History Assignment

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

1. A Dangerous New World, 1607–1689 2. The Colonial Wars, 1689–1763 3. The American Revolution, 1763–1783 4. Preserving the New Republic’s Independence, 1783–1815 5. The Armed Forces and National Expansion, 1815–1860 6. The Civil War, 1861–1862 7. The Civil War, 1863–1865 8. From Postwar Demobilization Toward Great Power Status, 1865–1898 9. The Birth of an American Empire, 1898–1902

10. Building the Military Forces of a World Power, 1899–1917 11. The United States Fights in the “War to End All Wars,” 1917–1918 12. Military Policy Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939 13. The United States and World War II: From the Edge of Defeat to the

Edge of Victory, 1939–1943 14. The United States and World War II: The Road to Victory, 1943–1945 15. Cold War and Hot War: The United States Enters the Age of Nuclear

Deterrence and Collective Security, 1945–1953 16. Waging Cold War: American Defense Policy for Extended Deterrence

and Containment, 1953–1965 17. In Dubious Battle: Vietnam, 1961–1967 18. The Lost War: Vietnam, 1968–1975 19. The Common Defense and the End of the Cold War, 1976–1993 20. World Disorder New and Old, 1993–2001 21. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001–2011

Photographs

APPENDICES Appendix A. Participation and Losses, Major Wars, 1775–2012

Appendix B. The Armed Forces and National Expansion Appendix C. The Armed Forces of the Cold War and After Appendix D. U.S. Troops Stationed Abroad Appendix E. American Military and Diplomatic Deaths, Terrorist

and Military Actions, 1980–2000

INDEX

The Chapter Bibliographies and General Bibliography can be accessed online at the Free Press author pages: http://www.SimonandSchuster.com, and Professor Feis’s webpage at Buena Vista University: http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html

Acknowledgments

Writing the acknowledgments for a book that is thirty years old and now takes new life in a third edition is more challenging than writing the book. It does not become easier when the book has three authors. As the senior author, I have usurped the role of writing these acknowledgments in order to avoid pronoun confusion. Peter Maslowski and William B. Feis are blameless for any oversights or insensitivities our readers may spy.

This book had its start in my first exposure to a class in American military history taught by my adviser, the late Harry L. Coles, at The Ohio State University. Harry assigned us Walter Millis’s Arms and Men (1956). Given the choices in 1963, the book was the right one for a course that stressed civil-military relations and the political and social influences on strategy. Having just finished three years as a Marine infantry officer, I didn’t want to read a textbook written for ROTC cadets about leadership and patriotism, the general focus of the other potential texts. On the other hand, Millis had little feel for how military organizations work (or don’t), and his grasp of operational problems lacked expertise. Harry agreed— and said I should try to do better some day. That day came sooner than he and I anticipated.

I had the good fortune to return to The Ohio State University in 1969

after teaching at the University of Missouri-Columbia for

three years. Harry Coles had become department chair, and

I inherited his one-quarter (ten-week) course on American

military history, from Jamestown to the nuclear age. I had

used Millis at Missouri and did not like it for a semester

course. I liked it even less on the quarter system. On the

other hand, I also inherited a stellar group of graduate

students, among them Calvin Christman, Robert Daugherty,

J. Frederick Shiner, and Peter Maslowski. Peter and I shared

several interests, among them bird-watching and basketball.

Peter finished his dissertation despite my mentoring, went

to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, taught American

military history, and agreed with me that the book choices

still left much to be desired. By now we had a new

candidate, Russell F.

Weigley’s The American Way of War (1973); but Russ, I

thought, worked too hard to make military history (often just

army history) fit his criticism of American strategy in

Vietnam. Through the 1970s, as Peter and I taught and

wrote other books, we talked about writing our own text.

Peter took the initiative in opening negotiations with the

Free Press, and soon we had a contract and a chance to

write, not just gripe.

NO GENERAL HISTORY of American military policy could exist without the contributions of the two generations of scholars whose books, essays, and articles provide the foundation for this book. Our debt to them, acknowledged in the online chapter and general bibliographies (http://www.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html and the Free Press author pages at http://www.SimonandSchuster.com) is complete. We hope they recognize their contributions among our breezy assertions and breathtaking generalizations. We are indebted to our colleagues who volunteered their considerable talent and precious time to critique our individual chapters. Peter, the author of Chapters 1 through 9 for the first two editions, appreciated the advice of Dr. Douglas E. Leach, Dr. Don Higginbotham, Dr. Charles Royster, Dr. Richard H. Kohn, Dr. Craig L. Symonds, Dr.

Francis Paul Prucha, Dr. K. Jack Bauer, Dr. Archer Jones, Dr.

Frank E. Vandiver, Dr.

James A. Rawley, Dr. John Y. Simon, Dr. James M. McPherson,

Dr. Robert M. Utley, Dr.

Benjamin Franklin Cooling III, Dr. Graham A. Cosmas, and Dr.

David F. Trask, all experts on the American military

experience from the colonial period to the twentieth century.

Dr. Patrice M. Berger of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

history department, Lawrence J. Baack (a former history

professor), and Ms. Barbara Rader also provided Peter with

evaluations from perspectives professional but

unspecialized in U.S. history. Peter asked his mother, Edna

H. Maslowski, to read portions of several chapters to check

his literary English in the first edition.

I wrote Chapters 10 through 17 of the first edition with the sound advice of a distinguished platoon of specialists in twentieth-century American military history: Dr. Timothy K. Nenninger, Dr. Dean C. Allard, Dr. Daniel R. Beaver, Dr. Donald Smythe, Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, Colonel J. F. Shiner, USAF, Dr. Gerald E. Wheeler, Dr.

Williamson Murray, Mr. Kenneth H. Watman, Mr. Charles

MacDonald, Dr. Ronald H. Spector, Dr. John L. Gaddis,

Colonel Roy K. Flint, USA, Lieutenant Colonel Harry

Borowski, USAF, Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA

(Ret.), Dr. David Alan Rosenberg, Brigadier General Edwin H.

Simmons, USMC (Ret.), Dr. George C. Herring, Dr.

David S. Sorenson, and Dr. Joseph J. Kruzel. We also want to

thank those members of the history departments of the U.S.

Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy who

reviewed parts of the original manuscript.

From its inception, this study enjoyed the support of the Mershon Center for Education and Research in National Security at The Ohio State University, directed successively by Dr. Richard K. Snyder and Dr. Charles F. Hermann, when this book was first written. In addition, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln provided Peter with a Faculty Development

Fellowship and Maude Hammond Fling Summer Fellowship in order to work on this book.

Mrs. Yvonne Holsinger and the staff of the graphic arts division of The Ohio State University’s Teaching Aids Laboratory drew the maps that have graced this book for almost thirty years. In addition, Joyce Seltzer and Robert Harrington of the Free Press offered valuable suggestions on the original manuscript.

AFTER TEN YEARS, Peter and I agreed that For the Common Defense needed a fresh coat of learning and updating. We had suggestions for improvement from reviewers, from other historians who used the book in their classes, and from our students, never shy in commenting about their readings. Since our readers had not found whole sections of the book wrongheaded, we agreed that peer review of every word in every chapter need not slow our revision process. The only original addition was Chapter

18 and the Epilogue, which started with the end of the

Vietnam War and carried the narrative through the Gulf War,

which I wrote. Even though Peter did not have to rewrite

Chapters 1 through 9, he sent these chapters or portions of

them to Dr. Ira D.

Gruber, Dr. Robert Wooster, Dr. Donald R. Hickey, and Dr.

Brian Linn for review. As I recall, they liked the chapters very

much. Since I had one new chapter that needed close

review, I asked my colleague Dr. Williamson Murray to read

it, and we turned to an uncommon graduate student, Jay

Young, whose government service in the 1980s made him

especially expert on the defense policy of the Reagan era.

For the Gulf War, I relied upon Brigadier General Edwin H.

Simmons, USMC (Ret.), director of the Marine Corps History

and Museums Division and my former commanding officer

when I headed the fighting historians of MTU DC-4. After my

retirement from the USMCR in 1990, the dedicated reserves

of DC-4 covered the Gulf War on the ground, and I saw their

early drafts, as well as some operational summaries. To

finish the review process, we asked Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose

to read the whole manuscript and participate in a panel

discussion of the book at the March 1993 meeting of the

Southwestern Social Sciences Association in New Orleans.

Steve read the entire manuscript with the highest standards

of professional attentiveness and made recommendations I

accepted without regret.

The last and most important participant in the second review process was a graduate student from Lincoln, Nebraska, named William B. Feis. Bill had taken large doses of For the Common Defense as an undergraduate history major and an MA graduate student, administered by his adviser, Professor Peter Maslowski. As my advisee and Civil War reenactor “pard,” Bill was unlucky enough to become a research assistant and copy editor on the second edition. He escaped the editorial trap only by completing his dissertation in 1997, fleeing to a faculty appointment at Buena Vista University in Iowa. Peter and I tracked his escape route and agreed that we would find more work for him someday.

When we persuaded the Free Press that a book in continued use in American classrooms should be revised again, Peter and I turned for help to Dr. Calvin Christman, another Ohio State graduate who had just retired from a distinguished teaching career at Cedar Valley Community College in Dallas, Texas, with graduate teaching experience at North Texas University. We asked Cal to work on the bibliographies and read any new material we wrote. His work had just begun when Cal learned he had cancer, which killed him on August 24, 2011. Fortunately, Bill Feis responded to our mild coercion and joined us as a full partner, happy with the opportunity to exact red-pencil revenge on his former advisers. Bill became the essential editor in making the third edition possible against tight deadlines. With the aid of his academic assistant Zoey Reisdorf, he also assembled the online bibliographies. We know we tried his legendary patience and that of his talented wife, Dr. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, an accomplished teacher and published historian of the World War II Vietnamese-OSS collaboration. Bill took over assembling the final manuscript under demanding time and distance conditions that would

have staggered anyone. In the fall of 2011, Bill lost his father and grandfather, but pressed on.

In addition to using Bill’s wide knowledge as the foundation for the review of the third edition, we continued to seek student reaction to the book. I had a class of graduate students at the University of New Orleans critique the whole second revision in 2009, and they found several errors and gaps. The next summer I had a class at the University of Hawaii- Manoa do a chapter-by-chapter review as part of a class on American military history. One of this group, Manuel Ortega, proved especially careful in his analysis.

As I coped with two new chapters that dealt with the complex interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, I sought the advice of former students who had seen these distant wars at close range: Peter Mansoor, Mark Jacobson, Jay Young, and David Gray. I sought information on Iraqi missiles and their nemesis, the Patriot antimissile missile, from Bryon Greenwald, a career air-defense officer. Wick Murray provided me with the publications of the Iraqi Perspectives Project. Dr. Richard W. Stewart, chief historian of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, graciously provided the high-quality maps and sound advice.

Peter, Bill, and I are indebted to all those who contributed to this book, and we thank them for their role in its publication. Any errors or omissions are our burden and not theirs.

There are those whose influence deserves special mention. Peter and I were fortunate to have role models for perfection and perseverance in two World War II veterans, Technical Sergeant Karl H. Maslowski and Colonel John D. Millett, who remained interested in our writing until they died.

We are especially indebted to our wives. Peter’s wife, Linda

Maslowski, has always been a source of patience and wise

counsel. In my case, I had the good sense to marry Martha

E. Farley, whom I met at Ohio State and married in 1980

before publication of the first edition. As a historian and

teacher, Martha brought special insight to writing a book

designed principally for university undergraduates.

Her contribution as researcher, editor, and typist for the

third edition was essential to the book’s completion. She

also has been a full partner in our association with our

colleagues in the International Commission of Military

History, who have used this book abroad with their students

and arranged to have it translated into Spanish, Japanese,

and Chinese.

The challenge of defending the United States of America will not disappear, and all of us should try to understand the nation’s peculiar exercise of military power for the common good. As I write this, the nation is beginning celebrations (for lack of a better word) of the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the sesquicentennial of the War of the Rebellion (known in some areas as the War Between the States), the seventieth anniversary of American participation in World War II, and the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Korean War. Will we celebrate the commitment of ground troops to Vietnam in 2015, the fiftieth anniversary of that perilous fight? I suspect so. One hopes that American students will think long and hard about this nation’s wars and that this book will help them deal with a past that will not go away.

Allan R. Millett

New Orleans, 2012

Introduction

Although we are pleased that the original 1984 edition and 1994 revised edition of For the Common Defense have stood the test of time so well, the ongoing important national defense issues of the last eighteen years and the superb scholarship in military history since 1994 warrant this third edition. We have been encouraged in our efforts by teachers who have continued to use the second edition, even though American military history took on new directions in the Balkans and Muslim world since its publication.

We have reviewed all of the text for currency and accuracy. Where we found errors of fact and printing, we have corrected them. We have made the most changes in areas where our own research interests have taken us in the last eighteen years. I rewrote the account of the Korean War to reflect fifteen years of research. The Vietnam War is now divided into two chapters written by Peter, a subject of his recent research. There are now two chapters on the end of the Cold War and the new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2001–2011, the decade characterized by the George W. Bush administration as the “Global War on Terrorism.”

Readers will search in vain in this book for dramatic new interpretations or radical departures in intellectual approach. We are aware that others may take issue with our reluctance to add novel twists and unexpected turns to our narrative. We have not taken the easy road of alternative or counter-factual history. We have tried to maintain the distinction between “what if” and “what was,” although “so what” remains a matter of reasonable debate. We hope we have provided the right balance of fact and interpretation to make any discussion of American military history meaningful, whether the debate involves contemporary defense policy or some aspect of American history, such as race relations, in which military history provides relevant testimony.

Our bibliographic suggestions (http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html and the Free Press

author pages at http://www.SimonandSchuster.com) require some explanation. Except in special cases, we have omitted journal articles, for several reasons. Many articles become books. Others are superseded by other books. The availability of journal contents on the internet makes finding an article by subject relatively easy. By stressing books, we have chosen works that are current, reliable, tested, and probably available at public and university libraries. We have leaned toward books that are in print. We have chosen to make selections on the principles of “If you were to read one book on . . . ,” although we know two or three books might be useful. We apologize to those authors who feel ignored or aggrieved, but modern technology has saved the works of the just and the unjust, so everyone now has electronic immortality, or at least their books do.

Writing military history is an ancient craft, but since classical times military historians have focused almost exclusively on battles and the conduct of war. After World War II, however, American historians began to treat military history in broad political, economic, social, and institutional terms. Although retaining some elements of the “old” military history, this book falls more clearly into the “new” military history genre of the post–World War II era. Battle connoisseurs will sniff a hint of gunpowder throughout the book, since it discusses the major campaigns in all of America’s wars. The details of military operations and the problems of combat leadership and tactics are limited to those developments and events that demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the armed forces as they implement national policy. The primary purposes of this book are to analyze the development of military policy and to examine the characteristics of military policy as influenced by America’s international relations and domestic development.

Six major themes place United States military history within the broad context of American history. First, rational military considerations alone have rarely shaped military policies and programs. The political system and societal values have imposed constraints on defense affairs. A preoccupation with private gain, a reluctance to pay taxes, a distaste for military service, and a fear of large standing forces have at various times imposed severe limitations on the availability of monetary and manpower resources.

Second, American defense policy has traditionally been built upon pluralistic military institutions, most noticeably a mixed force of professionals and citizen-soldiers. These pluralistic institutions reflect the diverse attitudes of professional soldiers, citizen-soldiers, and antimilitary and pacifistic citizens about the role of state-sponsored force in the nation’s life.

Third, despite the popular belief that the United States has generally been unprepared for war, policymakers have done remarkably well in preserving the nation’s security. For most of American history, especially from the nineteenth century onward, policymakers realized that geographic distance from dangerous adversaries, the European balance of power, and growing material and manpower mobilization potential were powerful assets. When gauging America’s strength against potential enemies, policymakers realized that the nation could devote its energies and financial resources to internal development rather than to maintaining a large and expensive peacetime military establishment. However, mobilizing simultaneously with a war’s outbreak has extracted high costs in terms of speed and ease with each new mobilization.

Fourth, the nation’s firm commitment to civilian control of military policy requires careful attention to civil-military relations. The commitment to civilian control makes military policy a paramount function of the federal government, where the executive branch and Congress share the power to shape policy. The Constitution makes the president commander in chief (Article II, Section 2) and gives Congress the responsibility of organizing and funding the armed forces it creates, as well as passing laws about what forces do and how they are managed (Article I, Section 8). The Congress has the power to declare war, and it can influence any military activity through the legislative and appropriations process, should it choose to do so. The two branches are supposed to work in concert for “the common defense.”

Although the influence of the federal system on military policy faded by the end of the twentieth century, national-state-local relations have defined much of defense policy for the preceding three centuries. While the Constitution defines what the national government can do, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) tells the national government what it cannot do, and one prohibition is that the national government cannot

monopolize military power. The Second Amendment permits other levels of government, like a state or county, to form military forces to meet local emergencies. In 1789 these crises might have included an invasion from Canada or Florida, piracy, Native American raids, slave revolts, urban or rural uprisings, political protests and election disruption, and ethnic and family feuds. It was an era in which civilian policing was notoriously ineffective in the hands of county sheriffs and urban constables. Depending on the threat and the powers of “calling forth” authority, citizens were supposed to arm themselves and be available for emergency service as an obligation of citizenship. There are, of course, other more novel interpretations of the Second Amendment.

Fifth, the armed forces have become progressively more nationalized and professionalized. Beginning with the American Revolution, the services have increasingly been raised and supported by the federal government and used for purposes defined by the federal government. Although civilians ultimately control military policy, the professionalization of officership, a trend that has progressed rapidly since the early nineteenth century, has had important consequences for the conduct of military affairs, since career officers in the national service (as opposed to officers appointed only in wartime) have progressively monopolized high command positions and advisory positions.

Finally, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, but especially during the twentieth century, industrialization has shaped the way the nation has fought. In particular, the United States has used increasingly sophisticated technology to overcome logistical limitations, primarily in transportation, and to match enemy numbers with firepower. This dependence upon industry and technology in executing military policy has placed enormous burdens on career military officers and the defense industry, and it is very costly.

Military history requires some attention to definitions. Policy is the sum of the assumptions, plans, programs, and actions taken by the citizens of the United States, principally through governmental action, to ensure the physical security of their lives, property, and way of life from external military attack and domestic insurrection. Although military force has been used in both domestic and foreign crises that did not involve national survival, the definition of policy remains rooted to the prevention

or termination of a military threat faced collectively by the American people. War is a less elusive concept, since it enjoys centuries of political and judicial definition. It is the application of state violence in the name of policy. It involves killing and wounding people and destroying property until the survivors abandon their military resistance or the belligerents come to a negotiated agreement. War aims are the purposes for which wars are fought. Strategy, the general concepts for the use of military force, is derived from war aims. In wartime, strategy is normally expressed in terms of missions, geographic areas of operations, the timing of operations, and the allocation of forces.

Each element of the armed forces has an operational doctrine, which is an institutional concept for planning and conducting operations. Taking into account such factors as their mission, the enemy situation, the terrain, and the combat and logistical capabilities of the available forces, service leaders develop their organizations’ capabilities. For example, the U.S. Army Air Forces of World War II expressed a strategic theory when arguing that Nazi Germany could be bombed into submission. But when the USAAF chose to conduct the bombing with massed bomber formations in daylight raids against industrial targets, it defined an operational doctrine. Tactics is the actual conduct of battle, the application of fire and maneuver by fighting units in order to destroy the physical ability and will of the enemy’s armed forces. To continue the example of the bombing campaign against Germany, the USAAF bombers grouped themselves in combat “boxes” to create overlapping arcs of machine-gun fire against German fighters; their fighter escorts— when they had them—attacked the German fighters before they reached the bomber formations. In addition, the bombers varied their altitude and direction to confuse antiaircraft artillery fire. They also dropped tons of metallic chaff to foil enemy radar. These techniques were tactical, since their goal was the immediate destruction or demoralization of a specific enemy force.

Americans have had a peculiar ambivalence toward war. They have traditionally and sincerely viewed themselves as a peaceful, unmilitaristic people, and yet they have hardly been unwarlike. Statistics alone testify to the pervasive presence of war in the nation’s history, for tens of millions of Americans have served in wartime and more than a million have died in

uniform. Understanding both this paradoxical love-hate attitude toward war and the relationship among military institutions, war, and society is essential in comprehending America’s past, its present, and its future.

Of the authors of The Federalist Papers, James Madison could claim the least familiarity with military affairs, for unlike Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he had known neither the sting of battle nor the tension of international diplomacy during the American Revolution. In contrast to Hamilton, who had conducted an inquiry on post-Revolution defense policy, or Jay, who had directed the perilous diplomacy of the new nation under the Articles of Confederation, Madison had made his postwar reputation as a cerebral congressional surrogate for his famous Virginia colleague Thomas Jefferson. During the Constitutional Convention, however, Madison emerged as one of the architects of the Constitution with which its framers hoped to reorganize the newly independent states. Thus when the fight for ratification came to the crucial state of New York, Madison was a natural choice to be one of the three authors of “Publius” essays, advocating a stronger central government. Surprisingly, Madison contributed an essay on Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, applying his analytical skill to No. 41 of The Federalist Papers. The issue was empowering the government to conduct the nation’s defense.

To Madison, the Constitution’s provisions for the central control of military policy seemed self-evident. “Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union. The powers requisite for attaining it must be effectually confided to the federal councils.” It was unthinkable to him that defense would not be the domain of the national government. “Is the power of raising armies and equipping fleets necessary?” Madison could imagine no constitutional limits upon the government because there would be no limits upon the nation’s potential enemies. “How could the readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit in like manner the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?” Perhaps he remembered George Washington’s quip that the Constitution would not limit the size of other nations’ armies even if it set a ceiling on America’s standing forces. “The means of security can only be regulated by the means and danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules and no other. It is in vain to oppose

constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain. . . . If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.”

Many seasons have passed and years have rolled by since Madison argued that the Constitution provided the best hope for the common defense, but his rationale stands intact. Although he could have foreseen neither the global reach of American interests nor the intricacies of dividing the responsibility for the common defense between the executive and legislative branches, Madison would not have been surprised to see the contentiousness with which the nation makes its decisions to spend the lives and treasure of its citizens. Thus it has been since the first shots on Lexington Green and at Concord Bridge. Madison understood that the cost of defense would always compete with the individual and collective “pursuit of happiness.” He could only hope that the innate wisdom of the American citizenry would correctly evaluate the degree of shared danger, the measure of ever-present risk, and allocate resources accordingly.

The dominant leaders of Madison’s generation understood that moral suasion alone could not guard the Republic. The question of national survival is no less compelling now than it was in the nation’s infant years. Whether or not the United States will rightly judge the delicate balance between its internal development and its influence upon world affairs, still shaped by the exercise of military power, remains a question that history can only partially answer. Yet the history of American military policy suggests that the dangers will not disappear. Neither will the political responsibility to face them, for they will not evaporate with wishful thinking. When the olive branches wilt, the arrows must be sturdy. Only another history can answer whether the people of the United States in the twenty-first century understand that constant vigilance is the price of liberty.

Allan R. Millett

New Orleans, 2012

Chapter Bibliographies and General Bibliography

for the Third Edition

can be accessed online at

the Free Press author pages:

http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

and

Professor Feis’s webpage at Buena Vista University:

http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html

ONE

A Dangerous New World, 1607–1689

Crossing the Atlantic during the seventeenth century was a perilous voyage, entailing weeks or months of cramped quarters, inadequate food, and unsanitary conditions. Yet in the late 1500s Englishmen had begun to hazard the venture, and in 1607 they planted their first permanent settlement on the North American continent at Jamestown. By the early 1730s, thirteen separate colonies hugged the seaboard. Although great diversity prevailed among the colonies, most colonists shared a common English heritage and clung to it tenaciously. Their religious attitudes, economic views, political thoughts, and military ideals and institutions were all grounded in English history. In no aspect of colonial life was this heritage more important than in regard to military matters. The colonists’ most revered military institution (the militia) and their most cherished military tradition (fear of a standing army) both came from England.

The English Inheritance

The earliest English settlers arrived in a dangerous New World. The initial colonies represented little more than amphibious landings on a hostile coastline followed by the consolidation of small, insecure beachheads. The settlers did not take possession of an uninhabited land, but settled in regions controlled by various Native American tribes. Fortunately for the colonists, they unwittingly landed in areas that had recently experienced precipitous population losses among the Indians. Europeans made periodic contact with the natives long before they established permanent colonies. These transient visitors left a devastating legacy of smallpox,

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measles, and other European diseases, for which the natives had no built- in immunities. But the colonists soon learned that the Indians, even in their weakened state, were a formidable adversary. Nor were Indians the only military threat. The English settled in lands also claimed by their European rivals, and the memory of the raids conducted by the Spanish, French, and English against each other’s outposts in the Caribbean and along the Florida coast undoubtedly haunted many colonists. The fear of pillaging buccaneers and pirates who infested coastal waterways compounded the potential problem posed by European enemies.

Colonists faced these threats alone. Although the English monarch authorized their expeditions and granted extensive lands for settlement, the Crown expected the colonists to defend themselves. With few illusions about their precarious position, colonists came to the New World armed and, anticipating conflict, gave prompt attention to defense. Professional soldiers accompanied the expeditions to Jamestown, Plymouth, and succeeding colonies. Indeed, the first heroes in American history were far from ordinary settlers. The profit-seeking Virginia Company hired Captain John Smith, a veteran of Europe’s religious wars, to teach military skills to the settlers at Jamestown in 1607. Other experienced soldiers, such as Lord De La Warr, Sir Thomas Gates, and Sir Thomas Dale, soon followed him. The pious Pilgrims wisely did not rely on God’s favor alone for protection, but employed Captain Myles Standish, a veteran of the Dutch wars for independence, to ensure Plymouth’s success. Although Smith and Standish are the most famous of the soldier-settlers, practically all the other colonies had similar veterans who provided military leadership during the founding period. The importance placed on military preparations could be seen in the attention given to fortifications. Less than a month after their arrival, the settlers at Jamestown had constructed a primitive, triangular fort, and by 1622 the Pilgrims had erected a 2,700- foot-long defensive perimeter guarding their fledgling plantation.

The most important response to the dangerous military realities was the creation of a militia system in each colony. The British military heritage, the all-pervasive sense of military insecurity, and the inability of the economically poor colonies to maintain an expensive professional army all combined to guarantee that the Elizabethan militia would be transplanted to the North American wilderness. No colonial institution

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was more complex than the militia. In many respects it was static and homogenous, varying little from colony to colony and from generation to generation. Yet the militia was also evolutionary and heterogeneous, as diverse as the thirteen colonies and ever changing within individual colonies.

At the heart of the militia was the principle of universal military obligation for all able-bodied males. Colonial laws regularly declared that all able-bodied men between certain ages automatically belonged to the militia. Yet within the context of this immutable principle, variations abounded. While the normal age limits were from sixteen to sixty, this was not universal practice. Connecticut, for example, began with an upper age limit of sixty but gradually reduced it to forty-five. Sometimes the lower age limit was eighteen or even twenty-one. Each colony also established occupational exemptions from militia training. Invariably the exemption list began small but grew to become a seemingly endless list that reduced the militia’s theoretical strength.

If a man was in the militia, he participated in periodic musters, or training days, with the other members of his unit. Attendance at musters was compulsory; militia laws levied fines for nonattendance. During the initial years of settlement, when dangers seemed particularly acute, musters were frequent. However, as the Indian threat receded, the trend was toward fewer muster days, and by the early 1700s most colonies had decided that four peacetime musters per year were sufficient. Whether few or many, muster days helped forge a link between religious duty and military service, particularly in New England. An integral part of each training day (and of all military expeditions) was a sermon, which invariably fostered an aggressive militancy by emphasizing that the Bible sanctioned martial activity and that warfare was a true Christian’s sacred duty. “Hence it is no wayes unbecoming a Christian to learn to be a Souldier,” Chaplain Samuel Nowell preached to Massachusetts militiamen in 1678, because being a soldier was “a Credit, a praise and a glory.” When the colonists unsheathed their swords, they did so in God’s name, serene in the belief that the Lord was on their side against their heathen and Papist enemies and that whatever happened was God’s will.

Militiamen had to provide and maintain their own weapons. Militia laws detailed the required weaponry, which underwent a rapid evolution

in the New World. Initially a militiaman was armed much like a European soldier, laden with armor, equipped with either a pike or matchlock musket, and carrying a sword. But Indian warfare was not European warfare, and most of this weaponry proved of limited value. By the mid- 1670s colonial armaments had been revolutionized. Armor, which made it difficult to traverse rugged terrain and pursue Indians, had disappeared. Pikes were equally cumbersome and of little use against Indians, who neither stood their ground when assaulted nor made massed charges. At times the matchlock was superior to Indian bows and arrows, but its disadvantages were many. It took two minutes to load, and it misfired approximately three times in every ten shots. The weapon discharged when a slow-burning match1 came in contact with the priming powder, but keeping the match lit on rainy or windy days was difficult, and the combination of a burning match and gunpowder in close proximity often resulted in serious accidents. By the midseventeenth century, the matchlock had given way to the flintlock musket. Depending on flint scraping against steel for discharge, flintlocks could be loaded in thirty seconds and misfired less often. Swords remained common weapons, but colonists increasingly preferred hatchets for close-quarter combat. Although both weapons were valuable in a melee, hatchets were also useful for a variety of domestic purposes.

Militia laws emphasized the importance of a well-armed citizenry in numerous ways. To ensure that each man had the requisite weapons and accoutrements, colonies instituted a review of arms, imposing the duty of conducting it on militia officers, muster masters, or other specially appointed officials. Each colony’s law detailed how destitute citizens could be armed at public expense, and legislatures provided for public arsenals to supplement individually owned armaments. Colonies also required that even men exempted from attending musters should be completely armed and equipped. Although the basic tactical unit in all the colonies was the company, or trainband, regional variations and changes over time were as important as the superficial uniformity. No standardized company size existed, some companies containing as few as sixty-five men and others as many as two hundred. Some trainbands elected their officers, but in others the governors appointed them. Southern colonies, with widely dispersed populations, often organized companies on a

countywide basis; while in New England, with its towns and villages, individual communities contained their own trainbands. As populations increased and the number of trainbands grew, colonies organized companies into regiments to preserve efficient management. As one last example of the variety and change within militia units, the initial all- infantry composition evolved into a mixture of infantry and mounted units, the latter providing increased maneuverability and speed, which were valuable assets in Indian warfare.

Militia officers, like colonial politicians, overwhelmingly came from the upper classes, and men moved with ease from important political positions into high military offices and vice versa. The practice of plural officeholding, whereby a man simultaneously held political and military office, epitomized the integration of political and military leadership. For example, in Salem, Massachusetts, between 1765 and 1774, twelve of the twenty-nine active militia officers also held important positions in the municipal government. Similar instances could be cited for other colonies.

The militia was, above all else, a local institution, and officers rarely ordered their men to serve far from home. Each colony organized its militia for its own defense, a principle frequently embodied in legislation prohibiting the militia’s use outside a colony’s boundaries. Every colony faced Indian attacks, worried about rival Europeans, and experienced financial stringencies. How could Virginia help South Carolina without rendering itself less secure, or New York assist Pennsylvania without subjecting itself to increased danger? It could not—or at least it believed that it could not.

Within a colony civil authority controlled military matters, establishing America’s revered tradition of civilian control over the military. However, a shift occurred in the governmental branch exercising predominant influence over the militia. Initially the governors dominated, often receiving their power directly from the King, who gave them wide latitude in appointing officers and waging war. But people considered the governor analogous to the King, the colonial assemblies analogous to Parliament. In England the King and Parliament, and in the colonies governors and assemblies, battled for supremacy. The legislative branch emerged triumphant in both Britain and America. By the mideighteenth century a governor’s military authority lacked substance without the

cooperation of the legislature, which had gained almost exclusive control over expenditures, including military appropriations. Using the power of the purse as a lever, legislatures gradually assumed control of the militia. By the Revolution, civilian authority over the military meant legislative control.

As the frontier advanced, the militia decayed. The rot appeared first in the more densely settled seaboard regions, where the Indian threat had diminished by the waning years of the seventeenth century and spread into the interior. Militia service became more of a social or ceremonial function than a military function. The fewer muster days witnessed little serious training and instead became occasions for picnics for the privates and elegant dinners for the officers. Men clamored for more restricted age limitations and an expanded exemption list and complained about the burden of maintaining weapons and equipment. Increasingly men sought militia officership not from a sense of duty but because, as one critic wrote, they had “an amazing infatuation” with military titles as symbols of social prominence. Authorities everywhere laxly enforced the militia laws.

As the common militia based on universal and obligatory service deteriorated, a new phenomenon emerged, partially filling the military void. In George Washington’s words, some men always had “a natural fondness for Military parade,” enjoyed soldiering, and willingly devoted time and money to it. Thus “volunteer militia” companies arose, distinct from the common militia, with their own uniforms, equipment, organization, and esprit de corps. Like so much of the American military heritage, independent volunteer militia units traced their roots to England, especially to London’s Honorable Artillery Company, chartered in 1537. The first similar New World organization was the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, founded in 1638. Exclusive little societies of fifty to one hundred enthusiastic and relatively affluent men, the volunteer organizations kept the martial spirit alive in regions more and more remote from immediate danger.

The Diversity of Colonial Military Forces

Paradoxically, trainbands and regiments were not combat units, rarely functioning in warfare as colonial assemblies organized them on paper. In

fact, legislatures did not design the common militia as a fighting force except, perhaps, for extreme local emergencies. Instead it served primarily as an induction center, a training school, and a reservoir of partially trained manpower. Upon reaching the requisite age, a man automatically joined his local trainband; then he underwent periodic training for the next thirty years or so and acquired at least a rudimentary knowledge of military practice. In wartime, authorities formed expeditions by tapping this manpower pool, drawing men out of the trainbands on an individual basis and organizing them into fighting units.

In theory the militia could provide local defense during an emergency, such as an Indian or rival European assault on an exposed settlement. During such crises settlers had little hope of assistance from the colonial government. The unexpected nature of an attack and the poor communications precluded an appeal to the government for timely aid. And the nature of the resulting warfare—usually little more than guerrilla skirmishes amidst the enveloping wilderness—placed a premium on local self-reliance. Knowing they might be unable to exert much influence over events in isolated areas, colonial officials delegated a great deal of power to local officials, but this decentralization of authority was of questionable value. Suppose an Indian war party suddenly descended upon a frontier outpost. Even if word of the attack reached local militia officers, travel was so slow that a complete trainband could not be mobilized and dispatched in time to save the settlement. Nor would it have been wise to send the trainband out: If all the able-bodied men in an area rushed to one beleaguered location, the entire vicinity would be left unprotected against further enemy depredations. Even for local defense the militia, as organized on paper, was of limited effectiveness.

As a practical solution for the problem of local defense, pioneers adopted a stronghold concept. Garrison houses, blockhouses, and stockades dotted the frontier. When danger threatened, inhabitants crowded into these fortified structures. The men at the loopholes were militiamen, but, few in number, they acted as individuals rather than members of a militia unit. The stronghold concept had disadvantages. Maintaining a large number of people created logistical problems, not only for arms and ammunition but also for food and water. Abandoning homes and farms for the security of a garrison house or stockade left other

property vulnerable to destruction. The colonists, in effect, allowed themselves to be surrounded, leaving no avenue for retreat. Fortunately for them, Indians rarely conducted siege operations, and strongholds could often survive. Strongholds may have preserved settlers’ lives, but the smoky plumes from burning homes, the steady stream of refugees, and the long roll call of abandoned settlements all attested to the militia’s inability to provide defense when and where colonists most desperately needed it. The militia failed to perform its theoretical local defense function, and in a war’s early stages the frontier invariably retracted toward the more heavily populated seaboard.

The militia was more effective as a local police force or as a standby posse comitatus. It preserved the domestic peace, protected propertied and privileged colonists from the disadvantaged elements within society, and quelled movements against the established political order. Militiamen frequently performed riot control duty. In the south, colonies merged their slave patrols with the militia and converted it into an internal police force to recover fugitive slaves and suppress slave insurrections. New Englanders in essence converted their militia into a civil police by mating it with the night watch. As a final example, when the Regulators of western North Carolina demanded substantial local governmental reforms and defied colonial authority during the late 1760s and early 1770s, the governor mobilized a thousand militiamen, who routed the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in May 1771. Thus a sharp distinction arose between the militia as a domestic police and a colony’s expeditionary military forces.

When authorities launched a military expedition, they did not “call out the militia” per se. Instead they commissioned officers specifically to command the expedition and established manpower quotas for militia districts. Sometimes the commanding officers appointed for an expeditionary force were regular militia officers, but oftentimes they were not. Based upon a formula related to population, the quotas demanded a certain number of men from each affected trainband. Sound reasons supported the quota system. A community needed most of its able-bodied men to defend it from an enemy that often seemed to appear magically where least expected. Settlements also required men at home to plant, tend, and harvest the crops. What good would be accomplished by

creating a large army only to have the soldiers in the field and their dependents at home face the grim specter of starvation?

Militia districts filled their quotas by a combination of volunteers, draftees, substitutes, and hirelings, with volunteering being the preferred method. To spur volunteering from among the men in the trainbands, governments usually offered volunteers a bounty. Even lucrative bounties rarely enticed sufficient volunteers, in which case militia officials drafted men out of their trainbands. However, a draftee could avoid service by obtaining a discharge from the governor or a high-ranking militia officer, by providing a substitute, or by paying a commutation fine. Authorities used the money collected from fines to hire additional men or to buy arms and ammunition for destitute soldiers or the community arsenal. A draftee unable to obtain a discharge or a substitute and too poor to pay the fine had one last option to avoid soldiering: He could flee. Movement of men from town to town evading wartime service was a common problem.

The men serving in expeditions increasingly came from society’s lower classes. Individuals of wealth and status were often exempt and unlikely to volunteer, and they could easily secure a discharge, find a substitute, or pay the commutation fine. In fact, colonies sometimes consciously excluded more prosperous citizens from active duty. For example, in the mid-1750s Virginia sought to raise 1,270 men for service. Local justices of the peace, field officers, and militia captains were to hold a court of inquiry, examining the occupations of men between the ages of eighteen and fifty on the muster rolls and making a list of all able-bodied men “as shall be found loitering and neglecting to labor for reasonable wages; all who run from their habitations, leaving wives or children without suitable means for subsistence, and all other idle, vagrant, or dissolute persons, wandering abroad without betaking themselves to some lawful employment.” The court was also to list “such able-bodied men, not being freeholders or housekeepers qualified to vote at an election of burgesses, as they shall think proper. . . .” A second court would meet the quota by drafting men from among those on the list, which automatically omitted the colony’s best citizens.

Yet, as always, colonial military affairs were not subject to easy generalizations, and an acute threat could result in an expeditionary force that more nearly represented a colony’s social composition. For example,

at a time when Virginia was raising its army almost exclusively from among the poorest elements of its population, Massachusetts was acting quite differently. Far more immediately threatened by the French in Canada than was Virginia, Massachusetts fielded military forces during the 1750s that were not heavily weighted toward the permanently poor and vagrants but instead reflected the colony’s overall social composition.

