being compelled to do it and indeed as far as we can tell most of the runaways, indeed, including most of the men, don't choose to be colonial marines. some may end up as sailors or others work as guides, many women worked as lawn dresses and nurses. some of them are serving as paid servants for british officers and others go to work for the naval dockyard in bermuda. it's a subset of the men serving in the colonial marines and they are not compelled to do this, though there is a great deal of persuasion applied to encourage them to serve and they are attracted by the fact they will be paid, they will receive decent clothing for the first time in their lives, they will receive a daily meat ration for the first time in their lives, they will receive a daily alcohol ration for the first time in their lives. they will receive some respect and they will have the opportunity to plunder and in

some cases kill their former masters. now, possessing racial prejudice, these british naval officers, again, they're growing into this role. don't get the idea that these are william lloyd garrison on the decks of these naval warships. they've got other priorities. so they are not natural-born abolitionists but they are working up a real good hatred for the united states as this conflict goes along, and they're trying to think, how can we really stick it to them? and it occurs to them, by liberating their slaves and using them against them. that's what is going on here. and coburn thought, well, it's useful because it draws these people away from their masters. it weakens the economy. he's not sure these young men are going to be effective fighters. he said, quote, blackie hears

about naturally very valorous, end quote. that's what he says in 1814 as the drilling has started. a month later, however, coburn changed his mind upon noticing how well the new recruits responded to their training. he reported they were getting on astonishingly and are really fine fellows. they have induced me to alter the bad opinion i had of the whole of their race and i now i believe these who we are training will neither show want of zeal or courage when employed by us in attacking their old masters, end quote. and with glee he noted that this is the news of the colonial marines was alarming the local masters. "they expect blackie will have no mercy on them and knows that they understand bush fighting and the locality of the woods as well as themselves and perhaps could play a hide and seek."

and during may and june, he starts to employ the colonial marines as part of the rating -- raiding forces, and they are systematically targeting militia batteries, particularly along the eastern shore and along the northern neck of virginia, and in the paut uxet valley of southern maryland. and they perform very admirably and win the universal praise of british naval officers. i'll just quote one of them and, again, it's coburn but you could multiply these quotes. "how uncommonly and unexpectedly well the blacks have behaved in these several engagements and that one of them was shot and died instantly in the front of the others and it did not daunt or check the others in the least but on the contrary, animated them to seek revenge."

now, on the one hand, by recruiting blacks in significant numbers, the british are able to escalate their shore raids. they are able to go deeper inland than they ever could in 1813. they also need to do so because the british cannot sustain their crews without food drawn from the shores of the chesapeake. and there are more and more people on these warships and on tangier island as they are welcoming more and more refugees. in the first year of this operation when they were reluctant to take on the refugees, 600 had come to them. i believe that 2800 went during 1814, which shows the payoff ofg the british now welcoming them and aggressively going out and seeking them. but now they have to feed them z on top of their own crews.

and so that means they have to accelerate and escalate their raiding into the interior, to get food, to get livestock in particular, but to get hams, to get chickens. they are seeking out food. and they are going to the places where their colonial marines know best, their former neighborhoods. and that's an opportunity, then, for some revenge and it's also, more importantly, an opportunity to get out relatives who have been left behind. so everybody's purposes are being served by these raids, the purposes of these runaways who have become colonial marines and the purposes of the british who want to punish the americans and need to get food for their own crews and for the expanding refugee population. they benefit from the nocturnal knowledge of enslaved peoples who have had to become intimate experts in the landscape.

they have had to know how to navigate it at night and dodge slave patrols in order for them to meet their friends, to meet their wives, to meet their children because black families have been split up and the black -- they tend to live on different farms and plantations. and so the black community is maintained by nocturnal travel. they are the experts in this landscape. they know it better than their masters, who allegedly own it. and it is that knowledge that passes to the british. and we can find both in british sources very eloquent statements about how better informed and more secure they are now that they have blacks as their guides and as their light infantry in the form of these colonial marines but we also find it from american officers. one of them, brigadier john p. hungerford of virginia, said, vote, our negros are flocking from the quarters and with a

most minute knowledge of every bypass. they leave us as spies upon our post and our strength and they return upon us as guides and soldiers and insendiaries. it was by the aid of these guides that ambushes were formed everywhere in the woods. from this cause alone, the enemy have a great advantage over us in a country where the passes and byways through our necks and swamps are so little known to but very few of our officers and men, andd2 through which the ey can be conducted with so much ease by these refugee blacks, end quote. and this is the same modern artist imagination of the colonial marines engaged in one of these raids at benedict p destroying some kegs of alcohol in the foreground. in the middle ground you see a british naval officer directing

a black family to safety and freedom in british boats that are just out of the scene here and in the distant background you see an american sailing ship being burned. so the whole range of activities that colonial marines would have been involved with, several of their activities are combined in this one imagined reconstruction of their activities. now, the point i want to make is that this raiding would not have been as effective without the colonial marines that transformed british operations. here is a map done and i am grateful to ralph for sharing this with me. this shows the variety of targets the british had in 1813, the first year. and you'll see that it's fairly randomly scattered along the bay, east and west, north and south, by the maritime targets

-- but the maritime targets are the principal targets and that's indicated by these symbols for sailing ships. if we go to 1814, we'll see a very different nature of british attacks. many more shore raids and they are concentrated particularly along the northern neck of virginia and in southern maryland, either along the shores of potomac on the maryland side but especially along the paut you think set river. the british are targeting them for a reason. one, there are a lot of black people there eager to get out and help the british. these are also the pathways or i should say the waterways that lead to washington, d.c., and coburn has been planning from the very start of the war, he's been looking for the opportunity to get to washington. he did not have that opportunity in 1813. now he has it in 1814. but he must first do soften up and eliminate militia

resistance along one of these two corridors. the virginians are much more republican than the marylanders of southern maryland and they fight a lot harder. so coburn decides it's the paut uchk set where resistance is eliminated much more quickly and earlier because most of the people living in southern maryland don't really want to be part of this war at all. and they certainly don't want to deal with superior of british forces that are now well-guided by the local experts in the landscape. and it is because of this that the british are able to land without any opposition at benedict in mid-august of 1814 and they are able to advance to the upper reaches of the paut uxet river and to approach the very outskirts of the washington, d.c., again, without any opposition, because that opposition has already been eliminated by the raids of the

summer. and they were able to brush aside militia resistance which it belatedly appears at bladensburg and push into washington, d.c., where they famously burn the public buildings. here is a very famous image of that. and you all notice, there is not a single black face represented in this, which is all too common among representations of battles of the war of 1812. they are presented as lily white affairs in almost all cases. the colonial marines were very much present in the occupation of washington, d.c., and in the burning of the white house and the capitol. now, so my argument today has been that the colonial marines and black refugees in general transform the british operation in the chesapeake and make it far more effective and destructive to the americans

than had been their operation in 1813, when they did not have the same level of support and assistance from black americans. now, this is an image that is produced. i'm going to get this magic arrow out of the way, which is not part of the original image. you may recognize this structure. it's the u.s. capitol building. this was produced in 1817 by a critic of american slavery, an american critic of american slavery named jesse torrey and jesse torrey wants you to think about the destruction of the capitol building and wants you to draw certain conclusions from it and those conclusions that he wants you to reach are indicated by the other figures he's put in this particular engraving. you can see down here in this right foreground, a group of

enslaved african-americans, a slave coffle. washington, d.c., was a slave -- fss a major center for the interstate slave trade of the united states, which is accelerating in this very period of time. and, indeed, although i certainly find it impressive that 3400 african-americans will escape to freedom during the war of 1812 from the chesapeake, it is probably something on the order of 60,000 enslaved chesapeake slaves were moved deeper south into the harsher slavery of the deep south during the same period of time. and jesse torrey is commenting on that. we have a slave trader who is there with a group of enslaved people, men, women and children. and then just so h4]will further get the message, we have a couple of other figures floating in the sky.

