The President in Peril

James Monroe (1758–1831)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence

Interesting Links

“The Health of the President: James Madison” (Rudolph Marx, reprint from The Health of the Presidents, originally published in 1960)

Videos for teachers and students: “Three Presidents – Monroe, Madison, Jefferson” (PBS Learning Media)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “Dear sister, I must leave this house,” Dolley Madison
• “A Very Sad Thing,” Theodore Roosevelt
• “Becoming a First Lady,” Abigail Adams

Buy the book
The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, diary entries, speeches, news articles, memoirs, poems, sermons, songs, & military reports • 928 pages

“A boxing match, or another bloody nose for John Bull,” 1813, political cartoon by engraver William Charles (1776–1820). The artist gloats over naval losses suffered by England early in the War of 1812, in particular the defeat of the warship Boxer by the American frigate Enterprise in September 1813. King George III stands at left, his nose bleeding and eye blackened, saying, “Stop . . . Brother Jonathan, or I shall fall with the loss of blood — I thought to have been too heavy for you — But I must acknowledge your superior skill — Two blows to my one! — And so well directed too! Mercy, mercy on me, how does this happen!!!” On the right, James Madison says, “Ha-Ah Johnny! you thought yourself a ‘Boxer’ did you! — I'll let you know we are an ‘Enterprize’ing Nation. and ready to meet you with equal force any day.” Brother Jonathan was an imaginary character signifying the United States; he was supplanted by Uncle Sam after the Civil War. Similarly, John Bull was a cartoon representation of England. Image and caption details courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

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The pale and delicate James Madison—“Little Jemmy” to his detractors—was never an imposing figure. He was five foot four, weighed only a hundred pounds, and was prey to worry and depression. When Washington Irving met Madison in January 1811, he remarked in a letter to a friend: “Ah! poor Jemmy!—he is but a withered little apple-john.”

Madison’s near-fatal illness of the summer of 1813, possibly mosquito-borne malaria from the wetlands in and around Washington, occurred at the height of that year’s congressional activity and military campaigning in the War of 1812. His maladies further compromised his image as a capable chief executive and strengthened the resistance of the anti-war Federalists. Thomas P. Grosvenor, a freshman Congressman from New York, prayed for a speedy end to the President, that he might “soon appear at the bar of Immortal Justice” and be judged for his “bloody crime.” Major John Lovett, wounded the previous year at the Battle of Queenston Heights and also a New Yorker newly elected to Congress, wished good riddance to both him and his vice president, the “scant-patterned old skeleton of a French barber” Elbridge Gerry, then sixty-nine and struggling back from a stroke.

While the President and Vice President were in ill health, the War of 1812 raged on. American forces lost two crucial battles that month in a series of conflicts that would eventually leave American forts along the Niagara River in British hands and civilian settlements from Youngstown to Buffalo in ruins. In addition, the British navy was expanding its blockade to include all major ports of the middle and southern states, crippling both the economy and the treasury.

On the political front, things weren’t any better for the President. The anti-war Federalists and their allies in the Democratic-Republican Party had increased their numbers in the previous year’s elections, and they resisted Madison’s proposals for new trade restrictions, militia reform, and the enlistment of minors. Every attempt to raise taxes for the war effort strained the fraying Republican front. Diplomatic appointments were blocked, with confirmation hearings dissolving into what Madison biographer Ralph Ketchum has described as “weeks of bitter, futile debate over the origins and causes of the war.” Speaker of the House John C. Calhoun decried, “Party sperit is more violent than I ever knew.” So violent, in fact, that Calhoun himself nearly engaged in pistol duels with Grosvenor, who stridently contested every measure, and with William Gaston of North Carolina, his nemesis on the Ways and Means Committee.

