Andrew Jackson (36 page)

A
visitor to the nation’s capital the month before the declaration of war against Britain was struck by the partisan divide between Republicans and Federalists. “The opposite parties live separate from each other, and have but little intercourse except on business,” he wrote. “I once asked Mr. Potter [Elisha Potter, a Federalist congressman from Rhode Island] if it would not be better for the members of different parties to live more together and become more sociable with each other. He said they could not live in peace together, and that, after the contentions which they continually had in the hall”—Congress—“they required some rest and quiet when they got home. He said also that some of the Democrats”—Republicans—“are men of such unruly minds that it is extremely difficult to be upon good terms with them. ‘There is that Willis Alston [Republican congressman from North Carolina],’ said he. ‘Why he is as clear a brute as ever wore a tail.’”

Wars often draw parties and factions together, as peacetime rivals rally against the common foe. The War of 1812 had the opposite effect in America, driving the parties apart. Federalists blamed the Republicans for the war, which disrupted their commerce and the ties to Britain they had reconstructed since the Revolutionary War. They criticized the administration and at every step tried to block all but the most narrowly defensive measures. Republicans responded by lashing the Federalists as Tories and traitors. “When war is declared,” asserted a Republican paper in Baltimore, “there are but two parties:
Citizen Soldiers
and
Enemies—Americans
and
Tories
.” Republicans in Baltimore took this maxim to the street, rioting against Federalists to tunes from the Revolutionary War (“We’ll feather and tar every damned British Tory / And that is the way for American glory”). One man was killed in the riot, and nearly a dozen were injured, some quite badly.

Had the war been successful and short, the opposition wouldn’t have mattered. But the war was neither, and even those who had been hottest for the conflict soon had to admit that things weren’t going as they had anticipated. “I have intended, my dear Rodney, twenty times to write you,” Henry Clay explained to an old friend during the first winter of the war, after the string of defeats in the Northwest. “But, really, such have been the mortifying incidents of the last campaign on that theater where all our strength was supposed to lay that I have not had the courage to portray my feelings to you.” America’s problems, Clay contended, started at the top. “It is vain to conceal the fact—at least I will not attempt to disguise with you—Mr. Madison is wholly unfit for the storms of war. Nature has cast him in too benevolent a mould. Admirably adapted to the tranquil scenes of peace, blending all the mild and amiable virtues, he is not fit for the rough and rude blasts which the conflicts of nations generate.” Madison’s advisers were no better, and the president failed to call them to account. “He is so hesitating, so tardy, so far behind the national sentiment, in his proceedings toward his war ministers, that he will lose whatever credit he might otherwise acquire by the introduction of suitable characters in their places.”

The good news of the next several months was that the bad news wasn’t worse. Spirits rose with Perry’s victory on Lake Erie and Harrison’s on the Thames, and then with Jackson’s on the Tallapoosa. But hard upon these last good tidings from across the Appalachians came grim word from across the Atlantic. During the spring of 1814, during the very hours when Jackson was crushing the Creeks, British and allied European forces were defeating the French. The Napoleonic tide had crested at Moscow in 1812, where the Russians saved their country by burning their holy city. Deprived of shelter and sustenance, Napoleon was compelled to retreat before the Russian winter, which decimated his army and, more important, destroyed the sense of inevitability that had long been his principal asset. The Russians chased him west and were joined by the Prussians and the Austrians. The Spanish and Dutch revolted against their Bonapartist rulers and gave aid to the British. Napoleon parried the allied thrusts with his customary brilliance but with diminishing resources, and in the last days of March 1814—while Jackson’s men were taking Horseshoe Bend—the allies took Paris. Like William Weatherford, Napoleon evaded his enemies awhile longer, but he too finally gave himself up.

