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.