Reprinted below is the brief letter Secretary of State James Monroe wrote to Thomas Jefferson about Madison’s illness—the next President writing to the previous President about the current President, as it were. He lamented how opponents were already planning for Madison’s death and how they were capitalizing on his illness by blocking the diplomatic appointments of Jonathan Russell to Sweden and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to the Russian peace mission. Fortunately, Madison’s fever broke a few days later; on July 2 his wife, Dolley, wrote to a cousin that “for the last three days his fever has been so slight as to permit him to take bark every hour and with good effect.” (The bark of the cinchona tree was thought effective for fevers—and, in fact, it does contain quinine, which is effective for treating malaria.) After hearing of Madison’s incipient recovery, former President John Adams, who had supported his reelection, wrote empathetically to a friend, “His agitations of mind and incessant labours, I know by sad experience must be too great for any but the most robust Constitutions.”

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We reproduce this week’s selection in its entirety below, followed by notes explaining the most important of its many references. You may also download the letter as a PDF or view it in Google Docs.

Washington June 28th 1813

Dear Sir,—From the date of my last letter to you the President has been ill of a bilious fever; of that kind called the remittent. It has perhaps never left him, even for an hour, and occasionally simptoms have been unfavorable. This is I think the 15th day. Elzey of this place, & Shoaff of Annapolis, with Dr. Tucker, attend him. They think he will recover. The first mention’d I have just seen, who reports that he had a good night, & is in a state to take the bark, which indeed he has done on his best day, for nearly a week. I shall see him before I seal this, & note any change, should there be any, from the above statement.

The federalists aided by the malcontents have done, and are doing, all the mischief that they can. The nominations to Russia, & Sweden, (the latter made on an intimation that the Crown prince would contribute his good offices to promote peace on fair conditions) they have embarrassed, to the utmost of their power. The active partizans are King, Giles and (as respects the first nomination) S. Smith. Leib, German and Gilman, are habitually in that interest, active, but useful to their party by their votes only. The two members from Louisiana, Gailliard, Stone, Anderson, & Bledsoe, are added to that corps, on those questions. They have carried a vote 20. to 14. that the appointment of Mr. Gallatin to the Russian mission, is incompatable, with his place in the treasury, & appointed a committee, to communicate the resolution to the President. They have appointed another committee to confer with him on the nomination to Sweden. The object is to usurp the Executive power in the hands of a faction in the Senate. To this, several mention’d are not parties, particularly the four last. A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President, that is a head of a dept. and not with the ch: Majistrate, for in the latter case a committee of that house is equal to the Executive. To break the measure, & relieve the President from the pressure, at a time when so little able to bear it, indeed when no pressure whatever should be made on him, I wrote the committee on the nomination to Sweden, that I was instructed by him to meet them, to give all the information they might desire of the Executive. They declin’d the interview. I had intended to pursue the same course respecting the other nomination, had I succeeded in this. Failing, I have declined it. The result is withheld from the President. These men have begun, to make calculations, & plans, founded on the presum’d death of the President & Vice-President, & it has been suggested to me that Giles, is thought of to take the place of the President of the Senate, as soon as the Vice President withdraws.

Genl. Dearborn is dangerously ill, & Genl. Lewis doing little. Hampton has gone on to that quarter, but I fear on an inactive command. Genl. Wilkinson is expected soon, but I do not know what station will be assign’d him. The idea of a comr. in Ch: is in circulation, proceeding from the War dept., as I have reason to believe. If so, it will probably take a more decisive form, when things are prepar’d for it. A security for his (the Secys.) advancement to that station, is I presume the preparation desir’d.

Your friend, etc.

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Portions of the above introduction and the notes below were adapted from material in The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence, edited by Donald R. Hickey.

Notes: Arnold Elzey was Madison’s primary physician in Washington during his Presidency; John Thomas Shaaf and Thomas Tudor Tucker (who was U.S. Treasurer from 1801 to 1828), both prominent physicians, also attended Madison during his illness.

Among Monroe’s list of various “partizans” in Congress opposing the diplomatic appointment of Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin, William Branch Giles, Senator from Virginia, should be singled out. A member of Madison’s own party who opposed the administration’s war policies, Giles is suggested later in the letter as someone who might be chosen by Madison’s opponents as President pro tempore of the Senate, thus becoming next in line to the Presidency should Madison and Gerry both die.

