1 Introduction
The Internet, new media and social media have become a way of life for many Canadians. These new forms of communication are affecting the lives of Anglophone and Francophone Canadians, who are using them in many areas. These new tools are both instant and accessible. The use of these new technologies is spreading quickly, but are Canadians’ language rights being respected? (Canadian Standing Senate Committee 2012)
In 2011, the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Offi cial Languages undertook a study of Internet use and social media in Canada and observed that although the Internet and new and social media present opportunities for the French language (e.g. web initiatives to promote French and those who speak it), the Internet remains Englishdominant (Senate Committee 2012: 102). Notably, the report stressed the need to expand the presence of French in the digital world (Senate Committee 2012: 103). While recommendations focussed primarily on the potential for action within the government and civil service, the Committee also stressed the importance of the private sector and the significant role of financial incentives in encouraging growth (Senate Committee 2012: 103).
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 R. Vessey, Language and Canadian Media, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53001-1_1
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Such recommendations allude to the powers of the nation-state and their role-effecting change in language issues. Although the Canadian government has been widely successful in effecting linguistic change in offline environments, the media have consistently posed challenges to the Canadian nation-state model. In particular, the emergence of new and social media that are transnational and “superdiverse” raises questions about the extent to which a government can continue to enforce language policies—and thus protect language rights—in an increasingly mediatised world. Moreover, viral news stories that present specific languages and language groups in a negative light indicate that the presence of a language in online spaces is not always the issue; rather, the issue is sometimes the extent to which explicit or implicit representations of these languages and speakers contribute to discourses about—and the uptake of—language policies.
Viral news stories that focus on languages and language groups highlight the provocative nature of language issues in Canada—and in particular official language issues. Although English and French are both the official languages of the country, they are not spoken in equal numbers from coast to coast, nor do they share a history of equality. While open debates about the two languages are not everyday affairs, beliefs about the two languages are embedded and naturalised in day-to-day life in Canada; they arguably underpin Canadians’ very understanding of the country and, to some extent, their place within it. News stories, online commentary, and social media data can show how beliefs about languages become manifested and openly contested, but examinations of large-scale data sets can also show us the more mundane ways in which language ideologies are part of everyday Canadian discourse.
The theoretical framework of “language ideologies” is useful for explaining how language, identity, nationhood, and the state become interconnected in the social imaginary and represented in discourse. If beliefs about languages—or language ideologies—differ between French speakers and English speakers, then debates over the country’s official languages may be inevitable. Moreover, since the vast majority (83 %) of Canadians are not fluent in both official languages (Statistics Canada 2011), most English and French speakers do not have full access to alternative perspectives voiced in the other language. Thus, if different language ideologies circulate within linguistic communities, then these may perpetuate the
historic isolation of and misunderstandings between English- and Frenchspeaking Canadians. It is the objective of this book to examine and compare language ideologies in English and French media data in order to identify how they contribute to language policymaking and the adoption of language policies on the ground.
Th is introductory chapter supplies some of the ideas presented in this book by exploring the role of language ideologies in the media. It begins by outlining previous research on language ideologies before turning to their study in news media. Although there has been less research on language ideologies in new and social media, an overview of scholarship in this emerging fi eld will be provided. Having reviewed the state-of-the-art, the chapter will then turn to the research questions guiding the book, before concluding with an overview of the chapters.
1.1 An Introduction to Language Ideologies and the Media
Although the use of languages in media is certainly important for respecting language rights, there is also the question of how languages are being used, by whom, and for what purposes. More specifically, it is crucial to understand how languages are being represented—or misrepresented—in different media because such representations can have implications for the uptake of language policies and, thus, the respect of language rights. Even though representations of languages can be explicit (e.g. “English is practical”; “French is romantic”), they can also be implicit and take shape in incremental, banal ways. Whether explicit or implicit, representations of languages tend to be based on fundamental beliefs about and understandings of languages ingrained in a society and taken to be commonsense. In this book, such beliefs and understandings about languages are referred to as “language ideologies” (Woolard 1998). These are:
Set[s] of beliefs on languages or a particular language shared by members of a community […] These beliefs come to be so well established that their
origin is often forgotten by speakers, and are therefore socially reproduced and end up being ‘naturalized’, or perceived as natural or as common sense, thereby masking the social construction processes at work. (Boudreau and Dubois 2007: 104)
Language ideologies include understandings of the role language does or should play in society, and these may involve beliefs about the kind or variety of language that is or should be spoken in (certain sectors of) society. Language ideologies have been a topic of research for linguists since the 1970s (e.g. Silverstein 1979) and were largely defined by the publication of the edited collection Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Schieffelin et al. 1998). However, not all research that concerns beliefs about language in society has used the term “language ideology”. For example, research on language attitudes, motivation, folk linguistics, language planning, prestige, standards, aesthetics, and language awareness all deal to a certain extent with beliefs about language (see Ager 2001; Coupland and Jaworski 2004: 23; Preston 2002; Ricento 2005; Ruiz 1984; Woolard 1998: 4). Talk about language, or “metalanguage”, tends to express these beliefs, and metalanguage is studied across various disciplines (Kelly-Holmes and Milani 2011: 468). Jaworski et al. (2004a: 4) describe metalanguage in terms of what are often evaluative understandings and beliefs, referring to “[l]anguage in the context of linguistic representations and evaluations”. Metalanguage may involve expressions of how language works, what it is normally like, what various ways of speaking may imply or connote, and what language ought to be like (Jaworski et al. 2004b: 3; Silverstein 1998: 136; Spitulnik 1998: 163). When metalanguage is used to make sense of the “reality of language”, it tends to become ideological (Jaworski et al. 2004b: 3; Preston 2004: 87–89). However, since beliefs about and understandings of languages are not always explicitly stated (i.e. with metalanguage), the language ideologies framework is preferred here (cf. Johnson and Ensslin 2007: 7).
According to Woolard ( 1998 : 3), language ideologies are “[r]epresentations, whether explicit or implicit , that construe the intersection of language and human beings in a social world” (emphasis added). Language ideologies may be implicit if, for example, they are naturalised
and do not require articulation, or they may become explicit in “linguistic representations” (e.g. Boudreau 2008 ) or “language ideological debates” (Blommaert 1999a ). Th us, “[i]deology is variously discovered in linguistic practice itself; in explicit talk about language, that is, metalinguistic or metapragmatic discourse; and in the regimentation of language use through more implicit metapragmatics” (Woolard 1998: 9). Language ideologies may concern linkages between such diverse categories as spelling and grammar with other categories such as nation, gender, authenticity, knowledge, power, and tradition. Th e linkages between language (or language features) and social categories are the result of what Silverstein (2003) calls the “orders of indexicality”. Indexicality involves signs that either naturally or as a result of social construction point to some property common to a group (Squires 2010: 459). However, the orders of indexicality, as used by Silverstein, focus specifi cally on linguistic features and how strata of social meanings come to be indexed by these linguistic features: “‘indexical order’ is the concept necessary to showing us how to relate the micro-social to the macro-social frames of analysis of any sociolinguistic phenomenon” (Silverstein 2003 : 193).
