example of recent historians who have supported this interpretation. Jackson claimed in 1831 that he had received a nod from the president to invade Florida, but he furnished no hard proof and the cabinet uniformly denied the charge. Jackson was known for his revisionism during his later political career. 86 Chapter Six discusses the diplomatic and political fallout of the Seminole War in greater depth. John Quincy Adams and Monroe turned the war into an opportunity to gain Florida, which required outward support for Jackson’s war, but as the following discussion will make clear, everyone except Adams in the cabinet, to include the president, had grave misgivings about the legality of Jackson’s war. 239

Florida should not, however, be confused for a willingness to assume so much diplomatic risk as to attack the Spanish directly.

As for the latter objection that Monroe ought to have been more specific and directive, Secretary Calhoun actually was, in point of fact, quite clear in his guidance to

Jackson. Calhoun’s response had been explicit: the Americans were permitted to cross the border into Florida, but not to attack Seminoles under Spanish asylum. Jackson understood the orders well enough to protest the logic of them and urge approval ahead of time to seize Florida.87 Monroe did not respond to Jackson’s direct appeals for permission; Monroe claimed he was sick upon receipt of Jackson’s letter and simply forgot to respond to a letter that had got lost in a pile of backlogged correspondence. As difficult as Monroe’s explanation may be for some historians to accept, Jackson should not have taken silence for consent, and anyway Monroe reiterated to Calhoun on January

30 that Spanish posts were not to be attacked.88 The orders that Jackson had in hand prohibited his actions.

Remini, believing he has uncovered a smoking gun to the contrary, cites a letter from Congressman Rhea of Tennessee—whom Jackson intended to use as a go-between for the illicit work of fighting a dirty war with tacit approval—as proof of presidential approbation. According to Remini, Rhea had insinuated to Jackson in a letter of January

12, 1818 that “the sentiments of the President respecting you are the same.”89 In an

87 See Jackson to Graham, December 16, 1817, and Calhoun to Gaines, December 16, 1817, ASP-MA, 1:689. For Jackson’s protest to Monroe directly in response to Calhoun’s 16 December letter, see Jackson to Monroe, January 6, 1818, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:166-167. 88 See Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:166-167; Monroe to Calhoun, January 30, 1818, NARA RG107 M221. 89 Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 118; Rhea to Jackson, January 12, 1818, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1, vol. 46, LC. 240 earlier letter to Jackson dated December 28, Monroe told his Southern Division commander that now is no time “to think of repose,” but rather to be prepared to carry out

“other services” against the “banditti.” In Remini’s mind, Monroe could not have been any clearer about his wishes without dangerously implicating himself.90

Such seemingly conclusive arguments fall apart quickly. Jackson had no reason at all to interpret Monroe’s and Rhea’s separate letters as tacit approval for his invasion.91

Monroe’s December 28 letter was a continuation of a discussion the two had been having about Jackson’s longing to retire. Monroe was urging Jackson not to leave with so much ablaze along the frontier. The January 12 letter from Rhea is even more straightforwardly irrelevant to the present discussion. When Rhea stated that “the sentiments of the

President respecting you are the same,” he was unambiguously referring to the conflict over Jackson’s “mutinous” general order of April, 1817, and their shared desire to put the matter to rest.92 “You have given me great pleasure in saying you will not resign before you see [Monroe],” Rhea added in closing.93 Jackson could not have somehow reasonably mistaken these statements for permission to seize a foreign colony. If Jackson did somehow believe he had the president’s approval, he formed such an impression in contravention to the written instructions he had from the executive.

Yet seizing the foreign colony is precisely what Jackson ended up doing. Time and again, the executive had hoped to control and exploit Jackson politically; time and

90 Rhea to Jackson, January 12, 1818; Monroe to Jackson, December 28, 1817, both quoted in Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 118-119. 91 Cf. Ibid. 92 See discussion in the previous section above; Monroe to Jackson, December 2, 1817, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:155; James Monroe, “President’s Message to Congress,” Annals, 15th Congress, 2nd session, 12-13. 93 Rhea to Jackson, January 12, 1818, Andrew Jackson papers, series 1, vol. 46, LC. 241 again, he slipped their grasp. Jackson had determined to gather a force, lead it into

Florida, and attack the Spanish directly, despite his orders of restraint. The following spring, he put the plan into effect.

* * *

Andrew Jackson was an intense man. Those who crossed him received the full measure of his rhetorical fury; he would wish his enemies “scorched,” “skinned,” scorned, or shot.94 He operated according to his own counsel, and he dared those who held public offices to condemn him. If they did, they would have to deal with his most powerful weapon: the passions of the American people. He set the pattern before his glory at New Orleans with his conduct of the Creek War and his decision to conclude the

Treaty of Fort Jackson, but it was his New Orleans fame alone that granted him true power. Without it, as we have seen, the Treaty of Fort Jackson may have stalled in

Congress and not been ratified. Nor would New Orleanians have tolerated Jackson’s military rule in that city so long after the British threat had receded without his aura of grandeur protecting him. After Judge Hall of New Orleans attempted to fine Jackson, and

Jackson saw the degree to which he could leverage the common man against the legal system, he would be virtually unstoppable. Whether it was the secretary of war or the president himself trying to constrain Jackson with orders, Jackson shook off his restraints and did as he thought best. It fell upon the officeholders simply to accept that reality, and adapt policy accordingly. In each case, whether it was his being brought to court in New

Orleans to answer for his reign of martial law, his decision to attack and destroy the

Negro Fort, or his subordination to the directives of the War Department in 1817, Jackson

94 Jackson to William Lewis, January 30, 1819, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:268. 242 chose public opinion as his dueling field. Each time, Jackson deserved censure, prosecution, and condemnation—he truly was a mutineer. Each time, he eluded such consequences. Each time, he won.

243

Chapter 6: An American System Andrew Jackson and American Military Politics

To the rising greatness of the West—may it never be impeded by the jealousy of the East.1 —Andrew Jackson, 1805

How disgracefull to our nation—that select committees of Congress have become the hotbeds of falsehood & calumny to serve the views of party… it is a question of political ascendency, and power[;] and the Eastern interest are determined to succeed regardless of the consequences, the constitution[,] or our national happiness[. T]hey will find the southern & western states equally resolved to support their constitutional rights.2 —Andrew Jackson, 1820

The political and diplomatic fallout from Jackson’s personal war against the

Spanish in 1818 made its way to the halls of Washington, where the political trajectory moved back to the wood-fortress paradigm between 1819 and 1821. These years represented the great showdown between the two visions for American society. Andrew

Jackson’s popular appeal and the sectionalism he came to represent breathed tremendous life into the Old Republican counter-reformation platform in Congress, which ultimately yielded the Army Reduction Act of 1821.

Two popular plays from this time period sensationally depict the underlying rhetorical tension fueling this political movement. Throughout 1816, beginning shortly after the first anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, residents of Washington and of

New York City filled the playhouses to watch C.E. Grice’s The Battle of New Orleans, or

1 Jackson quoted in Burstein, Passions, 72. 2 Jackson to Andrew Jackson Donelson, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ 4:367. 244

Glory, Love, and Loyalty, a dramatic retelling of the epic showdown between Jackson

and Pakenham at the titular battle. Early in the play, the audiences were treated to a

monologue by Pakenham at the onset of the campaign. “By heaven, this puny warfare moves my indignation,” claimed the sniveling villain. “I blush to see those troops, before whose arms the valiant of the world have fled …make their war on raw recruits… Why it is Achilles armed against a gnat!”3 It was a strange choice of words for a man about to

fight an inferior enemy, considering that Achilles is at least as well known for his tragic

vulnerability as he is for his might.

By the play’s end, the audience received its cathartic moment: “This day shall

crown our hopes and bless our arms, and with a ray of glory write our names,” said an

American colonel. In a nod to Shakespeare’s Henry V, he continued. “The chosen band

that fight with us this day, will make New Orleans our country’s boast to all succeeding

times.”4 The lesson about the character of the American citizen against the professional

soldier was about as subtle as a whiff of grapeshot into the assembled audiences.

Mordecai Noah, an accomplished playwright, was having none of Grice’s morals.

Noah responded in 1819 with She Would Be a Soldier, or the Plains of Chippewa, which offered an even less nuanced interpretation of the militia. In the opening act, Sergeant

Jasper, the protagonist, met a militia veteran named Jerry who had marched for the 1812 battle at Queenstown, where many New York militiamen had infamously refused to cross into Canada.

“And you did not cross?” Asked Jasper to his new friend.

3 C.E. Grice, The Battle of New Orleans, or Glory, Love, and Loyalty; An Historical and National Drama in Five Acts (New York: John Law, 1816), 11. 4 Ibid., 56. 245

“Oh no, I stood still and look’d on; it were contrary to the constitution of my country, and my own constitution to boot.” Jerry answered.

“Admirable sophistry,” Jasper snapped angrily, “that can shield cowards and traitors, under a mistaken principle of civil government!” Noah, speaking through Jasper, dutifully framed his anti-militia tirade within the comfortable terms of Revolutionary patriotism. “I pray you pardon me. I am an old soldier, and fought for the liberty which you enjoy, and, therefore, claim some privilege in expressing my opinion.” The play ended, as the title suggests, on the plains of Chippewa, where an American officer closes with a brief dramatic monologue about the triumphant soldiers on whom the country’s eternal honor rests, and so on.5 Noah was adjuring his audiences to remember how the militia had, at critical points in the war, abandoned their own nation.

Noah knew precisely in what manner of rhetorical match he was engaged.

“National plays should be encouraged,” Noah wrote, since “they keep alive the recollection of important events, by representing them in a manner at once natural and alluring.” He confessed that he considered the Battle of Chippewa to be “the most neat and spirited battle fought during the late war,” and that was why he had chosen it for his background setting.6 A people’s character was defined by its art and by what it commemorated, and Noah and his peers directly fought over the rhetoric and memory of the War of 1812. The lessons and mythology of Winfield Scott’s victory at Chippewa had not only survived the cruel passage of time, they were set on a collision course with the lessons of Jackson at New Orleans.

5 Mordecai Noah, She Would Be a Soldier, or the Plains of Chippewa, in Montrose Jonas Moses, ed., Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1765-1819 (New York: B. Blom, 1968) 650, 678. 6 Ibid., 641. 246

These playwrights were forging American memory, and the American people for

a time seemed strangely comfortable with the two contradictory morals that the different

plays represented. An even greater collision between the systems of Jackson and Scott

occurred in congressional politics beginning in early 1819. After 1815, Congress had

approved major measures to increase the power and stature of the federal apparatus.

There were setbacks, but for the most part congressmen had been amenable to increasing

the American military establishment as well. Between Grice’s 1816 play commemorating

the Battle of New Orleans and Noah’s 1819 Chippewa memorial, however, American

politicians began shifting their attitudes toward the wood-fortress antimilitary tradition.

The reformers had not been inactive during these years, and in fact the political machine of John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay had laid out a coherent program

for continued American expansion. Across from these men was Andrew Jackson, whose

attacks against them imperiled the military measures in Congress until, in March 1821,

John C. Calhoun’s expansible army was defeated and the army returned to its pre-1812

size of roughly 6,000 men. Increasingly central to this process, beginning with the fallout

from the Seminole War and continuing with American reactions to the Missouri

Controversy and the Panic of 1819, were the politics, rhetoric, and mythology of Andrew

Jackson.

The central question is what it was that changed between 1815 and 1821 to move

Congress from approving a peacetime army of unprecedented size to debating anew the

old arguments about liberty and tyranny. There were, of course, many factors at play,

since politics, ideology, and culture are very seldom confined to one component. For one,

the opinion makers of the time gave Americans permission to relax after Secretary of

247

State Adams’s diplomatic movements of 1818-1820, which according to commentators

granted a reprieve from the threat of war.7 For another, American citizens and politicians

spun the twin crises of 1819-1820—the Missouri Controversy and the Panic—according

to polarizing political and regional prejudices. It was a movement that worked, in part, to

undo the nationalistic rhetoric of Monroe, Calhoun, and the rest of the reformers.8

Jackson, too, played a role. Usually, historians have characterized Jackson in passive terms, emphasizing how others used Jackson’s war as a tool to attack the Monroe administration or the New Republican bloc.9 But less frequently in this historiographical

discussion has been the rhetorical role that Jackson himself played as an independent

actor. His active rallying, self-promoting, and politicking throughout 1819-1820 went a

long way in developing a sense that the standing army was no longer a symbol of security and unity, but of federal overreach. As John William Ward has told us about the creation of the new political world in the 1820s, “In the Beginning Was New Orleans.”10 Yes, and it formed a myth in its own image and likeness, and breathed life into it, and it became a living soul. And Andrew Jackson saw that it was good.