Monroe also refers to General Henry Dearborn, whose illnesses increasingly aggravated his inability to forcefully press early advantages gained in the Niagara River frontier, and Major General Morgan Lewis, who was in command of the Canadian outpost Fort George, captured by the Americans a month earlier. Madison sent Major Generals Wade Hampton and James Wilkinson to replace Dearborn, with Wilkinson in command of American forces for the campaign against Canada and Hampton in a subordinate role. The two generals had despised each other for more than five years, and their feud was a contributing factor to the collapse of the American plan to attack Montreal. In the letter’s closing, Monroe mentions (the Secys.), referring to John Armstrong Jr., who had been appointed Secretary of War despite the opposition of Monroe and Gallatin. Monroe’s insinuation was that Armstrong wanted to become commander in chief of the war effort.

Monroe's letter was originally published in The Writings of James Monroe, vol. 5 (1901).

“Like a Sea of Blood”

Anonymous (A Kentucky Soldier)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence

Interesting Links
“How America’s ‘forgotten’ war shaped our young nation” (Donald Hickey, Reader’s Almanac)

“America’s ‘forgotten war’ ended on Christmas Eve 1814, and few people knew” (Constitution Daily, National Constitution Center)

Previous Story of the Week selections about the War of 1812
“Dear sister, I must leave this house” (August 1814), Dolley Madison
“Storming the Capital” (August 1814), George R. Gleig
“Defence of Fort M‘Henry” (September 1814), Francis Scott Key

Buy this book:
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Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, news articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages
See the table of contents
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Two hundred years ago, on Christmas Eve 1814, British and American diplomats signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. Yet the war continued unabated because the news took six weeks to cross the Atlantic. The treaty arrived in New York on February 11, the Senate ratified it unanimously a week later, and fighting and skirmishes flared across the United States until the end of February, as word of the truce and treaty gradually reached combatants.

And so the war was officially over when one of its bloodiest battles took place. The previous summer, the British had begun planning an invasion of the Gulf Coast, and by mid-September Andrew Jackson knew something was afoot—but he wasn't sure where it would happen. When he and his soldiers dislodged enemy forces from Pensacola in early November, he learned from a merchant who had just arrived from Jamaica that New Orleans was the target. Jackson rushed to the city, reaching it on December 1, and mobilized its defenses.

Three weeks later, after delays navigating heavy barges in the shallow waters of Lake Borgne, British forces completed their landing on December 23 and established their headquarters eight miles below New Orleans on the Mississippi. A series of confrontations occurred during the next two weeks. The very night the British landed, Jackson led eighteen hundred men in a surprise attack that ended with a couple of hundred casualties on each side. Over the next two days additional British forces arrived, including Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, who assumed command and who launched an abortive attack on December 28. Another clash took place on New Year’s Day, but ended when the British ran out of ammunition.

The British forces vastly outnumbered the Americans, yet Pakenham did not seek to press his advantage, preferring instead to wait on artillery laboriously brought up from Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane’s ships. The delay allowed Jackson to establish formidable lines of defense below the city, and the inevitable cataclysm, which finally took place on January 8, ultimately cost Pakenham his life and resulted in a devastating loss to the British army. Our Story of the Week selection, written by one of Jackson’s Kentucky riflemen, is a spellbinding and sometimes giddy account of this last major battle of the War of 1812.

In his preface to The Library of America’s collection, The War of 1812, Donald R. Hickey summarizes the significance of the American victory:

Jackson emerged from the war as an outsized hero, and his commitment to democracy and slavery as well as to territorial expansion and Indian removal epitomized the jarring forces that would shape the nation in the postwar era.

The victory at New Orleans was no less important because it transformed how the war was remembered. Americans boasted how they had defeated “Wellington’s invincibles” and “the conquerors of the conquerors of Europe.” They forgot the causes of the war and lost sight of how close the nation had come to military defeat and financial collapse. They remembered instead that they had beaten back an attempt to re-colonize the nation, that they had decisively defeated the conqueror of Napoleon and the Ruler of the Waves.