When a feature is noticed and correlated with a specific speech community, this is the first-order index (what Silverstein calls the nth order). When this order becomes metapragmatically linked to an entire speech group, this is a second-order index (what Silverstein calls the nth + 1 order). When these features are “objectified and metadiscursively linked to stereotypic personae”, a third-order index (or nth + 1 + 1 order) is established (see discussion in Squires 2010: 460). The idea is that meaning is transferred from one level onto another level where two things are clearly less connected (Silverstein 2003: 194). Since dialects, accents, and lexicogrammar tend to be interpreted as indexical signals, readers and listeners ascribe meaning to these indexical signals through socially held orders of indexicality. The meaning attributed to indexical signals tends to be evaluative because communication is achieved because of—or fails as the result of—standards, norms, and expectations (Blommaert 2005b: 393). Since meanings, and thus evaluations, of indexes are not precise or fixed, the range of potential meanings is what Eckert (2008: 454) calls an “indexical field”, which she defines as a “constellation of ideologically
related meanings, any one of which can be activated in the situated use of the variable”.
It is as a result of these indexical processes that beliefs about language become transferred onto speakers and language communities; such transfers can have real and important impacts on social life. For example, language ideologies can contribute to the value attributed to a language, which can impact on its perceived worth (or “misrecognition” of worth, see Blackledge 2005: 34; Bourdieu 1977; Spitulnik 1998: 163). Here, this will be referred to as the “commodification” of language; that is, the process of changing a language into a valuable commodity (Heller 2003). The belief that one language is more valuable than another, or that one language has any real marketable value at all, has a crucial effect on the function of a language in society (Bourdieu 1977: 30). Some language varieties come to be valued more than others because of attributions of social, moral, and political value to that language, and because of constructed links between languages and categories of people (Blackledge 2005: vii; Irvine 1998: 61; Woolard 1998: 19).
Throughout history, language has been associated with communities of speakers, their ethnicity, their culture, and their territory. These associations often evolve into nation-states with distinctive and defended language varieties; nation-internal coherence has been fostered by asserting the distinctiveness of the “national language” in opposition with other nations’ (often closely related) languages. At the same time, “similar” language varieties have been used as the rationale for uniting speaker communities together as a single nation, wherein a single dialect is privileged over the others to encourage linguistic and social assimilation (see e.g. Kasuya 2001; Lo Bianco 2005). Nation-states have played an important role in the management of language ideologies by mediating between international/transnational models of language and national/local models and providing infrastructure (e.g. media, education, culture) for the (re)production of language regimes (Blommaert 2005b: 396–397). Of course, the increasingly globalised world has also had profound effects on communities, nations, and the language(s) that they speak.
One central way that globalisation has impacted on local communities is through the increased prestige of English as the “international” language. In today’s world, English is the international language of the
global market and fluency in English is often considered an invaluable asset (or symbolic resource, see Bourdieu 1977; see also Bolton and Kachru 2006; Heller 2003; Oakes and Warren 2007: 63; Ricento 2005: 352–353). This commodification of English has tended to have rather significant effects on communities that speak other languages. In fact, the growth and expansion of English has sometimes been at the expense (i.e. diminishment, “death” or “genocide”, see Skutnabb-Kangas 2006) of minority languages, their speakers, and their cultures (May 2008). In reaction, there has been a growing movement to protect minority languages (see e.g. discussion in Duchêne and Heller 2007). In addition to commodifying English, globalisation has also had the reverse effect of encouraging communities to rediscover their roots as “legitimate” sources of identity and culture, and to “act locally”, in part, by speaking and marketing their authentic, local language (Budach et al. 2003; Coupland 2003; da Silva et al. 2007; Heller 2003; Jaffe 2007: 149; King and Wicks 2009; Oakes and Warren 2007: 5, 17).
In this globalised context, languages and language varieties can be perceived as valuable in two overarching ways: language may be perceived as having a core or “intrinsic” value if it is seen as a cultural asset in a particular social group; and language may have an “instrumental” value that enables individuals to achieve specific goals (Ager 2001: 2–10; Gardner and Lambert 1959: 267; Oakes and Warren 2007: 34, 91; Robichaud and De Schutter 2012; cf. Kulyk 2010: 84 on the “ideology of understanding”). According to Garvin’s (1993) conceptual framework of language standardisation, in locations where a language has predominantly instrumental value, individual fluency in a standard language is highly prized. In contrast, if a language tends to have predominantly intrinsic value, then expectations for individual fluency in a standard language may be lower. Garvin cites English-speaking countries as examples of places where the instrumental attachment to language dominates (Garvin 1993: 51; Yavorska 2010: 167). However, intrinsic and instrumental values are not necessarily mutually exclusive; languages that maintain a long-lasting and secure place in society arguably need both.
The respective value of different languages is not a natural fact; neither are the linkages between linguistic categories and social categories intrinsic. Rather, these beliefs, values, and understandings exist because they are
part of and contribute to social practice. In other words, language ideologies affect our way of behaving and interacting in society. These are not abstract considerations of opinion or manipulation of the “truth”; language ideologies are organised and lived through practices, expectations, and understandings of human nature and the world (Williams 1973: 7). In other words, no language ideology is real or unreal, “right” or “wrong”, “true” or “false”—ideology simply refers to lived experience that, because it is lived, “become[s] coextensive with itself” (Eagleton 2007: 58; see also Charland 1987: 143; Eagleton 2007: 13; Gal 1998: 321; van Dijk 1998: 24–29, 2006: 117). One way that language ideologies become “co-extensive” with lived reality is through the ways in which individuals speak about issues in society. While no single discussion in and of itself would necessarily have an impact on society, when ideologies become embedded in overarching ways of speaking that are shared throughout a community, these can help to (re)institute these ideologies in social life. In this book, “ways of speaking” will be referred to as “discourse”.
In its most basic form, “discourse” refers to language above the sentence level; this is meaning that is not reducible to single words or phrases, but meaning that exists because of the complex links that exist among what is said, what has been said previously, and expectations of what will be said in the future. While texts are examples of people “doing” (i.e. communicating) what they think, pragmatic reasons prevent individuals from expressing all that they know and think. As a result, texts tend to be intertextual, drawing on the words, phrases, patterns, and even ideas that have been used by others. Meaning is achieved because of access to shared understandings of words and phrases and their uses in society. Thus, discourses are inherently social; they exist because of the complex ways through which meaning is conveyed in social contexts. Social groups that share common ways of expressing meanings can be called “discourse communities” (Swales 1990); these are composed of “individuals who share the same social practices” and thus who must, most of the time, “understand one another correctly” (Eagleton 2007: 13). However, just as most individuals belong to more than one social group, so too they are part of more than one discourse community and produce and consume more than one discourse.
