The Causes of the War of 1812

By Reginald Horsman

In the years immediately preceding the War of 1812, England was dominated by a faction that pledged itself not only to defeat Napoleon but also to maintain British commercial supremacy. The two main points of contention between England and America—impressment and the restrictions imposed by the Orders in Council—were direct results of these commitments. America finally had no alternative but to oppose with force British maritime policy.

In addition to tracing the gradual drift to war in America, Professor Horsman shows that the Indian problem and American expansionist designs against Canada played small part in bringing about the struggle. He examines the efforts made by America to avoid conflict through means of economic coercion, efforts the failure of which confronted the nation with two alternatives: war or submission to England.

This volume offers the first analysis of the causes of the war from both the British and American points of view, showing clearly that, contrary to the popular misconception, the war’s basic causes are to be found not in America but in Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789121957

Reginald Horsman

Reginald Horsman (October 24, 1931) is an English historian and Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He was born in 1931 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England to Alfred William Horsman and Elizabeth Thompson. He married Lenore Lynde McNabb on September 3, 1955, and the couple have two daughters, Janine and Mara, and one son, John. Prof. Horsman received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Birmingham in 1952 and 1955, respectively, and was awarded his PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in 1958. He became Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1958. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1965. Prof. Horsman is a member of the Organization of American Historians, Society of America Historians and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He is also a fellow of the Guggenheim Fellowship (1965). He is best known for his book, The Causes of the War of 1812, which was first published in 1962. His other history works include: Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812 (1967); The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783-1815 (1970); Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (1981). He has also authored several biographies, including Matthew Elliott, British Indian Agent (1964) and Frontier Doctor: William Beaumont, America’s First Great Medical Scientist (1996).

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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The Causes of The War of 1812

By

Reginald Horsman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 5

1 Background of Conflict 6

2 The Threat of Invasion 13

3 American Indecision 25

4 A Whig Interlude 38

5 The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty 52

6 Embargo and Orders in Council 64

7 The Failure of the Embargo 80

8 The Erskine Agreement 95

9 The Problem of the West 104

10 The Turn of the Tide 118

11 The Growth of Opposition 126

12 Crisis in the Northwest 137

13 The War Hawks 147

14 America Goes to War 161

15 Conclusion 180

BIBLIOGRAPHY 183

I. SOURCES 183

A. Manuscript 183

B. Printed 185

II. SECONDARY WORKS 193

A. Books 193

B. Articles 197

APPENDIX—VOTE FOR WAR, JUNE 4, 1812, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 202

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 203

DEDICATION

To my

MOTHER and FATHER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Professor John D. Barnhart of Indiana University has given me constant encouragement in the preparation of this book, and I have gained immeasurably from his careful scholarship. I have also received invaluable help and advice from Professor John A. Hawgood of the University of Birmingham, England. Two other Indiana University professors—Robert H. Ferrell and Leo F. Solt—have given me most perceptive criticism, and I am very grateful to them.

I should also like to thank the many librarians who have helped me in my research, and the editors of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review and the Indiana Magazine of History for giving me permission to use material from my articles which originally appeared in those journals.

My wife and son have made the task of research and writing an exceedingly pleasant one.

University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee

April, 1961

REGINALD HORSMAN

The Causes of The War of 1812

1 Background of Conflict

REGENCY ENGLAND had a surfeit of foreign news in the summer of 1812. Her mighty adversary, Napoleon, had decided to humble the Tzar, and in the warmth of late June the French host began its triumphal progress into Russia. As the summer passed, England learned of the Corsican’s relentless thrust into the heart of that vast country. By September Napoleon commanded Moscow, and seemingly Russia had followed Austria and Prussia into vassalage. It was not until November that England learned that the French invader had been forced to abandon the wasted Russian capital, and was fleeing westward in the snow and ice of a Russian winter. While Napoleon was seeking world dominion in the east, England had essayed modest gains in the Peninsula. The victory at Salamanca in July had allowed Wellington to take Madrid in August, and had brought at least some compensation for the disastrous news from the east. Yet Wellington’s small army could not hold its hard-won gains, and by October he was forced to yield the Spanish capital and retreat towards Portugal.