Mr. Jackson Goes to Washington

The story of Andrew Jackson’s arrival in Congress begins in an unimposing wood garrison along the humid, mossy banks of the Apalachicola named Fort Scott, near the borders of the (later Alabama), Georgia, and Spanish Florida in the

7 Michael S. Fitzgerald, “Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan: The Army Reduction Act of 1821,” War in History 3, 2 (1996): 164. 8 Skelton, An American Profession of Arms, 126. 9 John Quincy Adams advances this idea in his own writing, see Memoirs 4:120, 242, 279-297; see also Norman K. Risjord, The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson (New York, Columbia University Press, 1965), 193-196. 10 Ward, Symbol for an Age, Chapter 1. 248 late autumn of 1817. The executive’s inability to control Jackson as he veered and careened into a war against the Spanish led, unsurprisingly, to political fallout. The controversy over Jackson’s war came right on the very dawn of political fighting over expansion of slavery and of national banks, protective tariffs, and revenue for internal improvements. Jackson thrust himself into Washington politics at a most fortuitous time.

As Andrew Jackson was preparing to begin his attack on the Spanish in Florida, he assessed that his troop levels were inadequate, as they stood, to defeat his Seminole enemy. Disregarding orders to coordinate with the governors of Tennessee and Georgia for militia reinforcements, Jackson made his appeal directly to the citizenry and to their undying “patriotism.” “The savages on your borders, unwilling to be at peace, have once more raised the tomahawk to shed the blood of our citizens,” Jackson informed them.

“Stupid mortals!” He added, “They have forgotten too soon the streams of blood” that their recalcitrance had already cost them. Jackson promised his heroes an easy and victorious campaign, one that would win them glory. Referring to himself as “Your general,” he proclaimed his faith that they would not disappoint him. About a thousand of

Old Hickory’s veterans from flocked to their former captain. Jackson had raised his own personal army.11

Marshalling near the U.S.-Floridian border, Jackson and his army made their way to the site of the destroyed Negro Fort. From there, Jackson’s very first inclination was to attack St. Marks, a Spanish-held garrison that, according to Jackson’s sources, was harboring Seminole brigands. On March 25, he informed the secretary of war, without

11 Andrew Jackson, General Order, [n.d.], in Daily National Intelligencer VI, 1597, February 20, 1818; Report on the Seminole War, Annals, Senate, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 257-258. 249 embarrassment, that he felt bound by the “law of nations” to attack the Spanish there.12

The next day, he and his men set out. After a brief skirmish with some Red Sticks who, according to Jackson, had the scalps of the U.S. infantrymen who had been ambushed and killed the previous November after the Fowltown battle, Jackson arrived at St. Marks and occupied it without firing a shot. Between the April 6 and 18, Jackson’s forces patrolled the surrounding areas, as far east as “Bowlegs Town,” where Jackson captured two British men who, in Jackson’s opinion, were almost entirely responsible for the violence.13 Robert Ambrister, a former Royal Marine officer, and Alexander Arbuthnot, a septuagenarian Scottish trader, came into Jackson’s possession, but not for long—they were both destined for the military executioner.

Since at least the day of the Fowltown skirmish in late 1817, when Gaines’s men had discovered a British officer’s coat in the Indians’ possession, Jackson had become convinced that only British meddling could be inducing the Seminoles to violence. After capturing Ambrister and Arbuthnot, Jackson was beside himself with indignation. He had the two civilians court-martialed without delay. The Britons stood accused of inciting violence, of , and of “wickedness, corruption, and barbarity, at which the heart sickens, and which in this enlightened age…a christian nation would not have participated.” Jackson showed his enlightened Christianity by promptly executing both men. Jackson reported as much to the secretary of war, adding nonchalantly that his next target was Pensacola. The Spanish had feigned friendship and cooperation, Jackson said,

12 Jackson to Calhoun, March 25, 1818, ASP-MA 1:698-699. 13 Jackson to Calhoun, April 8, 1818 and April 20, 1818, idem, 1:699-700. 250 all while arming and sheltering America’s enemies. Florida would be Jackson’s, and with the two British subjects killed, the war was all but over in his mind.14

John Quincy Adams, Monroe’s newly-appointed secretary of state, now had his hands full. Adams fielded the angry complaints of both British Ambassador Charles

Bagot and Spanish Ambassador Luis de Onís. Adams was forced to admit to them that

Jackson had exceeded his orders from the U.S. government, but he urged patience and expressed the hope that further information would reveal Jackson’s proper reasons.15

Adams felt Monroe was aloof even as the threat of war loomed over his head, but as the protests continued to mount from the aggrieved European powers, Monroe at last called a cabinet meeting. “The President and all the members of the Cabinet, except myself, are of opinion that Jackson acted not only without, but against, his instructions,” Adams noted.16 Since it was Adams who had had to diplomatize Jackson’s actions, and who therefore had to make explanations early on for the seizure of Florida and the execution of British subjects, he may well have convinced himself of Jackson’s constitutionality ahead of time. Others in the cabinet, however, were nervous about the implications of

Jackson’s act of war. Monroe himself admitted that his first concern was to maintain the integrity of the Constitution—one rogue general should not have the authority to make war on a sovereign nation. Pensacola would have to be restored to the Spanish.17

14 Jackson to Calhoun, May 5, 1818, idem, 1:701-702. 15 John Quincy Adams diary entries, in Charles Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1875), 4:101-103. 16 Ibid., 4:108. 17 Ibid., 4:108-109; Monroe to Jefferson, February 8, 1819, Thomas Jefferson papers, series 1, vol. 51, LC; Calhoun to Gaines, August 14, 1818, ASP-MA 1:696. 251

Within the American public, there were some loud protests against Jackson’s

actions, but the majority of public discourse favored Jackson initially.18 Ambrister’s guilt

in stirring up the Seminoles to war was never a question in the public mind. The death of

Arbuthnot, on the other hand, was more difficult to explain. The initial reports of the

executions in American newspapers connected the elderly tradesman with George

Woodbine, a marine captain who had operated on the Florida panhandle during the War

of 1812 Gulf Coast campaign.19 The Boston Palladium went so far as to claim that

Arbuthnot actually was Woodbine, operating under an alias.20 To many, Arbuthnot’s

execution was warranted by virtue of his association with the Indians alone. “[W]hat pity

do they deserve, who, born and educated in the bosom of civilized society, have

identified themselves with cannibals, thirsting after human blood[?]” Asked one writer.21

A soldier in Jackson’s army wrote a similar defense of his chief. “To what commiseration are such wretches entitled, who join a set of merciless savages in their work of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction?”22 One report that circulated in the east

coast made Arbuthnot younger—about 40—and called him a former captain in British

service to help implicate him as a meddler. The same article tauntingly reported that

Ambrister had, “as death began to look him in the face…lost his composure, and died

more like a woman than a man.”23 Elsewhere, papers reported that it was not Ambrister,

18 For discussion of the dissention, see John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, 108-109; National Advocate (Washington, DC) vol. VI no. 1725, July 14, 1818; and Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1698, June 19, 1818. 19 “Savannah, May 22,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1682, June 1, 1818; also in The Supporter (Chillicothe, Ohio) vol. X no. 504, June 17, 1818. 20 “From the Boston Palladium,” The National Advocate vol. VI no. 1677, May 19, 1818. 21 Capt. Toby, “New Orleans, May 12,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1685, June 4, 1818. 22 “Sulpicius,” “Occupation of Pensacola,” The National Advocate vol. VI no. 1765, August 29, 1818. 23 “From the Southern Army,” Milledgeville Journal, May 26, printed in Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1688, June 8, 1818. 252

but Arbuthnot, who had met his doom in such an emasculated manner.24 Regardless of

who died the womanly death, or whether or not association with “savages” was a capital

crime, moderate voices pleaded with the American public to keep in mind that the two

Britons had had a “fair” court-martial run by trustworthy officers of the United States

Army. We should grant Jackson and Gaines the benefit of the doubt, these editorialists

claimed.25

As the new year dawned, however, it became less and less clear that Jackson and

Gaines had deserved the benefit of the doubt. Adams observed in his diary that

“Jackson’s conduct is now arraigned with extreme virulence in every quarter of the

Union,” as a result of new reports, correspondence, and accounts that had since come to

light.26 As Congress reconvened in December 1818, one of its first measures was to

assemble a select committee on the conduct of the Seminole War.27 The U.S. government

was in a political bind over the question of Jackson. Secretary Adams had already,

through the summer of 1818, used the opportunity to pressure Spain into ceding Florida

to the United States, since it barely had possession of that territory anyway. Having done

so, Adams had effectively declared that Jackson’s actions were perfectly in bounds. To

censure Jackson now could place the United States in an even more awkward position.

24 “Savannah, May 22,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1682, June 1, 1818; also in Supporter (Chilliothe, OH) vol. X no. 504, June 17, 1818. 25 Daily National Intelligencer vol. VI no. 1698, June 19, 1818. See also “Execution of Arbuthnot & Ambristie,” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Gazette, June 5, 1818; H.C., “To the Editor of the State Gazette,” The Mississippi State Gazette vol. VI no. 23, June 6, 1818; “Latest from the Army,” Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer vol. LXXVI no. 18, May 7, 1818, which also conflated Arbuthnot and Woodbine. 26 Entry of December 30, 1818, JQA, Memoirs, 201; see also “Extract of a letter,” December 31, 1818, in Daily National Intelligencer vol. 7 no. 1867, January 5, 1819. 27 Annals, Senate, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 37, 76, 256. 253

Yet many in Congress felt justified in condemning Jackson for his arrogant assumption of congressional powers.28

In January 1819, Andrew Jackson once again took the field; this time, it was not southward to kill “savages,” but eastward to excite support for his actions among the coastal urban population centers. He came first to Washington on January 27, where the

House of Representatives had been debating bills to censure him. On February 8, the

House voted 100 to 70 against a resolution to condemn Jackson’s seizure of Florida as unconstitutional.29 For the moment, Jackson was still politically afloat, but the Senate was still deliberating the same question. It was then that he made a tour of the northeast, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, which he began on February 11. In each successive city, he was greeted by crowds that came out to cheer the Hero of New

Orleans. Militiamen, private citizens, and local politicians saluted him with military bands, artillery fire, public dinners, and acclaim.

At each point, his admirers and supporters emphasized his conduct at New

Orleans especially, but the Seminole War lurked beneath the surface of every toast drunk in Jackson’s honor. When one New Yorker boldly told Jackson that some citizens, here in the North, believed him too harsh in executing Ambrister, Jackson completely lost his cool and rose violently to pace about, imprecating the mere suggestion. “They were spies, sir, they were spies. Their execution was necessary. The example was needed. The war would not otherwise have ended so speedily as it did. …It is only our own people who

28 For a discussion of Adams’s defense of Jackson and the political consequences thereof, see Weeks, “John Quincy Adams’s ‘Great Gun,’” 25-42. 29 Annals, HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 1138, 1130-1138. 254 are dissatisfied. …No, sir, they were spies.” The room fell quiet; no one mentioned

Ambrister or Arbuthnot again.30

When Jackson had returned to Washington, the Senate had already released its conclusions. The committee, which had been headed by Senator Abner Lacock, lambasted Jackson for his illegal personal army that he and Gaines had raised in late

1817. It charged him with completely disregarding the clear orders he had received from the War Department and with making aggressive war against Spain “for reasons his own, unconnected with his military functions.” Lacock was especially furious that Jackson had justified his aggression by appealing to Spain’s weakness and, therefore, its inability to do anything in response. Lacock compared Jackson unfavorably to Napoleon, another military officer who had bullied weak nations, established military dictatorships, and seized whatever he wished at the point of a bayonet.31 Such were the seething words of

Lacock’s report against Jackson in Florida on February 24, but they went nowhere. The

Senate would not vote on any measure to censure the Hero during its second session.

After the Senate adjourned on March 3, Jackson returned home to Nashville, where he was publicly greeted and lauded.32 Andrew Jackson had, once again, evaded condemnation for his unilateralism.

30 James Parton, The Life of Andrew Jackson (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1880- 1888), 2:533, 557-560, quote on 558; “At the Public Dinner given to General JACKSON at Baltimore, the following was the fifth toast drank,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. 7 no. 1917, March 4, 1819; “General Jackson,” The Mississippi State Gazette vol. VII no. 28, April 17, 1819; “Domestic Concerns: New York, February 22nd,” Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix New Series, vol. 1 no. 17, February 27, 1819; Burstein, Passions of Andrew Jackson, 136-137. 31 Report on the Seminole War, Annals, Senate, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 256-268, 262 quoted. 32 Parton, 2:572; “General Jackson,” Nashville Whig, April 10, 1819, printed in Daily National Intelligencer vol. 7 no. 1966, April 30, 1819; JQA, Memoirs, 2:278. 255

Jackson’s successful elusion had everything to do with keeping the people happy.

