A History of the American People

a group of Southern and Western states, led by the Carolinas, Georgia, and Kentucky, making
128 votes. But the seven states which voted for Madison had a total of 980,000 slaves. These
blacks had no voice in government whatever but each group of 45,000 added an electoral vote to
the state where they were held, giving the cause of the South-and war-a total of twenty-one
electoral votes. Thus the New England federalists claimed that the freemen of the North were at
the irresponsible mercy of the slaves of the South.
Even so, war might have been averted. On June 18, 1812 Congress completed the formalities
necessary for a declaration of war on Britain. Two days later in Westminster, Henry Brougham's
motion for repealing the Orders in Council had elicited from Lord Castlereagh, on behalf of the
government, a statement that they were suspended. Unfortunately, an inexperienced American
charge d'affaires in London failed to get the news to Madison with the speed required. To judge
by the letters which flew between Madison and his mentor Jefferson throughout 1812, while
Madison drifted to war without much passion or eagerness, Jefferson believed that the time had
come for a reglement des comptes with Britain and that America would make huge and
immediate gains, especially the conquest of Canada.' With the advantage of hindsight, perhaps, we see both these two pillars of the republic, these upholders of white civilization, as irresponsible and reckless. When the war began it consisted of three primary forms of hostility: an American invasion of Canada; the naval war on the Great Lakes and on the high seas; and opportunities presented to the South and the American settler interest to despoil the possessions of Britain's ally, Spain, and Spain's and Britain's Indian dependants. Washington pinned its high hopes on the first. But the invasion was based on two misapprehensions. The first was that Canada was a soft target. It consisted of two halves-Lower Canada in the east, overwhelmingly French-speaking, and Upper Canada, to the west and north, English-speaking but thinly settled. Madison and Jefferson believed that the French-speaking Canadians were an oppressed and occupied people, who identified with Britain's enemy, France, and would welcome the Americans as liberators. Nothing could have been more mistaken. The French Canadians were ultra-conservative Roman Catholics, who regarded the French Republic as atheism incarnate, Bonaparte as a usurper and Anti-Christ, and who wanted a Bourbon restoration, one of the prime aims of British war-policy. The Quebec Act of 1774 had given the French community wide cultural, political, and religious privileges and was seen as a masterpiece of liberal statesmanship. They thought that, if the invasion turned Lower Canada into a member-state of the United States, they would be republicanized and Protestantized. In Upper Canada, it is true, there were only 4,500 British troops and a great many recent American settlers. The British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Isaac Brock, thought many of them were disloyal and that his only course was tospeak loud and think
big.' In fact the majority of the English-speaking Canadians were old Tories, anti-republicans, or
their sons and grandsons. Canada had resisted the blandishments of American republicanism
even in the 1770s; reinforced since then by 100,000 loyalists and their teeming descendants, and
by many recent arrivals from Britain, they had no wish to change their allegiance.
The illusions shared by the Virginian Dynasty are summed up in Jefferson's boast to Madison:
`The acquisition of Canada this year [1812] as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere
matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax the next, and the final
expulsion of England from the American continent. Halifax once taken, every cockboat of hers
must return to England for repairs.' The second grand illusion was the quality of the American
militia, about which Madison had boasted in his inaugural-'armed and trained, the militia is the
firmest bulwark of republics.' In the first place, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire