Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence
Hugh Howard. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012. 384 pp. Illus. Notes. Index. $30.00.
Reviewed by David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler
Hugh Howard has written an engaging look at the War of 1812 just in time for the commemoration of its bicentennial. The book is not entirely a military or political history, and it is certainly not a social history, but Howard blends these different perspectives into a lively story told through the eyes of James and Dolley Madison.
Howard obviously did not set out to write a comprehensive account of the war, but his vignettes nicely illustrate its important events. It makes for a rollicking good read. The author focuses often on the “Presidentess,” as contemporaries sometimes called Dolley, to paint a flattering picture of her strength, style, and sagacity. While James sometimes fades into the background as a result, he emerges at the end a dedicated patriot. Events occasionally overwhelmed him—most infamously when the British marched on the capital—but here Madison is nevertheless an enduring figure of stoic strength.
Howard begins with a riveting account of HMS Leopard’s 1807 assault on the USS Chesapeake to introduce American efforts to manage growing tensions with Great Britain. Colorful characters enter and exit the story, as did guests at Dolley Madison’s famous levees. Those events were so packed with people they were called “squeezes,” but Mrs. Madison managed with aplomb, and Howard similarly handles his large cast. The young British minister Augustus John Foster watches helplessly as events overtake him; brash and charming Henry Clay exults in war and then works assiduously for peace; and commanders cope with supply shortages, government ineptitude, and inexperienced recruits. Ignominious defeats are predictable, miraculous triumphs marvelous.
Howard has a flair for dramatic descriptions of military affairs, and though some arguably deserve more attention, those elaborately treated are beautifully told. From the disgraceful surrender of Detroit to Captain Isaac Hull’s victory over the Guerriere, readers will smell gunpowder and feel sea spray. Naval engagements, in fact, are described with exceptional clarity and cinematic detail, both the blue-water exploits of America’s storied frigates and the heroic actions on inland lakes, such as Oliver Hazard Perry’s crucial victory at Put-in-Bay. Some of the book’s best parts depict the tense days before the British attack on Washington, D.C., where growing civilian panic and mounting military chaos sealed the capital’s fate.
Inevitably, the author’s work has its flaws. Not everyone will agree with his admiring interpretation of Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s equal importance in sustaining the war effort. Some will fault his choice of maps, particularly when his accounts of complicated campaigns would have benefited from them, as with British operations at Baltimore. Some of the latest literature is missing from his bibliography, and a few factual errors mar an otherwise splendid tale.
One of the most glaring instances is Howard’s observation that Fort Mims in southern Alabama was a fortification used exclusively by white settlers. Actually, Fort Mims was peopled with whites, Creeks, and mixed-race settlers and militia, an indication of the complexity of the Creek War. Andrew Jackson did not replace William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s resignation merely opened up a regular general’s billet that Jackson was tapped to fill. And Howard’s version of the Battle of New Orleans omits any mention of British operations aimed at the Mississippi’s west bank that, if better timed, could have easily turned the tables on Old Hickory.
In short, specialists will find little new here, and some will likely cavil at the phrase “Second War of Independence” in Howard’s subtitle and in his narrative. Yet we can say that he gamely makes a case for the war invigorating the country, in the end. Admittedly this is not a new view of the significance of that conflict, but Howard’s explanation gives us different perspectives. Moreover, general readers are in for a treat, for Howard’s manner of telling the story is fresh and often compelling.
1812: The Navy’s War
George C. Daughan. New York: Basic Books, 2011. 491 pp. Illus. Maps. Notes. Bibliog. Index. $32.50.
Reviewed by David Curtis Skaggs
The status quo antebellum terms of the Treaty of Ghent that ended the second war between the United States and Great Britain seemed to indicate, says author George Daughan, that Americans, Britons, Canadians, and Native Americans “had sacrificed in vain. . . . The war seemed to have settled nothing.” In the document, the causes of the war—impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy, restrictions on neutral commerce during wartime, encouragement of native warriors to combat American settlers, disputes over national boundaries—are not mentioned. But to conclude that this meant nothing had changed defies reality, as Daughan, like most historians, finds. The consequences were worth the sacrifice: The war “laid the foundation of a peaceful relationship between the two great English-speaking countries that was to last more than two centuries and was to serve both them and the world extraordinarily well.”
Daughan argues that at the core of this newfound appreciation of the United States was the significant contribution of its Navy to the war effort. For those wanting a review of the naval engagements, political infighting, strategic policies, and operational successes and failures, this soundly researched and finely written volume constitutes one of the best available. An unusual and important difference from most accounts of the Navy’s history is the author’s inclusion of the military aspects of the war in North America and related European events.
Daughan emphasizes the importance of William Jones as the secretary of the Navy, 1813–14. A privateer veteran of the American Revolution and longtime Philadelphia shipping merchant and banker, Jones took control of the department from his inept predecessor, Paul Hamilton, and provided organizational competence, administrative energy, and sound strategy. Recognizing that there was no chance for strategic victory in warship encounters on the high seas, Jones focused instead on commerce raiding, with an emphasis on the destruction of Britain’s economically essential overseas trade. His orders stressed the destruction of commercial vessels over the desire held by too many of his captains for personal glory against enemy warships. Some, like James Lawrence, disobeyed him with fatal consequences.
As the British blockade tightened, Jones built and deployed sloops of war, against the wishes of many congressmen and senior naval officers who wanted 74-gun ships of the line and more heavy frigates. There was a sound strategic reason for his policy; sloops of war “were faster, took less time to build, were much cheaper, and required smaller crews” than frigates and ships of the line, and they could “also beat the blockade more easily.” If Daughan had spent less space describing land warfare in Europe, he could have paid more attention to cruises such as that of the sloop Wasp and her gallant commander Johnston Blakeley; ton for ton and gun for gun, she did more for the war effort than the vaunted Constitution.