Discourse is central to the study of language ideologies because, as Eagleton (2007: 9) remarks, “ideology is a matter of ‘discourse’ rather than
‘language’”. While texts only reflect the “tip of the [ideological] iceberg” (van Dijk 1998: 28), they tend to be created within discourse communities and contain at least some ideological discourse. Drawing on a common discourse, texts share commonalities in terms of language patterns, logical assumptions, and underlying ideologies. Thus, by examining individual texts, we can look at inventories of communication; by examining texts specific to social groups, we can start to conceive of a group’s ideological discourse. Studying language ideologies therefore means, at least to a certain extent, the study of the social groups and their ways of communicating. Language ideologies contribute to transforming the beliefs and values of social groups into reality, but such transformations depend on the communication channels available to the groups in question (cf. Johnson 1999). As we will see in the next section, the media plays an important role in the dissemination of language ideologies across groups and spaces, thus contributing to the reification of commonsense notions in society— including those related to language issues.
1.2 Language Ideologies and News Media
Language ideologies have been central to the evolution of the media, beginning with the printing press, which arguably played a major role in the creation and diffusion of language ideologies. With the printing press and the rise of literacy, many groups of people found that they could understand and relate to each other despite geographic expanse and perhaps localised differences. In other words, since they could read and understand the same language and material, this facilitated the creation of a shared—albeit imagined—identity (Anderson 1983). Still today, many populations are convinced they belong to a unique community largely because they read, listen to, and watch the same material in a common language. A “nation” can be understood—at least in part—as a body of people sharing beliefs about and understandings of a language and believing themselves connected due to this shared language. The consequence of the connection between language and nation is that nations have tended to be conceptualised as monolingual and linguistically homogeneous. As Androutsopoulos (2007: 207–208) remarks, this intensified with the
emergence of the mass media: “The mass media contributed to the constitution of national languages and gave rise to the linguistic ideal of public discourse in the monolingual nation-state: a language as homogeneous as the nation it represents.” As a result, the belief in a singular, homogeneous national language emerged as a supposed indicator of national legitimacy.
The printing press was instrumental in the development of the news media. The news media became a particularly well-known site in the study of language ideology not least because they are powerful sites of ideological discourse production in society more generally. The mass media are social institutions that impact on the communication flow in society (Leitner 1997: 188) and thus have power over how individuals access information and communicate with each other. They also impact which information is disseminated to the public, how this information is presented, and at what point this information is released (Baker 2010: 141; Jaffe 2007: 166–167). According to Cotter (2001: 423), journalists “manipulate” temporal elements, and as a result they are not “stenographers or transcribers; they are storytellers and interpreters”. However, since not all interpretations are explicit, they can involve hidden relations of power (Fairclough 1989: 49).
The news media, as producers and distributors of the information, directly affect the discursive representation, construction, and reproduction of society (see Bell 1998: 64–65; DiGiacomo 1999: 105; Fowler; 1991: 4; Machin and van Leeuwen 2007: 1–24). This is achieved, on the one hand, by manipulating the focus of the public eye on events that are deemed relevant, important, or “newsworthy”, and on the other hand, simply by being a highly visible information source that has the capacity to distribute and publicise information over a vast geography (Bednarek 2006: 18; Conboy 2007: 30; Cotter 2010: 80; Fowler 1991: 13; Spitulnik 1998: 165). The capacity to distribute and publicise is particularly potent if a news agency forms part of a chain or conglomerate. When individuals or corporations own a number of newspapers and/or other media establishments (e.g. TV, radio), then competition for alternate sources of information is reduced (Bell 1991; Pritchard et al. 2005: 293; Soderlund and Hildebrandt 2005: 33).
When information is conveyed in the media, the impact is significant because it is considered authoritative, reproduced en masse, and
widely distributed. The power of the news media is thus in part the result of its systematic tendencies and cumulative effect. As Fairclough (1989: 54) explains, “[a] single text on its own is quite insignificant: the effects of media power are cumulative, working through the repetition of particular ways of handling causality and agency, particular ways of positioning the reader, and so forth”. As a result, the media has a more important function than that of an individual speaker or text. As Fowler (1991: 124) explains, “[t]he articulation of ideology in the language of the news fulfils, cumulatively and through daily iteration, a background function of reproducing the beliefs and paradigms of the community generally”. Media discourse is designed for mass audiences, with a target audience or readership in mind; as a result, the communicative strategies deployed in the news are oriented and motivated by opportunities of reception and the chance of profit (see Bell 1991: 38; Bourdieu 1977: 654).
Within this news media system, journalists report news that is relevant to the “community of coverage” (Cotter 2010: 26). This includes not only people who are readers or listeners but also those who live in the media outlet’s geographical region, or those who have exposure to it. The news is a discursive product that emerges from processes within the journalistic discourse community; this community includes not only journalists but also editors and news executives (Bell 1991: 38). Since these individuals tend to live and work in their inhabitant or geographic community, the ties between the journalist community and the community of coverage can be quite strong (Cotter 2010: 34). As a result, in order to produce news that appeals to the community of coverage, a newspaper tends to carry specific stories that are presented in such a way as to make the news relevant to and coherent with its community of coverage (Cotter 2010: 46; Fletcher 1998).
Sometimes it is clear which stories and perspectives are relevant to a community; however, other times journalists must deduce or assume. At these times, journalists presuppose a “prototypical image” or an “ideal” recipient (Fairclough 1989: 49; Leitner 1997: 189), appealing to what Bakhtin (1981) called the “superaddressee”: an invisible but responsive and understanding third party existing above all individual participants in a dialogue. In other words:
With a greater or lesser degree of awareness, every utterance is also constituted by another kind of listener, a supreme one “whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time” […] This superaddressee would actively and sympathetically respond to the utterance and understand it in “just the right way”. (Morson and Emerson 1990: 135)
The journalists adopt norms in such a way as to appeal not only to immediately identifiable addressees but also to an overarching, generalisable audience (see also Blommaert 2005a: 73, 2007: 118). This generalisation of public opinion arguably leads journalists to adopt the “vox populi”, that is, the (presumed or assumed) voice and/or perspective of the community’s dominant group (Fairclough 1989: 51; Karim 1993; Leitner 1997: 194).
By adopting dominant norms, the media appeal to, produce, and reproduce the discourse of the status quo wherein one social group dominates (Conboy 2007: 24; Cotter 2010: 187; Fowler 1991: 23). News discourse, although inherently intertextual (continuously drawing on the language of other people), thus continues to emphasise the language of the dominant group (Bakhtin 1981; Catenaccio et al. 2011: 1845). In this way, the news media are not solely responsible for the ideologies they may contain; rather, they can be taken as an example of ideological discourse that is already in circulation in society. Thus, although the news media are a powerful site of ideological discourse production, members of the journalistic discourse community are not authority figures in isolation from society; rather, they interact with the “community of coverage”, which includes participants active in the media process (Bell 1991; Cotter 2001: 422; Eagleton 2007: 34; Gal 1998: 321; Jaffe 2007: 159; Robinson 1998: 4).