Note: One of the American soldiers in this account promises vengeance for “River Raisin.” In January 1813 American militia forces from Kentucky, led by Brigadier General James Winchester, attempted to protect settlers on the River Raisin in Michigan Territory but were defeated at the Battle of Frenchtown. Winchester surrendered his entire force. The British commander, unprepared to deal with so many prisoners, left the wounded under the protection of a small retinue. The next day Indians killed approximately thirty Americans; the slaughter became known as the River Raisin Massacre and served as a rallying cry for Kentucky soldiers for the remainder of the war.

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Col. Smiley, from Bardstown, was the first one who gave us orders to fire from our part of the line; and then, I reckon, there was a pretty considerable noise. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

Defence of Fort M‘Henry

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843),
with an account by Roger B. Taney (1777–1864)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence

Interesting Links
Five myths about “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Steve Vogel, The Washington Post)

“Your Guide to the Three Weeks of 1814 That We Today Call the War of 1812” (Peter Snow, Smithsonian Magazine)

The Battle for Baltimore (National Park Service)

Recent Story of the Week selections about the Attack on Washington
• “Dear sister, I must leave this house,” Dolley Madison
• Storming the Capital, George R. Gleig

Buy this book:

The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, news articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages
List price: $40.00
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Web store price: $32.00

“A View of the Bombardment of Fort McHenry.” Print by American artist John Bower, c. 1814. The full caption for the print reads “A VIEW of the BOMBARDMENT of Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, by the British fleet taken from the Observatory under the Command of Admirals Cochrane & Cockburn on the morning of the 13th of Sept 1814 which lasted 24 hours & thrown from 1500 to 1800 shells in the Night attempted to land by forcing a passage up the ferry branch but were repulsed with great loss.” Image from Wikimedia.

Two hundred years ago, three weeks after burning down nearly every major federal building in Washington, British forces set their sights on Baltimore. Before reaching the city, they sustained heavy casualties in the Battle of North Point on September 12, and the commanding officer, Major General Robert Ross, was killed by a sharpshooter. The relatively inexperienced Colonel Arthur Brooke assumed command and advanced to the outskirts of Baltimore. Brooke realized that the city was heavily fortified and asked the Royal Navy (commanded by Admiral George Cockburn and Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane) to soften the lines with naval fire. In order to get close enough, a British squadron had to first pass by Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor. Bombs and rockets pummeled the fort for over twenty-four hours on September 13–14, but the attack ultimately failed, convincing the British to abandon the siege of Baltimore.

Francis Scott Key witnessed the bombardment from a ship and, inspired by the bravery and obstinacy of the American defenses, jotted down a few lines of the first verse of a song. A mere three days after the battle, the final poem was published as a handbill, with the title “Defence of Fort McHenry”; it quickly became one of America’s most-loved patriotic songs and in 1931 officially became the national anthem of the United States.

In honor of the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” we present two selections. The first is the text of Francis Scott Key’s original handbill; it is followed by an account written four decades later by Roger B. Taney, the fifth U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice. Taney recalls the events that led Key—his brother-in-law—to travel to Baltimore and end up on a ship that gave him a front-row seat to the Bombardment of Fort McHenry.

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If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

Storming the Capital

George R. Gleig (1796–1888)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence

Interesting Links
“Five myths about the burning of Washington” (Steve Vogel, The Washington Post)

George Cockburn (U.S. National Park Service)

Previous Story of the Week selections about the War of 1812
• “Storm and Shipwreck,” James Fenimore Cooper
• “The Capture of USS Essex,” David G. Farragut
• “‘Old Ironsides’ Captures HMS Guerrière,” Moses Smith

Buy this book:
The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, news articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages
List price: $40.00
Save 20%, free shipping
Web store price: $32.00

The President’s House [after the burning of Washington], c. 1815–16. Watercolor on paper by American engraver George Munger (1771–1825). A note in Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride (2008) explains the strange S-curved shape on the roof. “It is most readily interpreted as part of a lightning protection system. Not a lightning rod, given its length, but rather part of the metallic conductor that encircled the roof, now torn from its mooring." Image from the White House Historical Association website.

For our previous Story of the Week selection, which commemorated the 200th anniversary of the burning of Washington on August 23–24, 1814, we showcased the letter Dolley Madison wrote to her sister just hours before she fled the White House with her staff, important artifacts, and a famous painting of George Washington. This week we present the recollections of that same event by George R. Gleig, an eighteen-year-old British officer who participated in the attack on the nation’s capital.

