1. U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee, Spirit and Manner in Which the War is Waged by Enemy, 13th Cong., 1st  sess., July 31, 1813, Military Affairs: Vol. 1, No. 123/7, 367. For more on this attack, see: George, Christopher, Terror on the Chesapeake: The War of 1812 on the Bay (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 2000)Google Scholar; Glatfelter, Heidi, Havre de Grace in the War of 1812: Fire on the Chesapeake (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013)Google Scholar; and Marine, William, The British Invasion of Maryland, 1812–1815 (Baltimore: The Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland, 1913)Google Scholar.

2. U.S. Congress, House, Committee of Claims, On the Petition of Mary Sears, 16th Cong., 2nd sess., Claims: Vol. 57, No. 18,  6.

3. Congress, Spirit and Manner, 366.

4. Ibid.

5. Few historians have even made use of the property claims from the War of 1812. Adam Rothman cited some claims from New Orleans in his book Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, and Richard Lackey published claims from the Mississippi Territory (present-day Alabama) in his book Frontier Claims in the Lower South: Records of Claims Filed by Citizens of the Alabama and Tombigbee River Settlements in the Mississippi Territory for Depredations by the Creek Indians During the War of 1812 (Baton Rouge, LA: Provincial Press, 1977)Google Scholar. In contrast, George Sheppard expertly recounted the British government's response to the property claims from Upper Canada in his book Plunder, Profit, and Paroles: A Social History of the War of 1812 in Upper Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Of Sheppard's book, J.C.A. Stagg, an eminent scholar of the War of 1812, noted that “American historians could well ask similar questions with similar methods” (see Stagg, J.C.A., “Review of George Sheppard's Plunder, Profit, and Paroles,” Journal of the Early Republic 15 [1995]: 528Google Scholar).

6. As the historian Billy Smith once observed, “only an extremely thin margin separated those [Americans] who required assistance from those who were able independently to secure the necessities of life” (Smith, Billy G., “The Best Poor Man's Country?” in Down and Out in Early America, ed. Smith, Billy G. [University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003], xviiiGoogle Scholar). Considering their economic vulnerability, it is no surprise that thousands of wartime sufferers sought immediate compensation to replace their property losses and restore their livelihoods.

7. “Washington City,” Washington City Weekly Gazette, December 21, 1816, 463.

8. Widows were particularly vulnerable to financial hardship during the Early Republic. But women did not need to be desperate to seek compensation. A widow named Rosalie Deslonde owned a plantation near New Orleans. In the winter of 1815, the United States military turned her mansion into a hospital. Deslonde requested that General Andrew Jackson order an evaluation of the damages to her property so she could petition Congress for compensation (Lewis Williams, American State Papers, 16th Cong., 2nd sess., December 11, 1820, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 536, 752).

9. Researchers would be hard pressed to find any information about the effort of the sufferers to obtain federal compensation. Michele Landis Dauber is perhaps the only scholar to examine this topic, which she addressed in the following article: “The War of 1812, September 11th, and the Politics of Compensation,” DePaul Law Review 53 (2003): 289–354Google Scholar. With good reason, Dauber states that the War of 1812 claims process “is by now almost wholly forgotten” (ibid., 293). She therefore deserves credit for conducting the initial research into this topic. But Dauber was primarily concerned with determining whether the War of 1812 had set a legal precedent for compensating the victims of a September 11-like attack. She claimed that, “in the political hazards faced by relief administrators … we can see displayed, not only the moral logic of disaster relief, but also that of its closely allied cousin, the welfare state” (ibid., 290). Dauber also argued that aid recipients are ultimately stigmatized. She observed that “being the recipient of government relief is just such a universally discrediting attribute, a stigmatizing fact that is only normative in the particular context of disastrous loss. As the moment of loss recedes—in time, public attention, and in its effects on claimants—the power of the calamity to protect recipients from moral suspicion recedes as well” (ibid., 292).