It was at the end of July, as Napoleon advanced in Russia and Wellington in the Peninsula, that the news reached England of the American declaration of war on June 18. Though it came into an England satiated by European events, it carried a surprising impact. For more than a year, while England had been wracked by economic distress, a growing body of opinion had called for friendship with America in the hope of producing a renewal of commercial intercourse and an easing of the depression. One positive result of this agitation had been the removal in June of the British Orders in Council restricting American trade, and England had confidently expected a renewal of friendly commercial intercourse with the United States as a result of this measure. It was thus with a feeling of profound shock that England received the news that her concessions had been too late, and that the United States was at war. At a time when the fate of Europe hung in the balance, England was obliged to face a new adversary. The editor of the provincial Tory Leicester Journal bubbled with exasperation as he printed President James Madison’s war message and commented that it was the most laboured, peevish, canting, petulant, querulous, and weak effusion, that ever issued from a man assuming the character of a statesman and the President, or elective quadrennial King, of a professedly Republican country.{1}

England was indeed shocked in the summer of 1812 that the United States could have thrown her forces on the side of Napoleonic tyranny, for throughout the spring and early summer it had been prophesied that there would be no war.{2} Actually what is really surprising is not that America declared war on England in 1812, but that she had not done so several years earlier. In many ways it is easier to show why America should have gone to war in 1807 or 1809 rather than in 1812. In 1812 America had been independent of England for less than thirty years. Relations between a nation and its ex-colonists are never a simple matter, and after the achievement of American independence in 1783 there was no love lost between England and the United States. In the years preceding the War of 1812, when America had ample reason for declaring war on both France and England, but discretion made it necessary to choose only one adversary, the traditions of the Revolution cannot be ignored as a factor influencing the American decision. It was no accident that the young War Hawks of 1811 and 1812 spoke so often of following the example of their fathers, and urged the young Americans of 1812 to cherish the independence that had been bequeathed to them. The fact that France was an old ally, and England the old adversary, was of no small importance in influencing American policy in the years before 1812. Strong anti-French feeling arose as a result of the obvious threat of Napoleon to American interests, but it was hardly possible for France to injure America sufficiently to persuade the majority of Americans that France and not England was the main enemy. I scarcely know of an injury that France could do us, short of an actual invasion of our Territory, wrote Henry Clay in August, 1810, that would induce me to go to War with her, whilst the injuries we have received from Great Britain remain unredressed.{3} England was distrusted in America after 1783—it was to take far longer than one generation for the two nations to discover that they had so much in common. Apart from a pro-British Federalist minority, the traditions of the War of Independence were enough to embitter American feeling against England far into the nineteenth century, and the feeling did not entirely disappear in the twentieth.

In England, too, the traditions of the Revolution were of importance. The prevailing sentiment was one of dislike of the ex-colonists, though, as in America, there were certain minority groups that viewed the country across the Atlantic with friendliness. The English manufacturing classes who had a lucrative export trade to the United States were the counterpart of the commercial New Englanders who had their financial center in London. It was in the interest of both groups to cultivate a policy of amity between the two countries. Another group in England that looked with favor upon the experiment on the other side of the Atlantic was the doctrinaire Whigs originally centered around Charles James Fox, but the most prominent sentiment was one of animosity. There was a natural resentment at a new country which had been formed at the expense of Great Britain, and every opportunity was taken to cast scorn upon the American way of life. This dislike extended into all classes of English life, and prompted the pro-American Monthly Review in March, 1808, to agree with an anonymous pamphleteer that hatred of America seems a prevailing sentiment in this country.{4} In England, as in America, dislike and distrust were common sentiments. It was too much to expect within thirty years of the War of Independence—thirty years filled with problems in Anglo-American relations—that a sound friendship could be established between the two countries. There was still too much unforgotten, and too many of the generation that had fought in the Revolution still alive, to expect a close understanding. As misunderstanding grew in the years before 1812, this latent resentment became more and more obvious.