“Had general Jackson been brought to trial for transsending his orders,” Monroe confessed to Thomas Jefferson, “I have no doubt that the interior of the country, would have been much agitated, if not convulsed by appeals to sectional interests.” It was in this same letter that Monroe had outlined the constitutional transgressions he had had to fix after Jackson’s seizure of Pensacola. There was little doubt in Monroe’s mind that

Jackson had violated the law of the republic, but Monroe could ill afford the ire of

Western and Southern voters when the nation was dealing with other difficult political questions.33 Jackson’s conduct, whether justly or not, reflected upon the current administration. Monroe was hamstrung politically and diplomatically.34

This relationship between Monroe and Jackson worked its way into the legislature. Adams was well attuned to congressional politics and the machinations of

Virginians for or against Monroe. He recorded that in the wake of Jackson’s east coast tour, legislators had become increasingly unable to use the Seminole War as a point of attack, and that “not a man was found who dared to introduce” measures of censure against Jackson, even at the state level, for fear of his popularity.35 Being the object of

Jackson’s wrath was not a particularly pleasant experience for politicians. It was often, as

Winfield Scott had learned in 1818-1819, counterproductive.

Henry Clay, for example, had led the charge against Jackson, whom he denounced in Congress with appeals to the proper subordination of officers to civilian government. Jackson’s allies in Congress, and those who represented his popular base,

33 Monroe to Jefferson, February 8, 1819, Thomas Jefferson papers, series 1, vol. 51, LC. 34 See JQA, Memoirs, 279. 35 Ibid., 279, 313 (quote on 313). 256

responded to what they considered Clay’s unwarranted and vicious attack by defending

Jackson’s actions all the more, appealing to examples from the American Revolutionary

War to justify Jackson’s actions.36 Jackson, now at enmity with Clay, the great architect of the Second Bank and a stronger federal network, fell victim to Jackson’s modus operandi: Jackson brought the case before the people. He had Clay’s speech published in

Western newspapers to elicit the opprobrium of the populace, who he hoped would

scourge Clay appropriately.37

Likewise, former Secretary of War William H. Crawford had, since he first

committed the great sin in 1816 of suggesting that Indians had rights, been at odds with

Jackson. By opposing Jackson on the issue of Indian land rights, he had enraged

Jackson’s Western allies as well. When John Clarke, one of Jackson’s friends, informed

him that he was writing a screed against Crawford to be published later in 1819, Jackson

was delighted. He instructed Clarke to make sure the book portrayed Crawford’s

“hypocricy surrounded with all its horid deformity, depravity, and baseness of human

character.” Jackson self-consciously hoped that such a book would aid him in answering

to the report of Lacock in the Senate, but Jackson’s primary aim was to damage

Crawford’s life and reputation as much as he possibly could. It was deeply personal to

him.38 The only true friend that Jackson had in Monroe’s administration seemed to be

John Quincy Adams—an ironic fact given the political destinies of those two future

presidents. As for Monroe and Calhoun, they set aside their objections to Jackson’s

36 Speech of Rep. Tallmadge, Annals HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 733. 37 Lynn Hudson Parsons, The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 53. 38 Jackson to Clarke, July 13, 1819, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1, vol. 53, LC. 257 conduct for the time being. Monroe had accepted Adams’s logic, and despite all his misgivings went so far as to endorse Jackson’s actions in his message to Congress.39 As a result, the Monroe administration was, for now, unencumbered by Jackson’s vitriol as it proceeded toward its political objectives—objectives that were, in themselves, products of Jackson’s actions.

Jackson controlled Washington; Washington’s attempts to hem him in had proven fruitless. Monroe had hoped desperately that Andrew Jackson would have used his personal appeal to bind the frontier to the center in a spirit of shared nationalism. The scheme had worked to some degree in New Orleans in 1815, but by 1819, Jackson had clearly set himself against Washington and had, in fact, nearly paralyzed Monroe with threats of sectional discord. Jackson was nothing if not an instigator. His ability to play on parochial prejudices was a critical first step away from the reformers’ nationalistic vision.

Congress and the Fracturing Union

While Jackson had been flitting about in Spanish Florida, the congressional reformers, led at various points by Calhoun and Clay, were at work pushing for measures that would strengthen the federal arm and subordinate the state governments to

Washington. 1815 was a banner year for the reformers’ military goals. Congress had approved an unprecedented peacetime army of 10,000 men, spending for a new series of fortifications, and a set of measures to provide for the U.S. Military Academy at West

Point. This financial largesse was particularly extraordinary given the economic backdrop of the postwar treasury. The United States had, over the course of the war years, amassed

39 Monroe, “President’s Message to Congress,” Annals, 15th Congress, 2nd session, 12-13. 258

a national debt of approximately $127 million—a sum that might have frightened a

traditionally parsimonious Congress into a period of extreme fiscal austerity.40 The pro-

federal reformers who emerged within Congress itself had set to work convincing their

colleagues to open the purse strings to other aspects of governance that fed into national power.

Over the course of 1816, the congressional focus was bolstering the financial power of the Union through a national bank. It was the keystone measure that year, as well as the bedrock of Henry Clay’s American System.41 Secretary of the Treasury

Alexander Dallas—doubling as acting secretary of war in late 1815—wrote in December

1815 to Calhoun a long outline of his vision for the national bank. Dallas, confident that

the prudence of establishing such an institution was now beyond debate, thankfully laid aside the need to speak of its virtues and instead focused on the technical particulars. It seemed obvious enough that the expiration of the previous bank’s charter in 1811 was

responsible for the largely denuded federal coffers in 1815. Dallas did emphasize,

however, that the institution was not to be “for the purposes of commerce and profit

alone, but much more for the purposes of national policy, as an auxiliary in the exercise

of some of the highest powers of the government.”42 John Randolph, an ally of the

financial measures, added more bluntly that the bank and its associated tax and tariff

policies would “prostrate the State Governments at the feet of the General

Government.”43

40 Skeen, 1816, 53. 41 Although it would not be labeled “the American System” for many years, Clay clearly articulated the policy that would come to be known as such. The term is used here for the sake of simplicity. 42 Dallas to Calhoun, December 24, 1815, in Niles Weekly Register vol. 9 (Sept. 1815 – Mar. 1816): 367. 43 Randolph quoted in Skeen, 1816, 56. 259

Dallas was not entirely justified in his confidence that the national bank’s virtues

were beyond debate. Many in Congress questioned its constitutionality and feared the

growth of the federal government that it would represent.44 Calhoun gave the measure his

impassioned support, arguing on the floor of the House that, first of all, the Constitution

gave Congress the authority to regulate commerce, which a national bank doubtless

functioned to do. But above all, he argued, the country had been affected with what he called a “disease.” The malady was eating away at the nation’s very lifeblood—its

commerce was suffering unnecessary hindrance thanks to the confused mix of worthless

bank notes from local governments. He called on Congress to cure this disease, which

had plagued so many Americans during the time of war.45 Some members, however, were

unimpressed with Calhoun’s credentials as a physician. The real disease, in their minds,

was the very treatment he had prescribed. On the eve of the vote in the House for the

adoption of a new national bank, one congressman complained that the Calhoun bloc’s

constitutional logic was so fast and loose that the entire republic was in peril. The bank

was, in fact, a first step toward the Constitution’s slow, agonizing death. Despite these

protests, the 1816 bank bill passed by a fairly narrow margin of 80 yeas, 71 nays.46

The reformers had an edge in Congress over the still-prevalent antebellum prejudices against consolidation of central power in 1816. The reformers were, for the most part, able to ride this momentum through the sessions of 1817 thanks to their successful rhetoric about the lessons and legacy of the war. They hawked a vision of the future that was heavily steeped in the past and relevant to the present. A year after

44 “Chronicles,” February 3, 1816, Niles Weekly Register vol. 9 (Sept. 1815 – Mar. 1816): 404. 45 Proceedings, February 26, 1816, Annals, HR, 14th Congress 1st Session, 1065. 46 Remarks of John Clopton, March 14, 1816, idem, 1218. 260

Calhoun’s successful lobbying for the Bank of the United States, he introduced another

petition to Congress to apply the bank’s federal dividends to a better transportation

system for national commerce. One of the first considerations he mentioned was the

difficulty of movement during the war. He then mentioned the value to the present that

such a system would bring, and he concluded with his infectiously optimistic call to

“conquer space” and forge a glorious new path.47

Between 1818 and 1820, Calhoun began to lose some of the optimistic buy-in he

had had for his nationalistic future. These years brought some good news for American

nationalists, particularly the solidification of most border disputes with Britain and Spain

thanks to the Rush-Bagot Treaty, the Convention of 1818, and the 1819 Adams-Onís

Treaty.48 But all was not well beneath the surface. Partisans spun the Panic of 1819 to

undercut popular confidence in the American System, and fed off the lingering, festering

sectional argument over the expansion of slavery during the Missouri Controversy of

1819-1820. Preceding both of these affairs was General Andrew Jackson’s climactic final act of mutiny against his government, the Seminole War of 1817-1818. This conflict, the popular reaction to the controversy surrounding it, and the manner in which Jackson had learned to wield his popularity and feed into regional prejudices all served to accelerate the fracturing of the consensus that the congressional reformers had tried to forge through

1817.

47 Calhoun, February 4, 1817, Annals, HR, 14th Congress, 2nd Session, 851-852. 48 Michael Fitzgerald argues that these treaties eased the war tensions between the United States and Europe, which was the primary reason for the eventual reduction of the army in 1821 (“Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan,” 169). Fitzgerald adds on p. 172 that the army benefitted throughout Spain’s failure to ratify the treaty in 1820. 261

Few indeed had a more direct impact on the course of congressional politics since

1814 than Jackson. In 1814, he had presented Congress with the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which he had taken upon himself to conclude with the Red Sticks and his own Creek allies. After his popular rise following New Orleans, Congress was obliged to ratify the treaty, the fallout from which directly set conditions for the Seminole War. His conduct there had been similar, and once again Congress was spellbound by his capacity for victory—the ends, it seems, justified the means. Now he was not only the hero of New

Orleans but the man who had almost single-handedly secured America’s borders to the south and west. It is impossible to imagine the Adams-Onís Treaty containing the land cessions that it did without the forcible seizure of territory that Jackson had brought about. All the while, as these debates and exchanges echoed through the chambers of the

Congress, Jackson enjoyed renowned celebrity among the people. Even when some of the public disagreed with his conduct, Jackson had done enough that he was still greeted as a member of the American pantheon. It is difficult to understate the degree to which

Jackson mattered to Americans in the late 1810s and early 1820s. Thus, when Jackson began increasingly to distance himself from the U.S. government from 1818 to 1820, it affected the public mood. He grew suspicious of the federal government’s power, and he propped himself up as the apotheosis of frontier independence and virtue. While Jackson was not the sole cause of the return of the wood-fortress majority in Congress, he certainly played a major role in it. His fingerprints appeared everywhere.

Michael Fitzgerald has penned one of the most exhaustive and in-depth studies of

John C. Calhoun’s failure in 1821 to maintain a large army or to pass his vision for an expansible force. He believes he has found the one true primary reason for the undoing of

262 the larger peacetime establishment: international diplomacy. It had very little, if indeed anything at all, to do with antimilitary bias or with Andrew Jackson’s illegal war.49

According to his reasoning, Congress had only approved the 10,000-man army in the first place because Monroe and others convinced a majority that the United States needed a diplomatic chip against both Britain and Spain, with which there was still a distinct possibility of renewed war. It was not until after 1819, he claims, that these war tensions eased and the army was safe for reduction, but the delay through 1820 came because of

Spain’s reluctance to ratify the Adams-Onís Treaty. The reduction came, not coincidentally in Fitzgerald’s mind, only after all loose diplomatic and political ends were tied up with Spain. Monroe’s expanded army of 1815 was no peacetime establishment after all—it was a war deterrent.50

While it is certainly correct that the larger army was sold as a prudent measure in an uncertain set of diplomatic conditions, a politician’s words should not always be taken at face value—congressmen were salesmen for ideas, and many of their ideas were wolves dressed in sheep’s skin. The gap between what a politician says and what he actually thinks, then as now, can be wide. What is more, attempts to analyze voting trends can prove slippery. It may stand to reason that a congressman voting to censure

Andrew Jackson in 1819 would be motivated to do so by a distrust of the army as an institution. And indeed, as we shall see, some congressmen did in fact frame the issue this way in their minds. To vote for censuring Jackson did not, however, always equate to voting against the army. Some were able to separate Jackson the renegade general from

49 Fitzgerald, “Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan,” 164. See also his “‘Nature Unsubdued,’” which makes the same case but focuses specifically on the initial military buildup of 1815-1817. 50 Fitzgerald, “Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan,” 178-181. 263 the large standing army in their minds. Among the 77 congressmen who served in both the 15th and 16th U.S. Congresses, there is a dizzying mix of voting trends.