10. For a comprehensive account of the British efforts to liberate enslaved people during the War of 1812, see: Taylor, Alan, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013)Google Scholar.

11. U.S. Congress, House, Statutes at Large, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., March 3, 1825, ch. 66, 123.

12. Throughout the antebellum period, Northerners were upset with the Constitution's three-fifths clause, which gave slaveholding states an inordinate share of representation in both Congress and the Electoral College. And, many historians have contended that the North's refusal in 1819 to admit Missouri into the Union as a slave state represented a stand against this systemic inequity, rather than a stand against slavery itself. According to the traditional narrative, though, it was not until the rise of the Free Soil movement during the 1840s that the North truly began to unify against the influence of the “Slave Power” over federal affairs. For more on the North's sense of injustice over the South's power, see: Earle, Jonathan, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Richards, Leonard, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Atta, John Van, Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

13. For a few monographs about the South's political influence over various federal policies, see: Einhorn, Robin, American Taxation / American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ericson, David, Slavery in the American Republic (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011)Google Scholar; Karp, Matthew, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mason, Matthew, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. During the Early Republic, the federal government had little to do domestically, other than carry the mail and regulate the sale of public land. As Brian Balogh states, the federal government basically operated as a “‘water-front’ state” because most federal officers worked either along the nation's waterfront or its borders (Balogh, Brian, A Government Out of Sight [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar). But that does not mean the federal state was weak and idle. As several historians have recently argued, the federal government acted authoritatively and energetically on issues of security, trade, and even economic development. According to Balogh, the federal government remained peripheral only when state and local governments, as well as private institutions, could accomplish the task. In that regard, Balogh is joining with a few other scholars, such as Max Edling, Ira Katznelson, and Gautham Rao, in revising the work of Richard Bensel, who, in Yankee Leviathan, rooted the American fiscal-military state in the Civil War, as opposed to an earlier period. For more on this debate, see: Balogh, A Government Out of Sight; Bensel, Richard, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Edling, Max, A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katznelson, Ira and Shefter, Martin, eds., Shaped By War And Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rao, Gautham, National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Jared Sparks to William Sprague, May 25, 1812, Jared Sparks Personal Papers, MS Sparks 147a. Houghton Library, Harvard College Library.

16. Both sides took and destroyed civilian property, fueling a cycle of retaliation. In 1813, United States forces sacked the Canadian capital of York (Toronto) and Newark (Niagara). British forces, in turn, terrorized the residents of upstate New York, as well as the coastal inhabitants of Maryland and Virginia. Most notably in the mid-Atlantic theater, the British, in August 1814, burned the public buildings in Washington, DC, sparing only the Patent Office. For two cogent and comprehensive monographs about the War of 1812, see: Eustace, Nicole, 1812: War and Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)Google Scholar and Stagg, J.C.A., The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

17. For a comprehensive account of the War of 1812 along the Niagara frontier, see: Taylor, Alan, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Vintage Books, 2010)Google Scholar. Scholars of American borderlands are beginning to focus on the Niagara frontier, too. For a particularly fascinating account of the social and political development of the Niagara frontier during the early national period, see: Hatter, Lawrence, Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

18. Many sufferers had to rely on charity to survive the war. Toward that end, New Yorkers implemented a quasi-public relief movement for the Niagara refugees. The New York legislature supplemented the donations with $50,000 from the state's coffers. Eventually, the federal government paid New York $32,286.64 because the state had outlaid that amount to the sufferers who qualified for federal compensation under the claims law of 1825.

19. “To the Editors,” Daily National Intelligencer, December 29, 1817, 2.