The first half of his account describes the Battle of Bladensburg, during which the overconfident and poorly organized American forces—which greatly outnumbered the invaders—were quickly swept aside. In a later version of his memoir, Gleig said that he was initially surprised by the sight of the Americans, who “would have been much more appropriately employed in attending to their agricultural occupations, than in standing, with their muskets in their hands.” During the months following the battle, news reports and poems ridiculed Madison and “his army,” referring to the hasty American retreat as the “Bladensburg races.”

The second half surveys the destruction of federal buildings (including the White House, the Capitol, and the Treasury), which began immediately after a British party bearing “a flag of truce” entered Washington to negotiate terms of surrender and were instead fired upon by riflemen hiding in a private home.

One incident is not mentioned in Gleig’s account. When British Admiral George Cockburn arrived in the city, he searched for the offices of the National Intelligencer, which had long been insulting and taunting him, and oversaw personally the destruction of the pressroom. Spectators overheard him denouncing the publisher “with much of the peculiar slang of the Common Sewer.” The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 mentions a contemporary report claiming that the admiral instructed soldiers to “take special effort to obliterate all of the c’s in the newspaper’s type racks” so that the publisher could no longer spell Cockburn’s name.

Notes: The first page of the selection mentions Isis, which is the section of the Thames that flows through Oxford. Page 518 refers to the siege during the Peninsular War by Wellington’s army of a large French garrison in the northern Spanish port city of San Sebastián. The siege lasted from July 7, 1813, to the surrender on September 8. During the final week British and Portuguese soldiers ransacked, pillaged, and burned the city, leaving only a few buildings standing.

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The hour of noon was approaching, when a heavy cloud of dust, apparently not more than two or three miles distant, attracted our attention. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

“Dear sister, I must leave this house”

Dolley Madison (1768–1849)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence

Interesting Links
“Dolley Madison: First Lady and Queen” (Catherine Allgor, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)

“When Dolley Madison Took Command of the White House” (Thomas Fleming, Smithsonian Magazine)

Previous Story of the Week selections about the War of 1812
• “Storm and Shipwreck,” James Fenimore Cooper
• “The Capture of USS Essex,” David G. Farragut
• “‘Old Ironsides’ Captures HMS Guerrière,” Moses Smith

Buy this book:
The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, news articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages

George Washington [“Lansdowne portrait”]. Oil on
canvas, replica of a painting by Gilbert Stuart. This
particular replica has been in the White House since
1800 and was rescued during the evacuation by Dolley
Madison.It is usually attributed to Stuart himself—although
there is some doubt about its provenance. As can be seen
in the inset, “States” is misspelled on the spine of one of
the books. (The word is spelled correctly in the original.)

Dolley Madison was our nation’s first First Lady—that is to say, she was the first wife of a president to be known by that designation when Zachary Taylor referred to her as such in the eulogy he delivered at her funeral. During her husband’s two administrations, she became renowned both for her political acuity and her frequent sponsorship of social events (she oversaw the nation’s first official inaugural ball). When the War of 1812 intensified as the British raided coastal cities from Florida to Maryland, she refused to abandon Washington and reassured acquaintances that the enemy would never get within twenty miles of the capital. “I am not the least alarmed at these things,” she wrote to a friend.

Two hundred years ago, on August 17, 1814, British forces under Major General Robert Ross arrived at the mouth of the Patuxent River (a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay). “All President Madison could do,” writes historian Thomas Fleming, “was call out thousands of militia. The commander of these jittery amateurs was Brig. Gen. William Winder, whom Madison had appointed largely because his uncle, the governor of Maryland, had already raised a sizable state militia.” On the morning of August 23, the president sent the First Lady a short message saying that American forces were “in high spirits” and the enemy’s approach was of little concern. “The last & probably truest information is that they are not very strong, and are without cavalry or artillery, and of course that they are not in a condition to strike at Washington.” But that afternoon he sent off a second note retracting his original assurances. The next day the feeble American forces were soundly defeated at the Battle of Bladensburg, opening the road to Washington. On August 24–25, the British occupied the capital city and burned public buildings—including the White House.