Despite the power of the news media, recipient uptake of the news is not prescribed or predictable, and the effects of media discourse can be equally uncertain. Leitner (1997: 189) explains that “[i]t is recipients that expose themselves to or withdraw from media output, they decode adequately or misconstrue content, they reinforce messages or alternatively nullify their effect”. Audiences have the possibility—and indeed the power—to resist media discourse. The meanings contained in the news, then, are “a product of negotiation between readers and texts” (Garrett and Bell 1998: 2). The process of recipient uptake also involves the choice
of information source. Although newspaper readership, for instance, is often restricted by newspaper availability (e.g. Canada is dominated by “one-newspaper-towns”), when there is a choice between newspapers, readers are drawn to papers that report stories in a way that is designed to evoke a particular response. The newspaper’s “audience design” thus tends to accommodate addressees and their interests by reporting the “familiar and culturally similar” (Kariel and Rosenvall 1983: 431; see also Gagnon 2006: 80). Also, by including letters to the editor in the newspaper, the newspaper includes in a more visible way the discourse of its readers. Although many letters may be published in online editions of newspapers, only a small number of letters can be published in print versions. As a result, the selection of which letters to publish can have ideological implications (Richardson 2007: 151).
Nevertheless, it is important not to attribute undue causal power to the media as a distributor and disseminator of ideology (see, e.g. Eagleton 2007: 34). Some researchers argue that the study of ideology in the media may simply support a researcher’s own “ideological frame” or bias about what may be present in the text. Bell (1998: 65), for example, warns that overeagerness to get to the “real meat” of ideological detective work can lead researchers to draw erroneous conclusions. Also, the search for ideology in the media often presumes clear, definable relations between linguistic choices and specific ideologies, attributing to individuals (i.e. reporters and editors) a far more deliberate ideological intervention than is likely (Cotter 2001: 421; see also Bell 1991: 214).
Another criticism of the study of ideology in the news media is that most analysts do not contextualise media language as the “outcome of a discourse process” (Cotter 2010: 4). Journalists, for example, report, write, edit, and produce text within the context of their discourse community (Catenaccio et al. 2011; Cotter 2001: 428; Sauvageau 2001: 38). Through socialisation in the community, journalists learn the ideological values and norms that underlie the news discourse, which include categorisations concerning how the world works and the beliefs that structure it (Conboy 2007: 30). Cotter (2010: 4) argues that a lack of understanding of the “normative routines of daily journalism” compromises linguistically oriented research into media language and discourse, since “everyday practice […] shapes the language of the news”. Journalists
produce language within the context of membership in the journalistic discourse community; they are also not alone in the production of the news, since they work alongside editors and within institutional contexts (Bell 1991: 33–50).
In summary, the media does not so much produce but establish and reproduce ideas and values that are already present in society (Fowler 1991; Leitner 1997); news media also cannot be presumed to have a direct—or indeed any—impact on readers (Cotter 2010: 131; Johnson and Ensslin 2007: 9). Nevertheless, the news media remain an important site for the study of ideological discourse, in part because of the interweaving of the journalistic community and the community of coverage. Media discourse is not necessarily more ideological than any other discourse; all discourse is, to a certain extent, ideological, but media discourse has a more important function than that of an individual speaker or text. As Fowler (1991: 124) explains, “[t]he articulation of ideology in the language of the news fulfils, cumulatively and through daily iteration, a background function of reproducing the beliefs and paradigms of the community generally”. In particular, the news media are an important site for the study of systematic beliefs and paradigms of the community that concern language (Delveroudi and Moschonas 2003: 6; Horner 2007: 144; Johnson and Ensslin 2007: 13; Pujolar 2007: 121; Spitulnik 1998).
News media are important in the study of language ideologies in three main ways. First, news texts are written by members of journalistic communities who have a “very self-conscious relationship to language” (Cotter 2010: 187). As Cotter (2010) has shown in detail, journalists’ language attitudes tend to be conservative, prescriptive, and mainstream, and journalists tend to adhere to the “ideology of the standard” (Milroy 2001), believing that there is a singular “best practice” and that “optional variability” should be suppressed (see also Cameron 1995: 53). Also, Cotter (2010) explains, “meta-talk” (cf. metalanguage, above) is a part of everyday practice, and such talk is often evaluative and based on notions of correctness. Since journalistic communities interconnect with the communities of coverage, “commonsense” beliefs about language tend to be shared between these two communities. In other words, since most members of the public and most journalists are not linguists, the conclusions of both tend to embody “lay” notions of language (Cotter 2010: 190).
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CHAPTER XVI.
A the loss of Detroit caused the greatest loss of territory that ever before or since befell the United States, the public at large understood little of the causes that made it inevitable, and saw in it only an accidental consequence of Hull’s cowardice. Against this victim, who had no friend in the world, every voice was raised. He was a coward, an imbecile, but above all unquestionably a traitor, who had, probably for British gold, delivered an army and a province, without military excuse, into the enemy’s hands. If any man in the United States was more responsible than Hull for the result of the campaign it was Ex-President Jefferson, whose system had shut military efficiency from the scope of American government; but to Jefferson, Hull and his surrender were not the natural products of a system, but objects of hatred and examples of perfidy that had only one parallel. “The treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot be a matter of blame to our government,” he wrote[283] on learning the story of Lewis Cass and the Ohio militia officers, who told with the usual bitterness of betrayed men what they knew of the causes that had brought their betrayal to pass. “The detestable treason of Hull,” as Jefferson persisted in calling it, was the more exasperating to him because, even as late as August 4, he had written with entire confidence to the same correspondent that “the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.” Perhaps the same expectation explained the conduct of Hull, Madison, Eustis, and Dearborn; yet at the moment when Jefferson wrote thus, Madison was beginning to doubt. August 8, the often-mentioned day when Brock reached Long Point and Hull decided to retreat from Canada, Madison wrote to Gallatin:[284]—
MAP OF THE S N
from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario
From “Memoirs of My Own Times,” By Gen. James Wilkinson, Philadelphia, 1816. Struthers & Co., Engr’s and Pr’s, N.Y
“Should he [Hull] be able to descend upon Niagara and an adequate co-operation be there afforded, our prospect as to Upper Canada may be good enough. But what is to be done with respect to the expedition against Montreal? The enlistments for the regular army fall short of the most moderate calculation; the Volunteer Act is extremely unproductive; and even the militia detachments are either obstructed by the disaffected governors or chilled by the Federal spirit diffused throughout the region most convenient to the theatre I see nothing better than to draw on this resource as far as the detachments consist of volunteers, who, it may be presumed, will cross the line without raising Constitutional or legal questions.”
In contrast with these admissions and their satirical “it may be presumed,” the tone of the governor-general, Sir George Prevost, at the same crisis was masterful.[285]
“The Eighth or King’s Regiment,” he wrote August 17 from Montreal, “has arrived this morning from Quebec to relieve the Fortyninth Regiment. This fine and effective regiment of the Eighth, together with a chain of troops established in the vicinity of this place consisting of a regular and militia force, the whole amounting to near four thousand five hundred men, effectually serve to keep in check the enemy in this quarter, where alone they are in any strength.”
The Canadian outnumbered the American forces at every point of danger on the frontier. A week later Sir George claimed another just credit:[286]
“The decided superiority I have obtained on the Lakes in consequence of the precautionary measures adopted during the last winter has permitted me to move without interruption, independently of the arrangement [armistice], both troops and supplies of every description toward Amherstburg, while those for General Hull, having
several hundred miles of wilderness to pass before they can reach Detroit, are exposed to be harassed and destroyed by the Indians.”
