July 4, a circular was issued to the governors of States, in the interior as well as along the seaboard, inviting them "to hold in readiness for immediate service a corps of 93,500 men. July 9, General Winder, whose utmost field force of regular troops he represented in his entire district at from 700 to 800 men, suggested that 4,000 militia should be called out, to be stationed in two equal portions one between South River and Washington, the other in the vicinity of Baltimore." July 12 and 17, General Winder was authorized "in case of actual or menaced invasion of the district under his command," to call out the entire Maryland quota of 6,000, as also 2,000 from Virginia, 2,000 from the District of Columbia, and 5,000 from Pennsylvania-in all 15,000 men.c In conveying this authority to General Winder, the Secretary of War expressed "the wish of the President that not less than 2,000, nor more than 3,000 of the drafts under the requisition of the 4th of July, should be embodied and encamped at some point between Baltimore and Washington."a July 20, General Winder reported to the Secretary of War that he had "deemed it advisable to call for the largest number directed by the President, supposing that by this means we might possibly get the lowest (2,000).” July 25, the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, reported to the Secretary of War that the repeal of the State militia law of 1807, and the substitution of another, "causes an almost total disorganization of our military system, between the 1st of August and the 4th of October, and presents difficulties, in yielding perfect compliance with the requisition of the President insurmountable.”ƒ August 13, General Winder reported to the Secretary of War, that under his call upon the Governor of Maryland for 3,000 men, the number drafted would not exceed 1,000. August 20, General Winder's call for the militia en masse was approved. August 21, the troops were mustered and had the Articles of War read to them. August 22, the troops were reviewed by the President, accompanied by the Cabinet. 66 On the 24th of August the army described by its commander as suddenly assembled without organization," or discipline, or officers of the least knowledge of service, numbered 5,401," of whom 400 were regulars, 600 marines, and 20 sailors, the remainder being volunteers and militia. g The same day the army thus hastily assembled was as hastily formed in order of battle at Bladensburg, where, in the presence of the President and the Cabinet, it was attacked and routed with the loss of but 8 killed and 11 wounded." By way of contrast between disciplined and undisciplined troops, the following extract is inserted from Ingersoll's account of the battle a American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 549. d American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 525. e American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 544. ƒ American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 551. . g Armstrong's Notices of the War of 1812, vol. 2, p. 152. h A. G. O. ¿American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 526. of Lundy's Lane, fought but a month previous to the catastrophe at Bladensburg: "All that remained of the first brigade after that terrible conflict did not exceed 220 men, the Ninth, Eleventh, and Twenty-second regiments consolidated under Major Leavenworth, not altogether 100. Many of the cartridges with which the Americans fired, when attacked on the hill, were taken from the cartridge boxes of the English lying dead around them. Men and officers, after five hours' constant fighting, were completely exhausted, and many almost fainting with thirst. There was no water nearer than the Chippewa. Before they marched, however, from the hill, the wounded were carefully removed, and the return to the camp behind the Chippewa was made slowly in perfect order, entirely undisturbed by the enemy. Seventy-six officers were killed or wounded, and 629 rank and file; of whom the first brigade lost 38 officers, and 468 rank and file. The commander of the brigade and every regimental officer were wounded. Every officer of the brigade and regimental staff was killed or wounded. General Scott and Major Jesup had each two horses shot under them; Jesup was wounded four times severely; Scott has never entirely recovered from the wound in the shoulder; Brady, Leavenworth, and McNeill, had each a horse shot under him. No battle in America, before or since, was ever so severely contested, or attended with such casualties in proportion to numbers."" b The British force which landed at Benedict on the Patuxent numbered 3,500, of which only a part of the advanced division of 1,500 were engaged.c At 8 o'clock p. m. the day of the battle of Bladensburg the enemy, without further opposition, marched into Washington and, according to official report, set fire to the "President's palace, the Treasury, and the War Office." The next evening, after completing the destruction of the public buildings, the enemy withdrew, and on the 29th returned unmolested to his shipping. In connection with this humiliating event, and as furnishing undoubted proof that our repeated disasters in every war have been due to the inability of our most eminent citizens and statesmen to appreciate the value of military education and discipline, it should be stated that in 1808, when our relations with Great Britain first became threatening, President Thomas Jefferson, who, as governor of Virginia during the Revolution, was unable to offer the slightest opposition to the capture of the State capital by Benedict Arnold, assured