The problems in Anglo-American relations after 1783 were, however, far more than a mere legacy of hostility—there were exceedingly acute practical difficulties. The fact that England retained colonies bordering the United States was in itself the source of some of the greatest problems in British-American relations. Canada on the north meant not only boundary difficulties, which were an irritant until well into the nineteenth century, but also a struggle for the fur trade south and west of the Great Lakes, and an acrimonious controversy concerning the suspected British backing of the Indians in the Northwest. In the years from 1783 to 1795 these difficulties were particularly acute. The British retention of the Northwest posts, and the encouragement given to Indian resistance, met with vigorous American protests. It was not until Wayne’s defeat of the Indians at Fallen Timbers in August, 1794, and the Treaty of Greenville in the following year, that peace was attained in the Old Northwest, and feeling against the British allowed to diminish. From 1795 to 1807 comparative peace existed in the Northwest. The British officials neglected the Indians, and the Indians themselves recuperated from their 1794 defeat, preparing for their next stand along the Indiana frontier. Though the Northwest was temporarily quiet, the potential British-American clash in the area was not removed. It was quite obvious that it was only a matter of time before the American pressure would force the Indians to renew hostilities. When this occurred, England’s position and interests in the Northwest ensured that the Americans would trace a guilty connection between British agent and Indian warrior. In addition, the British officials would once again be obliged to meet the temptation of whether or not to give aid to the Indians. The peace that reigned on the Northwest frontier after 1795 was only a truce. The Indians had for the moment been defeated, and then assuaged by the granting of a definite boundary at Greenville, but once the American frontiersmen started to advance beyond that boundary further Indian resistance was inevitable, and a testing time could be expected in Anglo-American relations.{5}

It was not only on the frontier that problems were left in 1783. The American colonies had long been an integral part of the British colonial system, both as a market for British manufactures and as the chief source of provisions for the British West Indies. In 1783 England faced the problem of discovering and formulating a new commercial relationship with her ex-colonists. The year following American independence had brought a bitter dispute in England between the groups favoring a liberal policy and the granting of commercial privileges, and groups which favored the maintenance of the British Navigation System and the exclusion of the United States. Those favoring a liberal commercial policy, mainly a small group led by young William Pitt and Lord Shelburne, had endeavored to establish a free commercial intercourse between the two countries. They had, however, been frustrated by a considerable body of opinion in favor of a rigid maintenance of England’s Navigation System. Most influential in this group had been the shipping interest, which was struggling to preserve its maritime monopoly. The problem had been complicated by the West India interest, which generally gave the shipping interest its wholehearted support in defense of the Navigation System, but which on this occasion was anxious to permit American vessels to supply the West Indies. Though the West India group opposed the extreme views of Pitt and his supporters, they clearly realized that the British West Indies were dependent upon these American supplies.{6}

The victory of the protagonists of Britain’s established system in 1783 and 1784 meant that in the years immediately following independence the United States was placed strictly on the footing of any other foreign nation. Instead of prospering within the same system, and achieving a sound basis of friendly commercial relations, the United States and England became commercial rivals in the years after 1783. An opportunity for friendly relations was lost, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century considerable resentment was felt in Great Britain at the commercial prosperity of the United States.

Yet in spite of all the problems left in 1783—and there were a host of minor difficulties which were to have an important cumulative influence when more bitter arguments separated the two countries—America managed to weather the decade after independence without engaging in actual conflict with Great Britain. In fact, it was not the achievement of independence but the outbreak of war between England and France in 1793 that ultimately was to lead to the War of 1812. Here special problems were created which lay at the core of the causes of that war. America as a great commercial neutral could not avoid difficulties concerning neutral rights and trade. In her desire to reap benefits from the European war, and to engage, with as much freedom as possible, in trade with both belligerents, she discovered that war could produce great profits for the enterprising neutral, but that there were also corresponding difficulties. The United States discovered in the years before 1812 that England had no desire to see France reap the benefits of an extensive neutral trade. France, fully cognizant of the power of the British navy, opened the trade between the French West India colonies and France to United States shipping shortly after the outbreak of war. England in turn invoked the so-called Rule of 1756, by which a trade closed to a neutral in time of peace could not be opened in time of war. America’s answer was to inaugurate the system of the broken voyage, by which produce eventually destined for France was first taken to the United States. Britain, though aggravating the Americans by extreme commercial Orders in Council in the months immediately following the outbreak of war, acquiesced in this American device for most of the first phase of her wars with France. The West India interest, which was likely to lose most by this neutral competition in European markets, was enjoying, until almost the end of the century, a considerable prosperity, and was far less concerned by competition than it was to be in the years after 1800.{7}

