Later a single cruise lost us ten vessels to these half-civilized
people.

Following European precedent, Washington had made, in 1795, a
ransom-treaty with this nest of pirates, to carry out which cost us a
fat million. The captives had meantime increased to one hundred and
fifteen, though the crews of the Maria and the Dauphin had wasted away
to ten men. Nearly a million more went to the other North-African
freebooters. The policy of ransoming was, indeed, cheaper than force.
Count d'Estaing used to say that bombarding a pirate town was like
breaking windows with guineas. The old Dey of Algiers, learning the
expense of Du Quesne's expedition to batter his capital, declared that
he himself would have burnt it for half the sum.

Yet it makes one's blood hot to-day to read how our fathers paid tribute
to those thieves. The Dey had, in so many words, called us his slaves,
and had actually terrorized Captain Bainbridge, of the man-of-war George
Washington, into carrying despatches for him to Constantinople, flying
the Algerine pirate flag conspicuously at the fore. After
anchoring--this was some requital--Bainbridge was permitted to hoist the
Stars and Stripes, the first time that noble emblem ever kissed the
breeze of the Golden Horn.

[1803]

Jefferson loathed such submission, and vowed that it should cease.
Commodore Dale was ordered to the Mediterranean with a squadron to
protect our ships there from further outrage. One of his vessels, the
Experiment, soon captured a Tripoli cruiser of fourteen guns, the
earliest stroke of any civilized power for many years by way of showing
a bold front to these pestilent corsairs.

This was on August 6, 1801. In 1803 Preble was placed in command of the
Mediterranean fleet, with some lighter ships to go farther up those
shallow harbors. Bainbridge had the misfortune while in pursuit of a
Tripoli frigate to run his ship, the Philadelphia, on a rock, and to be
taken prisoner with all his crew. The sailors were made slaves.
Lieutenant Decatur penetrated the Tripoli harbor under cover of night,
and burned the Philadelphia to the water's edge. Tripoli was bombarded,
and many of its vessels taken or sunk. Commodore Barron, who had
succeeded Preble, co-operated with a land attack which some of the
Pasha's disaffected subjects, led by the American General Eaton, made
upon Tripoli. The city was captured, April 27th, and the pirate prince
forced to a treaty. Even now, however, we paid $60,000 in ransom money.



Lieutenant Decatur on the Turkish Vessel during the Bombardment of Tripoli.



CHAPTER X.

THE WAR OF 1812

[1807]

Although paying, so long as Jay's treaty was in force, for certain
invasions of our commerce, Great Britain had never adopted a just
attitude toward neutral trade. She persisted in loosely defining
contraband and blockade, and in denouncing as unlawful all commerce
which was opened to us as neutrals merely by war or carried on by us
between France and French colonies through our own ports.

The far more flagrant abuse of impressment, the forcible seizure of
American citizens for service in the British navy, became intolerably
prevalent during Jefferson's administration. Not content with reclaiming
deserters or asserting the eternity of British citizenship, Great
Britain, through her naval authorities, was compelling thousands of men
of unquestioned American birth to help fight her battles. Castlereagh
himself admitted that there had been sixteen hundred bona fide cases of
this sort by January 1, 1811. And in her mode of asserting and
exercising even her just claims she ignored international law, as well
as the dignity and sovereignty of the United States. The odious right of
search she most shamefully abused. The narrow seas about England were
assumed to be British waters, and acts performed in American harbors
admissible only on the open ocean. When pressed by us for apology or
redress, the British Government showed no serious willingness to treat,
but a brazen resolve to utilize our weak and too trustful policy of
peace.

One instance of this shall suffice. Commodore Barron, in command of the
United States war vessel Chesapeake, was attacked by the Leopard, a
British two-decker of fifty guns, outside the mouth of Chesapeake Bay,
to recover three sailors, falsely alleged to be British-born, on board.
Their surrender being refused, the Leopard opened fire. The Chesapeake
received twenty-one shots in her hull, and lost three of her crew killed
and eighteen wounded. She had been shamefully unprepared for action, and
was hence forced to strike, but Humphreys, the Leopard's commander,
contemptuously declined to take her a prize. There was no excuse
whatever for this wanton and criminal insult to our flag, yet the only
reparation ever made was formal, tardy, and lame.



James Madison.
From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--property of T. Jefferson Coolidge.