Not only were the British forces equal or superior to the American at Detroit, Niagara, and Montreal, but they could be more readily concentrated and more quickly supplied.
The storm of public wrath which annihilated Hull and shook Eustis passed harmless over the head of Dearborn. No one knew that Dearborn was at fault, for he had done nothing; and a general who did nothing had that advantage over his rivals whose activity or situation caused them to act. Dearborn threw the whole responsibility on the War Department. August 15 he wrote to President Madison: [287]
“The particular circumstances which have created the most unfortunate embarrassments were my having no orders or directions in relation to Upper Canada (which I had considered as not attached to my command) until my last arrival at this place, and my being detained so long at Boston by direction If I had been directed to take measures for acting offensively on Niagara and Kingston, with authority such as I now possess, for calling out the militia, we might have been prepared to act on those points as early as General Hull commenced his operations at Detroit; but unfortunately no explicit orders had been received by me in relation to Upper Canada until it was too late even to make an effectual diversion in favor of General Hull. All that I could do was done without any delay.”
For the moment, such pleas might serve; but after the capture of Detroit, Dearborn’s turn came, and nothing could save him from a fate as decided if not as fatal as that of Hull. His armistice indeed would have answered the purpose of protection had the Government understood its true bearing; but Dearborn’s letter announcing the armistice reached Washington August 13, and the Secretary of War seeing the dangers and not the advantages of a respite replied, August 15, in language more decided than he had yet used:[288]
“I am commanded by the President to inform you that there does not appear to him any justifiable cause to vary or desist from the arrangements which are in operation; and I am further commanded to instruct you that from and after the receipt of this letter and allowing a reasonable time in which you will inform Sir George Prevost thereof,
you will proceed with the utmost vigor in your operations. How far the plan originally suggested by you of attacking Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal at the same time can be rendered practicable, you can best judge Presuming that not more than a feint, if that should be deemed expedient, with the troops on Lake Champlain aided by volunteers and militia can be immediately effected against Montreal, and considering the urgency of a diversion in favor of General Hull under the circumstances attending his situation, the President thinks it proper that not a moment should be lost in gaining possession of the British posts at Niagara and Kingston, or at least the former, and proceeding in co-operation with General Hull in securing Upper Canada.”
The same day, August 15, the eve of Hull’s surrender, Dearborn wrote to the Secretary of War,[289]—
“If the troops are immediately pushed on from the southward, I think we may calculate on being able to possess ourselves of Montreal and Upper Canada before the winter sets in.... I am pursuing measures with the view of being able to operate with effect against Niagara and Kingston, at the same time that I move toward Lower Canada. If the Governor of Pennsylvania turns out two thousand good militia from the northwesterly frontier of his State, as I have requested him to do, and the quartermaster-general furnishes the means of transportation and camp-equipage in season, I am persuaded we may act with effect on the several points in the month of October at farthest.”
As yet nothing had been done. August 19 General Van Rensselaer reported[290] from Lewiston that between Buffalo and Niagara he commanded less than a thousand militia, without ordnance heavier than 6-pounders and but few of these, without artillerists to serve the few pieces he had, and the troops in a very indifferent state of discipline. In pursuance of his orders he collected the force within his reach, but August 18 received notice of Dearborn’s armistice and immediately afterward of Hull’s surrender. August 23 Brock, moving with his usual rapidity, reappeared at Fort George with Hull’s army as captives.
Fortunately, not only were the Americans protected by the armistice, but both Prevost and Brock were under orders, and held it good policy, to avoid irritating the Americans by useless incursions.
Prevost, about the equal of Madison as a military leader, showed no wish to secure the positions necessary for his safety. Had he at once seized Sackett’s Harbor, as Brock seized Detroit, he would have been secure, for Sackett’s Harbor was the only spot from which the Americans could contest the control of Lake Ontario. Brock saw the opportunity, and wanted to occupy the harbor, but Prevost did not encourage the idea;[291] and Brock, prevented from making a correct movement, saw no advantage in making an incorrect one. Nothing was to be gained by an offensive movement at Niagara, and Brock at that point labored only to strengthen his defence.
Van Rensselaer, knowing the whole American line to be at Brock’s mercy, felt just anxiety. August 31 he wrote to Governor Tompkins,[292]—
“Alarm pervades the country, and distrust among the troops They are incessantly pressing for furloughs under every possible pretence Many are without shoes; all clamorous for pay; many are sick While we are thus growing weaker our enemy is growing stronger. They hold a very commanding position on the high ground above Queenstown, and they are daily strengthening themselves in it with men and ordnance. Indeed, they are fortifying almost every prominent point from Fort Erie to Fort George. At present we rest upon the armistice, but should hostilities be recommenced I must immediately change my position. I receive no reinforcements of men, no ordnance or munitions of war.”
Dearborn replied to this letter September 2, and his alarm was certainly not less than that of Van Rensselaer:[293]
“From the number of troops which have left Montreal for Upper Canada, I am not without fear that attempts will be speedily made to reduce you and your forces to the mortifying situation of General Hull and his army. If such an attempt of the enemy should be made previous to the arrival of the principal part of the troops destined to Niagara, it will be necessary for you to be prepared for all events, and to be prepared to make good a secure retreat as the last resort.”
To the Secretary of War, Dearborn wrote that he hoped there would be nothing worse than retreat.[294] Under such circumstances the armistice became an advantage, for the offensive had already passed into the enemy’s hands. Detroit and Lake Erie were lost
beyond salvation, but on Lake Ontario supplies and cannon were brought to Niagara by water from Oswego; the vessels at Ogdensburg were moved to Sackett’s Harbor and became the nucleus of a fleet; while all the troops, regular and militia, that could be gathered from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania were hurried to the front. September 1 Dearborn wrote to Eustis[295] that he had at Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, or under marching orders there, five thousand troops, more than half of them regulars, while six thousand, including three regular regiments from the southward, were destined for Niagara.
“When the regular troops you have ordered for Niagara arrive at that post,” he wrote to Eustis, September 1, “with the militia and other troops there or on their march, they will be able I presume to cross over into Canada, carry all the works in Niagara, and proceed to the other posts in that province in triumph ”
Yet the movement of troops was slow. September 15 Van Rensselaer had only sixteen hundred militia.[296] Not till then did the reaction from Hull’s disaster make itself felt. Commodore Chauncey came to Lake Ontario with unbounded authority to create a fleet, and Lieutenant Elliott of the navy was detached to Lake Erie for the same purpose; ordnance and supplies were hurried to Buffalo, and Dearborn sent two regiments from Albany with two companies of artillery.
“When they arrive,” he wrote September 17 to Van Rensselaer, [297] “with the regular troops and militia from the southward and such additional numbers of militia as I reckon on from this State, the aggregate force will I presume amount to upward of six thousand. It is intended to have a force sufficient to enable you to act with effect, though late.”
