Hammer to Ladder

Every year a profound uneasiness attends the anniversary of September 11th. Those of us who lived through that day, and remember the county’s change in mood thereafter, cannot help but to dread this date.

Yet in the American consciousness, the date of September 11th used to be very fondly remembered. Far from a day of mourning as it is now, the country used to regard 9/11 as an auspicious day based on events which transpired on the opposite end of New York State.

The event in question was a fateful battle which unfolded during the War of 1812. Popular memory of that distant conflict is hazy in the USA. To the extent that Americans know anything about that war, they may have heard about how the British torched the White House, bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, and maybe about General Andrew Jackson’s Creole army which successfully defended New Orleans. Into the memory hole has drifted recollection of a British invasion which was thwarted in Plattsburgh, along the banks of Lake Champlain.

Background

The conflict’s narrative is rather convoluted. The main fact to bear in mind about the War of 1812 is that it occurred on the tail end of the United Kingdom’s long struggle with France under Napoleon Bonaparte. Both France and the UK attempted to restrict trade to Europe, which meant that neutral Americans could make a swift buck selling to both belligerents. The UK thus adopted a policy to require any ship trading with Europe to stop first in London and pay a tax, lest it be forfeit to seizure by the Royal Navy.

Though in flagrant contravention of international law, the Royal Navy thus seized American mercantile ships even on the high seas. The Royal Navy even seized mariners found on American vessels, believing some to be deserters from its Navy. Such mariners at gunpoint would then be forced to work in the Royal Navy. The British called the practice “impressment” to euphemize this kidnapping, and the UK even resorted to impressing its own civilians in Britain by way of roving “press gangs.” It is estimated that through these practices, the British enslaved around 6,000 Americans sailors. On June 22nd, 1807, HMS Leopard broadsided USS Chesapeake in Lynnhaven Bay off Virginia’s coast to detain it and enslave four of its sailors. By all laws then and now, one navy’s deliberate attack against another constitutes an outright act of war.

When Congress eventually declared war on June 17th, 1812, strategically its best move was an invasion of Canada since a British response to the declaration was bound to be mobilized from this neighbor. Three incursions into Canada were planned for the year of 1812, but the Canadians thwarted all of them.

The U.S. Army had a little more luck the following year. On April 27th, 1813, Brigadier General Zebulon Pike’s expedition of 1,700 regulars ferried across Lake Ontario (and it is Lake Ontario, folks!) to conduct a raid on Canada’s nascent capital of York (presently Toronto). The raid accomplished its objective of destroying a warship under construction (a corvette of 24 guns to be christened the HMS Sir Isaac Brock, after a general whom the Americans had sniped the previous year), but General Pike was killed during the raid. Due to Pike’s loss, the U.S. regulars’ worst impulses went unchecked, so they torched York before withdrawing.

On May 27th, 1813, U.S. Major General Henry Dearborn gained a toehold by way of seizing Fort George at the juncture of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. Over the course of two months, Canadians repeatedly repulsed the occupation’s incursions inland and U.S. President James Madison belatedly relieved Dearborn of command. After the American occupation endured seven months of harrying from Canadians and their Amerindian allies like the Mohawk and Ojibwe, the new commander, Brigadier General George McClure of the New York Militia, authorized the torching of civilian homes in Newark (presently Niagara-on-the-Lake) during withdrawal on December 10th, 1813, for which illegal order the New York Militia expelled him.

In April 1814, the UK and its allies (the Sixth Coalition) defeated and deposed Napoleon, which meant that highly experienced British troops would be transferred to service in North America. To preempt the arrival of such troops in the continent, U.S. Secretary of War John Armstrong Jr. urged another invasion into Canada across the Niagara River in July 1814. That would be a sixth invasion, depending on how you count it. U.S. Generals Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott enjoyed initial success, such as the victory at Chippawa River on July 5th, but the inconclusive Battle of Lundy’s Lane on July 25th killed one third of both the American expedition and the Canadian opposition, which prompted the U.S. Army’s withdrawal back to New York. By the summer of 1814, the British had reinforced the ranks of Canada’s defenders with 18,000 battle-hardened veterans, and they were keen on some payback through invasions of their own.

Transecting the Union

Dramatis Personæ

Lieutenant Governor Sir George Prévost conceived the plan to invade the USA through Plattsburgh, and he was to command the invasion in the field. Prévost was nothing less than the Lieutenant Governor-in-Chief of British North America, a role which unified the highest civilian and military authority in one person. Born 1767 in Hackensack, New Jersey, his Swiss Protestant father had raised him speaking French, which during his appointment to Lieutenant Governor proved vital in gaining the Québécois’ respect. As the UK’s global war with Napoleon consumed inordinate resources, Prévost’s remit was to hold Canada until resources could be diverted for offensive operations against the USA… such as by the summer of 1814.

