THE WAR OF 1812.--THE "CONSTITUTION" AND THE "GUERRIÈRE."
Difficulties which finally led to the outbreak of war had been growing for several years; and the Government, as I have said, had all this time done little or nothing in the way of preparation for defence either on land or at sea. The navy was opposed as bitterly as ever, and the money that was needed for its support was given grudgingly. After the war with Tripoli, in which gunboats had been found of so much use, the Administration had begun to build great numbers of vessels of this class. This was a great mistake. Gunboats were useful and even necessary for operations in bays and rivers and shoal waters, but they could not take the place of frigates in making war. But it seemed to be a pet scheme with the President to transform the navy into an immense gunboat flotilla, and one hundred and seventy-six of these little craft were built, which turned out to be of no more service in war than so many mud-scows. The money which was wasted by this mistaken policy would have built eight frigates of the largest class, and would have added immeasurably to our power upon the sea.
When the war broke out, there were in the navy, besides the gunboats, only eighteen vessels, of which three--the "Chesapeake," "Constellation," and "Adams"--were repairing, and one was on Lake Ontario. Of the other fourteen there were those three fine frigates of forty-four guns,--the "Constitution," the "United States," and the "President;" and three smaller frigates,--the "Congress," of thirty-eight guns, the "Essex," of thirty-two, and the "John Adams," of twenty-eight. The rest were sloops, brigs, and schooners carrying from ten to twenty guns apiece. To make war on this puny force, the British Navy possessed two hundred and thirty line-of-battle ships, of from sixty to one hundred and twenty guns each, and over six hundred frigates and smaller vessels.
What could the United States now do with its eighteen ships against nine hundred of the enemy? It seemed a hopeless situation,--so hopeless, that there were some statesmen in the country who thought it would be best to lay up and dismantle our little fleet as the only way to enable it to escape capture. It happened that when this plan was broached, Captain Bainbridge and Captain Stewart were in Washington, and hearing of it they went to the Secretary and implored him not to do so suicidal a thing. "What are our ships for," said they, "if not to fight and attack the enemy when their country goes to war? If when a war comes they are all to be laid up, it would be better to give up altogether this pretence of a navy, which seems to be only used in peace-time, when there is no real work for it to do. No doubt if one of our frigates falls in with the enemy's squadron it will be captured; but English frigates do not always sail in squadrons any more than our own; and if one of us meets one of them alone at sea, we shall be able to give a good account of ourselves. Let the frigates go to sea to show what they can do: at the worst, they can only be captured, and the country will be no worse off than if they were laid up to rot in idleness."