Jackson’s impact on the movement was broader than some linear relationship between votes in 1819 and votes in 1821. One congressman might have voted in favor of censuring Jackson because he opposed the executive’s use of the army (though, as we have seen, the executive did not actually intend to use it in that manner). Such a position could validate the wood-fortress orthodoxy about dangerous generals and motivate an anti-army vote. Alternatively, another could have voted for censure in order to condemn

Jackson himself, the great military tyrant some accused him of being, rather than

Monroe’s policy.51 On the other side of the issue, an ally of Jackson’s could vote against the army in 1821 out of shared disdain for the War Department’s “intermeddling pimps,” as Jackson had called them.52 One’s hatred or admiration of Jackson alike could potentially motivate one to vote against the army in 1821.

The votes in Congress reflected national mood. Diplomatic tensions had never yielded such large armies before 1812. That is not to say that diplomacy with Spain did not matter tremendously, of course, but diplomacy mattered in large part because of

Jackson and the people he represented. Jackson had charged headlong into Florida thanks to frontier ideology, and had thereby given John Quincy Adams the diplomatic leverage to corner Spain. All of Onís’s protests against Jackson’s deprivations had got him nowhere. After the 1819 treaty with Spain, the United States owned not only Florida, but had the potential to expand even farther west now that Spain had dropped its claims to

51 Henry Clay, for example, in January 20, 1819, Annals, HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 654-655. 52 Tennessean , for example. For the quote, as discussed in Chapter Five, see Jackson to Scott, December 3, 1817, “Correspondence,” in Scott Papers, USMA-SC. 264 parts of the original Louisiana Territory. Adams was well aware of his indebtedness to

Jackson, referring to Jackson’s raffish quest around the Gulf as one of “the most immediate and prominent causes” of his diplomatic success.53 Monroe likewise understood Jackson’s role, which is why he could not reprimand Jackson in the first place.54

Once the path west lay open, so did the question of the expansion of slavery, an inherently sectional question.55 It truly began in February 1819, when James Tallmadge introduced a proposed amendment to the bill to admit Missouri as a state. The amendment would have prohibited any further expansion of slavery westward, and it provided that slaves born in the former territories be emancipated no later than their twenty-fifth birthday. The immediate moral and political question that erupted on the floor of Congress was how such a restriction could be fitted to republicanism. What right, proslavery congressmen asked, did the central government have to tell a state what it could and not could have in its own constitution? Supporters of the measure answered that slavery itself was incompatible with the republicanism that these slaveholders claimed to cherish so dearly, since all white men of Union should have equal commercial and economic opportunity. What chance did a non-slaveholding migrant have in

53 JQA, Memoirs, 4:278. 54 Noble E. Cunningham, The Presidency of James Monroe (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 68-69. 55 James Albert Woodburn, “The Historical Significance of the ” Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1893): 251-297, esp. 254; Cunningham, The Presidency of James Monroe, Chap. 7; Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), Chap. 8; John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007); Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 224-244, esp. 236. 265 competition with a slaveholder in these new territories?56 Almost immediately, the debate turned to threats of secession, violence, and war. Georgia Representative Thomas Cobb stated darkly that “if we persist, the Union will be dissolved” and that the fire Tallmadge had begun could only be extinguished by “seas of blood.” Tallmadge, ready to fuel the fire all the more, responded that “if a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war…let it come!”57

Not surprisingly, the vote on the amendment was overwhelmingly dependent on geography. Representatives from Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi,

North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia all unanimously voted against the amendment. Even with a handful of dissenting votes from Northern representatives, the unanimity was still not enough to defeat the measure in the House. Civil war did not come in 1819 thanks only to the proportionally greater Southern representation in the

Senate, where the amendment was struck from the bill.58 The statehood bill, with amendments added and deleted as it went back and forth between House and Senate, died with the two chambers in a deadlock as Congress adjourned in March. Missouri would not become a state in 1819, and the nation had the rest of the year to think about it.59

Andrew Jackson was livid. Tallmadge’s measure was proof to him that the whole debate was nothing more than the work of “demagogues,” who valued selfishness over the national good. The ensuing exchanges in newspapers, debates among politicians, and

56 “Admission of Missouri,” February 13, 1819, Annals HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 1170. But, some congressmen did appeal to the morality of freeing oppressed people and destroying a “radical evil.” See idem, 1174-1175. 57 James Tallmadge (quoting Cobb in his own speech), idem, 1204. 58 Idem, 1214; “Proceedings,” February 27, 1819, idem, Senate, 273. 59 Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 224. 266 general rabblerousing all split the Republican Party into antislavery and Southern factions, a phenomenon that Jackson wholly embraced, suspecting as he did that the northeastern population had set itself against the interests of the southwest. The Northern faction took to the people throughout late 1819. Southerners seemed not to agitate over the issue as much, in part out of fear that such news could incite slave insurrection and in part because they were more concerned by economic depression, but Jackson did emphasize that those eastern troublemakers would find the southwestern population every bit as tenacious of their constitutional rights.60 After the Missouri Compromise measure finally passed in 1820, Calhoun wrote to Jackson about Jackson’s obvious “strong foreboding as to our future policy.” Calhoun lamented that the “Missouri question has undoubtedly contributed to weaken in some degree the attachment of our southern and western people to the Union,” but added hopefully that the compromise and time would heal those wounds.61

Americans ossified sectional tensions and re-created regional politics over the

Missouri Controversy. The Panic of 1819, then, sapped their confidence in the government structure itself and in the ability of the reformers’ platform to bring about the prosperous, unified future they had promised. The Panic hurt the slaveholding “victims” of the Missouri Compromise hardest. It was their land that was so harshly devalued and their plantation staples whose prices had dropped so precipitously since the Concert of

Europe had allowed European wares to saturate the market once again, but it was certainly a national crisis. Besides the hard hit that the agricultural sector took, those on

60 Jackson to Andrew Jackson Donelson, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ 4:367; Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 224, 228, 230-232; Parsons, Birth of Modern Politics, 63. 61 Calhoun to Jackson, June 1, 1820, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 56, LC. 267 the eastern seaboard could complain that the “markets are deluged with merchandise from foreign nations, while thousands of our citizens, able and willing to work…are unable to procure employment.” Manufacturing was on its back, the United States was hemorrhaging its specie to Europe, and trade was paralyzed.62 The American System was not working.

The Panic of 1819 had everything to do with the national bank, the stronger central system that it represented, its constitutionality, and republican ideology. Early that year, there had already been grumbling in Congress about the national bank, with James

Johnson of Virginia going so far as to move to repeal the April 1816 bank bill. Johnson, anticipating complaints about a breach of the public faith by such a measure, objected preemptively that the bank, “which was to promote the great interest of the country, has, by its misconduct, completely defeated the objects of the community.” The trouble with

Johnson’s claims of “fraud” and corruption, according to the opposition, was that however mismanaged one might think the national bank to be, the state banks were worse by degrees. It was their inability to manage currency that had led to the postwar financial crisis in the first place. The House deferred Johnson’s measure to the Committee of the

Whole, and did not vote on it.63 As the crisis mounted throughout the course of 1819, however, local and regional politicians leveraged the perceived failure of the centralized system to electrify their constituents. In Andrew Jackson’s home state, the question of a

62 “Communicated for Publication,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. 7 no. 1994, June 2, 1819. 63 “Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report a bill to repeal the act, entitled ‘An act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States,’ passed April 10th, 1816,” James Johnson, February 9, 1819, Annals HR, 15th Congress 2nd Session, 1140-1141. 268 national bank catapulted Jackson into state politics (and, eventually, to the presidency, where his opposition to the bank would be a hallmark of his policy).64

By July 1820, the Panic of 1819 still had Americans struggling to stimulate economic growth. Shortly after Jackson announced his desire to retire from the army in the late spring of that year, he became bound up in Tennessean politics and found himself temporarily aligned with John Overton, who had offered him such impressive support during his 1819 congressional censure hearing, against the establishment of a loan office that would issue paper notes for residents to use to pay off their debts. Jackson was no supporter of a central bank. Amid the controversy between factions of Tennesseans,

Jackson took the time to explain to his friend William Lewis that he was certain “that the

Constitution of our State, as well as the Constitution of the United States prohibited the

Establishment of Banks in any state.”65 But he was even less enthusiastic about the continued injection of worthless paper notes into the market.

The American people developed less rosy views of union and prosperity in response to the economic downturn and the question of slavery’s expansion. They roused regional prejudices from their slumber in response to the Missouri question, and the financial crisis served only as further evidence to those who argued that the federal government had no business dominating local principalities. In the midst of this increasing polarization of American politics came the army debate.

64 Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 243-244. 65 Ibid.; Moser et al, eds., PAJ, 4:375, Jackson to W.B. Lewis, July 16, 1820, in idem, 4:378 (quoted); on retirement see Calhoun to Jackson, June 1, 1820, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 56, LC. 269

Retrenchment

Mere days after the House voted against censuring Jackson’s conduct of the

Seminole War, Lewis Williams of North Carolina introduced a motion that the army be

reduced from 10,000 to 6,000 men. James Smith, Williams’s fellow Carolinian, seconded

the motion, and proposed an addendum that the grade of major general be discontinued as

part of the reduction. Both of the Carolinians had voted in favor of reprimanding Jackson,

and now rationalized their proposals by arguing that the standing army was a serious

threat to American liberty, and that Secretary of War Calhoun’s latest report on the army

was a smokescreen intended to convince congressmen of the economy of maintaining

such a gargantuan force. In a continuance of the Old Republican orthodoxy, Williams

added that this force was an inefficient drain on the federal budget.66

Eldred Simkins of South Carolina was appalled by what he heard. If a

hypothetical visitor with no prior knowledge of the American defense system were to

visit our shores, he argued, he would assume that Congress would never consider such a

reduction unless its borders were consolidated and its militia were disciplined and trained

enough to assume the mantle of American security.67 (Such a visitor would have to be

ignorant of the American ideological context indeed.) Simkins accused Williams of

forgetting the clear lessons of the war. “In what situation would your country have been placed without Scott,” he asked rhetorically, “…and many more…the mention of whose

names delicacy now forbids?” He then tied the continued health and welfare of the

American officer corps directly to the American System. A strong army, he argued, can

66 “Reduction of the Army,” February 13, 1819, Annals HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 1157-1158, 1164. 67 Ibid., 1155-1156. 270

and will build the very roads that will both improve military operations and the American economy at the same time. As an added benefit, the new military network will tie together our varying factions. An army, therefore, “will strengthen the defence and promote the commercial and political prosperity of the Union.”68

Congress did not end up voting on Williams’s 1819 reduction bill, citing the short

time remaining in the current session and the other business the House had to discuss before adjourning. It was at this same time that John Tallmadge was moving to forbid the westward expansion of slavery, his amendment arriving on the floor only two days after

Williams’s anti-army speech. By a narrow vote of 71 to 66, the House tabled the issue.

The issue of army reduction was clearly weighing on congressional minds, but the more pressing matters of Missouri’s statehood, slavery, and the economy prevented the House

from being able to debate the question for the time being. Nor was diplomatic safety with

Spain and Britain enough, on its own, to stifle the ideological eagerness to return the republic to its orthodox roots.69

The open-endedness of Spanish affairs did, however, concern the U.S.

government. Monroe went so far as to beg Jackson to retain his commission in the army

until the question was settled, since it was Jackson who had forced the Spanish into the

issue of cession in the first place. Jackson had had enough of his regular army

commission, but the chance to continue to use his image and his name to facilitate open

westward expansion and was enough to overcome his reluctance to

68 Ibid., 1161-1163. 69 “Admission of Missouri,” Annals HR, 15th Congress, 2nd Session, 1165, 1170; cf. Fitzgerald, “Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan,” 174. 271

continue serving.70 The question of treaty ratification was not necessarily enough,

however, to overcome the mounting ideological prejudices against the standing army in

itself. In fact, many congressmen considered the question of European war and border

security to be all but closed. Lewis Williams, in making his army reduction speech in

early 1819, had appealed to his colleagues to consider the futility of an army when the

frontier was as pacified as it was. Simkins, in his passionately pro-army rebuttal, did not

challenge Williams’s premise, but instead appealed to the thousands of miles of new

frontier now open to the savagery of the tomahawk and the scalping knife. Would

Williams care to have his name attached to the blood of innocent women and children who fall victim to Indian depravity, he asked?71

As reassuring as Simkins’s concern for the safety of the frontier no doubt would

have been to its inhabitants, Andrew Jackson and his loyal followers in the frontier

militias did not feel that the regulars’ presence was entirely necessary. Jackson had

argued for more army garrisons on the frontier, but it was becoming clear to him and his

neighbors that the army would not operate in the manner he desired. Since 1817, Jackson

complained that the army had been constricting its presence and pulling farther back from

the Florida border when it needed to do the very opposite. He wanted the regulars

deployed forward in order to remove Indians and secure the land for white settlers.

