Consequences of the War of 1812

Here is the final post in our series on the War of 1812, dealing with the situation of Britain, the United States, Canada, and Native Americans of the western frontier in the aftermath of the war.

After the Treaty of Ghent took effect in February 1815, the U.S. and Britain were officially at peace. But so had they been in 1812, when the war started; was anything different?

On the surface, the answer was clearly “no.” Neither the U.S. nor Great Britain gave up any territory during the war or as a result of the peace. That meant Britain was still sitting on the western frontier (at that time, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc.). The British were free to continue to harrass U.S. settlement of its territories, and to ally with Native Americans to do so.

But they did not. The British no longer needed to keep the U.S. off-balance and in check. Now that there was no war between Britain and France for the Americans to join with France in fighting, Britain stopped doing all the things that had led the Americans to declare war: impressing U.S. sailors, capturing U.S. ships, harassing U.S. settlement. Britain concentrated its defensive efforts on maintaining Canada, and left the U.S. alone. Indeed, Britain was now anxious to engage in its profitable trade with the U.S. once again, and had no desire to weaken the new nation.

The U.S., for its part, was glad to go back to the status quo land-wise, no longer certain of its ability or desire to conquer Canada. With British pressure off the western frontier, the U.S. could focus on re-establishing its strength and reputation after the disastrous and embarrassing losses of the war. Washington DC was rebuilt and a modern navy was constructed—no more relying on gunboats to defend the U.S. coast or forts.

The areas of the U.S. that suffered after the war were New England and the Deep South. New England had opposed the war vigorously throughout and had been seen to ally itself with Britain; after the war, which most Americans saw as a massive victory (mostly because of the Battle of New Orleans), there was hostility toward the traitorous region. New England states had held a conference from December 1814-January 1815 at which they asked the federal government to give them back full control over their militia and their finances (they didn’t want to participate in the blockade or war taxation). Word spread that the New England conference was actually a secession conference, that New England wanted to leave the Union, and popular anger at the region was inflamed. It would take a few decades for New England to regain its standing in the eyes of the nation. New York took over as the most important city in the northeast, and Boston and New England took a backseat to that thriving metropolis.

In the Deep South, slaveholders had seen their fantasy that enslaved black Americans loved slavery exploded before their eyes by the numbers of enslaved people who ran away to join the British war effort. Promised their freedom if they did so, black Americans put themselves at great risk to aid the British. (They would be cruelly disappointed by their ally, for Britain launched a few very feeble efforts to resettle black Americans in howling wildernesses in Canada and overseas.) Slaveholders tried to convince themselves and the nation that this was an anomaly, but Denmark Vesey’s and Nat Turner’s slave uprisings in 1822 and 1831 showed it was not, and the South clamped down on enslaved Americans even harder.

Native Americans were losers in the war on a par with enslaved black Americans. The British withdrew their financial and military aid from Native Americans on the western frontier, who were left to face increasing white settlement with no leader to unify them and no money or ammo to fight.  Native Americans either moved west or lived in segregation with white settlers. Their plight would worsen when the hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson, became president; an inveterate “Indian” hater, Jackson would set out to destroy all Native American groups within the U.S., most famously when he overturned a Supreme Court order protecting the Cherokees and sent them on their death march from Georgia to Oklahoma in 1838-9.

So at the end of the war we see the U.S. in a position to grow stronger and richer thanks to the constant threat of French or British harrassment being removed. Britain is the undisputed superpower of the world, and has no need to hassle the U.S. Slavery is threatened but viciously preserved in the southern U.S., the northeastern U.S. loses its pre-eminence over New York, and Native Americans are miminalized in the western U.S.

The War of 1812 did not have to happen. If the U.S. could  have held off from entering into a trade agreement with France that was bound to provoke Great Britain to war, if the U.S. could have made itself as invisible as possible, suffering insults at sea and at home, from 1794 to 1814, the Napoleonic Wars would have ended on cue and suddenly the pressure would have been off and the nation could have gone straight to being Britain’s good trading partner and skipped the mostly disastrous war.

But 20 years is a long time to be insulted and invisible, and really, if the U.S. had allowed Britain to push it around entirely for 20 years, would the U.S. have seemed so desirable a partner by 1815? Perhaps not. The war itself strengthened the U.S. in important ways. The war taught the states that they needed to shake off their chronic unwillingness give the federal government any money and put out the cash needed to build an Army and Navy to defend itself. It taught the U.S. that it was not yet a major player in world affairs. It taught the U.S. that diplomacy was as important as an army and navy. Last, the War of 1812, despite the complaints and isolation of New England during the war, taught the U.S. that it was one unit, not just a group of unaffiliated states. It lived or died as a cooperative unit. The “Era of Good Feelings” that followed the war was the result of feeling that the states had been more closely welded together into a nation. The continuing fight over slavery would take over 40 years to rip that nation apart again.

The War of 1812 is not well-remembered today. It is a blip between the Revolution and the Mexican or even the Civil War. But the U.S. had a very great deal to lose in the War of 1812, and came very close to losing it all. This near-miss is worth a closer look.

The Burning of Washington and the Battle of New Orleans

Welcome to part 3 of our series on the War of 1812. Here we focus on two epic moments in that conflict. The first gave us our national anthem, the second gave us a controversial president.