Bad was changed to worse with the progress of the new and more desperate
war between Great Britain and Napoleon. The Emperor shut the
North-German ports to Britain; Britain declared Prussian and all West
European harbors in a state of blockade. The Emperor's Berlin decree,
November, 1806, paper-blockaded the British Isles; his Milan decree,
December, 1807, declared forfeited all vessels, wherever found,
proceeding to or from any British port, or having submitted to British
search or tribute. In fine, Britain would treat as illicit all commerce
with the continent, France all with Britain. But while Napoleon, in
fact, though not avowedly, more and more receded from his position,
England maintained hers with iron tenacity.

[1810]

Sincere as was our Government's desire to maintain strict neutrality in
the European conflict, it naturally found difficulty in making England
so believe. Their opponents at home ceaselessly charged Jefferson,
Madison, and all the Republicans with partiality to France, so that
Canning and Castlereagh were misled; and they were confirmed in their
suspicion by Napoleon's crafty assumption that our embargo or
non-intercourse policy was meant to act, as it confessedly did,
favorably to France. Napoleon's confiscation of our vessels, at one time
sweeping, he advertised as a friendly proceeding in aid of our embargo.
Yet all this did not, as Castlereagh captiously pretended, prove our
neutrality to be other than strict and honest. At this time it certainly
was both. So villainously had Napoleon treated us that all Americans now
hated him as heartily as did any people in England.

[1812]

The non-intercourse mode of hostility, a boomerang at best, had played
itself out before Jefferson's retirement; and since George's ministry
showed no signs whatever of a changed temper, guiltily ill-prepared as
we were, no honorable or safe course lay before us but to fight Great
Britain. Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams, and Monroe--the last the soul of
the war--deserved the credit of seeing this first and clearest, and of
the most sturdy and consistent action accordingly. Their spirit proved
infectious, and the Republicans swiftly became a war party.

Most of the "war-hawks," as they were derisively styled, were from the
South and the southern Middle States. Fearing that, if it were a naval
war, glory would redound to New England and New York, which were hotbeds
of the peace party, they wished this to be a land war, and shrieked, "On
to Canada." They made a great mistake. The land operations were for the
most part indescribably disgraceful. Except the exploits of General
Brown and Colonel Winfield Scott, subsequently the head of the national
armies, not an action on the New York border but ingloriously failed.
The national Capitol was captured and burnt, a deed not more disgraceful
to England in the commission than to us in the permission. Of the
officers in command of armies, only Harrison and Jackson earned laurels.

Harrison had learned warfare as Governor of Indiana, where, on November
7, 1811, he had fought the battle of Tippecanoe, discomfiting Tecumseh's
braves and permanently quieting Indian hostilities throughout that
territory. In the new war against England, after Hull's pusillanimous
surrender of Detroit, the West loudly and at length with success
demanded "Tippecanoe" as commander for the army about to advance into
Canada. Their estimate of Harrison proved just. Overcoming many
difficulties and aided by Perry's flotilla on Lake Erie, he pursued
Proctor, his retreating British antagonist, up the River Thames to a
point beyond Sandwich. Here the British made a stand, but a gallant
charge of Harrison's Kentucky cavalry irreparably broke their lines. The
Indians, led by old Tecumseh in person, made a better fight, but in
vain. The victory was complete, and Upper Canada lay at our mercy.



Tecumseh


Andrew Jackson also began his military experience by operations against
Indians. The southern redskins had been incited to war upon us by
British and Spanish emissaries along the Florida line. Tecumseh had
visited them in the same interest. The horrible massacre at Fort Mims,
east of the Alabama above its junction with the Tombigbee, was their
initial work. Five hundred and fifty persons were there surprised, four
hundred of them slain or burned to death. Jackson took the field, and in
an energetic campaign, with several bloody engagements, forced them to
peace. By the battle of the Horse-Shoe, March 27, 1814, the Creek power
was entirely crushed.

Subsequently placed in command of our force at New Orleans, Jackson was
attacked by a numerous British army, made up in large part of veterans
who had seen service under Wellington in Spain. Pakenham, the hero of
Salamanca, commanded. Jackson's position was well chosen and strongly
fortified.  After several preliminary engagements, each favorable to the
American arms, Pakenham essayed to carry the American works by storm.
The battle occurred on January 8, 1815. It was desperately fought on
both sides, but at its close Jackson's loss had been trifling and his
line had not been broken at a single point, while the British had lost
at least 2,600, all but 500 of these killed or wounded. The British
immediately withdrew from the Mississippi, leaving Jackson entirely
master of the position.

