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NAVAL AFFAIRS.

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into the hands of the British blockading cruisers; of CHAPTER those left at the Marquesas, one was carried off by a party of mutineers, while another, with the remnants of 1814. the garrison on board, was taken by the Cherub. The Essex, Jr. was converted into a cartel, in which Porter and his crew were sent to the United States.

April.

May 5.

After this capture, and the return of the Constitution, already mentioned, there remained no American frigate at sea. The Constitution was blockaded at Boston, the Congress at Portsmouth, the United States and the Macedonian at New London, the President at New York, and the Constellation at Norfolk. So hopeless was their chance of getting out, that their crews were mostly sent to re-enforce Chauncey. The Adams, cut down to a sloop of twenty-eight guns, having got to sea from the Potomac by passing the British ships in the night, was Jan. 13. now the heaviest cruiser out. After an unsuccessful voyage, she returned to Savannah, whence she sailed on another, which proved, as we shall see, to be her last. Of the new sloops-of-war, the Frolic, from Boston, when a few days out, was taken by the frigate Orpheus, after April 21. a chase, in which she threw all her guns overboard. The Peacock, from New York, reached the coast of Florida, where she captured the British brig-of-war April 27. Epervier, with $118,000 in specie on board, and with her prize got safe into Savannah, whence she soon sailed on a new cruise. The Wasp, another new sloop, sailing from Portsmouth to the British Channel, engaged, captured, and destroyed the Reindeer sloop-of-war, after June 28. which she put into L'Orient for repairs. Both the Epervier and the Reindeer were somewhat inferior to their antagonists, especially the latter, which made a very gallant fight. The Rattlesnake, a fast-sailing brig bought into the service, was first chased by a frigate off the

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CHAPTER American coast, and obliged, in escaping, to throw most of her guns overboard, and, soon after, again chased, and 1814. taken by a fifty-gun ship. The Syren also fell into the June 12. hands of a British seventy-four, leaving of the original July 22. smaller vessels only the Hornet, blockaded at New Lon

don, and the Enterprise, now employed as a guard-ship at Savannah. The Independence seventy-four, and the Guerriere and Java, new forty-fours, were launched in the course of the summer; but, besides the obstacles of the blockade, the financial difficulties of the government soon became such as to prevent their getting fitted for sea. The Baltimore clippers, and other privateers built on the same model, defied the pursuit of the enemy's cruisers. But the blockade of the coast made it very difficult to get their prizes in, and they, as well as the Adams, Wasp, and Peacock, the only national ships now at sea, adopted the practice of setting fire to their prizes after taking out their more valuable contents; a miserable destruction of property, which the enemy retorted by burning all the small coasters not able to pay

a ransom.

Naval operations thus curtailed, and the blockaded coast left to defend itself, recruits for the army, as fast as they could be got, were hastened off to the New York frontier. In the course of the season, at an expense of two millions in bounties, about 14,000 recruits were enlisted, of whom Massachusetts, unpopular as the war was, furnished more than any single state, and lukewarm New England more than all the hot slave states put together. But such was the waste by the sword, disease, and desertion, that it was not found possible to raise the numbers of the army beyond the 34,000 at which it had stood at the close of the last campaign— about half the authorized number.

COMMAND ON THE FRONTIER.

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Wilkinson and Harrison had thrown up their com- CHAPTER mands in disgust. Hampton had retired in disgrace. Dearborn was stationed first at Albany and presently at 1814. Boston, Lewis at New York, and Bloomfield at Philadelphia. Winchester, Chandler, and Winder were still in the hands of the enemy. To supply their places Izard and Brown had been appointed major generals, and March. Macomb, Thomas A. Smith, Bissell, Scott, Gaines, and Ripley, brigadiers; all, except Brown and Ripley, officers of the old army. After the desolation of the Niagbeen sent to take the command