We covered the attack on Washington briefly in the last post, Overview of the War of 1812. The British navy had been terrorizing the Atlantic coast, particularly the Chesapeake Bay area, from the start of the war. The U.S. had few warships with which to challenge the British, who sometimes sent detachments to coastal towns offering them the choice of paying a fine or being bombarded. The British moved up the Chesapeake Bay in the summer of 1814, heading not really toward Washington but toward Baltimore.

Baltimore was a thriving port and an important U.S. city. The British plan was to destroy Washington for the symbolic value of it, then overcome nearby Baltimore to drive home the final nail in the coffin of U.S. resistance. On August 24 a battle was fought at Bladensburg, Maryland, just miles from Washington, between desperate Americans and the determined British. It was a defeat for the Americans. President James Madison had left the White House to watch the battle from a short distance away, and when it became apparent that the British were victorious, and heading directly for the capital, a messenger was sent to the White House to let the First Lady, Dolly Madison, know that she had to leave immediately.

First Lady Madison did not do so. With nerves of steel, she collected important documents from the president’s office, and with the British vanguard in sight, she finally took the portrait of George Washington from the president’s walls and fled, her carriage just escaping the attack on her home.

The British intent was to destroy the city as completely as possible. One British soldier, George Gleig, happily described the scene in an 1826 history: “[We] proceeded, without  a moment’s delay, to burn and destroy everything in the most distant degree connected with government. In this general devastation were included the Senate House, the President’s palace [the White House], an extensive dockyard and arsenal… the blazing of houses, ships, and stores, the report of exploding magazines, and the crash of falling roofs informed them, as they proceeded, of what was going forward. You can conceive nothing finer than the sight which met them as they drew near to the town. The sky was brilliantly illuminated by the different conflagrations, and a dark red light was thrown upon the road, sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his comrade’s face.”

Washington was quickly vanquished, and British sights set on Baltimore. The attack was two-pronged: a land attack on North Point and a siege of Fort McHenry in the harbor. Major General Samuel Smith stopped the British at North Point, in an unexpected and certainly unusual American victory. All now waited to see how the siege would go at the important fort. Major George Armistead was in charge of U.S. defenses there. Bombardment of the fort by British ships began on September 13th. Nearly 2,000 cannonballs were launched at the fort over 24 hours, but damage was light.

The British commander decided to land troops west of Fort McHenry, hoping to lure the U.S. army away from North Point, but Armistead discovered them and opened fire, scattering the landing party of British soldiers. Early on the morning of September 14, the giant American flag that local seamstress Mary Pickersgill and her daughter had made was raised over the fort, to replace the one torn apart the night before. Seeing that the fort still stood in American hands, British land forces withdrew and returned to the ships. British General Cochrane then withdrew the fleet to prepare for the attack on New Orleans.

Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer who had gone on a mercy mission to the British to gain the release of an American doctor who had been captured but had previously tended British soldiers. Key was on a truce ship in Baltimore Harbor during the bombardment. When morning dawned on the 14th, and Key saw his country’s flag still flying over Fort McHenry, he wrote the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the back of a letter in a paroxsym of joy. It became the U.S. national anthem in 1931.

Now to the Battle of New Orleans. The goal of the British was not just to capture the port city, but to do so and then lay claim to all of the territory included in the Louisiana Purchase.

Cochrane’s fleet arrived from the failed attack on Baltimore on December 12, 1814. They anchored in the Gulf of Mexico and planned their attack to capture Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne surrounding New Orleans. Once again, the U.S. had only gunboats to defend its territory. Lake Borgne was captured by the British on December 14.

On December 23, the British reached the Mississippi River, only six miles south of New Orleans; rather than attack immediately, their commander waited for reinforcements and was surprised by U.S. soldiers under Andrew Jackson. After a brief but devastating attack, the Americans pulled back to a canal four miles from New Orleans and fortified it. The British made small attacks on the earthworks on December 28, but the first heavy attack came on January 1, 1815. The earthworks were partially destroyed, and the British ran out of ammunition. British Major-General Pakenham decided to wait for reinforcements before launching another attack.

It came on January 8. The British advanced early that morning in a heavy fog, but that fog lifted as they came upon the earthworks and the Americans began to fire. Lt. Col. Thomas Mullins, leading a British regiment, had forgotten to bring the ladders his men would need to scale the defenses, and as the British stalled in front of the earthworks they were mowed down by American fire. As different groups of British soldiers crossed the battlefield, one managed to briefly overtake a section of the earthworks but could not hold it without reinforcements. The Americans, however, received reinforcements from the 7th Infantry, and before the battle was over most of the British officers  leading the charge were dead.

The victory was significant, but the battle for the city was not over. On January 9, the British began a 10-day bombardment of Fort St. Philip. The fort held, and the British withdrew to Biloxi, Mississippi. They were preparing to attack the port city of Mobile when word came that the war had in fact ended before the Battle of New Orleans had even begun. Jackson was a hero, and Americans rejoiced.

Next time: after the war

Overview of the War of 1812

Welcome to part 2 of our series on the War of 1812. Here we look at the fighting of the war.

For very different reasons, neither the U.S. nor Great Britain really hit the ground running once war was declared. Britain was in the midst of its French wars, and its navy was blockading Europe while its army was fighting the Peninsular War in Spain. There were barely 6,000 British soldiers in all of Canada when the War of 1812 began. Because no soldiers could be spared from the battles in Europe, Britain took a defensive position with its army in Canada and sent a few warships across the Atlantic to do battle on the coast.