Napoleon’s defeat augured badly for America. “You are sufficiently aware of the total change in our affairs produced by the late revolution and by the restoration of universal peace in the European world, from which we are alone excluded,” Albert Gallatin, Madison’s Treasury secretary, wrote Henry Clay. “A well organised and large army is at once liberated from any European employment, and ready, together with a superabundant naval force, to act immediately against us. How ill prepared we are to meet it in a proper manner, no one knows better than yourself, but above all our own divisions and the hostile attitude of the eastern states give room to apprehend that a continuance of the war might prove vitally fatal to the United States.”

The fatal blow began to fall during the summer of 1814. A British fleet penetrated the Chesapeake and landed troops on the Maryland shore. The redcoats proceeded west toward the American capital. “Having advanced within sixteen miles of Washington,” British general Robert Ross reported, “and ascertained the force of the enemy to be such as might authorize an attempt at carrying his capital, I determined to make it. . . . A corps of about 1200 men appeared to oppose us, but retired after firing a few shots.” Nor was the closer defense of the capital more effective. Ross threw his light cavalry and then his infantry against the enemy. “His first line, giving way, was driven on the second, which, yielding to the irresistible attack of the bayonet and the well-directed discharge of rockets, got into confusion and fled.”

Nothing now stood between the British and the seat of American self-government. “I determined to march upon Washington, and reached that city at eight o’clock that night,” Ross explained. The British lacked the numbers to occupy the capital for any length of time, but Ross intended to retaliate for an American raid on York, the capital of Upper Canada, in which various government buildings had been burned. “Judging it of consequence to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay . . . the following buildings were set fire to and consumed: the capitol, including the Senate-house and the House of Representatives, the arsenal, the dockyard, Treasury, War Office, President’s Palace, rope-walk, and the great bridge across the Potomac.” A British veteran of the Napoleonic wars remembered the moment with soldierly satisfaction. “It would be difficult to conceive a finer spectacle,” George Gleig wrote. “The sky was brilliantly illumined by the different conflagrations, and a dark red light was thrown upon the road, sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his comrade’s face. Except the burning of St. Sebastian’s”—taken by Wellington’s army in northern Spain in 1813—“I do not recollect to have witnessed at any period of my life a scene more striking or more sublime.”

The experience was humiliating to every patriotic American. A country that couldn’t protect its capital from enemy assault would quickly become a laughingstock among nations. Small comfort followed the repulse of the same British force when it attacked Baltimore two weeks later. The victory gave Americans an anthem to sing after Francis Scott Key, observing the defense of Fort McHenry, put American words to a British drinking song, but it provided little in the way of confidence or lasting security.

Republicans and a few Federalists tried to mask their mortification with anger at the behavior of the British. On learning that General Ross had been killed by an American sniper at Baltimore,
Niles’ Register
recommended derisively that a monument be erected to “THE LEADER OF A HOST OF BARBARIANS who destroyed the capitol.” Many Americans joined Henry Clay in lamenting Madison’s ineptitude. One graffitist marked the sooty walls of the Capitol with a damning comparison: “George Washington founded this city after a seven years’ war with England; James Madison lost it after a two years’ war.”

F
ederalists in New England took the burning of Washington as an opportunity to weaken the hold of the Republicans on the national government, and perhaps of the national government on New England. Gathering at Hartford, Connecticut, they vented their grievances against the war, against the Republicans, and against most of what had happened in American politics since John Adams left the presidency. Some spoke of secession, others of amendments to the Constitution. Just what they said was impossible for outsiders to know, for they barred the door of their meeting hall against ordinary citizens and published neither transcripts nor summary of the debates. After three weeks they produced a report recommending several constitutional amendments designed to make embargoes, war declarations, and the admission of new states more difficult; to reduce the representation in Congress of the South (by negating the three-fifths clause of the Constitution and thereby eliminating slaves altogether from the seat-determining totals); and to limit presidents to one term and prevent a single state—they were obviously thinking of Virginia—from having two presidents in succession.