Moreover, the warfare between England and France had not assumed the markedly commercial character that was to come at a later date. When the war developed into a struggle of blockade and counter-blockade, American trade was to assume a vital importance. The first phase of the British wars with France, from 1793 to 1801, did not attain the bitterness and desperation of the later Napoleonic phase from 1803 to 1815. England could far more afford to act with reason in her policy towards America in the 1790’s than she could after the renewal of the war in 1803. England’s moderation in the 1790’s meant that America could take advantage of the new commercial opportunities. American trade prospered on the profits of neutrality. The war undoubtedly came as a great boon to the commerce of the neutral United States, and the Americans took full advantage of their opportunities. America’s large and rapidly expanding marine, and her proximity to the enemy colonies in the West Indies, ensured her a most powerful commercial position in this time of war. Apart from her profits from engaging in trade between France and her colonies, America also found that the British West Indies were unable to do without American supplies in time of war. Temporary British acts enabled the Americans to become the regular suppliers of the British West Indies, and added to the prosperity of American commerce.{8}

There were many disadvantages as well as advantages to the American position as a neutral; eventually the former were far to outweigh the latter. America had to face a whole series of difficulties connected with the term neutral rights. The American and British opinions on these questions were obviously radically different. America discovered that England was prepared to dispute her right to trade freely in time of war. She tried to maintain that free ships make free goods, but Great Britain flouted this doctrine, which would have permitted French-owned goods to travel unmolested on American ships. There was also a constant dispute concerning the articles that constituted contraband. America desired to limit the list to those articles which would directly help the French war effort, and England wished to make it as broad as possible—in particular she argued that American provisions intended for France could legitimately be prevented from reaching their destination by the British. The question of what constituted a proper blockade also arose to plague Anglo-American relations. America maintained that the only legal blockade was that which stationed ships directly off the port or coast involved. England on the other hand issued paper blockades, which covered large stretches of coast, and she felt free to capture ships that were far out at sea and presumed to be heading for a forbidden destination. The process of stopping and searching ships itself brought grave difficulties. Great Britain interpreted the right of visit and search as the right to search a ship rigorously from top to bottom, whereas the Americans would have liked to restrict the right to that of merely examining the ship’s papers. The war at sea produced innumerable difficulties of this type.

Yet of all the maritime difficulties that arose to pester Anglo-American relations, none was so persistent as that of impressment. Conditions in the British navy at that time were such that many seamen had taken the opportunity to desert and find employment on American ships. England, who maintained the doctrine of inalienable allegiance, claimed the right to take British seamen from American merchant ships wherever they might be found on the high seas. Naturalization was not recognized by the British, and indeed the ease with which naturalization papers could be obtained in the United States gave the British captains ample reason for their distrust of these documents. The British exercise of the right of impressment produced constant difficulties in Anglo-American relations. There was always the problem that the English language as spoken in America and in England could, on occasions, be practically the same, and mistakes could and were frequently made. It is quite obvious that not all of these mistakes were accidental. Though the impressing of Americans was frowned upon by the British government, there was more than one British sea captain of this period prepared to turn a blind eye to regulations. The mortality rate at sea was high, and a British captain short of seamen to fight the French did not draw too fine a distinction between Briton and American. Any protest that ensued would probably take a year or more to reach him. At times American ships were left with hardly enough seamen to navigate back to port. No solution was ever found for the impressment controversy, and while England was at war it was a constant irritant in Anglo-American relations.{9}