From whatever social class they came, once enlisted for an expedition the men who filled the ranks believed they had a legal contract with the provincial government that could not be breached without the mutual consent of both parties. Their military ethos contained little of the emphasis on loyalty, subordination, and discipline that characterized European armies. When a colony failed to fulfill its legal obligations by not providing sufficient rum and food, by forcing men to serve beyond the expiration of their term of service, or by demanding additional duties not covered in the initial contract, colonial soldiers felt that their contract was void. Once authorities broke the contract, the troops felt no compunction against staging a mutiny or deserting in mass, even in the midst of a campaign. To the colonial soldiers these actions were legal and sensible, but to British regulars serving alongside the provincials during the colonial wars, such violations of military discipline were intolerable. No wonder British Major General James Abercromby, who observed colonial troops during the French and Indian War, complained that they were “the rif-raf of the continent.” All too often they were! Not only were they primarily indigents and down-and-outers, but they did not behave as European professional soldiers thought they should behave.

Expeditions composed of militiamen drawn from the common militia’s manpower reservoir represented only one type of military activity. Sometimes authorities sanctioned the formation of ad hoc volunteer companies bearing no official relationship to the militia. Two famous examples occurred in New England during King Philip’s War. One company, commanded by Captain Samuel Moseley, was a conglomeration of apprentices, servants, seamen, and even a few convicted pirates who had in fact been captured by Moseley and gained their release from prison by agreeing to serve. Captain Benjamin Church, one of the most remarkable Indian fighters in American history, led the other. In July 1676, the governor of Plymouth Colony authorized Church to raise a

volunteer company of about 200 men, consisting of not more than 60 whites augmented by approximately 140 friendly Indians. Volunteers, who often came from the lowest social strata, were normally outside the formal militia structure, which excluded Indians, criminals, servants, and men on the move, such as seamen. Bold and aggressive, these men served in anticipation of a rich reward of captured Indian booty and prisoners, who could be sold as slaves.

Some colonies also periodically tried to develop a static defensive line by building forts along the frontier. Virginia, for example, built four forts in 1645–1646 and undertook similar projects throughout the colonial era. Garrisons raised from the militia manned the strategically situated forts. In contrast to typical militia expeditions, garrison troops served for extended periods of time (up to a year in some cases) and in that respect resembled temporary standing armies. Forts often created more problems than they solved: The wooden structures decayed, they were expensive to build and maintain, garrison troops inevitably suffered from low morale, and, perhaps most important, Indians easily infiltrated between the forts. To ameliorate this last problem, Virginia also created “scout” or “ranger” units that patrolled the frontier between and beyond the forts on long- range reconnaissance missions, hoping to expose or disrupt attacks before they descended in full force upon settled areas. Thus colonial military forces were extremely diverse. Supplementing the peacetime common militia, from which authorities organized wartime expeditions through a quota system, were volunteer militia units, garrison troops and rangers, and volunteer companies completely outside the militia framework.

During the first seventy years of settlement a series of Indian wars severely tested colonial military institutions. The natives’ overall initial reaction to the pale-skinned arrivals was cautious hospitality, but within two decades the whites’ land greed, plus a general cultural incompatibility, created open hostility. Before considering the resulting wars, it is necessary to understand Indian methods of warfare, the problems Indian tactics posed for the whites, and the ways in which the Europeans overcame these difficulties.

Before the white man’s arrival tribes living along the east coast engaged in endemic warfare, but the fighting was seldom costly in lives or property. To the first explorers and settlers, Indian warfare seemed almost playful or

sporting. Roger Williams observed that Indian warfare was less bloody than European warfare, and many whites reacted contemptuously to the mild manner in which Indians fought. For instance, John Underhill affirmed that “they might fight seven years and not kill seven men. They came not near to one another, but shot, remote, and not point-blank, as we often do with our bullets, but at rovers, and then they gaze up in the sky to see where the arrow falls, and not until it is fallen do they shoot again. The fight is more for past-time, than to conquer and subdue enemies.” That is, whites initially encountered Indians who did not wage total war, rarely striking at noncombatants or engaging in the systematic destruction of food supplies and property.

These original observations were not universally applicable. As with conflicts among whites, the scope, intensity, and magnitude of Indian warfare differed depending on prevailing conditions and ideas and hence varied across time and geography. While some Indian “wars” consisted of little more than persistent low-intensity raids to inflict revenge, acquire plunder, or take captives, others were wars to the death, designed to destroy an enemy, capture prime land, or at least establish hegemony over other tribes. These wars had nothing sporting about them. Instead they featured prolonged campaigns, strict military discipline, pitched battles, fortified positions, sieges, and the unmerciful slaying of women and children.

Native Americans were shrewd strategists, clever tacticians, and resilient warriors. Since they had no written languages, Indian strategic debates cannot be reconstructed from records housed in some repository but must be inferred from their actions. As for their tactics, the eastern woodland Indians generally fought in small war parties that kept on the move, acted in isolation, and repeatedly conducted sophisticated ambushes and raids. Warriors would move stealthily, spread out over a considerable distance to avoid being ambushed themselves, and rapidly concentrate for a whirling attack—often at night, during storms, or in dense fog so as to catch their adversaries off guard and confuse them. Then the Indians would vanish into the wilderness. Rarely would they stand and fight if hard pressed; their warrior ethic lacked the European concept of holding a piece of land no matter what the cost in casualties. These hit-and-run tactics baffled and angered the English, who did not

lack “courage or resolution, but could not discern or find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy.”

Indian hit-and-run tactics were dangerous enough when executed with bows and arrows but became even more deadly when mated with flintlock muskets. Ironically, the Indians were more proficient than the colonists at using flintlocks. Having been taught hunting skills and the use of aimed fire with bows and arrows since childhood, the Indians readily adapted flintlocks to their guerrilla warfare. Colonial legislatures passed laws banning the firearms trade with the natives, at times even imposing the death penalty for violators, but Indians managed to acquire European weapons, often through illegal trade. And at least in New England, they learned how to cast bullets, replace worn flints, restock muskets, and make a variety of other repairs. Only one technical capability continued to elude the Indians: They never mastered gunpowder production and therefore experienced frequent powder shortages.

In contrast to the Indians, few whites had been hunters in the Old World or knew how to shoot well. Moreover, the colonists were steeped in formal battlefield tactics, which included firing unaimed mass volleys rather than aiming at individual targets. These may have worked well on Europe’s open plains but were virtually useless in the dense North American forests against an enemy that neither launched nor endured frontal assaults. Yet most colonists made little effort to adjust to Indian- style warfare. On muster days militiamen practiced the complicated motions and maneuvers prescribed by European drill manuals. One commonly used drill book described fifty-six steps for loading and firing a musket. In battle many militiamen never lived to crucial Step 43: “Give fire breast high.” And despite blundering into ambush after ambush, colonists persisted in marching in close order, so that, as one Indian said, “It was as easy to hit them as to hit a house.” The settlers’ reluctance to adjust to New World conditions was partly psychological. They considered Indian warfare barbaric; if Europeans fought in the same way, would they not also be barbarians?

The English compensated for the militia system’s weaknesses by employing Indian allies, by waging ruthless warfare against the foundations of Indian society, and at least in a few cases by adopting Native American methods. Colonists learned—often the hard way—that

Indians were the only match for Indians. Whites were so inept at forest warfare that launching an expedition without Indian allies invited disaster. The English especially needed natives as scouts to keep from blundering into an ambush, but native allies were also invaluable as spies, guides, and sometimes fighters. Fortunately for the whites, Native Americans were not united but consisted of tribes, subtribes, and quasi-independent bands. Virtually every tribe considered itself “the People”—not “a People” but “the People”—and various tribes and subtribes held such deep-seated suspicions and hatreds toward one another that they constantly struggled over territorial rights, power, and the loyalty of potential allies. This intertribal enmity allowed the whites to divide and conquer, for they invariably found Indians who wanted access to European goods and welcomed Euro-American assistance in fighting traditional foes. When Europeans paid their Indian allies, gave them weapons, and fought alongside them, the recipients considered themselves fortunate. European largess, firepower, and reinforcements allowed one tribe to strike more effectively at another tribe with which it was already at war.

Rarely did whites fight Indians; instead, Indians killed Indians, or whites and some Indians fought other Indians, or some whites and some Indians battled other whites and Indians. Determining exactly who was exploiting whom in these conflicts was difficult. Europeans, of course, realized that intertribal tensions could be exploited. But many tribes perceived that they could exploit animosities among white people and cleverly manipulated the British, French, Spanish, and (eventually) Americans against one another and against their native enemies for their own purposes.

Even when augmented by friendly Indians, colonists had a difficult time bringing the quick-moving warriors to decisive battle, and the real objective of colonial strategy became enemy villages, food supplies, clothing, and noncombatants. In a trend that continued for nearly three hundred years, white settlers waged war against Native Americans with remorseless, extravagant violence. Gratuitous devastation and killing was not unique to North America; the English perpetrated similar atrocities in Ireland, and the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) at times seemed to be little more than a long roll call of atrocities. Nor were the Indians always on the side of the angels; ferocity, savagery, and barbarous behavior were

common to both sides. Shepherded by Indian scouts, often guided by Indian informers, and invariably accompanied by Indian warriors, colonial forces struck at Indian villages, killing old men, women, and children, scalping and raping, burning homes, and destroying crops and food caches. Men who believed they were fighting to protect their own homes and families from savage heathens eagerly torched Indian dwellings and slaughtered noncombatants. They pursued survivors ruthlessly, executing or enslaving captives, and many fugitives died of starvation and exposure.

Along with Indian allies and their terror tactics, the settlers had another advantage, one that nobody at the time understood: Disease. Europeans spread Old World diseases such as typhus, cholera, tuberculosis, measles, and smallpox. Because Native Americans had no immunity against these unseen killers, a tribe was often reduced by 50 to 90 percent, leaving survivors demoralized, and sometimes even suicidal, as they watched loved ones die painful, rotting deaths and their communities, tightly woven together with bonds of kinship and clan, disintegrate. As just one example, in 1633–1634 a smallpox epidemic reduced the once-powerful Pequot tribe from 13,000 to 3,000, rendering them vulnerable to retribution from Indian foes and conquest by the Puritans.

Waging war against society rather than against warriors was new and shocking to the Indians. Captain Underhill, who was so condescending toward the gentleness of Indian warfare, recorded the reaction of native allies who watched the English destroy an enemy Indian community. The Indians expressed astonishment at the way the English fought, crying out that it was wicked “because it is too furious, and slays too many men.”

Nevertheless, when Indian and European military cultures collided, an acculturation process took place as the adversaries adjusted to each other’s technology and methods. By the late 1600s the colonists had shed such cumbersome accoutrements as armor, pikes, and swords. And while formal militia training had not changed, some expeditionary forces began to employ Indian guerrilla techniques, including the use of cover and concealment and aimed fire. Meanwhile the Indians embraced certain aspects of European technology, including the flintlock, and quickly accepted the colonists’ “war to the death” mentality. Although Indians

had fought with each other long before whites arrived in the New World, the newcomers taught them how to wage war more ruthlessly.

Fighting for Survival

At dawn on Good Friday, March 22, 1622, Virginia was at peace. Just a few months before, Opechancanough, the chief of the Indian confederation in the Tidewater area, had assured the whites that “he held the peace so firme, the sky should fall [before] he dissolved it. . . .” Relations between Indians and settlers seemed amiable. Suddenly the Indians fell upon the unsuspecting whites and, as one contemporary put it, “basely and barbarously” murdered them, “not sparing eyther age or sex, man, woman, or childe.” This surprise attack was an excellent example of Native American strategic thinking, as Opechancanough orchestrated simultaneous assaults against farms and villages scattered for eighty miles across the landscape, certainly no easy task in an era without modern communications. Within hours the Indians had killed 25 percent of Virginia’s population. Terrified survivors abandoned outlying plantations and huddled together in fewer settlements, where they planned a counterattack despite their meager resources. Fewer than two hundred men remained for active service, and arms and ammunition were in short supply.

The colonists enlisted the Potomack Indians’ aid against Opechancanough’s warriors, appealed to the King for weapons, and through a mighty effort launched military expeditions. For ten years the First Tidewater War ravaged eastern Virginia. Throughout the hot, humid summers and the cool, dreary winters the colonists, guided by Indian allies and defectors from Opechancanough’s forces, struck at enemy villages, cornfields, and fishing weirs. Although it inflicted severe punishment on the Indians, this continual effort imposed tremendous strains on colonial society. By the early 1630s both sides approached exhaustion, and in 1632 the governor signed a peace treaty with the major tribes in the enemy confederation.

The peace was short-lived. In 1644 Opechancanough, now nearly a hundred years old, directed another surprise attack reminiscent of 1622. His warriors killed nearly five hundred colonists during the first morning,

more than had fallen on Good Friday in 1622, but the effect was not as devastating. Instead of striking a feeble outpost as they had two decades before, the Indians now attacked a rapidly maturing society of some eight thousand settlers with a much greater ability to defend itself. In the Second Tidewater War, which lasted only two years, the Indians suffered a decisive defeat, as colonists pursued their previous strategy of destroying the foundations of Indian society. Colonists captured Opechancanough; after he spent a short period in captivity, a soldier shot him. His death symbolized the demise of any future resistance to white expansion in the Tidewater area.

The importance of the Tidewater Wars transcended the fact of ultimate Indian defeat. Equally significant was the resultant attitude toward the natives. When Englishmen settled in America, they had a dual image of Indians. Viewing the natives as noble savages, some settlers felt a sense of mission to convert them to Christianity and bring them the blessings of “civilization.” But other settlers considered the Indians ignoble savages, brutal heathens prone to treachery and violence. Although some people continued to advocate moderate treatment of the Indians, the 1622 attack, seemingly without provocation, confirmed the ignoble savage image in the minds of most settlers, ensuring that the predominant attitude toward Indians would be hatred, mingled with fear and contempt. It also released white inhibitions in waging war. Facing what they perceived as an inhuman enemy, Englishmen responded with extreme measures. Many spoke of exterminating the natives. For example, the Virginia Company urged “a sharp revenge upon the bloody miscreantes, even to the measure that they intended against us, the rooting them out from being longer a people uppon the face of the Earth.” At the least, settlers wanted to subjugate the Indians completely, since, as the Virginia assembly repeatedly declared during the war, relations between whites and Indians were irreconcilable and the natives were perpetual enemies.

After 1622, then, whites responded ruthlessly to any Indian provocation. The colonists punished the offending tribe (or tribes) severely and, just as important, terrified other tribes into submission by setting a frightful example of what happened to natives who aroused colonial wrath. A perfect illustration of this occurred in New England in 1637. In the early 1630s, before being devastated by new diseases, the

Pequots were the most powerful tribe in New England. They had a well- deserved reputation for ferocity, gaining the enmity of both their white and Indian neighbors. When a complex series of events led to war between the Pequots and the English, practically all other natives in the area joined with the whites.

The major “battle” of the Pequot War took place at a palisaded Pequot fort along the Mystic River. Colonial troops commanded by Captain John Mason of Connecticut and Captain Underhill of Massachusetts Bay, accompanied by several hundred friendly Indians, attacked at dawn. Barking dogs alerted the Pequots, many of them women and children, who briefly put up a stout defense until Mason and Underhill personally set fire to the wigwams inside the fort. Within half an hour all but a handful of the Pequots had been put to the sword or had burned to death, fouling the air with a sickly scent and, as Mason put it, “dunging the Ground with their flesh.” Accounts differ as to how many Indians perished, but the number probably approached four or five hundred. The attackers lost only two dead and twenty wounded.

The slaughter at the Mystic River fort broke the back of Pequot resistance, and survivors sought asylum with neighboring tribes or fled northward toward the homeland of the Mohawk Indians. But mere victory did not satisfy the colonists. Having learned from Virginia’s misfortune in 1622, they thirsted for annihilation. Aided by Indian allies, New Englanders systematically hunted down the fugitives. The Mohawks were especially helpful, capturing the Pequot chief, Sassacus, and forty of his warriors. The war reduced the once fearsome Pequot tribe to impotence, and other tribes warily pondered the totality of the colonists’ victory that, ironically, they had helped achieve.

Following the Pequots’ destruction, New England experienced nearly forty years of uneasy peace before King Philip’s War erupted in 1675. The war took its name from the chief of the Wampanoag Indians, Metacomet, upon whom the English had conferred the classical name of Philip as a symbol of esteem and friendship. They treated Philip with respect because he was the son of Massasoit, who had signed a peace treaty with the English in 1621 and faithfully adhered to it until his death four decades later. But Philip was not Massasoit. Seeing his people increasingly subjected to English domination, he became restive, and gradually

Wampanoag hospitality turned into hostility. Some evidence indicates that Philip tried to form an Indian confederation to launch a coordinated attack against the whites, but whatever his intentions, the war began before any widespread conspiracy had matured. Philip fought as one of several important chieftains, not as the leader of an intertribal confederation.

The war began in a small way in a limited area but eventually engulfed New England, bringing suffering to nearly all its English and native inhabitants. In June 1675, a few Wampanoags looted and burned several abandoned buildings in a frontier community. The destruction was more an act of vandalism than a military attack, but as so often in the relations between whites and Indians, seemingly inconsequential events had momentous consequences. Plymouth colonists mobilized to retaliate, the Wampanoags prepared to defend themselves, and before long a war was in progress. Almost immediately the conflict took an adverse turn for the English when the Nipmuck tribe joined Philip’s warriors. Fearful colonists wondered how many other tribes would join the Wampanoags and especially worried about the Narragansetts, the most powerful tribe in the area and the Wampanoags’ traditional enemies. In 1637 the Narragansetts had helped eliminate the Pequots, but in the intervening years they became truculent as whites encroached upon their Rhode Island homeland. Now English efforts to elicit a firm pledge of friendship from them gained only an equivocal response.

Rather than abide fickle friends, the colonists delivered a preemptive strike against the Narragansetts, resulting in the war’s most famous battle, the Great Swamp Fight of December 19, 1675. Many Narragansett families had taken up winter residence in a secret fortified village in Rhode Island’s Great Swamp. During the morning and early afternoon of the 19th, a day memorable for its bitter cold and the tremendous snowfall shrouding the land, an intercolonial army trudged the last few miles to the Indian fort. The governor of Plymouth Colony, Josiah Winslow, commanded the 1,100-man force, composed of soldiers from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and a substantial contingent of Indian allies, including a Narragansett defector who led the army to the concealed encampment. The Narragansetts resisted with valor, but the English gained the upper hand by resorting to fire, as they had previously

done along the Mystic River. The immediate Indian losses numbered in the hundreds, but of equal importance was the destruction of the Indians’ clothing, housing, and winter food supply. Those Narragansetts fleeing into the swamp carried practically nothing with them and faced the grim prospect of freezing or starving to death.

The Narragansetts had suffered a stunning defeat, but the colonial victory was not cause for unmitigated joy. Colonial casualties were about 20 percent of the army. Furthermore, the Narragansetts still had considerable fighting power, and the preemptive attack pushed the enraged tribe into the enemy camp. Still, though tainted by the casualty list and the prospect of additional enemies, the victory bolstered sagging morale. Until the Great Swamp Fight the colonial effort had been inept. One explanation for the initial blunders was the failure to use Indian allies. Despite many contemptible actions by whites toward even friendly Indians, approximately half the natives of New England refused to join the Wampanoags. However, when the war began, the settlers viewed practically all Indians with suspicion, fearing they might be plotting to repeat Good Friday of 1622 on a grander scale, and were reluctant to employ them. By the spring of 1676 necessity overrode prejudice and suspicion, and with Indian assistance the strategy of waging total war against Indian society became more successful.

Two of New England’s most famous soldiers were William Turner and Benjamin Church. Leading 150 volunteers, in May 1676 Turner attacked a huge Indian base camp on the Connecticut River, killing hundreds of women and children and destroying a large cache of ammunition and two forges that the Indians used to repair firearms. Just as the colonists completed their destruction, Indian warriors counterattacked and inflicted severe losses on Turner’s command, but irreparable damage to the Indians’ cause had already been done. Church, who used Indian auxiliaries and imitated Indian methods, was New England’s foremost war hero. He had participated in the Great Swamp Fight and then retired from the war until the summer of 1676, when he offered to form a volunteer company of Indians and whites and fight Indians by fighting like Indians, emulating their stealthy guerrilla tactics. Church personally persuaded the small Sakonnet tribe to abandon Philip and then enlisted the Sakonnet warriors into his own company. His men captured Philip’s

wife and nine-year-old son and, guided by one of Philip’s own men turned traitor, also killed the Wampanoag sachem on August 12, 1676. Church ordered Philip’s head and hands cut off and had the body quartered; then each quarter was hung from a separate tree.

Although the roundup of stragglers went on for several months, Philip’s death marked the end of concerted Indian resistance. For the English the war’s cost was grievous: expenses of £100,000 and debts larger than the colony’s property value, three thousand fresh graves out of a white population of only 52,000, hundreds of homes burned, thousands of cattle killed. But white society recovered. The Indians did not. King Philip’s War was analogous to the Second Tidewater War, as it settled the question of whether Indians or whites would dominate the region. The conflict reduced the once-proud Wampanoags, Nipmucks, and Narragansetts to insignificance. Even tribes allied with the English suffered acute degradation as the natives rapidly declined in the war’s aftermath. A visitor to New England in 1687 noted: “There is Nothing to fear from the Savages, for they are few in Number. The last Wars they had with the English . . . have reduced them to a small number, and consequently they are incapable of defending themselves.”

Simultaneously with this New England war, Virginia endured a curious affair known as Bacon’s Rebellion, which was part Indian war, part civil insurrection. The chain of events precipitating the rebellion would make good comic opera, had the results not been so lethal. In 1675 whites murdered some members of the friendly Susquehannock Indians, forcing the tribe onto the warpath. When the Susquehannocks retaliated, Virginians divided on how to respond. Governor William Berkeley represented one viewpoint. For reasons of humanity and policy, he believed colonists should differentiate between friendly and hostile Indians, protecting the former and waging war only against the latter. The governor knew of the recent upheaval in New England and wanted to preserve the loyalty of neighboring Indians, whose help would be essential if war broke out in Virginia too. To protect the frontier, Berkeley proposed a series of forts manned by militiamen; to reassure Virginians of the inability of subjugated Indians in their midst to do any harm, he disarmed the natives. Nathaniel Bacon, Berkeley’s cousin by marriage, symbolized the other perspective. Bacon believed all Indians were

enemies and launched a crusade to kill them without distinguishing between hostile and loyal tribes. Bacon’s attitude represented the majority of frontiersmen who, resenting the expense of maintaining Berkeley’s forts, wanted to raise volunteer companies and slaughter Indians indiscriminately. When Berkeley opposed the formation of volunteer units, Bacon defied him, becoming an unofficial, uncommissioned “General of Volunteers.” Thus a dispute over Indian policy bred civil revolt.

Under Bacon’s leadership the volunteer frontiersmen did not kill a single enemy Indian, contenting themselves with persecuting and slaughtering innocents. Meantime, Bacon also waged civil war against Governor Berkeley’s loyal forces. The whole sorry incident ended when Bacon died of the “Bloody Flux” (dysentery) in October 1676. The rebellion against constituted authority soon sputtered to a conclusion, and in the spring authorities reached a peace agreement with the terrified friendly tribes, whom Bacon’s volunteers had driven from their homes.

In the hundred years prior to the American Revolution, colonists fought other wars strictly against Indians. For example, in 1711 the Tuscarora Indians in North Carolina launched a surprise attack that began the Tuscarora War (1711–1713). And in 1715 the Yamassee Indians staged an attack in South Carolina, beginning the Yamassee War, which intermittently sputtered on until 1728, with the Indians, as usual, being defeated. But purely Indian wars were relatively unimportant following King Philip’s War. After 1689 English colonists fought a series of wars against rival European colonies in which both sides made liberal use of Indian allies. By then the colonists had developed attitudes toward military institutions and war that set them apart from the European experience. First, unlike European nations, the colonies did not develop professional armies, instead relying on a militia system. During the Indian wars from 1622 to 1676, colonists gained confidence in this system and romanticized it, believing that citizen-soldiers defending their homes were far superior to an army of mercenaries. From their perspective they were at least partially correct. The militia had its deficiencies, but it proved adequate, since the Indians were the vanquished, not the whites. Second, the colonists did not enjoy an “Age of Limited Warfare” like that which prevailed in Europe from the midseventeenth to the mideighteenth

century. To the colonists (and to the Indians), war was a matter of survival. Consequently, at the very time European nations strove to restrain war’s destructiveness, the colonists waged it with ruthless ferocity, purposefully striking at noncombatants and enemy property. The colonial wars fought between 1689 and 1763 perpetuated the attitudes fostered by the military experience between 1607 and 1676. Colonists remained disdainful, even fearful, of professional soldiers and augmented their quest for the Indians’ subjugation with an equally intense desire for the complete removal of French influence from North America.

TWO

The Colonial Wars, 1689–1763

By the time Benjamin Church left King Philip’s butchered body hanging from four trees, North America had become a divided continent, as three imperial powers struggled for dominance. The English had established a thin band of civilization along the eastern seaboard and also claimed the shores of Hudson Bay. An even sparser line of French settlement thrust along the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes region. The Spanish claimed much of the Gulf coast, with its eastern anchor in Florida, where they founded St. Augustine in 1565. However, Spanish power was waning, leaving England and France as the primary competitors for an enormously rich prize, the interior of North America drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Geography favored the French, since the St. Lawrence gave them relatively easy access into the heart of the continent. By contrast, with the Appalachian Mountains blocking their westward advance, English colonists seemed doomed to occupy a coastal ribbon. Only two major gaps breached the northern half of the Appalachians: In central New York the Mohawk River pierced the mountains; farther north a corridor, consisting of the Hudson River, Lakes George and Champlain, and the Richelieu River, linked New France and the British colonies. Along with the St. Lawrence itself, these gaps were practically the only avenues over which the enemies could strike at each other.

Although nature had blessed New France, the British had two compensating advantages, manpower and sea power. Throughout the colonial wars, British colonists outnumbered French colonists by about fifteen to one. Several factors somewhat reduced this disproportion in manpower. Only New York and New England, containing about half the

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English North American population, consistently fought in the wars, while France drew on all of Canada for support. The French colony also contained a higher proportion of males. One government capable of imposing unity of command ruled Canada, while the English, fighting under their individual colonial governments, lacked overall coordination. But would a single unified command be enough to overcome the British numerical advantage on both land and sea?

Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the British navy increasingly controlled the Atlantic Ocean. Reinforcing the Royal Navy were privateers, which were merchant ships that their owners converted into warships for the express purpose of raiding the enemy’s seaborne commerce. Because a privateer’s owners and crew shared the proceeds from any captured ships (called prizes), the prospect of substantial prize money attracted thousands of colonial businessmen and mariners to the enterprise, especially from the port cities of Newport, New York, and Philadelphia. Since New France remained dependent on imports from the mother country, it could be likened to a sapling striving to reach maturity in a harsh environment. The sea lanes to France represented the roots, the St. Lawrence was analogous to the trunk, and the Great Lakes were the branches. Anything impeding the flow of supplies along the root system stunted the growth of the trunk and foliage. In wartime the Royal Navy, supplemented by numerous privateers, periodically severed these roots, allowing British land forces to attack a foe suffering from malnutrition.

Euro-Indian Alliances and Early Conflicts

The colonial wars cannot be understood without recognizing the complex relationship among Europeans, Indians, and the fur trade. Colonial competition for mastery of the continent inevitably affected the native tribes. Realizing that Indian alliances might ultimately determine which nation prevailed, perceptive white men sought Indian allies as warriors and as agents in the economically important fur trade. In the quest for Indian allies the French had two advantages, the British one. Less race- conscious than Englishmen, Frenchmen embraced Indian culture in ways alien to the British, and the natives recognized the difference. Nor were the French as greedy for Indian land as the British. Many French colonists

were single males (fur traders, priests, and soldiers) and required only a few acres for their trading posts, missions, forts, and garden plots. But the rapidly multiplying English came primarily in family units to farm. Their thirst for land seemed unquenchable, and they frequently resorted to unscrupulous methods to obtain it.

The British advantage was in the fur trade, which bound whites and Indians in an interdependent relationship and brought the European rivals into more direct competition. Colonists profited from the trade, while the Indians, who exchanged pelts for manufactured goods, gradually abandoned their self-sufficient existence as they became dependent on these wares. Since English manufactured goods were better and cheaper than French goods, Indians preferred to trade with the British. Under intense pressure to procure pelts, Indians killed off the nearby supply of fur-bearing animals and had to trap in more remote areas. White traders followed them, pushing the frontiers of New France and the English colonies closer together.

The crucial European-Indian alliances in the northeast emerged early in the colonial era. Two major Indian cultures existed in the region, the Iroquoian and the Algonquin. Not only were these groups hostile to each other, but internal conflict among tribes belonging to the same group also occurred. Various Algonquin tribes—such as the Abnakis, Montagnais, and Ottawas—living in areas the French explored, welcomed the newcomers as allies against their traditional enemies, the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy (the Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Mohawk tribes). The Five Nations occupied the territory from the Hudson River and Lake Champlain westward to the Genesee River.2

Living in the Great Lakes region were the Hurons, Neutrals, and Eries, all akin to the Iroquois but, like the Algonquin tribes, periodically at war with the confederacy. South of the Five Nations were the Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian tribe also in conflict with the confederacy.

When the French allied themselves with the Algonquins and Hurons to ensure the safety of their settlements and to gain access to rich fur sources, they automatically gained the enmity of the confederacy. Although the Five Nations could never count on more than three thousand warriors, they were aggressive fighters. The confederacy’s geographic position also allowed it to control the economic and military balance of power between Canada and the English colonies. Inhabiting the Mohawk and Hudson River gaps, it sat astride the northern frontier’s most vital crossroads of communications and trade. The Five Nations served like a belt of armor that the French had to penetrate before striking the English. The Iroquois were also in an ideal position to divert the flow of pelts from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson River.

The Dutch settled the Hudson Valley, building Fort Orange (Albany) nine miles below the mouth of the Mohawk River. The Iroquois, anxious to acquire firearms to counter the French-Indian threat to their north, and the Dutch, eager to profit from the fur trade, established cordial relations. Seeking new access to furs, the Five Nations waged a series of expansionist wars during the midseventeenth century. They defeated the Hurons, Neutrals, and Eries and then turned against the Susquehannocks. The Iroquois intrusion into the Great Lakes region disrupted New France’s fur trade, threatening the colony with economic disaster. In 1664 the English conquered New Netherland, renaming it New York. Realizing

that friendship with the Five Nations was important for their economic and military security, the conquerors preserved the Dutch relationship with the Iroquois. Thus when the colonial wars began, the battle lines were well formed. New France, the Algonquins, and remnants of the Iroquoian tribes that had recently been defeated by the Five Nations opposed the English colonists and the Iroquois. Although the northern frontier ultimately would be decisive during the colonial wars, the clashing interests of Spain, France, and England along the southern frontier helped mold the final outcome. After the founding of Charleston in 1670 and the subsequent growth of the Carolinas, a parallel search for Indian trade and alliances developed in the south, where the Appalachians tapered off in central Georgia. Settling in territory claimed by Spain, the Carolinians struggled with the Spanish and their Indian supporters. Forming alliances with various Indian tribes, the English drove the Spanish frontier southward to the Florida peninsula. With the Spanish barrier eliminated, Carolina traders penetrated into the interior, where they established trading relations with the most important tribes of the old southwest. In eastern Tennessee and western Carolina they encountered the Cherokees. Further westward, in the Yazoo River valley and along the upper reaches of the Tombigbee River, were the Chickasaws. The Creeks inhabited western Georgia and eastern Alabama, and the Choctaws lived west of the Tombigbee. Like the northern tribes, these four powerful tribes frequently warred with each other.

The Anglo-French frontiers collided in Louisiana, as they had already in the Great Lakes region. Both sides sought the allegiance of the four primary tribes living between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. The French had the advantage of easy water routes, while the Carolinians had to rely on difficult overland trails. The French were also much less abusive toward the Indians and did not traffic in Indian slaves, a practice the English avidly pursued. However, the Carolina traders, like their northern counterparts, sold better-quality goods more cheaply. The Indian alliance system remained fluid during the early 1700s. The Choctaws were generally in the French camp, while the Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws favored the Carolinians. However, diplomatic maneuvering, trading opportunities, and strategic considerations made alliances

undependable. The only certainty was that Indian assistance in the south, as in the north, would be vital in the wars for continental domination.

The colonial wars take their formal dates from simultaneous wars in Europe, but the fighting between English and French colonists, and their Indian proxies, often preceded the declarations of war and continued after the signing of Old World peace treaties. Colonists had their own reasons for fighting, reasons divorced from European diplomacy. Conflicts over fishing rights, religious differences, and the desire for revenge reinforced the struggle to dominate the fur trade and the western areas. The colonial wars merely gave intermittent official sanction to the nearly constant warfare that plagued North America between 1689 and 1763.

Although neither side was prepared for conflict in 1689, when King William’s War began, the French reacted more quickly. Count Frontenac, who became Canada’s governor in October of that year, understood the importance of the Iroquois–New York alliance and brought from France a plan for the conquest of New York, which would isolate the Five Nations militarily, weaken the English colonies by cleaving them in two, and safeguard the fur trade. However, the plan was too ambitious for Canada to implement, and Frontenac settled for a loosely coordinated three- pronged attack against the New England-New York frontier. In the first half of 1690, combined forces of French and Indians inflicted massacres on Schenectady, Salmon Falls, and Falmouth.

Even as Frontenac’s grisly offensive unfolded, Massachusetts was preparing the first British colonial attack of the war, aimed at thinly populated French Acadia. Leading the venture was Sir William Phips. In May 1690, his 700-man force captured Port Royal, the principal outpost in Acadia, subdued the remainder of the area, and returned to Boston in triumph. Phips’s exploits were strategically insignificant, since the French soon reoccupied Port Royal, but they bolstered morale throughout New England.

Meanwhile, the northern colonies girded for a major effort. In late April an intercolonial conference met in New York City, attended by representatives from New York, Connecticut, Plymouth, and Massachusetts. This conference demonstrated that some colonists realized the problem posed by Canada was beyond the resources of any single colony and required intercolonial cooperation. The delegates adopted a

sound plan that became a virtual blueprint for almost all subsequent efforts against New France. The plan envisioned a dual thrust to sever the vital artery of the St. Lawrence River. Moving overland from Albany, an army would strike Montreal while a seaborne force ascended the St. Lawrence and attacked Quebec. If the forces could converge on their targets simultaneously, Canada’s sparse manpower would be divided trying to defend both cities. Either Montreal or Quebec would capitulate, making the other city easy prey once the attackers united their forces. With the trunk severed, the colony’s roots and branches would wither and die.

The proposal was good in theory but poorly executed. The colonies raised fewer militiamen for the Montreal army than had been promised at New York, and instead of the expected hundreds of Iroquois warriors,

only a few dozen met the militia at Wood Creek near Lake Champlain. A smallpox epidemic swept the ranks, provisions were scarce, and too few boats existed to transport the army down Lake Champlain. In late summer the commander canceled the expedition. Meanwhile the Quebec force, some 2,000 strong and commanded by Phips, departed late and made slow progress, not arriving at its objective until early October, when the nip of winter was already in the air. The city occupied a strong defensive position atop steep cliffs, and with the threat to Montreal evaporated, Frontenac had reinforced the garrison so that it now out- numbered the attackers. Phips put a substantial force ashore, but it made little headway against the French and suffered from inadequate supplies and the bitter cold. Discouraged, Phips and his army headed home.

Exhausted in spirit and heavily in debt, the colonies made no effort similar to the 1690 campaign during the remainder of the war. The conflict became “a Tedious war” of frontier raids for the next seven years. Canadian raiding parties, composed of a few coureurs de bois (woodsmen) and militiamen and numerous Indians and perhaps commanded by a French regular officer, struck outlying homesteads and settlements. These war parties of “Half Indianized French and Half Frenchified Indians” appeared suddenly, destroyed livestock and property, killed or captured settlers, and then disappeared into the wilderness. The high success rate of these assaults demonstrated—as had the previous Indian wars—the militia’s inability to provide frontier protection. Relief columns usually arrived only in time to bury the mutilated corpses. Unable to prevent these calamities, the English retaliated with similar expeditions against the Canadians. Both sides also urged their Indian allies on to the warpath; acting independently, they added to the mayhem.

By 1697 the combatants in North America and in Europe had battered each other into exhaustion without either side achieving an appreciable advantage, and in September the European powers signed the Treaty of Ryswick. Under its terms the situation on both continents essentially reverted to the prewar condition. It did not take prophetic genius to foresee that the conflict would soon be renewed. “For the present the Indians have Done Murdering,” wrote a Puritan minister, adding “they’ll Do so no more till next Time.”

In 1701 a new war erupted in Europe and spread to the colonies, where it became known as Queen Anne’s War. During the brief interval after the Treaty of Ryswick, New France had been able to view the future with optimism. Emerging unbeaten from a decade of warfare against a more numerous enemy, it built an outpost at Detroit and established settlements in Louisiana. Most important, in 1701 the French achieved a stunning diplomatic success. The Iroquois, who had suffered grievously in King William’s War, resented the inability of the English to unite among themselves and with the Iroquois confederacy in a concerted effort to destroy New France, and in 1701 they signed a neutrality treaty with Canada. British colonists feared encirclement by a French empire stretching from Acadia up the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to the Gulf.

Fighting occurred in three regions in North America during Queen Anne’s War. Since France and Spain were now allied, military operations took place along the southern frontier. In the fall of 1702 South Carolina’s governor, James Moore, conducted a campaign against St. Augustine. He easily occupied the city, but when Spanish reinforcements arrived, his army retreated to Charleston. The next year Moore, although no longer governor, partially avenged his failure when his army devastated the Apalachee region between Pensacola and St. Augustine. Encouraged by Moore’s success, others undertook similar, though smaller, expeditions into Spanish territory. The English also sent their Indian allies, notably the Creeks, to attack the Choctaws and other French-aligned natives. The only significant enemy effort came in 1706 when a Spanish-French force unsuccessfully attacked Charleston. Indian allies of Spain and France, bearing the brunt of English offensives and seeing the feebleness of Spanish and French defenses, increasingly came under British influence. By 1712 the English had, as one Carolinian asserted, “firm possession . . . from Charles Town to Mobile Bay, excepting St. Augustine.”

While the southern frontier was a new arena of strife, New York, which had been in the maelstrom of the previous conflict, did not become involved in Queen Anne’s War until 1709. When the war began, Canada and the Five Nations adhered to their neutrality treaty. Concerned for the safety of its citizens and eager to profit from an uninterrupted fur trade,

New York’s government took no action that endangered the peace along its border.