two lady liberties who are -- so when you put together the three components of this, the message is that the u.s. capitol burned for the sins of the united states in sustaining slavery in the land devoted to freedom. now, the last thing i want to show you is the only photograph that we know of of one of the runaways from the war of 1812. this is gabriel hall. he came from calvert county, maryland. he was probably born in 1801. he was 13 years old when he escaped, so about the same age that willis had been. and this is a photograph taken much later in life, in 1891, when he was 90 years old. and he was a prospering farmer in nova scotia, which is where approximately 2800 of the

refugees from the war of 1812 end up after the war as free people. so i wish there were more images that had survived and maybe those additional images will pop up, but right now, this is our only chance to look at the face of someone from the african american community that experienced the events that i have discussed today. thank you very much. [ applause ] so i'm happy to take any questions you may have. yes, please. >> [ inaudible ]. >> yes. >>. [ inaudible ] >> okay. so i'll repeat the question. where do the british take the refugees at the end of the war? during the war, they are being

taken to tangier island, to bermuda, a major british naval base and central operations in the chesapeake. other main british naval base in north america is at halifax, nova scotia. so probably about 1200 during the war years are moved on to nova scotia and then another 1600 are moved on to nova scotia from bermuda or from the sea islands of georgia where the british also operated at the very end of the war. we're getting about 2800 who go to nova scotia. we've got another approximately 360 who go to new brunswick, another of the maritime provinces and probably about a thousand, including most of the colonial marines who go to

the west irndian -- indian island of trinidad. and in trinidad they have their most successful experience. and they manage to maintain distinct communities in a distinct identity. professor allgor talked about identity formation in her presentation. identity formation, this particular community in trinidad has maintained its cohesion, and they call themselves to this day, the merikans, to distinguish themselves from the many other people of color in trinidad. they turn the "c" into a "k" and they are the merikans and a fair number of them have subsequently come immigrants either in england or in the united states. but they are still very proud about being merikans. yes? >> i understand reports that

andrew jackson opposed -- [ inaudible ] so why didn't the royal navy apply the lessons in louisiana that it arguably should have learned from the chesapeake? >> well, the british do. the british forces in the chesapeake include two regiments of -- from the west indies. so the british are in the forefront in employing people of color in their military. they do so in india and they so two-thirds of the british force in the west indies were actually black people, when the war of 1812 begins. the united states is extremely reluctant to employ even free blacks in its military. it does so in the navy and the privateers so free black americans make a major contribution to the u.s. war effort in the navy and the privateers but are not allowed

in the u.s. army until the very end of the war when policy suddenly changes because the united states is basically on the ropes militarily and is desperate for men. the only place where a significant number of black men are employed in the united states army is at new orleans by andrew jackson. there are two battalions of free blacks were employed and enslaved people, who were promised their freedom by andrew jackson. this employment outraged the local whites of louisiana. so andrew jackson is going out on a limb and he's a slaveholder himself in tennessee but this shows you how desperate he was for men, to fend off this british attack, which included black soldiers. unfortunate or fortunate, whatever side you are on in this war, jackson wins, big time.

and then he reneges on his promise to the black soldiers. he promised them freedom and then said, sorry, you're not going to be freed because i don't really have that power. yes? >> thank you for a superb presentation. >> thank you. clifford from warrenton, virginia. i question the effectiveness of a 1,000 broadside circulation to a population that cannot read by reality, the effectiveness of their inability to read and i also question the notion that white virginians, marylanders, would discuss the circulation of this broadside to their enslaved people. can you address that? >> yes, i can. two very good questions. one is, there is much greater literacy among the slaves in this period of time than i think we've recognized. this is probably the peak period for literacy among enslaved people. a couple of reasons.

one is, it's not illegal yet to teach slaves to read and write in virginia. that will become illegal in 1832. in the wake of nat turner's revolt. until then, there's an actual fair amount of teaching slaves to read and write, particularly artisans and house slaves. the other thing is, this is also a period in which the vast majority of enslaved people in chesapeake have become ñcgez christians and they are usually methodist or baptist and they are class leaders or their preachers would like many of them to be able to read the bible. so there's much more literacy than we have bargained on and you don't need everybody to be able to read it. if there's one person in a group of 50 who can read, he can read it to everybody else. the other thing is that people in america are lousy at keeping secrets.