In this week’s selection, a letter Dolley wrote to her sister late in the day of the evacuation, she describes her role in the rescue of an iconic painting of George Washington. This canvas, a replica of Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne Portrait,” is believed to be one of several copies painted by Stuart himself and it still hangs in the White House to this day. (There is some doubt about its provenance, in part because Stuart disowned this particular copy soon after it was purchased by Congress in 1800.) The original painting was commissioned in 1786 as a gift to William Petty FitzMaurice, who, as British Prime Minister in 1782–83, finalized the Treaty of Paris that brought the American Revolution to an end. He was then made Marquess of Lansdowne—thus the name used to designate the portrait.

The original of Dolley’s letter is actually lost; what survives is a transcription of what she called “an extract” sent to her biographer in 1836. In the decades following the incident, various and conflicting narratives of the rescue circulated; some of the more fanciful chroniclers reported that she had removed the painting with her own hands at the last minute and stuffed it into her suitcase—embellishments that her own account doesn’t support. Paul Jennings, a slave in the Madison household who was fifteen years old at the time, wrote his recollection of the event in a memoir published in 1865:

It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there), and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment.

Notes: Charles Carroll, mentioned in the letter, was “a gentleman intimate in the President’s family,” in the words of the doorman for the Executive Manson. Many years later, various counterclaims arose about the rescue of the Stuart portrait and Carroll’s son insisted that his father had rescued the painting. The two gentlemen of New York are Robert Gilbert Livingston de Peyster and financier Jacob Barker.

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If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

The Capture of USS Essex

David G. Farragut (1801–1870)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence

Interesting Links
Naval Battleships in the War of 1812 (PBS)

For teachers and students: A website about the War of 1812 (National Park Service)

Previous Story of the Week selections about the War of 1812
“ ‘Old Ironsides’ Captures HMS Guerrière,” Moses Smith
“Storm and Shipwreck,” James Fenimore Cooper

Buy this book:
The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, news articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages
See the table of contents
List price: $40.00
Save 20%, with free shipping!
Web store price: $32.00
Also available as an e-book

Two hundred years ago, on March 28, 1814, the American warship Essex engaged in a climactic life-or-death battle off the shore of Chile—and on board was David G. Farragut, then only twelve years old. Born in Tennessee as James Farragut, he was the son of Revolutionary War veteran and U.S. Navy officer George Farragut. When James was seven years old and living with his family in New Orleans, his mother cared for naval officer David Porter Sr. during his final illness. Shortly after Porter died, James’s mother succumbed to yellow fever and, in gratitude for the Farragut family’s treatment of his father, Captain David Porter Jr. offered to adopt the lad and sponsor his naval career. In December 1810, a mere nine years old, James was appointed as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy. (Midshipmen at the time were usually twelve to eighteen years old.) At some point he changed his first name to that of his adopted father.

During the War of 1812, unable to compete with the superior British Navy, the fledgling American fleet adopted the strategy of raiding and capturing British commercial vessels. Captain Porter was perfectly suited for this type of warfare, having fought against French and Tripoli pirates during the so-called Quasi-War at the end of the eighteenth century. Young Farragut was assigned to the USS Essex, under Porter’s command, and in late 1812 the frigate rounded Cape Horn and became the first American warship to sail in the Pacific. During the following year, Porter and his crew seized a total of twelve British ships, and after one capture, twelve-year-old David was appointed commander of the prize and sailed it back to harbor at Valparaiso. Near this same harbor the Essex finally met its match when the ship lost its topmast and was cornered by two British warships.