The entire war in the north fell upon the third region, New England. As in King William’s War, New Englanders primarily fought “a barbarous war with cruel and perfidious savages” rather than with Frenchmen. But colonists realized that “the root of all our woe” was Canada, which supplied the Indians with the necessities of war. New Englanders agreed they could never live in safety as long as New France survived, but, remembering Phips’s disaster, they believed the mother country must assist them. England had viewed the war in North America as a sideshow to the greater struggle in Europe, but in early 1709 the Queen approved a plan reminiscent of the 1690 campaign. She pledged ships and men to a dual thrust aimed at conquering Canada, one army moving through the Champlain trough toward Montreal and another sailing up the St. Lawrence to Quebec.

New Englanders believed these expeditions would be no repetition of 1690, since they would be well supplied and steeled by professionals. Furthermore, New York could not refuse to participate in a campaign sanctioned by the Queen. Forced to go to war, New Yorkers persuaded the Iroquois to discard their neutrality pact with Canada. The colonies responded to the opportunity to destroy Canada with unparalleled cooperation and enthusiasm. By July, after great exertion and expense, two forces stood poised to assault the archenemy. One army of more than 1,500 men, composed of militiamen from four colonies and several hundred Iroquois, assembled at Wood Creek under the command of Colonel Francis Nicholson. The other army, composed of more than 1,200 New England militiamen, gathered at Boston, ready to sail up the St. Lawrence with the promised British armada when it arrived. But in early summer England canceled its part of the bargain. Although the government immediately dispatched a message informing the colonies, it did not arrive until October. Militiamen had endured months of deprivation for nothing, and the vast expenditures had been for naught.

Her Majesty partially redeemed herself in 1710 when British warships and a regiment of marines aided a militia force in capturing Port Royal and made Acadia a British province. Encouraged that the home government had not forsaken them, colonists implored London to

resurrect the 1709 plan. In 1711 England again agreed to attempt the pincer movement against New France. In late June a British fleet commanded by Sir Hovenden Walker arrived at Boston, accompanied by seven regular regiments and a marine battalion. Walker was in overall command of the Quebec pincer, and Brigadier General John Hill commanded the regulars, who were reinforced by thousands of militiamen. Colonel Nicholson again commanded the western pincer of more than 2,000 militiamen and Indians.

When the armada departed for the St. Lawrence, the northern colonies exuded confidence. But Walker lacked the courage and determination that allows great commanders to overcome adversity. He knew that fog, storms, and uncertain currents and tides made the St. Lawrence difficult to navigate, and he worried that his force might be trapped by ice and forced to winter in Quebec, where resupply would be impossible. He became obsessed with these problems. On the night of August 23, as his fleet inched upriver in dense fog, it strayed against the north shore of the river, several ships foundered, and almost a thousand men drowned. A hastily convened council of war agreed to abandon the attempt on Quebec. Walker believed the armada should attack a lesser target, perhaps Placentia, but Hill disagreed. A second war council concurred with Hill, and eventually the fleet returned to England without striking a single blow against New France. Nicholson’s army, toiling through the northern forests, was recalled far short of Montreal. Canada rejoiced, the disillusioned Iroquois hastily renewed their neutrality treaty with the French, and New England and New York brooded.

The fiascos of 1709 and 1711 had a significance beyond the simple fact of failure. Both years witnessed extensive efforts at intercolonial cooperation from Pennsylvania northward. The question of security had a nationalizing influence, forging mutual military efforts on the stern anvil of survival. As the colonies gained confidence in each other, the nonarrival of one British fleet and the precipitous withdrawal of the other sowed a sense of disgust with England and its professional military men. The Walker expedition’s appearance in Boston especially strained relations between professional soldiers and New Englanders. The colonists argued that despite the imperious behavior of Her Majesty’s officers, they themselves had done as much as possible to aid Walker, whom they

blamed for the expedition’s failure. Walker and his fellow officers responded that citizens had provided insufficient provisions and inflated the price of what they supplied, they sheltered deserters, and pilots knowledgeable about the treacherous St. Lawrence refused to accompany the fleet. In their opinion, the colonists had begged the Queen for help, she had responded generously, and now the recipients of her kindness were ungrateful. The British found such behavior incomprehensible and reprehensible. Echoing his comrades, a colonel wrote that until England placed the colonists under more stringent control “they will grow every day more stiff and disobedient, more burthensome than advantageous to Great Britain.” Lexington and Concord were years in the future, but the events of 1709 and 1711 planted a seed of distrust in the imperial relationship.

When the European combatants signed the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, New France, except for Acadia, remained unconquered. But at the negotiating table France surrendered much of what its colony had preserved by force of arms. The mother country, defeated in other areas of the globe and economically exhausted, ceded to England the shores of Hudson Bay, Acadia, and Newfoundland. The situation in the south returned to the status quo antebellum, disappointing the Carolinians, who had hoped to eliminate French control in Louisiana and Spanish sovereignty in Florida. England’s territorial gains shifted the North American balance of power in its favor, but New France, though wounded, was far from moribund.

Struggling for Control of North America

The Treaty of Utrecht ushered in twenty-five years of uneasy peace between England and the Bourbon powers (France and Spain). In North America, however, relations among the colonists continued in turmoil. One cause was the continuing quest for Indian allegiance. Indian diplomacy heightened colonial anxieties. The apparently fickle natives, squeezed by technologically and numerically superior white cultures and striving to maintain their independence, played the Europeans off against each other with consummate skill. A second, related, cause was the colonists’ construction of outposts in strategic locations to improve

security and to exert influence on nearby natives. Located in the unoccupied zones between expanding colonial frontiers, these forts created new tensions.

Along the northern frontier, New France tried to bring the Iroquois into its orbit. To upset French designs, the English established Fort Oswego on the Great Lakes, but the French countered with a fort at Crown Point, which was in territory claimed by New York and gave the French access to the Mohawks. The French also worried about their eastern flank, now vulnerable with Newfoundland and Acadia in British hands. Fortunately for Canada, Cape Breton Island had not been ceded to England, and here the French built Louisbourg, a formidable fortress that guarded the mouth of the St. Lawrence.

In the south, the Carolinians suffered hard times after Utrecht. Their desire to eliminate the Bourbon powers had been forestalled, and in 1711–1712 the French scored a diplomatic triumph akin to the Iroquois treaty of 1701 when they made peace with Carolina’s foremost Indian allies, the Creeks. Then in 1715 the Yamassee War stunned the English. The origins of the war, which was a widespread revolt led by the Creeks and other erstwhile friends, the Yamassees, involved callous actions by Carolina traders, white land greed, and Spanish and French intrigue. To the English the war was a classic example of the omnipresent danger they faced as long as the Bourbons maintained a foothold in the region, and of the Indians’ untrustworthy behavior. Carolina escaped a potentially disastrous situation when the Cherokees refused to join the uprising and instead aided the whites. Although Carolina won the war, its situation was grim. As one man wrote, “We are just now the poorest Colony in all America and have . . . very distracting appearances of ruine.”

Recognizing that the recent Indian war had weakened its North American southern flank and worried that the prospect of French encirclement was no idle nightmare, especially after the French strengthened their hold on the lower Mississippi by founding New Orleans, the British government responded vigorously. The English established several new forts and in 1732 founded the colony of Georgia, which was in part intended as a military buffer zone. Under James Oglethorpe’s assertive leadership, Georgians constructed a series of fortified outposts stretching southward into territory claimed by Spain

and coveted by France. When Oglethorpe built Fort St. George on the St. Johns River, the gateway to Florida’s interior and the backdoor to St. Augustine, passions flared and thick war clouds gathered.

Storms had also been brewing in Europe, and in 1739 the clouds burst into a British-Spanish conflict known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. What began as a drizzle became a deluge when this war merged into the War of the Austrian Succession, embroiling one European power after another until 1744, when Britain and France declared war on each other. The war in America—lasting from 1744 to 1748 and pitting English colonists against those of France and Spain—was known as King George’s War, but the entire conflict, first against Spain and then against the combined Bourbon powers, can be labeled the War of the 1740s. From 1739 to 1744 the North American struggle centered around Spanish possessions; after 1744 the focus shifted to the north.

When Oglethorpe learned of the war with Spain, he tried to fulfill Moore’s dream of capturing St. Augustine. Descending on Florida with a force of Georgia and Carolina militiamen, Creek and Cherokee warriors, a newly raised regular regiment, and a small British squadron, he hoped to surprise St. Augustine and take it by storm. But the Spanish were alert, and although Oglethorpe had proclaimed he would succeed or die trying, he did neither, retreating ignominiously with his bedraggled army.

The next year Americans participated in the assault on Cartagena, the most important port on the Spanish Main. In 1739 Admiral Edward Vernon had captured Porto Bello, and the elated British government reinforced his command so that he could make further conquests. A large fleet and army left England to rendezvous with Vernon in Jamaica, while for the first and only time the government asked the colonies to provide troops for a campaign beyond the mainland. In early 1740 the call went out for volunteers. To expedite volunteering, colonial governments offered bounties and promised the troops a fair share of captured booty. Eleven colonies provided thirty-six companies of a hundred men each, organized into an “American Regiment” commanded by Virginia Governor William Gooch. The regiment sailed to Jamaica, meeting Vernon’s fleet and the British army under Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth. The expedition then moved against Cartagena and met with a disastrous repulse. Like Walker’s expedition thirty years earlier, Vernon’s

failure had long-term significance, spreading discord between Englishmen living on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The soldiers in the American Regiment fared badly at the hands of the British military establishment. They ate “putrid beef, rusty pork, and bread swimming with maggots,” did an inordinate amount of fatigue duty, were forced to serve on British warships, and for their efforts received little but contempt. Thus Cartagena further reduced British military prestige in America and reinforced the emergent antagonism Americans felt toward regulars.

With the colonies weakened by their exertions at St. Augustine and Cartagena, Spain struck back, attacking Frederica, Georgia, in 1742. Although outnumbered more than four to one, Oglethorpe displayed military capabilities conducting a defense that he had not exhibited while on the offensive at St. Augustine and forced the Spanish to withdraw. The war along the southern frontier then became little more than a series of minor clashes.

As major campaigning petered out in the south, it commenced in the north. In mid-January 1745 the Massachusetts general court met in secret session to hear an extraordinary proposal from Governor William Shirley: Massachusetts should mount an expedition to capture Louisbourg! Since Louisbourg commanded navigation up the St. Lawrence, its capture would ultimately mean the downfall of all of New France. If the prospect was tempting, the dangers were great. From outward appearances the city was impregnable. The channel into the harbor was narrow and guarded by two supplemental fortifications, the Grand Battery and the Island Battery, both bristling with cannons. On the land side, stout walls and a wide trench protected the fortress. However, from exchanged prisoners who had been held captive in Louisbourg, Shirley had learned that the powder supply was low, the garrison was undermanned and mutinous, the fortifications (especially the Grand Battery) were in disrepair, and excellent landing sites existed along Gabarus Bay just west of the city.

The general court approved the expedition by only a single vote and on the condition that other colonies participated. No doubt many people feared this might be another Cartagena, but New England ministers roused the populace, portraying the venture as a crusade against the “stronghold of Satan.” William Pepperrell commanded the expedition, which by any rational calculation should have failed. The badly trained

and poorly disciplined 4,000-man militia army was, as one professional soldier wrote, led by “People totally Ignorant” of the military skills “necessary in such an undertaking.” Yet after a siege of about seven weeks, the fortress capitulated. The French had conducted an inept defense, failing to contest the initial landing and then abandoning the Grand Battery without a fight. The volunteers fought surprisingly well, and a British naval squadron had blockaded the fortress, preventing outside succor from relieving the city.

Louisbourg’s capture was the most brilliant military achievement by the American colonies in the pre-Revolutionary era and had far-reaching implications. Most New Englanders saw “the Finger of God” in their success and believed more firmly than ever that they were His chosen people, destined for some great purpose on earth. The capture also gave colonists confidence in their martial abilities, particularly when they contrasted their performance with the Cartagena affair. Citizen-soldiers doing God’s will seemed infinitely superior to British regulars serving an earthly sovereign.

After Louisbourg the fighting took on a pattern similar to previous colonial wars. Hoping to capitalize on the victory by attacking Canada in 1746, Governor Shirley proposed the familiar two-pronged plan to the British government. When the government tentatively approved, the colonies raised an army and eagerly awaited the promised English force. However, various delays and European commitments caused Britain to abandon the campaign. Remembering the mother country’s failure in 1709, colonists pondered anew England’s solicitude for their well-being. The colonists also tried to derail the Iroquois from their neutrality but failed. Lacking support from both England and the Iroquois, colonists launched no more major offensives. Meanwhile, the French perpetrated a few massacres but mostly dispensed death in small doses.

By 1748 the war was a stalemate. France dominated the European continent, but Britain controlled the seas and, having conquered Louisbourg, held the advantage in North America. The Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle angered English colonists. The guiding principle was restoration of the status quo antebellum, which meant that Britain returned Louisbourg to France. In return, as a concession to England’s interests, France withdrew from Flanders, but this did little to diminish colonial

anguish. Colonists believed the mother country had callously disregarded their sacrifices and had sacrificed their security on the altar of England’s own selfish interests.

The Great War for Empire

In June 1758 an army of more than 12,000 British regulars and colonial troops commanded by the British commander in chief in North America, James Abercromby, labored along Lake Champlain toward Fort Ticonderoga, a French stronghold near the northern tip of Lake George. He planned to smash Ticonderoga and Crown Point and move into the St. Lawrence Valley. The French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, had fewer than 4,000 troops at Ticonderoga, but they had constructed a log breastwork and covered the ground in front of it with sharpened branches pointing outward. On July 8 Abercromby hurled his force against this position in an ill-conceived frontal attack. Almost 400 Iroquois, who in their own form of warfare always tried to avoid excessive casualties, had joined the British that morning and watched incredulously as the white troops advanced into the bristling abatis and French guns. For four hours the intrepid soldiers repeatedly attacked, recoiled, reformed, and attacked again, reddening the battlefield with their scarlet coats and their blood. Finally, mercifully, having lost more than 1,600 regulars and 300 provincials, Abercromby halted the assault. Although he still possessed numerical superiority, the unnerved British commander ordered a retreat.

For the English, Abercromby’s disaster was another loss in a series of defeats in the renewed war between France and Britain. The war began in 1754 over control of the Ohio Valley. During the 1740s the English had gained de facto sovereignty in the Ohio country, but their hold was tenuous, and between 1749 and 1753 New France acquired superiority in the area, thereby strengthening the link between Canada and Louisiana. In 1754 a French expedition ousted a Virginia volunteer unit from the most strategic position in the west, the forks of the Ohio, and began building Fort Duquesne. Meanwhile, a second Virginia force, commanded by a young George Washington, marched toward the forks with orders to expel all Frenchmen from the area. But the French outnumbered

Washington’s men and forced the Virginians to surrender. By exerting superior military power, New France possessed the Ohio Valley.

Although France and England remained officially at peace until 1756, the last colonial war had begun. The sparks struck in the Ohio wilderness ignited a conflagration that became the first true world war. Unlike the previous wars that began in Europe and embroiled the colonies, the Great War for Empire—also known as the French and Indian War— commenced in the colonies and engulfed reluctant parent countries. Both belligerents had been anxious to avoid another struggle while still recuperating from the previous wars’ debilitating effects.

Even before England was formally at war with France, the British ministry had ordered a series of preemptive strikes to drive back Canada’s ever-advancing military frontier. The ministry hoped to present France with such an overwhelming fait accompli that it would accept the situation rather than risk an international confrontation. The positions selected for elimination were Fort Duquesne, Niagara, Crown Point, and Fort Beausejour. Success on all fronts would oust New France from the Ohio country, sever communications between Quebec and the Great Lakes (and hence Louisiana), force the Canadians back to the St. Lawrence, and safeguard Nova Scotia.

The British government might have relied on colonists and their Indian allies to carry the military burden of this far-flung campaign, but this prospect inspired little optimism. The disunited colonies seemed incapable of concerted action, either for defense or in Indian affairs. In the summer of 1754, seven colonies sent representatives to Albany to discuss defense problems and to entice the Six Nations out of their neutrality. Although the Albany Conference proposed a Plan of Union calling for united action in defense matters and Indian relations, no colonial assembly approved the plan; and the Iroquois, far from being receptive, inclined dangerously toward France. Thus the British ministry was forced to commit regular troops to the enterprise and centralize Indian affairs under imperial control.

Early in 1755 Major General Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia with two understrength regular regiments that were to be recruited to full strength in the colonies. The commander in chief also had authority to raise two new regiments in America and to appoint qualified men to

superintend Indian affairs. The British government expected Braddock’s four regiments, along with Nova Scotia’s permanent garrison, to conduct the campaign with only minimal assistance from provincial troops. However, since the colonies had begun raising men for attacks on Crown Point and Fort Beausejour, Braddock integrated these forces into his planning. A British regular officer commanded colonial troops in the Fort Beausejour area, but the commander at Crown Point was New Yorker William Johnson, whom Braddock also appointed as superintendent for northern Indians. Leading the Niagara expedition was Governor Shirley, Braddock’s second in command. The commander in chief personally headed the Fort Duquesne prong of England’s fourfold advance against Canada’s outer bastions.

The 1755 campaign resulted in one success, one semi-success, and two failures. A combined force of regulars and militiamen easily captured Fort Beausejour. Johnson’s army crawled northward and in early September defeated a French army at the Battle of Lake George. Colonists naturally lauded the victory, but Johnson failed to exploit his success and abandoned the projected Crown Point attack. Ominously, with the pressure relaxed, the French began building Fort Ticonderoga twelve miles south of Crown Point. Meanwhile Shirley’s expedition got as far as Oswego but did not advance farther before the campaigning season ended.3 Braddock suffered a greater calamity. Hacking his way through a hundred miles of uninhabited wilderness, Braddock achieved a logistical masterpiece in getting his army to within a day’s march of Fort Duquesne. But on July 9 near the Monongahela River, the British advance party unexpectedly collided with an enemy army that was hurrying from the fort to lay an ambush farther down the trail. The initial encounter surprised both sides, but the French force recovered quickly, fanned out along the flanks of Braddock’s column, and gained possession of a hill dominating the British position. The English regulars in the vanguard fell back on the main force advancing to the scene. Chaos and panic ensued as the British fought an invisible enemy hidden in the dense foliage on either side of the road. Before being fatally wounded, Braddock valiantly tried to rally his men, but the remnants of his shattered army fled from the battlefield.

The failure to take Crown Point, the abortive Niagara venture, and Braddock’s defeat established the pattern for Britain’s war effort during the next two years. Ambitious plans produced meager results, while New France seemed to succeed in every endeavor. The operations proposed by Shirley for 1756 were almost a replica of 1755, but these grandiose plans did not produce a single victory. Instead, the colonies endured a crippling setback when Montcalm demolished Oswego, severing British access to the Great Lakes. The next year was equally bad for the British. Montcalm captured Fort William Henry, and, as he had at Oswego the previous year, the French commander razed the fort and withdrew. Almost simultaneously Lord Loudoun, the new British North American commander in chief, canceled his major offensive, an assault on Louisbourg, when he learned that a French naval squadron had reinforced the harbor. British General John Forbes gloomily summarized the situation at the end of 1757, writing that “the French have these severall years by past, outwitted us with our Indian Neighbors, have Baffled all our projects of Compelling them to do us justice, nay have almost every where had the advantage over us, both in political and military Genius, to our great loss, and I may say reproach.”

Despite the succession of losses, Britain had established the preconditions for victory in North America. Beginning in midsummer 1758, its prospects brightened. Fundamental to this transformation was William Pitt’s ascent to power within the British ministry. In June 1757 he assumed control over the war effort, and by the next summer his strategic concepts prevailed. Since the late 1730s a debate had raged over which should dominate, a continental or a maritime and colonial strategy. Continental advocates argued for a large-scale military commitment in Europe. Devotees of a maritime and colonial strategy, including Pitt, asserted that the Royal Navy should sweep enemy commerce from the seas; then, using its seaborne freedom of movement to hurl superior forces into the imperial domain, England should make its primary effort against enemy colonies. In particular, Pitt believed that America was the main prize. Under his leadership the war’s foremost objective was to obtain security for the thirteen colonies. Realizing that this meant the conquest of Canada, Pitt was prepared to commit vast resources to the task.

Under Pitt’s guidance the British navy asserted its superiority in numbers and spirit, blockading French ports to prevent the departure of squadrons, reinforcements, and supplies. Since Canada depended on constant transfusions from the mother country, the French position in America became increasingly anemic. Starvation stalked the land, the economy collapsed, and when Montcalm pleaded for more troops, he received only token forces. France could not risk losing large numbers of transports to British ships patrolling the North Atlantic. By 1758 Canada’s resources were so limited that it adopted a defensive strategy, and the initiative passed to the Anglo-Americans.

In late December 1757, Pitt wrote to the colonial governors assuring them that England had “nothing more at Heart, than to repair the Losses and Disappointments of the last inactive, and unhappy Campaign.” To ensure future success Pitt dispatched massive reinforcements of regulars, and to inspire the colonists to greater efforts he promised to repay most of their expenses. His objectives for 1758 included Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Louisbourg, Fort Duquesne, and, if conditions permitted, Quebec.

Abercromby failed at Ticonderoga, but other British endeavors met with success. The Louisbourg expedition, commanded by Jeffery Amherst, succeeded. In early June he sent his men toward shore against stout defensive positions at Gabarus Bay. Brigadier General James Wolfe, leading four companies of regulars, made a lodgment and audaciously ordered his outnumbered men to attack, surprising the French and establishing a small beachhead. The defenders scurried into Louisbourg and the siege began, ending with the stronghold’s capitulation in late July. Since it was late in the campaign season, Amherst decided against attacking Quebec. Meanwhile Abercromby, following his defeat by Montcalm in July, destroyed Fort Frontenac in late August. Several months later General Forbes approached Fort Duquesne, haunted by the memory of Braddock’s defeat, hindered by transportation problems, and handicapped by difficulties with Indian allies. But when he arrived at the fort, he found it abandoned.

Although the central approach to Canada remained blocked, England had penetrated its perimeter defenses in the east and west. British targets for the next year were obvious: Niagara, to remove the last French bastion

in the west; Ticonderoga and Crown Point, to open the way to Montreal; and Quebec, to rip the heart out of Canada.

British arms won victories on all fronts in 1759. The Niagara expedition captured the French position in late July, and Amherst succeeded where Abercromby had failed. With an 11,000-man army he approached Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Since the French commander in the area had only 3,000 men, Montcalm ordered him to delay the British but to retreat northward rather than lose his army in a futile defense. By early August both strongholds were in British hands. Amherst entrusted the crucial Quebec operation to Wolfe, who had performed so nobly at Louisbourg. Learning of the expedition in advance, Montcalm concentrated most of Canada’s manpower there. With an army 8,500 strong, supported by about one-fourth of the British navy, Wolfe arrived at Quebec in late June. Once he was there his real problems began. The city’s natural strength and large garrison confronted him with “such a Choice of Difficultys, that I own myself at a Loss how to [proceed].” By early September, after several unsuccessful attempts to breach Montcalm’s defenses, Wolfe was pessimistic. Deciding on a last desperate gamble, in the early-morning hours of September 13 he landed an elite force at the base of steep cliffs barely two miles from the city. In the darkness the infantry struggled hand over hand up the precipitous slope and overwhelmed a French outpost. Within hours 4,500 redcoats had assembled on the Plains of Abraham just west of Quebec, while Montcalm hastened his regulars to the scene. In a brief midmorning battle, fought in accordance with accepted European standards, the British routed the French army. Four days later the citadel surrendered, although the French army’s escape to Montreal prevented the victory from being decisive.

The once expansive Canadian domain now consisted only of Montreal, and the stricken colony’s only chance for survival was the recapture of Quebec. In the spring of 1760 a French force made a gallant effort to reclaim the city but failed. The pitiful remnants of Canada’s army then huddled in Montreal as powerful British forces converged on it from Quebec, Lake Ontario, and Crown Point. When all three armies arrived simultaneously in early September, the Canadian governor had to surrender.

Montreal’s capitulation ended the war in North America, but it continued on the seas, in Europe, in the West Indies, and in Asia until February 1763, when the combatants signed the Peace of Paris. British arms were victorious everywhere. Even Spain’s entry into the war against England in January 1762 could not save France from a humiliating defeat. Territory around the globe changed hands, but the treaty’s most momentous provisions concerned America, where France lost all its territory except for two small islands off the Newfoundland coast. To England it ceded Canada, Cape Breton Island, and all its land claims east of the Mississippi except for New Orleans. France ceded this city and all its territorial claims west of the Mississippi to Spain, which in turn gave Florida to Britain. From St. Augustine to Hudson Bay, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, England reigned supreme.

British Regulars and Colonial Militias at War

Colonial troops and, to a lesser extent, Indians contributed to Canada’s defeat, but British regulars bore the brunt of the fighting. The relationships among redcoats, colonials, and Indians were strained, but the developing rift between British officers and colonial civilians was even more ominous. Regular officers believed colonial troops had no merits. They were, wrote one of Braddock’s subordinates, “totally ignorant of Military Affairs.” They were ill disciplined and lazy and, lacking even elementary knowledge of camp sanitation, suffered an appalling rate of sickness. Colonies never fielded as many men as the legislatures voted, officers failed to report accurately their unit’s strength, and men deserted in droves, so the number of colonial troops was always uncertain. The large enlistment bounties that were needed also made colonial recruits exorbitantly expensive.

This catalog of shortcomings was true in many respects, and understanding why is important. The Great War for Empire was a war of conquest, requiring extended offensives far from the homes of most militiamen. But the militia was a system for local defense. Large numbers of militiamen could not be absent long without leaving their colonies vulnerable to enemy raids and without dislocating the local economy. Militiamen were part-time citizen-soldiers who had to run businesses, tend

crops, and conduct the fishing and fur trades. Consequently, authorities hesitated to impose militia drafts and instead relied on volunteers, who came primarily from the lowest social strata. In the few cases when a colony resorted to a draft, the sending of substitutes and paying of commutation fines ensured that few middle- or upper-class citizens served. But of all the high-ranking British officers serving in North America, Lord Loudoun alone seemed to realize that colonists marching with English regulars against some distant fort were different from the men enrolled on militia musters. “The Militia,” he wrote, “are the real Inhabitants; Stout able Men, and for a brush, much better than their Provincial Troops, whom they hire whenever they can get them, and at any price.” Almost all other British officers confused the expeditionary forces with the actual militia, thus misjudging the militia’s military potential in defense of its own terrain.

Holding such a low opinion of colonial soldiers, British officers relegated them to auxiliary functions. They built roads, served as wagoners and boatmen, and repaired and constructed forts. With their aristocratic ties and long years of experience, English officers were reluctant to treat American officers, who were usually young and newly commissioned, as equals. While provincial officers had traditionally relied on exhortation and admonishment to maintain discipline, English officers inflicted ferocious punishment upon enlisted men, including liberal use of the lash and, for serious offenses, execution by hanging or firing squad. To colonial soldiers, whippings and executions were horrific and unnecessary. And because the redcoats engaged in swearing, excessive drinking, and whoring, the colonists also condemned them as profane, irreligious, and immoral—pollutants in a pure land. And initial British defeats mingled with earlier memories, making a lasting impression. The Walker expedition, Cartagena, Braddock, Loudoun at Louisbourg—what right did professionals have to claim superiority? All in all, serving with British regulars graphically reminded colonists of a standing army’s threat to free people living in a free society, and persuaded them that their own military institutions were morally and militarily superior.

British officers also considered Indians questionable allies. Amherst described them as “a pack of lazy, rum-drinking people, and little good,” and Forbes accused them of being “more infamous cowards than any

other race of mankind” and having a “natural fickle disposition.” These impressions flowed in part from cultural ethnocentrism, but also from the natives’ difficult position in the white rivalry swirling around them. Between 1748 and 1760 England and France negotiated constantly with the Indians and tried to buy their allegiance through lavish gift giving. While the natives listened to, and took presents from, both French and English ambassadors, they were naturally anxious to be on the winning side. Inactivity, duplicity, and hesitancy to go on the warpath were stratagems to buy time until a clear-cut winner emerged. But these traits exasperated British professionals, who demanded unwavering commitment.

Initially, with English arms suffering reverses, Indians tended to support the French, and the British maintained the neutrality of important tribes, such as the Creeks and Iroquois, only through astute diplomacy coupled with large expenditures for gifts. The turning point in Indian relations, as in the war itself, came in 1758 when a reversal of battlefield fortunes occurred and the naval blockade prevented French goods from reaching Canada. Addicted to European products through the fur trade and white gift giving, French-aligned natives suffered. The tide of allegiance shifted to England.

Although the British found that friendly Indians were useful, in the final analysis they were not essential. To combat American conditions and the enemy’s guerrilla methods, the British recruited white frontiersmen and organized them into ranger companies to perform duties traditionally done by natives. Regulars also made certain tactical adaptations. They formed light infantry companies composed of agile, lightly armed men who received training in irregular warfare tactics. Some units learned to deliver aimed fire rather than volleys, to maneuver by companies instead of battalions, and to march single file to lessen the impact of an ambush. These modifications, however, were not widespread, and the British army’s success depended on standard European practices. The regulars’ discipline and organized persistence counterbalanced the virtues of Indian-style warfare.

Relations between British regulars and colonial civilians were a reenactment of the Walker expedition performed on a continent-wide stage. Conflicts over recruitment, quarters, transportation, and provisions

fueled mutual resentment. To fill understrength regiments and raise new ones, the British hoped to tap the colonial manpower reservoir. In 1755 and 1756 they met considerable success, enlisting some 7,500 colonists, but thereafter the number of recruits dwindled. One reason was that men had a choice: long-term service in the regulars with low pay and harsh discipline, or short-term service in a provincial unit with an enlistment bounty, higher pay, and lax discipline. Another reason was the often violent opposition to the unscrupulous methods British recruiters used. For example, they recruited heavily among indentured servants, a practice that colonists considered “an unconstitutional and arbitrary Invasion of our Rights and Properties” that cast suspicion on all recruiting. By 1757 mobs regularly harassed recruiters and “rescued” men whom they assumed had been illegally recruited. The inability to find men outraged professionals and forced Pitt to rely on full-strength regiments from the home islands.

Redcoats needed quarters, especially during winter, but America had few public buildings that could serve as barracks. The only option was to quarter them in private houses, but citizens argued that soldiers could not be quartered in a private home without the owner’s consent. Civilians had the law on their side, but Loudoun insisted that “Whilst the War lasts, Necessity, will Justify exceeding” normal quartering procedures. He told the Albany city government “that if they did not give Quarters, I would take them” by force. Albany officials maintained that Loudoun “assumed a Power over us Very inconsistent with the Liberties of a free and Loyal People. . . .” Civilians and soldiers invariably reached an accommodation over quarters, but only at a high cost in mutual trust.

The British government also counted on colonial assemblies to provide adequate provisions and timely transportation, but the colonies proved stingy and dilatory—at least in the opinion of regular officers. Every British officer complained about the reluctance of assemblies to comply “with the just and equitable demands of their King and Country,” but legislators acted at their own deliberate pace. They were so slow in fulfilling requests that the British frequently impressed or seized what they needed, which was an unjustified exercise of arbitrary power from the colonial perspective.

British officers thought they perceived sinister motives in the colonials, who seemed “bent upon our ruin, and destruction,” working tirelessly “to disappoint every Plan of the Government.” Professional soldiers simply misunderstood colonial institutions and political philosophies. England’s appointment of a commander in chief for North America imposed centralized military control on a decentralized political system. Each colony considered itself sovereign and was anxious to maintain its freedom of action in military affairs. Allowing the Crown’s representative, who was also a high-ranking officer in a suspect standing army, to direct the war effort would reduce every colony’s independence. Furthermore, many colonists accepted radical Whig ideology, which preached a dichotomy between power and liberty. Every accretion of power reduced freedom’s sphere. When the British army recruited fraudulently, quartered men illegally, impressed property, and tried to bully assemblies, colonists feared that growing military power threatened their liberty. Colonial legislatures believed they were fighting two wars of equal importance, one against France and one for liberty.

Several important themes emerged from the colonial wars. First, most Americans gained a high opinion of their martial abilities and a low opinion of British professionals. Colonists typically emphasized British defeats and insufficiently praised the triumphs of Amherst, Forbes, and Wolfe. Such attitudes were a tribute to the colonists’ selective military memory and help explain colonial confidence in 1775. Second, the wars had a nationalizing impact. In 1763 each colony still jealously protected its sovereignty, yet during the wars against New France important experiments in cooperation had occurred. The Albany Plan, though rejected, was an evolutionary step leading to the First Continental Congress. During the colonial wars English colonists became Americans. Finally, a growing estrangement between England and the colonies emerged. Many Englishmen agreed with Loudoun that the colonies assumed “to themselves, what they call Rights and Privileges, Totally unknown in the Mother Country.” Many colonists concurred with the Albany city council, which stated that “Upon the Whole we conceive that his Majesties Paternal Cares to Release us [from the threat of France] have in a Great Measure been Made use of to oppress us.” The Peace of

Paris, which should have pleased Englishmen everywhere, left a bitter heritage.

THREE

The American Revolution, 1763–1783

Britain’s triumph in the Great War for Empire contained the seeds of the American Revolution. England emerged from the war with an expanded empire and a staggering national debt, much of it resulting from the struggle in North America. Britain wanted to administer its new empire with maximum efficiency, which in part meant enforcing the Navigation Acts, a series of laws designed to regulate colonial trade for the mother country’s benefit. Americans had consistently violated laws through smuggling and bribery. Strict enforcement would help alleviate England’s financial distress but would crimp the colonial economy.

The North American interior also concerned Britain. It had fought the war primarily to ensure colonial security; the interior had been wrested from France for that purpose. But even as the Canadian menace waned, it became apparent that the colonies were still not secure. During the war settlers and speculators continued to push westward, threatening to oust the Indians from their hunting grounds. In the spring of 1763 an Ottawa chief named Pontiac led a coalition of tribes against whites in the Old Northwest. Pontiac represented a new type of Indian leader who emerged from the colonial wars. By the 1740s some sachems had concluded that all Indians were a single people, united by their “color” or race, with a mutual interest in halting British-American expansion. These “nativists” attempted to overcome traditional Indian localism and ethnic rivalries and advocated unified action against the advancing whites. Although efforts to forge a pan-Indian movement persisted into the early nineteenth century, neither Pontiac nor his nativist successors could overcome Indian

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factionalism or the influence of “accommodationist” leaders who believed that the whites were too strong to be resisted effectively.

Under Pontiac’s direction, Indians attacked frontier posts from Pennsylvania to Virginia, captured or forced the abandonment of almost a dozen forts, and besieged Fort Pitt and Detroit. However, neither siege was successful, and the Indians’ campaign perceptibly slowed. In 1764 General Thomas Gage, Amherst’s successor, launched an offensive that pacified many of the tribes that had supported Pontiac. As more and more of his followers submitted to the British, Pontiac’s cause became hopeless, and in July 1765 he agreed to preliminary peace terms. A year later the Ottawa chief signed a final agreement, formally ending the war.

Pontiac’s rebellion demonstrated the need for a British policy that would keep peace on the frontier. England responded by adopting three interrelated measures. It established the Proclamation Line of October 1763 that temporarily closed the area beyond the Appalachians to white settlement, thus removing Indian fears of illegal land purchases and encroachments. Britain also decided to garrison the west with regulars to enforce the Proclamation Line and regulate the fur trade equitably, thereby eliminating abuses that fueled Indian resentment. Finally, England began taxing the colonies to help pay for the army in America. From the British government’s perspective, these actions represented a tidy package that would protect the colonists, prevent the outbreak of costly Indian wars, and help meet the expenses of administering the empire. And, a few officials noted, if the colonists misbehaved, the army would be conveniently located to compel obedience to imperial rule.

Every element in England’s postwar policy rankled the colonists. Efforts to enforce the Navigation Acts threatened the colonial desire for economic growth. With France’s removal from the continent, land speculators, fur traders, and frontiersmen anticipated an unhindered westward surge. It seemed inexplicable that England should prevent them from exploiting the resources of the west. And why was a standing army needed now? Colonists had always defended themselves against Indians, and they could continue to do so. Some people suspected that the army was intended to coerce the colonies into obeying unpopular Parliamentary laws. As if to confirm the suspicion, in 1765 England passed two laws— the Stamp and Quartering Acts—that Americans considered illegal

because they taxed the colonies. Colonists asserted that only their own legislatures could tax them, that Parliament had no right to levy any direct taxes on the colonies.

The imperial program sparked colonial resistance. In the west, Americans refused to conform to the Proclamation Line or obey the trade regulations. But on the seaboard resistance was more ominous, as colonists defiantly challenged Parliament’s authority to impose taxes, especially the Stamp Act. An intercolonial Stamp Act Congress met in New York and issued protests. People adopted nonimportation agreements, uniting most Americans in an attempt to put economic pressure on England to repeal the act. Most important, colonists responded with violence. Groups calling themselves “Sons of Liberty” enforced the nonimportation agreements, forced stamp agents to resign, and mobilized mobs to ransack the homes of unpopular Crown officials. The Connecticut and New York Sons of Liberty even signed a treaty pledging mutual aid if British troops tried to enforce the Stamp Act. In the face of this opposition, Parliament repealed the act but passed a Declaratory Act proclaiming Parliament’s right “to bind” the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

The series of events that led the colonies from resistance to Parliamentary sovereignty in 1765 to outright rebellion in 1775 cannot be recapitulated here. But two points need to be made. First, the crisis represented a clash between a mature colonial society and a mother country anxious to assert parental authority. Britain had previously never exercised much direct control over the colonies. Prospering under this “salutary neglect,” the colonies enjoyed de facto independence and developed a remarkable degree of self-reliance. Colonial aspirations thus collided with England’s desire to enforce subordination and diminish colonial autonomy.

Second, the Revolution began in 1765, not 1775. The events of 1765– 1775 marked the first phase in a colonial war of national liberation. Only a handful of colonists advocated outright independence in 1765, but they vigorously championed their cause and slowly gained adherents over the next decade. During this initial stage colonial leaders organized themselves politically while subverting the established government’s authority through terrorism and propaganda. The Stamp Act Congress,

followed by the two Continental Congresses, reflected the emergence of a national political organization. At the local level the Sons of Liberty evolved into a network of committees of correspondence and of safety. These extralegal bodies coordinated the opposition against Parliament, prevented the Revolutionary movement from degenerating into anarchy, and intimidated individuals who supported England. Radical leaders also organized riots against important symbols of British rule. Mob actions were not spontaneous but instead represented purposeful violence by what were, in essence, urban volunteer militia units. Supplementing the violence was a propaganda campaign portraying every English action in the darkest hues.