[ laughter ] they are the world's worst people at keeping secrets and this comes back to bite them all the time. in the war of 1812. you get officers in the front line writing letters about how terrible their troops are and they are not prepared and they are sick and they get published in the newspapers and people talk about stuff. they can't stop themselves from talking. so we live in a society now where we've been conditioned for the last three generations to try to keep secrets militarily and our government has become better and better at trying to so it can be hard for us to understand why people are just blabbing away about everything. and we can get this notion that black people and white people live in separate worlds. at that time they didn't. and you'll get these virginians who will frankly say, we have an internal enemy, and they are waiting on our tables, they are

working in the fields next to us, and they are hanging on everything we say, and anything we say is being reported to the enemy. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. thank you for the questions. yes, ralph? >> why didn't the british -- [ inaudible ] why didn't that keep going? >> okay. well, this goes to the points that andrew makes. the british don't want to be in this war. you know, sometimes these naval officers work up these real good fantasies about how great it would be to break up the united states and really stick it to the americans. but that's never the official policy of their government at home. their policy at home is, let's get out of this war as soon as we can so they want to inflict pain on the united states but not with the goal really, at the official government level, of breaking up the united states. but of just getting them to give in and make a peace treaty as quickly as possible.

so if we compare -- you know, at the peak, the colonial marines is a unit in the chesapeake of 360 men. you're not going to topple slavery with 360 men. in the union force that would end up toppling slavery had 360,000 black troops. it's a whole other scale of things. and that's because the union's goal was not to try to negotiaì% a solution. and they realized the only way that they could crush the confederacy was to enlist thousands of african-americans to help them do it. and the british never get to that point because the war goals are so much more limited for the brirk, and -- for the british, and at the end of the day, what do they want? they want the united states to go back to being their number one trading partner in the world. they want to be able to resume business and that's not going to be so good if you've totally

destroyed the slave system in the united states. so the goal of the policy is to inflict pain on the united states, get them to give in and then go back to a more peaceful and trading relationship that is profitable to british manufacturers again. yes? >> i'm doing research on the slaves on board the potomac squadron that came up the potomac river after the burn in washington. and the ship logs, the british ship logs show they picked up slaves on several occasions and even trained some of the slaves on board the decks in small arms, in preparation for fighting the americans. and i've looked at the depositions that you've looked at so well described in your book. in these same depositions by the land owners that are filed after the war and give these wonderful stories of how the slaves got to the british, they seem to be -- you can tell they are -- the land owners, the neighbors are making a big point on whether or

not they went on their own accord or were forcibly taken. so i would like for you to speak about that. >> so, slave messengers do not like to see these escapes as a referendum on their conduct as masters, because they like to believe that they've actually treated their enslaved people, in their view, well. and so they prefer to believe that the british have come in and forced people away. or -- but sometimes you find out what this force means and it means they have come in and told the slaves they'll have a better life in they go away with them. and from the perspective of masters, this is just lies. they are not going to have a better life with the british. so the overwhelming majority of people in virginia and maryland do not believe that the british are at all sincere of what they are doing and that the slaves are going to end up ruining the

-- ruing the day they ran away from their masters. now, there's abundant evidence that this is not true. and there are a handful of slaves who do choose to go back to their masters at the end of the war. you can number them on the fingers of a hand. whereas you've got over 3,000 that prefer to stay with the british. and it's also untrue, it just lives on and the british sold at least some of them into renewed slavery in january of 1812 and there is zero evidence that this happened. yes? >> does a slave revolt have any effect on the military operations of the americans? >> yes, very much so. particularly on the ability to muster militia.

so the united states has a major manpower problem of its own. which is, it doesn't have enough men to invade canada properly and they are sending almost all of their regular troops to invade canada which leaves the defense of the coast overwhelmingly to state militias who are not trained and equipped or motivated for this job in any prolonged way but they are out there month after month obliged to serve in harsh conditions with inadequate equipment and food and a lot of them are being pulled in from the piedmont to the tidewater and they don't like it. and one of the things that they keep coming up with of why they shouldn't have to go down to norfolk and die of malaria, which is the number one killer of american troops in the chesapeake, malaria at norfolk, which is a graveyard for these