20. It is no surprise that sufferers petitioned their representatives for redress, despite having no statutory or common law claim to receive compensation for their losses. By the nineteenth century, most Americans understood that they had the right to petition their representatives. Legal historians have also shown that early nineteenth century Americans often based their understanding of the law on their own sense of right and wrong, rather than on federal, state, or even local regulations. For more on this notion, see: Baily, Raymond, Popular Influence Upon Public Policy: Petitioning in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Bowling, Kenneth and Kennon, Donald, eds., The House & Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Edwards, Laura, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009)Google Scholar; and Hartog, Henrik, “Pigs and Positivism,” Wisconsin Law Review 4 (1985): 899–935Google Scholar.

21. Bartlett Yancey, American State Papers, 13th Cong., 3rd sess., November 19, 1814, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 260, 442.

22. The special acts of Congress are listed as addenda at the end of each alphabetized section in the Index to Record of Claims. See: Index to Record of Claims, Claims Acts of 1816–1817, War 1812, R.B. Lee Commissioner, Volume 1; Commission to Adjudicate Claims Arising Out of the War of 1812. ca. 4/1816–ca. 4/1818; Index to Register of Claims, ca. 1816–ca. 1818; Registers of Claims, 1816–1878; Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, 1775–1978, Record Group 217, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

23. Robert Wheeler Stoddard to Peter B. Porter, January 16, 1816, Peter A. Porter Collection, Peter Buell Porter Papers, Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, Reel No. 3, A-551.

24. White, Leonard, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951), 118Google Scholar.

25. U.S. Congress, House, Statutes At Large, 14th Cong., 1st sess., April 9, 1816, ch. 40, 261–64.

26. From its inception, the American legal system operated with a principle of eminent domain; that is, the ability of the government to take property for public use without the owner's consent. But the Constitution does not specify who or what can exercise eminent domain. Those who sought to limit compensation for lost property used this ambiguity as a pretext for denying claimants with vouchers from military personnel. For more information, see: Ely, James Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

27. Lee's family was highly influential in Madison's home state of Virginia. He was elected to be northern Virginia's first member in the United States House of Representatives. In Congress, Lee allied himself with the Federalists. His politics, however, did not inhibit him from becoming close friends with Madison, who was a leader of the Republicans. Lee lost his bid for re-election in 1795 and descended into genteel poverty. When he heard that Congress had passed a law creating an office for adjudicating war claims, he asked then-President Madison for the appointment. Madison agreed and the Senate unanimously approved Lee's appointment as the commissioner of claims on April 30, 1816.

28. Although the Treasury Department operated nationwide, it was primarily concerned with collecting money, not distributing it. To that end, the vast majority of its employees were stationed along the coastline attending to the customs service. Congress was also planning to liquidate the Treasury Department's Internal Revenue Service, which it had created to collect excise taxes during the war (White, The Jeffersonians, 138–39).

29. Lee began publishing his notifications in early June 1816. For one example, see: “Office of Claims for property lost, captured or destroyed, whilst in the military service of the United States, during the late war,” Daily National Intelligencer, June 4, 1816, 2.

30. Committee of Claims, Report of the Committee of Claims on the Petition of Mary Sears, 3.

31. U.S. Congress, House, Committee of Claims, Executer of Mary Sears, Deceased, 24th Cong., 1st sess., January 19, 1836, Vol. 1, no. 176, 1.

32. Committee of Claims, Report of the Committee of Claims on the Petition of Mary Sears, 3.

33. Dauber, “The War of 1812, September 11th, and the Politics of Compensation,” 289–354.

34. U.S. Congress, United States Statutes at Large, Payment for Property Lost, Destroyed, or Captured by the Enemy, April 9, 1816, 14th Cong., ch. 40, 263.