The violence and nonviolent protests had the cumulative effect of undermining confidence in the British government. Frightened Loyalists found the government unable to protect them, while other colonists were persuaded that the ministry and Parliament were despotic. Either way, Americans lost faith in England. Mistrust bred contempt, creating a political vacuum that was filled by radical political agencies. John Adams correctly observed that “the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and in the union of the colonies; both of which were substantially effected before hostilities commenced.” By 1775 many colonists were convinced, as one town meeting stated, that the British government had “a design to take away our liberties and properties and enslave us forever.” Rather than submit to what they perceived to be an iniquitous government, the colonies united through the Continental Congress to defend themselves against England’s alleged schemes.

As resistance broadened, England’s attitude toward the colonies hardened. In late 1774 King George III stated that the New England colonies, which were at the center of colonial turmoil, were in rebellion and that “blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.” Both sides were determined to fight rather than retreat over the issue of Parliament’s authority. The stage was set for Lexington and Concord, which did not begin the Revolution, but only escalated the war to a higher level of violence.

The Strategic Balance

By the spring of 1775 colonial leaders and the British commander in chief, General Gage, were expecting a fight. In September 1774, Congress recommended that the colonies begin military preparations, and many of them stockpiled supplies and undertook militia training with a long- absent seriousness. Activity was particularly feverish in New England, where the British army was concentrated. After the Stamp Act crisis, the turbulence in the seaboard cities had replaced the frontier as the primary concern of the ministry, which had ordered Gage to redeploy most of the army eastward. Gage had a large garrison in Boston, where he fortified the city’s approaches, trained his troops rigorously, and gathered intelligence from spies, including Dr. Benjamin Church, a trusted member of the Revolutionary inner circle. Church informed Gage of the buildup of military supplies in Concord. When Gage received secret instructions to restore royal rule in Massachusetts through force, Concord was the logical target.

On April 18, 1775, Gage dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to destroy the Concord supplies. In the early-morning hours of the 19th, as Smith’s men tramped down the road, rebels alerted the countryside. Irritated by the slow advance and worried by the prospect of resistance, Smith sent Major John Pitcairn ahead with six light companies and asked Gage for reinforcements. Pitcairn arrived at Lexington as the rising sun revealed about seventy militiamen in martial array. No one knows who fired first, but in a brief confrontation eight Americans died and another ten were wounded. The British pushed on to Concord, where a skirmish with several hundred militiamen occurred, resulting in casualties on both sides.

The fighting at Lexington and Concord did not last five minutes, but as the British withdrew from Concord a real battle began. Responding in a massive popular uprising, thousands of irate militiamen hemmed in the redcoats and fired at them from concealed positions. By the time Smith reached Lexington, his men were panicked, and only the arrival of reinforcements saved them. The reinforced column fought its way back to Boston, but about 20 percent of the 1,500 regulars engaged were casualties. Worse yet, 20,000 New England militiamen soon besieged Gage. For the first time, the British had experienced the damage that an

armed and angry populace employing irregular tactics could inflict on a conventional military organization.

It looked as if the colonies were embarked upon an unequal war. A population of two and a half million (20 percent of whom were slaves), without an army, navy, or adequate financial resources, confronted a nation of eight million with a professional army, large navy, and vast wealth. Yet many colonists were confident and determined. They believed in the “natural courage” of Americans and in God’s divine protection. Congress admitted that colonial soldiers lacked experience and discipline but insisted that “facts have shown, that native Courage warmed with Patriotism is sufficient to counterbalance these Advantages.” And a British captain wrote that Americans “are just now worked up to such a degree of enthusiasm and madness that they are easily persuaded the Lord is to assist them in whatever they undertake, and that they must be invincible.” Colonists were determined because they struggled for high stakes, summed up by George Washington: “Remember, officers and soldiers, that you are freemen, fighting for the blessings of liberty; that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity if you do not acquit yourselves like men.” The Revolution was no European dynastic squabble, but a war involving an ideological question that affected the population far more than did the kingly quarrels of the age of limited warfare. Large numbers of colonists ardently believed freedom was the issue, not only for themselves but for generations yet unborn.

While Americans claimed natural courage, God, freedom, and posterity as invisible allies, Britain encountered difficulties that negated its advantages in men, ships, and money. England had underestimated the militia’s military potential and rebel numerical strength. Officials, remembering the pathetic provincial soldiers of the last war and ignorant of the distinction between the wartime units and the actual militia, believed sustained resistance was impossible. Compounding this misunderstanding was England’s belief that the rebels were a small minority. British hopes for Loyalist support were high, but Loyalist strength was an illusion: Tories represented less than 20 percent of all white Americans.

Britain also misunderstood the difficulties of conquering a localized, thinly populated society. Colonial decentralization meant the colonies had

no strategic heart. To win the war, England had to occupy vast expanses of territory, a task beyond its military resources because of logistical problems and manpower shortages. The British never solved the difficulties involved in waging war across three thousand miles of ocean in a relatively primitive country. Part of the problem was England’s cumbersome administrative machinery, staffed with incompetent patronage appointees, and the lack of coordination among departments. Uncertain communications across the Atlantic and over crude North American roads hindered every military operation. During the Great War for Empire, America had for the most part fed the British army, but now rations had to come primarily from the mother country. They often arrived moldy, sour, rancid, or maggoty; even worse, many ships fell victim to storms or hostile craft. No matter how many supplies came from England, the army still foraged in America for hay, firewood, and some fresh food. But foraging often became indiscriminate plundering, which alienated colonials and drove many of them into the rebel camp. The rebels also tried to deny the enemy access to supplies by conducting guerrilla operations against foraging parties.

The British populace at home was not united behind the war because some people doubted its wisdom and justness. One result of the antiwar sentiment was difficulty in recruiting troops, a difficulty aggravated by George III’s reluctance to incur the huge expenses necessary to expand the army. To fill the ranks, England hired German soldiers, collectively known as Hessians, and sent almost 30,000 of them to America. But Hessians alone were insufficient, and England also enlisted slaves, mobilized Indians, and depended on Loyalist soldiers. England still suffered manpower shortages, and these expedients were also partially counterproductive. Hiring mercenaries, using slaves, inciting “savages,” and fomenting a civil war within a civil war heightened colonial disaffection.

Perhaps England’s fundamental error was its inability to implement an unambiguous strategy early in the war. Although most authorities believed the rebellion could be crushed by brute force, some questioned the expediency of ramming Parliamentary supremacy down the colonists’ throats. Unable to form a consensus on this question, England wavered between coercion and conciliation, vacillating between a punitive war to

impose peace and an attempt to negotiate a settlement through appeasement. Unclear about its objectives, Britain inspired neither fear nor affection in the colonies.

Finally, England had no William Pitt to rally the population and direct the war effort. The two men most responsible for conducting the war were Prime Minister Sir Frederick North and Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the American colonies. Neither possessed a charismatic personality or an abundance of wisdom. As for the generals, no one would mistake any of them for another Frederick the Great or, for that matter, George Washington. A series of cautious and weak commanders plagued British strategy. The odds against the colonists were not as great as they appeared. Britain’s difficulties in projecting military power into the colonies offset America’s obvious deficiencies. The war began as a balance of military weakness, ensuring a long conflict despite optimistic expectations by both sides that the war would be short.

The “Dual Army”

The Revolution created a “dual army” tradition that combined a citizen- soldier reserve (the militia), which supplied large numbers of partially trained soldiers, with a small professional force that provided military expertise and staying power. As much as Americans mistrusted a standing army, Congress realized one was necessary and created the Continental Army. By establishing this national regular army, Congress implicitly accepted the ideology of English moderate Whigs, who had argued that a regular force under firm legislative control was not only consistent with constitutional freedoms but also essential to preserve those liberties. Throughout the war the Continental Army complemented rather than supplanted the state militias, and at practically every critical juncture these disparate forces acted in concert.

Even before Lexington and Concord, the colonial assemblies had revitalized the militia system by increasing the number of training days, stiffening punishment for missing musters, tightening exemption lists, stockpiling powder and shot, and, in some colonies, creating a distinction between militiamen and minutemen. The latter were generally younger men who received special training and took the field on short notice.

Rebels also purified the militia by purging Tory officers, ensuring that only “the inflexible friends to the rights of the people” held commissions. The militia’s renaissance had a profound impact. With every colony’s military establishment under rebel control, British armies encountered an unfriendly reception wherever they went. Loyalists were immediately on the defensive and never gained the initiative, as rebel militias beat down counterrevolutionary uprisings. For example, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, tried to mobilize Loyalists and appealed to runaway slaves, but in December 1775 the Virginia militia, reinforced by 200 Continentals, defeated Dunmore at the Battle of Great Bridge. Two months later a similar fate befell Josiah Martin, the royal governor of North Carolina, when the North Carolina militia defeated his Loyalist forces at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge. In both states the militia had extinguished Loyalist power and expelled royal authority. Greeting enemy forces with small-scale warfare and maintaining internal security were only two of the militia’s functions. Militiamen patrolled against slave insurrections, fought Indians, repelled seaborne raiding parties, garrisoned forts, guarded prisoners of war, collected intelligence, rallied the war-weary, transported supplies, and battled British foragers.

One thing the militia usually could not do was stand alone against large numbers of enemy regulars. But in most battles militiamen did fight alongside Continental troops. The militia had a mixed battlefield record. Sometimes it behaved shamefully, sometimes valiantly. The militia’s performance often depended on the commanding officer; one who understood its limitations against disciplined regulars could utilize militiamen with surprising effectiveness. A British general, while barely suppressing his distaste for such undisciplined irregulars, perhaps best assessed the militia’s battlefield contribution. “I will not say much in praise of the militia of the Southern Colonies,” Lord Cornwallis wrote, “but the list of British officers and soldiers killed and wounded by them . . . proves but too fatally they are not wholly contemptible.”

Although many men shirked militia duty by paying commutation fees, hiring substitutes, or running away, a large percentage of adult males did some service because few localities escaped mobilizing their militias. Units formed quickly, executed their short-term tasks, and vanished. British commanders never understood how these militia forces proliferated.

Steeped in the traditions of limited warfare, they did not perceive that the Revolutionary War was one in which military service was being democratized and nationalized. Military authority no longer resided in a sovereign, but in the people and their chosen representatives. War aims were not tangible and limited but abstract and not easily compromised— the colonies could not be half independent—and the politically alert population cared about the outcome.

Since the militia generally adhered to its parochial traditions, Congress realized it needed a national army that could be kept in the field and sent to fight beyond the boundaries of any particular colony. It was for this purpose that it organized the Continental Army, which initially consisted of the New England militiamen penning Gage’s force inside Boston. In mid-June 1775, Congress adopted the besieging throng and then voted to raise ten companies of riflemen from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to give the army a more “continental” flavor. Having formed an army, Congress selected George Washington to command it. Washington had been with Braddock and with Forbes’s expedition to Fort Duquesne, and in between service with the regulars he had commanded the Virginia militia. As the crisis with England worsened, Washington played an active role in Virginia’s evolution from resistance to revolution, and he attended both the First and Second Continental Congresses. He was the only delegate attending the deliberations in Philadelphia attired in a military uniform, perhaps symbolizing his readiness to fight for American rights. Washington was a reasonably experienced soldier, a firm advocate of American liberties, impressive in looks, and articulate without being flamboyant. Equally important, he was a Virginian whose appointment, like the rifle companies, gave the army a continental appearance.

“I declare with the utmost sincerity,” Washington wrote the president of Congress, “I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honoured with.” He probably meant it, since his frontier service had given him no opportunity to become acquainted with cavalry tactics, massed artillery, or the deployment of large forces. Yet Washington eventually embodied the Revolution, with the cause and the commander so intertwined in rebel eyes that they became synonymous.

During the war with France, Washington had developed an aversion to militiamen and an appreciation for British professionals. He had experienced nothing but problems with the Virginia militia. They never turned out in sufficient numbers, and those who did he considered insolent and prone to panic and desertion. His opinion did not change during the Revolution, and most Continental officers shared his conviction that “to place any dependence upon Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff.” Paradoxically, Washington repeatedly depended on the militia to buttress the Continental Army during innumerable crises. If the militia dismayed Washington, British regulars impressed him, and he strove to mold the Continental Army into a mirror image of Britain’s army. He insisted it should be “a respectable Army,” not only well organized and disciplined but also officered by “Gentlemen, and Men of Character.” He believed the prospect of such an army endangering civilian supremacy was remote; the slight risk was necessary because the consequence of fighting without a regular army was “certain, and inevitable Ruin.”

Although Washington intended to fight the British as they had fought the French, employing a regular army commanded by long-serving officers and using citizen-soldiers only as auxiliaries, he never quite succeeded. The reasons were a dearth of competent officers and too few Continentals. America had no reservoir of men experienced in conventional warfare, and it took long years and hard trials to develop effective battlefield leadership. The consistent shortage of Continental soldiers forced militiamen to fill gaps in the fighting line. Ironically, the militia’s existence was one reason regulars were so few: Given the choice between a militia unit or a Continental regiment, most men chose the former. Militia duty carried no stigma, being patriotic, necessary, and often dangerous. But brief militia service entailed little of the long-term misery Continentals experienced. The high wages paid laborers and the possibility of profit from privateering also retarded recruiting. Despite land and monetary bounties, despite the resort to state militia drafts to fill manpower quotas set by Congress, and despite varied enlistment terms— from one year to the duration of the war—the army never approached its authorized strength. For example, in the fall of 1775 Congress voted for an army of 28 regiments (20,000 men), and a year later it increased this to

88 regiments (75,000 men), but the army’s actual size was invariably less than half, and frequently less than a third, of its paper strength.

In terms of social composition the rank and file approximated that of the British army. The ranks contained some farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics, but they included many more recent immigrants, enemy deserters and prisoners of war, Loyalists and criminals (both of whom sometimes had the option of joining or hanging), vagrants, indentured servants, apprentices, free black men, and slaves. The soldiers thus overwhelmingly came from the bottom strata of society. Although the social origins of many Continentals resembled those of British regulars, the similarity fades when one asks why men served. Obviously, some Continentals, like their British counterparts, had little choice. But most American recruits served willingly. The methods of avoiding service were so numerous that few people became regulars against their will. Poor and propertyless men may have found substitute payments, bounties, and army pay attractive, but less dangerous ways to make money and acquire land abounded in American society. Financial benefits simply reinforced the primary motivation to serve, which was probably ideological. Appeals to freedom and liberty—and the vision of a better future these abstractions conveyed—could strike an especially intense chord in men of humble means and origins. One soldiers’ song emphasized this ideological motivation:

No Foreign Slaves shall give us Laws, No Brittish Tyrant Reign

Tis Independence made us Free and Freedom We’ll Maintain.

Proof of the Continentals’ willing service was the way so many of them endured continuous hardships with a fortitude that made foreign observers marvel. Baron von Closen of the French army exclaimed: “I admire the American troops tremendously! It is incredible that soldiers composed of men of every age, even children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.” And a Hessian captain asked in wonderment:

With what soldiers in the world could one do what was done by these men, who go about nearly naked and in the greatest privation? Deny the best-disciplined soldiers of Europe what is due them and they will run away in droves, and the general will soon be alone. But from this one can perceive what an enthusiasm—which these poor fellows call “Liberty”—can do!

Money could not buy, and discipline could not instill, the Continentals’ type of loyalty; an ideological motivation that promised a better life for themselves and their posterity held them in the ranks. Of course, not every Continental could tolerate prolonged deprivation, and many deserted. But the desertion rate declined as the war progressed, and the army became the heart of resistance.

Shouldering arms freely and believing freedom was the issue, Continentals never became regulars in the European sense. They became good soldiers, but they remained citizens who refused to surrender their individuality. They asserted their personal independence by wearing jaunty hats and long hair despite (or perhaps to spite) their officers’ insistence upon conformity in dress and appearance. Furthermore, they were only temporary regulars. Unlike European professionals, they understood the war’s goals and would fight until they were achieved, but then they intended to return to civilian life.

Congress was mindful of the irony in creating a standing army. Americans had consistently inveighed against regulars, their threat to liberty, and the taxes necessary to maintain them. Now Congress, having established its own regular army, shouldered two onerous burdens. First, as Samuel Adams said, since a “Standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People,” it had to “be watched with a jealous Eye.” Congress was careful to keep the army subservient to civil authority. It enjoined Washington to “observe and follow” all orders from Congress and to report regularly to the legislature, and appointed all subordinate generals, who would look to Congress, not Washington, for preferment. It also determined the war’s objectives, controlled the army’s size and composition, provided money and resources for its maintenance, established disciplinary regulations,

and conducted foreign affairs. At times Congress even directly guided strategy.

Considering the hypersensitive fear of military ascendancy, Congress’s selection of Washington was fortuitous. He repeatedly stated his belief in civil supremacy, remaining deferential to Congress even when its inefficiency threatened the army’s survival. Having served in the Virginia assembly and in Congress, he understood the often maddeningly slow political process in representative governments and the nation’s inadequate administrative machinery for conducting a large-scale war. By reporting to Congress on all matters great or trivial, by religiously adhering to congressional dictates, and through his immense patience in the face of nearly unbearable frustrations, Washington alleviated concern that he would capitalize on his growing military reputation to become a dictator. Although revolutions have frequently given birth to permanent presidents, kings, and emperors, Washington had no desire to become an American Cromwell. Like the men he commanded, he never forgot that he was a citizen first and only second a soldier.

The second congressional burden was furnishing logistical support for the army. The fundamental difficulties were insufficient financial resources, inadequate administrative organization, and primitive transportation facilities. War is never cheap: As General Jedediah Huntington observed, “Money is the Sinews of war.” But the colonists, having rebelled against English taxation, refused to give Congress the power to tax. To finance the war, Congress resorted to the printing press, emitting $200 million worth of paper money by the fall of 1779, when it ceased printing money. Since Congress had no source of revenue from taxation, the value of Continental bills depreciated rapidly, reducing their purchasing power. With the states also issuing paper money and many counterfeit bills in circulation, the nation wallowed in worthless paper. As the currency depreciated, inflation soared, further fueled by war-induced dislocations in agriculture and commerce and by shortages of manufactured goods. Only foreign loans, primarily from France, allowed Congress to muddle through.

To administer the army, Congress initially relied on ad hoc committees to deal with problems as they arose. Not until June 1776 did it form a five- member Board of War and Ordnance to give continuity to army

administration. But board members devoted only a fraction of their time to army matters, since congressmen serving on the board usually sat on several other committees and also attended to their regular congressional duties. Congressional membership also changed rapidly, and few delegates remained long enough to comprehend the army’s needs. Thus in October 1777 Congress reconstituted the board to include military officers. Congress also created rudimentary staff departments such as a commissary general of stores and provisions and a quartermaster general. Neither the board nor the supply departments were efficient. They never attained institutional stability because of frequent reorganizations and changes in both civilian and military personnel as Congress strove to find a combination that would produce results. Finding good men was not easy. The United States had few men experienced in large-scale logistical management. Like battlefield officers, staff officers had to be nurtured, and they made mistakes as they matured. Many appointees proved to be incompetent or corrupt; others were simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of their responsibilities contrasted with the meager resources at their disposal. Persuading talented officers to forsake field command for a desk job was especially difficult. Soldiers knew that their way to glory and historical immortality lay with the sword, not the pen. Another problem was the feeble coordination among the staff departments, which often competed with each other—and with state logistical agencies and civilians—for scarce goods, driving prices up. Worst of all, the perpetual financial crisis made supplying the army virtually impossible. Supply officers had too many items to buy and too little money to pay for them.

By the winter of 1779–1780, with the treasury depleted and army storehouses empty, Congress abdicated much of its responsibility for the army to the states. It asked each state to pay its own troops in the Continental Army and adopted a system of requisitioning the states for “specific supplies.” Under this plan Congress apportioned quotas of food, clothing, fodder, and other necessities among the states according to their special resources. Unfortunately for the starving Continentals, the situation did not improve. States did not have adequate administrative machinery and were reluctant to commandeer supplies from their citizens. Almost every state argued that its quota was unfairly high and refused to cooperate until Congress made adjustments—which never quite met all the objections. The requisition system’s failure compelled Congress to reassert its own authority, and in 1781 it centralized the management of

financial and military matters in executive departments. But by then active hostilities were drawing to a close.

Even if Congress had enjoyed unlimited funds and an efficient logistical organization, the army’s supply situation would have remained precarious because of the nation’s underdeveloped transportation network. The British blockade hampered coastal trade, forcing reliance on land transportation. But roads were few and all but impassible during inclement weather, wagons were in short supply, and horses and oxen were scarce. At times the army nearly perished in the midst of plenty when supplies could not be moved from wharves and warehouses to the famished troops. Unpaid, unfed, unclothed, and unsheltered, many Continentals became stoical, viewing themselves as martyrs to the “glorious cause.” As one colonel wrote, “We have this consolation, however, that it cannot be said that we are bought or bribed into the service.”

The militia and the Continental Army were two sides of a double- edged sword. Neither blade was keenly honed, and even in combination they usually did not make a lethal weapon. Washington’s task was never easy, but without either army it would have been impossible.

The Militia’s War, 1775–1776

The majority of men who took up arms during the “popular uprising” phase of the war in 1775–1776 were not fighting for independence, but for their rights as Englishmen within the empire. Although a growing number believed independence inevitable, most maintained allegiance to George III, who, they assumed, was being misled by corrupt ministers conspiring to enslave the colonies. Congress insisted that the colonies were only protecting themselves from these conspirators, that reconciliation would occur as soon as the King restrained his advisers.

Although colonists issued proclamations portraying the English as aggressors and themselves as aggrieved defenders, rebel forces quickly assumed the offensive. On May 10, 1775, frontiersmen under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold overwhelmed the British garrison at Ticonderoga, and two days later another rebel force captured Crown Point. Meanwhile, the New Englanders around Boston were organized into a makeshift army,

with the men enlisted until the end of the year. British General Gage considered their entrenched positions strong and pleaded for more men. Instead of reinforcements, the government sent Major Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne to act as advisers. They demanded that Gage take the offensive. In mid-June, when colonists ordered to entrench on Bunker Hill mistakenly dug in on Breed’s Hill, he consented to let Howe oust them. When Howe’s effort to outflank the colonial position failed, he believed that he had no choice but to make a frontal assault. Three times the redcoats advanced, and twice the colonists hurled them off the hill. On the third try, with the colonists weary and short of ammunition, the British swarmed over the parapet and the Americans fled.

British success at the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill was costly; more than 1,000 of the 2,500 regulars engaged were casualties. If the immediate price of victory was exorbitant, even more disturbing for British prospects was the fighting spirit Americans displayed. Gage recognized that opinions formed during the French and Indian War were wrong, and he advised the ministry to “proceed in earnest or give the business up.” The government, realizing that it faced a genuine war requiring a regular campaign, replaced Gage with Howe and began to plan for 1776.

When Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 2, he was eager to pursue an aggressive strategy. But he could do little immediately. A severe shortage of weapons and powder prevented him from attacking the British army, and his own army appalled him. The New Englanders struck him as “exceedingly dirty and nasty people” characterized by “an unaccountable kind of stupidity” and a lack of discipline. Knowing the eyes of the continent were upon him and expecting some momentous event, Washington found the inactivity around Boston galling, so in late summer 1775 he ordered Arnold to advance through the Maine wilderness to capture Quebec. Unknown to Washington, Congress had meanwhile ordered General Philip Schuyler to attack Montreal. Americans hoped the invasion would incite a Canadian revolt against Britain and convert the region into the fourteenth colony. Washington also struggled to discipline the army, but before he could achieve much success, that army almost disappeared. When enlistments expired at year’s end, most men refused to reenlist. Washington had to

discharge one army and recruit another while the enemy was only a musket shot away. He did it by calling on militiamen to fill the gaps until new Continental recruits arrived.

In November 1775 the novice commander sent Henry Knox, a self- taught soldier, to Ticonderoga to fetch the artillery captured there. Knox dragged the ordnance across three hundred miles of ice and snow, arriving back at Boston in January 1776, and Washington shrewdly placed it behind hastily constructed entrenchments atop Dorchester Heights outside Boston. American artillery now dominated the British position, and Howe, unwilling to fight another Bunker Hill to dislodge the guns, had to evacuate the city. On March 17, 1776, the enemy army sailed for Halifax, leaving no British force anywhere on American soil.

Grim news from Canada offset the good news from Boston. Schuyler had relinquished command to General Richard Montgomery, who had occupied Montreal in mid-November. Arnold’s men, reduced to walking skeletons by their arduous trek, reached the St. Lawrence simultaneously, and Montgomery hastened downriver to unite forces. The commanders audaciously stormed Quebec in late December during a raging blizzard, but when Montgomery fell dead and Arnold was wounded, the attack fizzled. Arnold doggedly directed a siege from his hospital cot, but when British reinforcements arrived in May, the demoralized Americans retreated in disorder to Ticonderoga.

Even as the invasion force retreated, sentiment for independence advanced. On balance, the first year of fighting went to the Americans. The British retreat from Concord, the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the militia successes at Great Bridge and Moore’s Creek Bridge, and the evacuation of Boston all augured well for American success. But although doing tolerably well on their own, Americans believed they needed assistance to win. However, neither France nor Spain was likely to aid them openly unless independence, rather than reconciliation, was the American goal. English actions also alienated Americans. Both King and Parliament rejected conciliatory appeals for redress of grievances and instead showed a determination to conquer the colonies. Employing mercenaries, instigating Indians, and appealing to slaves to join royal armies angered men who previously favored reconciliation, as did the

senseless destruction of Falmouth, Maine, in October 1775, and Norfolk, Virginia, four months later.

When Thomas Paine’s Common Sense excoriated monarchy in principle and George III in person and declared that “the weeping voice of nature cries, ’Tis time to part,” it found a receptive audience. Jefferson’s famous document severed the last strand of colonial allegiance. Americans had already rejected Parliamentary sovereignty, and now the Declaration renounced fealty to the King. Americans were aware, as John Adams said, “of the toil and blood and treasure” entailed in maintaining independence. “Yet,” Adams continued, “through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.”

From Disaster to Victory, 1776–1781

By July 1776 the war’s “uprising” phase had ended and the last stage of the war of liberation had begun. In this phase rebels fielded their own regular army, which represented a new government claiming sovereign status. Although conventional operations never fully replaced guerrilla activity, the roles of opposing regular forces became increasingly important. The conventional war consisted of a northern period that climaxed at Saratoga in 1777 and a southern period that culminated at Yorktown in 1781.

Both the Continental Army and America’s very claim to sovereignty received a severe test in 1776 when the ministry made its largest effort of the war, hurling 32,000 troops and almost half the Royal Navy against New York City. Howe commanded the land forces; his brother, Richard, Lord Howe, commanded the naval component. Down from Canada came Sir Guy Carleton with 13,500 men, following the Richelieu River–Lake Champlain route. England aimed these formidable forces against the Hudson River for strategic reasons. New York was a superb harbor from which the navy could conduct operations. Control of the Hudson would link British forces in Canada and those in the colonies and split America’s resources and population by isolating New England. The middle colonies reportedly teemed with Loyalists, who would provide manpower and logistical support.

Washington brought the army from Boston to defend New York, splitting his forces between Manhattan Island and Long Island. To the latter’s defense he committed about half his 20,000 fit soldiers (mostly raw Continentals and even rawer militia), under the command of General Israel Putnam. The Americans entrenched on Brooklyn Heights, hoping Howe would attempt a frontal assault, but Putnam also deployed about 4,000 men in forward positions. On August 27 the British general, who had landed more than 20,000 British and Hessian troops on Long Island, moved around the left flank of the advanced units and routed them. But Howe failed to smash the rebels by assailing Brooklyn Heights and instead began a formal siege of the American position. His caution allowed the Americans to escape to Manhattan, uniting the two wings of Washington’s army.

The American situation was still desperate. Thousands of dejected militiamen deserted, and the army’s position in New York City could be outflanked by a British amphibious landing anywhere farther north on Manhattan. On September 15 the enemy landed at Kip’s Bay, threatening to trap the American army. But Howe moved across the island lethargically, and Washington escaped. The Americans took up a prepared defensive position at Harlem Heights near the northern tip of Manhattan Island, leaving New York City to the British, who made it their headquarters for the remainder of the war. Howe sent a probing party against Washington’s defenses, but in the Battle of Harlem Heights that followed the Americans repulsed the enemy and the campaign settled into another prolonged lull.

Washington’s new position was no safer than Brooklyn or New York. As long as the British could ferry men up the Hudson or East Rivers, they could outflank the Americans. A month after Kip’s Bay, Howe did just that with disembarkations at Throg’s Neck and then Pell’s Point. Had the British made a rapid thrust inland, they could have cut off Washington’s retreat from Manhattan Island. But Howe again acted with caution, allowing the Americans to escape and assume another strong defensive position at White Plains, where Washington again hoped Howe would make a frontal attack. At the Battle of White Plains, Howe refused to accept the bait and instead executed a flanking movement, forcing the Americans to retreat and presenting the British with still another

opportunity to annihilate Washington. But Howe again dallied, and Washington withdrew five miles to North Plains.

Throughout the entire New York campaign, Howe never utilized his maneuverability—which command of the waterways in the area gave him —to trap and destroy the Continental Army. He has been criticized for his failure to do so, but he faced at least two constraints. Howe fought according to the precepts of eighteenth-century warfare, which emphasized avoiding battles and deemphasized ruthless exploitation of success. Furthermore, as members of a peace commission that accompanied the military forces, the Howe brothers had a dual role as soldiers and diplomats. Sympathetic to America, they hoped to end the rebellion with a minimum of bloodshed by a judicious combination of the sword and the olive branch. Their peacemaking faltered because the United States had declared independence, which the Howes could not concede. Their warmaking failed because they allowed Washington to escape when he should have been crushed.

The British had nevertheless jostled Washington’s army from Manhattan. As the Americans withdrew northward, Washington left garrisons at Forts Washington and Lee, on opposite banks of the Hudson. Rather than pursue Washington to North Plains, Howe suddenly turned southward, captured Fort Washington and its garrison, and forced the evacuation of Fort Lee. Howe then dispatched Clinton to capture Newport, Rhode Island, while the remainder of his army fanned out into New Jersey. Washington fled across the Delaware River, trying to stay between the advancing enemy and the rebel capital at Philadelphia.

With Washington’s army numbering fewer than 3,000 men, the Revolution seemed about to expire. However, one bit of success pierced the gloom: The British advance from the north had failed. Arnold, recovered from his wound sustained at Quebec, built a flotilla of small ships on Lake Champlain, and Carleton paused to construct his own fleet. At the Battle of Valcour Island, Arnold’s outgunned fleet fought a stout delaying action that unnerved Carleton, who retired northward. Washington saw other possibilities for successful operations. Howe’s army was scattered throughout New Jersey in winter quarters. Perhaps one or more of these encampments could be surprised. Washington knew it would be a daring enterprise, but something had to be attempted “or we

must give up the cause.” With an unorthodoxy born of desperation, he began a winter campaign. On Christmas night his men crossed the Delaware and assaulted the Hessian outpost at Trenton, capturing or killing almost 1,000 men. He retreated back behind the Delaware, called up militia reinforcements, recrossed the river, and occupied Trenton. When Cornwallis approached with 6,000 troops, Washington sidestepped them and attacked Princeton, inflicting another 400 casualties. The Americans then took refuge near Morristown. Trenton and Princeton revived the Revolutionary cause, and Howe, twice stung, withdrew his garrisons from almost all New Jersey. The 1776 campaign ended with the Continental Army small but intact and with the British in control of only New York City and Newport, which were minimal gains for England’s maximum effort.

The British had learned a sobering lesson. Washington was a clever commander whose army could fight well, even though the men were so ill- shod that they left bloody footprints in the snow. Henceforth the American commander would be an even more formidable adversary, for Washington had gained great insights from the 1776 campaign. He knew he was fortunate to have survived his eagerness to fight around New York. And he realized that the Revolution would continue as long as the Continental Army, the backbone of the Revolution, existed. Since his army was inferior to the enemy’s, it should not be risked except in an emergency. No city, except perhaps Philadelphia, could warrant hazarding the army because, said Washington, “it is our arms, not defenceless towns, they have to subdue.” After 1776 Washington assumed the strategic defensive and became determined to win the war by not losing the Continental Army in battle, fighting only when conditions were extraordinarily advantageous. He would frustrate the British by raids, continual skirmishing, and removing supplies from their vicinity, always staying just beyond the enemy’s potentially lethal grasp. This strategy entailed risks. Americans might interpret it as cowardice or weakness, and since defensive war meant protracted war, they might lose heart. But Washington believed he could be active enough to prevent excessive war- weariness. Prolonged resistance would also fuel opposition to the conflict in England, as well as strengthen America’s hand in European diplomacy.

England made its second greatest effort in 1777, but the campaign demonstrated the government’s inability to provide coherent strategic guidance. When operations began, the men who played major roles in the planning—Germain, Howe, and Burgoyne—were unsure of each other’s precise orders and intentions, resulting in two uncoordinated expeditions. Burgoyne followed the Champlain route southward while a secondary force under Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger moved eastward along the Mohawk River. These forces were to unite on the Hudson and capture Albany, where, Burgoyne assumed, they would cooperate with Howe. But Howe left a garrison in New York and took 13,000 troops to capture Philadelphia. Instead of marching overland, he went by sea, which ensured that he and Burgoyne would be incapable of mutual assistance. The movement baffled Washington, who mistakenly believed British plans would be logical. Britain’s flawed strategy allowed Washington to plan wisely. He accurately estimated Burgoyne’s strength and calculated that the Continentals in upstate New York, reinforced by militia, would stop him. He also guessed Howe’s destination and wheeled his army toward Philadelphia.

For political and psychological reasons Washington had to defend the capital. He took up a position behind Brandywine Creek, but Howe outflanked him and defeated, but once again did not destroy, the army. Howe garrisoned Philadelphia, but he quartered part of his army at nearby Germantown and used another detachment to reconnoiter Forts Mercer and Mifflin on the Delaware, which had to be cleared so the army could be supplied. Noting the dispersed deployments, Washington attacked Germantown. His army again fought hard but lost, and by mid- November Howe had also captured the Delaware River forts. Washington’s twin defeats and the capital’s loss were troublesome but not disheartening. The army had performed well and rapidly replaced its losses, and word from the north was joyous.

Burgoyne had started his campaign successfully by capturing Ticonderoga. From there he inched forward, burdened by an enormous artillery and baggage train. The troops under Philip Schuyler, commander of the American forces in upstate New York, hampered the advance by felling trees into a tangled labyrinth and hastening crops and cattle out of Burgoyne’s reach. In mid-August, Burgoyne sent a detachment to

Bennington, Vermont, to raid a rebel supply depot. Angered by atrocities committed by Burgoyne’s Indian allies and elated that Horatio Gates had replaced the hated Schuyler, militiamen annihilated the column. At almost the same time St. Leger turned back after an unsuccessful siege of Fort Stanwix. The arrival of Continental reinforcements, especially a corps of riflemen, made Burgoyne’s situation worse. The riflemen drove his scouts inside their own lines, leaving the British blind in a swelling sea of militiamen. “Wherever the King’s forces point,” moaned Burgoyne, “militia, to the amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours.” Reinforced by the militia, Gates’s regulars fortified a position on Bemis Heights, on the west bank of the Hudson, barring the route south. At the Battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights the English failed to penetrate this barrier and Burgoyne retreated to Saratoga, where militiamen and Continentals hovered about his dying army like vultures. On October 17 he surrendered.

After two mighty exertions England was no closer to victory than it had been at Lexington and Concord, and support for the war plummeted. British forces held enclaves at New York, Newport, and Philadelphia, but the Continental Army and rebel militias controlled the countryside. As the rival armies entered winter quarters, their mutual weakness remained in equilibrium.

The winter at Valley Forge was one of discontent and privation. Rumors about a plot to replace Washington with Gates, although without foundation, kept the commander in ill humor. The troops’ plight did not improve his disposition. Without adequate shelter, food, or clothing, they huddled around their campfires exercising a soldier’s inalienable right to complain. In particular the forlorn men cursed Congress, which they blamed for their distress. In truth, Congress was doing the best it could. The soldiers’ condition was caused by soaring inflation, currency depreciation, the scarcity of goods, primitive transportation, and a rudimentary administrative organization. These were beyond the control of Congress, which was a weak central government that could neither tax nor enforce its requests to the states for resources.

But Valley Forge was not entirely bleak, and the army emerged a better fighting force and with high morale. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a former captain in the Prussian army, introduced a training system

emphasizing simplicity and standardization in drill and musketry, and the men, who had experienced enough confusion under the old system, responded readily. In February, Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s best subordinates, became quartermaster general and miraculously improved the logistical system. The soldiers, tempered in the fires of adversity, developed a common pride in their military proficiency and ability to survive.

Best of all, in February 1778, France, convinced by Saratoga that America could win the war, signed a treaty of alliance. France had been providing covert aid, but America could now anticipate far greater assistance. In 1779 Spain also declared war on England, and in 1780 so did the Dutch. Thus a colonial rebellion had expanded into a world war, a development that was essential to the American cause. After 1778 England’s European enemies diverted British resources from North America, disrupted British operations there, and provided loans and equipment that helped sustain the rebels during some of the war’s darkest periods. Equally important, a French army and fleet eventually deployed in North America, providing direct support to Washington’s army. After the French alliance the scales of weakness became unbalanced in America’s favor, although it would be three years before the tilt brought conclusive results.

After 1778 England considered America a secondary theater and consequently reevaluated its strategy there, resulting in a shift in strategic focus to the south. It would be necessary to coordinate operations on the mainland and in the Caribbean, where the French threat was acute. Some officials believed southerners would not be as intransigent as New Englanders because “their numerous slaves in the bowells of their country, and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet.” But the most compelling factor was the belief in widespread Loyalism in the region. The ministry pinned its hopes on the existence of southern Loyalists, who would have to carry the burden of the fighting, since Parliament refused to send many reinforcements.

As a prelude to southern operations Clinton, who replaced Howe as commander in chief, abandoned Philadelphia and consolidated his forces at New York. As he marched north with 10,000 men, the New Jersey militia mobilized to resist the advance, so that, as a Hessian officer

succinctly phrased it, “Each step cost human blood.” Washington also attacked the rear of the extended British column near Monmouth Courthouse. He entrusted the initial assault to General Charles Lee, a retired British major who had settled in America and adopted the rebel cause, but Lee’s halfhearted assault soon fell back in disorder. Riding to the sound of the guns, Washington rallied the men, and in weather so hot that soldiers died from heatstroke, the armies exchanged volleys and bayonet charges in European fashion. The Continentals, displaying the benefits of von Steuben’s training, more than matched the British for five hours until darkness ended the battle. Washington resolved to renew the assault in the morning, but Clinton escaped during the night. Monmouth Courthouse was the last major battle in the north. For the next three years the British remained in New York City and Washington’s army kept watch on them from an arc of defensive positions in the Hudson Highlands above the city. The armies skirmished and raided constantly, but they engaged in no battles. At least Washington had the satisfaction of knowing that after two years of maneuvers and battles in the north, “both Armies are brought back to the very point they set out from.”