To supplement his naval strategy, Jones encouraged privateering. Daughan acknowledges that these entrepreneurs collectively captured more British merchantmen and adversely affected the enemy’s domestic insurance rates and commodity prices than did the U.S. Navy. Given their strategic importance, the reader would have appreciated having a couple of these cruises included in the descriptions. Privateers also drove up prices for naval matériel and deprived the U.S. Navy of many of the country’s experienced seamen.
Secretary Jones emphasized building and manning squadrons on the North American lakes more than most of his senior captains wanted him to (there were no admirals until the Civil War). He was well served by Oliver Hazard Perry on Lake Erie and Thomas Macdonough on Lake Champlain. On the very critical Lake Ontario, Commodore Isaac Chauncey proved a most effective supervisor of ship construction and a mediocre combat commander. Daughan virtually ignores Chauncey’s opportunity to impose decisive defeat on Commodore Sir James Yeo’s squadron at the so-called “Burlington Races” in September 1813. Particularly because he writes so effectively about naval action, this gap is disappointing. Also not receiving sufficient analysis are the amphibious operations at York (Toronto), Fort George on Lake Ontario, and at Amherstburg in the Detroit River, all fine examples of unity of effort without unity of command.
Still, 1812: The Navy’s War is more than its title implies. It combines a lively narrative of naval actions with a keen understanding of national strategy and international relations in the conduct of war. For those with limited reading time during this war’s bicentennial, Daughan’s account is an excellent overview with enough detail to satisfy most.
Admiral Nimitz: The Commander of the Pacific Ocean Theater
Brayton Harris. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 238 pp. Illus. Notes. Bibliog. Index. $26.00.
Reviewed by Robert Love
Most of the high-ranking American naval leaders of World War II deserve serious, respectable biographies, works of careful scholarship akin to Forrest Pogue’s George C. Marshall, Gerald Wheeler’s Kinkaid of the Seventh Fleet, or John B. Lundstrom’s Black Shoe Admiral about Frank Jack Fletcher. Altogether too much of what is available is either hagiographic—The Magnificent Mitscher by Theodore Taylor, for instance—or reliant on older or less-than-rigorous research. None of the four fleet admirals—William D. Leahy, Ernest J. King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William F. Halsey—are the subject of serious, well-researched, carefully crafted studies.
This is particularly sad in the case of Nimitz. Descended from German settlers of Fredericksburg, Texas, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1903, entered the infant submarine service, and later specialized in early diesel technology. His most notable interwar billets were as assistant chief and later chief of the Bureau of Navigation (later renamed the Bureau of Naval Personnel). Slated to take command of the Asiatic Fleet in late 1941, Nimitz was abruptly tapped by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to relieve Admiral Husband Kimmel as CinC Pacific Fleet after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Unique among the half-dozen wartime Allied theater commanders, Nimitz was seldom burdened by combined (multinational) concerns, although his joint (Army-Navy) difficulties were many, and he was served by a host of determined, often raspy flag and general officers. Blessed with a calm, cheery demeanor, Nimitz disliked personal confrontations. He defused them with what one Navy widow confided were the “best dirty jokes,” by delegating unpleasantries to his chiefs of staff—either eccentric or unpleasant men—or by shifting blame to his immediate superior, Admiral King, who reluctantly bore this cross.
Whereas grand and, often, theater strategies were the product of compromises negotiated between King and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall or with the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), King worked might and main to shift operational planning from Washington to the Pacific command, but whether and why Nimitz welcomed or delayed accepting these responsibilities remains unclear. He resisted deployments to the South Pacific in early 1942, adopted King’s attrition approach off Midway—apparently without considering alternatives—and agreed to the grinding Solomons offensive without quarrel.
After King convinced the CCS to approve the Central Pacific drive, did Nimitz allow the arrival of the Essex-class carriers to dictate operations, or were other choices in play? And why, considering his background, did he tolerate confusion and incompetence to beset Pacific Fleet submarine strategy and command until 1944? What were Nimitz’ contributions to, or reservations about, the Downfall plan for the invasion of Japan? Recent scholarship indicates he tried to scuttle it.
For two years after he succeeded King as CNO in December 1945, Nimitz directed the most impressive demobilization in modern naval history. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal took the lead resisting unification, but what policies did Nimitz advance for the postwar Fleet and shore establishment, and what were the bases—strategic, financial, and political—for his choices? Did he succeed, fail, or merely step aside? Two years after retiring, Nimitz was appointed by President Harry S. Truman as the United Nations Special Representative on the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, a full-time task that he did not abandon until 1951. Little is known of this heroic, yet fruitless effort.
Most of these important matters are not even addressed, and the others are not satisfactorily examined in Brayton Harris’ brief Admiral Nimitz. Based wholly on E. B. Potter’s earlier Nimitz, a smattering of secondary sources, a few of the many oral histories held by the U.S. Naval Institute, and no archival research, Harris’ pleasingly written biography is ridden with error, replete with disconcerting omissions, and bereft of new scholarship or understanding. The list of the “most competent flag officers” compiled by Secretary Knox’s “secret board” did not include King or any other four-star admiral. The Allies did not adopt a “Europe first” grand strategy after Pearl Harbor because Britain “was in imminent danger of capture or collapse,” but because Germany possessed the resources to win the war whereas Japan’s defeat was a surety. Length alone cannot excuse these lapses, as illustrated by the deeply researched Mac-Arthur by the knowledgeable U.S. Army historian Mitch Yockelson, an equally brief volume in a similar series. For the general reader unfamiliar with the Pacific war or naval history, however, Admiral Nimitz is a decent, short primer.