It’s tempting to think of unpopular wars as a modern phenomenon, something that came about only during the eras of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, it’s hard to picture early Americans opposing our country’s military efforts.
But 200 years ago, Americans, especially Vermonters, found themselves bitterly divided over whether to fight Britain for its provocative actions. We have no polling data from the period, but one Vermont newspaper editor who supported the war estimated that 40 percent of the state’s population did not.
That was just one man’s guess, but clearly a sizable portion of Vermonters wanted nothing to do with the war the United States declared against Britain in 1812.
The War of 1812 is remembered elsewhere as a struggle between Britain and France for supremacy in Europe. It was just the continuation of a long-running conflict between the two countries. And in the early years of the 1800s, American merchants profited from it, doing a brisk business supplying both sides in the struggle.
But the United States eventually found it could not remain neutral.
British leaders had never really gotten over the loss of the Colonies and didn’t take kindly to Americans’ trading with the French. They demanded that U.S. merchant ships stop at British ports to pay duties on any goods destined for France. Worse yet, the British started seizing sailors aboard American merchant vessels and pressing them into service in the British Navy.
Between 1802 and 1812, the British restocked its navy by taking more than 10,000 men from American ships, according to one estimate.
The conflict came to a head in 1807 when a British warship, the HMS Leopard, intercepted the USS Chesapeake off the Virginia coast and demanded that its crew turn over British Navy deserters it claimed were on board. When the American crew refused, the Leopard fired on the Chesapeake, killing three sailors. British troops boarded the Chesapeake and removed four men alleged to be deserters.
President Thomas Jefferson responded by pushing through Congress an embargo on all foreign trade from U.S. seaports. If the British, and to a lesser extent the French, wouldn’t respect the sovereignty of the United States, they could see what it was like to do without American trade.
Vermont’s economy suffers
The embargo raised difficult questions for Vermonters, striking as it did at the heart of the state’s economy. People living in or near the Champlain Valley relied heavily on trade with British-controlled Canada via Lake Champlain. Even those in the Connecticut River Valley were affected by the ban on maritime trade, because the river connected them to the Atlantic by way of New York.
People found devious ways to maintain this trade while staying within the letter of the law. Smugglers constructed wharves exactly on the U.S.-Canadian border. They would unload cargo from vessels on the U.S. side of the wharves and then have other crews reload the cargo onto boats on the Canadian side, out of the legal reach of American customs agents.
A New Yorker named John Banker Jr. devised another scheme. He set himself up as a privateer, which gave him the legal right to attack enemies of the United States. Banker outfitted a small sailboat with three muskets, and used it to intercept smuggling vessels. The smugglers, who were in on the plan, willingly surrendered their goods, which under international law Banker could do with as he saw fit. Banker sold the goods to customers in Canada at a price prearranged with the smugglers, and then gave the money to the smugglers, minus a commission for himself.
Despite the ruses to evade the embargo, the ban on trade devastated the Vermont economy and quickly became a hot political issue.
Federalists in Vermont, who sought good relations with the British and therefore opposed war, argued that the embargo was politically motivated. They claimed that members of Jefferson’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, were directly targeting the livelihoods of the many Federalist merchants who traded with Canada.
The Federalist press in Vermont argued that the embargo had had the wrong effect: Rather than starve the British into submission, it had “driven our own citizens to beg for bread.” These anti-Jeffersonian newspapers praised the exploits of smugglers, branded the embargo an assault on personal freedom and argued that the trade ban might ignite war with Great Britain.
In contrast, newspapers that supported Jefferson warned readers that war was inevitable. Democratic-Republicans had long been popular in Vermont, because they aimed to keep government decentralized and in the hands of small farmers. The embargo’s impact on the state economy, however, weakened the Democratic-Republicans and gave new strength to the Federalists, who sought to centralize government and give more power to bankers and industrialists.
Smuggling was rampant
The federal government’s enforcement of the embargo proved unpopular in Vermont. Though few Vermonters actually engaged in smuggling, many tolerated those who did. At town meetings through the Champlain Valley, Vermonters said that without trade with Canada, the harvest from their land “becomes useless trash.”
Vermonters’ tolerance of smuggling was put to a test in August 1808. Members of the nascent national customs service were patrolling Lake Champlain when they intercepted the Black Snake, a 40-foot-long smuggling boat, equipped with seven oars on a side and a sail, and carrying 100 barrels of potash north. The smugglers fired on the federal agents, killing two of them, as well as a local farmer who was unfortunate enough to be at the scene.
The smugglers were captured and put on trial. Three of the men were convicted of murder and one was publicly hanged before a crowd of 10,000 in Burlington. The Black Snake Affair only intensified the feelings of both sides in the embargo dispute. Though the embargo was lifted in March 1809, in the last days of Jefferson’s administration, the conflict with Britain continued.
As war loomed, opposition to it grew stronger. War opponents disrupted a pro-war rally at the Statehouse in February 1812 and interrupted a muster of troops in Bennington. When towns were called on to enlist troops, the people of Poultney voted not to pay the recruits; the people of Rockingham decided not to recruit them in the first place.
One Federalist newspaper mocked military recruitment advertisements by stating that “slaves” were needed to fill the ranks. Federalists also claimed that Jeffersonians were in league with France’s Napoleon; Democratic-Republicans shot back that New England Federalists were so strongly against the war that they were conspiring to secede from the Union, an idea that was indeed discussed at a secret meeting of Federalists. One Jeffersonian called for restricting civil liberties to block the actions of these “domestic traitors.”
Once war is actually declared, the public often rallies around the flag, but not Vermonters during this war. Many continued to oppose the conflict. Despite the onset of war, trade continued to flow between Vermont and Canada. The Vermont Legislature even loosened restrictions on trade with Canada.
Soon, Vermonters were literally feeding an army that was threatening to invade. The British army in Canada reported that two-thirds of its beef originated in Vermont and New York.
When the British did invade in 1814, they did so down the west side of Lake Champlain. Some claimed this was to avoid alienating the many British sympathizers in Vermont. Among those seeking to avoid armed conflict with Britain was Vermont’s Federalist governor, Martin Chittenden, who refused to allow Vermont troops to help New York defend the western shore of Lake Champlain.
According to one historian, based on voting records, roughly 40 percent of Vermonters opposed the embargo. Opposition to the war, he estimated, was larger, reaching 50 to 60 percent by 1814.
On Sept. 11 of that year, however, a resounding American naval victory on Lake Champlain at the Battle of Plattsburgh sparked a surge in patriotic pride and presumably dampened opposition to the war.
Vermonters’ mixed feelings soon became irrelevant. On Christmas Eve of that year, the Treaty of Ghent ended the war. But of course, political disputes never really end. They just morph. The parties quickly began arguing over whether the country had gotten what it deserved out of the treaty.