England’s southern strategy began in November 1778 when Clinton embarked 3,500 men under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell to attack Savannah, which was easily captured. A full year elapsed before Clinton followed up the initial success by investing Charleston from its landward side. In May 1780 the city surrendered, including the entire American army in the south. Two weeks later Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, commanding the Loyalist British Legion, defeated South Carolina’s last organized rebel force at the Waxhaws, killing those soldiers who surrendered. The British quickly established posts throughout the state. In June Clinton departed, leaving Cornwallis to consolidate British gains by protecting and encouraging Loyalists. Hundreds of men renewed their allegiance to the Crown, and Major Patrick Ferguson organized a potent Loyalist militia force. Rebel resistance in South Carolina and Georgia had apparently collapsed.

The Charleston and Waxhaws disasters capped a very bad winter and spring for the Americans. The army, which had its 1779–1780 winter quarters at Morristown, had endured a more miserable experience than it had at Valley Forge, since the weather was colder with more snow, and most of the causes of privation at Valley Forge had grown worse. On three occasions between January and June, Continental units mutinied. The men were incapable of suffering further misery and believed that the populace had betrayed the foremost defenders of the Revolution by failing to support them. The wonder is that no mutinies occurred sooner. Because the soldiers wanted to continue to serve the Revolutionary cause and mutinied only as a means of self-preservation, officers quickly quelled the outbreaks. But the mutinies were an ominous sign that the Revolution had reached its lowest point since Washington’s flight across New Jersey in 1776.

The rebel situation deteriorated further when Congress, against Washington’s wishes, appointed Gates to command a new southern army formed around 1,400 Continentals, reinforced by militiamen. In August Gates marched into South Carolina, met Cornwallis’s advancing army at Camden, and deployed his regulars on his right wing while entrusting his left to militiamen alone. When Cornwallis attacked, the militiamen threw down their weapons and fled. The outnumbered Continentals fought valiantly but were overwhelmed. In just three months, two American armies had disappeared.

Compounding the agony was the treason of Benedict Arnold, who conspired to sell the plans of West Point—the crucial fortress in Washington’s Hudson Highlands defense system—to the British. While some Americans believed the conspiracy’s failure afforded, as Greene said, “the most convincing proofs that the liberties of America are the object of divine protection,” others wondered whether the cause would survive. If Arnold, who served so nobly at Quebec, at Valcour Island, and during the Saratoga campaign, had lost all sense of honor and patriotism, how many others might follow his treasonous path?

Despite Morristown, the southern calamities, and Arnold’s defection, three factors furthered the American cause in 1780. First, in July a 5,000- man French expeditionary force commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau and accompanied by a small fleet arrived at Newport, which the British had evacuated. Second, the Revolutionary spirit revived in the south. British troops and Loyalists plundered and raped, and they angered the neutral Scotch-Irish by persecuting the Presbyterian Church. The British decreed that anyone who failed to take an oath of allegiance would be considered in rebellion. Men who had adopted a passive stance had to choose collaboration or resistance, and many chose the latter. The dying embers of the Revolution ignited in guerrilla warfare under men like Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens. Convincing proof of resurgent resistance came at King’s Mountain, where five backcountry partisan bands coalesced against Ferguson’s Loyalist militia and annihilated it. Finally, bowing to Washington’s request, Congress appointed Greene to replace Gates. Greene found the difficulties of his command “infinitely exceed what I apprehended.” His minuscule army was in wretched condition, and the bonds of society had disintegrated as

rebels and Tories committed “dreadful, wanton Mischiefs, Murders, and Violences of every kind, unheard of before.” But Greene skillfully coordinated rebel maraudings with the activities of his army, which slowly grew larger and stronger. Greene was especially heartened by the arrival of Daniel Morgan, who had commanded the rifle corps that had fought so well against Burgoyne.

Greene was an unorthodox strategist who took grave risks that yielded great dividends. He assumed command in December 1780 and divided his outnumbered army between himself and Morgan, inviting defeat in detail. Somewhat mystified, Cornwallis split his own army, sending Tarleton directly after Morgan while he took a circuitous route to cut off Morgan’s retreat. Morgan stopped retreating at Cowpens. Shrewdly deploying his mixed force of Continentals, cavalry, and militiamen, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the British, and 90 percent of Tarleton’s 1,100 men became casualties or prisoners.

After Cowpens, Morgan hastened to join Greene. Anxious to refurbish British prestige, Cornwallis gave chase. A game of hounds and hare ensued, with Greene playing the rabbit’s role willingly. By luring Cornwallis away from South Carolina, the partisans could harass enemy outposts with relative impunity. Still, the race was desperate. Frequently the American rear guard skirmished with the British van, but Greene always eluded the main body and finally crossed the Dan River into Virginia. His men exhausted, Cornwallis reversed course to Hillsborough to refit his army, but Greene decided the time to fight had arrived and recrossed the Dan. The armies met at Guilford Courthouse in a furious battle in which the British won a Pyrrhic victory. Cornwallis’s losses were so severe that he moved to Wilmington, where he could recuperate and be resupplied by sea. Soon he marched into Virginia, which he believed was the Revolution’s southern center. The move betrayed southern Loyalists, who had offered support and in return expected protection.

When Cornwallis entered the Old Dominion, Greene marched southward to reclaim the Carolinas and Georgia, where 8,000 enemy troops under Francis Lord Rawdon remained in scattered garrisons. At Hobkirk’s Hill, Greene fought Rawdon, who won another hollow British victory. While the American main army kept Rawdon occupied, guerrillas picked off isolated British posts. In early September, Greene tangled with

Rawdon’s successor, Alexander Stewart, at Eutaw Springs in a three-hour slugfest. If the militia failed at Camden, it now redeemed itself by fighting splendidly. As at Guilford Courthouse and Hobkirk’s Hill, the British won the battlefield but suffered irreplaceable losses. Eutaw Springs was Greene’s last battle. He could not claim a single victory—Morgan deserves credit for Cowpens—but he and the partisans had reconquered all the south except Savannah and Charleston. Greene’s operations rank with Washington’s performance at Trenton and Princeton as the war’s most brilliant campaigns.

As Greene’s activities diminished, the war’s final drama unfolded in Virginia. In December 1780, Clinton sent Benedict Arnold—now a British general after his treason—to Virginia with 1,200 men, and Washington countered by dispatching the Marquis de Lafayette’s division. Like a magnet Virginia attracted reinforcements on both sides, and when Cornwallis arrived in the spring of 1781, he assumed command of the British forces there. As Lafayette’s army expanded, Cornwallis fortified Yorktown in order to have access to the sea should he need to receive reinforcements—or escape.

Far to the north the French expeditionary force finally left Newport and united with the Continental Army in July 1781. Washington and Rochambeau knew that a powerful fleet commanded by the Comte de Grasse had departed France under orders to cooperate with them. Washington hoped de Grasse would come to New York and seal it off so that the Franco-American army could capture Clinton, but on August 14 Washington received a message from de Grasse saying he was sailing for Chesapeake Bay. Bagging Clinton was thus impossible, but perhaps Cornwallis could be cornered. Washington ordered the army southward and directed the French naval squadron still at Newport to bring siege artillery and provisions.

The movement of land and naval forces to Yorktown was unique in the war because nothing went wrong. Lafayette kept Cornwallis from fleeing to the Carolinas; de Grasse fended off a British fleet at the Battle of the Virginia Capes, preventing seaborne succor from reaching the garrison at Yorktown; the Newport fleet arrived unscathed; and the army rapidly reached Virginia. The concentration of two naval squadrons and 5,700 Continentals, 3,100 militiamen, and 7,000 French troops at Yorktown was

a tour de force that trapped Cornwallis, whose situation was hopeless. On the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne’s capitulation, surrender negotiations began, and two days later 8,000 British troops marched out of Yorktown and stacked arms. The southern phase of the war ended with a British disaster comparable to Saratoga.

Fighting on the Frontier and at Sea

Like the colonial wars, the American Revolution involved the Indians, although they played a minor role compared to the main armies. Resenting the aggressive expansionism of Americans and desiring English trade goods, Native Americans generally supported the British. Frontier warfare took place in three distinct theaters: a central front in the Ohio Valley and Kentucky, a southern front in the Carolina and Georgia backcountry, and a northern front in western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Indian wars in the Ohio country actually began in 1774 when the Shawnees resisted the land encroachments of Virginia settlers. In order to force the Indians to cede their lands, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, organized an expedition into Shawnee territory. Lord Dunmore’s War involved only one battle, when 1,000 Indians attacked an equal number of militiamen at Point Pleasant on the Ohio. The assault failed to prevent Dunmore’s column from penetrating to the Shawnee villages, which compelled the Indians to give up extensive land claims. An uneasy peace prevailed until 1777, when the British commander at Detroit, Henry Hamilton, dispatched raiding parties to Kentucky to divert American attention from Burgoyne, forcing the Kentucky pioneers to huddle together in Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and other strongholds. The Indian raids continued into 1778, making life on the Kentucky frontier dangerous and miserable.

George Rogers Clark proposed to end the Indian menace by first attacking British-controlled settlements in the Illinois country, then assaulting Detroit. Virginia, the parent state of Kentucky, authorized the expedition, and in 1778 Clark captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. With a small force that included Indians allied to the British, Hamilton marched from Detroit and recaptured Vincennes in December. Clark immediately left Kaskaskia to retake the town. To discourage

Hamilton’s Indian allies, Clark had six captured Indians tomahawked to death in sight of the British defenses. “It had,” he said, “the effect that I expected.” Vincennes surrendered, but it was Clark’s last important triumph. He never received enough reinforcements to attack Detroit, and Kentucky was on the defensive after 1779, as intermittent Indian raids scourged the Ohio Valley.

In the south, the Cherokees rose against white settlers in May 1776, but the uprising was ill-timed. With no British forces in the region, Georgia and the two Carolinas could concentrate on subduing the Indians. The three states committed 4,500 militiamen to a three-pronged campaign that inflicted severe devastation on the Cherokees, forcing them to sue for peace. The display of American might dampened the warlike ardor of other southern tribes, and for the next two years England received much sympathy but little military aid from them. With the capture of Savannah and the subsequent British conquests in the south, England persuaded a few Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws to assist them. The rebels responded in late 1780 with a punitive expedition against the Cherokees, who again endured the loss of villages and crops. This second chastisement of the Cherokees, combined with England’s deteriorating position in the south throughout 1781, ended Indian participation in the southern war.

In the New York–Pennsylvania region the war shattered the Iroquois Confederacy, as the Oneidas and Tuscaroras supported the United States and the other four tribes assisted the British. Joseph Brant, a well- educated Mohawk chief, led the pro-British Iroquois and worked closely with Loyalist leaders. In 1778 Tory-Indian raiding parties operating out of Niagara terrorized the frontier, destroying the communities of Wyoming Valley, German Flats, and Cherry Valley. Pleas for protection resulted in General John Sullivan’s 1779 expedition. Washington told Sullivan he wanted Iroquois country not “merely overrun, but destroyed.” Aside from punishing the Indians, Washington had a second motive: He did not want the United States confined to the seaboard, and Sullivan’s activities, like Clark’s, might allow America to acquire the west during peace negotiations. Sullivan’s force was powerful, consisting of some of the best Continentals and commanded by excellent officers. Unprepared for such a massive invasion, Brant and the Loyalists made only one effort to stop

Sullivan. At the Battle of Newton they fought briefly before fleeing, leaving Iroquois territory open to the invaders. Although Sullivan inflicted extensive damage, the campaign was not decisive. As one participant observed, “The nests are destroyed, but the birds are still on the wing.” They roosted that winter at Niagara, more dependent than ever on British aid, and in the spring they returned to the frontier bent on revenge. Northern wilderness warfare pitting rebels against Loyalists and Indians continued until the war’s end, although it never again matched the scope of 1778–1779.

If frontier warfare saw the repetition of a familiar—and frightening— theme, Americans also fought on a new frontier, the sea. During the colonial wars Americans helped man the Royal Navy and served as privateers, but they never tried to maintain a separate navy. As soon as the Revolution began, some men contemplated confronting Britain on the ocean as well as on land. No one advocated building a fleet to challenge British supremacy, since in 1775 the British navy included 270 ships of the line, frigates, and sloops (the three largest categories of warships), while America did not have a single warship. Although the Royal Navy could not be directly challenged, an American naval effort could still hurt England by attacking its lucrative seaborne commerce and disrupting its military lines of supply and communication. Drawing upon its extensive shipbuilding experience, vast timber supplies, large seafaring population, substantial merchant and fishing fleets, and strong maritime tradition, the United States floated not just one navy, but four distinct types.

Washington created a private navy during the siege of Boston. His army was destitute, while the besieged enemy received ample supplies via the sea. Capturing supply ships would reduce American distress and increase enemy logistical problems. In September 1775 Washington chartered the schooner Hannah, put a few cannons and a volunteer crew aboard, and sent it into Massachusetts Bay. During the next few months he chartered another half-dozen small ships. Before the enemy evacuated Boston, Washington’s ships had captured fifty-five prizes, providing valuable cargoes of muskets, gunpowder, flints, and artillery to the rebel army.

All the colonies except for New Jersey and Delaware organized state navies, primarily for coastal defense. The state navies generally consisted

of shallow-draft barges, galleys, and gunboats, but a few states, such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, also commissioned small deep-water vessels that could prey upon British merchantmen. Often the navies acted as maritime militia, fending off British naval raids to gather provisions and preventing Loyalists from supplying ships lying offshore. Occasionally a state navy saw more dangerous action. Pennsylvania’s navy, for instance, participated in the defense of Forts Mercer and Mifflin during Howe’s Philadelphia campaign in 1777.

A third type of navy consisted of privateers, which were privately owned armed ships sailing under a commission or letter of marque authorizing the vessel to attack enemy merchantmen. Privateering was licensed piracy, and it had great appeal. The proceeds from the sale of captured ships and cargoes went to the privateer’s owner, officers, and crew, so the capture of a few merchantmen could make everyone rich. Before the war ended, an estimated 2,000 privateers had sailed under commissions from Congress, state governments, and diplomats abroad. They harmed Britain more than any other facet of the American naval war. England’s losses exceeded $65 million; maritime insurance rates skyrocketed; and to protect merchantmen, England resorted to convoys, which siphoned warships from other vital tasks. The privateers also disrupted communications between England and its forces in America.

The fourth navy was the Continental Navy, established by Congress in the autumn of 1775, when it created a Naval Committee and authorized the acquisition of armed ships. The first were eight converted merchantmen commanded by Esek Hopkins, who had limited qualifications but was the brother of a member of the Naval Committee. Nepotism played a role in the selection of commanding officers for all the vessels. Symptomatic of the officers’ questionable competence was the infant fleet’s first voyage, which, as it turned out, was the only fleet operation by the Continental Navy during the war. Hopkins disobeyed orders to cruise in Chesapeake Bay and instead raided Nassau in the Bahamas. On the return voyage the fleet encountered HMS Glasgow, which, though outnumbered and outgunned, outfought the Americans.

Congress was not content to rely on converted merchantmen. In December 1775 it voted to build thirteen frigates and eventually authorized construction of approximately thirty more vessels. But

shipyards, hindered by shortages of cannons, iron, canvas, and seasoned timber, never completed the authorized vessels, and the fate of most ships that slid down the ways was dismal. For example, of the thirteen frigates, the Americans burned three to keep them out of enemy hands, the British burned two and captured seven, and one sank in battle.

The Continental Navy’s worst handicap was a shortage of trained seamen. Privateering was more attractive than naval service because crews received a greater share of prize money, discipline was lax, and it was relatively danger-free, since privateers avoided enemy warships. Continental ships often sat in port for lack of crewmen, and squadron operations became difficult. Thus ships usually sailed alone and, like privateers, concentrated on commerce raiding. Several captains carried the commerce war to European waters with spectacular success. Lambert Wickes and Gustavus Conyngham captured dozens of ships at England’s doorstep, and John Paul Jones won his renowned victory over Serapis while trying to plunder a convoy off Britain’s coast.

One aspect of the naval war deserves special mention. In 1772 David Bushnell, a brilliant mathematics student at Yale, proved that gunpowder would explode underwater, and by 1774 he had developed a submarine mine. He then designed and built the Turtle, the world’s first submarine. This one-man craft could be used to deliver a mine to an enemy warship’s hull. When Howe’s force appeared at New York in 1776, Washington consented to let Bushnell try the Turtle against Eagle, Lord Howe’s flagship. Although Ezra Lee, who operated Turtle, positioned the submarine under Eagle, he was unable to attach the mine to the hull. Two subsequent efforts against other ships also failed. Despite the Turtle’s failure, Bushnell’s efforts foretold the future. Not only did submarines eventually become potent weapons, but Bushnell had also mated engineering science to war.

Approximately fifty ships saw service in the Continental Navy, most of them small and of limited usefulness. By 1780, with only five warships in commission, the navy had practically disappeared and America was relying totally on privateers and the French navy. Indicative of the navy’s negligible role was Yorktown, where de Grasse had forty ships of the line and the United States did not have a single ship. Had there been no national navy, its absence would not have affected the war’s outcome.

John Adams, one of the navy’s earliest proponents, provided its epitaph when he wrote that, looking back “over the long list of vessels belonging to the United States taken and destroyed, and recollecting the whole history of the rise and progress of our navy, it is very difficult to avoid tears.”

After Yorktown

Although no one was thinking about the navy, few dry eyes could be seen in Fraunces Tavern in New York during the afternoon of December 4, 1783. Washington had assembled a small group of officers to bid farewell before departing for Congress to submit his resignation. The commander offered a brief toast to his subordinates, thanking them and wishing them well. Then, one by one, the battle-hardened veterans filed by to embrace Washington in an emotional scene suffused with that special affection that develops among soldiers who have triumphed against seemingly impossible odds. Washington did not greatly exaggerate the sense of wonderment at their own success that many of the revolutionaries felt when he wrote to Nathanael Greene:

If Historiographers should be hardy enough to fill the page of History with the advantages that have been gained with unequal numbers (on the part of America) in the course of this contest, and attempt to relate the distressing circumstances under which they have been obtained, it is more than probable that Posterity will bestow on their labors the epithet and marks of fiction: for it will not be believed that such a force as Great Britain has employed for eight years in this Country could be baffled in their plan of Subjugating it by numbers infinitely less, composed of Men sometimes half starved; always in Rags, without pay, and experiencing, at times, every species of distress which human nature is capable of undergoing.

The fighting had ended unexpectedly. No one, least of all Washington, believed Yorktown would be the war’s last campaign. The British had already lost one army at Saratoga and the Americans two armies in the south, yet both sides were able to persist. England still held Charleston,

Savannah, and New York with more than 20,000 troops, which was more men than Washington had. He expected that the spring of 1782 would see new campaigns, but none took place in America. The war was going badly for England around the globe. In the Caribbean, the French captured several important islands and threatened Jamaica. Minorca in the Mediterranean fell to the French, Gibraltar was under siege, Spain conquered West Florida, and in India the British precariously held on in the face of intense French pressure. Yorktown broke Parliament’s will to continue the American war, thereby reducing a drain on England’s resources that could be used to preserve the rest of its empire. Carleton, who replaced Clinton, received orders to remain on the defensive. Peace negotiations, which began in 1780, intensified, and on September 3, 1783, the combatants signed the Peace of Paris. The liberal terms England granted the United States astounded Europeans and Americans alike. The former colonies achieved not only independence but also the right of navigation on the Mississippi, access to the Newfoundland fisheries, and enormous territorial acquisitions in the west.

It had been a long and costly war, resulting in at least 25,000 American war-related deaths, which represented almost 1 percent of the entire population. Except for the Civil War, which killed 2 percent of the population, no other United States war took such a frightful toll.4 Like most revolutionaries, Americans improvised with extraordinary ingenuity. Starting from scratch they organized a government, a navy, and an army, and they conducted diplomacy with an astuteness that achieved the indispensable French alliance and an incredibly favorable peace. Even though England confronted great difficulties fighting in its distant colonies, especially after 1778, the American performance was still remarkable.

Equally remarkable was the Revolution’s impact on political and military affairs. Politically, it sparked the feeling in Europe that a new era was dawning. News of American events and institutions filtered into Europe through the press, the efforts of American propagandists, discussions in literary clubs, and reports of returning soldiers. The Enlightenment’s liberal philosophical ideas lost their abstractness as Americans seemingly put them into practice, thereby intensifying the revolutionary and democratic spirit in Europe. In France the new spirit

mingled with rising discontent fomented by a soaring cost of living and a bankrupt treasury, both of which resulted primarily from France’s support of the United States. Six years after the Treaty of Paris, France exploded in its own revolution, plunging Europe into a generation of nearly ceaseless violence.

War after 1789 was radically different from what it had been during the age of limited warfare. Restraints on warfare began eroding during the American Revolution, and the French Revolution completely washed them away. Americans reintroduced ideology into warfare, fought for the unlimited goal of independence, and mobilized citizen-soldiers rather than professionals. In the spring of 1783, Washington summarized the drastic implications of these changes. “It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system,” he wrote, “that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal service to the defense of it.” To protect the nation, “the Total strength of the Country might be called forth.” Mass citizen-soldier armies would be motivated by patriotic zeal as they fought for freedom, equality, and other abstract ideological virtues.

The French followed Washington’s prescription for national defense when the government issued a levee en masse in 1793, theoretically conscripting the entire population. France’s national mobilization portended a new, more destructive type of warfare that would culminate in the twentieth century. Huge armies required large-scale production to equip, feed, and transport them, which in turn necessitated economic regimentation. The line between soldiers and civilians, both indispensable to the war effort, became blurred. To sustain the patriotic ardor of troops and workers, governments resorted to mass indoctrination. And since national survival seemed at stake, nations fought with grim determination, surrendering only when battered into abject helplessness. The American and French Revolutions, politically and militarily, transformed Western civilization.

FOUR

Preserving the New Republic’s Independence, 1783–1815

The post-Revolutionary era, which was one of serious peril for the infant republic, necessitated the development of a military policy that reconciled ideological concerns for liberty with military effectiveness. Complicating the task of devising an appropriate policy were three events during 1783 that reawakened traditional fears of a standing army and poisoned civil- military relations. The first episode leading to this crisis in civil-military relations was the Newburgh Conspiracy. Early in the war Continental Army officers began demanding half pay for life as a postwar pension, a tradition in European armies. Despite opposition to the creation of a favored class, in 1780 the Continental Congress promised the officers half pay for life. But by the winter of 1782–1783, when the army was at Newburgh, New York, nothing had been done to implement the promise. Officers feared their service was going to go uncompensated and that the new Confederation Congress, which assumed authority after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, would repudiate that pledge as it disbanded the army.

The officers drew up a petition offering to have half pay for life commutated into a lump-sum payment, and a committee, headed by General Alexander McDougall, carried it to Congress. The army delegation played into the hands of those congressmen, known as nationalists, who desired a stronger central government. They especially wanted the government to have the power to tax, a function that public creditors also favored. The nationalists tried to combine the army’s

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discontent with the civilian creditors’ clamor to secure a permanent taxing power for Congress and thereby strengthen the government. McDougall and the nationalists implied that if the officers’ demands were not met, the army might defy congressional control over the military. Despite the threat of a mutiny, Congress refused to capitulate to the commutation proposal and the nationalists’ demands.

To intensify pressure on recalcitrant congressmen, the nationalists fomented further demonstrations among the officers at Newburgh. Whether or not some officers actually contemplated a coup d’état remains unclear, but two anonymous documents, known as the Newburgh Addresses, circulated in camp. One called for a meeting to discuss means for obtaining redress; since Washington had not been consulted, such a meeting was against regulations. The other denounced Congress and threatened its supremacy over the military.

These documents shocked Washington, though perhaps they did not surprise him. He shared the officers’ belief that their valorous service had been rewarded by ingratitude and injustice, and he received hints that nationalists were using the army as a lobby group. Washington adhered religiously to civilian rule, believing that “the Army was a dangerous Engine to Work with.” He acted quickly to stop the growing protest by calling his own meeting, at which he warned the men against impassioned actions and argued that an attempted coup would tarnish the army’s reputation and “open the flood Gates of Civil discord.” With a touch of theatrics, he recalled his own sacrifices, noting he had grown gray and nearly blind in the service. Pledging to do everything he could in their behalf, he implored the officers to continue their “unexampled patriotism and patient virtue.” Washington’s virtuoso performance undermined whatever scheme was afoot. When he departed, the officers adopted a memorial affirming their “unshaken confidence” in Congress and deploring the Newburgh Addresses. Meanwhile, under the pressure of the threats and unaware of the dramatic reversal at Newburgh, Congress enacted a plan commutating half pay for life into full pay for five years. The crisis was over, but many people considered the episode a frightening example of a standing army’s potentially subversive nature.

As winter yielded to spring, another cloud drifted out of Newburgh to cast a shadow on the army. In mid-May, Henry Knox formed the Society

of the Cincinnati to unite army officers in a fraternal and charitable organization. But outsiders saw sinister designs in the Cincinnati’s constitution. Membership was hereditary: Was this a step toward an American nobility? The society also permitted honorary memberships: Would it become a powerful pressure group by adding important politicians to its ranks? Each officer contributed to a charitable fund: Could this be a war chest to finance diabolical plots? Auxiliary state societies were to correspond through circular letters discussing, among other things, “the general union of the states”: Did this imply a political purpose, perhaps to overthrow the Confederation? Washington’s acceptance of the Cincinnati’s presidency indicated that the organization had none of these corrupt motives, but the public furor against the society was nonetheless intense.

As critics pilloried the Cincinnati, another thunderbolt was brewing. On April 11, 1783, Congress proclaimed an end to hostilities, even though no definitive peace treaty had been signed. Men wanted to be discharged and paid immediately, but Congress was reluctant to do the former until final peace was achieved, and it lacked the money to do the latter. Troops became riotous, and in mid-June some of the Pennsylvania troops in the Continental Army mutinied. The men marched on the Pennsylvania State House, where both Congress and the state government were meeting, and sent in a message threatening “to let loose an enraged soldiery on them” if their demands were not met. The legislators refused to comply and courageously left the building to a flurry of insults; but Congress moved to Princeton as a precaution.

These ominous events overshadowed the Confederation’s efforts to devise an effective postwar military policy. In April 1783, Congress appointed a committee to study future policy. Alexander Hamilton, one of Washington’s former aides and an ardent nationalist, chaired the committee and sought advice from the commander in chief, who responded with his “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment.” The general mentioned the need for a navy and seacoast fortification but emphasized four necessities. First, the country should have a regular army to garrison the west, “awe the Indians,” and guard against attacks from Spanish Florida or British Canada. Considering the nation’s poverty, its distance from Europe, and the widespread prejudice against professional military

forces, Washington proposed a small regular army—specifically, 2,631 officers and men. Second, with the army so tiny, the nation required a “respectable and well established Militia.” Contrary to the colonial system, Washington insisted the militia should be nationalized, with the central government imposing uniformity in arms, organization, and training. In particular, within each state he wanted “a kind of Continental Militia,” modeled after the war’s minutemen, under stringent national control. Thus Washington proposed a three-tiered land force: A regular army, a ready reserve similar to the volunteer militia, and an improved common militia. Third, he suggested arsenals and manufactories to support these armies. Fourth, he wanted military academies to foster the study of military science.

Washington later wrote that his “Sentiments” conveyed what he thought would be politically acceptable, not what he “conceived ought to be a proper peace Establishment.” Considering his distaste for the militia, he undoubtedly preferred to minimize its role and depend on regulars. But he was aware of the resurgence of the pre-Revolutionary fear of a permanent army and knew a large army would be unacceptable. Paradoxically, although militia and regulars complemented one another in the Revolution, proponents of each now viewed them as rival defense systems. Regular army advocates stressed militia debacles, while militia enthusiasts eulogized Concord and Bunker Hill and emphasized the compatibility of radical Whig ideology and the militia system.

Hamilton’s committee report followed most of Washington’s recommendations, although it put less emphasis on the militia and stressed a greater reliance on a standing army. But antinationalists rejected as unnecessary the arguments in favor of peacetime preparedness at the national level. After all, the colonies had had virtually no organized military strength in 1775, yet they had prevailed against the British. So why was more strength necessary now? Moreover, the antinationalists believed that a strong central government and a regular army went hand in glove, and they wanted neither, preferring a decentralized system of sovereign states each exercising complete control over its own militia. Because antinationalists were in the ascendancy in Congress, the legislature rejected Hamilton’s report and on June 2, 1784, disbanded all but eighty men and a few officers of the Continental Army.

Having discarded Hamilton’s plan, Congress had to do something to meet the urgent military problems in the west. The British refused to evacuate their western posts, from which they controlled the fur trade, subverted the Indians, and threatened to contain American expansion. In the southwest, Spain exerted similar influences, though not as strongly. The nation had to preserve peace with the Indians, if for no other reason than Congress lacked the funds to fight a war. Somebody had to protect envoys to the Indians, evict squatters on Indian lands, and defend surveyors and settlers. Since the states had ceded their land claims in the Northwest Territory to the Confederation, these problems were beyond the scope of any individual state militia. They were also beyond the capacity of eighty soldiers.

Congress recognized its military challenges, and the day after disbanding the Continental Army it created the 1st American Regiment— the first national peacetime force in American history—by calling on four states to raise 700 militiamen for one year. The regiment was a hybrid, neither strictly militia nor regular. Its formation depended on the states’ goodwill to provide men, but Congress organized, paid, and disciplined the regiment, and the commander, Josiah Harmar of Pennsylvania, reported to both Congress and the Pennsylvania state government. When enlistments expired in 1785, Congress continued the regiment but made it a regular force by calling for three-year recruits and omitting all reference to the militia. When the end of this enlistment period approached, Congress again authorized the same number of men for three years. Thus the Confederation created a very small standing force. Like the prewar British garrison, the regiment failed to police the west effectively. Harmar never received enough men to “awe” the Indians, with whom relations continued to deteriorate, or the white squatters, who encroached on Indian territory with impunity. And least of all did Harmar’s troops awe the British. To nationalists, the regiment’s ineffectiveness symbolized the Confederation’s weakness.

Events in Massachusetts in 1786 dismayed nationalists even more than the precarious frontier situation. Burdened by debts and taxes, farmers led by Daniel Shays rebelled against the government. Publicly hiding behind the subterfuge of preparing for frontier defense, Congress voted to expand the army to 2,040 men but could raise only two artillery

companies and was powerless to intervene. Eventually Massachusetts volunteers quelled the rebellion, but this did not lessen the nationalists’ sense of humiliation and fear. In their minds Shays’ Rebellion proved the impotence of the Confederation Congress and seemed to be the first stumble toward anarchy.

The Confederation’s military weakness on the frontier and in Massachusetts was one of the primary reasons for the Constitutional Convention. Nationalists believed that unless the government was strengthened, the United States would remain weak at home and contemptible abroad. Since they had a vision of a great nation that would protect life, liberty, and property and be respected in foreign councils, the situation was intolerable.

The Constitution, the “Dual Army,” and the Navy

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention generally agreed that the government needed enhanced coercive powers. “But the kind of coercion you may ask?” Washington wrote to James Madison. “This indeed will require thought.” And indeed it did, since military force is the essential concomitant of governmental authority. The extent of the government’s military power had profound ramifications, affecting not only the distribution of power between the states and the central government but also perceptions of the relationship between security and liberty. Was it possible to invest sufficient power in the government to defend against foreign and domestic enemies without transforming it into an oppressive instrument? The Constitution tried to create a delicate balance in which the central government received enough power to “provide for the common defense” and “insure domestic tranquility,” without extinguishing state sovereignty and individual liberty. The document divided military power between the federal government and the states, giving paramount power to the former while guarding against excessive centralized authority by sharing national power between Congress and the president.

Congress could “provide and maintain a navy” and “raise and support armies”; to ensure money for these purposes, it could levy and collect taxes and borrow funds. However, since the Constitution limited Army

appropriations to two years, a permanent standing army was possible only with Congress’s continuing consent. Congress was to provide for calling forth the militia “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions,” as well as establish regulations “for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia” and for governing the militia when in national service. Congress also had the power to declare war. Congressional tyranny was unlikely, since the president was not only the commander in chief of the Army and Navy, but the militia “when called into the actual service of the United States.” He also appointed military officers, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Constitution thus gave national military forces two masters, neither of which could attain a despotic preeminence.

As for the states, the Constitution guaranteed them a republican form of government and promised them protection from invasion or domestic violence. The states could not form alliances, authorize privateers, keep nonmilitia troops or warships in peacetime without Congress’s consent, or engage in war “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” But they retained their own militias. The right to do so was not explicitly stated in the Constitution proper, but it was implicit in the states’ authority to appoint militia officers and train the militia “according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” The Second Amendment made the states’ militia authority explicit.

The Constitution institutionalized the dual-army tradition. The historic militias remained, and the new government had ample authority to establish a regular Army. Since one of the nationalists’ primary goals had been to permit the central government to maintain a peacetime army, they had achieved an impressive victory. Nationalists also wanted a nationalized militia, but in this they were only potentially successful and were dependent on the laws that Congress would pass implementing its authority over the militia. Despite the careful restraints on military power, many antinationalists inveighed against the proposed government’s despotic potential. Unlike nationalists, they were less concerned with military effectiveness than they were with maintaining a proper constitutional balance between the states and the federal government. They disliked the new government’s concurrent power over the militia, a dramatic departure from past practice that might diminish state autonomy

and undermine the militia’s local nature. Fearing “the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people,” they were also alarmed by the prospect of a standing army. But with painstaking thoroughness the nationalists parried every antinationalistic thrust, and the Constitution took effect on June 21, 1788, after the ninth state had ratified it.

When the new government assembled in 1789, it had to translate the Constitution’s military provisions into actual policy. Action was necessary in three areas: The government needed an agency to administer military affairs, implement its militia responsibilities, and decide whether to create an army and, if so, how large it should be. The legislature acted upon the first issue expeditiously. Under the Confederation, a War Department headed by a “secretary at war” (Henry Knox since 1785) administered military matters. In August 1789 Congress maintained continuity by creating a Department of War, and in September it confirmed Washington’s nomination of Knox as the first secretary of war.

In regard to the militia, Congress foiled nationalist aspirations. Washington and Knox urged Congress to reorganize the militia into an effective force under national control, but militia legislation was a touchy political question. It struck at the root of state versus federal power and had a direct impact on every citizen. Congress delayed acting until the spring of 1792, when it passed the Calling Forth Act and the Uniform Militia Act. The former implemented the constitutional provision allowing Congress to call forth the militia by delegating that authority to the president. In case of invasion, Congress gave the executive a relatively free hand, since both nationalists and antinationalists feared foreign invasion. However, antinationalist fears of a despotic central government hedged the president’s authority to summon the militia to execute the laws or suppress insurrections. Before he could do so, a federal judge had to certify that civil authority was powerless to meet the crisis, and then the president formally had to order the insurgents to disperse and give them an opportunity to disband. In no case could a militiaman be mobilized for more than three months in any one year.

The Uniform Militia Act, which remained the basic militia law until the twentieth century, enshrined the concept of universal military service, requiring the enrollment of all able-bodied white men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. It contained an exemption list (to which the states

could add), required men to arm and equip themselves, and outlined a tactical organization that states were to adopt only if “convenient.” From a nationalist perspective, the law had severe shortcomings. It did not provide for a select corps in each state or for federal control over officership and training, and it imposed no penalties on either the states or individuals for noncompliance, thus representing little more than a recommendation to the states. The government virtually abdicated responsibility over the militia; the states were free to respond to the law according to their diverse impulses—which they did. The Uniform Militia Act killed the nationalized militia concept by failing to establish uniform, interchangeable units, a prerequisite for a national reserve force. What little vitality the militia retained reposed in volunteer units forming a de facto elite corps; this was far from what Washington visualized, because the units were neither standardized nor nationalized.

The failure to forge reliable state militias made a standing army imperative, and Congress slowly moved toward that goal. In September

1789 it adopted the 1st American Regiment and the artillery battalion raised during Shays’ Rebellion. Six months later Congress added four companies to the regiment, bringing the total authorized force to 1,216 men, but this minuscule Army proved inadequate to the challenge of an Indian war. In Indian relations the administration preferred diplomacy over war. The government secured a precarious formal peace south of the Ohio River through the Treaty of New York (1790), and Secretary of War Knox worked diligently to restrain Tennessee frontiersmen who opposed the peace policy. Although Tennesseans occasionally ignored his pleas and conducted unauthorized campaigns, the intermittent fighting between settlers and Indians fortunately never escalated into genuine war. Neither militarily nor monetarily could the nation afford confrontations on two fronts, and north of the Ohio the situation had reached a crisis.

In the Northwest the Indians, determined to make the Ohio the boundary between the races, tried to form a confederacy to stop white migration across the river. In these efforts they received British support. By 1790 the violence between settlers and Native Americans assumed near-war proportions, and westerners cried for federal assistance. In June 1790 Knox ordered Harmar and Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, to organize an expedition into hostile territory along the Wabash and Maumee Rivers. The two-pronged campaign was a disaster. One wing departed Fort Knox and headed for the upper Wabash but turned back far short of its objective. The other, led by Harmar and consisting of 320 regulars and 1,133 militiamen, managed to reach its objective. Harmar’s force destroyed a few villages along the Maumee, but the Indians ambushed two substantial detachments, and the column retreated in disorder. The regulars fought well, but the militiamen acted disgracefully. Most of them were substitutes who were at best disobedient, at worst mutinous, and in battle they followed the principle of fleeing before fighting.

Having failed to chastise the Indians with one understrength expedition, the government organized another—with even worse results. Congress added another regiment to the Army, authorized the president to call out militiamen, and allowed him to enlist 2,000 “levies” for six months. The levies were an innovation, a method of manpower mobilization halfway between regulars and militia. They were federal

volunteers raised and officered by the national government, but like militia, they served only a short term. In the nineteenth century federal volunteers became the normal method of utilizing citizen-soldiers.

Washington appointed St. Clair to command the mixed force of militia and levies that assembled near Fort Washington (now Cincinnati, Ohio) during the summer. The militia again consisted mostly of substitutes, and the levies were little better. Neither type of citizen-soldier got along with the regulars. The composite “army” was little more than a rabble, and St. Clair had no time to train it properly because Washington had urged him by “every principle that is sacred” to march as soon as possible. When the horde moved northward, one veteran prayed that “the Enemy may not be disposed to give us battle,” but his prayers were not answered. On November 3 the army camped along the Wabash. As the 1,400 men began their morning routine on the 4th, 1,000 Indians attacked and inflicted over 900 casualties—the worst defeat ever suffered by an American Army against Native Americans.

In response to this new calamity, the administration followed a dual policy. It reopened Indian negotiations to appease easterners, who believed aggressive frontiersmen caused the violence, and to save the country from bankruptcy. But the government also began building a capable Army. Congress authorized three more regiments, and Knox reorganized the expanded Army into the Legion of the United States, composed of 5,280 officers and men divided into four equal sublegions. The president pondered over a commander, finally selecting Anthony Wayne, who had a reputation for being courageous and offensive-minded. For two years, while negotiations continued, Wayne drilled the Legion, molding it into a disciplined force. In September 1793, after the diplomatic effort failed to dissuade the Indians from their insistence on the Ohio River boundary, Knox ordered Wayne to use the Legion “to make those audacious savages feel our superiority in Arms.”