militia men. the reason they come up with is, the slaves are probably going to rise up and revolt if the militia is pulled out of the piedmont and sent to the coast. the irony is, by all measures of violence, such as arson, piedmont goes way down during the war. because there are so many militia men marching back and forth on these roads, that actually the slave holders in the piedmont are in more secure control than they were in peacetime. the reverse is true in tidewater where enslaved people can see the british warships, they can hear the british warships mtbáñ because coburn very thoughtfully up and down. coburn liked to call attention to himself. he also liked to call attention because he knew that if -- that if enslaved people would come the night after they heard thisy warship moving up and down,

let's say, the rappahannock. >> were the slaves who escaped house servants and artisans or were they -- >> they come from every -- there's a broad occupational range that slaves have in the chesapeake, and every occupation they have, including field hand, is very well represented. what i did find was that the number who are artisans or house slaves, they are disproportionately represented among the runaways. what that means is, i am not saying they were a majority. because a majority are probably field hands as was a majority of the enslaved population. but the proportion of those who run away who are artisans is -- and house slaves is larger than the enslaved population. and we find the same pattern in the civil war, that the people

who are, who feel mofst aggrievd ut those who have a little more education, a little higher skill, and are much clearer that they -- their ambitions are being stifled. and the british are presenting an opportunity for freedom, what freedom means to a lot of former slaves is the opportunity to finally get the worth of their skill and to be able to hold their families together. and this is appealing across the work up the courage to make the attempt are disproportionate art zanl -- artisans and house slaves and this shocks the masters, because they think they shouldm2ç most loyal to us, and they are not, and you get the same kind of rhetoric from slave

holders when they are shocked that their slaves would betray them. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> the symposium on the war of 1812 and the burning of washington, d.c. continues authorities. authors and historians discuss the war, the role of dolly madison and the star spangled national historic tour. we're live starting at 8:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span3, and at 8:00 p.m. eastern, we'll give you another chance to see the discussions and remarks from the event. >> here are some highlights for this coming weekend. today, live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, the nebraska supreme court will hear oral

argument to the keystone pipeline. saturday on the communicators. former fcc commissioners. with command 2014 gearing up, watch the latest debates on c-span opinion sunday at noon, kay hagan and tom tillis. and from the california governor's race, jerry brown and republican nominee neil cache cary. 8:00 on c-span 2, author john yoo shares his opinion on international law. saturday on book tv, mike gonzalez and how he thinks republicans can make gains with the hispanic vote. our three-hour conversation and your phone calls with the former chair of the u.s. commission on civil rights. tonight on c-span 3, authors and historians talk about the ever 1812.

saturday on real america, the building of the hoover dam, and sunday night at 8:00, the anniversary of ford's pardon of nixon. find our schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us, tweet us or you can e-mail us at comments at xvx c-span.org. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> thursday on c-span, a senate agriculture committee on improving meals in schools. we heard from new york senator gillibrand on the subject.afufç here's a look. >> of course kids like non-whole grains. yes, that's what they prefer. they like sugar even more. if you give your child a choice of sugar or fruits and vegetables, they're going to

pick sugar. but you have to be the adults in the room. you just don't give kids the foods they want. you have to teach them to eat well their wholeó+3 lives. that takes leadership, determination, creativity. i love the fact that you told your school district, pick three colors every day. my children, when i was teaching them about nutrition, that's how we did it, how many colors can you put on your plate? they loved that. vegetables, they only like steamed vegetables. they don't want butter, or cream or cheese on it. they have been eating fruit at every meal since they were babies. because they were introduced healthy foods at every meal, they prefer healthy foods. but a lot of kids are not getting healthy foods at home. they're getting refined carbohydrates at every meal. a burger and fries. of course they prefer burger and fries, that's what they've been

fed since they were little. we have to do more. i feel, that, whys, to senator hobin, it is easy to have flexibility. but let's not serve refined foods at lunch. let's actually push them to eat something healthy what makes them healthy and reach their full potential. when way kid's obese, he didn't reach his full potential. he can't concentrate in class. he's often made fun of. he has low self-esteem. he doesn't reach his full potential. she doesn't reach her full potential. so i am grateful that all of you have thought outside the box,sj figuring out how to solve these problems, meet nutrition standards. i don't want to back off, let's figure it out. we can figure it out. >> thursday a senate agriculture hearing on efforts to improve nutrition in school males. you can see it at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.