35. Lee had a confluence of reasons for applying a broad interpretation of the law. As he was a Virginia native and resident of Washington, DC, the war literally hit close to home for him. A British shell even blasted through the house in which Lee's mother had been raised (Clarissa Fleming, “Richard Bland Lee: Statesman and Master of Sully,” 1960, 27, unpublished article; copy courtesy of the Archives and Records Center for Fairfax County, VA). He also knew at least one of the claimants, Tench Ringgold, because they had briefly worked together. Yet, Lee did not recuse himself from presiding over Ringgold's case. Instead, he awarded Ringgold the full amount that he had requested for his lost ropewalk and house, neither of which—as congressmen later observed—“constituted a military deposit” (U.S. Congress, House, Committee of Claims, Revision of the Act Authorizing Payment for Property Destroyed by the Enemy During the War With Great Britain, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 17, 1816, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 320, 487). Lee had ideological motives for taking a liberal construction of the law, as well. Throughout his political career, he consistently favored a proactive central government. He also stated his belief that the interest of the United States “will be more certainly promoted and permanently established by acts of justice and retribution to its citizens who have innocently suffered in a war waged for the common benefit, than consigning them to undeserved misery and want, in imitation of Governments which are created and supported by military force, and do not rest, like ours, on the basis of justice and equality of rights” (Richard Bland Lee, American State Papers, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 23, 1816, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 324, 490).

36. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 1816, 368.

37. To contextualize this expenditure, in 1816, the federal government received $237,840 in revenue from the postal service and approximately $1,500,000 from all its public land sales (U.S. Congress, House, William Crawford, Annual Report of Secretary of Treasury on State of Finances, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 20, 1816, Vol. 3 no. 490, 2).

38. Lee realized that he was stretching the law. In October 1816, he corresponded with New York Governor Daniel Tompkins about the Niagara sufferers. Lee admitted that the law restrained his ability to help. However, he also told Tompkins that Congress had recently passed a bill for the relief of Clinton, NY, because the United States military had shelled its courthouse during the Battle of Plattsburg. “This act may however be viewed in another light as merely declaratory,” thought Lee, “pointing out to the Commissioner [meaning himself] the propriety of receiving and adjudicating similar claims. In this view I am disposed to regard it, being an interpretation most convenient, most conformable to justice and economy, and facilitating to the [Niagara] sufferers.” And Lee realized that some in the federal government would disagree with his decision. “By so doing,” he confessed to Tompkins, “I might offend the sovereignty” (Richard B. Lee to Daniel Tompkins, October 19, 1816, Letters Sent Concerning the Payment of Soldiers’ Claims from the War of 1812; Records of the R.B. Lee Commission; and Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, 1775–1978, Record Group 217, National Archives Building, Washington, DC).

39. “From the Buffalo Gazette,” The Columbian, October 7, 1816, 2.

40. Revision of the Act Authorizing Payment, 484. Anti-administration newspapers argued that Madison lacked the authority to suspend Lee's work. “As to the executive power of suspending the operation of laws,” wrote the Washington City Weekly Gazette, “such a power was never contemplated, and cannot exist, without a direct infringement of the Constitution, and in fact, an utter annihilation of the liberty of the country” (“Washington City,” Washington City Weekly Gazette, December 21, 1816, 463). The Albany Advertiser commented that Madison could not fire Lee because, “in the first place, the man is a Virginian—in the second, such a proceeding would have been constitutional—and in the third, it is the fashion, now-a-days, to turn men out of office for doing their duty, not for an opposite course” (“Mr. Richard Bland Lee,” Albany Advertiser, January 8, 1817, 1).

41. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., January 2, 1817, 406. This willingness to re-evaluate the efficacy of the law probably stemmed from what the historian John Resch describes as the “cult of sentiment” during the Early Republic. Following the War of 1812, Americans increased their support for voluntary associations, almshouses, and hospitals. As Resch chronicles in Suffering Soldiers, this philanthropic spirit was also reflected in legislative programs, such as the creation of pensions for Revolutionary War veterans. That said, most congressmen opted to limit compensation to wartime sufferers. For more on public and private humanitarianism after the War of 1812, see: Resch, John, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Rockman, Seth, Welfare Reform in the Early Republic: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 2003)Google Scholar; and Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