Wayne’s campaign was an enormous success. He built Fort Greenville, where most of his Army overwintered, and Fort Recovery, which was on the site of St. Clair’s defeat. In response to Wayne’s presence the British established Fort Miami at the Maumee rapids, and by June 1794 some 2,000 Indians gathered nearby, confidently expecting British aid. On June 30 and July 1 the Indians, reinforced by some Canadians, attacked Fort

Recovery, but the defenders (outnumbered ten to one) repulsed them. Meanwhile, deploring the government’s inability to recruit the Legion to full strength, Wayne called on Kentucky for mounted volunteers. When 1,500 of them arrived in late July, the reinforced Legion moved out. Wayne expected to meet “a Heterogeneous Army composed of British troops the Militia of Detroit & all the Hostile Indians N W of the Ohio,” but at the Battle of Fallen Timbers he fought a mere 500 Indians. The Legion routed the Indians, who fled toward Fort Miami, where, to their chagrin, the British refused to help them. Indian losses in the battle were small, but the psychological shock of England’s broken promises was great. Defeated and dismayed, the Indians had no hope of maintaining the Ohio boundary, and in the Treaty of Greenville they ceded most of Ohio and a sliver of Indiana. The victory also lessened British influence in the Northwest and convinced the English to relinquish the posts they had garrisoned since 1783. Finally, the Legion had demonstrated the government’s ability to maintain an Army that could “provide for the common defense,” at least to the extent of waging a successful Indian campaign.

Simultaneously with the Indians’ defeat, the government also proved it could “insure domestic tranquility.” The Whiskey Rebellion erupted in western Pennsylvania as a protest against an excise tax on distilled spirits. Discontent also flared in western Maryland, Kentucky, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Washington initially acted cautiously. He feared the use of force without an effort at conciliation might precipitate rebellion throughout the west, and with the Legion committed against the Indians, he would have to rely on the militia, which might not mobilize to suppress the tumults. But when negotiations with the whiskey rebels broke down and they defied a presidential proclamation to disperse, the administration believed that “the crisis was arrived when it must be determined whether the Government can maintain itself.” Washington sent orders to the governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia for 12,500 militiamen, and to his gratification the states’ forces assembled. Never before had the militia functioned as a national, rather than a local, institution. Rebel leaders swore they would resist, but as the massive posse comitatus crossed the mountains, the rebellion evaporated.

By applying two kinds of force—regulars and militia—in two different situations—against Indians and domestic insurrection—Federalists (formerly “nationalists) believed the government had demonstrated it deserved respect. However, the Federalist utilization of force showed how thoroughly military policy had been politicized. The coercive power that comforted Federalists frightened Republicans, the newly emerged opposition political party. While Federalists applauded the Whiskey Rebellion’s demise, Republicans viewed the episode as an example of a strong government’s armed tyranny. Republicans also cast an anxious eye toward the Legion, believing it should be drastically reduced. The Treaty of Greenville and England’s promise to evacuate the western forts, they argued, made such a substantial Army unnecessary. An armed populace could provide frontier defense more cheaply than regulars and with less danger to liberty. Republicans especially feared that Federalists might use the Legion for despotic domestic purposes. Administration spokesmen asserted that any reduction was inadvisable. The nation needed the regular Army to garrison western posts, deter aggression, and preserve “a model and school for an army, and experienced officers to form it, in case of war.” Furthermore, the militia’s deplorable condition made the Legion doubly necessary.

In 1796 Republicans apparently won the argument when Congress abolished the Legion and reorganized the Army into a reduced force of two light dragoon companies and four infantry regiments. Yet, in a sense, Federalists had also won. A peacetime standing Army did survive, and ever since Washington presented his “Sentiments” to Hamilton’s committee, this had been a major objective of Federalist military policy. The 1796 legislation irrevocably committed the nation to the maintenance of a frontier constabulary that spearheaded western expansion for the next century.

Federalists not only established an American Army, but a Navy as well. The Confederation sold the Continental Navy’s last ship in 1785, and the nation had no Navy when trouble at sea loomed on two fronts in 1793. The French Revolution exploded into a world war when France declared war on England, Spain, and Holland. The belligerents, especially England, began interfering with American neutral commerce, which also suffered from Algerine corsairs. The Barbary States—Algiers, Morocco,

Tunis, and Tripoli—traditionally engaged in piracy, but the European powers bottled up their activities within the Mediterranean Sea. After 1793, with the Europeans preoccupied, corsairs from Algiers, the most powerful of the petty North African nations, entered the Atlantic and preyed upon American shipping.

Washington’s administration thus confronted a major crisis with a formidable enemy and a minor crisis with a weak adversary. It responded to England’s challenge by passive defensive measures and negotiations. In 1794 Congress voted to create four arsenals, to build coastal fortifications protecting important seaports, and to form a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers to garrison the seaboard forts. Americans assumed the forts would prevent an enemy coup de main, giving land forces time to assemble to repel an invasion at a nonvital location. The president also dispatched John Jay to London to resolve Anglo-American differences, resulting in Jay’s Treaty, which temporarily restored amicable relations. To combat the Algerians, Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794, authorizing the construction of six frigates but providing that the act would be suspended if Algiers agreed to peace. In 1796, before completion of any of the frigates, the United States negotiated a treaty with Algiers. Rather than stop construction, Washington asked Congress for further guidance, and it agreed to continue building three of the ships.

Like the Army, the Navy became entangled in partisan politics. Support for a navy came from the commerce-oriented North Atlantic seaboard and parts of the tidewater south, the strongholds of Federalism, while opposition came from agrarian areas and the interior states, the bastions of Republicanism. Believing that preparedness deterred war, Federalists wanted a standing Navy to match the standing Army. A Navy was necessary to protect maritime commerce, the whaling and fishing fleets, and the territorial waters. It would also be a unifying force benefiting the whole country, drawing timber and naval stores from the south, iron from the middle Atlantic states, and shipbuilders and seamen from the north. Even a small fleet, said Hamilton, would allow the United States to “become the arbiter of Europe in America, and be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interests may dictate.” A squadron capable of decisive intervention in the West Indies would guarantee American neutrality during a European war;

no nation would risk its New World interests by alienating the United States. Finally, Federalists envisioned the country as a future world power and were concerned about prestige and diplomatic leverage. A Navy, they asserted, symbolized national strength, ensuring European respect.

Republicans argued that instead of deterring war, a navy might provoke it. The prospect of a growing navy might so alarm a European power that, said one Republican, it “would crush us in our infancy.” A navy might be an invitation to imperialism and adventurism abroad. No European nation would attack the United States, unless provoked by a naval challenge, because of the predatory European balance of power and the difficulty of bridging the Atlantic moat. Far from benefiting all sections of the country, the Navy would primarily aid New England merchants and shippers. Yet a fleet would be expensive, imposing an oppressive tax burden on the entire country and increasing the national debt. Republicans did not relish a role in European affairs, preferring to direct national energies toward developing the west. Thus while Federalists hoped to parlay the small Army and the tiny kernel of a Navy into military greatness, Republicans wanted to limit future armed forces expansion. The debate over military policy soon reached a furious crescendo.

Federalists and Republicans in Peace and at War

When France and England went to war in 1793, the American political elite fractured along party lines. Federalists were pro-British, emphasizing a common heritage and the commercial connections between England and America. Republicans sided with France, stressing the 1778 treaty that bound the two nations in “perpetual friendship and alliance” and the French Revolution’s antimonarchical aspect. Washington decreed, and Congress sanctioned, a neutrality policy, but perfect neutrality in an imperfect warring world was impossible. Jay’s Treaty, which prevented war with England, outraged the French, who viewed it as establishing an Anglo-American alliance. In retaliation, France increased its depredations against American shipping and refused to receive a new American minister. In 1797 President John Adams sent a special commission to avert war, but France rebuffed it in the notorious “XYZ affair,” in which the French foreign minister demanded a huge bribe before he would even

open negotiations with the commission. The result was the Quasi-War with France.

In the spring of 1798 war hysteria engulfed the nation, especially Federalists, who believed the nation faced both a foreign threat and a domestic menace. They feared French agents were subverting the country from within and that Republicans were eager to foment civil war if the United States and France went to war. Viewing themselves as defenders of constitutional liberty, Federalists considered Republicans disloyal, domestic Jacobins conspiring to convert the country into a French province. To deal with the dual danger of French invasion and French- inspired insurrection, Federalists enacted a preparedness program that Republicans opposed, providing, said Federalists, further proof of their treason.

Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to suppress internal opposition; to enforce the laws and meet the anticipated invasion, it enacted a welter of Army legislation. It created a 10,000-man Provisional Army to be raised in the event of war and empowered the president to accept volunteer companies into national service. Four months later it authorized the president to raise immediately a New Army of twelve infantry regiments and six troops of dragoons. Congress also provided for a massive Eventual Army that, like the Provisional Army, the president could mobilize only in an actual emergency. Legally the United States had five distinct armies: the “old” Army on the frontier, the Provisional Army, the volunteer corps, the New Army, and the Eventual Army.

The government organized only the New Army for the crisis. The old Army remained in the west, and the War Department practically ignored the Provisional, volunteer, and Eventual Armies. Washington agreed to command the combined old and New armies, but he would not take the field until war commenced. Hamilton, who was his ranking subordinate, really commanded the New Army. President Adams disliked and distrusted the New Yorker, but he appointed him second in command upon Washington’s insistence. Hamilton craved military glory and devoted his considerable skill to mobilizing the New Army, believing he could use it to quell Republican rebellion, repel French invasion, and—so he dreamed—conquer the Floridas, Louisiana, and perhaps all South

America. Naturally, Hamilton excluded Republicans from the officer corps, making this the only wholly political army in American history.

The New Army never matched Hamilton’s grandiose expectations. War fever ebbed before serious recruiting began, supplies were inadequate, and, most important, Adams undermined Hamilton’s efforts, believing he was a truly dangerous man. The only opportunity to utilize the Army came in 1799, when farmers in eastern Pennsylvania, led by John Fries, resisted the taxes levied to pay for the new military establishment. Adams proclaimed the area in rebellion and ordered 500 New Army regulars and several volunteer militia companies to restore peace. Hamilton applauded the action, but when the Army arrived on the scene, all was quiet. Federalists thought they had nipped a budding revolution, while Republicans asserted that the massive response to Fries’ Rebellion was another example of Federalist military despotism.

The Federalists also pursued a naval expansion program. Congress appropriated money to send the three nearly completed frigates to sea, to build the other three authorized in 1794, and to acquire another twenty- four warships. The Marine Corps, which functioned during the Revolution but expired in the postwar demobilization, was revived to provide ships’ guards, who could also be ordered to serve on shore. As a maritime reinforcement, Congress permitted merchant vessels to arm themselves and attack armed French ships. The burgeoning land and naval forces imposed an onerous burden on Secretary of War James McHenry, and in April 1798 Congress cleaved his workload in half by creating the Department of the Navy. As the first secretary of the navy, Adams selected Benjamin Stoddert, who requested a building program of twelve 74-gun ships of the line, an equal number of frigates, and twenty or thirty smaller warships, all supported by a system of shipyards and dry docks. Not even the Federalist-dominated legislature could swallow that many masts without choking, but in 1799 it authorized construction of six 74-gun ships and two dry docks, and the purchase of timber lands for naval use.

The first clash in the Quasi-War occurred in July 1798, when the converted merchantman Delaware captured Croyable; the last encounter took place in October 1800 when the frigate Boston defeated LeBerceau. In between these two engagements the Navy escorted merchant convoys

in the West Indies, hunted enemy privateers infesting the area, and occasionally fought the few warships France sent to the Caribbean. More than a thousand armed merchantmen augmented the fifty-four warships Stoddert assembled, and they had hundreds of encounters with French privateers. Throughout the conflict the Americans enjoyed considerable success, due in large part to British assistance. The Royal Navy aided in convoy duty, freeing American ships for other tasks, and controlled the Atlantic, preventing substantial French forces from sailing to the New World. American ships used British guns, supplies, and Caribbean bases.

The Quasi-War remained limited and undeclared. When Adams received French assurances that a new peace mission would be properly received, he dispatched another commission, which negotiated the Convention of 1800 ending the Quasi-War. Congress soon dismantled the wartime military establishment, disbanding the New Army and authorizing the president to sell all the ships except for thirteen frigates, only six of which would remain in active service. The convention also aided Jefferson’s election in 1800. The Hamiltonian wing of the Federalist Party refused to support Adams’s reelection bid, having never forgiven him for choosing peace over war and robbing it of an opportunity to crush the Republicans, defeat the French, and conquer a vast American empire. The sudden end to the crisis also gave Republicans an armory of political ammunition by making Federalist preparedness measures appear despotic.

As the Federalist era ended, the party of Washington and Hamilton had not infused as much military strength into the republic as they desired. Yet military policy as it evolved during the 1790s basically remained intact for a century. The nation would keep a small professional Army, augmented by militia and federal volunteers during wartime. The embryonic system of arsenals, shipyards, dry docks, and coastal fortifications would be expanded. The nation would rely on a small navy to show the flag in peacetime and to protect American shipping while plundering enemy commerce during wartime. In essence, a passive defense policy emerged that theoretically would preserve the country during a crisis until its latent strength could be mobilized.

The survival of the Federalist-established military institutions initially depended on their acceptance by the new president. Jefferson had a

defensive conception of United States military power and advocated noninvolvement in foreign affairs, governmental economy, and reduction of the national debt. In his mind none of these goals accorded with a substantial peacetime establishment. But he also believed the international arena was predatory and that military weakness invited aggression, and he had no intention of completely dismantling the Federalist military apparatus. Although Jefferson viewed the militia as the first line of defense, its purpose was to buy “time for raising regular forces after the necessity of them shall become certain.” He urged Congress to reform the militia, making it an effective immediate defense force so that the regulars could be safely reduced, but not abolished.

The Republican-controlled Congress refused to tamper with the Uniform Militia Act, but on March 16, 1802, it passed the Military Peace Establishment Act, which demonstrated Jefferson’s commitment to a regular Army, but one that was “Republicanized.” The administration inherited a Federalist-dominated Army, and Jefferson believed he needed to ensure that it would respond to Republican direction. The 1802 act provided the mechanisms for breaking Federalist control and creating a source of Republican officers. Under the guise of an economy measure, the act “reduced” and reorganized the Army. The reduction was cosmetic. The Army had never attained its authorized strength under the Federalists, and the Republicans simply cut the Army’s authorized size to approximately its actual strength. The reorganization eliminated eighty- eight officers’ positions, allowing Jefferson to remove officers who had been Federalist partisans, but also added about twenty ensigns. The president appointed Republicans to these new positions.

The 1802 act also established the Military Academy at West Point, creating a Corps of Engineers distinct from the artillery and stating that “the said corps . . . shall constitute a military academy.” The president received exceptional powers over the Corps of Engineers and the Military Academy, permitting him to select the officers who would establish the academy and teach there, and the cadets who would attend it. Ironically, since the early 1780s Federalists had supported such an institution, while Jefferson had always opposed this idea. He reversed his position for two reasons. First, the president had wanted a national school that would emphasize the sciences and produce graduates useful to society. Officers

trained as scientists and engineers would, for example, benefit the nation as explorers and roadbuilders. Equally important, West Point would be a Republican avenue into the officer corps. In selecting faculty and cadets, Jefferson searched for eligible Republicans and avoided Federalists, furthering the process of “Republicanizing” the Army that would continue throughout his years in office.

Naval retrenchment under Jefferson initially bordered on liquidation, but when war with Tripoli appeared likely, the administration lifted its budgetary ax from the Navy’s neck. At first Republicans discontinued work on the 74s, the dry docks, and the navy yards, discharged officers and men, and sold ships as rapidly as possible. However, the pasha of Tripoli threatened to unleash his pirates if he did not receive increased tribute, which the United States had been paying since the 1780s. The president detested Barbary corsairs more than an expensive Navy, and in June 1801 he dispatched a small squadron under Commodore Richard Dale with orders to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence” if Tripoli declared war. Dale learned that the pasha had done so, but neither he nor Commodore Richard Morris, who arrived with a replacement squadron in 1802, was very aggressive, and they accomplished little. In 1803 Jefferson sent a third squadron under Commodore Edward Preble, who clamped a tight blockade on the city of Tripoli and subjected it to naval assaults that damaged the town, its fortifications, and enemy ships in the harbor. A fourth squadron under Commodore Samuel Barron followed up Preble’s work with a combined land-naval expedition that forced the pasha to sign a peace treaty in June 1805.

The Tripolitan War spurred Jefferson’s fascination with gunboats, which had been useful in the shallow North African waters. Congress authorized construction of fifteen gunboats in 1803, and eight of them crossed the Atlantic to serve in the Mediterranean. In the postwar period the president embraced them as the heart of his naval policy, and by 1807 Congress had authorized another 263 of them. The gunboats were cheap to build, were so simple to operate that maritime militiamen could man them—which coincided with Jefferson’s preference for citizen-soldiers over professionals—and were incontrovertibly defensive. Combined with stationary batteries at strategic coastal locations, mobile land batteries,

and floating batteries, he believed gunboats would protect the country from invasion by even the strongest maritime power.

What the gunboats could not do was protect seaborne commerce, which badly needed protection. In 1803, after the brief Peace of Amiens, Napoleon declared war on England, reigniting the contest for European supremacy. Both combatants struck at American neutral trade, trying to strangle each other economically. Having gained command of the sea at the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain was the worst offender. The Royal Navy seized more than 500 American vessels between 1803 and 1807, hovered off the coast imposing a virtual blockade, and impressed American seamen. The ultimate indignity came in June 1807, when the British frigate Leopard fired on the Chesapeake, killing and wounding twenty-one men and impressing four alleged deserters.

Jefferson’s administration responded to these provocations in several ways. It launched an intensive diplomatic effort and supported it with several defensive measures: Increasing the Army’s authorized strength to 10,000 men; appropriating money to complete, repair, and build coastal fortifications; and authorizing $200,000 annually for arming the militia. Diplomacy failed to budge England on the crucial questions of neutral rights and impressment, but rather than go to war, Jefferson undertook an experiment in economic coercion. In December 1807 Congress passed an Embargo Act that prohibited all exports. Jefferson hoped that by depriving the belligerents of American products, he could wring concessions from them regarding neutral rights, but he was wrong. The embargo had little effect on the European antagonists, and British impressment and neutral rights infringements continued unabated.

Although the embargo did not deter the Europeans, it brought the United States to the verge of civil war. Federalist New England mercantile interests saw their local economy ruined, as ships rotted at their wharves and seaborne commerce languished. The Francophobe Federalists also believed the embargo hurt England far more than France. They so strenuously opposed the law that Jefferson had to use both regulars and militia to enforce it, employing military force domestically at least as readily as Federalists had done during the Whiskey and Fries Rebellions. Now it was Jeffersonians who spoke glowingly about the necessity of preserving orderly government and Federalists who screamed about

tyranny. Thus the embargo sapped internal unity without alleviating the war-provoking problems with England.

Western concerns as well as maritime grievances pushed the United States toward war. Farmers believed British commercial restrictions depressed grain prices, and some westerners squinted at Canada and Florida with expansionist greed. Most important, although the English had withdrawn across the Canadian border, they continued to aid the Indians, especially Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who tried to revitalize the Indian confederacy quashed at Fallen Timbers. In 1811 the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, defeated the Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe; when British-supplied equipment was found nearby, frontiersmen seethed with anger at British treachery.

By 1812 many Americans believed the country’s options were either to fight or surrender national honor and sovereignty. A group of young congressmen, known as the War Hawks, voiced the public’s frustration over relations with England. Led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the War Hawks, tired of wordy diplomacy and spineless economic sanctions, waxed belligerent in their advocacy of strong war measures. Even Jefferson admitted that “every hope from time, patience, and love of peace are exhausted and war or abject submission are the only alternatives left to us.” His successor as president, James Madison, submitted a war message to Congress on June 1 and, after favorable votes of only 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate, signed it on June 18.

The War of 1812

Rarely have nations gone to war so reluctantly. At war with Napoleonic France, the British did not want a North American conflict. Despite the War Hawks’ verbal bellicosity and a decade of acute tension, the United States had made few warlike preparations, so the declaration of war and preparations for war came almost simultaneously. Legislation enacted early in 1812 increased the Army to 35,000 and provided for 50,000 volunteers and 100,000 militia. While these numbers were awesome on paper, when war began the regulars numbered only 12,000 and the volunteers and militia remained unorganized. The Navy consisted of only sixteen ships, seven of them frigates inherited from the Federalists,

including three superb heavy frigates.5 By contrast, the Royal Navy had about 1,000 warships.

Aside from its tardy preparations, the country had four other handicaps. Madison was a weak commander in chief. A poor judge of men, he filled many positions with incompetents. For example, his general officers were Revolutionary veterans, now averaging sixty years of age. Although they had been good soldiers in their youth, time had sapped their vigor and ability. Also, Madison claimed to govern by Republican principles, including minimal government cheaply run, a distaste for standing forces, and opposition to a national debt. The war made all three principles impossible to follow, but the Madison administration never quite adjusted to this reality and, for instance, failed to formulate an adequate taxation system. Therefore the nation went to war on a financial shoestring, resulting in inadequate logistical support for the armed forces.

A third difficulty was the factionalism that pervaded all aspects of waging the war. In the field, generals rarely cooperated with one another, and Navy and Army officers paid little attention to each other’s concerns. No government agency existed to plan, much less impose, intra- and interservice coordination. Personal and political rivalries rent Madison’s cabinet, reflecting the deep divisions even among Republicans as to the war’s wisdom and the most effective measures for waging it; meanwhile the Federalists opposed the war almost unanimously.

Finally, conflict between national and regional strategic concerns also hampered the war effort. From the administration’s perspective, the crucial strategic task was to conquer Canada in the hope that Britain would make concessions on the maritime issues to regain it. Though a Canadian offensive was Madison’s primary goal, American coastal localities were more concerned about naval raids, the southwest considered the Creek Indians a primary threat, and the northwest believed Tecumseh’s confederacy to be the foremost security problem. The government’s weakness and the slow, primitive means of transportation and communication resulted in the war becoming so regionally oriented that national strategy was often irrelevant. Imposing the administration’s will on the war effort was impossible; local leaders simply ignored its injunctions. But regionalism could be a strength as well as a weakness. Local strategists understood regional realities and could

adopt appropriate measures; and because they were so autonomous, defeats in other theaters did not shatter their morale.

Factionalism and regionalism united in Federalist-dominated New England, where the war’s unpopularity not only hamstrung the war effort but threatened national unity. Every Federalist in Congress voted against the declaration of war. Traditionally pro-British, the Federalists believed that the United States should help, not hinder, Britain against France. In the fall of 1814 the Federalist governor of Massachusetts sent an agent to Halifax to probe for prospects of a separate peace; the Federalists’ collective disaffection culminated in December at the Hartford Convention, a conclave that seemed so ominous the Madison administration prepared to use force to crush any secessionist movement that might burst from behind the meeting’s closed doors. Although the convention only proposed certain defensive measures and a series of constitutional amendments that would strengthen New England’s position in national affairs, it implied that if the demands were not met New England might secede from the Union.

Deleterious consequences flowed from Federalist opposition. New England Federalists (and even some Republicans) carried on illicit trade with England, providing supplies to enemy armies in Canada, and withheld financial assistance for “Mr. Madison’s war.” Since Republicans failed to impose sufficient taxes, they resorted to loans and borrowed $40 million, of which less than $3 million came from New England, the nation’s richest section. Federalist governors also refused to mobilize their militias when Madison called for them. Under the Constitution the militia could be called into national service only for specific purposes. The governors insisted that they, not the president, had the right to determine when these exigencies existed, and they denied their existence.6 They also argued that militia could not be used outside the country for a Canadian invasion. Since New England’s militia system was the country’s best, the obvious invasion route via Lake Champlain bordered New England, and the small Army needed militia reinforcements to conduct an invasion, the governors’ refusal to cooperate was near crippling.

In broad terms, fighting occurred in four theaters. The northeast encompassed the Canadian border from the Niagara River and Lake Ontario to the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain, while the northwest

stretched from Lake Erie to the northern reaches of Lake Huron. A southern theater included the Gulf coast from New Orleans to Pensacola and jutted inland along the Alabama River and its tributaries. The fourth theater was the eastern seaboard and the Atlantic Ocean.

Neither England nor America had thought about the strategy they would employ, but the initiative belonged to the United States. England could devote few resources to the New World and assumed the defensive in Canada, where 7,000 regulars garrisoned the border. The commander in chief for Canada, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, could also call on the militia, but this was scant comfort. He described it as “a mere posse, ill arm’d and without discipline,” and he worried about its loyalty because of the numerous former French citizens and American immigrants in the population. Aid might come from the Indians—if American control in the Northwest could be neutralized.

Correctly assuming that Canada was vulnerable, the administration prepared to attack it. The obvious strategy was to capture Montreal. Madison preferred a powerful thrust along the traditional invasion route, but New England’s lethargy made such a movement difficult. On the other hand, war fervor in the west beckoned for offensives in the Great Lakes region. From these considerations emerged a three-pronged offensive, one prong moving from Detroit, another attacking along the Niagara River, and a third marching toward Montreal. Attacks on three fronts should have stretched British resources to the snapping point, but failure to coordinate the advances allowed the English to meet each one in turn.

Begun with confident expectations, the campaign yielded dismal results. General William Hull entered Canada from Detroit in mid-July intent on capturing Fort Malden, but he encountered logistical difficulties. The enemy controlled Lakes Erie and Ontario, preventing easy supply by water, and Indian ambushes cut his overland supply line. Then came word that the British had captured Fort Michilimackinac. Fearing that thousands of Indians would descend on him from the north, Hull timidly pulled back to Detroit, where he surrendered in mid-August to a British force of regulars, militia, and Tecumseh’s Indians. The previous day the Fort Dearborn garrison evacuated its post on Hull’s orders, only to be slaughtered by Indians. Hull’s successor, William Henry Harrison, tried to redeem the situation with a winter campaign to recapture Detroit, but the British surprised an advance detachment at

Frenchtown and annihilated it. The debacle in the northwestern theater was complete.

On the Niagara front General Stephen Van Rensselaer, a political appointee with no military experience, commanded an army of regulars and militia. In mid-October he attacked Queenston, achieving initial success. But when militia reinforcements refused to cross the Niagara River into a foreign country, the British counterattacked and won the Battle of Queenston Heights. Van Rensselaer was replaced by General Alexander Smyth, who excelled at issuing bombastic proclamations to “plant the American standard in Canada.” Unfortunately his words spoke louder than his actions, and the American standard remained in America. Despite the Detroit and Niagara failures, if General Henry Dearborn’s offensive could capture Montreal the United States would still gain a decisive advantage. He moved slowly northward to the Canadian border where, as on the Niagara front, the militiamen would go no further. So Dearborn returned to winter quarters and all Canada was safe—at least until spring.

While the effort on land was a demoralizing tale of poor strategy and weak leadership, the opening sea campaign was as refreshing as a cool ocean breeze. Americans had several advantages. The Federalist heavy frigates were the finest ships of their class in the world. Unlike the Army commanders, who had earned their reputations in the Revolution, ranking naval officers were generally young and had developed professional skills and attitudes during the Quasi- and Tripolitan Wars. Moreover, the British navy could commit only a fraction of its strength to American waters.

The administration contemplated deploying the Navy in a single fleet, but this proved impractical. However, a squadron commanded by John Rodgers did get to sea, while other ships cruised alone to prey on British commerce or fight enemy warships. The result was a series of spectacular single-ship victories, with Constitution destroying the frigate Guerriere and then later defeating the frigate Java, and United States capturing the frigate Macedonian. In all these actions the American ship was larger and more heavily gunned, but knowledge of this did not detract from the celebrations following the news of each victory.

These encounters persuaded Congress to authorize new ships: four 74s and six 44-gun frigates in January 1813, and six sloops in March. But the Navy’s glory days were over. Stung by the defeats, the British Admiralty ordered its frigates to avoid single-ship engagements and sent more ships to blockade the coast, trapping the American frigates in port. The few American warships that got to sea after 1812 could not repeat earlier successes because the British no longer underestimated them. When, for example, the frigate Shannon disobeyed orders and fought USS Chesapeake, the British vessel prevailed. However, the Chesapeake’s captain, James Lawrence, exemplified the Navy’s fighting tradition. When he was mortally wounded he told his subordinates, “Don’t give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks.” Although the ship did not sink, the English captured it only after boarding it and engaging in savage hand-to-hand combat.

Meanwhile, the blockade became a noose, choking American commerce. By 1814 merchant trade was about 17 percent of what it had been in 1811. Beginning in 1813 the Royal Navy also made punitive coastal raids, and Jefferson’s gunboats, designed to prevent such excursions, proved ineffectual. Although the blockade penned up the frigates and crushed seaborne and coastal trade, it could not prevent privateers and small warships from slipping out of port. What success Americans enjoyed on the ocean after 1812 came from privateers and the sloops authorized in 1813. Five hundred privateers received commissions and took 1,300 prizes, and the sloops captured numerous merchantmen and a few small warships. But neither the 1812 frigate victories nor the depredations by privateers and sloops significantly altered the war’s course.

Despite the setbacks on land in 1812 the United States remained on the offensive in 1813. Since the failures had been more the consequence of American ineptitude than British skill, optimism still prevailed. But the United States again dissipated its strength in several disjointed assaults on Canada. The Americans had limited success on the Detroit front when Oliver H. Perry’s ships destroyed a British squadron on Lake Erie on September 10. Perry scribbled a hasty report to Harrison on the back of an old letter: “Dear Gen’l:—We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop. Yours with great

respect and esteem. O. H. Perry.” His communique was a model— perhaps unique—battle report, being both accurate and brief!

The Battle of Lake Erie forced both British General Henry Proctor and Harrison into action. With his supply line across the lake cut, Proctor retreated eastward along the Thames River and Harrison pursued. Proctor confronted his pursuers two miles west of Moraviantown with about 1,000 regulars and Native-American allies. Harrison had thrice that many men, including 1,000 mounted riflemen from Kentucky, whom Colonel Richard M. Johnson had trained more rigorously than was usual for citizen-soldiers. In the Battle of the Thames the Americans won a smashing victory, killing Tecumseh and capturing most of Proctor’s army. With Tecumseh’s death the Indian confederacy collapsed, fulfilling a vital northwestern war objective. But, although satisfying a regional war aim, the campaign did little to advance the national war effort, since Harrison’s front was subsidiary to the more important front further east.

Secretary of War John Armstrong, who believed that the Lake Champlain force was too weak to attack Montreal directly, instead proposed thrusts against Kingston, York, and Forts George and Erie. Triple success would make all British positions west of Kingston untenable. The campaign began well. In late April General Zebulon Pike —of Pikes Peak fame—raided York against minimal resistance. A month later General Henry Dearborn attacked Fort George and the British commander, General John Vincent, retreated, taking the Chippewa and Fort Erie garrisons with him. So far so good, but the tide of war soon flowed against the Americans when Vincent routed a pursuing force at Stoney Creek and compelled the Americans to abandon Chippewa and Fort Erie. The American commander at Fort George tried to strike one of Vincent’s advanced posts, but the enemy captured the entire column at the Battle of the Beaver Dams, a defeat that left the Americans precariously isolated in Fort George.

At this point Secretary Armstrong replaced Dearborn with General James Wilkinson, who had become the Army’s ranking officer when Wayne died in 1796. Wilkinson proposed that Kingston be bypassed and that he and General Wade Hampton, commanding at Plattsburgh, attack Montreal, with each army approaching the city from a different direction. Command disputes foiled the plan. Unfortunately, despite Wilkinson’s call

for a coordinated dual advance, he and Hampton so detested one another that bickering rather than cooperation was the hallmark of the campaign. Armstrong came to the front to placate his feuding generals, but his presence only muddled an already tangled problem when he tried to exercise direct field command. British forces turned back Hampton at the Battle of Chateauguay and Wilkinson at the Battle of Chrysler’s Farm. In mid-December the Americans evacuated Fort George, unleashing a British offensive that captured or burned Fort Niagara, Lewiston, Black Rock, and Buffalo. These enemy successes canceled out the earlier American victories, leaving the Niagara front in British hands.

After two campaigning seasons the United States was no closer to victory than it had been when the war began. It had frittered away precious opportunities to invade Canada while England fought for survival against Napoleon. Now news from Europe indicated that it would be an entirely new war in 1814, with the United States on the defensive. France collapsed in the winter of 1813–1814, Napoleon abdicated in April, and a victorious England could send reinforcements to America, transforming its war there from a desperate defensive to a punishing offensive. The British planned offensives from Canada, in Chesapeake Bay, and at New Orleans, and they were as confident as the Americans had been two years earlier. Yet the same obstacles that England had encountered in fighting the Revolution remained, especially America’s sponge-like nature. As the Duke of Wellington said, he could perceive no operation that would so badly injure America that it would be forced to sue for peace. Furthermore, by 1814 aggressive younger men had replaced the Army’s original commanders. Coming to the fore were Jacob Brown, Edmund R Gaines, Alexander Macomb, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson. These men would direct the nation’s military fortunes for decades to come.

Before British reinforcements could cross the Atlantic the United States launched two offensives. Wilkinson moved northward from Lake Champlain to La Colle Creek, where a stone mill occupied by fewer than 200 British soldiers blocked the advance. An artillery bombardment consumed all the American ammunition without damaging the mill, and Wilkinson retreated. On the Niagara front, Jacob Brown commanded an army of two regular brigades and one militia brigade. After capturing Fort

Erie he moved northward, while General Phineas Riall, the enemy commander at Fort George, marched south. The armies collided at Chippewa, where they engaged in a classic eighteenth-century battle featuring close-range volleys and bayonet charges. The British broke the militia but then ran into a regular brigade under Winfield Scott, which fought back fiercely. At one point, as Scott’s brigade deployed into a battle line, Riall exclaimed, “Those are regulars, by God!” Technically he was correct, but Scott’s “regulars” were mostly recent recruits whom he had converted into disciplined troops in just a few months. An avid student of the history and theory of war, Scott had established a training camp where he drilled recruits intensely, proving that under competent officers citizen- soldiers could become quality troops without years of rigorous instruction.

After Chippewa, General Gordon Drummond assumed command of the British force shortly before the armies clashed at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, which was more fierce than Chippewa, with opposing lines firing volleys almost muzzle to muzzle. The battle was a tactical standoff, but with both Brown and Scott wounded the Americans withdrew to Fort Erie, which they soon blew up just before returning to American soil. As usual, the Montreal and Niagara fronts were indecisive.

As the rival armies battered each other along the Niagara, the British offensives began elsewhere. General Prevost advanced down the Richelieu, arriving at Plattsburgh in early September with 10,000 men and a flotilla under George Downie to guard his left flank and maintain his supply line along the lake. Opposing him were Alexander Macomb with 3,400 men and Thomas Macdonough’s squadron anchored in Plattsburgh Bay. Prevost decided to attack simultaneously on land and water. On September 11 Downie’s ships sailed into the bay, and a furious naval battle resulted. When the lake breezes wafted away the acrid smoke, the British flotilla was in ruins. Meanwhile Prevost’s land assault had developed slowly, and when he realized Downie was beaten he ordered a halt. His magnificent army was still intact, but he believed that loss of control on the lake made his logistical situation hopeless. The next day he retreated.

The British Chesapeake Bay offensive began in August with Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane commanding the naval element and

General Robert Ross the land forces. The ministry had authorized them to undertake punitive raids against seaboard cities to divert American attention from Prevost’s offensive. As Cochrane sailed up the bay Joshua Barney’s gunboat flotilla fled up the Patuxent River. The British anchored at Benedict, disembarked 4,500 men to march along the river banks, and sent some small craft upstream. Trapped, Barney destroyed his gunboats.

Ross now marched toward Washington, which Armstrong had never fortified, considering it strategically insignificant. The administration hastily organized a predominantly militia force under General William H. Winder, but he neglected even obvious delaying tactics such as destroying bridges and sniping at the redcoats as they traversed dense forests. Winder established a three-line defensive position at Bladensburg, but the first two lines quickly collapsed, the soldiers departing at sprint speed. Barney’s 500 sailors, footsore from the unaccustomed marching, stood in the third line. Here hard fighting occurred, as Barney’s men fended off attacks and, crying “Board ’em, board ’em!” counterattacked. When the British outflanked their position the seamen finally retreated, ending the Battle of Bladensburg and opening the way to the capital. There the British burned the public buildings, including the White House and the Capitol.

The next target, Baltimore, disappointed British hopes of another easy victory. The American commander, Samuel Smith, was a determined fighter, and militiamen rallied to his standard. In a testimonial to aching muscles and blistered hands, the city’s citizens fortified defensive positions. Guarding the harbor was Fort McHenry, one of the fortifications authorized in 1794. As Ross’s army marched from North Point, militia blocked the route about halfway to Baltimore. Although the British punched through the force, a sniper killed Ross. His replacement, Colonel Arthur Brooke, pushed on but halted before the city’s entrenchments. At dawn on September 13, Cochrane began a twenty- four-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry. A Washington lawyer, Francis Scott Key, watched the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air, saw the flag flying proudly over the fort in the dawn’s early light, and was mightily inspired. He jotted down some verses, later revised, that became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But what was inspirational to Key was

disheartening to Cochrane and Brooke, who withdrew on September 14. The second of Britain’s three offensives had now been blunted.

The United States not only repulsed but shattered the New Orleans offensive, primarily because of Andrew Jackson’s cyclonic energy and iron-willed determination. Jackson became a hero after he won the Creek War of 1813–1814, a conflict in which he was virtually an independent warlord, often acting on his own authority and sometimes contrary to the secretary of war’s orders. In 1813 a large portion of the Creek nation, seizing the opportunity presented by the Americans’ war with England, went on the warpath and killed more than 200 whites at Fort Mims, Alabama. With concentrated loathing the entire southwest struck back. When word of Fort Mims reached Tennessee, Jackson, a state militia general even though he had never led troops in battle, was recuperating from a wound suffered in a frontier brawl. With a bullet lodged close to his heart and his arm in a sling, he struggled from bed, summoned volunteers, and won the Battles of Tallushatchee and Talladega. Other columns from east Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi Territory also defeated the Creeks in isolated engagements. Lacking centralized direction, the campaign failed to end the Creek War, but the Creeks had lost at least 20 percent of their warriors.

As the year ended Jackson’s army disintegrated when the volunteers’ enlistments expired and the men returned home. But reinforcements arrived in early 1814, and Jackson invaded Creek territory a second time. With incredible tenacity considering their reduced manpower, the Indians attacked three times, forcing Jackson to retreat. However, when he learned that more than 1,000 Creeks had fortified a bend in the Tallapoosa River, the Tennessean invaded a third time. At the peninsula’s neck the Creeks had a log breastwork, and at the far end they had canoes to flee in if hard pressed. Jackson sent his Cherokee allies and mounted volunteers to seal the escape hatch and stormed the barricade, pushing the Indians back in savage combat. Even Jackson admitted “the carnage was dreadfull” as the Creek nation’s fighting strength expired in a hundred acres of gullied terrain. The Battle of Horseshoe Bend ended the Creek War.