The years immediately after the start of the European war in 1793 produced a crisis in the relations between England and America. British policy at sea combined with the difficulties on the Northwest frontier created a definite possibility of war in 1794. This possible conflict eventually was avoided by a combination of the timely compromise of Jay’s Treaty, the relaxation of British maritime policy, and Wayne’s victory over the Indians at Fallen Timbers. The signing of Jay’s Treaty on November 19, 1794, inaugurated a decade of much improved Anglo-American relations. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that potential difficulty between the two countries had been removed. The accommodation was made possible by the fact that England did not use her full maritime power against American commerce in the late 1790’s. The improvement in relations was also aided by the negative factor of American difficulties with France at that time, which culminated in the quasi-war of 1798 to 1800. Once America and France settled their difficulties the likelihood of a British-American clash increased immensely. The conditions necessary for an acute increase of difficulties between England and America had been created by the outbreak of war between England and France in 1793. If ever England decided to wage all-out war at sea, America, as a commercial nation desiring to reap the advantages of neutrality, would be obliged to face the problem of how to cope with British depredations upon her commerce. In 1794 and 1795 a crisis in Anglo-American relations was solved, but the continuation of good relations depended upon the willingness of Great Britain to wage limited maritime warfare.

If the Peace of Amiens between England and France, of which the preliminary articles were signed in 1801, could have lasted, there seems little reason to suppose that America would have gone to war with Great Britain in 1812. Certainly, while there were two years of peace in Europe, British-American relations were in a very satisfactory state.{10} The inevitable renewal of American difficulties with the Indians in the Northwest would probably have once again produced acrimony in Anglo-American relations, but it seems very unlikely that this alone would have produced warfare between the two countries. Though the period from 1783 to 1795 had been one of constant Indian problems for the Americans, and they had repeatedly connected Indian warfare with British activities on the frontier, it was only when the major complications of a European war and British actions at sea arose that British-American animosity reached a crisis. Moreover, chances of serious clashes in that area were considerably reduced when England, by Jay’s Treaty, agreed to hand over the Northwest posts.

While there was peace in Europe, as there was between 1801 and 1803, England and America faced no great danger of going to war—in fact they could view each other with something approaching friendship. But when war was renewed, as it was in 1803, everything was once again thrown into the balance. If England was content to wage the more limited maritime war of the period before 1801, all could still be well, but if England felt compelled to wage total maritime war a deterioration in Anglo-American relations was inevitable. The question of whether there was to be peace or war between England and America was decided in the years between 1803 and 1812. It was decided by the manner in which England determined to wage her war against France.

2 The Threat of Invasion

THE RENEWAL of war between England and France in May, 1803, was of vital importance to the course of Anglo-American relations. For England the war immediately assumed an intensity far beyond that of the years before 1801. Napoleon was determined to defeat England on her own soil, and never again until the summer of 1940 was England so near invasion and defeat. Inevitably, British policy towards the United States in these years was governed to a great extent by European affairs. The all-important task was the defeat of Napoleon, and other considerations were sacrificed to this end. In the years from 1803 to 1812, as from 1914 to 1917 and from 1939 to 1941, the United States found herself involved inextricably in the affairs of Europe. Isolation, unless in the form of Jefferson’s masochistic Embargo, proved as impossible in the early nineteenth as in the twentieth century. From 1793 to 1801 the United States had been treated comparatively gently by Great Britain—the only belligerent with the maritime power to harm her. Under the stress of the years after 1803, this moderation proved impossible.