The U.S. was unprepared for war because it was poor, the U.S. Army had fewer than 12,000 soldiers in it, and when the federal government tried to expand the army, Americans resisted. They were happy to serve at their pleasure in their local state militias, but would not volunteer for the Army. Another major problem was the refusal of New England to join the war effort. The embargo on trade with France and England, first imposed by Jefferson and reinstituted by Madison in 1808, wrecked the trade economy New England was based on, ruining banks, merchants, and the livelihoods of countless ships’ crews. Thus New England did not support the war when it came, seeing it as another plan by Washington to ruin the New England economy. Without the fountainhead of revolutionary spirit—and shipbuilding—on board, whipping up support for the war would be difficult.

The United States’ real aim was to capture British Canada. The U.S. had always hoped to incorporate Canada into the union, and during the congress to write the Articles of Confederation in 1781 had left the door open to Canadians, saying that any time they wanted to join the union they would be immediately accepted as a state. The Canadians had not taken the U.S. up on this deal, and now the U.S. hoped to incorporate them by force.

In August 1812, the American army under General William Hull invaded Canada but was defeated, and the British chased him back to what is now Michigan, promptly capturing both Fort Dearborn and Fort Detroit with the aid of Canadian militia and Native American forces led by Tecumseh. Losing Detroit was a blow. It was the most powerful American fort in the western territories. If the U.S. continued to lose its forts in the west, it would be easy for Britain to claim those lands permanently (which was the British plan). Another invasion attampt ended in defeat for the Americans  in October at the Battle of Queenston Heights.

Despite the attractions of conquering Canada, the U.S. was forced to turn its attentions west and east rather than  north. In the west, the Americans were struggling to keep control of the frontier from the British and Native Americans. In the east, they were trying to end the British blockade of their coast and prevent the capture of their capitol city, Washington DC. The U.S. raced to build warships to take on the British Navy, but until those ships were ready the Americans had to rely on small gunboats, which was disastrous. The famous attack on Washington, which we’ll cover in the next post in more detail, was only the most important and devastating of many British attacks on the east coast. The British Navy even sent messages to seaside towns in the Chesapeake region offering them the choice of paying huge bribes to the British or being burned down. The U.S. federal government was powerless to protect its own territory east or west, and would have to rely on a small, inexperienced army and an at-first mostly civilian navy to win the day.

That private navy provided the one bit of success the Americans had in the first year of the war. Privateers were sent out to attack British shipping, from Maine to the West Indies. Owners of  private merchant ships had a long history of smuggling, stretching back to the 1760s, especially in New England. While New Englanders didn’t support the war, they couldn’t ignore a chance to make back some of the money they were losing in the embargo. Privateering, then, did most of the damage to British interests in the first year of the war.

In the west, future President William Henry Harrison led an attempt to retake Detroit, but part of his army lost the battle of Frenchtown or River Raisin in January 1813; 60 American prisoners were killed there by North American allies of the British.  In May 1813, the British moved to capture Fort Meigs in Ohio, and while U.S. army forces were defeated by Native American forces there, the fort managed to stave off capture, and a siege set in which led many Native American soldiers to eventually leave the area. Hoping to keep his invaluable Native American fighting force, British General Procter mounted a second attack on Fort Meigs in July, but it was rebuffed. Procter and Tecumseh then attacked Fort Stephenson, also in Ohio, but suffered a serious defeat, and the war in Ohio ended.

Naval battles in the first year of the war were not fought on the Atlantic Coast but on the Great Lakes, those watery territories between the U.S. and Canada. The famous American Captain Oliver Hazard Perry won the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, carrying his battle flag which read “DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP”  and reporting back to Harrison after his victory “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Perry’s motto “Don’t give up the ship!” (the dying words of one of his fellow officers) would be used by U.S. sailors during WWII.

The victory gave the U.S. control of Lake Erie, which prompted the British to flee from Fort Detroit. Emboldened, the U.S. made another invasion attempt on Canada under Harrison at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813. At last the Americans had a victory, winning the battle and stripping the British of their most valuable ally, Tecumseh. When Tecumseh was killed in the battle, the alliance of Native Americans that he inspired and controlled dissolved. The British tried to keep the allies together, but they were unable to provide them with weapons from the east now that Lake Erie was in American hands. A further attempt to conquer Canada, however, ended in defeat at Crysler’s Farm in November 1813, and the U.S. gave up the attempt permanently, happy to focus on keeping control of the western forts.

1814 brought important changes. The Napoleonic Wars finally ended, leaving Britain free to send more men and ships to fight in America but also giving them less reason to do so. Now that there was no need to worry about the U.S. allying in battle against Britain with France, there was no need to blockade the American coast or impress U.S. sailors or seize U.S. ships. The U.S., for its part, no longer believed it was possible to conquer Canada, and desperately needed to remove the British threat from its coast and western frontier.

The Treaty of Ghent was signed in what is now Belgium on December 24, 1814, ending the war. News of the peace took two months to reach America, during which time fighting went on and the British lost a very important battle to take the vital western port city of New Orleans on January 8, 1815 (which we will also look at in more depth in the next post).

So we see that the actual fighting of the war took place mostly in the west, as Britain tried to take possession of  the U.S. territory it had refused to leave after the Revolutionary War, and that the great naval battles really took place on the Great Lakes, and that the British did the most damage to American morale and self-confidence on the Chesapeake coast.

Next time: the burning of Washington and the Battle of New Orleans

What caused the War of 1812?