42. The more erudite congressmen knew that jurists seldom held governments liable for an enemy's actions during a time of war. In particular, those opposed to compensating the sufferers relied heavily on the works of the Swiss philosopher Emmerich de Vattel and the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. But most of those representatives did not openly credit their sources. They probably reasoned that referencing the arguments of long-dead Europeans scholars in their speeches would do more harm than good in their nation's increasingly democratic political climate. The tone of some Republican newspapers certainly suggested as much. “In the monarchies of Europe,” cried one advocate of the sufferers in the National Intelligencer, “it has never been acknowledged that the government is bound to indemnify its subjects for the losses sustained during a war.” “And why?” this writer asked rhetorically. “Because such governments only regard the interest of the privileged few, and never acknowledge, but with reluctance, any of the rights of the people” (“To the Editors,” Daily National Intelligencer, December 29, 1817, 2). For an admirably understandable history of international law, see: Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order From Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

43. For a brief description of property seizures during the Revolutionary Era, see: Ely, Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right, 33–41.

44. The Congress's 1784 resolution is reprinted and explained in a report by the Committee of Claims (Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd sess., December 1818, 466).

45. The Committee of Claims presented its final report on the Revolutionary claims in 1797, after the expiration of the deadline for claims. Rebuffed Revolutionary War claimants (or their heirs) reapplied for compensation after the War of 1812, arguing that the new law should apply retroactively to them. In early 1817, the committee seemed willing to compensate these claimants. However, it reversed course after the controversy over Lee's awards. Instead, the committee explained that Congress had never intended to pay for their lost property and that they should have applied for compensation from their home states. For more on the creation of the Committee of Claims, see: White, Leonard, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967), 355–58Google Scholar.

46. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 1816, 384.

47. Clay was a strong advocate for various federal endeavors. His tenure as speaker of the House constituted—as historian C. Edward Skeen writes—“one of the most productive and progressive periods in the history of the early republic” (Skeen, C. Edward, 1816: America Rising [Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003], 236Google Scholar).

48. For more on these early precedents for federal relief, see: Dauber, Michele, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 17–25Google Scholar.

49. “To the Editors,” Daily National Intelligencer, December 29, 1817, 2. Congress appropriated relief funds as early as 1790. According Michele Dauber, the early appropriations “hardened into a set of legislative precedents,” leading later Congresses to debate the merits of relief measures on a case-by-case basis (Dauber, Michele, “The Sympathetic State,” Law and History Review 23 [2005]: 387–442CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

50. Nearly one quarter of Upper Canada's male population submitted claims for lost property. But, in 1823, the British government decided that it would only partially compensate these claimants. Instead, in 1837, the colonial administration of Upper Canada offered them full restitution. This initiative bankrupted the colony, however. As a result, Upper Canada was forced to merge with Lower Canada in 1840, which created the foundation for a unified Canada. For more on the Canadian claims, see Sheppard, Plunder, Profit, and Paroles.

51. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., January 1817, 428.

52. Ibid., 426.

53. David W. Hawley to Peter B. Porter, January 12, 1817, Peter A. Porter Collection, Peter Buell Porter Papers, Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, Reel No. 3, A-583.

54. Nathaniel Sill to Peter B. Porter, February 16, 1817, Peter A. Porter Collection, Peter Buell Porter Papers, Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, Reel No. 3, A-584.

55. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 1816, 388.

56. U.S. Congress, House, Statutes at Large, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., March 3, 1817, ch. 110, 397.

57. “Damages Sustained by War,” The Columbian, January 23, 1817, 2.

58. “Niagara Claims,” Commercial Advertiser, May 6, 1818, 2.

59. Committee of Claims, Report of the Committee of Claims on the Petition of Mary Sears, 4.

60. Journal of the House of Representatives, December 8, 1817, Vol. 11, 28.

61. Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 1st sess., December 1817, 478.

