Republicans, Federalists, and The War of 1812

It seems that Simeon had no burning desire to return to his father's farm. After the dissolution of the Farnsworth-Churchill partnership, and the premature end of his apprenticeship, Simeon found another printing job in Windsor, with “The Washingtonian”, a Federalist paper. Simeon, like the rest of his family, is a Republican, and in a letter home, he assures his father that he will have nothing to do with printing the paper. He will just be the bookkeeper. This didn't appease his father at all. In a letter back to Simeon, Lemuel says, “I am sorry to learn that you are in that dirty business and place. The Mosiac rule, I fear, will not cleanse the man that touches that loathsome press, 'The Washingtonian' “.

This is a pretty strong statement. Lemuel was a rabid Republican in an era when political feelings were running very strong. He was a Republican member of the state legislature for one term, but when he ran a second time, he lost the election by one vote. Louis Flanders, who wrote Simeon's biography, says that Lemuel probably would have been reelected if his political views were a little more moderate.

Certainly the events leading up to the War of 1812 would have affected the life of a young man in Vermont, just beginning to make his way in the world, especially someone involved in the newspaper business. Newspapers were political vehicles. Unlike today, when newspapers are supposed to be unbiased, newspapers of the 1800's were openly committed to one political party or the other, or for one cause or another.

Before the war, the United States was divided between the Federalist Party and the Republican Party. John Adams was a Federalist, and his administration created a strong banking system that put the new government on a firm financial footing. However, the next presidential election went to a Republican, Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists never regained power. The Republicans, then as today, believed that less government is better, and that an agrarian based society is preferable over an urban society. Lemuel's harsh statement against the Federalist newspaper Simeon worked for mirrored the extreme animosity between the two parties clashing strongly over the impending war.

The Federalists didn't want to go to war against England. They admired England's political system and thought that the American system should emulate it. Most of New England was Federalist. New England shipping interests would only be damaged by a war with England. The Republicans supported a war with England. They hated the elitism of the British governmental system. Some Republicans believed that the Federalists secretly wanted to reunify with Britain, although that is hard to believe. John Adams, the only Federalist President, would hardly have turned the country back over to Britain. Emotions ran especially strong in Vermont. Although Vermont voted Republican in the election of 1808, it was the only New England state to do so. There were plenty of people in Vermont who sided with the rest of New England, which caused plenty of political tension.

After the American Revolution, there was a lot of unfinished conflict between America and Britain. Britain didn't believe the United States could survive as a country. They thought that a governmental system based on equality and universal suffrage would descend into chaos and anarchy and it was only a matter of time before America would come knocking on Britain's door asking to be taken back into the folds of the British empire. Looking toward that eventuality, Britain began building a government in Canada that they thought would look appealing to an America seeking to reunite with the mother country.

The border between Canada and the United States was blurry for a number of reasons. After the Revolution, 38,000 American colonists who had remained loyal to Britain moved to Canada. Canada got another influx of Americans during the 1790's, when the British offered free land and a promise of low taxes to anyone who wanted to settle there. At the same time, Irish immigrants, subjects of the King of England, poured into the United States. These migratory movements caused some confusion over the question of who was loyal to which country.

Britain took advantage of this confusion on the high seas. In British law, if you were born a British subject, you stayed a British subject for your whole life. There was no naturalization process. They didn't recognize American citizenship for their former subjects. They didn't come into America and grab British-born subjects and drag them home, but they did that very thing on the ocean. Britain was involved in a war with France, and that war was being fought mostly at sea, by the French and British navies. In addition, Britain needed sailors to man the ships that traveled throughout her far-flung empire. A small country, Britain could ill afford to lose all this manpower to the United States. Like a parent retrieving runaway children, captains of British ships overpowered American merchant ships at sea and “impressed” any sailors they thought had been born in Britain. Of course, it was hard to tell whether a sailor was American or British born. Many sailors who were born in America ended up serving on British ships, as well as sailors who had been born in Britain but were American citizens. This confusion also led to accusations of takeover plots and conspiracies on both sides of the Canadian border. The Americans were convinced that the British government was planning a new invasion of the United States, from Canada, and the British government was convinced that the Americans were sending Republican agitators and newspapers to Canada to spread republican ideals and cause unrest amongst the settlers there. Some of these accusations were accurate. There were some unscrupulous people who sought to get rich by fomenting hate and mistrust between Canada and the United States.

Our own Ira Allen, brother of Ethan, was involved in negotiations with the French to join Vermont with the French in a takeover of Quebec. After the takeover, Ira planned to have Quebec and Vermont unite and form a new state called “United Columbia”. Ira was on a ship full of guns headed to North America, when British naval forces intercepted it and impounded the contents. Ransford Rogers, one of Ira's cronies, went to Montreal to organize a secret society created to take over the city on behalf of Vermonters. The “White Cap Society” had 61 members, bound by a blood oath. During club meetings, held at night, Rogers performed occult ceremonies while all attendees wore special white caps. These ceremonies were supposed to yield the secrets to finding various hidden treasures. The White Cap Society also supposedly organized a plot to plunder and burn Montreal with the help of 1,000 armed men from Vermont. Montreal authorities got wind of Rogers' activities and chased him back to Vermont, where he disappeared. Rogers been run out of New Jersey for running a similar scam there. There's even a book about him – intriguingly entitled “An Account of the Beginning, Transactions and Discovery of Ransford Rogers, Who Seduced Many By Pretended Hobgoblins and Apparitions and Thereby Extorted Money From Their Pockets”.

These various threats to the security of Canada made the British nervous. British officers began to build alignments with Indian tribes on the American border, offering food, firearms and ammunition in return for allegiance against the Americans. On November 6, 1811, William Henry Harrison led a force of Americans in an invasion of a Shawnee Indian village, Prophetstown, on Tippecanoe Creek in Indiana. At Prophetstown, two Shawnee leaders, supported by the British, had gathered a band of followers to resist American settlement of their land. Although Harrison and his men succeeded in driving the Shawnee out of Prophetstown, they suffered heavy casualties.

The triple threats of impressment, British-sponsored Indian attacks, and troubles over the Canadian border convinced Republicans that war should be declared. The Federalists reluctantly agreed, but the two parties couldn't come to a consensus on how the war should be fought. The Federalists thought the war should be fought on the sea, with a strong American Navy, especially since the whole thing began at sea. The Republicans thought that building a Navy would be too expensive, and they didn't like the idea of any standing military. Convinced that Americans would rise to the occasion voluntarily like they did during the Revolution, the Republicans wanted a land war. They supported an invasion of Canada. They had the majority in Congress, and they carried the day.