Welcome to the first in a series on the War of 1812—the United States’ most forgotten war (even more forgotten than the Korean War). Here we look at its causes.

The years following the end of the American Revolutionary War were turbulent. France underwent its own revolution beginning in 1789, and that nation quickly descended into terror. Great Britain organized seven different international coalitions between 1793 and 1815 to overthrow the French revolutionary government, which was led from 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte.

During this period, many Americans thought it only right that the United States go to war on France’s behalf, returning the favor France had done them by coming to the Americans’ aid during the American Revolution. The full extent of the Terror in France was not known to most Americans, and even those like Thomas Jefferson who did know about the despotic rulers in Paris admired their spirit, believing it to be truly revolutionary. The terror, they reasoned, was a temporary over-exuberance of revolutionary spirit and would soon settle down. Under the leadership of George Washington, however, the U.S. would not enter a foreign war. Washington knew the nation had no money to fight a war, and was still fighting to bring its own citizens under the control of the federal government (see the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794).

But the U.S. could not keep out of the war. Both Britain and France saw the U.S. as a powerful tool to use for their own benefit. Britain, hoping to keep the U.S. from allying with France, offered the Jay Treaty, which the U.S. ratified in 1794. In it, Britain promised to remove its soldiers from six forts in the Great Lakes region (which was U.S. territory), and to pay over $10 million to U.S. shipowners whose ships had been seized by Britain in 1793-4. The ships had been taken as part of Britain’s ongoing efforts to sabotage U.S. growth and expansion (Britain was also helping Native Americans fight U.S. settlement in Ohio). The seizure of the ships had led the U.S. to embargo trade with Britain.

Afraid that the embargo was a sign that the U.S. would ally formally with France, Britain offered the Jay Treaty. The U.S. accepted it (over Jefferson’s strenuous objections), and gave Britain most favored nation trading status in return.

In its turn, France saw ratification of the Jay Treaty as a sign that the U.S. would formally ally itself with Britain. Outraged, France retaliated against the U.S., seizing 300 U.S. ships bound for British trading ports. Worse, when the U.S. sent envoys to Paris to negotiate the ships’ return, three French agents representing their government demanded humiliating bribes from the Americans that would have to be paid just for the privilege of speaking to the French: 50,000 pounds sterling (the U.S. still used the pound as one of its currencies, especially in trade with Great Britain), a $10 million loan, $250,000 for the personal use of the French foreign minister, and a letter of apology for the Jay Treaty from President John Adams.

When news of this insult reached the U.S., Americans demanded that President Adams declare war on France. The “X, Y, Z Affair,” as it was known, was too infuriating to bear. But Adams, like Washington before him, skilfully refused to be drawn into war, and managed to settle the dispute through diplomacy. Adams knew the U.S. was still in no shape to get involved in a war between the two superpowers of the day.

The price of British peace was high. British navy ships routinely stopped U.S. trade and Merchant Marine ships and impressed their crews (this meant forcing the sailors to work basically as slaves aboard British ships). Impressed men never saw their homes again. They were forced to labor for the British navy—often to impress other Americans. Britain also continued to work with Native Americans in Canada and northwestern territories of the U.S. to overthrow the federal government and stop U.S. settlement. According to both the treaty ending the Revolution and the Jay Treaty, the British were supposed to withdraw soldiers from U.S. territory, but did not. The British also tried to stop the U.S. from trading with France.

By 1808, James Madison was president of the United States. One of his first international actions was to stop trade with Britain and France. This was finessed in May 1810 to a statement that the U.S. would trade with whichever nation accepted U.S. neutrality. In France, Napoleon seemed to accept this deal, but he did so only to get the U.S. to embargo trade with Britain. With Britain still in mind as the natural enemy of the U.S., many Americans became “War Hawks” at this point, urging war with Britain. In Congress, War Hawks like John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay pushed Madison to declare war.

Madison knew the odds of winning a war against Britain were no better than they had been in Washington’s or Adams’ day. But continued British impressment and ship seizures, combined with France’s seeming support of U.S. neutrality, led him to bow to public and political pressure.  On June 1, 1812, Madison asked Congress to declare war on Britain. It was just 29 years after the Treaty of Paris had ended the Revolutionary War.

Next time: How and where the war was fought

Gay marriage defeated in Maine

The voter referendum held in Maine on November 3, 2009 on whether to revoke the law recently passed there allowing gay Americans to legally marry was marked by claims that the people—rather than the courts or the state legislature—should decide whether gay people should marry. After state judiciaries in Iowa and Vermont in April 2009 legalized marriage for gay people, the usual outraged claims that the judiciary had gone too far filled the air. “We’re not governed by the courts,” sputtered one angry man on the radio.

This basic misunderstanding of the U.S. government leads me to repost this article, originally written in 2008 when California’s courts ruled on marriage for gay people. It applies to Maine, Vermont, Iowa, California, and any other state whose court decides in favor of allowing gay people to marry:

The California Supreme Court’s decision that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional has been met with the by-now common complaint that the Court overstepped its bounds, trampled the wishes of the voters, and got into the legislation business without a permit.

A review of the constitutionally described role of the judiciary is in order.

The famous commentator on American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, talked a great deal in his books Democracy in America about the tyranny of the majority. This is when majority rule—the basis of democracy—ends up perverting democracy by forcing injustice on the minority of the public.

