Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

The British government justified its restrictive trade policy based on the Rule of 1756, which indicated that neutrals should not engage in trade with the enemy if that trade did not exist before the war. Although such British restrictions were perceived as the primary problem, probably because the British had the naval power to enforce its policies, French policy was equally problematic and equally illegal. In his letter to Congress, Madison also complained about French conduct but left open the question of whether the United States should also do something about it. In his letter he noted, “It will have been seen also that no indemnity had been provided or satisfactorily pledged for the extensive spoliations committed under the violent and retrospective orders of the French Government against the property of our citizens seized within the jurisdiction of France. I abstain at this time from recommending to the consideration of Congress definitive measures with respect to that nation.”11

That Britain’s actions were perceived to be the greater burden should not come as a surprise. As Albert Gallatin, Madison’s secretary of the treasury, reported, US trade with Britain and her allies was $38.5 million. Trade with France and her allies was only about $1.2 million.12 Clearly, British trade policy was the more salient consideration, although both protagonists imposed restrictions that the United States deemed illegal. The free trade grievance certainly had a strong foundation that one could well imagine a nation dependent on such commerce would see as a casus belli. As it happens, however, the British repealed the Orders in Council on June 23.13

Given the slow speed of transatlantic communication at the time, the British were unaware of the American declaration of war and the US government did not know that Britain had relaxed the trade restrictions imposed on American exports. It took a little time for each side to learn of the other’s actions. Yet, before a single shot was fired, by mid-1812 news reached America that the Orders in Council were repealed. With that knowledge in hand the second grievance was irrelevant. Hence, at least two of the three primary justifications for war identified by Madison had been largely resolved before fighting commenced.

The British Ignore America’s Maritime Grievances

AS THE BRITISH WERE ACTIVELY RECTIFYING AMERICAN COMPLAINTS against them, Madison’s concern that the British ignored American efforts to resolve their differences would also have diminished, if not evaporated altogether. To be sure, his June 1 complaint that the British government dealt with the US government in bad faith had good justification, relating to his own experience with the British as early as 1809: in April of that year, David Erskine, Britain’s then ambassador to Washington, appeared to negotiate an agreement under which the British would remove the Orders in exchange for the US repeal of the Non-Importation Act—the trade embargo against British goods implemented by Madison’s presidential predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, in the hope of forcing just such an agreement. Unfortunately, Erskine promised more than the British government had given him permission to do. The offer was withdrawn and Erskine eventually replaced. This, not surprisingly, left a legacy of mistrust. Once the Orders in Council were repealed, impressment was essentially over, and hence Madison’s argument that the British ignored US complaints, especially regarding impressment and maritime trade, had become difficult to sustain.

The Second War of Independence: “Indian Savages” Reprised

JOHN C. CALHOUN PORTRAYED THE AS-YET UNDECLARED WAR OF 1812 as the second war of independence. Speaking in Congress on May 6, 1812, regarding the proposed repeal of the trade embargo with Britain, he stated, “I assert, and gentlemen know it, if we submit to the pretensions of England, now openly avowed, the independence of this nation is lost—we will be, as to our commerce, re-colonised. This is the second struggle for our liberty; and if we but do justice to ourselves, it will be no less glorious and successful than the first.”14 We believe this notion is what he wanted people to understand the war to be, but that it is also a piece of historical mythology far removed from the truth. Rather, we believe that Madison’s third point—about the British conspiracy with the “savages”—was a rhetorical flourish intended to cover the true motivation behind the call for war: to take the frontier—“our frontier”—from the Indians and their British patrons and make it part of the United States, with credit going as much as possible to the president and the War Hawk faction in the Republican Party.

Madison’s third grievance was a familiar one, both in its content and wording, almost perfectly echoing a similar one in the Declaration of Independence thirty-six years earlier. Once again, in 1812, the leadership of the now independent United States complained that, ostensibly with the support of the British, Indian “savages,” specifically those in what is today’s Midwest, were again—or still—waging “a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity.”15 Just as the Virginia founding fathers needed to rid themselves of the British and the Indians in the American Revolution, so, too, did America’s early nineteenth century leaders. They needed a “second war of independence” to advance their interests at the expense of the British and the Indians. This was especially true in such places as the Louisiana Territory, purchased from France by President Jefferson, and in such relatively new states as Kentucky and Tennessee. These were on the frontier, confronting the ongoing alleged threat from the English and the Indians.

Remember, the American Revolution had succeeded in driving the British from the original thirteen colonies, but not from the continent and not from their alignments with Indian tribes. The removal of the British was one of the most deeply held concerns in early American history. We forget today, but back then Evacuation Day—November 25—was celebrated, most especially in New York, as a holiday of as great importance as July 4. It commemorated the withdrawal of the last British troop from Manhattan on that day in 1783. Massachusetts and Illinois continue even now to observe variations of Evacuation Day. Back in 1812, as the threat of war was being stirred up in the United States, British colonial power persisted in Canada and in “our frontier” where the British and Indians worked hand in hand and often against the interests of expansionist Americans. The British were far from having evacuated North America!

British relations with Indian tribes were motivated both by economic opportunity and shared military interests. The latter resided in protecting the territory each held from the encroachments of American settlers. In fact, hoping that a strong confederacy of tribes would provide an effective buffer between the expanding United States and Britain’s Canadian colonies, the British supported and traded with Indian tribes, including those associated with Tecumseh and the confederation he formed. They also provided supplies to stop the Indians from starving. But there were frequent assertions, usually without any evidence produced, that the British were conspiring with the Indians to threaten the security of American settlers.16 Yet it was much more clearly the goal of American settlers to expand their settlements and colonize land held by sovereign Indian nations and the British than it was of either of these groups to recolonize the lands that constituted the United States of the time.

In reality the Indians had much more to fear from the Americans than the American settlers did from them. As noted by Ellmore Barce, an early twentieth-century historian whose approach was extremely sympathetic to such American Indian fighters as William Henry Harrison, later ninth president of the United States: