By Joel Thurtell
We’re into the bicentennial of the War of 1812, an ugly, misguided conflict that taught important lessons.
The Americans learned that it’s a lot easier to bluster about conquering another country than to actually invade and take it over.
Conquering Canada was a chief goal of the War of 1812, and despite lots of lives lost and money spent, the United States failed to seize our northern neighbor and place our borders around it.
The British learned from the war, too: Those Americans they at first deemed weak and inept proved they had a navy that could mortify British seamanship and — between regular US Navy operations and privateering — force the vainglorious Brits to reckon with American sea power.
There were lessons about race and white stereotypes about blacks, too.
Because today is Martin Luther King Day, I’d like to mention an episode about which I just learned, thanks to a fine book I’m reading — 1812: The Navy’s War, by George C. Daughan.
Oliver Hazard Perry, an energetic master commandant whose father, Christopher Raymond Perry, was a naval hero in the Revolutionary War and in the Quasi-War with France in 1798, joined the Navy as a midshipman when he was 13, and so had served in the Navy half his life by the time he became a hero in his own right by clearing the British off Lake Erie on September 10, 1813.
Perry was in competition for scarce naval stores and personnel on the Great Lakes with Commodore Isaac Chauncey, who was trying to establish US supremacy on Lake Ontario. Chauncey controlled the flow of men and goods to Perry.
On July 16, 1813, a contingent of sailors sent by Chauncey and led by Perry’s nephew, Sailing Master Steven Champlain, arrived at Presque Isle, Perry’s base on Lake Erie. Perry was furious. He was convinced Chauncey was holding back his best men and sending the dregs to him. He wrote to Chauncey, complaining that the 60 men Chauncey had just sent were “a motley set, blacks, soldiers, and boys.”
From his own ship on Lake Ontario, the General Pike, Chauncey wrote back: “I have yet to learn that the color of the skin, or cut and trimmings of the coat, can affect a man’s qualifications or usefulness. I have nearly 50 blacks on board of this ship and many of them are amongst my best men.”
It was not black sailors who nearly brought about Perry’s defeat in that battle with a British fleet commanded by Robert Barclay.
Rather, a white officer, Jesse Elliott, commanding the USS Niagara, failed to bring his ship into combat while Perry on the USS Lawrence was being battered to smithereens by Barclay’s superior force.
Perry got into a small boat and rowed to the Niagara, replacing Elliott and sailing the ship into battle with the British. Possibly Elliott was jealous of Perry. His behavior nearly caused the Americans to lose.
Victory on Lake Erie meant the Americans could easily transport men and arms through the Old Northwest, while the British were forced to move over land.
Control over Lake Erie led to victories by General Harrison and defeat of Britain’s Indian allies.
Daughan doesn’t tell us whether Perry learned any lesson about racial prejudice from this exchange.
But he notes that one-quarter of the men who fought under Perry in the Battle of Put-In Bay were black.
Were the black sailors fighting with Chancey and Perry slaves or free men?
Daughan doesn’t ask or answer that question.
When I think of 19th-century blacks in the military, I think of black troops in the Civil War.
Who were these black sailors on the Great Lakes?
How many of the salt-water Navy men were black?
Were there black seamen about USS Constitution when the big American frigate defeated HMS Guerriere and HMS Java?
Or USS United States in that frigate’s victory over HMS Macedonian?
Daughan found the Perry-Chauncey letters in William Dudley’s Naval War of 1812, Vol. II, pp. 529-31. He doesn’t give a source for his statement that one-quarter of Perry’s crews were black.
No doubt about it: The valiant efforts of Perry’s sailors, including many black seamen, enabled Perry to send General William Henry Harrison the news:
“We have met the enemy and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.”