For example, slavery was an example of the tyranny of the majority. Most Americans in the slave era were white and free. White and free people were the majority, and they used their majority power to keep slavery from being abolished by the minority of Americans who wanted to abolish it. The rights of black Americans were trampled by the tyranny of the majority.

Before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the majority of Americans were fine with segregated schools. They used their majority power to oppress the minority of Americans who were black, or who were white and wanted desegregation.

In each example, the majority is imposing and enforcing injustice which is incompatible with democracy. They are tyrannizing rather than governing.

The judiciary was created to break this grip of majority tyranny. The legislature—Congress—cannot usually break majority tyranny because it is made up of people popularly elected by the majority. But the appointed judiciary can break majority tyranny because its sole job is not to reflect the wishes of the people but to interpret the Constitution.

If the judiciary finds that a law made by the legislature perverts democracy and imposes the tyranny of the majority, it can and must strike that law down. This is what happened in California. The court found that although the majority of Californians (as evidenced by a previous referendum) had voted to ban gay marriage, that majority was enforcing and imposing injustice on the minority. So the court found the ban unconstitutional.

This is not beyond the scope of the judiciary, it’s exactly what it is meant to do.

I heard a commentator yesterday saying the California court should have left the issue to “the prerogative of the voters”. But if the voters’ prerogative is to oppress someone else, then the court does not simply step aside and let this happen. In the case of Maine, someone claimed that “using the courts as a battering ram to push gay marriage will only turn people against it [gay marriage].” The same could be said—and was said—about desegregation of schools. Popular approval is not the sole measure of a law in a democracy; it simply can’t be.

The same people who rage against the partial and biased justices who lifted this ban are generally the same people who would celebrate justices who imposed a ban on abortion. People who cry out for impartiality are generally only applying it to cases they oppose. See Dispatches from the Culture Wars for an excellent post demonstrating this.

So that’s what the judiciary does: it prevents the tyranny of the majority from enforcing injustice in a democracy. Like it or not, the “will of the people” is not always sacred, and sometimes must be opposed in the name of equality.

What happened at Valley Forge?

“Valley Forge” is another of those iconic phrases used to describe American history that fewer Americans understand than one might think. It is hardly ever explained; “Valley Forge,” someone will say, using the two words to convey worlds of meaning. The Revolution is Yorktown, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and Valley Forge.

Of those three moments in the war, Valley Forge at least conjures up a concrete image: barefoot soldiers leaving footprints of blood in the snow. We are urged to study the bravery and devotion of those patriots, and with good reason. But first, some important questions must be answered. Why on earth was the Continental Army in such bad shape during the winter encampment of 1777-8? Was it incompetence on the part of their commander, General Washington, or unconcern? Or was it just the way the Americans experienced the war, always worse off than the British army?

Let’s start at the beginning. In the fall of 1777, the British had taken Philadelphia, the American capital. Washington’s army had attempted to stop the British, led by General Howe, at the Brandywine River, but failed. Now the British Army occupied Philadelphia, and settled in there for the winter.

The Continental Army, as it had the previous winter, wanted to stay close to the British during the winter hiatus. That way, when fighting resumed in the spring, the Continentals would be ready to stop the British from any further moves. Washington decided to make winter camp at Valley Forge.

Remember, at that time there was no shudder of doom at the very name of Valley Forge. And in fact, it was a good location. Valley Forge was in a settled area, where local people could provide food and clothing if they wished (Washington never forced locals to contribute), and it was the area where the British would have gone outside Philadelphia to forage for food. Cities weren’t like they are today, with abundant food through the winter. The British Army would quickly go through the stores of food in town, and would want to go into the countryside to hunt game, just as the people of Philadelphia would have done. Washington made that a lot harder. Valley Forge was also very well situated for defense, making it very difficult for the British to pull off an off-season surprise attack.

So his army began to build cabins. It was December, and while there was never a lot of snow—our mental image of huge drifts freezing the men is incorrect—it was constantly wet and cold. The Continentals were worn out from their fall campaign, low on supplies, and wearing pretty tattered clothes. Their marching had torn apart their shoes. And while it was never easy for Congress to supply the army (it levied no taxes and had no power over the colonies), it was now impossible for Congress to do anything to help. Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, had been forced to flee when the town fell. Washington’s army was on its own.

The local people could do little to help. The British had raided their towns before the end of the fall campaign, taking their stores of food and ammunition and burning some houses.

So the Continental soldiers began building their cabins, which they did very quickly. Shelter was not so much a problem as food and clothing. The army quartermaster, Thomas Mifflin, did a terrible job finding supplies for the men. He was replaced by General Nathanael Green, who did a much better job of coaxing contributions from local people and doing deals with merchants in unoccupied cities. The soldiers never actually starved, but the food they got was often lacking in nutrition, and there was never enough. Weak and dispirited, the man let all rules of hygiene go, leaving the rotting carcasses of horses (dead from fatigue and little food) lay throughout the camp and refusing to use latrines (relieving themselves throughout the camp). The poor diet and bad hygiene made it easier for soldiers to get sick, and dysentery, typhus,  and other camp diseases took many lives.

The stench of bodily waste and rotting horses finally drove Washington to issue an order than any man seen not using a latrine would get five lashes of the whip. Washington was very  much a part of the camp. He did not retreat to officers’ quarters. He visited the makeshift hospitals and walked the camps daily. He also had 3-4,000 men vaccinated against smallpox at a time when most people did not believe in vaccination because they did not understand this medical innovation.