In May, Jackson became a regular Army major general commanding the 7th Military District, which included Louisiana. His responsibility was

to stop Britain’s New Orleans venture, a responsibility he shouldered alone, since time and distance prevented the national government from affording him timely assistance.

Admiral Cochrane, who had gone to Jamaica after his exploits on Chesapeake Bay, planned to capture New Orleans by taking Mobile, marching an army from there to the Mississippi, and then moving downriver to the Crescent City. While a roundabout approach, it was the easiest route, since New Orleans was a hundred miles up the Mississippi, situated amid a maze of bayous, swamps, and flesh-rending reeds. It could be attacked directly, said a British officer, only if troops were “assisted by the aerial flight of the bird of prey, or astride the alligator’s scaly back.” The ministry appointed Sir Edward Pakenham to command the army, but he did not reach Jamaica before the armada departed and General John Keane became acting commander.

Jackson suspected that the British might use an overland route, and when they attacked Fort Bowyer, Mobile’s main defensive work, his alert men repelled them. Three weeks later he counterattacked, capturing Pensacola. His vigilance foreclosed Cochrane’s preferred route and doomed British hopes of recruiting legions of Indians and Spaniards to assist them. Having blocked the land route to the city, Jackson hastened to New Orleans. He was not well, but those who glimpsed his fierce, hawklike eyes sensed that the emaciated exterior belied his inner strength. Jackson ordered the likely approaches to the city guarded, and to defend it he assembled a large amount of artillery and a cosmopolitan force that included sailors, a few marines, several regular regiments, Tennessee and Kentucky militia and volunteers, the Louisiana militia, two brigades of New Orleans free black men, some Choctaw Indians, and Jean Lafitte’s 800 pirates.

“By the Eternal, they shall not sleep on our soil!” thundered Jackson on December 23 when he learned that British troops were only nine miles from the city. They had arrived undetected by coming across Lake Borgne and using an unaccountably unguarded bayou leading inland. The Americans made a night attack on Keane’s position; it became a melee pitting British bayonets against American hatchets and knives. After this First Battle of New Orleans, Jackson withdrew two miles, assuming a defensive position behind the wide but dry Rodriguez Canal. On the right

was the Mississippi and on the left a cypress swamp, making enemy flank attacks difficult. In front was a plain dominated by Jackson’s parapet.

Pakenham, who arrived on Christmas Day, probed the American defenses on December 28 and on New Year’s Day—the Second and Third Battles of New Orleans. The Fourth (and main) Battle came on January 8. Although Pakenham probed Jackson’s flanks, sending a West Indian black regiment through the swamp and dispatching another force across the Mississippi to assail the American forces there, his major assault was on the broad plain toward Jackson’s main position. The British general planned to attack at night, but the advance was delayed until morning. It appeared that fortune might shine on the British as fog shrouded the plain, but the fog suddenly lifted and the slaughter began. By eight-thirty the battle was over, with 500 prisoners in American hands and another 1,500 British dead and wounded littering the plain, most of them victims of Jackson’s artillery. American casualties numbered about 70.

Ironically the victory had no influence on the Treaty of Ghent, which had been signed on Christmas Eve, 1814. Efforts at negotiations had begun almost as soon as the war commenced. Allied with England in the war against Napoleon, Russia offered to mediate the dispute. Having bungled the 1812 campaign, the United States accepted Russia’s offer, but England did not. The British, however, suggested direct negotiations and Madison agreed. By the time the negotiators met, England was in no hurry to conclude a peace, believing its 1814 offensives would improve its bargaining position. Still, Britain was not prepared to fight a prolonged war for New World territory or for the benefit of its Indian allies. Not only was England’s population war-weary after two decades of continuous strife but, with the French population seething with discontent and Britain squabbling with its allies, England feared a renewed European war.

After Prevost’s retreat and Cochrane’s repulse at Baltimore, Wellington in essence advised the British government to settle the war. These defeats indicated that England could not project power into North America any more effectively in 1814 than during the Revolution—a fact confirmed by New Orleans. As in that earlier war, both combatants were militarily weak in America, with the United States being just barely strong enough to stave off defeat.

Britain agreed to terms based on the status quo ante bellum. The treaty was a cessation of hostilities that mentioned none of the war’s causes. Of course, with the European war over, British violations of neutral rights ceased and they were no longer an urgent issue. Although the United States did not acquire Canada and annexed only part of Florida, it escaped territorial losses. For the west and south the defeat of Tecumseh’s confederation and the Creeks signified clear-cut gains. Perhaps New England “lost” the war, since its influence in national affairs waned rapidly after 1815. And from a national perspective even a stalemate against Napoleon’s conquerors was no embarrassment. By fighting England a second time and surviving intact, the United States had preserved its independence and gained new respect in the international arena.

In early February 1815, three messages converged on Washington from separate locations. News of Jackson’s victory came from New Orleans, quickly followed by the treaty from Ghent. The two announcements set off national rejoicing, erasing grim memories of earlier defeats. Amidst this euphoria the third communication arrived, borne by a committee from the Hartford Convention. The Federalists’ veiled threat of New England secession tainted the party with treason, and they never recovered from the stigma—a sad end for the party that a quarter-century earlier had laid the foundations for the republic’s future growth.

The nearly simultaneous arrival of the glad tidings from Louisiana and Ghent made it appear as if the United States had defeated Britain again, a myth Americans willingly embraced. New Orleans had a further importance: It enshrined the western hunter-soldiers who had supposedly mowed down England’s veterans (artillery inflicted most of the casualties) and glorified the militia at a time when the militia system was virtually dead. The Treaty of Ghent was also significant in that it marked the end of an epoch in American history. For more than a century, the large wars wracking the Old World had become the New World’s wars as well. But for a century afterward no general conflict afflicted Europe, and the United States avoided the Continent’s numerous smaller wars. Hence the nation turned inward, devoting its energies to domestic development and territorial expansion. America’s armed forces played vital roles in both activities.

FIVE

The Armed Forces and National Expansion, 1815–1860

During the War of 1812 the Republican Party converted to Federalist military policy. In the war’s aftermath, amid fervid nationalism and with full Republican support, the armed forces prospered. But by the 1820s the magnified nationalism waned, and the Army and Navy entered an era of neglect. Yet these poorly financed and undermanned forces participated in three significant developments. First, the Industrial Revolution’s technological advances transformed the conduct of war. Second, the postwar decades witnessed the beginnings of military professionalization. Finally, the armed forces aided the nation’s territorial expansion and economic development. The Army explored the wilderness, built transportation networks, guarded settlers, and fought wars against Indians who resisted President Andrew Jackson’s removal policy and against Mexico, which contested America’s claim to a “Manifest Destiny.” The Navy, too, advanced national interests by protecting foreign trade and conducting diplomatic-commercial missions abroad.

Postwar Nationalism and Military Policy

In early 1815, in words that Alexander Hamilton might have written, President James Madison told Congress that experience “demonstrates that a certain degree of preparation for war is not only indispensable to avert disasters in the onset, but affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.” The president asked Congress to maintain a defense establishment similar to the one Federalists had long advocated: a

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strong Navy to protect commerce, fortifications to defend the coast, and a substantial regular Army and a reformed militia to guard the frontiers and repel invaders. Although Congress had no desire to tamper with the militia, it responded favorably to the other items.

In 1816, for the first time, the United States established a peacetime long-range naval building program. Congress voted $1 million annually for eight years to build nine 74-gun ships of the line, twelve 44-gun frigates, and three coastal defense steam batteries—a larger building program than ever before. But by 1820 a movement toward naval retrenchment, spurred by the Panic of 1819, was underway, and in 1821 Congress cut the appropriation in half, although it extended this reduced annual outlay for three years beyond the original 1824 termination date. In 1827 and in 1833 Congress continued the $500,000 expenditure for six more years. Slowly, most of the ships authorized in 1816 were completed, but the Navy Department took many of them out of active service (“laid them up in ordinary,” in the terminology of the time) and depended to a great extent on smaller warships periodically authorized by Congress.

The reliance on small ships was not ill-founded. The Navy’s primary responsibility was to protect America’s expanding commerce. No great nation threatened this trade, but pirates and irregular privateers employing small, fast ships did. Trying to catch these buccaneers with ships of the line and frigates was futile. Thus instead of forming a battlefleet, the Navy Department divided its ships into squadrons that sailed in geographic areas called stations. A squadron normally consisted of one or two frigates or ships of the line and a larger number of smaller but swifter vessels. The first squadron established was in the Mediterranean, where in 1812 Algiers had renewed its depredations. Shortly after Congress ratified the Treaty of Ghent, it declared war on Algiers. After the Navy had subdued the petty state, a squadron remained on station in the Mediterranean, and the department periodically established other squadrons in trouble spots around the globe. By 1843 six squadrons existed.7

Between 1815 and 1842 a Board of Navy Commissioners helped the secretary of the navy administer the squadrons. Since the Navy Department’s founding, a civilian secretary, aided by a few clerks, had directed all naval activities. Some experts had urged formation of a

professional board to help the secretary, and the War of 1812 demonstrated the navy’s poor administration. Consisting of three captains, the board had authority in such specialized duties as the procurement of naval stores and materials, and the building, repairing, and equipping of ships. The board provided the secretary with technical assistance without impinging on civilian control, since the secretary retained control of policy.

The board had two defects. Its collective nature was, as one secretary said, “extremely unfavorable to that individual responsibility, which it is so necessary to impose upon every public officer.” The board was also extremely conservative and opposed maritime technological innovations. Aware of these problems, Congress abolished the board in 1842, replacing it with five bureaus: Yards and Docks; Construction, Equipment, and Repair; Medicine and Surgery; Provisions and Clothing; and Ordnance and Hydrography. The bureaus inaugurated an era of specialized management, with each bureau chief acting independently and reporting to the secretary. Congress also established a Corps of Engineers to service the Navy’s few steam warships, thereby acknowledging the growing importance of the new motive power, which the Board of Navy Commissioners had been slow to accept.

The bureaus and the Corps of Engineers, while reformist in intent, created problems that bedeviled the Navy for decades. The bureaus carried individual responsibility too far. Without any compulsion to cooperate, they rarely coordinated their activities, resulting in fragmented management. Conflict arose between line and staff officers. Line officers viewed staff officers, such as paymasters, surgeons, and engineers, as socially and professionally inferior and not entitled to equal rank and the privileges and esteem that went with it. Staff officers disliked the line officers’ assumed superiority. Engineers, for example, designed, directed the manufacture of, installed, and operated steam machinery on warships. These were taxing and dangerous tasks, and the men who performed them demanded equal rank and pay.

The Republicans were as favorably inclined toward coastal fortifications—few could forget Fort McHenry—as they were toward the Navy. The new ships would be the nation’s sword, new fortifications its shield. During war scares in 1794 and 1807 the country began

fortifications systems, but most of the structures rapidly decayed. In 1816 Congress appropriated more than $800,000 for a fortifications program. Begun after the crisis had passed, the new system, like the new Navy, was to proceed methodically during peacetime and be permanent. Madison appointed a Board of Engineers for Fortifications to deal with seacoast defense. Its first report (February 1821), combined with a supplemental report five years later, outlined a theory of defense that remained in vogue until the 1880s. The board declared that the first line of defense was the Navy, but since it was likely to remain small, it must be supported by seacoast fortifications, an interior communications network, a regular Army, and a well-organized militia. The 1821 report suggested 50 sites for defensive works, and by 1850 the board had recommended nearly 150 more. Long before then, however, congressional enthusiasm for the program had diminished, and the gap between fortifications projected and those completed became a chasm.

The Army also benefited from the postwar nationalism. Not only was its peacetime strength increased, but the army’s bureaucracy underwent an important reorganization. In March 1815 Congress established an Army of 12,000, dwarfing any army the United States had maintained except in wartime or acute crisis. Bureaucratic reforms consisted of the creation of a General Staff and the position of commanding general of the Army. The United States had been no better prepared for war in 1812 than it had been in 1775, and the Revolution’s logistical deficiencies had soon reappeared. Part of the problem stemmed from Republican unwillingness to use the taxing power, but much of the difficulty lay within the War Department, which had developed no support service administrative machinery. An overburdened secretary, aided by a handful of clerks, usually acted as quartermaster general and commissary general, along with all his other duties. At best the department exercised loose supervision over logistical matters, and what services existed were small and decentralized. The casual administration of logistics, troubling in peace, was intolerable in war. In 1812 Congress revived several staff offices that had sporadically existed since the Revolution, such as a quartermaster general and a commissary general of purchases. However, confusion reigned due to overlapping responsibilities. In 1813 the legislature tried to bring order from chaos by creating a General Staff,

which was a group of autonomous bureau chiefs, such as an adjutant and inspector general and quartermaster general, with each chief reporting to the secretary of war.8

The General Staff was unable to improve logistical support appreciably during the conflict. But two postwar secretaries—William H. Crawford (1815–1816) and John C. Calhoun (1817–1825)—realized that a peacetime staff organization was essential preparation for war. Two acts, one in 1816 and the other in 1818, expanded and improved the staff and ensured the staff’s permanence; it remained essentially intact until the twentieth century.

Operational command had been as dismal as logistical support throughout the War of 1812. No single officer commanded the entire Army. The War Department divided the Army into districts and departments, with each commander acting independently, coordinated only by the secretary of war. A commanding officer such as Andrew Jackson often failed to cooperate with other commanders and invariably resented the secretary’s “interference” in military matters. In 1821, when Congress reduced the Army’s high command to one major general and two brigadier generals, Calhoun seized the opportunity to create a centralized command system, which might prevent the emergence of a Jacksonian-style warlord in any future war. He ordered the sole major general, Jacob Brown, to Washington and designated him the commanding general.

Most officials considered the Army’s new institutions important reforms. In theory the War Department now had a balanced organization. For technical advice the secretary called on the General Staff, while he directed military operations through the commanding general. In practice three problems arose. First, the commanding general’s responsibilities were unclear. Could he really command the Army? If he did, he would usurp the secretary of war’s constitutional duty as the president’s appointed deputy; but if he did not, his position was meaningless. A strained relationship between the commanding general and the secretary resulted. Second, a line-staff rivalry developed. Line officers wanted preferential treatment because they believed they endured privation while staff officers lived a soft life. Line officers also insisted on the right to command staff personnel in their district, but bureau chiefs asserted that

staff officers in the field were responsible only to their superiors in Washington. Finally, Army bureau chiefs did not cooperate among themselves, and even the secretary was often unable to control them. Secretaries rarely stayed in office more than a few years, so power gravitated to the bureau chiefs, who held commissions for life. Chiefs became consummate bureaucrats and extremely knowledgeable about their specialized functions, but they often confused their own bureau’s well-being with the Army’s welfare.

Congressional goodwill toward the Army evaporated during the Panic of 1819. In 1820 the House told Calhoun to prepare a plan for reducing the Army to 6,000, and in response he submitted one of the most important military papers in American history. Declaring that reliance on militia was foolhardy and that the nation must depend on regulars, Calhoun proposed a peacetime “expansible” Army that could readily expand in war without diluting its capabilities. His fundamental principle was that when war came, “there should be nothing either to new model or to create.” In peacetime the Army should maintain a complete organization of companies and regiments and full complements of both line and staff officers but a reduced number of privates. In wartime preexisting units would be augmented by recruiting privates, who would be trained by experienced officers. The transition from peace to war, wrote Calhoun, could “be made without confusion or disorder; and the weakness and danger, which otherwise would be inevitable, be avoided.” Calhoun suggested an Army of 6,316, expansible to 11,558 without adding a single officer or company. With only 288 additional officers the Army could expand to more than 19,000. Calhoun’s proposal made no headway against congressmen such as Charles Fisher, who said he “always thought, that one of the best features of our Government is its unfitness for war.” In March 1821 Congress rejected Calhoun’s expansible Army concept, slashing the Army’s strength to 6,183 by eliminating regiments and reducing the number of officers. Yet the idea lived on, advocated by those who believed regulars should be the foundation for war planning.

Several postwar trends were clear. The armed forces enjoyed a few years of unprecedented peacetime support before economic ills and fading memories of the war led to cutbacks. Both services experienced bureaucratic growth in an effort to give civilian secretaries ready access to

professional advice; to ensure long-term institutional stability in technical and logistical functions; and, in the Army, to impose centralized command on a previously decentralized system that had been a breeding ground for disaster. Although the bureau system represented an important administrative development, it ushered in new problems. Extreme specialization within the bureaus and lack of cooperation among them often hamstrung effective management, staff-line squabbles afflicted both services, and the commanding general’s ambiguous position created turmoil in the War Department.

Technology and War

“What hath God wrought?” asked Samuel F.B. Morse in May 1844 in the first message transmitted over the telegraph, a device he had invented. Whether the invention was God’s creation or man’s was debatable, but what had been wrought was a communications miracle that diminished time and distance in the transmission of information. Military communications—for centuries tied to a messenger’s uncertain speed— became almost instantaneous. Dramatic as it was, Morse’s telegraph was only one of the technological innovations that so profoundly influenced warfare as to constitute a military revolution, inducing acute anxiety among strategists needing to discern the impact of a bewildering range of developments. Not the least of the policymakers’ problems was the tremendous expense involved in keeping pace with new technologies. So rapidly did innovations appear, wrote one secretary of war, that a mere decade marked “an epoch in the onward progress of modern invention and improvement. Even five years may modify, materially, plans of defense now reputed wisest and most indispensable.”

During the first half of the nineteenth century armies harnessed the Industrial Revolution’s technology, resulting in dramatic increases in mobility and firepower. Enhanced mobility came from the steamship and the railroad. In 1789 John Fitch built the first successful steamboat, in 1807 Robert Fulton’s Clermont began commercial operations, and by the 1830s hundreds of steamers plied inland waters. Steamboats could defy currents and wind, but low water or ice brought them to a halt, and they had to go where rivers went. Neither drought nor winter stopped the

railroads, which had the additional advantage of going anywhere people chose to lay tracks. A group of New Yorkers organized the first railroad company in 1826, and by 1860 there were 30,000 miles of track traversing the United States. Although developed for commercial purposes, steamboats and railroads had benefits equally important for commerce and war: Travel was faster and cheaper.

Increased firepower came from innovations that made infantry weapons dramatically more lethal. The flintlock mechanism gave way to percussion caps, cylindro-conoidal bullets replaced spherical lead balls, rifles superseded smoothbores, and breechloaders and repeaters competed with single-shot muzzleloaders. The development of fulminates in the 1790s led to a replacement system for the notoriously unreliable flintlock mechanism. By 1820 Joshua Shaw of Philadelphia had perfected a copper percussion cap containing mercuric fulminate. An infantryman placed a percussion cap on a hollow cone connected to the breech; when the hammer struck the cap, the fulminate exploded, sending flame through the cone to the main charge. The percussion cap, being simpler and more reliable than the flintlock, meant infantrymen fired at a faster rate than ever before.

Rifles had greater range and accuracy than smoothbores. Yet in 1815 no army had more than a few elite rifle units because rifles were slower to load than smoothbores. In a smoothbore the ball did not have to fit tightly in the barrel, but for a rifle to work, the bullet had to “grip” the rifling inside the barrel. The only way to achieve this “grip” in muzzleloading weapons firing round lead bullets was to force the projectile down the barrel—sometimes by pounding a steel ramrod with a mallet—so that it fit snugly against the rifling. The perfection of the elongated cylindro- conoidal bullet by a French army captain, Claude E. Minie, made it feasible to load rifles quickly. The so-called “Minie ball” slipped easily down the barrel but had a hollow base that expanded under the impact of the powder charge’s explosion, causing the projectile to grip the rifling. In the mid-1850s the Army adopted as its standard weapon a .58-caliber, percussion-cap, muzzleloading rifle firing cylindro-conoidal bullets. Smoothbores were accurate to only about fifty yards, but the new weapon could be deadly at ten times that distance.

By 1861 arms makers had developed breechloaders and repeaters. In 1811 John H. Hall patented a breechloading rifle, and in 1819 he signed a contract to produce his guns at the Harpers Ferry Armory. In manufacturing these rifles, Hall attained the goal Eli Whitney popularized but never achieved: Mass production using precision machine tools that resulted in interchangeable parts. Hall’s production system rapidly spread, spurring America’s economic growth, but his rifle had a fundamental problem. Gas and flame leaked from the breech, which detracted from the bullet’s velocity and endangered the soldier. The self-contained metallic cartridge, developed during the 1850s, solved the difficulty. The thin metal shell casing possessed the property of obturation (when the powder detonated, the casing expanded, sealing the breech). The new cartridge made possible effective breechloaders and repeating rifles. Prior to the Civil War, Samuel Colt, Christopher M. Spencer, and others had patented repeaters; and in 1862 Richard Gatling produced the first machine gun.

Railroads, steamboats, and rapid-fire rifles transformed land warfare. Strategically, armies could be transported long distances with unprecedented speed and be supported logistically with relative ease at a reasonable cost. They could also be controlled from afar by telegraph. At the same time the tactical system utilized by Napoleon lost its ability to achieve decisive battlefield results. Napoleon generally concentrated his artillery close to the enemy lines and, following a furious barrage, sent his massed infantry and cavalry forward in frontal assaults. By 1860 these tactics were suicidal. The longer range, better accuracy, and increased rate of fire of infantry weapons made it difficult to bring artillery near the enemy lines, potentially converting mass attacks into mass butchery.

Changes in naval warfare were no less startling, as steam and iron began to replace sails and wood. Indeed, naval technology seemed to be changing so swiftly that one congressional committee even suggested building a throw-away Navy. Instead of expensive iron construction, the Navy should rely on cheaply built vessels of white oak, sell them when they decayed, and build new ships “so as to keep the Navy up with all the improvements of the day, and in a condition to introduce, without sacrifice, any new invention.”

Robert Fulton built the world’s first steam warship, Fulton, completed in 1814 to defend New York harbor. Although entrepreneurs quickly adopted steam for commercial purposes, the Navy did not rush to embrace it. During the reign of the Board of Navy Commissioners the Navy built only four steamships. In the mid-1830s Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson partially implemented the 1816 congressional authorization for three steam batteries when he ordered construction of one steamer, a new Fulton, completed in 1837. Two years later Congress authorized three additional steam warships. One of these never performed well, but the other two, Mississippi and Missouri (both completed in 1842), were seagoing paddlewheelers representing a high state of technical proficiency.

Why was the Navy so reluctant to convert to steam? Part of the answer was naval conservatism regarding innovations. Many officers viewed the noisy, dirty steamships as ungainly sea monsters. Practical problems also delayed the acceptance of steam. Engines were bulky, weak, and unreliable. It took about one ton of machinery to generate one horsepower, and engines consumed coal voraciously, limiting a vessel’s range. The exposed paddlewheels made the vessel vulnerable, since a single shot into them would be crippling. The paddlewheels and the cumbersome steam machinery also left little room for broadside guns, reducing a ship’s own firepower.

Experimentation gradually produced more efficient engines, and the introduction of the screw propeller to replace the paddlewheels solved the problems of vulnerability and firepower. Placed underwater at the stern, the propeller was secure from enemy fire, allowed the ship’s vital machinery to be placed below the waterline, and freed the broadside for guns. The first screw-propeller warship was Princeton, launched in 1843. Its design made steamships equal to sailing vessels in fighting power, with the additional advantage of machine propulsion, and in the fifteen years preceding the Civil War the Navy increasingly converted to steam.

The steam warships built before the Civil War were actually obsolete. They had unprotected wooden hulls that could absorb a terrific pounding from solid shot, but explosive shells splintered the hulls and set wooden ships afire. Shells had long been used in land artillery because howitzers and mortars, fired at relatively high angles, required low projectile

velocities. But naval guns required a flat trajectory to hull enemy ships and hence high velocity and breech pressures. In 1823 a French artillery officer, Henri-Joseph Paixhans, solved the technical difficulties in firing shells from naval guns. In the late 1830s France and England adopted the shell gun, as did the United States.

The answer to incendiary shell guns was iron. Two related innovations occurred simultaneously: iron construction and the use of iron plates as armor. The first armed vessel built of iron was Michigan, launched on the Great Lakes in 1843. The previous year Congress authorized Robert L. Stevens to build a “shot and shell proof” ironclad screw-propelled warship, the first modern ironclad9 authorized for any navy. Initially the vessel was to have 4 to 6 inches of armor, but inventors soon built guns that could penetrate it. Designers planned to install thicker armor, but even more powerful ordnance was soon available. The metallurgical advances permitting thicker, more resistant armor could also be used to build stronger guns capable of hurling larger projectiles at greater velocity. Stevens never filled his contract, and France launched the first seagoing ironclad, La Gloire, in 1859. The British countered the next year with Warrior, the first seagoing iron-hulled ironclad. Both ships were theoretically obsolete, since they carried only four and a half inches of armor. The fate of Stevens’s ship and the instant obsolescence of La Gloire and Warrior were indicative of the “race” between guns and armor— between penetration and protection—that lasted into the post–Civil War era.

The ascendancy of steam over sail and iron over wood had not been achieved by 1860. Steam warships carried full sail rigging, and most naval officers considered steam auxiliary to sails. The American Navy boasted no large iron-hulled ships or ironclads. Yet the implications of iron and steam were discernible. Steam completely altered maritime strategy and tactics. Ships could travel in direct lines rather than in sweeping deviations necessitated by prevailing winds and currents. Steam increased travel speed, allowed for a precise calculation of how long a voyage would take, and made in-shore maneuvering easier. However, steam also acted as a tether, binding warships to their coal bases. Previously the wind had been all-important in battle, but now its influence was negligible and speed became a more significant factor. The effects of iron construction

were equally profound. It made possible ships that were larger, stronger, and more variable in design than wooden-hulled ships, providing more stable gun platforms capable of carrying enormous weapons. Iron hulls were more durable than wood and could be divided into watertight compartments that contained damage. In terms of initial cost and economy in repairs, iron was also cheaper than wood.

Schools of War

On September 16, 1871, an elderly man committed suicide by leaping into the paddlewheel of a Hudson River steamer. Melancholy for some time, Dennis Hart Mahan became morbid when the Military Academy’s Board of Visitors recommended his mandatory retirement from the West Point faculty. For Mahan, life without the Academy was not worth living. He had arrived at West Point in 1820 as a cadet, graduated first in the class of 1824, and served as an instructor there for two years. Then Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer sent him to France to study military engineering and fortifications. He resumed teaching duties at the Academy in 1830—and left again only in death. During his more than four decades at West Point, no one was more influential than Mahan in the transition of officership from a craft into a profession.

All professions exhibit three characteristics: specialized expertise attained by prolonged education and experience; a responsibility to perform functions beneficial to society; and a sense of corporateness, a collective self-consciousness that sets professionals apart from the rest of society. A professional officer’s expertise is the management of violence, and his responsibility is to provide national security. A sense of corporateness flows from the educational process, the customs and traditions that develop within the profession, and the unique expertise and responsibility shared by group members.

No nation had a professional officer corps in 1800, but all the European powers and the United States did by 1900. The impetus for professionalization came from changes in warfare foreshadowed by the American Revolution but made more obvious by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Fundamentally, as armies became larger, they created new administrative, operational, and tactical problems and

possibilities. To deal with these, an ever-larger number of more highly skilled officers was necessary. Thus the magnitude and complexity of Napoleonic warfare gave birth to two elements essential for training such professional officer-specialists: military schools and a literature on warfare to guide officers in their studies. These developments appeared first in Prussia, crushed by Napoleon in 1806–1807. Lacking a genius like Frederick the Great to counter the French genius Napoleon, Prussian leaders established a school system—culminating in the Kriegsakademie— to forge the nation’s officers into collective competence. From the Kriegsakademie and lesser schools came studies dealing with the theory and principles of war. The most important was Karl von Clausewitz’s abstract commentary on the Napoleonic Wars, On War (1831). Although the most profound treatise on war ever written, Clausewitz’s book remained unknown to Americans until translated into English in 1873.

France emulated the Prussian schools, since military genius appeared so erratically that France could not depend on the timely arrival of another Napoleon. But the French and Prussian institutions had important differences. Prussian officers studied strategy and its relationship to policy, while the French emphasized military engineering, fortifications, and tactics. The Prussians wrestled with Clausewitz’s metaphysical discourse, while the French studied Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini’s The Art of War (1838). Clausewitz and Jomini, the two major commentators on Napoleonic warfare, tried to discover universal elements in war. They examined the same campaigns but presented different interpretations. Clausewitz understood the bloody, violent, and often chaotic style of war unleashed by the French Revolution and Napoleon. Jomini, however, found unrestrained war repellent and stressed decisive geographic points, speed, movement, and lines of supply and communication. These concerns missed the central point of Napoleonic warfare: the quest for decisive battle.

West Point followed the French example. The most obvious deficiencies during the War of 1812 had been well-trained officers and basic strategy. The two were not unrelated, since able officers could devise appropriate strategy, which required competent officers to implement. Thus postwar Republicans supported improvements at the Military Academy, which was near extinction in 1815. The revival began in July

1817, when President James Monroe ordered Captain Sylvanus Thayer, who had studied French military schools and fortifications, to become superintendent. During his superintendency (1817–1833), Thayer sought to transplant French professional standards to the banks of the Hudson, using Mahan as his conveyor. Mahan was professor of civil and military engineering and—as he insisted on adding to his title—of “the Art of War.” Textbooks were not available for either the engineering or the warfare course, so Mahan wrote his own. Known as Outpost (1847),10 his military text was a pioneering American study of war that relied on Napoleon (as interpreted by Jomini) to convey its lessons. In 1846 Mahan’s former student Henry W. Halleck had written Elements of Military Art and Science, a more original discussion of military theory than his mentor’s book, although still dependent on Jomini’s (and Mahan’s) portrayal of Napoleon. Mahan and Halleck initiated American strategic studies and consciously promoted professionalism, arguing that military science was a specialized body of knowledge understandable only through intense study, especially of military history.

Devoting only a fraction of the curriculum to military theory and history, West Point could instill only a limited professionalism in officers. A complete professional education required higher military schools. West Point would introduce cadets to military art and science, but graduate schools would give special preparation for service in the three line branches (infantry, cavalry, artillery) and in staff positions. In 1824 Calhoun established the Army’s first postgraduate school, the Artillery School of Practice at Fortress Monroe, and three years later his successor founded an Infantry School of Practice at Jefferson Barracks. But the movement was abortive. The Artillery School closed in 1835, and the Infantry School existed in name only. A permanent postgraduate system emerged only after the Civil War.

The Navy had no West Point equivalent until 1845, when Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, temporarily also serving as secretary of war, transferred Fort Severn, Annapolis, from the Army to the Navy. Bancroft then ordered midshipmen returning from sea, as well as a small instructional and administrative staff, to report there. The new school began to nurture naval professionalization and in 1850 was named the

Naval Academy. However, the Navy also lacked postgraduate schools to hone its officer corps’ expertise, responsibility, and corporateness.

Despite savage criticism of West Point (and later the Naval Academy), professionalization continued during the age of Jackson, an era known for its emphasis upon egalitarianism and amateurism. Critics deemed the Academy unnecessary and extolled the natural martial ability of citizen- soldiers—a trait personified by Jackson himself. They denounced the Academy as un-American, claiming it established a military aristocracy that monopolized the officer corps and degraded enlisted men. Critics also charged that West Point was expensive and produced more officers than the Army needed.

The clamor against West Point had little effect, as the proportion of West Point graduates in the officer corps grew from less than 15 percent in 1817 to more than 76 percent in 1860. And because of accelerating professionalization, the officer corps in 1860 was far different from what it had been a generation earlier. Between the 1st American Regiment’s formation in 1784 and the end of the War of 1812, the officer corps had been characterized by administrative instability, amateurism, high turnover (because men considered military service little more than a brief interruption in their civil careers), and internal dissension. Indeed, few armies had ever been led by such an unruly, contentious group of officers; as one general wrote in 1797, the Army was an “Augean stable of anarchy and confusion.”

But after 1815 a distinct military subculture emerged, aided by the comparative political harmony that prevailed immediately after the War of 1812. Military careers became dramatically longer as men increasingly viewed officership as a lifelong commitment; in 1797 the median career length for all officers was only ten years but by 1830 it had extended to twenty-two years. The expanded, permanent General Staff developed formal regulations and methodical procedures that brought stability to military administration, a structure later emulated by private corporations. The nascent educational system socialized aspiring officers into their craft and instilled values that united men from different regions and social classes. Professional officers believed that the Army should avoid strident political partisanship and instead be a neutral instrument of government policy. Perceiving themselves as distinct from the civilian world, they

developed a near-unanimous contempt for citizen-soldiers and collectively wallowed in self-pity, convinced that the public showed little appreciation (but much apathy) for the Army’s difficult and dangerous task of policing the Indian frontier.

After the War of 1812 military planners realized that no matter how often politicians glorified citizen-soldiers or how severely Congress cut the Army, regulars would provide the first line of land defense. They also knew that reliance on the common militia to reinforce the regular Army was chimerical. In 1808 Congressman Jabez Upham had argued that the notion of prosecuting a war with militia “will do very well on paper; it sounds well in the war speeches on this floor. To talk about every soldier being a citizen, and every citizen being a soldier, and to declaim that the militia of our country is the bulwark of our liberty is very captivating. All this will figure to advantage in history. But it will not do at all in practice.” The War of 1812 proved Upham a prophet. Aside from Baltimore and New Orleans, the militia performed badly, and after the war it lived on only in Fourth of July oratory. Presidents stopped urging, and Congress ceased debating, militia reform, and the number of states submitting militia returns to the War Department declined precipitously.

Volunteer militia units partially filled the void left by the common militia’s demise. To preserve the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company and other traditional volunteer units, a section of the Uniform Militia Act permitted states to incorporate volunteer companies. Under this clause a volunteer militia movement swept the country after 1815, providing an outlet for men who still took citizen-soldiering seriously. Despite the myth of a “militant south,” the volunteer phenomenon was particularly strong in the north, with earnest amateurs in New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut representing a substantial military force.

In his second annual message President Franklin Pierce praised “the valuable services constantly rendered by the Army and its inestimable importance as the nucleus around which the volunteer force of the nation can promptly gather in the hour of danger.” Perhaps unknowingly the president acknowledged that a crucial change in military policy had occurred since the War of 1812. Militia no longer figured in the commander in chief’s calculations, an admission no president would have made just a generation earlier. Professionalized regulars reinforced by

enthusiastic volunteers had replaced the common militia as the foundation for national defense.

Military Forces and National Development

The hallmarks of the age were territorial expansion and the westward movement. Florida, Texas, Oregon, the Mexican Cession, and the Gadsden Purchase increased the national domain, and settlement reached the Pacific. In this surge of national development, the Army served as an advance agent of a continental empire. Soldiers explored the west and built, improved, and protected transportation networks. Communities arose in the vicinity of forts where bluecoats provided security and consumed goods and services. The Army was also a law enforcement agency, especially in Indian affairs. West Point graduates were well suited for developmental activities. Under Thayer’s guidance the Academy not only produced officers with professional ideals but also became the nation’s finest scientific and engineering school, and graduates readily utilized their scientific and engineering skills for national development.

Army explorations began before the War of 1812, halted during the war, and then scoured the west after 1815. Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark led the most noteworthy prewar expedition, which departed St. Louis in 1804, crossed the continent to the Pacific, and returned in 1806. The expedition was the first direct federal aid in developing the west, setting a precedent for the future. Perhaps the most famous postwar army explorer was Lieutenant John C. Fremont, whose three long reconnaissances, between 1842 and 1845, won him the nickname “the Pathfinder.” But Fremont was only one of dozens of officers who helped unlock the region’s geographic mysteries. The Army also cooperated with civilians. Scientists, scholars, and artists normally traveled with Army expeditions, and civilian-led parties depended upon Army assistance. Although the trans-Mississippi west was unknown to Americans in 1800, sixty years later people understood its geography and knew much about its geology, flora and fauna, and native peoples. Pioneers did not blindly enter the wilderness.

Army personnel made the west increasingly accessible by assisting with internal improvements. Distinguishing the military from the commercial

significance of roads, improved rivers, canals, and railroads was impossible, and in the General Survey Act of 1824 Congress authorized the use of military engineers for transportation improvements of commercial or military importance. Under this act Army engineers worked on state and private projects as well as federally sponsored improvements. The War of 1812 had demonstrated the handicaps imposed by inadequate transportation, and Army efforts to remedy the situation began immediately after the war. Soldiers began work where the war had shown the greatest need, building, for example, “Jackson’s Military Road” from Tennessee to New Orleans. As the nation expanded, the soldier-roadbuilders followed the moving frontier. In many cases troops did the construction, but in other instances military engineers supervised civilian crews working under War Department contracts. Army engineers improved rivers and harbors and assisted in the construction of canals, such as the Chesapeake and Ohio. They worked with railroad companies, beginning in 1827, when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company asked for and received government engineering aid. By the mid- 1830s, between ten and twenty companies were receiving Army engineering assistance every year.

Army posts offered economic opportunity, often making the difference between a stagnant local economy and a prosperous one. Although soldiers spent much of their time farming, building barracks, doing maintenance work, and cutting firewood, few forts achieved self- sufficiency. They depended on the local community for building materials, corn, beef, hay, and firewood. Garrisons employed civilians as clerks, teamsters, and skilled laborers, and soldiers primed the economy by spending their pay in the immediate vicinity.

Troops made the west reasonably safe. Since colonial times forts had been built to control the fur trade, impress the Indians, deter potential foreign enemies, and protect settlers. The fur trade remained profitable and the Indians belligerent, Britain retained Canada, Spain held the southwest, and settlers wanted to keep their hair. Thus the War Department built new forts at strategic locations as the frontier swept westward. In 1817 a loose cordon of forts ran from Fort Mackinac at Lake Michigan’s eastern tip, to Fort Howard on Green Bay, to Forts Crawford, Armstrong, and Edwards on the Mississippi, and to a post at

Natchitoches in central Louisiana. By the early 1850s the military frontier ran along the Columbia River, the California coast, and the Rio Grande. Army posts dotted the west, leaving only a handful of troops east of the 1817 perimeter.

One of the Army’s most onerous duties was enforcing the trade and intercourse laws in Indian country. Beginning in 1790 Congress passed a series of acts, codified in 1834, to regulate trade with the Indians and preserve peace by eliminating Indian grievances. The laws forbade settlement on Indian lands, licensed the Indian trade, and prohibited liquor in Indian Territory. Upholding the law’s majesty made the Army unpopular with avaricious settlers, traders, and whiskey vendors. Troops were too few, lawbreakers too numerous, and the frontier too vast for bluecoats to be effective policemen. Violators could not be tried by courts-martial but had to be remanded to civil courts, which rarely convicted alleged offenders. When the Army expelled intruders and seized liquor, aggrieved parties frequently filed civil suits against commanding officers, and the prospect of court actions deterred rigorous enforcement.