62. Lewis Williams, American State Papers, 15th Cong., 1st sess., March 11, 1818, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 412, 590.

63. U.S. Congress, House, Peter Hagner, Payments Made for Property Destroyed, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 10, 1825, Vol. 2, no. 39,  6.

64. Abstract of Claims, April 30, 1818–February 11, 1820; Office of the Third Auditor, Records of the R.B. Lee Commission; Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, 1775–1978, Record Group 217, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

65. Charles Rich, American State Papers, 15th Cong., 1st sess., March 27, 1818, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 431, 604.

66. R.D. Stoddard to Peter B. Porter, December 23, 1817, Peter A. Porter Collection, Peter Buell Porter Papers, Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, Reel No. 3, A-593.

67. “Niagara Claims,” Commercial Advertiser, May 6, 1818, 2.

68. “Niagara Claims,” The New York-Columbian, May 8, 1818, 1.

69. Augustus Ford, a printed “sketch” of William D. Ford's life (dated July, 1888), William Donnison Ford Papers, 29–30, New-York Historical Society.

70. Ibid.

71. William Ford, Memoranda Book, William Donnison Ford Papers, New-York Historical Society.

72. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., December 1816, 386.

73. Charles Rich, American State Papers, 16th Cong., 2nd sess., December 22, 1820, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 540, 756.

74. U.S. Congress, House, Committee of Claims, House Burnt by the Enemy at Havre-de-Grace in 1813, 14th Cong., 2nd sess., February 27, 1817, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 357, 526. Those in favor of limiting liability for losses often argued that Congress would inadvertently encourage future depredations by paying for property that had been wantonly destroyed. Of course, nations continually revise the laws of war. For more on the history of this evolution, see: Bass, Gary Jonathan, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Byers, Michael, War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict (London: Atlantic Books, 2005)Google Scholar.

75. J.R. Williams to William Woodbridge, January 22, 1820, Burton Historical Collections, Detroit Public Library.

76. Ibid.

77. U.S. Congress, House, Committee of Claims, Property Lost or Destroyed, 22nd Cong., 1st sess., March 5, 1832, Property Lost or Destroyed, 15, 11.

78. U.S. Congress, House, Bills and Resolutions, 18th Cong., 2nd sess.

79. Ibid.

80. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 28, 1824, 70.

81. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 27, 1824, 62.

82. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 27, 1824, 64.

83. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 28, 1824, 71.

84. de Vattel, Emmerich, The Law of Nations, trans. Chitty, Joseph (Philadelphia: P.H. Nicklin & T. Johnson-Law Booksellers, 1835), 402Google Scholar.

85. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 28, 1824, 73.

86. James Monroe to the American Plenipotentiaries at Gottenburg, January 28, 1814, American State Papers, 13th Cong., 3rd sess., Foreign Relations: Vol. 3, no. 269, 702.

87. Copy of the American Project to the British Plenipotentiaries at Ghent, November 10, 1814, American State Papers, 13th Cong., 3rd sess., Foreign Relations: Vol. 3, no. 271, 739.

88. British response to the American Projet, November 26, 1814, American State Papers, 13th Cong., 3rd sess., Foreign Relations: Vol. 3, no. 271, 740.

89. The Madison administration appointed John Quincy Adams, James Bayard, Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, and Jonathan Russell to serve as envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary. From their voluminous records, it seems that these negotiators never focused on obtaining indemnities for British spoliations in the United States, at least relative to other considerations. As veteran statesmen, legislators, and ambassadors, they likely knew that the British would not agree to such a condition, which, as the British pointed out, had little legal precedent in the annals of warfare. The British also had good reason to avoid establishing such a legal precedent. After all, they had been at war almost continuously for decades, ruining a great deal of foreign property in the process. For the most thorough accounts of the treaty negotiations, see: Perkins, Bradford, Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Updyke, Frank, The Diplomacy of the War of 1812 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1915)Google Scholar.

90. Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams, 166.

