What was the most effective branch of the American military in the war of 1812?

Answer 1

The US Navy.

But, the Navy was very small. The best ships it had were six frigates built in the 1790s, three rated 44 guns and three rated 38. The US had no "line of battle ships" which were the largest type, while the British had dozens. The British probably had twenty frigates for each one the US had. The US added some ships during the war from converting merchant ships and captures, but had no hope or plan to try to match British naval strength. Nevertheless, when they sailed the US frigates fought and won some very commendable head to head battles between ships. Most well remembered is that between the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") and HMS Guerriere. The US had several very fine naval officers who laid the foundation and began the tradition of naval excellence in the US - John Barry, Joshua Barney, James Lawrence, Stephen Decatur and David Porter, among others. The USS Constitution is preserved at Boston and is still a commissioned ship in the US Navy. She was restored in the 1990s and taken out for a sail. Another of the six fine frigates of that era is also preserved at Baltimore, the USS Constellation. Oliver Hazard Perry constructed a fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania and successfully contested for control of Lake Erie, in another brilliant exploit for the Navy.

The Army had occasional bright spots, such as Winfield Scott on the Niagara frontier, and Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, famously fought two weeks after the Peace Treaty had been signed, news of which had not reached the US when the battle was fought. But these were few and the disasters many, including British capture of Washington DC and the burning of the White House.

Declaring war on the world's most powerful empire was probably a reckless act, and had the British not had their hands full with Napoleon the entire time the result might have been catastrophic. Jefferson had been president from 1801-09 and Madison was his hand-picked protege. Neither had served in the military during the Revolution, and the only thing they understood of military matters was that they wanted no more than an irreducible minimum of it. Jefferson's brainstorm involved "gunboats". These were overgrown rowboats, capable of staying afloat only in the protected waters inside harbors and able to mount maybe one or two guns. He acquired many of these while the six fine frigates were moldering in that era's equivalent of mothballs, called being "laid up in ordinary". This was Jefferson's means of ensuring the Navy got no offensive notions, as the gunboats were fit only for harbor defense. When the British struck at Washington the gunboats had to go as far up tidal creeks as they could get, to keep out of the way of the British.

Jefferson placed James Wilkinson in command of the US Army. Wilkinson liked to call himself a "scientific soldier". He was a liar, a scoundrel, a thief and a traitor. Years later he was revealed to have been "secret agent #13 in the pay of Spain" for decades. He had been Jefferson's chief witness against Aaron Burr, in Burr's trial for treason. The jury acquitted Burr and wanted to lock Wilkinson up. In 1809 Wilkinson took the entire US Army - all 2200 men - with him to New Orleans. There he encamped the Army in a malarial swamp while he courted a Creole belle in town and defrauded his men of their rations. Deaths from disease plus desertions saw the US Army emerge from this ordeal 900 strong. Three years later Madison declared War on Britain. There had been some Congressional legislation authorizing increased strength for the army but recruiting never reached these newly authorized troop levels. Army policy was still so parsimonious that commanders in the field had to write to the penny-pinching, nickle-nursing Secretary of War, Armstrong, before expending any sum over $50 - say for medicine to keep their troops alive, or food to keep them from starving, and await a reply authorizing the expense - a process which could of course take months. Madison and Jefferson also disliked and distrusted the best general the US had, Andrew Jackson, and left him sitting at home in Tennessee without a command throughout the war. Meanwhile doddering, peaceable old Henry Dearborn was foolishly frittering away opportunities on the Canadian frontier.

Its truly a miracle that the US emerged from this ridiculous foray into hostilities very little the worse for it.