ara frontier, Scott had

there, whither he was followed in the spring by Brown May 2. with a column of 2000 men from Sackett's Harbor, under misapprehension, as Armstrong alleges, of orders for a feint in that direction. Izard, a son of the former South Carolina diplomatist and senator of that name, having had a military education in Europe and long experience, much was hoped when he was placed in command of the main column at Plattsburg. But the new commander did not seem very well satisfied with the prospect before him. He complained that his troops, both officers and men, were raw and ignorant; the soldiers unpaid, insufficiently clad, and sickly; the ranks thinned by death and desertion, to check which numerous executions had recently taken place, and but slowly filled by recruits, of whom many were negroes; the officers, notwithstanding numerous dismissals for incapacity and misconduct, doing little but fight duels and shirk from duty; and the quarter-master's department without funds; while the enemy, by a trade which it was impos sible to stop, drew abundant supplies of corn and cattle from the American side of the line. Vessels were building at Otter creek, under the direction of M'Donough, to secure the command of Lake Champlain; but their

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CHAPTER progress was slow, and Governor Chittenden had to send a detachment of militia to defend them against an at1814. tack, made but repulsed.

May 14.

Brown, meanwhile, with his two brigadiers, Ripley and Scott, and many inferior officers of great merit, in a more hopeful state of mind than Izard, labored assiduously, by rigorous drill and severe discipline, to form a corps able to encounter the British. But, for any movement on Canada, the command of the lakes, now held by the enemy, must first be secured. At the opening of the spring, Yeo had appeared on Lake Ontario with two brigs and four sloops-of-war of his old fleet, and two new ships, built and equipped during the winter-the Princess Charlotte, of 42 guns, and the Prince Regent, of 58. Chauncey had on the stocks, two heavy frigates and two large brigs; but the transportation of the guns and equipments from Albany to Oswego, and thence, by the lake shore, to Sackett's Harbor, was a slow, and, the latter part of it, a hazardous operation, resulting in several May 5-7. sharp conflicts. A British force attacked Oswego, destroyed the fort, and carried off several guns designed for Chauncey. A fleet of American transports, on their way from Oswego to Sackett's Harbor, were more successful. May 29. To avoid a squadron of seven British armed boats, they took refuge in the Big Sandy Creek; the men landed and lay in ambush, and when the British boats entered in pursuit, they surprised and captured them with their

crews.

The news of Bonaparte's abdication, of the restoration of the Bourbons, and of peace in Europe, was a severe stroke to the war party. Not that they loved Bonaparte, so they said, but because they saw in his fall the removal of the last check to the insolence of Great Britain. It was received, on the other hand, by the Fed

NEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR A PEACE.

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1814.

June 15.

June 29.

eralists with joy and exultation, as the harbinger of CHAPTER peace and of the renewal of commerce. It was cele brated at Boston by a religious ceremony, including a sermon from Dr. Channing, then just rising into reputation, and at New York by an oration from Gouverneur Morris, in which, after abundant exultations over the triumph of "legitimacy," he bade the Democrats prepare for the same fate which had overtaken their master and idol. The war party, however, found consolation for these taunts in their triumph at the late New York election, at which they had secured the command of both branches of the Legislature, and a large majority of the members of the next Congress.

However the mass of the war party might affect to make light of it, the unexpected change in the affairs of Europe, in putting a final period to all hopes of conquest, made the administration more anxious than ever for peace. A letter was accordingly addressed to the June 24. commissioners, from whom nothing definite had yet been heard, authorizing them, in consequence of the new state of things in Europe, to refer the impressment question, in case it should be found an obstacle to a treaty, to a separate negotiation, to be commenced as soon as peace was re-established. But before this letter was sent, dispatches arrived from Gallatin and Bayard, who had been in London for two or three months, endeavoring to pave the way for peace; and in consequence of these dis patches, which were far from encouraging, a postscript was added, authorizing the commissioners, should they June 27 think it best, to treat at London, and, if they could not make peace otherwise, to omit the subject of impressment altogether; but not without a protest that this silence was not to be taken as admitting the British claim. Before these new instructions arrived, Ghent, in Hol.

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