From at least 1803 to 1805 England considered herself in imminent danger of invasion. This fear was apparent even before the actual renewal of the war, and by the summer and the fall of 1803 had become acute. In August there were discussions in Parliament as to whether or not London should be fortified, and by December plans had been completed for the evacuation of the royal family from London in the event of invasion. So real was the fear that it was proposed that if the French landed in Essex the King would move to Chelmsford, and if in Kent he would travel to Dartford. Meanwhile the Queen was to travel north to Worcester, as were some thirty wagons of royal treasure that was to be deposited in Worcester Cathedral on the banks of the Severn.{11} Though such an emergency did not come to pass, England was kept in the same state of apprehension throughout 1804, and in July of that year James Maury, the American consul in Liverpool, informed Secretary of State James Madison that invasion is pretty generally expected.{12} Even in June, 1805, over two years after the renewal of the war, the speaker of the House, Charles Abbot, was lamenting that Parliament was debating inconsequential matters at a time when hourly invasion is threatened. The year 1805 was a glorious one for England’s heritage, but it ended in tragedy rather than triumph. Nelson, inspired by England and by Emma, smashed the French fleet at Trafalgar in October, but the victory was irreparably marred by his death. In December England’s ally, Russia, was overthrown by the French at Austerlitz, and once again there was fear at the Admiralty that Napoleon might renew his designs on Great Britain.{13}

Britain’s policy towards America in these years after 1803 must be considered against this background of total war. When England declared war on France on May 18, 1803, the British government, fortunately for the United States, was in the hands of Henry Addington, who had been chosen by George III after Pitt’s resignation in February, 1801, and served until April, 1804. The weak, vacillating Addington, known because of his father’s profession as the Doctor, was no war minister, and his administration depended upon the support of Pitt. From the very start of the war Addington and his friends underwent considerable attack. His Whig opponent, Thomas Creevey, only four days after the renewed of the war expressed his horror at the wretched destiny of mankind in being placed in the hands of such pitiful, squirting politicians as this accursed Apothecary and his family and friends.{14} Not all of his critics were quite that scathing, but Addington received little praise. Indeed, this peaceful first minister did not possess the personality needed to lead the country in a time of imminent danger. He had neither the ability nor the energy to undertake a forceful prosecution of the war. Yet England’s misfortune was America’s advantage. America was to suffer greatest only when England decided on an energetic prosecution of the war at all costs. Addington’s lack of forceful measures was a comparative boon to the United States.

In one respect, however, America could hope for no respite even from the weak Doctor and his friends. The renewal of war immediately produced a lack of seamen in England. From 1803 to 1805 England needed sailors as a last, and only, line of defense against the all-conquering armies of Napoleon. Even when the immediate fear of invasion passed there was no respite. After 1805 the war in Europe rapidly assumed the character of a commercial struggle. Napoleon controlled the land and England controlled the sea. More and more ships, and more and more sailors, were needed to patrol the huge Napoleonic coastline. It was increasingly maddening to the British that, at a time when their need for sailors was becoming greater and greater, the United States should continue to harbor large numbers of British deserters. Attracted by the higher pay and better living conditions in the American merchant service, British sailors frequently deserted to the United States. Even the British ship which took the new British minister, Anthony Merry, to the United States in the fall of 1803 lost fourteen men by desertion.{15} It was such occurrences that made the British Admiralty adamant in its refusal to renounce the right of impressing British seamen found on board American merchantmen. If British seamen could desert with impunity, how could England man her ships? Shortly before the renewal of the war in 1803 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl St. Vincent, assured the Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, that England could not give up this basic right. He stated that the most that could be conceded was that whenever British Seamen are found on board an American ship at sea, care shall be taken that the officer who demands them shall either leave or supply as many men as may be absolutely necessary for the navigation of the ship to her destined port.{16}

In the years after 1803 the problem of impressment became acute, not because Britain was maintaining any new principle, but because owing to her need for sailors she was searching for her deserters with far more care and energy. In proportion as England’s difficulties in Europe increased and her need for seamen grew greater, problems regarding impressment became more and more acute in Anglo-American relations. Before 1801 impressment had not been the same corroding force that it became after 1803. The reason for this was simply that England in those earlier years, particularly after 1797, had not felt the same desperate need for seamen that she was to experience in the dark days following the renewal of the war in 1803. The conclusion of a definite peace in 1802 had brought rapid disarmament, and England discharged some 40,000 sailors within a few months. When war was renewed, England faced the problem not only of bringing her depleted forces to full