HISTORICAL MEMOIR OF THE WAR IN WEST FLORIDA AND LOUISIANA. INTRODUCTION. THE abdication of the emperor of the French, and the temporary pacification of Europe, consequent on that event, enabled Great Britain to dispose of the numerous forces which she had till then employed against France. The British cabinet resolved that the war against the United States should be vigorously prosecuted. The British presses were set to work, in order to prepare the mind of the nation, and give it a bias favourable to the views of the governThe same journals which for several years had been filled with invectives against the emperor Napoleon, now began to vilify the chief magistrate of the United States. The artifices so long employed to alienate the French nation from her chief, were now resorted to against Mr. Madison. The friends, or rather the agents of Britain, in the United States, repeated the same calumnies, invented the same fictions, advanced the same specious falsehoods, to de ment. B stroy the President's popularity, and incite the nation to an insurrection against the government, which, according to British writers and emissaries, had drawn her into an impolitic, unjust, parricidal and sacrilegious war. It was, they maintained, become necessary to punish the inhabitants of the United States, for having preferred a free government, of their own choice, to that of a British king: nay, the United States must be reduced to their original colonial subjection, as a chastisement for their having dared to declare war against Great Britain, rather than suffer the lives and fortunes of their citizens to be forcibly employed in support of the British flag; and for their having presumed to oppose those pretended maritime rights, to which all the governments of Europe had thought proper to submit. The ministerial papers denounced the Americans as rebels, the devoted objects of vengeance. British publications now breathed the same rage as at the period of the declaration of our independence; and the ministerial writers had recourse to the grossest scurrilities in their endeavours to vilify our government. As they pretended that it was not against France that they had waged so long a war, but against the chief who presided over her councils; so now they affected to proclaim that their hostilities were not directed against the people of the United States, nor against the American nation, but merely against the leader of a dominant faction. It was to restore to our nation the enjoyment of prosperity, that they were determined to overturn our government! It was obvious that the cessation of hostilities in Europe, would afford Britain the means of executing a part of her threats; and reflecting men considered the fall of the emperor of the French (so long wished for by the friends of Britain) as a sure presage that we should soon have to contend with a formidable British force by sea and land; nor was it long before these apprehensions were realized. On the frontiers of Canada, the British had hitherto conducted the war with much dexterity and intrigue, but without any considerable number of troops. The courage of our soldiers could not remedy the faults of our generals, and the two first campaigns produced nothing more than some brilliant exploits, some particular instances of bravery, that could have no influence on great military operations. Courage without military tactics, an ill-disciplined army conducted without any fixed plant, with a defective system of organization, were the means with which we long opposed the British troops; and it may be truly said that the two first campaigns in Canada were consumed in a war of observation, and in the taking and retaking of a few posts. The British, by all possible means of seduction, had stirred up against us a great number of Indians on the north-western confines of the United States, and excited them to commit depredations on our frontiers, and massacre our citizens. History cannot record all the atrocities committed by those allies of Great Britain, some of which are of such a description that the most credulous would disbelieve them, were not the facts supported by the most creditable witnesses and the most authentic proofs. Experience at last opened the eyes of our government, and more numerous armies, under able and faithful officers, were sent into Canada, to carry on the war more effectually. It is foreign from the design of this work, to enter into any discussion on that subject; and I will merely observe that it was in some measure owing to a defect in the law then in force for calling out the militia, that our military operations in Canada, during the two first campaigns, were attended with so little success. I allude to the law which called out certain portions of the militia for six months only, at the expiration of which term the men were allowed to return home. Independently of the time necessary to repair from the middle states to the frontiers of Canada, or to Louisiana, six months are hardly sufficient to train a soldier to military discipline and evolutions, so as to render him fit to contend in the field against veteran troops. A subsequent law has, indeed, partly remedied this evil, by prolonging the time of service to twelve months; but even this term would probably be insufficient, had we to carry on a war with vigour. The arrival of reinforcements to the British army in Canada, was the prelude to more extensive operations. The taking of Washington, and the several attacks made on different points of the Chesapeake, sufficiently evinced the intention of the British government, to endeavour to execute the threats denounced against us through their newspapers. The burning of Havre-de-Grace, the excesses committed at Hampton, and at Frenchtown, enabled us to form a just idea of the men who professed the intention of delivering us from a "government ridiculously despotic," and who in the meantime insulted our wives and daughters, destroyed or plundered our property, and indiscriminately set fire to humble cottages and stately palaces. The capitol itself, that noble monument that might have commanded respect even from barbarians, became a prey to the flames; and that we should not remain in doubt as to the fate we were to expect, the commander of the British naval forces, in an official communication to the secretary of state, explicitly avowed his determination to continue the same system of inhuman warfare, and to lay waste and destroy the American coast, wherever assailable. From that moment all eyes were opened; the cry of indignation was heard from one extremity of the union to the other, and all minds were now bent on an obstinate and determined resistance. It was evident to all that we had no longer to contend for the precarious possession of an inconsiderable extent of country, but that we were called on to defend our wives and children from British insult and brutality; our fortunes from the rapacity of British invaders, and our homes from pillage, fire and devastation. Those who had hitherto considered the war only as an honourable contest between two nations, mutually esteeming each other, but set at variance by conflicting interests, were now convinced that our enemies were determined to wage against us a war of extermination, and that we had to repel a savage foe, who came * See admiral Cochrane's letter in the Appendix, No. 1. |