>> now, in the final remarks on day one of the war of 1812 symposium, we hear from john stagg, edison of the james madison papers at the university of virginia. from decatur house in washington, d.c., this is just over an hour. >> um, with that, let me introduce, with great pleasure, dr. john stagg, professor of history at the university of virginia, and editor of the james madison papers, where he's critical volumes of madison's personal correspondence. and we'd like another 20 if you can fit that in in the next few years. >>. [ inaudible ] >> because of the work of john and his usl]team, we have much complete understanding of madison and the context of his life and really we cannot have done our work without this incredible research. today he's going to illuminate

for us the intricacies of madison's presidency, including such factors as the perpetually fluctuating cabinet, and madison's later life reflections on his thoughts about the war. so please join me now in welcoming our colleague and our mentor, dr. john stagg. [ applause ] >> thank you for those words of welcome, and i would like to add my thanks to those of our previous speakers, to the organizers of the conference today. as the by centennial of the war approached, i found myself what

was the federal government and washington going to do about the by centennial of the war of 1812? it was entirely predictable that the great state of maryland would have a part, particularly in &,9÷2014, because it thinks itself a franchise on the star spangled banner and the nation's flag. but i found myself asking, what are they going -- [ indiscernible ] >> well, i'm glad to say that we are doing something here today. and i'm grateful it's been organized for me. let me start with some very general remarks about the nature of james madison's historical reputation. for the first half of the 20th century, i think, madison is standing was not high. the main reason for that was the war of 1812, which i don't think i need to belabor.

it was one of the most frustrating and unpopular wars ever waged by the united states. but it was also the impression that madison was a pale clone of thomas jefferson. in other words about the time of world war 1, historians didn't have a clear sense of madison as a distinctive personality. he stood too much in the shadow of jefferson. there was also another factor that early 20th century historians bore in mind, and that was ma madison had a certain point in his life, contributed, not insignificantly to theories that drove the nation toward civil war in 1861. remember the strearge and kentucky resolutions of 1798. that was held against madison by ag. so if you looked at these rankings of presidents, in order

of their greatness, exercises which american historians love to carry out, you'd find that madison was alwaysdeyw in the bm half of the class. now admittedly he wasn't right down there with people like ulysses grant or james bucannon, but he was not thought of very highly. slightly infuriated mediocrity. strange things have happened since then, madison's reputation as president has been rising. if you look at current presidential pn see that madison -- weave had 44 presidents to date. not way down there. and recently i saw a poll that said that madison was number six. now i'm not quite sure how to explain this.rçqcaúo cf1 o i'm just going to ask you to

take my word for it at the moment, such a poll does exist. but i do want to say something about how we might explain this. and i say this, cat, without soft reference orl;vñ flattery. i think it does owe something to the appearance of modern founding father's additions in the second half of the 20th century. >> we have a much clearer idea than previous generations of what madison contributes to the establishment of the american republic and how he might have appeared to his contemporaries. in that process, he's come to fare pretty well. he's emerged as a distinctive figure in his own right. it might also owe something to the phenomenon has founder chic, when in fact, madison as the member of the foundersw2zñ has generally has his image burnished along the wall of his

contemporaries. i might even be tempted to suspect that as we have welcome more dissatisfied with our presidents since the 1960s, there is more competition for places at the bottom ranks. and this may have had the effect of pushing up the standing of presidents from the very distant past. however, there does remain a problem with the war of 1812, even in the year of his by centennial, americans are embarrassed by this war. they are confused about why it occurred, and they are rather uncertain whether it should be celebrated or remembered in any way. i was in the british embassy two sundays ago -- [ inaudible ] >> the campaigns of this war were by and large, military fiascos and it's by no means clear, the united states was the

victim. the best historians say it was a draw. so it's something of a para docks. the historical reputation is readsing, and the understanding of the central event of his presidency, the war of 1812, has not. so i want to say more about that paradox in the next few months. if you take almost any book on the war of 1812, and there are a great many books on the war of 1812 after two centuries, from the event, it's easy to pull out which contributed to his unsatisfactory progress and ambiguous outcomes. >> some historians have linked these directly to madison. they say it was his fault, a result of his political decisions and his political style. can be described as problems