Instead, the War Department seemed to be more preoccupied with the eastern seaboard.72

70 Jackson to George Gibson, July 10, 1820, in Moser et al, eds, PAJ 4:374. 71 “Reduction of the Army,” February 13, 1819, Annals HR, 15th Congress 2nd Session, 1164. 72 See Jackson to Graham, January 14, 1817, in Moser et al., eds., PAJ 4:84-85; Jackson to Monroe, March 4, 1817, idem, 4:93-94; and Jackson to Monroe, January 6, 1818, idem, 4:166-167. 272

Jackson laid out these arguments in a memorial to Congress in February 1820.

Jackson, clearly still stinging from the hurt feelings of watching effete congressmen

debate the morality of his military adventure, attempted to refute, point by point, the

criticisms contained within Lacock’s scathing report to the Senate. After a feeble

resistance by only a handful of congressmen still devoted to publicly defaming Jackson,

“whose reputation and character [were] the property of the nation,” the memorial was

published in Congress.73 In it, Jackson defended his “illegal” army that he had raised by

complaining about the ineffective federal presence along the border. Jackson made it very

clear that the American system of defense was not as quick, effective, or efficient as

thousands of patriots assembling together to provide for their own defense. Frankly,

Jackson resented the implication that the government in Washington had any say in what

was or was not proper for the citizens’ local defense against Indian attacks. “It is one of

the attributes of State sovereignty, guarantied by the Federal Constitution...with which

the Executive and Congress cannot interfere,” Jackson claimed defiantly.74 Congress ordered the memorial printed, and the document was reproduced in newspapers across the country.75

Simkins’s 1819 appeal to the glory of Scott and to the defenseless frontier was at

odds with Jackson’s own rhetorical position. Whether in questions of banks, regulating slavery, or regulating defense, Jackson was fundamentally anti-centrist. Over the course

73 John Eaton to Jackson, March 11, 1820, Andrew Jackson Papers, series 1 vol. 56, LC. 74 Andrew Jackson, “Defeat of the Seminole Indians, &c.,” in Appendix to Annals HR, 15th Congress 2nd session, 2320-2322 (quote on 2322). 75 “Foreign and Domestic,” Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. 2, no. 19, March 4, 1820; “General Jackson’s Memorial,” Daily National Intelligencer vol. 8, no. 2243, March 21, 1820; “General Jackson’s Memorial,” Louisville Public Advertiser vol. II, no. 160, April 19, 1820; “Memorial of Gen. Jackson,” Mobile Gazette & Commercial Advertiser, vol. III, no. 62, May 10, 1820. 273

of 1820, Jackson’s popular appeal had by no means diminished, nor had the controversy

that Jackson engendered. In Ohio, one paper commented on his memorial to Congress by

reiterating the problems associated with Jackson’s private army. The lack of reprimand

from Monroe, this editorial claimed, reflected the president’s own policy and, therefore,

made his entire defense policy unconstitutional.76 Farther south in Kentucky, others had

heard quite enough of these denigrations of the great hero. It could only be a people

steeped in “depravity and corruption,” and who had already “passed the Rubicon,” that

would cast aspersions on a man “who was foremost in forcing the savage to retire from

the fruitful soil we inhabit, and who…at New Orleans, displayed the courage of Cæsar,

with the simplicity and virtue of a Cincinnatus.”77 The contrast between the Cincinnatus and those who had passed the Rubicon was clear enough imagery, but equally important

was the credit Jackson personally received for the victory in the War of 1812 and for the

opening of the land to white settlement. It was Jackson, not the executive, who was “the

savior of our southern frontier.”78 “Of all our heroes,” added the people of Richmond at

their Fourth of July toast in 1820, “Gen. Jackson has stood foremost.”79

The rollback of federal power measures began in earnest, with these discussions

in the background, in November 1820 as the 16th Congress convened for its second

session. Thomas Cobb of Georgia presented a series of proposals to reduce government

expenditures. First, the overall budget ought to shrink, he stated, which would demand

76 “Violations of the Constitution and Laws,” Chillicothe Supporter, vol. XII, no. 601, April 26, 1820. 77 In Louisville Public Advertiser vol. II, no. 175, June 10, 1820. 78 “Communication,” Mobile Gazette & Commercial Advertiser vol. 4, no. 3, July 20, 1820; see also “Our Treaty with Spain,” Louisville Public Advertiser vol. II, no. 135, January 22, 1820. 79 “Public Sentiment,” Richmond Inquirer reprinted in Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix vol. II, no. 62, August 2, 1820. 274

that unnecessary bureaucracies be cut and positions be eliminated within the government.

For those whose positions should be found absolutely critical, their salaries would be

reduced to 1809 levels. Finally, the military establishment’s budget ought to be drastically reduced by discharging 4,000 men (as well as half of the U.S. Navy) from

active service and by slowing work on seacoast fortifications to a trickle. The House, at

Cobb’s own suggestion, delayed debate until they could consider the measures and

peruse the reports of the secretaries of war and of the treasury.80 The military academy at

West Point soon was subjected to the same fiduciary scrutiny.81 Secretary Calhoun, whom Congress asked to produce a reduction plan, submitted an essay to the Congress on the futility of relying on citizen militias for defense. “I know of no instance,” he wrote,

“…in which the greatest talents have been able, with irregular and undisciplined troops, to meet with success those that were regularly trained.”82

The specter of Winfield Scott and his camp of instruction lurked behind every

word Calhoun submitted. If the Congress insisted on reducing the army to 6,000, then, it

should do so in a manner that emphasized military professionalism for a cadre of officers

and noncommissioned officers. This cadre would lead and train an expansible army in

time of emergency or war. Thomas Cobb was thoroughly unconvinced. The officer

reduction should be commensurate with the reduction of sergeants and privates, he

insisted. “Could you retain them for fifty years, on a peace establishment, they would be

no wiser in the science of war, than they now are,” he added. Cobb’s position relied upon

the assumption that warfare was not complex enough to require full-time practice. It was

80 “Reduction of Expenditures,” Annals HR, 16th Congress 2nd session, 449. 81 “West Point Academy” in idem, 502. 82 Calhoun, “Reduction of the Army,” December 12, 1820, ASP:MA 2:188. 275

a fundamental axiom of the amateur citizen-soldier model. Cobb endorsed the wood-

fortress mentality of dismantling the structure immediately after the crisis had passed,

since all a peacetime body of officers could do was to scheme and to present a danger to

republican liberties.83

Eldred Simkins responded with an implied appeal to the destruction of

Washington, indirectly referring to the poor state of coastal fortifications and of the militia in the late war, whose ill-preparedness had left the coast open to British ravaging.

He added that for all of Cobb’s and Williams’s complaints about parsimony, the army had become less expensive to maintain, even as it had expanded to more than 10,000 men. It was obvious to him that the statements about “security” and “economy” were mere window dressings for the orthodox ideological hatred of a standing army.84

Williams dismissed Simkins’s remarks, as well as the many who had dwelt on the

“national glory” of the war. “Of what avail is it to talk about the splendid victories of a

Decatur, if, in order to obtain those victories, the people had been obliged, by taxation… to go supperless to bed?” He similarly dismissed what another representative “was pleased to call historical facts” to prove the unreliability of the militia. Williams claimed that history actually proved the opposite, since every page of the republic’s history was based on the idea that “standing armies are dangerous to liberty.” The rules of military life, after all, are inherently despotic. The speech dripped with this idiom, invoking the

Newburgh Conspiracy and the crossing of the Rubicon in the same breath. Both events had taken place, Williams stated confidently, after peace had been concluded and the

83 Cobb, in “Reduction of Expenditures,” January 15, 1821, Annals HR, 16th Congress 2nd session, 728. 84 Simkins, in idem, 758-759, 763. 276

general had nothing left but to conquer his own people’s liberties.85 Such were the

debates in the House throughout the course of January 1821. The army was, on the one

hand, a means by which to usurp liberties; and on the other hand, it was the militia who

had endangered liberty by abandoning the countryside to British recolonization.

The arguments were very familiar to the congressmen who gathered to discuss the

measure; there was little being said that was new. What, then, was different in 1821 that

caused the bill to gain such traction? The best answer to this question came from a

congressman who described three main factors. First, the representatives had lost faith in

Clay’s and Calhoun’s promises of increased national revenue from the American System.

Far from “conquering space” and creating greater commercial intercourse, the internal

improvements were bleeding the treasury dry.86 Second, and closely related to the first

point, was that the people were shocked by the rapid ballooning of the government

apparatus. It was time for a conservative backlash. The representative ached longingly for

the old Jeffersonian republic, which “will be celebrated by historians, and sung by poets, as the golden age of this Republic.” Perhaps most dangerous was the extent to which the army bolstered “the influence of the Executive branch” by giving the commander-in- chief his own force over which to exercise patronage. Finally, of course, there was

Andrew Jackson. He was the ultimate example of the military chieftain who had run out

85 Williams, idem., 771, 774-775, 787. 86 Fitzgerald argues convincingly that the congressmen’s heavy reliance on financial appeals to support reducing the army were somewhat disingenuous. They claimed to worry about expenditure, but they clearly meant expenditure on the army—other spending programs that swallowed up government funds went unmolested through appropriations (“Rejecting Calhoun’s Expansible Army Plan,” 177-178). 277 of control and who had invaded an adjacent territory “plainly contrary to orders and, worst of all, contrary to the Constitution of this country.”87

Charles Fisher of North Carolina, the man who laid out this three-point thesis concerning what had changed between 1815 and 1821, was obviously no admirer of

Andrew Jackson. Likeminded Americans could, and did, accuse Jackson of “crossing the

Rubicon,” but as the pro-Jackson Louisville Public Advertiser had demonstrated, opponents could argue that it was the anti-Jackson congressmen who had crossed that threshold by opposing the liberty Jackson represented. Jackson had led many of his supporters and detractors alike to the same conclusion for very different reasons. Jackson, now no longer thought of as a regular army officer in the same sense as he had sometimes been between 1815 and 1817, was railing for state sovereignty against government overreach and the coastal conspiracy to trample upon the interests of the frontier. He had the ammunition of the economic downturn and the concomitant politics of the previous two years to scratch this popular itch. However one aligned oneself with respect to

Jackson—and indeed most congressmen respected his popularity—one now had the rhetorical and ideological justification to oppose a standing army as the tool of the executive.

* * *

On January 23, 1821, the House approved H.R. 180: “A Bill Reducing the

Military Peace Establishment of the Army,” which was finally approved and passed in

Congress on March 2. A year later, Monroe complained to James Madison “that the restless & disturbed state of the commonwealth” over the last several years was due to

87 Charles Fisher, in idem, 815-817. 278 the resurgence of party politics. The Federalists had diminished considerably, but the country seemed little better off for it so far.88

Andrew Jackson had played an active role in the partisanship that Monroe lamented after 1821. It is difficult to overstate how important Jackson was as a national figure in these critical years. He was like George Washington in stature, perhaps his equal—he was the savior of the nation. Americans, embittering themselves over moral questions of slavery and over of economic want, read in their newspapers week by week and month by month about Jackson’s defiance of the War Department, the impotence of the national system, and the halcyon days of Jeffersonian states’ rights. For a Washington-like hero to lend his voice to this movement over the course of two years had to have had a wide-ranging effect.

No matter how actively stone-fortress reformers petitioned and appealed for the

“proper lessons” of the past, the force of experience between 1819 and 1820 was enough to turn the rhetorical tide in Congress. Mordecai Noah’s decision to write his dramatic portrait of the Battle of Chippewa in the year 1819 was no accident. American nationalism, he could tell, was failing. But, Noah was hopeful for a brighter future. He and his fellow playwrights could nurture nationalistic drama, he believed, and in time the proper memory of events would win out.89 Monroe, likewise, expressed a similar optimism in his letter to Madison. “[T]he rolling of the waves after a storm, tho’ worse than the storm itself, will subside, & leave the ship in perfect security,” he wrote poetically. “Public opinion will react on this body, & keep it right.”90 The apparent defeat

88 Monroe to Madison, May 10, 1822, Madison Papers, LC. 89 Noah, She Would Be a Soldier, Preface, in Moses, ed., Representative Plays, 640-641. 90 Monroe to Madison, May 10, 1822, Madison Papers, LC. 279 of the new Napoleonic military establishment was not permanent. There was hope for

Calhoun’s vision after all.

280

Epilogue and Conclusion

… it must take time and experience for us to make Generals & to become a warlike nation.1

our…military establishment will achieve a victory over some of the prejudices of the country by their useful labours in peace if they could not by their deeds of arms in War.2

When Joseph Bonaparte arrived in the United States as the Comte de Survilliers after his brother’s defeat and imprisonment, he had been welcomed socially, but was unable to parade through the American capital under his real name. Politically and diplomatically, it was simply too risky to embrace a Bonaparte openly. Survilliers settled down into the seemingly quiet and idyllic life of a gentleman farmer on a massive estate he purchased along the Hudson River in New Jersey. The quiet was only surface deep.

Survilliers frequently met with other Napoleonic exiles, the most notable of whom were

General Bertrand Clausel, one of Napoleon’s most trusted military men, and Napoleon’s former minister of the interior, Comte Regnault de St. Jean d’Angely. The Bonapartists met regularly and dreamed out loud of rescuing Napoleon from his volcanic prison in the

South Atlantic. They even went so far, apparently, as to consider the newly-pardoned

Baratarian pirate Jean Lafitte as a possible naval accomplice to their scheme.3

1 John M. O’Connnor to George Mitchell, November 28, 1814, J.M. O’Connor Papers, Folder 4, CLUM. 2 Jacob Jennings Brown to Calhoun, June 11, 1819, Papers of John Calhoun 4:99-100; Spiller, “Calhoun as Secretary of War,” 158. 3 Ocampo, The Emperor’s Last Campaign, 28-29; Reeves, Napoleonic Exiles, 20-21. 281

It would not be a particularly small or easy matter to sail to the South Atlantic

with an armed band to rescue Napoleon. The British, of course, were not ignorant of the

desire within the Bonapartist diaspora to rescue their ill-fated emperor. As much as

Survilliers wanted to liberate his brother, and despite the many people who were eager to

assist in the coup, Joseph remained timorous about carrying out the plot. He had heard

reports that the British were to execute Napoleon upon the first sign of trouble or

attempted escape. The plan was delayed, but not cancelled. It had long been Napoleon’s

dream to re-establish his majesty in the United States, where he was confident that the

people would receive him cheerfully. By spring 1821, an expedition was finally preparing

to set sail from America.4 It was not to be.

That May, just two months after the reduction of the American army, the emperor died. 1821, instead of being the year of jubilee for the Bonapartists, was one of sorrow.

And yet, in a different sense, the late emperor did manage to escape his prison. After his

death, memoirs of his life became exceptionally popular reading across the Western

world, not least of all in the United States.5 The memoirs re-created the tyrant of British

caricature into an affable and revolutionary leader whose tremendous military victories

made his people proud to be French.

The American Napoleon was also defeated in 1821. He was outnumbered and

surrounded by a coalition of wood-fortress rhetoric, politicians, and citizens, but he was

not killed. He was exiled, in fact, to a remote frontier where his banishers believed he

4 Clarence E. Macartney and Gordon Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1939), 262-266. 5 Emmanuel de las Cases, Memorial de Sainte Helene: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at (Lexington, KY: Thomas Smith, 1823); Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte 4 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1891). 282

would never pose a threat to the proper and ancient established political order. The

army’s officer corps accepted the reality of its political exile, but did not resign itself to

its fate. The army had been reduced in size, perhaps, but not in stature. The reversal after

1819 of the military reform movement that had begun and flourished, comparatively speaking, between 1815 and 1817 did not mean that the reformers were entirely frustrated. Their efforts made a genuine impact on the course of American history, though not in the political culture as it existed in the early 1820s. Despite the rhetoric in

Congress about conservative blowback, the army had fundamentally changed thanks to the core cadre of stone-fortress officers who altered the American landscape. Calhoun’s concepts had not been completely defeated after all.

The army was most politically safe on the frontier, where according to the

Republican orthodoxy, the legions would be less likely to scheme their way across the

Rubicon to destroy the Senate. Samuel Watson, the foremost scholar of the frontier army, argues that the professional force developed on the frontier during the early 1820s.

According to Watson’s analysis, the tender shoots of a professional officer corps emerged by 1821.6 Although Watson gives comparatively little weight to the eastern seaboard,

stone-fortress institutions in his argument for emerging army professionalism, the ideas

he presents implicitly require them. Many of the officers arriving on the frontier by 1821

were, after all, products of Sylvanus Thayer’s West Point. Even if, as John Gates has

argued, the army was not “isolated” on the frontier and the majority of the officer corps

6 Samuel J. Watson, Jackson’s Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1810-1821 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), x; see also William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784-1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), xiii, 359, for a similar treatment of the frontier army. 283

stayed on the east coast, the army certainly became more socially isolated—so much so

that contemporaries complained of an aloof, aristocratic officer corps by the 1820s.7

Despite physical and social isolation, however, the army’s presence along the east coast proved every bit as important to its endurance as an institution. Its public works and presence among the population enhanced its reputation. Moreover, even granting that army professionalism grew on the frontier’s fertile soil, the east coast is where the seeds were sown and germinated. In the 1820s, despite the congressional politics of standing armies, the increasingly professionalized officer corps was quietly continuing the work of expanding both the idea of America and its physical boundaries.8

The army functioned, therefore, to forge a new national network, by which it bolstered the hidden hand of government. A growing body of historians has argued in

recent years that the federal government expanded consistently between the Jeffersonian

Revolution and the American Civil War, and that the mythical anarchy of the early 1800s

was and is an illusion. Peter Zavodnyik, for example, has offered an expansive look at the

history of strict and loose constructionism as paradigms in American politics. He finds

that all parties tended to choose loose construction when it suited their purposes, thereby

favoring governmental efficacy over constitutional asceticism. His story is essentially one

of continuing growth.9 William Novak, arguing in more forceful terms, calls the popular

conception of the weak federal government in early American politics a myth. Novak

7 John M. Gates, “The Alleged Isolation of US Army Officers in the Late 19th Century,” Parameters X, no. 3, (Autumn 1980): 32-45. Gates’s article focuses on the post-Civil War frontier army, not the army of the 1820s. 8 Thus Robert Wooster, The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). 9 Peter Zavodnyik, The Age of Strict Construction: A History of the Growth of Federal Power, 1789-1861 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 352-355. 284 borrows a parable from a 1984 presidential hopeful to illustrate the point. The parable tells of a citizen who serves in the army, attends college on a GI Bill, starts a business with a Small Business Administration loan, and so on. All the while, this everyman decries government overreach and longs wistfully for smaller government. The illusion,

Novak argues, applied in the early 1800s to states’ rightists.10

Brian Balogh has given the illusory “weak government myth” a full-length treatment. This “government out of sight,” as he refers to it, was effective and strong even in the dawning era of federal expansion. He suggests less continuity than Novak does, however, by arguing that in the nineteenth century, the government was most effective when it was least conspicuous. There was an “invisible hand” in the Market

Revolution of the 1820s, for example, but it was not in the Smithian sense: it was the government’s removal of Indians, creation of infrastructure, and shaping domestic and foreign policy to stimulate economic growth—all of which were, as we have seen, linked to the army.11 The trouble with broad-scope theses such as Zavodnyik’s or Novak’s, of course, is that inevitably there are exceptions to the trend. The 1819-1821 debate over federal power was a genuine setback to the growth of the federal government. Balogh’s model explains this political back-and-forth remarkably well. He allows for oscillation, and for the government to defer to locals on isolated issues.

The sticky point here, though, is whether or not it is fair to consider a government that is hidden but effective as “strong.” Balogh’s model ascribes strength to the federal

10 William Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, 3 (June 2008): 753-754. Novak’s parable is from Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings. 11 Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 4. 285 government through its accommodation, a position that would be more convincing if the government were able to coerce, but chose not to. Congressmen had reduced the army as part of a deliberate movement to weaken federal power. It was reduced and, as the counter-reformers hoped, relegated to the fringes of American life. Yet it was this “army out of sight,” as Balogh might term it, that engineered the American nation. The small army was not as out of sight as the counter-reformers had hoped. To the contrary, it was active and moving in the midst of the American national life.

The structural improvements took time, and the wood-fortress arguments continued apace, but the ground had been broken for the new military structure by 1821.

First, the rhetoric of army professionalism continued unabated into the 1820s and 1830s.

Mordecai Noah’s “Plains of Chippewa” play was just one example of this type of phenomenon. Memorialization of the War of 1812 and its heroes through poems, music, and works of fine art all worked to buttress the image of the American stone-fortress soldier and sailor. Second, Winfield Scott continued his work of regulating the army.

Never doubting his conviction that he could bring systemization and discipline to the armed forces, Scott’s 1821 manual outlined the methodology by which the West was to be subdued. Finally, and every bit as critically, the Board of Engineers revealed its building plan for a new system of ever-more impressive and plenteous stone fortresses to guard coastal cities. Taken together, these three strands, all of which were born out of the

1815-1817 reforms, would endure and continue to compete with pro-militia rhetoric to build a new military nation in the long term.

Despite all of Andrew Jackson’s antiestablishment folkloric appeal, Americans continued to be fascinated with European-style combat as well. “The Battle of

286

Chippaway,” an early poetic narrative that commemorated the memory of the great

European-style battle, was published “For the Use of Schools throughout the United

States” in 1819. It recounted the tremendous victory of the “army of Jacob”—Jacob

Brown—in biblical flourish:

Now on the third day of the seventh month, it came to pass that Jacob, the chief captain of the host of Columbia, [gathered] on the borders of the river Niagara… And the next day being the anniversary of the independence of Columbia… He moved with his host towards the plains of Chippawa… and spake unto them, saying, Lo! The army of the King are mighty men of valor…Nevertheless, be not disheartened….and the soldiers of Columbia shouted for battle.12

Then, of course, there was the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The poem, set to the tune of

“Anacreon in Heaven,” was printed almost immediately after the September 1814

defense of Fort McHenry, after which time its circulation throughout national papers

multiplied exponentially. Almost instantly, it became a national air.13 The proliferation of such an anthem helped elicit the emotions of American identity in a way that only art and symbols can. The “Star-Spangled Banner” communicated a sense of permanence for the nation using the image a stone bulwark.

The problem, of course, was that for all the stone-fortress symbols that Americans embraced after the War of 1812, there was equally strong mythology in favor of the

Battle of New Orleans’s wood-fortress conception. However infectious the “Star-

Spangled Banner” was as a national song, “” was every bit as

12 Gilbert J. Hunt, “The Battle of Chippaway,” in The Historical Reader; containing the Late War between the United States and Great Britain… (New York: David Longworth, 1819); Benham-McNeil Family Papers, box 1, folder 10, LC. 13 See Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, The Star Spangled Banner (Washington: GPO, 1914), 65-67; George J. Svejda, “History of the Star Spangled Banner from 1814 to Present,” (Washington: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1969), i-ii. 287

popular, if not much more so.14 The ballad commemorated the rustic frontiersman, his

, and his backwoods know-how. Throughout the course of the lyrics, the

“alligator horses” of Kentucky brag about their ability to defend their hearths and home,

and the final words drip with masculinity. “And now, if danger e'er annoys, / Remember

what our trade is; / Just send for us Kentucky boys, / And we'll protect ye, ladies.” The

Western man could pride himself that he was no “soft” east coast urban dweller.15

Thus the two military traditions continued to thrive in American art, but only one would emerge dominant in the army. The military establishment was, to a certain extent, immune to Jackson and his Hunters of Kentucky, since it was by its nature more hierarchical and, therefore, better suited to top-down reforms. Winfield Scott was therefore able to exploit this military structure to create a comprehensive system of rules and regulations for the army. Beginning in late 1818, he requested permission from the secretary of war to begin a monograph on the subject, based on his collected works on army discipline and tactics that he had amassed during his trip to Europe. Scott’s first condition for the project, though, was that he be permitted to work alone. He wanted no other hands on the product but his own.16

The War Department approved Scott’s request enthusiastically, and Scott made

the manual the sole object of his labors for the following two years until, in December

1820, the manual was submitted for review and was included in the new defense bill in

March 1821. Scott, who had stated that his goal was not fame or self-aggrandizement,

14 Ward, Symbol for an Age, 15-16. 15 Stoltz, “The Battle of New Orleans in Historical Memory,” 9-10. As Stoltz points out, and as previously discussed in Chapter 4, New Orleans imagery was practically unavoidable in the late 1810s and early 1820s. 16 Scott to Calhoun, September 2, 1818, ASP-MA, 2:199-200. 288

nevertheless proudly proclaimed his work to be the first comprehensive system of

discipline for any army, American or European, and asked that he receive pay as a major

general in recognition of his special effort.17 The manual was indeed exhaustive in its

scope and breadth. In terms of tactics, the volume retained the same system that Scott had

used to train Brown’s division in 1814, but the 1821 manual was far more than a book of

mere drill. Its discursive narrative of 76 articles covered everything from rank structure to

regulations for how bread ought to be toasted.18

Scott’s regulations were only half of the equation when it came to the military

education of a new, professional officer corps. Under the command of Sylvanus Thayer,

the U.S. Military Academy had become a better-organized academy that benefitted from

a coherent four-year curriculum and military discipline. Scott, though not himself a West

Point graduate, was one of the institution’s greatest friends during Thayer’s tenure

throughout the 1820s. When Scott included West Point’s regulations in his army

regulations, the former separation between the academy and the regular army was

entirely resolved. Cadets who mutinied against the system, as some unfortunate souls had

done in 1818 against Thayer and his new commandant, were now subject to the larger

writ of military law.19

More important than the academy’s incorporation into the larger army structure,

though, was the public relations efforts undertaken after 1819 to expose the citizenry to

17 Ibid.; G. Norman Lieber, Remarks on the Army Regulations and Executive Regulations in General (Washington: GPO, 1898), 145-146 (LC); Scott, Memoirs, 206-207. Scott was a brevet major general, but paid at the brigadier general grade. 18 Winfield Scott, General Regulations for the Army in ASP-MA 2:201-266; Johnson, “Young Fuss and Feathers,” 126. 19 Scott, General Regulations, 325ff.; the print version had three additional articles besides the original 76 in the ASP-MA enclosure; Bonura, Under the Shadow of Napoleon, 74; Spiller, “Calhoun as Secretary of War,” 169. 289

the cadets. As part of its summer encampment every year, the Corps of Cadets would march around the northeast, sometimes as far as Boston. The purpose, besides the physical training and the exposure to military drill, was to establish a presence among the people and foster their goodwill toward the institution as a whole. These public relations tours were overwhelmingly successful; the diarists who recorded them noted that they entered at each city, town, and village with enthusiastic greetings from the people.20 In

Hudson, New York, a local newspaper recorded that “a French gentleman, who had served in the army of Napoleon, when it had attained its highest perfection in… [military] discipline… declared that the marchings…and other displays of military science of this youthful battalion, were equal to any he had ever witnessed.”21 In 1821, similarly, the

citizens of Albany marveled at the “elegant and soldierlike appearance of the corps” as it marched through their city. As the corps arrived in Boston, it received a salute from the president of Harvard, a public dinner in Faneuil Hall, and a proud speech of acclamation from former President John Adams.22 West Point’s Corps of Cadets had become, in itself,

a physical structure on display to the citizens of the surrounding area.