The alarm still continued; and even a week afterward Dearborn wrote as though he expected disaster:[298]
“A strange fatality seems to have pervaded the whole arrangements. Ample reinforcements of troops and supplies of stores are on their way, but I fear their arrival will be too late to enable you to maintain your position.... By putting on the best face that your situation admits, the enemy may be induced to delay an attack until you will be
able to meet him and carry the war into Canada. At all events we must calculate on possessing Upper Canada before winter sets in.”
In Dearborn’s letters nothing was said of the precise movement intended, but through them all ran the understanding that as soon as the force at Niagara should amount to six thousand men a forward movement should be made. The conditions supposed to be needed for the advance were more than fulfilled in the early days of October, when some twenty-five hundred militia, with a regiment of Light Artillery without guns, and the Thirteenth U. S. Infantry were in the neighborhood of Lewiston; while a brigade of United States troops, sixteen hundred and fifty strong, commanded by Brigadier-General Alexander Smyth, were on the march to Buffalo. October 13 Dearborn wrote to Van Rensselaer:[299] “I am confidently sure that you will embrace the first practicable opportunity for effecting a forward movement.” This opportunity had then already arrived. Smyth reached Buffalo, September 29, and reported by letter to General Van Rensselaer; but before seeing each other the two generals quarrelled. Smyth held the opinion that the army should cross into Canada above the Falls, and therefore camped his brigade at Buffalo. Van Rensselaer had made his arrangements to cross below the Falls. October 5 Van Rensselaer requested Smyth to fix a day for a council of war, but Smyth paid no attention to the request; and as he was independent of Van Rensselaer, and could not be compelled to obey the orders of a major-general of New York militia, Van Rensselaer decided to act, without regard to Smyth’s brigade or to his opinions. He knew that the force under his immediate orders below the Falls was sufficient for his purpose.[300]
Van Rensselaer’s decision was supported by many different motives,—the lateness of the season, the weather, the sickness and the discontent of the militia threatening actual disbandment, the jealousy of a militia officer toward the regular service, and the additional jealousy of a Federalist toward the Government; for Van Rensselaer was not only a Federalist, but was also a rival candidate against Tompkins for the governorship of New York, and the Republicans were eager to charge him with intentional delay. A brilliant stroke by Lieutenant Elliott at the same moment added to the
restlessness of the army On the night of October 8 Elliott and Captain Towson of the Second Artillery, with fifty sailors and fifty soldiers of Smyth’s brigade, cut out two British vessels under the guns of Fort Erie.[301] One of these vessels was the “Adams,” captured by Brock at Detroit, the other had belonged to the Northwestern Fur Company, and both were of great value to the British as a reinforcement to their fleet on Lake Erie. The larger was destroyed; the smaller, named the “Caledonia,” was saved, and served to increase the little American fleet. Brock felt keenly the loss of these two vessels, which “may reduce us to incalculable distress,” he wrote to Prevost, October 11. He watched the progress of Elliott’s and Chauncey’s naval preparations with more anxiety than he showed in regard to Dearborn’s military movements, although he spared no labor in fortifying himself against these.
General Van Rensselaer conceived a plan for a double attack by throwing one body of troops across the river to carry Queenston, while a strong force of regulars should be conveyed in boats by way of the Lake and landed on the Lake shore in the rear of Fort George to take the fort by storm,—a movement afterward successfully made; but owing to Smyth’s conduct the double attack was abandoned, and Van Rensselaer decided to try only the simpler movement against Queenston. Brock with less than two thousand men guarded nearly forty miles of front along the Niagara River, holding at Queenston only two companies of the Forty-ninth Regiment with a small body of militia,—in all about three hundred men. Brock was himself at Fort George, some five miles below Queenston, with the greater part of the Forty-first Regiment, which he had brought back from Detroit, and a number of Indians. The rest of his force was at Chippawa and Fort Erie, opposite Buffalo, where the real attack was expected.
Van Rensselaer fixed the night of October 10 for his movement, and marched the troops to the river at the appointed time; but the crossing was prevented by some blunder in regard to boats, and the troops after passing the night exposed to a furious storm returned to camp. After this miscarriage Van Rensselaer would have waited for a council of war, but the tone of his officers and men satisfied him that any sign of hesitation would involve him in suspicion and injure the
service.[302] He postponed the movement until the night of October 12, giving the command of the attack to Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer of the State militia, whose force was to consist of three hundred volunteers and three hundred regular troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Christie of the Thirteenth Regiment.
At three o’clock on the morning of October 13 the first body of troops embarked. Thirteen boats had been provided. Three of these lost their way, or were forced by the current down stream until obliged to return. Colonel Christie was in one of the boats that failed to land. The command of his men fell to young Captain Wool of the Thirteenth Regiment. The British were on the alert, and although after a volley of musketry they withdrew toward Queenston they quickly returned with reinforcements and began a sharp action, in which Colonel Van Rensselaer was severely wounded and the advance on Queenston was effectually stopped. Daylight appeared, and at a quarter before seven Brock himself galloped up and mounted the hill above the river to watch the contest from an 18pounder battery on the hill-top.[303] At the same moment Captain Wool with a few men of his regiment climbed up the same heights from the riverside by a path which had been reported to Brock as impassable, and was left unguarded. Reaching the summit, Wool found himself about thirty yards in the rear of the battery from which Brock was watching the contest below. By a rapid flight on foot Brock escaped capture, and set himself immediately to the task of recovering the heights. He had early sent for the Forty-first Regiment under General Sheaffe from Fort George, but without waiting reinforcements he collected a few men—about ninety, it is said—of the Forty-ninth Regiment who could be spared below, and sent them to dislodge Wool. The first British attack was beaten back. The second, in stronger force with the York Volunteers, was led by Brock in person; but while he was still at the foot of the hill, an American bullet struck him in the breast and killed him on the spot.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Captain Wool, though painfully wounded, held the heights with two hundred and fifty men; but the heights had no value except to cover or assist the movement below, where the main column of troops with artillery and intrenching tools
should have occupied Queenston, and advanced or fortified itself. When Lieutenant-Colonel Christie, at about seven o’clock, having succeeded in crossing the river, took command of the force on the river bank, he could do nothing for want of men, artillery, and intrenching tools.[304] He could not even dislodge the enemy from a stone house whence two light pieces of artillery were greatly annoying the boats. Unable to move without support he recrossed the river, found General Van Rensselaer half a mile beyond, and described to him the situation. Van Rensselaer sent orders to General Smyth to march his brigade to Lewiston “with every possible despatch,” and ordered Captain Totten of the Engineers across the river, with intrenching tools, to lay out a fortified camp.
Toward noon General Van Rensselaer himself crossed with Christie to Queenston and climbed the hill, where Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott had appeared as a volunteer and taken the command of Captain Wool’s force. Toward three o’clock Lieutenant-Colonel Christie joined the party on the hill. Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New York militia was also on the ground, and some few men arrived, until three hundred and fifty regulars and two hundred and fifty militia are said to have been collected on the heights. From their position, at two o’clock, Van Rensselaer and Scott made out the scarlet line of the Forty-first Regiment advancing from Fort George. From Chippawa every British soldier who could be spared hurried to join the Forty-first, while a swarm of Indians swept close on the American line, covering the junction of the British forces and the turning movement of General Sheaffe round the foot of the hill. About one thousand men, chiefly regulars, were concentrating against the six hundred Americans on the heights.[305] General Van Rensselaer, alarmed at the sight, hastened to recross the river to Lewiston for reinforcements.