when madison as president had to contend with, but didn't do a very good job of overcoming them. so what can we say about madison himself? a serious charge that was leveled against madison is that he did not want this war, and that he was pushed into it by congressional warhawks, who wrested control over national policy away from the executive branch. having lost that control over national policy, madison then compounded his difficulties by not providing sufficientd"cz en in his role of commander in chief. that problem is fundamental7 any understanding of the war of 1812. so the first question, who's war was it? was it madison's, or was it the

warhawks? now most historians, i think, still favor the4xfs warhawks. but i think it's a misplaced emphasis. the critical developments that placed the americans on the path to war, occurred between march and july of 1811. in march of 1811 -- [ inaudible ] madison learned that georgia iii had latched on to what was going to be his final bout of insanity and the future george iv would have to discharge the duties of thelmj monarchy. since he despised his father and his cabinet and his policies, it was assumed that the principal agent would replace his father'q ministers with new ministers who might then modify the harsh infractions of equal rights that had characterized british policy

towards the united states up to that point. now, madison read these reports and he sensed that there was a chance for a change in anglo american relations, and to take advantage of that possibility, he bought into his cabinet, james monroe. there were a number of reasons why he did this. one reason, monroe had previously served as the american minister in london. and he had formed personal relationships with british politicians who were expected to come -- [ inaudible ] now, if this was a window of opportunity that very soon closed, the [ indiscernible ] never changed, despite what he felt and for that reason, british policy towards the united states never changed.

originally there was a conciliatory gesture towards the united states by sending a new british minister to washington in the summer of 1811. mod son knew that george iii's old minister were not likely to ease up on the violation of rights. now the prediction should come to pass. madison concluded he would have to adopt a much stronger policy of resistance toward great britain than he had done in the past. how do we know this? we know this because an q in the administration newspaper -- >> there's a complication. >> oh, sorry. there we go. sorry about that, i wasn't looking behind me. [ laughter ] yes, onwards and upwards. yes, how do we know this? because an editorial in the administration newspaper, the national intelligence, the

newspaper that coburn trashed when he burned washington in 1814. we know from a surviving fragment of the diary of the editor of that paper, joseph gales, that madison, in fact had dictated the contents of that editorial to the editor of the national intelligence. so what that means, as early as the spring of 1811, madison was considering very seriously the need to go to war in great britain. and this is seven months before the 12th congress and the warhawks even meet in washington. now, the negotiations between monroe and the british minister over the summer of 1811 confirmed madison's worst suspicions. not only did the british have no intention of changing their policies, they also announced effectively, and i'm compressing a bit here, they announced

effectively, that they would continue with these policies for as long as it took for them to end the domination of the affairs of europe. now this is 1811, remember. and in 1811, nobody1811. in 1811 nobody was predicting that napolian would be gone from the scene by 1814. you might have made that prediction by 1812, but by 1811 nobody was counting on him going away any time soon. so in response to that situation, madison at the end of july, 1811, called the 12th congress into an early session. his reason for doing so was that he decided that he had=@89 now no other option but to prepare for a war against great britain. again, he took this decision weeks and weeks before the 12th congress met in washington before congress knew of the policies they might have to pass

judgment on. so how can we say that affection of war hawks forced madison into a war that he did not want. quite simply we cannot say that. we should not is a thsay that. it's one of the myths that is hard to kill off but it is simply not true. the role of the war hawks was very different. they were not the makers of american policy toward great britain. the immediate spokesman who prepared this legislation worked its way through committees and votes in the house of representatives as congress prepared for war in the first six months of -- after november 1811. the prime mover of american policy here is not congress, it is president madison himself. now madison continued to try and shape policy this way throughout the war of 1812. so my next question is how well did this work for him as a commander in chief?