Fifty-eight Americans were killed in the resulting slaughter, and dozens were wounded or missing. A well-known passage in Melville’s novel White-Jacket questions the decision of Porter to not surrender once the battle was clearly lost:

[T]he American Captain continued to fight his crippled ship against a greatly superior force; and when, at last, it became physically impossible that he could ever be otherwise than vanquished in the end; and when, from peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, his men merely stood up to their nearly useless batteries to be dismembered and blown to pieces by the incessant fire of the enemy’s long guns. . . . I seek not to underrate any reputation which the American Captain may have gained by this battle. He was a brave man; that no sailor will deny. But the whole world is made up of brave men. . . . Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted, that if there were any common-sense sailors at the guns of the Essex, however valiant they may have been, those common-sense sailors must have greatly preferred to strike their flag, when they saw the day was fairly lost, than postpone that inevitable act till there were few American arms left to assist in hauling it down.

As for Farragut, he remained in the Navy until his death in 1870, four years after becoming the first admiral in American history. He is also famous for his victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay, when Union forces under his command captured the Confederacy’s last major port on the Gulf of Mexico. During the battle, he is said to have shouted various commands that have come down through history in shortened form as “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

Notes: A paddy in the cat-harpins is a jack-of-all-trades. (Catharpins are ropes or iron cramps used to brace the shrouds on a ship. See an image here.) During his narrative, Farragut refers to the Essex Junior, which was a British whaler captured the previous year and rechristened by the Americans to assist in their attacks on British vessels.

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During the action I was like “Paddy in the cat-harpins,” a man on occasions. I performed the duties of Captain’s aid, quarter-gunner, powder-boy, and in fact did everything that was required of me. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

Storm and Shipwreck

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence

Interesting Links

Sunken Sunset Exhibit: Hamilton Scourge (City of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)

Exploring a 200-year-old shipwreck in Lake Ontario (Canadian Geographic)

Previous Story of the Week selection
• “‘Old Ironsides’ Captures HMS Guerrière,” Moses Smith

Buy the book
The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, newspaper and magazine articles, memoirs, poems, sermons, and military reports • 928 pages
List price: $40.00
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Detail from Ship at Sea (also known as Shipwreck), 1833, by American marine painter Thomas Birch (1779–1851), who is especially well known for his paintings of naval battles from the War of 1812. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum.

In July 1843 James Fenimore Cooper was finishing up his latest novel, Wyandotté, when he wrote to his publisher to let him know he had already begun working on a new project:

. . . I have made great progress in a new book, of entirely new character. It will be called ‘Ned Myers; or the life of a tar.’ This is real biography, intended to represent the experience, wrecks, battles, escapes, and career of a seaman who has been in all sorts of vessels, from a man of war to a smuggler of opium in China. The facts are these. Near forty years ago I went to sea before the mast, to fit myself for the navy. Last winter I got a letter [from Ned], who, then a lad, had been my ship mate in a long trading voyage. . . .

Ned Myers (born Edward Robert Meyers) was a thirteen-year-old apprentice aboard the American merchant ship Stirling when the sixteen-year-old Cooper signed up in 1806 for a yearlong voyage to England and Spain. The two became good friends during the voyage but afterward lost touch as each followed his own career—Myers almost entirely at sea and Cooper mostly on land. On January 23, 1843, Myers wrote to the famous writer, asking if Cooper were the sailor he knew from the Stirling. “I am your old shipmate, Ned,” the novelist responded.

Myers subsequently stayed at Cooperstown for five months, and Cooper transcribed the sailor’s stories and transformed these conversations into Ned Myers, which Cooper composed as if it were an autobiography. “By Cooper’s tally, Myers had been a crew member of seventy-two different vessels, some in which he made several voyages,” summarizes historian William S. Dudley. “When adding to that number the ships in which Ned was a prisoner or civilian passenger, the total may have been closer to one hundred.”

When the book was finished, Cooper found his friend a job at the Brooklyn navy yard—the same location where, thirty years earlier, Myers had enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of the War of 1812. He volunteered to serve under Commodore Isaac Chauncey on the USS Scourge in Lake Ontario, one of fifteen ships forming the Great Lakes Squadron. The Scourge had been built as a merchant schooner, confiscated by the U.S. Navy for the war effort, and hastily converted to a makeshift military vessel. Two hundred years ago, on August 8, the Scourge and another ship, the Hamilton, unexpectedly encountered a summer squall while patrolling the lake, and the following selection describes the sailors’ terrifying and tragic night.