“By this time,” concluded Van Rensselaer in his report of the next day,[306] “I perceived my troops were embarking very slowly I passed immediately over to accelerate their movements; but to my utter astonishment I found that at the very moment when complete victory was in our hands the ardor of the unengaged troops had entirely subsided. I rode in all directions, urged the men by every consideration to pass over; but in vain. Lieutenant-Colonel Bloom who
had been wounded in the action returned, mounted his horse, and rode through the camp, as did also Judge Peck who happened to be here, exhorting the companies to proceed; but all in vain ”
More unfortunate than Hull, Van Rensselaer stood on the American heights and saw his six hundred gallant soldiers opposite slowly enveloped, shot down, and at last crushed by about a thousand men who could not have kept the field a moment against the whole American force. Scott and his six hundred were pushed over the cliff down to the bank of the river. The boatmen had all fled with the boats. Nothing remained but to surrender; and under the Indian fire even surrender was difficult. Scott succeeded only by going himself to the British line through the Indians, who nearly killed him as he went.
In this day’s work ninety Americans were reported as killed. The number of wounded can only be estimated. Not less than nine hundred men surrendered, including skulkers and militia-men who never reached the heights. Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New York militia, Lieutenant-Colonel Fenwick of the U. S. Light Artillery, Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott of the Second Artillery, and, among officers of less rank, Captain Totten of the Engineers were among the prisoners. Van Rensselaer’s campaign did not, like that of Hull, cost a province, but it sacrificed nearly as many effective troops as were surrendered by Hull.
General Van Rensselaer the next day sent his report of the affair to General Dearborn, and added a request to be relieved of his command. Dearborn, who knew little of the circumstances, ordered him to transfer the command to General Smyth, and wrote to Washington a bitter complaint of Van Rensselaer’s conduct, which he attributed to jealousy of the regular service.[307]
Hitherto the military movements against Canada had been directed by Eastern men. Alexander Smyth belonged to a different class. Born in Ireland in 1765, his fortunes led him to Virginia, where he became a respectable member of the Southwestern bar and served in the State legislature. Appointed in 1808 by President Jefferson colonel of the new rifle regiment, in 1812 he became inspector-general, with the rank of brigadier. By his own request he
received command of the brigade ordered to Niagara, and his succession to Van Rensselaer followed of course. Dearborn, knowing little of Smyth, was glad to intrust the army to a regular officer in whom he felt confidence; yet an Irish temperament with a Virginian education promised the possibility of a campaign which if not more disastrous than that led by William Hull of Massachusetts, or by Stephen Van Rensselaer of New York, might be equally eccentric.
October 24 Smyth took command at Buffalo, and three weeks later the public read in the newspapers an address issued by him to the “Men of New York,” written in a style hitherto unusual in American warfare.
“For many years,” Smyth announced to the Men of New York,[308] “you have seen your country oppressed with numerous wrongs. Your government, although above all others devoted to peace, has been forced to draw the sword, and rely for redress of injuries on the valor of the American people That valor has been conspicuous But the nation has been unfortunate in the selection of some of those who have directed it One army has been disgracefully surrendered and lost Another has been sacrificed by a precipitate attempt to pass it over at the strongest point of the enemy’s lines with most incompetent means The cause of these miscarriages is apparent The commanders were popular men, ‘destitute alike of theory and experience’ in the art of war.”
Unmilitary as such remarks were, the address continued in a tone more and more surprising, until at last it became burlesque.
“In a few days the troops under my command will plant the American standard in Canada They are men accustomed to obedience, silence, and steadiness They will conquer, or they will die
“Will you stand with your arms folded and look on this interesting struggle? Are you not related to the men who fought at Bennington and Saratoga? Has the race degenerated? Or have you, under the baneful influence of contending factions, forgot your country? Must I turn from you and ask the men of the Six Nations to support the government of the United States? Shall I imitate the officers of the British king, and suffer our ungathered laurels to be tarnished by ruthless deeds? Shame, where is thy blush! No!”
The respectable people of the neighborhood were not wholly discouraged by this call or by a second proclamation, November 17, as little military as the first; or even by an address of Peter B. Porter offering to lead his neighbors into Canada under the command of the “able and experienced officer” who within a few days could and would “occupy all the British fortresses on the Niagara River.” A certain number of volunteers offered themselves for the service, although not only the attack but also its details were announced in advance. The British responded by bombarding Black Rock and Fort Niagara; and although their cannon did little harm, they were more effective than the proclamations of the American generals.
November 25 General Smyth issued orders for the invasion, which were also unusual in their character, and prescribed even the gestures and attitudes of the attacking force:[309] “At twenty yards distance the soldiers will be ordered to trail arms, advance with shouts, fire at five paces distance, and charge bayonets. The soldiers will be silent above all things.” In obedience to these orders, everything was prepared, November 27, for the crossing, and once more orders were issued in an inspiring tone:[310]
“Friends of your country! ye who have ‘the will to do, the heart to dare!’ the moment ye have wished for has arrived! Think on your country’s honors torn! her rights trampled on! her sons enslaved! her infants perishing by the hatchet! Be strong! be brave! and let the ruffian power of the British king cease on this continent!”
Two detachments were to cross the river from Black Rock before dawn, November 28, to surprise and disable the enemy’s batteries and to destroy a bridge five miles below; after this should be done the army was to cross. The British were supposed to have not more than a thousand men within twenty miles to resist the attack of three thousand men from Buffalo. Apparently Smyth’s calculations were correct. His two detachments crossed the river at three o’clock on the morning of November 28 and gallantly, though with severe loss, captured and disabled the guns and tore up a part of the bridge without destroying it. At sunrise the army began to embark at the navy yard, but the embarkation continued so slowly that toward afternoon, when all the boats were occupied, only twelve hundred
men, with artillery, were on board. “The troops thus embarked,” reported Smyth,[311] “moved up the stream to Black Rock without sustaining loss from the enemy’s fire. It was now afternoon, and they were ordered to disembark and dine.”
This was all. No more volunteers appeared, and no other regulars fit for service remained. Smyth would not cross without three thousand men, and doubtless was right in his caution; but he showed want of courage not so much in this failure to redeem his pledges, as in his subsequent attempt to throw responsibility on subordinates, and on Dearborn who had requested him to consult some of his officers occasionally, and be prepared if possible to cross into Canada with three thousand men at once.[312] Smyth consulted his officers at the moment when consultation was fatal.
“Recollecting your instructions to cross with three thousand men at once, and to consult some of my principal officers in ‘all important movements,’ I called for the field officers of the regulars and twelvemonths volunteers embarked.”