now the answer is a rather mixed one. in most cases, the policies that the administration sought passed the house of representatives. they did not necessarily pass the reason for this is the senate is not controlled by a simple m%mavuk of republican votes. rather the senate or administration supporters of the senate could often be outmaneuvered by culminations o federalists and anti-administration republicans who didn't like james madison very much. the result was that the administration did not always get the legislation it wanted or it didn't get it in a sufficient timely manner. the differences between what th administration wanted and what the administration got did have an adverse affect on the implementation of policy throughout the war of 1812. this can be demonstrated in any

number of ways. i will just do the two quick examples. one is the decision to expand the size of the american army in the first six months of 1812. the other example is all the debates of how do you finance the war in the second half of 1814 when the war is going extremely badly for the united states to put it simply, the expanded army was a bureaucratic nightmare that the war department never got full control over. by the end of 1814, the united states is facing severe financial difficulties. congress cannot pass legislation in ways that sort those problems out. the situation got so bad as i think somebody mentioned by the end of 1814, theaürráed states has in fact defaulted on their national debt. i should add here that nobody in this room should tell congress that this is happening in

america. we do not want to encourage bad behavior on the part of national legislatures any time in the near future. but that's what did happen towards the end of the war. now what would madison have done about this or could he have done anything about it? he had no personal clout over congressm congressmen. he did not bargain for votes. he did not use patronage or votes or seize them by the labells of their coat and say son, nieed your vote. just to imagine that scenario is to see how impossible it is in this point in american history. but the problem is not that madison did not try to influence what congress did, he did try to influence what congress did

within the means that were available to him at that time. the real difficulty is the president didn't have very much affective power to guarantee control over the outcomes that he sought. all right, let's move to another question. how did madison manage his cabinet as the organ of the administration during the war? again, i think the answer is rather a mixed one. to summarize it simply, in 1809 and 1817, which is mad isson's tenure in the white house, he had three secretaries of state, three secretaries of the navy, four secretaries of the treasury and four secretaries of war. put all that together and ob,+á% can see why any number of historians said this man couldn't hold a cabinet together to save himself. this is a symptom of all things that went wrong in the war.

well, i'm not going to review the entire history of madison's relations with his cabinet. i will just hit on two high points. obviously there are serious problems in the war department as the critical organ of government here. madison's first secretary of it's pretty clear had very few ideas about strategy or tactics. he was largely a bureaucrat. the nature of the war office, the way it was organized at this point compelled him more orxelss to act as glorified master general for the army. he was forced&e#(#tr'g 18 and his replacement initially

was james monroe who could handle the details the war department. but much of?ir what monroe did n he was in the war department was designed to position himself to become president in 1817. in affecting in that way he fueled a very bitter feud with the secretary of war, a man named john armstrong of new york who actually held the war office for most of 1813 and 1814. &$q problem was armstrong also wanted to be president in 1817. as a consequence, neither armstrong nor monroe ever lost an opportunity to under cut each other throughout the war. this was sort of the patent of misconduct or behavior if you'd like that culminated when the british attacked washington on

that occasion. some of you will know that armstrong declined to participate 100% in the arrangements for him at the capitol while monroe has been accused with meddling with the organization of the troops at the battle of dlbladendberg and think historians feel that he should have stopped this feud that he should have clamped down firmly on him or sacked one of these people involved. but madison did not fire him or monroe. only part the problem i think lies in madison's personality. certainly as his been mentioned,

he was not confrontational in style. he liked to avoid unpleasantness if he could possibly could. the real problem was that madison had most difficulty getting anyone to serve in the cabinet at all. he went through rafts of kand yaep, kand yaepcandidates throughout . he got far more refusals then acceptances. the reality is too few politicians in the early 19th century thought a cabinet position was worth the sacrifices that it entailed. the reality was that madison usually had to settle with whom so so ever he could get and retain them for as>yñ long as he possi could. this was a reactive quality rather than proactive quality of

decision making. he seemed to only deal with decisions only after they had gotten out of hand and it was further. on the matters of war time policy, the standard criticism that's made of madison that he spent too much time pursuing the wrong strategies after the warl of 1812. what this means specifically is that when the americans invaded canada, the united states attacked all the wrong places in canada. british power in north america wrested on their control of montreal, québec. all of this is true enough. it cannot be denied but i think that situation did not arise from an affect of understanding of the strategic requirements of the victory. in almost every year of the war, it was clearly understood that nt