Congress in his last annual message that For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security. In 1809, a year after, the Army having been reduced by one-half, the same illustrious statesman proclaimed that— None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army; to keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important. The military reader will readily discover the similarity between the measures adopted for the defense of the capital at Philadelphia in 1777 and at Washington in 1814. In both cases the enemy approached by the Chesapeake; in both cases Congress and the President, as the Chief Executive of the nation, a Ingersoll's Second War, vol. 2, p. 99. bA. G. O. © Admiral Cockburn's Report, James's Military Occurrences, vol. 2, p. 493. turned to the States for assistance; in both cases, instead of calling the troops into the field when the enemy's object was first discovered, Congress and the President sought to economize by inviting the States "to hold the militia in readiness to march at a moment's notice;" in both cases, when the critical moment arrived, the militia was powerless in the presence of a disciplined foe, and in both cases the want of an adequate regular army caused the capital to fall into the hands of our enemies. Wherever news of the capture of Washington was received it justly excited the indignation of all parties. The people had given to their representatives, before and during the war, unlimited power to raise and support armies; the trust had been abused; the honor of the nation had been wounded. Unable to trace the real cause of the calamity to the defects of military organization, the people satisfied themselves with laying the blame on the Secretary of War, who was compelled, in disgrace, to retire from the Cabinet. The Secretary of War, like General Smyth, fell a victim to his mistaken reliance on raw troops. The latter, as described by the Secretary, was compelled after his failure in 1812 to flee from the Army, "hissed and hunted"a to his home in Virginia. "The sarcastic Secretary of War, as soon as the conquerors withdrew to their ships, accused of treason, was driven away by what he called a village mob, and not suffered even to resign at Washington, but advised by the President, and forced by popular indignation, to fly to Baltimore to do it."b The movement against the capital was followed on the 13th and 14th of September by a combined land and naval attack upon Baltimore, where, being confronted by a line of entrenchments as well as by better dispositions, the enemy withdrew, after suffering a loss of 319 killed and wounded, embracing, among the former, General Ross, the commander of the military forces. In October the British fleet, with the troops on board, left the Chesapeake and sailed for Jamaica. The repulse of the enemy at Baltimore, and the return of our Army from Fort Erie, were the last operations of any magnitude immediately preceding the treaty of peace, which was signed at Ghent on the 24th of December. EXERCISE OF COMMAND BY THE SECRETARY OF WAR. The fall of the Secretary of War suggests another abuse in our military system, from which both the country and the Army have suffered, especially whenever a citizen of military experience has been at the head of the War Department. The law creating this Department and prescribing the duties of its chief leaves no room to doubt that nothing could have been further from the intentions of Congress than to bestow upon a civil officer, subordinate to the President, the right to exercise military command. Nevertheless, the failure to create the grade of General in Chief, tempted, if it did not compel, the Secretary to assume, in the Cabinet and in the field, the position of generalissimo of our forces. During a Armstrong's Notices of the War of 1812, vol. 2, p. 113. b Ingersoll's Second War, vol. 2, p. 170. the first year of the war, in the absence of a competent military adviser to the President, the plans of campaign were mostly determined by consultations of the Cabinet. During the second year the responsibility was assumed by General Armstrong, a new Secretary, whose claim to public confidence was based chiefly on his experience as an officer of the Continental Army. As soon as he assumed office the vast and important duty of organizing our armies and providing their supplies engaged only a share of his attention. He devised all the plans of campaign, submitted them to the approval of the President, transmitted them to the military commanders, and finally, as in the autumn of 1813, repaired to the field to superintend their execution. His first interview with General Wilkinson at Sackett's Harbor was attended by confusion and discord, and gave evidence that so long as he remained, the movements of the Army would be retarded by the ambition and jealousy of the rival commanders." On the 4th of October he insisted upon an attack on Kingston, against which the general "remonstrated warmly and freely." Two weeks later the two commanders changed sides. Wilkinson approved and urged the attack; the Secretary of War as warmly opposed it. This attempt of the Secretary to combine and direct the movements of the armies of Wilkinson and Hampton against Kingston and Montreal, was much less calamitous than his action in collecting the forces before the opening of the campaign. It was his order to Wilkinson to withdraw most of the Regular troops from the vicinity of Fort George, and especially the fatal order to "close" with the proposition of Porter, Chapin, and McClare, who, if allowed to invade Canada with 1,000 to 1,200 volunteers, a few militia, and 