Army Bills sometimes commanded a premium of five per cent over gold itself, because, being convertible into government bills of exchange on London, they were secure against any fluctuations in the price of bullion. A special comparison well worth making is that between their own remarkable stability and the equally remarkable instability of similar instruments of finance in the United States, where, after vainly trying to help the government through its difficulties, every bank outside of New England was forced to suspend specie payments in 1814, the year of the Great Blockade.

CHAPTER III

1812: OFF TO THE FRONT

President Madison sent his message to Congress on the 1st of June and signed the resultant 'war bill' on the 18th following. Congress was as much divided as the nation on the question of peace or war. The vote in the House of Representatives was seventy-nine to forty-nine, while in the Senate it was nineteen to thirteen. The government itself was 'solid.' But it did little enough to make up for the lack of national whole-heartedness by any efficiency of its own. Madison was less zealous about the war than most of his party. He was no Pitt or Lincoln to ride the storm, but a respectable lawyer-politician, whose forte was writing arguments, not wielding his country's sword. Nor had he in his Cabinet a single statesman with a genius for making war. His war secretary, William Eustis, never grasped the military situation at all, and had to be replaced by John Armstrong after the egregious failures of the first campaign. During the war debate in June, Eustis was asked to report to Congress how many of the 'additional' twenty-five thousand men authorized in January had already been enlisted. The best answer he could make was a purely 'unofficial opinion' that the number was believed to exceed five thousand.

The first move to the front was made by the Navy. Under very strong pressure the Cabinet had given up the original idea of putting the ships under a glass case; and four days after the declaration of war orders were sent to the senior naval officer, Commodore Rodgers, to 'protect our returning commerce' by scattering his ships about the American coast just where the British squadron at Halifax would be most likely to defeat them one by one. Happily for the United States, these orders were too late. Rodgers had already sailed. He was a man of action. His little squadron of three frigates, one sloop, and one brig lay in the port of New York, all ready waiting for the word. And when news of the declaration arrived, he sailed within the hour, and set out in pursuit of a British squadron that was convoying a fleet of merchantmen from the West Indies to England. He missed the convoy, which worked into Liverpool, Bristol, and London by getting to the north of him. But, for all that, his sudden dash into British waters with an active, concentrated squadron produced an excellent effect. The third day out the British frigate Belvidera met him and had to run for her life into Halifax. The news of this American squadron's being at large spread alarm all over the routes between Canada and the outside world. Rodgers turned south within a few hours' sail of the English Channel, turned west off Madeira, gave Halifax a wide berth, and reached Boston ten weeks out from Sandy Hook. 'We have been so completely occupied in looking out for Commodore Rodgers,' wrote a British naval officer, 'that we have taken very few prizes.' Even Madison was constrained to admit that this offensive move had had the defensive results he had hoped to reach in his own 'defensive' way. 'Our Trade has reached our ports, having been much favoured by a squadron under Commodore Rodgers.'

The policy of squadron cruising was continued throughout the autumn and winter of 1812. There were no squadron battles. But there was unity of purpose; and British convoys were harassed all over the Atlantic till well on into the next year. During this period there were five famous duels, which have made the Constitution and the United States, the Hornet and the Wasp, four names to conjure with wherever the Stars and Stripes are flown. The Constitution fought the first, when she took the Guerriere in August, due east of Boston and south of Newfoundland. The Wasp won the second in September, by taking the Frolic half-way between Halifax and Bermuda. The United States won the third in October, by defeating the Macedonian south-west of Madeira. The Constitution won the fourth in December, off Bahia in Brazil, by defeating the Java. And the Hornet won the fifth in February, by taking the Peacock, off Demerara, on the coast of British Guiana.

This closed the first period of the war at sea. The British government had been so anxious to avoid war, and to patch up peace again after war had broken out, that they purposely refrained from putting forth their full available naval strength till 1813. At the same time, they would naturally have preferred victory to defeat; and the fact that most of the British Navy was engaged elsewhere, and that what was available was partly held in leash, by no means dims the glory of those four men-of-war which the Americans fought with so much bravery and skill, and with such well-deserved success. No wonder Wellington said peace with the United States would be worth having at any honourable price, 'if we could only take some of their damned frigates!' Peace was not to come for another eighteen months. But though the Americans won a few more duels out at sea, besides two annihilating flotilla victories on the Lakes, their coast was blockaded as completely as Napoleon's, once the British Navy had begun its concerted movements on a comprehensive scale. From that time forward the British began to win the naval war, although they won no battles and only one duel that has lived in history. This dramatic duel, fought between the Shannon and the Chesapeake on June 1, 1813, was not itself a more decisive victory for the British than previous frigate duels had been for the Americans. But it serves better than any other special event to mark the change from the first period, when the Americans roved the sea as conquerors, to the second, when they were gradually blockaded into utter impotence.

Having now followed the thread of naval events to a point beyond the other limits of this chapter, we must return to the American movements against the Canadian frontier and the British counter-movements intended to checkmate them.

Quebec and Halifax, the two great Canadian seaports, were safe from immediate American attack; though Quebec was the ultimate objective of the Americans all through the war. But the frontier west of Quebec offered several tempting chances for a vigorous invasion, if the American naval and military forces could only be made to work together. The whole life of Canada there depended absolutely on her inland waterways. If the Americans could cut the line of the St Lawrence and Great Lakes at any critical point, the British would lose everything to the west of it; and there were several critical points of connection along this line. St Joseph's Island, commanding the straits between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, was a vital point of contact with all the Indians to the west. It was the British counterpoise to the American post at Michilimackinac, which commanded the straits between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Detroit commanded the waterway between Lake Huron and Lake Erie; while the command of the Niagara peninsula ensured the connection between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. At the head of the St Lawrence, guarding the entrance to Lake Ontario, stood Kingston. Montreal was an important station midway between Kingston and Quebec, besides being an excellent base for an army thrown forward against the American frontier. Quebec was the general base from which all