But the naval operations of this war were far the most famous, exceeding
in their success all that the most sanguine had dared to hope, and
forever dispelling from our proud foe the charm of naval invincibility.
The American frigate Constitution captured the British Guerriere. The
Wasp took the Frolic, being soon, however, forced to surrender with her
prize to the Poitiers, a much larger vessel. The United States
vanquished the Macedonian, and the Constitution the Java. One of the
best fought actions of the war was that of McDonough on Lake Champlain,
with his craft mostly gunboats or galleys. His victory restored to us
the possession of Northern New York, which our land forces had not been
able to maintain.



Oliver H, Perry.


[1813-1814]

The crowning naval triumph during the war, one of the most brilliant, in
fact, in all naval annals, was won by Oliver Hazard Perry near
Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, over the Briton, Barclay, a
naval veteran who had served under Nelson at Trafalgar. The fleets were
well matched, the American numbering the more vessels but the fewer
guns. Barclay greatly exceeded Perry in long guns, having the latter at
painful disadvantage until he got near. Perry's flag-ship, the Lawrence,
was early disabled. Her decks were drenched with blood, and she had
hardly a gun that could be served. Undismayed, Perry, with his insignia
of command, crossed in a little boat to the Niagara. Again proudly
hoisting his colors, aided by the wind and followed by his whole
squadron, he pressed for close quarters, where desperate fighting
speedily won the battle. Barclay and his next in command were wounded,
the latter dying that night. "We have met the enemy and they are ours,"
Perry wrote to Harrison, "two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one
sloop."

Triumph far more complete might have attended the war but for the
perverse and factious federalist opposition to the administration. Some
Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having
with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when
the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign
affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and
favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of
commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had
cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for
orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.

Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New
York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where
embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire
tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its
sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound
rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible.
Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or
countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature
in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally
binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested
by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature
"to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the
assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering,
referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to
be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and
putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A
sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting
too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it
said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in
the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began
to be sedulously hushed--in consequence of the glorious news of victory
and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.



Perry transferring his Colors from the Lawrence to the Niagara.


While the Congregationalists, especially their clergy, were nearly all
stout Federalists, opposing Jefferson, Madison, and the war, the
Methodists and Baptists almost to a man stood up for the administration
and its war policy with the utmost vigor, rebuking the peace party as
traitors. [Footnote: The writer's grandfather, a Baptist minister, was
as good as driven from his pulpit and charge at Templeton, Mass.,
because of his federalist sympathies in this war.] Timothy Merritt, a
mighty Methodist preacher on the Connecticut circuit, has left us from
these critical times a stirring sermon on the text, Judges v. 23, "Curse
ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof; because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help
of the Lord against the mighty." Meroz was the federalist party and
England's ministry and army were "the mighty."

Czar Alexander, regarding our hostility as dangerous to England, with
whom he then stood allied against Napoleon, sought to end the war. The
Russian campaign of 1812 practically finished Napoleon's career, so
leaving England free to press operations in America. In April, 1814,
Paris was captured. The United States therefore accepted Alexander's
offices. Our commissioners, Adams, Clay, Gallatin, Marshall, Bayard, and
Russell met the English envoys at Ghent, and after long discussions, in
which more than once it seemed as if the war must proceed, the treaty of
Ghent was executed, December 24, 1814, a fortnight before the battle of
New Orleans.

It was an honorable peace. If we gained no territory we yielded none.
The questions of Mississippi navigation and the fisheries were expressly
reserved for future negotiations. Upon impressment and the abuse of
neutrals, exactly the grievances over which we had gone to war, the
treaty was silent, and peace men laughed at the war party on this
account, calling the war a failure. The ridicule was unjust. Had
Napoleon been still on high, or the negotiations been subsequent to the
New Orleans victory, England would doubtless have been called upon to
renounce these practices. But experience has proved that such a demand
would have been unnecessary. No outrage of these kinds has occurred
since, nor can anyone doubt that it was our spirit as demonstrated in
the war of 1812 which changed England's temper. Hence, in spite of our
military inexperience, financial distress, internal dissensions, and the
fall of Napoleon, which unexpectedly turned the odds against us, the war
was a success.

End of Volume II.