The council of war decided not to risk the crossing. Winder, who was considered the best of Smyth’s colonels, had opposed the scheme from the first, and reported the other officers as strongly against it. Smyth was aware of their opinions, and his appeal to them could have no object but to shift responsibility After receiving their decision, Smyth sent a demand for the surrender of Fort Erie, “to spare the effusion of blood,” and then ordered his troops to their quarters. The army obeyed with great discontent, but fifteen hundred men still mustered in the boats, when two days afterward Smyth issued another order to embark. Once more Smyth called a council of war, and once more decided to abandon the invasion. With less than three thousand men in the boats at once, the General would not stir.
Upon this, General Smyth’s army dissolved. “A scene of confusion ensued which it is difficult to describe,” wrote Peter B. Porter soon afterward,[313]—“about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their muskets in every direction.” They showed a preference for General Smyth’s tent as their target, which
caused the General to shift his quarters repeatedly A few days afterward Peter B. Porter published a letter to a Buffalo newspaper, attributing the late disgrace “to the cowardice of General Smyth.”[314] The General sent a challenge to his subordinate officer, and exchanged shots with him. Smyth next requested permission to visit his family, which Dearborn hastened to grant; and three months afterward, as General Smyth did not request an inquiry into the causes of his failure, the President without express authority of law dropped his name from the army roll.
When Dearborn received the official report of Smyth’s grotesque campaign, he was not so much annoyed by its absurdities as he was shocked to learn that nearly four thousand regular troops sent to Niagara in the course of the campaign could not supply a thousand for crossing the river.[315] Further inquiry explained that sickness had swept away more than half the army The brigade of regulars at Buffalo, which with the exception of Winder’s regiment had never fired a musket, was reduced to less than half its original number, and both officers and men were unfit for active duty.[316] Only rest and care could restore the army to efficiency.
The failures of Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth created a scandal so noisy that little was thought of General Dearborn; yet Dearborn still commanded on Lake Champlain the largest force then under arms, including seven regiments of the regular army, with artillery and dragoons. He clung to the idea of an attack on Montreal simultaneous with Smyth’s movement at Niagara.[317] November 8, he wrote from Albany to Eustis that he was about to join the army under General Bloomfield at Plattsburg.[318]
“I have been detained several days by a severe rheumatic attack, but I shall, by the aid of Dr. Mann, be able to set off this day toward Lake Champlain, where I trust General Bloomfield will be able to move toward Montreal, and with the addition of three thousand regular troops that place might be carried and held this winter; but I cannot consent to crossing the St. Lawrence with an uncertainty of being able to remain there.”
Whatever were Dearborn’s motives for undertaking the movement, his official report[319] explained that on arriving at Plattsburg he found General Bloomfield ill, and was himself obliged to take command, November 19, when he marched the army about twenty miles to the Canadian line. At that point the militia declined to go further, and Dearborn as quietly as possible, November 23, marched back to Plattsburg. His campaign lasted four days, and he did not enter Canada.
Whether Dearborn, Smyth, or William Hull would have improved the situation by winning a victory or by losing a battle was a question to be answered by professional soldiers; but the situation at best was bad, and when the report of Smyth’s crowning failure reached Dearborn it seemed for a moment to overcome his sorely tried temper. “I had anticipated disappointment and misfortune in the commencement of the war,” he wrote to Eustis,[320] “but I did by no means apprehend such a deficiency of regular troops and such a series of disasters as we have witnessed.” He intimated his readiness to accept the responsibility which properly belonged to him, and to surrender his command. “I shall be happy to be released by any gentleman whose talents and popularity will command the confidence of the Government and the country.” To the President he wrote at the same time:[321] “It will be equally agreeable to me to employ such moderate talents as I possess in the service of my country, or to be permitted to retire to the shades of private life, and remain a mere but interested spectator of passing events.”
CHAPTER XVII.
C as was the helplessness of the War Department in 1812, the public neither understood nor knew how to enforce responsibility for disasters which would have gone far to cost a European war minister his life, as they might have cost his nation its existence. By fortune still kinder, the Navy Department escaped penalty of any sort for faults nearly as serious as those committed by its rival. The navy consisted, besides gunboats, of three heavy frigates rated as carrying forty-four guns; three lighter frigates rated at thirty-eight guns; one of thirty-two, and one of twenty-eight; besides two ships of eighteen guns, two brigs of sixteen, and four brigs of fourteen and twelve,—in all sixteen sea-going vessels, twelve of which were probably equal to any vessels afloat of the same class. The eight frigates were all built by Federalist Congresses before President Jefferson’s time; the smaller craft, except one, were built under the influence of the war with Tripoli. The Administration which declared war against England did nothing to increase the force. Few of the ships were in first-rate condition. The officers complained that the practice of laying up the frigates in port hastened their decay, and declared that hardly a frigate in the service was as sound as she should be. For this negligence Congress was alone responsible; but the Department perhaps shared the blame for want of readiness when war was declared.
The only ships actually ready for sea, June 18, were the “President,” 44, commanded by Commodore Rodgers, at New York, and the “United States,” 44, which had cruised to the southward with the “Congress,” 38, and “Argus,” 16, under the command of Commodore Decatur. Secretary Hamilton, May 21, sent orders to Decatur to prepare for war, and June 5 wrote more urgently:[322] “Have the ships under your command immediately ready for extensive active service, and proceed with them to New York, where you will join Commodore Rodgers and wait further orders. Prepare for battle, which I hope will add to your fame.” To Rodgers he wrote on the same day in much the same words:[323] “Be prepared in all
respects for extensive service.” He asked both officers for their advice how to make the navy most useful. Rodgers’s reply, if he made one, was not preserved; but Decatur answered from Norfolk, June 8,[324]
“The plan which appears to me to be the best calculated for our little navy ... would be to send them out with as large a supply of provisions as they can carry, distant from our coast and singly, or not more than two frigates in company, without giving them any specific instructions as to place of cruising, but to rely on the enterprise of the officers.”
The Department hesitated to adopt Decatur’s advice, and began by an effort to concentrate all its ships at New York,—an attempt in which Secretary Hamilton could not wholly succeed, for the “Constellation” and the “Chesapeake,” 38-gun frigates, and the “Adams,” 28, were not in condition for sea; the “Essex,” 32, was not quite ready, and the “Wasp,” 18, was bringing despatches from Europe, while the “Constitution,” 44, detained at Annapolis by the difficulty of shipping a new crew, could not sail within three weeks. The secretary ordered Captain Hull, who commanded the “Constitution,” to make his way to New York with the utmost speed, and if his crew were in proper condition, to look for the British frigate “Belvidera” on the way. The only ships that could be brought to New York without delay were those of Decatur at Norfolk. To him the secretary, on the declaration of war, sent orders to proceed with all despatch northwards, and “to notice the British flag if it presents itself” on the way. “The ‘Belvidera’ is said to be on our coast,” added the secretary.[325] Before this letter reached Norfolk, Decatur and his squadron sailed from the Chesapeake and were already within sight of Sandy Hook; so that the only orders from the Navy Department which immediately affected the movement of the frigates were those sent to New York for Commodore Rodgers and the frigate “President,” but which included Decatur’s squadron when it should arrive.
“For the present,” wrote the secretary to Rodgers,[326] “it is desirable that with the force under your command you remain in such position as to enable you most conveniently to receive further more