He also took their side. Washington wrote a letter on December 23, 1777, describing the terrible state of the men—and angrily blasting the ridiculous attitude of some “Gentlemen” who ignore their hardships:

“[W]e find Gentlemen …reprobating the [decision to make a winter camp rather than attack Philadelphia] as much as if they thought Men [the Soldiery] were made of Stocks or Stones and equally insensible of frost and Snow and moreover, as if they conceived it [easily] practicable for an inferior Army under the disadvantages I have describ’d ours to be to confine a superior one (in all respects well appointed, and provided for a Winters Campaign) within the City of Phila., and [to protect] the States of Pensa., Jersey, &ca. but what makes this matter still more extraordinary in my eye is, that these very Gentn. who were well apprized of the nakedness of the Troops …advised me, near a Month ago, to postpone the execution of a Plan, I was about to adopt  for seizing Cloathes… [they] think a Winters Campaign and the covering these States from the Invasion of an Enemy so easy a business. I can assure those Gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fire side than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and Snow without Cloaths or Blankets; however, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked, and distressed Soldier, I feel superabundantly for them, and from my Soul pity those miseries, wch. it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent…”

The soldiers were not alone, though we picture them in complete, miserable isolation. They were helped by women and even children, wives and children of soldiers who were known as “camp followers.” Some women decided to join their husbands in the off-season, when there was less work to do at the farm at home, and their ceaseless, voluntary labor and care saved many men. Women and older children did laundry, worked in hospitals, foraged for food, cooked, wrote letters, and generally eased the suffering at camp even as they shared in it. It is estimated that about 500 women and children camped at Valley Forge, raising spirits and preventing more deaths.

In the spring of 1778, an unsung hero arrived at camp. Christopher Ludwig was a baker in Philadelphia who came to Valley Forge with 60-70 men and started baking. He used his own supplies and ovens, and he refused to take payment. He baked bread night and day so that every soldier would get the daily pound of fresh bread he had been promised by Congress. Fish also started running, and the soldiers went fishing every day to round out their meager diet.

They needed the extra food. The Baron von Steuben had arrived in February to drill the army, and he was untiring in his efforts to get them ready to face the British army and win a set battle. The tired and still under-nourished men withstood hours of training and were much improved by May, when they heard the marvelous news that France had joined the war on their side.

When at last it came time to break camp, the Continental Army was still mostly intact. The hordes of desertions even the most optimistic observer would have expected had not taken place, and while there had been many deaths (we don’t know how many; some say 3,000 men) from disease, those who were left were relatively well-fed and very well-trained, and ready for a spring campaign. The survivors were also even more loyal to their commander. Washington had shared their terrible experiences, living in a cabin and suffering cold and hunger and endangering himself by visiting the sick. His wife Martha had been a camp follower, serving not only her husband but enlisted men as well, working alongside other American women to relieve the suffering of the soldiers.

The British left Philadelphia in June. Now that France was in the war, they feared a French naval attack from the east far more than an American attack inland, and they removed to New York. Washington broke camp in June, leaving Valley Forge for a site closer to Philadelphia, but he dispatched men to go back to Valley Forge and clean it up. This kind of consideration for local people was unheard of, and endeared the general to the common American people.

The Continentals re-occupied Philadelphia once the British left, then followed the army and waged battle at Monmouth Courthouse on June 28. The newly trained Continentals were fighting well, but bad leadership by General Lee was costing them the battle until Washington found out Lee was retreating. Furious, he overtook Lee and led the men back into the attack, forcing a British retreat.

It wasn’t quite a win, but it was a powerful affirmation for the Continental army that had suffered so much at Valley Forge. We see that camping there was not some terrible mistake, Washington was not an uncaring ogre, and the men were not abandoned in their suffering. Valley Forge was a good location, Washington was a good leader, and hundreds of average Americans volunteered to help their army. It was really the hardship of having the capital of Philadelphia occupied, and Congress scattered, that ensured a terrible winter camp for the army in 1777-8.

The bad news is that the next winter camp of 1778-9 was even worse. This time the Continentals were in two places: part of the army led by Washington camped in Middlebrook, New Jersey (to guard against the British leaving New York to the south), and had a fairly easy winter camp. But the part led by General Putnam encamped in Connecticut (to keep the British from leaving New York to the east) had a terrible winter. The usual lack of supplies was causing problems, but the army felt experienced enough to deal with this when suddenly, one of the biggest blizzards in New England history struck in December. Foraging was impossible, and the cabins could not keep out the cold. It was a terrible winter camp that made Valley Forge seem bearable.

Why don’t we remember “Putnam in Connecticut” like we remember “Valley Forge”? Maybe it’s because Washington wasn’t in Connecticut, and we only remember our biggest heroes. But the next time you’re near Danbury, Connecticut, pay a visit to Putnam State Park and remember all the heroes of our war for independence.

Why did Washington cross the Delaware?

We all learn this phrase—Washington crossing the Delaware—in school in the U.S., but few of us remember what it refers to. It was actually a key moment in the Revolutionary War.

Washington’s Continental Army had been retreating almost from the moment it was formed. From August  to October 1776 Washington had been steadily chased out of New York, from Long Island north to Manhattan and then across the Hudson River at the northernmost point of Manhattan to New Jersey. From November through December 7, Washington’s army was hounded by the British all the way through New Jersey, with the Continentals finally crossing the Delaware River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania.

At this point, the Continental Army seemed like it might be permanently beaten. The British saw no threat, and set up winter camps at Bordentown, Trenton, and Princeton in New Jersey.

In the 18th century, armies shut down operations for the winter months, as marching was difficult, food supplies low, and surprise hard to come by. The Continental Army followed this custom too, and would likely have made camp where it was in Pennsylvania without any further action had Washington not believed that the army desperately needed a victory, not only for its own morale, but for the sake of the fledgling nation.

He decided to make a surprise attack on the Hessian forces fighting for Britain at Trenton. His army would attack on Christmas Day.

In December 1776 Washington had around 4-6,000 soldiers in his army, although about 1,700 of those men were too sick to fight. The continual retreats had forced the army to leave behind valuable supplies of food and munitions. Two American generals, Gates and Lee, were nearby, and were ordered by Congress to join forces with Washington’s frail army in Pennsylvania, but  neither did so. They each had their reasons, which included the thought that if they could pull off a great victory while Washington languished, one of them might be made commander-in-chief of the American forces.

Another problem for Washington was that many of the soldiers’ enlistments were up on December 31. They would be free to go home at that point, and why wouldn’t they?

Washington had to act quickly and boldly. One step he took to encourage men who might be leaving on the 31st to stay was to have Thomas Paine’s new pamphlet, The American Crisis, read aloud to the army. This is the familiar text we all know the first sentence of:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Hoping that these stirring ideas and his own brave example would do their work, Washington prepared for the attack on Trenton. Early on Christmas Day the army went to the ferry landing on the Delaware and began the long process of being taken across the river as silently as possible. Washington was in the first boat, and found a good landing site for the rest of the men.

You have most likely seen this painting:

It is called “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” and it is a mighty representation of tattered men fording the icy river, Washington standing tall and determined with the new flag behind him. The only real problem with this is Washington standing so tall—tall enough to throw off the balance of the boat and capsize it. He likely sat in the boat with the rest of the men. Otherwise, I think the tattered clothing and preoccupation of the men, few of whom are looking up from their oars, with getting safely across the river are very realistic.

It was not until 3 AM on December 26 that the entire Continental Army got safely across the river. It was snowing and sleeting. Washington broke the army into two columns, leading one with General Nathaniel Greene and putting General John Sullivan in charge of the other. They took parallel paths to Trenton, and fell on the Hessian camp, where some men were sleeping and others still drunkenly celebrating the holiday. No Americans were killed; the camp was taken, and 110 Hessians were killed or wounded. Precious muskets, powder, and bullets were seized, and the Continentals took 1,000 prisoners back with them into Pennsylvania—they did not stay in New Jersey to be attacked by the British at Princeton.

The victory did just what Washington had intended: it raised the morale of the soldiers and the nation. He was not concerned with the jockeying for leadership of Lee and Gates, but his victory sealed his role as commander-in-chief of the army. On December 27, the Continental Congress gave Washington special powers to recruit soldiers and get supplies from the states, to appoint officers, run the army, and arrest any citizens who did not take Continental currency as payment. Washington used these powers for six months, then relinquished them.

A last note on crossing the Delaware and the capture of Trenton: when Washington wrote to Congress with his report on the state of the Army on December 31, he said that “free Negroes who have served in the Army, are very much dissatisfied at being discarded.” Washington allowed those black Americans who wanted to re-enlist to do so. He had originally forbid any black Americans, free or enslaved, to serve in the Continental Army. Like the Union generals who would follow his footsteps 87 years later, Washington learned to see the courage and humanity of enslaved black Americans by virtue of black soldiers’ valor and determination in battle.

So, Washington crossed the Delaware from Pennsylvania to surprise-attack the Hessians at Trenton, New Jersey on Christmas Day, thus keeping the army and the nation’s hopes alive for another season of campaigning in the spring and summer of 1777. It was a very important success, and one that deserves to be remembered in full.

The federal government invents Social Security

Our final post in the series on whether the federal government is capable of guarding the public health and well-being focuses on Social Security.

The reputation of the federal Social Security program is tarnished today because it is being strained by huge numbers of retirees and near-retirees, and there are justifiable fears that it will go bankrupt. But this cannot make us forget how important, how groundbreaking the program was. What, after all, is the fuss all about? Why care if Social Security goes bankrupt? The answer is that the Social Security program created and managed by the federal government was the first, and remains the only, safety net for elderly and other at-risk members of our U.S. citizenry.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was a response to the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the only form of financial support for the elderly was a government pension. You received a pension if you had served in the U.S. armed forces or worked for the U.S. government. This, of course, meant that only men could receive pensions. Widows and children of pensioned men could receive their male relative’s pension once he died, but only if they applied for it. And men who were not veterans or former federal employees had nothing unless their employers offered pensions, which was not usual.

These pensions were nothing to write home about. They were extremely small. Elderly people, widows and children with pensions lived very meagerly, and those without pensions had to have relatives willing to support them and even take them in. If you had no pension and no family to fall back on, you were forced to beg for public charity. End of story.

After the stock market crash in October 1929, many elderly, widows, and children lost their pensions and/or the support of their families. Their families had lost their income and were now penniless as well. It is estimated that by 1934 over half of all elderly Americans were unable to support themselves financially. That’s over half of Americans over 65 living on charity—charity that was drying up fast. Thirty states set up state pensions to try to relieve elderly poverty, but the states themselves were poor and the relief was slight, and only about 3% of elderly Americans were receiving any state money by 1935, when the Social Security Act was passed.