Radicals among the Federalists complained that the recommendations didn’t go far enough. Few admitted publicly to feeling closer to Britain than to Virginia, but their constant carping against Madison and the war made clear where their loyalties lay. The canny among the separatists counseled tactical patience. “No sensible man ought to expect that the
first
New England convention would do as much as the
last
out of several congresses of the patriots of the revolution,” a Boston paper observed knowingly.

W
hen Jackson heard of the Hartford convention he was outraged. The country was at war, the very principle of self-government was in peril, and the Federalists were flirting with Britain. Jackson’s nationalism had always been of a piece with his devotion to popular government; since the Revolutionary War, when he had fought simultaneously against British regulars and American Tories, he had understood the Union to be the best guarantee of popular rule, and vice versa. The Federalists were twice wrong and hence doubly dangerous. “These kind of men, although called Federalist, are really monarchist, and traitors to the constituted Government,” he declared. By the time Jackson got the news the Hartford delegates had dispersed, but he left no doubt what he would have done if given the chance. “Had I commanded the military department where the Hartford convention met, if it had been the last act of my life I should have hung up the three principal leaders of the party.” As an afterthought to his imagined execution, he added, “I am sure an independent court martial would have condemned them.”

The Hartford Federalists didn’t have to fear Jackson, as a thousand miles separated him from them, but they did have to notice the Tennessee general. Jackson’s victory at Horseshoe Bend was a rare bright spot in the miserable war, and in its aftermath Americans from all across the country noticed its author. Newspapers in every city recounted the triumph. Millions of Americans who had never heard of Andrew Jackson now praised his bravery, determination, and skill, which contrasted so favorably with the timidity, fecklessness, and incompetence of nearly everyone else associated with the war.

The Madison administration embraced the general as tightly as it could. The War Department published Jackson’s reports from the front. War Secretary Armstrong recommended a promotion. “Something ought to be done for General Jackson,” he told Madison. The obvious thing, from the administration’s standpoint, was to bring Jackson into the regular army, where his light would reflect up the chain of command to Washington, rather than back to Tennessee. A hitch arose on account of the current recess of Congress. “All therefore that can be done at present,” Armstrong informed Jackson, “in reward for your able and gallant conduct during the campaign and in testimony of the public respect these have obtained is to make you a Brigadier of the line, with the brevet of Major General, and to invest you with the command of the Seventh Military District.” But the difficulty disappeared when William Henry Harrison, in a dispute with the War Department, resigned his commission as major general, freeing up that rank for Jackson.

Jackson thought twice about the appointment. For all his embrace of the Union as an ideal, he retained the westerner’s distrust of many of the agents and agencies of the national government. The War Department had done little good for Tennessee or, till now, for him. He recognized the motives of the Madison administration in putting him forward.

But he couldn’t say no. When the nation called, the patriot answered. And the honor was very great. The orphan boy from the Revolutionary War was becoming one of the highest-ranking officers in the country. To be a major general of the Tennessee militia was a fine thing, but to be a major general in the army of the United States was something else again.

W
ith the surrender of William Weatherford, Jackson could confidently declare the Creek campaign over. “Accept the expression of your general’s thanks, and of his admiration,” he told his men. “Within a
few weeks
you have annihilated the power of a nation that had for
twenty years
been the disturber of our peace. . . . Wherever these infatuated allies of our archenemy”—Britain—“assembled their forces for battle, you have seen them overthrown; wherever they fled, you have pursued them and dispersed them. The rapidity of your movements and the brilliancy of your achievements have corresponded with the valor by which you were animated.” Forgetting, or at least ignoring in the moment of victory, the failures and lapses of the mutinous few, Jackson recounted the triumphs of the faithful many: how they had endured hunger and fatigue, how they had marched over mountains and forded swollen rivers, how they had found and defeated the enemy in his woodland fortress. Now the time had come to return home, and their general would gladly lead them there. “In performing this last act of duty I shall experience a satisfaction not to be expressed.”