Finally provisioned with an abundance of personnel and materiel, Prévost opted for a massive invasion through Plattsburgh, in New York’s northernmost Clinton County, bordering Québec. The British invasion by land (their seventh in this war, depending on how you count it) would be supported by a British fleet to sail down Lake Champlain, which runs 107 miles (172 km) north to south between New York and Vermont. As British General John Burgoyne had attempted in 1777 during the Revolutionary War, the ultimate plan was to transect the USA so that New England could be permanently severed from the Union. (The Battle of Plattsburgh: What Historians Say About It, 1914, p. 34)

The aforementioned British expedition which torched the White House and bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor (August 12th – September 14th, 1814), was in fact a mere diversion intended to lure American troops away from the north so that Prévost’s invasion could proceed unimpeded. The UK’s government in Whitehall corresponded with Prévost about its southern offensives so that he could perfectly time his invasion. The British were betting everything on this invasion through Plattsburgh.

Captain George Downie was to command the armada which would support Prévost’s offensive by land. He had fought the Americans during the war on the Great Lakes but had no experience on Lake Champlain, which has different currents, capricious wind patterns and unusual shoals. The admiralty appointed Downie only a week before the invasion. Likewise his crew was freshly selected and thus unfamiliar with one another. Some infantrymen had even been assigned to crew Downie’s ships, so they were even less familiar with what to do and when. Finally, this battle was to be the maiden voyage of Downie’s flagship HMS Confiance, a frigate bearing 37 guns, which was constructed of newly felled timber.

Commodore Thomas MacDonough commanded the American squadron on Lake Champlain. He had fought Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and even had occasion to rescue an impressed American sailor from a British frigate in Gibraltar. MacDonough contended with fewer variables than his counterpart, Captain Downie. MacDonough was quite familiar with Lake Champlain, and he had assembled and personally drilled much of his squadron’s crew, who were all sailors except for some convicts provisionally released from the stockade. Like Downie’s recently constructed flagship, MacDonough’s flotilla consisted of ships newly and hastily assembled in Vergennes, Vermont; the flagship USS Saratoga (constructed in 40 days, bearing 26 guns) and USS Eagle (19 days, 20 guns).

U.S. General Alexander Macomb was to command the forces on land. The garrison at Plattsburgh initially numbered 6000 troops, but Prévost ostentatiously detached 3500 redcoats from his invasion force to march westwards to the U.S. Navy’s shipyards in Sackets Harbor, NY, along Lake Ontario. On August 31st, 1814, senior General George Izard was ordered to intercept this detachment, which left Macomb (age 32) second in command over the remaining 1500 blue-coated regulars. Over their governor’s objections, militia from Vermont (~2500) came to reinforce the garrison, and militia from New York (~700), including Martin Aiken’s morale-boosting company of teenaged rifleman. A contingent of free Blacks from Massachusetts also arrived, and Macomb assigned them to constructing defenses or found them employ in MacDonough’s squadron.

The Invasion Begins

On September 1st, 1814, Prévost marched roughly 12,000 troops south across the USA’s undefended border. It was slow going with North Country’s unpaved roads, if such paths could even be so called. Hauling conventional ordnance proved difficult, and the invasion included Congreve rockets – those which produced the “red glare” observed during Fort McHenry’s bombardment and immortalized in the Star Spangled Banner – which complicated travel on the muddy ruts passing for roads in North Country. The rockets’ bulky launching frames could be disassembled only so much if the rockets were intended for imminent use.

The invasion encountered resistance on September 6th by militia in Beekmantown at Culver Hill. For the most part, the British regulars – a number of whom had served under the “Iron Duke” Lord Wellington in the Penisular Campaign – were unfazed by militia skirmishers and marched in unbroken column. Yet any soldier breaking off to fill his canteen in a nearby brook would be sniped as if from the trees themselves, which began to take a psychological toll on the troops. Militia also swapped around road signs to disorient the British consulting maps in unfamiliar terrain.

Resistance hardened by the time the British reached the sinuous Saranac River bounding Plattsburgh to the north. Deadly snipers from a gristmill encouraged the British to flank across the ford at the ruins of Pike’s Cantonment and approach Plattsburgh from the west. As best as could be coordinated by messengers on horseback riding up and down the British lines, Captain Downie’s armada would sail into Plattsburgh’s Cumberland Bay on the morning of September 11th. Therefore, Prévost’s troops would assault Plattsburgh that morning at 08:30.

From the dockyards at Île-aux-Noix, Captain Downie’s armada of the HMS Confiance, Linnet, Chubb and Finch (the last two seized from Americans during the war and rechristened) and twelve small gunboats (smaller vessels with just one cannon of smaller calibre, usually mounted at the bow) sailed down the Richelieu River debouching into Lake Champlain. In the twilight of September 11th, Downie reached the headland into Cumberland Bay and by rowboat reconnoitered Commodore MacDonough’s array. There he observed the USS Saratoga, Eagle, Ticonderoga (a schooner with 12 guns and 3 carronades, which are like mortars), Preble (7 long guns) and ten gunboats, moored to protect the bay.