There was resistance to the idea of Social Security. Americans had convinced themselves that they weren’t a people who accepted charity, or even a helping hand, especially from the government. People were reluctant to admit that they had no family to depend on for help. One of the ingenious components of the Act was that it paid the elderly with money taxed on wages, taxes that would begin to be collected in 1937 so payments could begin in 1942. In other words, workers paid into the fund, so that when they retired, they would simply be taking back money they had set aside, rather than taking charity from others. This overcame the reluctance to lose face by taking a handout.

In a way, it wasn’t even the payments the elderly received that were so groundbreaking. It was the idea that the federal government, the government of any nation, would make it one of its responsibilities to provide for people in their old age. Government policies for the poor up to that date had consisted of various “poor laws,” which usually mandated prison for those poor who were deemed able to work but did not have jobs and those unable to work, or work farms/workhouses where the poor performed slave labor. If workers were to be taken care of once they grew too old to work, which was not a popular idea at all, then the companies they had worked for should provide a pension, but no one thought those companies should be forced to do so. Basically, no country thought the elderly poor needed or deserved special care, and in the U.S. there was an especially powerful idea that Americans could take care of themselves that foiled any attempt to help the vulnerable.

The Social Security Act included all workers, male and female. It was expanded in 1939 to include widows and children of working men. These people—the elderly, widows, and their children—quickly came to depend on Social Security, and the whole nation supported the idea that they should be reimbursed in their old age for the work they did in their youth. There was no shame attached to accepting Social Security by the 1950s, and the program came to be an accepted part of the American system.

Social Security was well-managed by the government that created it, although it is in serious danger now simply because of our massive population growth. It is perhaps the most important of the government programs put in place in the U.S. for the protection and care of its citizens. It is proof, along with federal highway safety programs and the FDA, of the ability and desire of the federal government to protect the public health and well-being. The fears expressed in 2009 about the federal government becoming involved in health care are just another example of Americans wishing to believe that we are different from all other nations and peoples, that we alone can always take care of ourselves without any help, and that we alone need to keep our federal government constantly at bay, as if it were a dangerous threat to our liberty.

But it is our federal government, our system of representative democracy, that truly makes us unique by creating our liberty. We should give it every opportunity to protect our equality of opportunity (that is, access to good and affordable health care) and justice for all (who seek health care). Our government is as good and as just as we demand it to be, and it is only by continually engaging with it, not fending it off, that we remain American.

Federal regulation of car safety–a success!

Last time in this series on successful federal management of public health and safety, we looked at Ralph Nader’s expose of automakers’ decision to put style ahead of safety. Now we see the federal government step in.

The 1966 Highway Safety Act mandated that the states create their own highway safety programs to reduce accidents, develop (or improve) emergency care for car accidents (this was when the paramedic program or EMS really came on the scene), and created the Department of Transportation (DOT), including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), to oversee these efforts. From now on, drivers would not be blamed for all car accidents.

We have the NHTSA to thank for crash-test dummies, fuel economy standards, safety belts, air bags, auto recalls, and consumer reports (not Consumer Report itself, but the concept of giving car buyers objective analyses of how safe cars are).  These are safety features we take for granted today, but I remember the 1970s, when older cars I rode in didn’t have seat belts, and even when cars did have them, drivers misled by automakers believed that the belts wouldn’t help in an accident, and that the best way to stay safe while driving was to not make mistakes that led to an accident—remnants of the “it’s the driver’s fault” mentality pushed by automakers prior to 1966.

Automakers have continued to fight the federal government on safety, delaying HID and halogen headlights, air bags, and safety features to promote seat belt use, such as those pinging alarms you get when you don’t have yours on.

In all, federal regulation of car and road safety has contributed significantly to American health and well-being. Next time, we’ll begin our conclusion to this series with perhaps the biggest federal health-and-well-being program of them all: Social Security.

Next: How big is Social Security?

Ralph Nader, car safety, and the federal response

Ralph Nader’s landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile is the focus of part 4 of our series on the federal government’s management of public health and well-being.

The book came out in 1965, and each of its chapters covered one problem with car safety (an overview can be found at Unsafe at Any Speed).  For instance, the most famous chapter is on the Chevrolet Corvair, and it’s called “The One-Car Accident.” From 1960-3 the Corvair was built with a faulty rear engine and suspension design that led to accidents. Nader also pointed out how shiny chrome dashboards reflected the sun into drivers’ eyes, non-standard shift controls leading to fatal mistakes, and expensive styling changes carmakers prioritized while stating that safer design would bankrupt them. Nader’s strongest point was that automakers knew how dangerous their cars could be, but did nothing about it because of the cost and the fear of arousing public anger.

GM tried to paint Nader as a lunatic. According to testimony in the 1970 case Nader brought against GM, “…[GM] cast aspersions upon [his] political, social, racial and religious views; his integrity; his sexual proclivities and inclinations; and his personal habits; (2) kept him under surveillance in public places for an unreasonable length of time; (3) caused him to be accosted by girls for the purpose of entrapping him into illicit relationships (4) made threatening, harassing and obnoxious telephone calls to him; (5) tapped his telephone and eavesdropped, by means of mechanical and electronic equipment, on his private conversations with others; and (6) conducted a ‘continuing’ and harassing investigation of him.”

Despite this attack, Nader persevered in speaking to the public, and that public’s outcry led to the development and passage of the 1966 Highway Safety Act.

Next time: the federal government gets behind the wheel of car safety