Free 1812: The Navy's War by George Daughan Page B

lived in the same Washington boardinghouse—known as the “war mess”—with Cheves, Lowndes, Calhoun, and Grundy. On occasion, Secretary of State Monroe was a dinner guest.
    Madison never acknowledged publicly that his aim was to annex Canada. The president insisted the invasion was for the purpose of obtaining a bargaining tool, not for conquest. On June 13, 1812, Monroe explained, “In case of war it might be necessary to invade Canada; not as an object of the war, but as a means to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.” Few took him seriously. He admitted himself that it would be “difficult to relinquish territory which had been conquered.”
    Absorbing Canada was an old ambition of American patriots, going back to the earliest days of the Revolution. Once the United States had overrun Canada, it was inconceivable that Madison would give it back. The political backlash along the frontier would be fearsome. The president’s strongest allies in the South and the West would have strenuously objected.
    Southerners, including the president, had more on their minds than just Canada. On June 26, only days after Congress declared war, the House, with Madison’s approval, passed a resolution allowing the president to occupy East Florida and the rest of West Florida. Madison had already occupied the portion of West Florida between the Mississippi and Pearl Rivers in 1810. He wanted to prevent the British from obtaining East Florida from their dependent ally Spain and also to realize an old dream of the South. On July 3, however, the Senate unexpectedly killed the measure by a vote of 16 to 14. Federalists voted against it as a bloc, and they were joined by Republicans Bradley of Vermont, Howell of Rhode Island, Leib of Pennsylvania, Giles of Virginia, and Samuel Smith of Maryland.
     
     
    ALTHOUGH CANADA AND Napoleon were the most important elements of Madison’s grand strategy, he thought privateers and letters of marque would give America a potent sea force. He expected dozens and then hundreds of privateers to put out from American ports, as they had during the Revolution. And he foresaw American merchantmen routinely applying for letters of marque, arming themselves, and looking to increase profits by capturing whatever unlucky British merchantman crossed their paths.
    Madison expected little or nothing from the official navy. To be sure, trying to divine how the United States could fight the mighty British fleet was next to impossible. After years of neglect under two Republican administrations, America’s navy—in a prosperous, seafaring country of nearly eight million—consisted of only twenty men-of-war, seven of which—the Chesapeake , Constellation , New York , Adams , Essex , John Adams , and Boston (all frigates and all built prior to Jefferson taking office in 1801)—were laid up for repairs. Some thought the Boston and the New York were so rotten they were beyond fixing. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, had 1,000 warships—at least 600 of which were continually at sea, while the rest were undergoing repairs or in various stages of completion.
    Of course, most of Britain’s fleet was occupied blockading Napoleonic Europe and servicing distant parts of the empire. The Admiralty’s North American Station at Halifax had only one 64-gun ship-of-the-line, five frigates of between 32 and 38 guns, eleven sloops of war between 16 and 20 guns, and six smaller armed schooners and brigs. Even so, the Halifax squadron was stronger than anything the American navy could assemble. And Halifax was augmented by a small force at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and larger fleets at Antigua in the Leeward Islands and at Port Royal, Jamaica.
    The huge disparity of forces had long since led Madison to conclude the American fleet would be either blockaded, captured, or destroyed early in the war and be of no real help in securing victory. He could not say so publicly, of course, not even to his intimates—except perhaps