Upon sighting the British squadron tacking in formation into Cumberland Bay, Commodore MacDonough called his officers to deck. With heads uncovered and on bended knee, MacDonough offered a short prayer to the Almighty, that they survive the battle and fulfill their duty this day.

The squadrons clashed at 08:00. Downie’s ordnance had longer range but his fleet was tacking against the wind. Downie’s angle of approach into the bay left his ships vulnerable to MacDonough’s guns, but the Americans fired prematurely, which allowed Downie to sail into position unmolested. HMS Confiance featured an innovation unusual for the time, which was a shot furnace. This heated the cannonballs until they were white hot. Carefully these were loaded and fired. Confiance caught Saratoga with a broadside which included hot shot, thus damaging the ship and crew by impact and fire. Saratoga’s survivors rallied, and MacDonough ordered a volley in riposte. At 0815, one cannonball struck the muzzle of a long gun aboard Confiance, next to which was standing Captain Downie. The long gun was knocked off its carriage and toppled onto Downie, killing him instantly.

The battle raged onwards. One by one the ships were knocked out of action. Confiance’s tiller wheel had been destroyed, so it was immobilized. Saratoga’s windward guns had likewise been smashed out of commission, which is when MacDonough played his last card. Before battle, he had rigged Saratoga with springs and kedge anchors. He thus ordered Saratoga winched around to present its undamaged leeward guns to the immobile Confiance. This manoeuvre may have taken ten to fifteen minutes, so Confiance attempted the same but could not since its main anchor had been blown away (scuba divers discovered it in 1996). Thus, Saratoga let fly withering broadsides on Confiance. Around 10:00, Confiance struck its colors, and the battle was over.

The surviving British captains rowed to Saratoga in order to offer their swords to Commodore MacDonough. The British recorded MacDonough’s declination, “Gentlemen, your gallant conduct makes you the more worthy to wear your swords. Return them to your scabbards.” One Captain Pring reported that MacDonough ensured that enemy wounded were dutifully attended at the field hospital on nearby Crag Island. In a war between cousins which had descended into the barbarity of burning each other’s civilians out of their homes in winter – as at York and Lewiston, NY – Commodore MacDonough’s beneficence to the vanquished was a step in the correct direction.

Prévost’s ground force never materialized at the appointed hour to assail Plattsburgh. The march officer got lost in the woods – possibly due to the road signs which the militia had mislabelled, though it is unknown for certain. When this force finally arrived, it saw that the American squadron had bettered their peers in Cumberland Bay. Though Prévost still had 12,000 fresh troops and could easily have taken Plattsburgh, which civilians had mostly abandoned, he realized that pressing the invasion would be pointless. His column could not effectively proceed southwards traversing the Adirondack forests to the west, and it could not march southwards along Lake Champlain’s shoreline under fire from the American squadron. Therefore, he ordered a retreat back to Canada.

Recrimination and Vindication

Prévost’s disgruntled officers and political enemies successfully lobbied to have Prévost recalled. In England, Prévost demanded a court-martial to clear his name, and one was scheduled for February 1816, time enough for witnesses to travel from Canada. Yet Prévost succumbed to dropsy (edema) on January 5th, 1816, in London.

As for vindicating his decision not to pursue the USA’s invasion without naval support on Lake Champlain, the UK considered sending the Iron Duke himself to North America to finish the war against the Americans. Lord Wellington offered this insight, “Any offensive operation founded upon Canada must be preceded by a naval superiority on the lakes.” Indeed, the impracticality of conducting a ground offensive in North America without dominion over the nearby lake was demonstrated when the Americans wrested control over Lake Erie on September 10th, 1813, which induced the British withdrawal from the northwestern theatre (i.e., Ohio, Michigan) of operations during the war.

The Battle of Plattsburgh, alternately called the Battle of Lake Champlain, denied a crucial card to British diplomats negotiating a peace with their American counterparts in Ghent, Belgium. The British had hoped to impose a peace which would block American expansion across North America. When news about the defeat at Plattsburgh reached the diplomats, they realized that their best bet was just to recognize the status quo ante, with no changes in territory between the USA and UK.

Hammer to Ladder

Before September 11th assumed its ominous implications for Americans, 9/11 was celebrated as a day of triumph in this country. At the centennial in 1914, future U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt then serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, said that “The naval battle at Lake Champlain, was probably the greatest feat of arms our Navy achieved in the War of 1812.” Roosevelt’s contemporary and the UK’s future Prime Minister Winston Churchill conceded that the Battle of Plattsburgh was “decisive.”

For those of us who remember events from twenty-five years ago today, we also remember how things were before… and afterwards. A president bullhorned for vengeance from atop of pile of rubble at Ground Zero, and the military started a game of whack-a-mole around the globe, from Afghanistan, to Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… As of late, we’ve circled back to antagonism of our cherished neighbors in Canada.

There is a time for wielding the hammer, and the USA has acquitted itself very competent in its use when needed. But future glory for this country depends on how judiciously we extend a ladder to those so willing to climb.