Upon their graduation, these cadets became officers in the army that Scott had

fashioned and that Calhoun had legislated. This new army had innumerable opportunities

to demonstrate its increased competence to the American public as it created public

works such as roads, canals, and new garrisons.23 The officer corps also had the

20 “Journal of a March,” (Newburgh, NY: Uriah Lewis, 1819), “Journal of a March,” (Newburgh, NY: War Gazlay, 1820); and see esp. John Latrobe, “March of the U.S. Corps of Cadets to Boston,” 18, all in USMA-SC. 21 “Journal of a March,” (1819), 21, USMA-SC. 22 Latrobe, “March…to Boston,” (1821), 6, 18-25, USMA-SC. 23 Charles F. O’Connell, Jr., “The Corps of Engineers and Modern Management,” in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 97. 290

opportunity to demonstrate to the American public that an army need not be a wartime

measure solely. Instead, and as Calhoun had argued time and again on the floor of

Congress, the military system could be interwoven with America’s commercial, political, and social fabric. Indeed, military men, trained in the system of administration and bureaucracy that the reformers had created leading up to 1821, found themselves increasingly sought after by civilian firms looking to benefit financially from America’s westward expansion. Stephen Long, the topographical engineer whose transfer inspired

Jackson’s mutiny against the War Department in April 1817, found himself employed on the Board of Engineers of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company in 1827. That board was composed “almost exclusively of men familiar with the principles and procedures that made up the Army’s management system.”24

Work on seacoast fortifications, too, continued on after the reduction of 1821.

Though the budget for work had taken a severe hit, the Board of Engineers that Madison and Monroe had set up in 1816, to the chagrin of Joseph Swift and his colleagues, actually began to hit its stride after 1821. It had had growing pains initially, thanks in no small part to Swift’s wounded pride and his consequent inability to work closely with

Simon Bernard. Once the committee was pared down following Swift’s and William

McRee’s resignations in 1818-1819, however, it began to work more cohesively. Unlike

Scott’s manual, which was the work of one man who was apparently sickened by the mere thought of working in committee, the Board of Engineers became a permanent institution. It would outlast its founding members and, for the first time in American

24 Ibid., 97-99 (quote on 99). 291

military history, work toward a systematic and technocratic strategic policy.25 The 1821

plan that the Board of Engineers presented to Congress was a coastal counterpart to

Scott’s manual insofar as it was exhaustive, unprecedented, and it aimed to organize a

system that, until that point, had been almost entirely ad hoc in its construction.

Naturally, the fortification plans were heavily French in their influence, which meant that they were to be far more imposing Vaubanian structures. John O’Connor, an

American officer who had traveled to France and who had translated the École

Polytechnique’s textbook and fortification, claimed joyfully that it was his honor

to have an English translation of a work that was found worthy of the French army and its

emperor. The work, which O’Connor dedicated to President Monroe, “the patron of Arts,

Arms and Literature,” was now the standard text not only at West Point, but within the

Board of Engineers as well.26 It would require decades for the “Third System” to come

fully into being, given the massive capital, labor, and manning requirements for which

the plan called, but the work to transform the American coastal landscape was underway

in 1821.

The stone-fortress reforms, then, were by no means unsuccessful. Top-down

policymakers found the military system more receptive to their influence thanks to the

culture of hierarchy and subordination that simply did not exist in the Congress or in the

popular press. Alden Partridge, for example, attempted to use his popularity among the

cadets at West Point to force a decision in his favor against the War Department’s policy.

25 Samuel Watson, “Knowledge, Interest, and the Limits of Military Professionalism: The Discourse on American Coastal Defence,” War in History 5, 3 (1998): 285. 26 Daniel Parker to J.M. O’Connor, May 4, 1816; O’Connor to Monroe, May 8, 1817; and Thayer to O’Connor, August 27, 1817, O’Connor Papers, CLUM; see also Browning, Two if by Sea, 29-32. 292

In doing so, he was relying on bottom-up pushback from within his network, not entirely unlike Andrew Jackson’s methodology against Judge Hall in New Orleans when he was put on trial for military tyranny. The difference between Partridge’s case and Jackson’s, however, was that Partridge’s popular base was dramatically narrower in scope. Even more critically, Partridge’s narrow base was subject to military law in its entirety. The wood-fortress congressmen who argued that military rules are those of despotism were not, in fact, all that wrong. The mutinies of Partridge and the cadets themselves could be

forcibly repressed and arrested.

Alden Partridge himself was very aware of the larger phenomenon he had

witnessed unfold. One of Partridge’s most enduring complaints about the U.S. Military

Academy as it stood was how contrary it ran to his notions of American democracy and

liberty. Writing under the nom de plume “Americanus,” Partridge argued that the system

for appointing cadets perpetuated a military aristocracy in America, since appointments

were granted at the secretary of war’s pleasure and could be highly politicized.27

According to a later memorial to Congress that Partridge co-authored, “the Military

Academy is converted into a grand monopoly…and constitutes a nucleus around which is rapidly concentrating a military aristocracy.”28 Partridge’s vision was for a populist

system of defense in which citizens would receive military training at a local academy

and then disperse into the population to provide competent leadership to the militia.

Partridge, with his belief that West Point had become the home to a military

aristocracy (a belief he was far from alone in holding), would have found Alain

27 Partridge, “West Point Unmasked” manuscript, Partridge Collection, Norwich A&SC, 2. 28 Partridge et al, “Memorial,” in Public Documents: The Senate of the United States. First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress vol. 5, document 238, 18. 293

Touraine’s theory of “class conflict” between consumers and technocrats intellectually

compatible.29 Nor did Partridge fail to connect this new military system that had been

forged since 1815 with the civil-military implications of the Board of Engineers’ seacoast

fortification plan. “There appears to be a kind of charm in the word fortifications,”

Partridge wrote, “which pervades and powerfully influences both the people and their

representatives; and if to this the word permanent be attached, it becomes almost

irresistible… We construct works of masonry…and call the whole permanent.” Partridge

argued that the structure was subject to decay, and that the true strength of a nation lay in

its population. Citing the Dutch and the French as examples of people who were

conquered, not because of lack of fortified structures, but because of lack of moral will,

Partridge claimed that the defense establishment had betrayed the United States’ true

reason for victory in 1814-1815. “Baltimore and New Orleans were saved by lines

temporarily constructed,” he noted tendentiously. He closed his lecture by arguing for a

deliberate return to the old, colonial-revolutionary system of temporary fortifications

built in time of war, and then dismantled upon peace.30

There was never any doubt in Thayer’s mind as to who would win the match

between the two of them. “[L]et him write & catch at straws as drowning men are want to

do,” he wrote dismissively of Partridge’s revisionism.31 Partridge’s belief that West Point

had helped create a military aristocracy was not, however, entirely without merit, even if

his conclusions were a bit extreme, and Partridge did have allies in the civilian world.

29 Callon, “Society in the Making,” in Bijker et al, eds. The Social Construction of Technological Systems, 87; see discussion in the Introduction. 30 “Extract from Capt. Alden Partridge’s lecture on national defence,” in Partridge et al, “Memorial of a Committee…” February 24, 1840 (original 1821), in Public Documents: The Senate of the United States. First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress vol. 5, document 238, 23-26. 31 Thayer to John O’Connor, September 17, 1817, O’Connor Papers, folder 19, CLUM. 294

The executive branch had nearly sole discretion over whom to appoint as a cadet, and

unless a particular young man were well-recommended, well-connected, and met the

qualification criteria, there was no way for him to become a regular army officer. There was also no way, under this system, for the militia to benefit directly from the military science curriculum at the academy.

Andrew Jackson, too, persisted in his antiestablishment track. His eventual presidency was characterized, in large part, by the , and by continued

retrenchment against John Quincy Adams’s infrastructure measures—not to mention his

continued policy of Indian removal that has earned him so much notoriety as an

American president. Jackson’s Democrats targeted the U.S. Military Academy especially,

often linking it directly to the national bank as a tool of the elites. A

Democrat named argued in the House, echoing many of the sentiments

not only of his friend Alden Partridge but also of his president, that the academy and the

bank “have been called in certain quarters the guards and defences of security,” but

instead all they had done was serve the interests of the new aristocracy. Middling yeomen

“must protect us from the evil influences of accumulated wealth, the power of

monopolies and all such exclusive privileges as are granted by this institution.” The

whole system, he was certain, was contrary even to what Madison had envisioned during

his presidency.32

The great irony in Jackson’s attacks against what his party typically viewed as the two-headed monster of federal privilege is that Jackson’s nephew and ward had gone to

32 “Substance of a Speech of Mr. Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire (Now President of U.S.) In House of Representatives, June 30, 1836 - 1st Session 24th Congress. On Bill authorizing appropriations for the Military Academy,” in Partridge Papers, reel 2, LC. 295

West Point at Jackson’s own urging in 1817, and Jackson himself had for a time aligned

himself with the American System measures, even if he did so half-heartedly in the case

of the bank.33 Jackson’s thinking clearly evolved over the course of the 1820s. His

intense hatred of “Eastern” interests grew exponentially between 1821 and 1829, and

West Point became a symbol of Eastern persecution of the West at the hands of what

Partridge had called “military dandies.”34

Sylvanus Thayer would continue to serve until 1833 as superintendent, when an

increasingly resentful President Jackson forced Thayer’s resignation. A group of cadets

Jackson had appointed complained to him about mistreatment by Thayer, whom Jackson

now viewed with the same type of disgust he had held for Winfield Scott in 1817-1818.