4 pieces of artillery had pledged their lives to occupy the peninsula and "either capture, destroy, or disperse all of the enemy's forces in that quarter, "that led to a counter-invasion, the capture of Fort Niagara, and the burning of Buffalo. The union of the purse and the sword in the person of the Secretary of War had still other objections. As the chief of military administration it exposed him, through the want of a proper commissariat, to the temptation of maintaining armies and directing their movements in the interest of a horde of unscrupulous contractors. The dependence of the Government upon this class of individuals may be inferred from the fact that as late as 1815 a single individual, John Swartwont, received the contract for supplying provisions for six months, to all of the armies from Niagara to Plattsburg, at the rate of 193 cents per ration. In Louisiana and Mississippi the contract was let to a single firm, Ward & Johnson, for the same period, at 15 to 174 cents per ration." The arrogance and power of this swarm of parasites, who fattened upon every reverse to our arms and who necessarily had the ear of the Secretary, although to his honor no charges of fraud were made. against him, were manifested as early as the campaign of 1812, when General Smyth, after his fiasco, partly explained his expulsion from a American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 470. the Army by stating in his official report, "the volunteers, and neighboring people, were dissatisfied, and it has been in the power of the contractors' agent to excite some clamor against the course pursued; he finds the contract a losing one at this time, and would wish to see the Army in Canada, that he might not be bound to supply it."a The evils and dangers of a supply system which enabled a contractor, whenever he disapproved of the actions or conduct of a military commander, to appeal to a war minister, who assumed the right to order and dispose armies as he saw fit, were further presented by General Scott in a letter submitted to Congress by Mr. Monroe: In time of war contractors may betray an army; they are not confidential and responsible agents appointed by the government. The principal only is known to the war office, and therefore may be supposed to be free from this objection; but his deputies and issuing agents are appointed without the concurrence or knowledge of the general or the government. The deputies or issuing agents are necessarily as well acquainted with the numerical strength of the army to which they are attached as the adjutant-general himself. For a bribe they may communicate this intelligence to the enemy, or fail to make issues at some critical moment, and thus defeat the best views and hopes of the commander in chief. The present mode of subsisting our armies puts the contractor above the general. If a contractor corresponds with the enemy, he can only be tried by the civil courts of the United States, as in the case of other persons charged with treason (courts-martial having decided that contractors do not come within the meaning of the sixtieth article of the Rules and Articles of War); and if a contractor fails to make issues, he can only be punished by civil actions. I speak of cases arising within the limits of the United States. In the enemy's country I suppose a general who knows his duty would not fail to hang a contractor who should, by guilty neglect or corruption, bring any serious disaster upon the army.b General Gaines at the same time expressed himself still more positively: I have uniformly given the best attention in my power ever since the commencement of the war to the supply of rations and the conduct of contractors, and if I were called before heaven to answer whether we have not lost more men by the badness of the provisions than by the fire of the enemy, I should give it as my opinion that we had; and if asked what causes have tended most to retard our military operations and repress that high spirit of enterprise for which the American soldiers are preeminently distinguished, and the indulgence of which would not fail to veteranize our troops by the annoyance and destruction of the enemy, I should say the irregularity in the supply and badness of the rations have been the principal causes. Original contractors seem to be a privileged order of men, who, by virtue of the profits of the contract, are elevated above the drudgery which a common-sense view of the contract would seem to impose on them. They take care to secure to themselves at least 1 cent per ration, leaving a second, and sometimes a third, order of miserable under-contractors to perform the duties, and each of these must calculate on making money. Thus the contract, after being duly entered into at Washington, is bid off until it falls into the hands of men who are forced to bear certain loss and ultimate ruin, or commit frauds, by furnishing damaged provisions; they generally choose the latter, though it should tend to destroy the Army. I know the opinion of no officer on this subject who does not think with me. © While for the want of proper organization of the supply departments, abuses like the above constantly jeopardized our success, there were other errors in the management of the War Department, equally destructive of unity and vigor in military operations. The assumed power to command the Army carried with it an arbitrary defiance of the well-established rules governing the transaction of official business a Fay's American War, p. 65. American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 600. c American State Papers, vol. 1, p. 601. |