In 1973 Daniel Nelson, a Canadian dentist, used sonar to locate the remains of both ships, resting three hundred feet below the lake’s surface. A decade later, a team of scientists sponsored by the National Geographic Society used underwater equipment to photograph the wreckage of both ships, which were found to be in remarkably well-preserved condition.

There is a postscript to the biographical account in Cooper’s book: After the publication of Ned Myers, Cooper gave his friend part of the proceeds, and the book’s eponymous hero flourished for a few years. He settled down and married a widow with children (one of whom was hired by the Coopers as a domestic servant), and at least one additional child was born to the couple. Unfortunately, Ned’s new life didn’t last; he died in 1849 after a bout of heavy drinking. Cooper continued to look after the Myers family after Ned’s death and added a provision in his own will for their care.

Notes: The above excerpt from the letter and some of the biographical data about Ned Myers are from The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper: Volume IV (1840–1844), edited by James Franklin Beard and published in 1964. On page 290 of the selection, the term Davy is a reference to Davy Jones, the legendary devil-ghost of the sea.

*   *   *

I was soon asleep, as sound as if lying in the bed of a king. How long my nap lasted, or what took place in the interval, I cannot say. I awoke, however, in consequence of large drops of rain falling on my face. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

“Old Ironsides” Captures HMS Guerrière

Moses Smith (1783–1870)
From The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence

Interesting Links
Why America’s fledgling Navy vanquished the Royal Navy so often during the War of 1812 (David Hanna, Reader’s Almanac)

Interview: An American perspective on the War of 1812

A recipe for switchel (Hillbilly Housewife)

Previous Story of the Week selections by Anderson
“Destruction of the Tea in Boston,” John Adams
“Damn the Torpedoes!” 
Helen Lawrenson

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The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence
Dozens of letters, speeches, diary entries, newspaper and magazine articles, memoir excerpts, poems, sermons, songs, and military reports • 928 pages
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Events honoring the bicentennial of the War of 1812 began in June of last year and will continue through February 16, 2015—the anniversary of the Senate ratification of the Treaty of Ghent. To coincide with the 32-month series of commemorations, The Library of America has just issued The War of 1812: Writings from America’s Second War of Independence, a collection of eyewitness accounts and historical documents about our nation’s first declared war.

Many of the war’s famous battles occurred at sea—even though the still-young United States didn’t have much of a navy. David Hanna, author of Knights of the Sea: The True Story of the Boxer and the Enterprise and the War of 1812, summarizes the situation at the outset of the war:

One of the remarkable things about the War of 1812 at sea (and on the Great Lakes) was how well the youthful U.S. Navy performed against the reputedly omnipotent Royal Navy. No one expected much from a navy that was outnumbered by a ratio of fifty to one. President James Madison claimed the war was about freedom of the seas, but in reality he was more concerned with expanding America’s frontiers and winning the 1812 election, then only months away.

Hanna offers two of several reasons American ships prevailed so frequently:

The wars against the Barbary pirates during the administration of Thomas Jefferson had served as an incomparable school for young American officers. . . . At that time, American crews were composed entirely of volunteers—their counterparts in the Royal Navy were, by contrast, virtually maritime slaves.

Moses Smith was one such volunteer. By the time of the famed battle between the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) and the British frigate Guerrière, the 29-year-old sailor had been on the American ship for a year; his responsibility during the 35-minute battle was to sponge out cannons between firings.

Early in Smith’s gripping narrative describing the encounter, he refers to a sea battle known as the Little Belt Affair—one of many events that led to the war. Two months earlier Guerrière had stopped a U.S. ship and detained a member of its crew. Incensed, the commander of another American ship, President, decided to track down the offending ship and encountered instead the much smaller sloop-of-war Little Belt. Accounts differ as to who fired the first shot, but, no match for the frigate President, the British ship sustained heavy damage, with nine dead and twenty-three wounded. The unequal contest became a rallying cry for the British navy during the war.

Note: Switchel is a beverage made from vinegar and molasses

Having learned which way the Guerriere was steering when last seen, we crowded all sail in that direction. We steered a north-east course for several hours, until the morning of the 19th of August, 1812. This was the day of the battle. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.