The final straw came when a cadet who, according to Thayer’s commandant of cadets, had “acquired his political tendencies and habits among the lower class of people” planted a hickory pole in the middle of the Plain—an homage to the commander-in-chief,

Old Hickory. Jackson, naturally seeing nothing wrong with the lark, overruled Thayer’s disciplinary actions in this cadet’s case. As a result, any cadet from then on knew he could take his case directly to the president, who would side with him against Thayer, the tyrant. “A cadet who was really a disgrace to the Academy would frequently be thus returned to the institution after dismissal, to scoff at the regulations he had defied.” It was an impossible situation for Thayer, who felt forced to resign in early 1833.35

33 Andrew Jackson to Joseph Swift, January 12, 1817, TP, USMA-SC; Jackson to Donelson, in Moser et al, eds., PAJ 4:367. 34 Alden Partridge, et al, “Memorial of a Committee…” February 24, 1840, in Public Documents: The Senate vol. 5, document 238, 18-19. 35 Ethan Allen Hitchcock and W.A. Croffut, ed., Fifty Years in Camp and Field (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 65; Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 108-110. Hitchcock was Thayer’s commandant of cadets in 1832-33. 296

Despite what the military “aristocrats” and “tyrants” could well perceive as a

hostile president, the U.S. Military Academy endured under the system that Thayer had

forged. Critical to its history as an institution was the professorship of Dennis Hart

Mahan, who named his famous son, the naval strategist , after his superintendent. Mahan was himself a product of Thayer’s academy. He graduated from

West Point in 1824, and had only left it to study French engineering for four years in

Metz. It was under Mahan’s tutelage that West Point truly earned its reputation as an

engineering school, and its stereotypical preference for Jominian military philosophy.36

It was from here that the army’s officers, now socially insulated and working as the “agents of empire” who actually realized John C. Calhoun’s call to conquer space, became a functioning and increasingly professionalized force that quite literally built

America as an expanding nation.37 The system of discipline and bureaucratization that the

army fashioned, beginning with Thayer, Scott, and their political patrons like Monroe and

Calhoun, made its way from the army into the American society that it forged. Military

historians have already observed that bureaucratization of the army leads to growth of the

36 Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country, 99-102. Recent scholarship has renewed the discussion on the antebellum academy’s influence on the course and conduct of the American Civil War. Carol Reardon’s With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2012) argues that the academic program at West Point did not do enough to prepare the Civil War generation for the rigors of military strategy. Indeed, Mahan’s program emphasized civil engineering almost to a fault, so that its 1830s-1840s graduates were apparently more comfortable in a railroad company than on the field of combat. See also Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 37 Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), xvi-xvii; Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 2. 297

state.38 To this point we may add that an army that engineers a national infrastructure demonstrates a state’s power. “Thus all governments have endeavored to vest themselves with power, according to the character of their people,” observed one officer in 1833 nonchalantly.39

The reformers of the Madison-Monroe era had sought to build a new military nation based off Napoleonic principles, but had found themselves constrained by the

rhetoric, art, and mythology of their time. The narrative that they attempted to fashion to

justify their platform enjoyed some initial success, but suffered under the rising popularity of the small-government frontier hero. These troubles did not follow them into

the army itself, where they were able to benefit from a far more narrow and pliant

network. The actual physical structures that the new military system was able to

construct, in turn, built the very foundations of American expansion. They had

engineered a new course for the American nation.

38 Mark Wilson, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2006), 209; Watson, Jackson’s Sword, 7 (who quotes Wilson); Michael Duffy, The Military Revolution and the State 1500-1800 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1980), chapter 1; John Lynn, “The Growth of the French Army during the Seventeenth Century,” Armed Forces and Society 6, 4 (1980): 568-585; and for an intriguing look at nearly the same phenomenon outside the Western world, see Caroline Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593-1606 (Vienna: Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 14, 1988). 39 “On Popular Prejudices against Military Establishments,” Military and Naval Magazine 1 (Mar-Aug 1833): 292. 298

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Appendix A: Coastal Fortifications, 1794-1822

FORTIFICATIONS, BATTERIES, AND ARSENALS AS OF 18061 Location Type (name, if appl.) Composition Notes Portland, ME Fort Sumner Earth Portsmouth, NH Fort Constitution Wood & sod Gloucester, MA Battery + citadel Earth Salem, MA Fortress Earth Marblehead, MA Masonry & sod Boston, MA Fort Independence Masonry Newport, RI Masonry Fort Wolcott Stone & sod New London, CT Fort Trumbull Masonry & sod New York Governor’s Island Earth () Philadelphia, PA Mud Island Fort Brick and sod Later Fort Mifflin Baltimore, MD Fort McHenry Masonry Annapolis, MD Fortress Not specified Norfolk, VA Fort Nelson Brick & sod Fort Norfolk Masonry Wilmington, NC Battery Earth Charleston, SC Fort Johnston Brick & wood Fort Moultrie Brick Pinckney Brick Savannah, GA Fort Greene (Battery) Wood & sod Destroyed by hurricane in 1804 St. Mary’s, GA Battery Wood & sod Placquemines, LA* Fort St. Philip Masonry & wood New Orleans Fort St Charles Masonry & (redoubt) earth

* Current-day Louisiana.

1 “Description and Progress of Certain Fortifications,” 18 January 1796, ASP-MA 1:110-111; “Fortifications and Gun Boats,” 15 December 1806, idem, 204. 310

FORTIFICATIONS, BATTERIES, AND ARSENALS IN 18112 Location Type (name, if appl.) Composition Notes Passamaquoddy, ME Battery Stone Machias, ME Battery Stone Penobscot, ME Battery Earth Georges, ME Battery Earth Damariscotta, ME Battery Earth Edgecomb, ME Battery Earth Georgetown, ME Battery Earth Portland, ME Fort Sumner Earth Improved, 1808 Masonry Fort Scammel (battery) Masonry Battery Unspecified Portsmouth, NH Fort Constitution Masonry Fort McClary (battery) Masonry Arsenal Brick Newburyport, MA Battery Earth & timber Gloucester, MA Battery Unspecified Salem, MA Masonry & sod Marblehead, MA Fort Sewall Masonry & sod Boston, MA Fort Independence Masonry Fort Warren Masonry Battery Unspecified Battery Unspecified Battery Earth , MA Fortress Stone & sod New Bedford Battery Masonry Newport, RI Fort Adams Masonry Fort Wolcott Stone & sod Fortress Stone & sod Unfinished Fortress Stone “circular tower” Battery Stone “in a state of ruin” New London, CT Fort Trumbull Masonry & sod Fort Hale Masonry Arsenal Brick New York Fort Columbus Masonry Stone Described as a tower Fortress Masonry Star fort Battery Masonry Grand Battery Stone 28 guns

2 “Report on the Fortifications and Defences of the United States,” 17 December 1811, ASP-MA 1:308- 311. 311

North Battery Stone Arsenal Brick In the city Arsenal Brick Outside city Arsenal Brick Long Island Philadelphia, PA Fort Mifflin Masonry Wilmington, DE Arsenal Brick Arsenal Brick Baltimore, MD Fort McHenry Masonry Annapolis, MD Fort Madison Masonry Battery Masonry Washington, DC Fort Washington Masonry Norfolk, VA Fort Nelson Brick & sod Fort Norfolk Masonry James River, VA “unfinished work” Masonry Intended for 13 guns Wilmington, NC Fort Johnston Unspecified Beaufort, NC Fort Hampton Unspecified Charleston, SC Fort Johnston (battery) Brick & wood Fort Moultrie Brick Castle Pinckney Brick Fort Mechanic Unspecified (battery) Beaufort, SC Unfinished work Unspecified Only four feet tall Savannah, GA Fort Jackson Masonry & mud Placquemines, LA* Fort St. Philip Masonry & wood English Turn, LA* Battery Masonry “nearly finished” New Orleans Fort St Charles Masonry & (redoubt) earth Battery Unspecified

* Current-day Louisiana.

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NEW FORTIFICATIONS, BATTERIES, AND ARSENALS, 1812-18223 Location Type (name, if appl.) Composition Notes Groton, CT Fort Griswold Earth 1814 Providence, RI Fortress (Brenton’s Stone 1822 Point) Fortress (Dumpling’s Stone 1822 Point) Fortress (Rose Island) Stone 1822 Long Island, NY Fort Diamond Masonry Begun 1812 New York Harbor Stone Completed 1818 Fortress (Utrecht 1822 1822 Point) Fortress (Wilkin’s Stone 1822 Point) Fortress (Throg’s Stone 1822 Point) Pea Patch Island, Stone Begun 1815 DE Patapsco River, MD Fortress Stone 1822 Washington, DC Fort Washington Stone Reconstructed, 1816 , Fort Monroe Stone 1819 VA Fort Calhoun Stone 1819 Federal Point, NC Fortress Stone 1814 Tybee Island, SC Fortress 1814-1815 Georgetown, SC Fortress 1814 Mobile, AL Fort Morgan Stone 1819 Dauphin Island Stone 1819 Rigolets, LA Battery Stone 1819

3 Document 183 “Fortifications,” 19 January 1820 ASP-MA 2:48-51; “Condition of the Military Establishment, &c.,” 22 January 1822, idem, 2:459. 313

Appendix B: Secretaries of War, 1814-1821

Secretaries of War and Acting (*) Secretaries of War, 1815-1821 Name Served from: Until: Notes: John Armstrong 13 January 1813 27 Sept. 1814 James Monroe 27 Sept. 1814 2 March 1815 Also Sec. of State Alexander Dallas* 2 March 1815 1 August 1815 Also Sec. Treasury William Crawford 1 August 1815 22 October 1816 George Graham* 22 October 1816 8 October 1817 John C. Calhoun 8 October 1817 4 March 1825

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Appendix C: Rollcall Votes in the House, 1819-1821

15th-16th U.S. Congresses - H.R.: Comparison 8 February 4 March 4 March 27 January 1819 1820 1820 1821 To declare the To approve To To reduce the Seminole War $800,000 appropriate military unconstitutional for funds for establishment fortifications USMA Connecticut R Jonathan Moseley Yea * * Yea Delaware R Willard Hall Nay Yea Yea n/a F Louis McLane Nay Yea Yea Nay Georgia R Joel Abbott Yea Yea Yea Yea R Joel Crawford Yea Yea Yea Yea R William Terrell Yea Yea Yea Yea Indiana R William Hendricks Nay * * Yea Kentucky R Richard Anderson Nay * * Nay R George Robertson Yea * * Nay R David Trimble Yea Yea Yea Yea R Tunstall Quarles Nay * * n/a Maine Ad Sen. John Holmes Nay Yea Yea * Maryland F Thomas Bayly Yea Yea Nay Yea R Thomas Culbreth Yea * * * R Peter Little Nay Yea Yea Nay R Samuel Ringgold Nay * * Nay R Samuel Smith Nay Yea Yea Nay

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Sem. War Forts. USMA Army Red. Massachusetts F Benjamin Adams Yea Nay Nay F Samuel Allen Yea * Yea Yea R Walter Folger Jr. Nay Yea Nay * R Timothy Fuller Yea Yea Yea Nay R Enoch Lincoln Yea Nay Yea Yea F Jonathan Mason Yea Yea Yea n/a R Marcus Morton Nay Nay Yea Yea F Jeremiah Nelson Yea Yea Yea Yea R Zabdiel Sampson Nay Nay Yea n/a R Henry Shaw Nay Nay Yea Yea R Yea Yea Yea Yea F Ezekiel Whitman Yea Yea Yea Nay North Carolina F William Davidson Nay Yea Yea Nay R Weldon Edwards Yea Nay Yea Yea R Thomas Hall Nay * * Yea R Lemuel Sawyer * * * * R Thomas Settle Nay Yea Nay * F Jesse Slocumb Yea Yea Yea n/a R James Smith Yea Yea Yea Nay R Felix Walker Nay Nay Nay * R Lewis Williams Yea Nay Nay * New Hampshire R Arthur Livermore Nay Nay Nay Yea R Nathaniel Upham Nay Nay Nay Yea New Jersey R Ephraim Bateman Nay Yea Yea * R Joseph Bloomfield Yea Yea Yea Nay R Charles Kinsey Nay Yea Yea Yea R John Linn Nay Yea Yea n/a R Henry Southard Nay Yea Yea Yea New York F Henry Storrs Yea Yea Yea Nay R John Taylor Nay Nay Yea * R Caleb Tompkins Nay Yea Yea * R Peter Wendover Yea Yea Yea Nay

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Sem. War Forts. USMA Army Red. Ohio R Philemon Beecher Yea Nay Yea Yea R John Campbell Nay * Nay Yea R Samuel Herrick Nay Nay Nay Yea Pennsylvania R Henry Baldwin Nay Yea Yea Nay R Joseph Hiester Nay * * n/a R Jacob Hostetter Nay Yea Yea Yea R William Maclay Yea Yea * Yea R David Marchand Nay Nay Yea Yea R Robert Moore Yea Nay Yea Yea R Samuel Moore Nay Yea Yea Nay R John Murray Nay Nay Nay Yea R Thomas Patterson Nay Yea Yea Yea R Thomas Rogers Nay Yea Yea Nay R Christian Tarr Nay Yea Nay Yea R James Wallace Nay Yea Yea Nay R Andrew Boden Nay Yea Yea * South Carolina R Elias Earle * Yea * Yea R William Lowndes Yea Yea Yea Nay R Eldred Simkins Yea Yea Yea Nay R Starling Tucker Nay Nay Nay Yea Tennessee R John Rhea Nay Yea Yea Yea R Francis Jones Nay Nay Yea Nay Vermont R Samuel Crafts Nay Nay Nay Yea R Charles Rich Nay Nay Yea Yea R Mark Richards Nay Nay Nay Yea Virginia R William Ball Yea * * Yea R Philip Barbour Nay Yea Yea Yea R Robert Garnett Nay * * * F Charles Mercer Yea * * Nay R Hugh Nelson Nay Yea Yea Nay R Thomas Newton Jr. Nay Yea Yea Nay

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Sem. War Forts. USMA Army Red. Virginia (Cont’d) R Alexander Smyth Nay Yea Yea Nay R George Strother Nay Yea Yea n/a R Yea * * Yea R James Johnson Yea Yea Yea n/a R William McCoy Nay Nay Nay Yea R Ballard Smith Nay Yea Yea * F James Pindall Yea Yea Nay n/a

318