The Navy played a vital role in national development by laying the foundations for America’s overseas commercial and territorial empire. Antebellum naval missions presaged a post–Civil War global commitment, especially to the Pacific. Between 1838 and 1861 maritime expeditions combining scientific objectives with commercial and diplomatic purposes explored the Amazon River and the Rio de la Plata, searched the Isthmus of Darien for an interoceanic canal site, reconnoitered the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, sailed the Arctic seas, charted Africa’s west coast, and ranged over the Pacific.

The most spectacular examples of the Navy’s commercial-diplomatic role concerned China and Japan. Although the United States remained neutral during the Opium War in China (1839–1842), a naval squadron commanded by Lawrence Kearny was posted to protect American merchants. Kearny’s astute diplomacy paved the way for the Treaty of Wanghia (1844), which opened five ports to American merchants on a most-favored-nation basis. The treaty placed American economic relations with China under diplomatic protection for the first time and heralded an American entrance into Far Eastern international politics. Equally

significant was Matthew C. Perry’s expedition to Japan in 1853–1854. Perry purchased land for a coaling station at Port Lloyd in the Bonin Islands and negotiated the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854), which opened two Japanese ports to American commerce, promised humane treatment to shipwrecked sailors, and permitted an American consul to reside at Shimoda. This treaty was Japan’s first step in a meteoric ascent from feudal isolation to great power status.

The Navy also participated in numerous punitive expeditions to protect American lives and property, suppress piracy, uphold national honor, and enforce treaties. During the antebellum era dozens of landing parties composed of sailors and marines supported American interests in Asia, in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, along both coasts of South America, and along the East African coast. Most of the expeditions were brief and bloodless, but occasionally fighting did occur. For example, the first official American armed intervention in Asia took place in February 1832 at Quallah Battoo, Sumatra, to avenge an attack on a merchant vessel. President Jackson, who feared the incident might presage other attacks on America’s growing Asian commerce, ordered John Downes, commanding the frigate Potomac, to the scene. After a cursory investigation, Downes sent sailors and marines ashore, where they destroyed the town and several forts and probably killed at least 100 Sumatrans.

The unofficial alliance between the Navy and American commercial interests produced astounding results. Between 1790 and 1860 total exports (including reexports) increased from $20 million to $334 million; this helped to transform the United States into one of the world’s foremost economic powers by the end of the nineteenth century. So stupendous was this antebellum maritime commercial expansion that one astute foreign observer, contemplating “the ardor with which the Anglo- Americans prosecute commerce,” predicted that America would “one day become the foremost maritime power of the globe.”

The armed forces played indispensable roles in national development despite acute manpower problems. Conditions in both services were often deplorable, featuring low pay, coarse and monotonous rations, primitive medical facilities, and near-sadistic discipline. Army recruits were predominantly northern laborers or immigrants, many of the latter unable

to speak or understand English. In 1840, for example, only four recruits came from the Deep South but 1,444 came from New York alone, and between 1850 and 1859 two-thirds of the enlisted men were foreign born. Economic factors were often foremost in a man’s decision to enlist. Laborers who lost their jobs during economic depressions sometimes turned to the Army in desperation, while immigrants were frequently destitute when they arrived at a seaport. Isolated in small frontier posts, many with fewer than 100 officers and men, soldiers had few opportunities for martial glory and none for becoming officers. Instead, they performed manual labor, building and maintaining forts and roads, farming, caring for livestock, and cutting wood. Since they had enlisted to be soldiers rather than laborers, they found these conditions onerous, often resorting to the bottle and to desertion to escape them. Deserting sometimes reached absurd proportions: In 1830 1,251 out of 5,231 men fled the Army!

Conditions in the Navy were no better. Like soldiers, sailors were isolated, floating on distant stations in tiny, cramped warships where the work was hard, life was boring, and an atmosphere of brutality prevailed. Common punishments included confinement in irons, informal floggings with the end of a rope, and formal lashings with a cat-o’-nine-tails that could leave the flesh “fairly hanging in strips” on a man’s back. Such conditions attracted few high-quality American citizens, and by 1860 the Navy’s foreign-born component approached 50 percent. Those Americans who did enlist, said one naval officer, came from “the most worthless class of our native population.” As in the Army, drunkenness and desertion were frequent occurrences; charges relating to these crimes composed 25 percent of all charges at Navy courts-martial between 1799 and 1861.

Reform movements tried to ameliorate conditions, especially in the Navy. Humanitarians, who often unfavorably compared sailors to slaves, focused on the abolition of flogging and the grog ration. The Army abolished flogging in 1812, though it was reinstated as punishment for desertion in 1833, and ended the daily liquor ration in 1830. The Navy clung to both. Most naval officers and their conservative congressional allies argued against “hyperphilanthropy,” maintaining that the lash held crews in line and the grog ration was healthful. Although reformers

eventually achieved success against flogging in 1850 and against liquor in 1862, overall conditions aboard ship improved only slightly.

Officers had to deal with truculent men and endured the same general milieu, but they also had a special problem. Guided only by seniority, promotion was slow. It often took twenty or thirty years for an Army officer to become a major, and fifty-year-old naval lieutenants were commonplace. Shut away in frontier posts or distant ships, scanning the news for deaths or resignations among more senior officers, men became quarrelsome and inordinately sensitive about personal honor. To escape the boredom, low pay, lack of esteem, and pettiness, many officers resigned, especially from the Army, because they could exploit their West Point education in civilian pursuits. Yet some good officers remained, proud of their profession and their role in national development.

The Army and Indian Removal

In the west, President Jackson told the Indians, “Your white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it, you and all your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be yours forever.” The president’s promise of a permanent Indian Territory was important in Indian removal, which meant trading land in the Louisiana Purchase to Indians living east of the Mississippi in exchange for their traditional homelands. After the War of 1812 the government informally pursued a removal policy until 1830, when Congress finally authorized the president to negotiate land- exchange treaties. Four years later Congress defined Indian country as land west of the Mississippi except for Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas. The government adopted removal as official policy for several reasons. Increased trans-Appalachian settlement made eastern territory more desirable, while humanitarians, motivated by an arrogant paternalism, argued that removal would save the Indians from extinction, the inevitable fate for people who resisted “superior” white civilization.

The Army had several duties under the removal policy. Initially civilian contractors organized Indian traveling parties, but they were so corrupt that in 1832 the secretary of war assigned these tasks to the Army. Army personnel helped the emigrants settle in their new lands and protected

them from the Plains Indians. Operating from forts along the border of Indian country, the bluecoats tried to preserve peace between whites and Indians. Most important, when Indians resisted removal, the Army went to war. Removal was supposedly voluntary and a few tribes went west without opposition, but most preferred to remain. To persuade them to emigrate, Jackson employed wholesale fraud and deception, and when chicanery failed, he used force. In 1836 three Creek bands went on the warpath, but more than 11,000 regulars, citizen-soldiers, and friendly Creeks quickly ended the resistance. When most Cherokees also opposed removal, force again compelled submission.

Although the Creek and Cherokee troubles were hardly wars, removal did provoke two genuine conflicts, the Black Hawk War and the Second Seminole War. The Sac and Fox tribes occupied prime Illinois real estate, and in 1827 the state petitioned the War Department for the Indians’ removal. When nothing had been done by 1831, Governor John Reynolds mobilized volunteers and forced Black Hawk, an aged Sac chief, to sign an agreement to stay west of the Mississippi. But during the winter Black Hawk received false assurances of assistance from Canada and from other tribes. In April 1832 he and his followers, including women and children, recrossed the river. The resulting war was a deadly farce, “a tissue of blunders,” as one colonel called it. Learning that he would receive no British or Indian support, Black Hawk tried to surrender three times, but on each occasion the whites rejected the peace overture. The Black Hawk War ended in early August at the so-called “Battle of Bad Axe,” where the whites slaughtered men, women, and children.

Seminole removal was more difficult. The United States first tangled with the Seminoles in 1817–1818 when Jackson, under War Department orders, invaded Florida. The motives behind the invasion were complex. Seminoles were raiding the Georgia frontier and escaping to safety under the Spanish flag, and Spanish authorities appeared powerless to restrain them. Florida was also a sanctuary for escaped slaves, who participated in the Indian forays. The hope of extending United States territory and removing a proximate foreign influence reinforced the desire to eliminate the sanctuary and recapture the slaves. With typical zeal, Jackson destroyed Indian villages, captured Spanish towns, and deposed the Spanish governor. Although Jackson eventually withdrew from Florida,

Spain realized it would ultimately lose the territory and decided to negotiate. The Adams-Onis Treaty, ratified in 1821, ceded Florida to the United States. The Seminoles also negotiated, signing a treaty in 1823 calling for them to concentrate on a reservation in central Florida. Few had done so by the early 1830s, and Jackson’s administration negotiated new treaties, which it claimed obligated the Seminoles to emigrate. The Indians maintained the treaties were invalid.

When the Second Seminole War began in December 1835, defeating the Seminoles seemed relatively easy. Fewer than 5,000 Indians lived in Florida, and the 1,200 warriors often fought with bows and arrows. Several factors made the task difficult, and the war became the Army’s longest, most costly Indian conflict. The terrain and climate proved formidable, and the black fugitives stiffened Seminole resistance. Removal for the Indians meant a new western home, but blacks feared they would be returned to slavery. The Seminoles and their black allies were adept guerrillas. A frustrated War Department even authorized the use of bloodhounds to track the elusive Indians, prompting an antiwar congressman to ask for a report on the “natural, political, and martial history of bloodhounds, showing the peculiar fitness of that class of warriors to be associates of the gallant army of the United States.”

Eight commanders tried to remove the Seminoles. Although their cumulative effect was to sap Seminole strength, by the time the eighth commander, Colonel William J. Worth, took charge in April 1841 the war seemed interminable. Determined to end the conflict, Worth conducted the war ruthlessly. With more than 5,000 regulars under his command, he launched the war’s first summer campaign, preventing the Seminoles from raising and harvesting their crops. The regulars suffered a high incidence of disease, but striking at the Indians’ villages and means of subsistence reduced the Seminole population to about 250 by the next spring. President John Tyler sent Congress a special message saying “further pursuit of these miserable beings by a large military force seems to be as injudicious as it is unavailing.” He authorized Worth to proclaim the war ended, which the colonel did in August 1842. The original goal of complete removal had not been achieved despite great manpower and monetary costs. Approximately 10,000 regulars and 30,000 citizen- soldiers served, at a cost of more than 1,500 deaths and $20 million. Yet

enough Seminoles remained to wage a comparatively minor Third Seminole War during the 1850s.

By the mid-1840s Indian removal was nearly completed. In 1820 an estimated 125,000 Indians were living east of the Mississippi; twenty-five years later fewer than 30,000 remained. But removal of the eastern Indians did not end Indian-white conflicts. After the Mexican War white settlement reached the Great Plains and leaped across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, igniting new confrontations. Between 1850 and 1861 the Army clashed with the Sioux, Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Comanches on the Plains; with the Apaches, Navajos, and Utes in the deserts and mountains of the southwest; and with the Yakimas, Rogues, Walla Wallas, and other small tribes in the Pacific northwest. Despite Jackson’s promise, no Indian territory was permanent. Most whites believed they needed the entire west in order to fulfill the nation’s Manifest Destiny.

The Mexican War, 1846–1848

The “re-occupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period,” read the 1844 Democratic Party platform, “are great American measures.” This shrewdly contrived plank appealed to both southern and northern expansionists and averted charges of imperialism by implying that the United States had once occupied Oregon and owned Texas, neither of which was true. Despite the political opportunism and historical fabrication, the plank captured the spirit of Manifest Destiny sweeping the nation and expressed the avid expansionism of the Democratic presidential candidate, James K. Polk. Polk interpreted his narrow election victory as a mandate to acquire Oregon and Texas, as well as California and New Mexico. Pursuit of these territorial ambitions almost provoked a two-front war. Britain, whose claim to Oregon was as good as America’s, resented Polk’s assertion that the United States had a “clear and unquestionable” right to all Oregon. It seemed that a third Anglo-American war might explode over Oregon, but a powerful England could accept a compromise without loss of dignity and, despite some vociferous Democratic sentiment for all Oregon, so

could Polk. In June 1846 the two nations split Oregon by extending the 49th Parallel to the Pacific.

The settlement with England was fortunate because the United States had gone to war with Mexico the previous month. Many issues soured United States-Mexican relations, but the war began over Texas, which had gained independence in a brief but bitter war in 1835–1836. The United States and other nations recognized the new country, but Mexico refused to accept the results of the Texas revolution and warned the United States that it would consider annexation an act of war. When the United States annexed Texas in 1845, Mexico broke diplomatic relations and threatened reprisals against Texas. A final diplomatic effort by Polk delayed hostilities, but war was inevitable after annexation. Mexico believed it could not accept territorial dismemberment and maintain national honor. Determined to have Texas and the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and California, Polk was willing to fight for them.

The question of Texas’s southern boundary aggravated the annexation issue. Texas claimed the Rio Grande, but Mexico insisted the Nueces River was the border. Accepting the Texans’ interpretation, Polk ordered Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to assume a position “on or near” the Rio Grande. Taylor stopped at Corpus Christi at the mouth of the Nueces, which was neither on nor very near the Rio Grande, but Polk acquiesced. However, on January 12, 1846, Polk learned his special envoy had failed to persuade Mexico to accept the Rio Grande boundary and to sell New Mexico and California. The next day he ordered Taylor to the Rio Grande. By late March the general’s Army of Occupation had concentrated opposite Matamoros. From Polk’s perspective Taylor had assumed a forward defensive position; the Mexicans considered Taylor’s advance an invasion.

In late April the Mexican commander, Major General Mariano Arista, sent his cavalry across the Rio Grande, and some of his horsemen ambushed two dragoon squadrons. Unbeknownst to either Arista or Taylor, Mexico’s president had already declared a “defensive war,” and even before Polk learned of the incident, he had also decided on war. On May 9 Polk told his cabinet that he wanted to send Congress a war message. Taylor’s report of the ambush arrived that evening, and with unanimous cabinet approval Polk delivered his message on May 11.

Mexico, he said, “has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil.” War, Polk insisted, “exists by the act of Mexico herself.” Although these assertions were half-truths, the United States declared war on May 13.

Two major battles had already occurred. On the last day of April Arista’s army crossed the Rio Grande, and on May 8 it confronted Taylor at Palo Alto. Taylor told his men “that their main dependence must be in the bayonet,” but American artillery bore the brunt of the battle and forced the Mexicans to withdraw. Just south of Palo Alto the open prairie gave way to dense chaparral sliced by ancient river beds known as resacas. At Resaca de la Palma, Arista’s army assumed a strong defensive position. The tangled growth made it difficult for American artillery to deploy, and the resaca formed a natural breastwork. The battle was a melee as the chaparral shattered unit cohesion. The Mexicans again lost and were sent fleeing across the Rio Grande. In two battles Taylor’s smaller army had inflicted 800 casualties and sustained fewer than 200.

The battles stunned Mexico, which believed it would win the war. Many leading Mexicans judged the United States politically and militarily weak. Slavery and the tariff were such divisive issues that some Mexicans thought that northern states would not aid the south in a war against Mexico. Two fifth-column elements would make a war difficult for the gringos: Slaves would rebel, and Indians would seek revenge for removal. The U.S. regular Army was small, and Mexican officials considered citizen-soldiers worthless. Even if Americans mounted an offensive, logistical support would be impossible across Mexico’s arid expanses. An amphibious invasion would confront tempestuous waters, bad roads leading inland, and Mexico’s staunch lowland ally, yellow fever. By contrast, Mexico seemed powerful. European observers considered its armed forces superb, an opinion shared by most Mexicans. Privateers would swarm to sea, feasting upon American commerce. Mexico also believed it would receive European aid, especially from England, since an Anglo-American war over Oregon seemed imminent. “We have more than enough strength to make war,” exhorted the editors of La Vox del Pueblo. “Let us make it, then, and victory will perch upon our banners.”

The only accurate aspect of Mexico’s assessment was its belief that the war would divide American society. Antiwar movements—Loyalists

during the Revolution, Republicans in the Quasi-War, and Federalists in 1812—had become traditional, and the Mexican War was no exception. Four major groups criticized the conflict. Abolitionists believed the war was a southern plot to extend slavery. Pacifists argued that war violated every Christian principle and that “false and pernicious principles,” such as “our country, right or wrong,” had subverted the people’s moral character. Whig politicians believed Polk had provoked Mexico in order to launch an imperialistic invasion. A small group of “Conscience” Whigs voted against military appropriations, but the larger number of “Cotton” Whigs, though critical of the war, affirmed their loyalty by praising American soldiers, eulogizing their commanders, and voting for the men and money Polk requested. By denouncing “Mr. Polk’s War” while loyally supporting it, the Whig Party avoided political suicide. Democratic followers of expresident Martin Van Buren and of John C. Calhoun, now a South Carolina senator, joined their Whig opponents in castigating the war. Van Burenites disliked Polk and opposed the expansion of slavery. Calhoun hoped his stand would lead to the presidency in 1848 but feared the impact of slavery’s expansion on the nation’s political stability. He also thought the seemingly unrestrained war power Polk exercised was unconstitutional, presaging a dangerous consolidation of power in the executive branch.

The antiwar movement had little impact. Diverse critics never united, and no civil rights issue allowed militant dissenters to become martyrs. Since military service was voluntary and government loans rather than direct federal taxes financed the war, activists could not resist a draft or refuse to pay taxes. Nor could they decry government censorship: Polk never suppressed critics despite their vicious attacks on him. However, the president questioned his critics’ loyalty. He referred to the Whigs as “Federalists” and claimed the antiwar agitation encouraged the enemy, thus protracting the war.

Although Polk had no military experience, he acted as not only commander in chief but also as coordinator in chief for the war effort. In the country’s first example of prewar strategic planning, after consulting with his cabinet Polk had contingency war plans drafted more than six months before Arista’s cavalry attacked Taylor’s dragoons north of the Rio Grande. Once the war began he exercised tight control over every aspect

of it, setting precedents that subsequent presidents built upon to make the White House, not the Capitol, the center of wartime authority. No problem perplexed Polk as much as the senior Army commanders, Scott and Taylor, who were as different as their nicknames implied. “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor rarely wore a uniform and had limited strategic and tactical abilities. His interest in military intelligence and planning for campaigns was so deficient that Scott assigned Captain William W. S. Bliss as his chief staff officer. Considered the Army’s brightest intellect, “Perfect” Bliss would compensate for Taylor’s own conception of warfare, which rarely went beyond marching, firing, and charging. Taylor’s strength was his battlefield imperturbability. Sitting atop Old Whitey, one leg crossed over the pommel and chewing on a straw, he never panicked. “Old Fuss and Feathers” Scott, who became the commanding general in 1841, loved fancy uniforms and had considerable strategic and tactical abilities. Although not a West Pointer, he had a keen interest in military affairs, read widely on the subject, and wrote tactical manuals. A meticulous planner, he insisted upon a thorough military reconnaissance before maneuvering or fighting.

Taylor and Scott were both Whigs with presidential ambitions. Since Polk had no desire to win the war with a Whig general who might capitalize on his military reputation to become president, he tried to circumvent them. He proposed creating the position of lieutenant general, last held by Washington, and intended to nominate an ardent Democrat for the post. But Congress refused to establish the lieutenant generalcy, and so Polk waged war with commanding officers whom he distrusted. The generals feared a conspiracy to deprive them of success and felt, as Scott put it, doubly endangered by “a fire upon my rear, from Washington, and the fire, in front, from the Mexicans.”

Polk oversaw many details of manpower mobilization. Three options were available, one being to call out the common militia. When the war began, Taylor, with War Department authorization, called out 1,390 three- month militia; and General Edmund P. Gaines, without authority, mobilized 11,211 more for six months. Also, on May 13, 1846, Congress extended the militia’s term of service from three to six months and authorized the president to call militiamen into service, although no one believed the nation could rely on common militia. Even a six-month term was too brief for a distant conflict, and the constitutional question about foreign service remained. Most of the militiamen mobilized by Taylor and Gaines were demobilized before they did any fighting.

Another possibility was to increase the regular Army. In the War of 1812 Congress created many new regiments, forming an impressive paper army. However, the understrength units composed of raw men and officers usually lacked proficiency. The government avoided repeating this mistake because after the Seminole War the Army had been reduced to 8,600 men along expansible lines, eliminating privates but not regiments. In May 1846 Congress authorized Polk to increase the number of privates, doubling the Army’s authorized strength. New recruits, placed among veteran soldiers and under experienced officers, soon marched and fought like veterans themselves. Only in February 1847 did Congress vote for ten additional regiments.

The final option was to mobilize the volunteer militia, and on May 13, 1846, Congress called for 50,000 volunteers to serve for twelve months or the duration of the war at the president’s discretion. The War Department understood that it was to enlist volunteer militia units under the call for

50,000 volunteers. The president erred when he delegated to the states, or even to the units, the decision of whether the newly raised troops would serve for a year or the duration; states and volunteer units almost unanimously chose the former. The mass infusion of volunteers led to traditional problems associated with citizen-soldiers. Ill-disciplined, they murdered, robbed, rioted, and raped with such abandon that Mexicans considered them “Vandals vomited from Hell.” Regulars and volunteers viewed each other with contempt. A regular described Louisiana volunteers as “lawless drunken rabble” who emulated “each other in making beasts of themselves.” In turn, a volunteer complained that even if he captured the entire enemy army single-handedly, “it would not be deemed a deed worthy of remark, being done as it would be, by a man not a graduate of West Point.” Volunteer regiments drained recruits from the regulars. Finally, volunteers were expensive since, invariably, land and monetary bounties had to be offered in order to entice them to enlist.

It became harder to fill the ranks as the war progressed. Antiwar criticism dissuaded some potential recruits, but increased knowledge of conditions in Mexico did more to dampen enthusiasm. Said one young man:

No sir-ee! As long as I can work, beg, or go to the poor house, I won’t go to Mexico, to be lodged on the damp ground, half starved, half roasted, bitten by mosquetoes and centipedes, stung by scorpions and tarantulas—marched, drilled, and flogged, and then stuck up to be shot at, for eight dollars a month and putrid rations.

Compensating for the lack of quantity was the troops’ fighting quality, which resulted primarily from competent officers, especially West Pointers. Academy graduates did not dominate the regular Army high command but served brilliantly in the junior ranks as skillful troop instructors, combat leaders, and military engineers. Professionally educated officers also served with the volunteers. Many West Point graduates who had resigned received volunteer commissions, as did men who had attended the Academy but never graduated. Mexican War volunteers occasionally performed badly, but normally they fought as tenaciously as regulars, demonstrating anew what Scott had proved at

Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane: that good leaders could quickly transform ordinary citizens into excellent soldiers.

No matter how brave and well led, troops need logistical support to fight effectively. Three staff departments shared logistics responsibility. The Ordnance Department provided weapons, the Subsistence Department rations, and the Quartermaster Department clothing, equipment, and transportation. No one (except staff officers) thought the supply bureaus worked efficiently. Polk believed staff officers had become too accustomed to easy living, displayed little energy but great extravagance, and were “Federalists.” He held numerous conferences with staff officers, maintaining that he and Secretary of War William L. Marcy had to “look after them, even in the performance of the ordinary routine details in their offices.” Taylor and Scott agreed with Polk about the staff’s incompetence. Both generals complained about inadequate logistical support, as did nearly every private. Suppliers joined in the critical chorus because staff officers sliced profit margins too thin.

Most of the complainants hindered rather than helped the supply bureaus. Polk, who wanted to conquer an enormous empire at small cost, followed a parsimonious policy that crippled procurement and transportation. Taylor was usually tardy in submitting requisitions, and Scott demanded more of everything no matter how much he already had. Wastefulness characterized the troops, and contractors engaged in unscrupulous price gouging, made doubly criminal by the shoddy goods they often supplied. In truth, logistical support excelled that of any previous war. Steamships and railroads helped make the logistical effort reasonably successful. Wherever possible the railroads moved supplies and troops to ports, and steamboats ferried them to Mexico. Although room for improvement existed, the bureaus performed creditably considering the vast distances and difficult geographic and climatic conditions.

Initial strategy, which Polk discussed with his cabinet and Scott, was obvious: blockade Mexico’s east coast and seize the provinces west and south of Texas, including Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, New Mexico, and California. Economic pressure and conquest, Polk hoped, would force Mexico to yield to his territorial demands. The Home Squadron, commanded by David Conner and his successor, Matthew C.

Perry, conducted the blockade. From a strictly military viewpoint blockade duty was not dangerous, since the United States enjoyed unchallenged naval superiority. Not a single enemy warship entered the Gulf, and the privateering threat never materialized. Yet the duty was not easy. Men and ships were in short supply, scurvy struck many sailors, vicious northerly gales appeared between October and April, and yellow fever raged from April to October. Boredom reigned most of the time, except during infrequent moments when lookouts spotted a strange sail or when naval forces attacked enemy ports in an effort to make the blockade more effective. The Navy unsuccessfully assaulted Alvarado twice but captured Frontera and Tampico.

Taylor’s army invaded Nuevo Leon after occupying Matamoros without a fight. Old Rough and Ready’s objective was the capital of Monterrey, but he advanced slowly, not arriving there until September 19. Monterrey stood on high ground on the north bank of the Rio Santa Catarina, which effectively guarded its rear. To the west were two fortified hills. The citadel, an uncompleted cathedral surrounded by bastioned walls, protected the city from the north, and two smaller fortifications anchored the defenses on the east. The stone houses were loopholed, the streets barricaded, and General Pedro de Ampudia, who had replaced Arista, had 7,500 men and forty-two artillery pieces to defend the city.

Monterrey’s defenses would have given pause to a less resolute commander than Taylor, who had only 6,200 men and lacked proper siege guns. But Taylor, displaying serene confidence, ordered a daring double envelopment. He sent Colonel William J. Worth’s division around the city to the west; the army’s other two divisions would batter into Monterrey from the east. Aside from the problem of coordinating the two wings, Taylor’s plan invited defeat in detail. But the Mexican commander failed to grasp the opportunity, and between September 21 and 24 Taylor’s forces fought their way into the city. Ampudia and Taylor then signed an eight-week armistice, allowing the Mexican army to withdraw intact and giving the Americans Monterrey without further bloodshed.

When Polk learned of the armistice, he was irate. Had Taylor persevered, captured Ampudia’s army, and pushed farther into the country, “it would have probably ended the war with Mexico.” He obviously did not understand Taylor’s critical situation. The enemy army

could not be captured without vicious street fighting and heavy casualties. Taylor’s army had already suffered more than 500 casualties and was tired and demoralized, barely capable of further combat. Ammunition was in short supply, and Taylor had no plans for restocking. In any event, convinced of Taylor’s ineptitude, Polk ordered the armistice abrogated. Old Rough and Ready wondered whether Polk was trying to discredit him for political reasons, but he followed the order and marched to Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila. Taylor had no desire to advance farther, since San Luis Potosí, the next potential target, was 300 miles to the south across rugged terrain.

In both New Mexico and California the pattern was one of conquest, revolt, and reconquest. Commanding the Army of the West, Stephen W. Kearny departed Fort Leavenworth in June, marched 850 miles in less than two months, and took Santa Fe without firing a shot. Kearny then continued westward with 300 men to aid in California’s conquest. En route he met Kit Carson, who reported that California was already in American hands. The conquest involved American settlers engaged in the Bear Flag Revolt, the navy’s Pacific Squadron, and John C. Fremont’s “exploring” party of sixty-two heavily armed men. Kearny sent most of his command back to Santa Fe and marched westward with a mere hundred men. Unbeknownst to Carson or Kearny, Californians loyal to Mexico revolted against the American conquerors in late September, as did loyal New Mexicans in mid-December. Kearny’s weary troopers arrived in California just in time to help Fremont and the Pacific Squadron quell the rebellion in late December and early January. Colonel Sterling Price, Kearny’s successor at Santa Fe, defeated the New Mexicans at Taos in early February 1847, ending their uprising. In neither province was American authority challenged again.

Meanwhile, two columns advanced on Chihuahua, the capital of Chihuahua Province. Commanding three volunteer regiments and a few regulars, John E. Wool departed San Antonio in late September, and Alexander W Doniphan’s 850-man 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers left Valverde, New Mexico, in mid-December. Wool occupied Monclova, where he received reports that Chihuahua’s garrison had fled. Since he believed it made little sense to continue toward Chihuahua, Wool asked for and received permission to advance farther south. When Wool’s men

eventually joined Old Rough and Ready in late December 1846, they had marched 900 miles and not fired a shot. Doniphan’s horsemen traveled more than twice as far and won two battles: El Brazito, just north of El Paso; and Rio Sacramento, fifteen miles from Chihuahua. Upon entering the city they found themselves isolated in a hostile community. Doniphan wrote Wool asking for instructions and received orders to join the main army. The Missourians reached Taylor in mid-May; thus they had missed the Battle of Buena Vista. Wool’s men had not been so lucky.

Buena Vista resulted from Polk’s new strategic approach. During the summer and fall of 1846 he received good news from the war zones. The blockade grew tighter, Taylor was deep into enemy territory, and initially New Mexico and California easily succumbed. Yet Mexico rebuffed peace initiatives. Successful on the battlefield, the initial strategy failed because it did not bring Mexico to terms. Polk and his advisers rethought their strategy and in October 1846 decided to capture Veracruz and send an expedition from there to Mexico City.

Designed to force Mexico to the negotiating table, the new strategy raised two difficult questions: Who should command the expedition, and where could the troops be found? The invasion of the enemy heartland would make the commander a war hero and a presidential prospect. Polk considered five men for the position. Congress prevented Democratic Senator Thomas H. Benton from being named the commander when it refused to establish the rank of lieutenant general. Major Generals Robert Patterson and William O. Butler were Democrats and thus potentially excellent choices; but Patterson was ineligible for the presidency because of foreign birth, and Polk did not know Butler very well. Taylor was a winning general, but the cabinet agreed with Polk “that he was unfit for the chief command, that he had not mind enough for the station, that he was a bitter political partisan and had no sympathies with the administration.” By process of elimination the command devolved on Scott, who at least would keep all the glory from Taylor.

Scott was an excellent choice. Since the war began he had argued that only a repetition of Cortes’s march to the Valley of Mexico would end the war. When the administration first contemplated the expedition, Scott wrote the planning papers detailing the military requirements and establishing the operation’s feasibility. He estimated that 4,000 regulars

and 10,000 volunteers would be needed and insisted that the Veracruz assault had to take place before the yellow fever season began. Since little time remained to raise new regiments, Scott took more than half Taylor’s men, including almost all his regulars, and prudently ordered Old Rough and Ready to remain on the defensive. The expedition was a double blow to Taylor. Denied the opportunity to command it, he also lost most of his army. Polk and Scott, he fumed, had conspired to cut short his military career and deprive him of the 1848 Whig nomination.

A copy of Scott’s order listing the troops withdrawn from Taylor fell into enemy hands. Santa Anna, the new Mexican commander, decided to attack the weakened army at Saltillo; he massed an army at San Luis Potosí and trekked across the desert wastelands. Taylor did not believe Santa Anna would attempt such an arduous march, and to demonstrate his confidence he advanced to Agua Nueva, disobeying Scott’s defensive orders. By February 20 Santa Anna’s 15,000-man army reached Encarnacion, thirty-five miles from Taylor’s army. Major Ben McCulloch of the Texas Rangers infiltrated the Mexican encampment, accurately estimated enemy numbers, and hastened to Taylor with the bad news. Taylor immediately retreated from Agua Nueva to a strong defensive site just south of Buena Vista. He had only 4,500 men, almost 90 percent of them volunteers who had never been in battle.

On February 22 Santa Anna sent Taylor a message inviting him to surrender, since he could “not in any human probability avoid suffering a rout, and being cut to pieces.” When Taylor declined, the Mexicans attacked late in the afternoon and some inconclusive skirmishing resulted. Santa Anna renewed the attack early the next morning, and by nine o’clock the American situation was critical. Taylor assumed a conspicuous position near the center of the battlefield, while Bliss reconnoitered the deteriorating American lines. The battle, Bliss reported, was lost. “I know it,” replied Taylor, “but the volunteers don’t know it. Let them alone, we’ll see what they do.” What they did was fight like veteran regulars. Everywhere the Mexicans outflanked or staved in the defenses, but the volunteers repeatedly rallied, oftentimes behind regular artillery batteries that heroically supported the citizen-soldiers throughout the day. By nightfall Taylor’s army had not been routed, but it had been cut to pieces. About 14 percent of his men were dead, wounded, or missing. Although

Mexican losses had been severe and Santa Anna retreated, Old Rough and Ready took little joy in the victory. “The great loss on both sides,” he wrote, “has deprived me of everything like pleasure.”

The day before Buena Vista began, Old Fuss and Feathers arrived at Lobos Island, staging area for the Veracruz assault. By early March enough troops, transports, and naval vessels had reached the island, and the expedition commenced. On March 9 Scott made the first major amphibious landing in American history, the troops going ashore in surfboats specially requested by Scott. The Mexicans did not contest the landing, and 10,000 troops came ashore without loss of life. In less than a week siege lines spanned the city’s landward side, while the Home Squadron maintained a sea blockade. Isolated and defended by only 4,500 men, Veracruz capitulated on March 29. The surrender was not a day too soon, as Scott expected the dreaded vomito (yellow fever) to strike soon. He had the bulk of his men heading inland on the national highway during early April.

Fifty miles from the coast the highway ran through a rocky defile at Cerro Gordo. Here Santa Anna, who had traveled a thousand miles and raised a new army since Buena Vista, established defenses manned by 12,000 soldiers. If he stopped the advance, the Yankees would have to remain in the vomito-ridden lowlands. For the Americans to attack the fortifications head-on would be bloody business. Captain Robert E. Lee found a path skirting the Mexican left flank, and on April 18 the Americans attacked it. After three hours of tough fighting the Mexicans fled, and the next day the Americans entered picturesque Jalapa above the yellow fever zone.

At Jalapa the enlistment of 3,700 twelve-month volunteers expired. Apparently without a qualm about leaving a depleted army deep inside enemy territory, they refused to reenlist and marched back to the transports at Veracruz. Scott now had only 7,100 men left, but he continued to Puebla, where he paused to await reinforcements. By early August he had 10,700 effectives, and the advance toward Mexico City began. Resolving “to render my little army a self-sustaining machine,” Scott abandoned his supply and communication lines, a sensible though risky solution to a difficult situation. Guerrillas infested the region between Veracruz and Puebla, and Scott did not have spare manpower to

guard the road. Following the war from afar, the Duke of Wellington said that “Scott is lost. . . . He can’t take the city, and he can’t fall back upon his base.”

The indefatigable Santa Anna raised 30,000 men to defend the capital and built strong fortifications facing eastward, assuming Scott would attack along the road from Puebla. Scott reconnoitered the city’s various approaches and, as at Cerro Gordo, executed a flanking maneuver that promised success without an all-out battle. He avoided Santa Anna’s prepared defenses by assaulting Mexico City from the south. The Mexican commander rushed troops into new positions, resulting in the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco. The Mexicans lost 10,000 men; Scott’s casualties were a tenth that many.

Having twice battered the enemy, Scott agreed to an armistice, believing Mexico would negotiate a favorable peace rather than allow the invaders into the capital. But Santa Anna used the cessation of hostilities to revitalize his shattered army. Realizing he had been duped, Scott renewed his offensive in September, defeating the Mexicans at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. Molino del Rey was particularly costly for Scott, who had received reports that it contained a cannon foundry. Contrary to his normal flanking tactics, he ordered a headlong assault by Worth’s division. Two hours and 781 casualties later, Worth captured Molino del Rey only to learn that Scott’s intelligence about a cannon foundry was erroneous. Chapultepec fell after an artillery bombardment on September 12 and a well-planned hour-long attack on the 13th. Seeing the American flag flying over Chapultepec, Santa Anna exclaimed that “if we were to plant our batteries in Hell the damned Yankees would take them from us.” Meanwhile, American troops rushed down two narrow causeways toward Mexico City and captured the Belen and San Cosme Garitas (gates), thereby gaining access to the city. The next day Scott’s army, numbering fewer than 7,000 effectives, occupied the Mexican capital.

When Wellington learned of Scott’s victory, he declared that the American commander was “the greatest living soldier” and urged young English officers to study the Veracruz–Mexico City campaign, which he considered “unsurpassed in military annals.” Old Fuss and Feathers deserved the praise, having brilliantly conducted an audacious campaign. Yet, like Taylor’s victories, Scott’s expedition did not result in immediate

peace. Mexican national pride made it difficult to accept defeat, and political turmoil frustrated the government’s decision-making process. The growing American antiwar movement also indicated that continued resistance might secure more favorable terms. Intense guerrilla warfare, the traditional recourse for a nation with limited conventional military power, involved the occupation forces in constant patrolling and numerous clashes.

With its armies defeated in every battle, its northern provinces conquered, and its capital occupied, Mexico’s refusal to negotiate frustrated Polk and his supporters. As the war’s toll in blood and treasure had increased, Polk believed the United States should take as an indemnity more territory than he originally demanded. Some Democrats even demanded “All Mexico.” In April 1847 Polk had dispatched the State Department’s chief clerk, Nicholas E Trist, to accompany Scott’s army with an offer to the Mexican government to negotiate. Trist’s instructions embodied Polk’s original territorial goals. By October 1847 the president not only wanted more land but also believed Trist had performed badly and, even worse, had become Scott’s political ally. Polk recalled Trist, but the diplomat refused to obey. On February 2, 1848, Trist signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which he negotiated on the basis of his original instructions. Under the treaty’s provisions the United States would pay Mexico $15 million and assume the damage claims of its own citizens against Mexico totaling $3.25 million. In return Mexico would recognize the Rio Grande boundary and cede New Mexico and California.

Few people liked the treaty. Polk was appalled that Trist had ignored his recall, avid expansionists believed the United States would gain too little territory, and war opponents thought the country had taken too much land. Yet on March 10 the Senate ratified the treaty. “The desire for peace, and not the approbation of its terms,” wrote Calhoun, “induces the Senate to yield its consent.” Direct war costs amounted to $58 million, plus the money paid under the treaty’s terms. The human price was also high: American deaths were approximately 14,700. As usual, disease and accidents, not bullets and bayonets, were the big killers: Only 1,733 men were killed in action or died of wounds.

Like most wars, the conflict with Mexico yielded glaring ironies. Polk, the staunch Democratic partisan, waged war both militarily and politically. In military terms he was spectacularly successful against Mexico, but he lost the political battle against popular Whig generals. In 1848 the Whigs nominated for the presidency Old Rough and Ready, who led them to victory. More fundamentally, the vast territorial expansion of America’s western empire precipitated the Civil War. Although historians do not agree on all the war’s fundamental causes, few deny that the immediate question of whether the newly acquired land would be slave or free played a significant role in shattering the nation. Manifest Destiny had made disunity manifest.