91. Taylor, The Internal Enemy, 430–33.

92. Property Lost or Destroyed, 14.

93. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 29, 1824, 85.

94. For a few of the comprehensive monographs on the Missouri crisis, see: Van Atta, Wolf by the Ears; Forbes, Robert, The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic.

95. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 29, 1824, 85.

96. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 3, 1825, 114.

97. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., December 23, 1824, 85.

98. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 3, 1825, 123.

99. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 4, 1825, 131

100. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 4, 1825, 135.

101. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong, 1st sess., Febuary 1816, 1056.

102. Bartlett Yancey, American State Papers, 14th Cong., 1st sess., December 29, 1815, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 278, 453.

103. Lewis Williams, American State Papers, 15th Cong., 2nd sess., December 16, 1818, Claims: Vol. 1, no. 452, 639.

104. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 4, 1825, 135–36.

105. Forsyth sought to defend the interest of slaveholders throughout his distinguished career in politics. In his biography of Forsyth, Alan Duckett contended that “Forsyth believed that the southern states were handling the Negro problem in a satisfactory manner and that neither the national government nor any other agency should interfere … He was particularly opposed to any deliberate attempts made to exercise the members of Congress on the subject” (Duckett, Alvin, John Forsyth: Political Tactician [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1962], 34Google Scholar).

106. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 5, 1825, 139–40.

107. Tooley, Mark, The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2015), 55Google Scholar.

108. Wright's version of the bill made no mention of either real or personal property. Instead, the law applied only to those “having a claim for a building destroyed by the enemy during the late war.” Wright probably thought that using terms such as real or personal property in the text would have opened the door for more claims, not to mention creating more confusion about eligibility. For example, although most jurisdictions regarded slaves as personal property, more than one third of the jurisdictions in the South applied the rules of real property to slaves (Morris, Thomas D., Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996], 64Google Scholar). And, with this change, Congress effectively sidestepped the issue over whether the federal government needed to compensate those who lost slaves in the service of the United States military. However, Congress would confront this issue directly in 1849, when the heirs of a man named Antonio Pacheco sought restitution for an enslaved man who had been lost while serving as an interpreter for the United Stateas military in the territory of Florida during the Seminole War. In essence, the debate over the Pacheco claim pitted those who believed that the federal government recognized property in slaves against those who believed that it did not. Ultimately, Congress approved the claim (Foner, Eric, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010], 59–60Google Scholar).

109. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 6, 1825, 147.

110. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 3, 1825, 114.

111. Historians have thoroughly documented the South's fear of federal encroachment during the antebellum period. To a large extent, this fear stemmed from the South's determination to protect slavery from Northern interference. However, Southern statesmen rarely couched their resistance to the federal government in in those terms. “Slaveholding congressmen,” writes Robert Forbes, “did not wish to do battle with northerners on the abstract question of the expediency of slavery.” According to Forbes, these statesmen instead employed an “emphasis on constitutional questions—what one might call the ‘indirect’ defense of slavery [which] prompted increasingly extravagant and unqualified southern assertions of federal impotence and states’ rights (and, later, territorial) rights and powers throughout the antebellum period” (Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath, 40–41). For other texts that focus on this topic, see: Einhorn, American Taxation / American Slavery; Finkelman, Paul, ed., Proslavery Thought, Ideology, and Politics (New York: Garland Science, 1989)Google Scholar; Finkelman, Paul and Kennon, Donald, eds., Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Freehling, William, Prelude to Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Huston, James, “Virtue Besieged,” Journal of the Early Republic 14 (1994): 523–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, Joseph, America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Toward Civil War (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2013)Google Scholar; Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic; Mulcare, Daniel, “Restricted Authority,” Political Research Quarterly 61 (2008): 671–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schoen, Brian, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

112. Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 6, 1825, 148.

113. Richards, The Slave Power, 83–85. Forsyth wrote an addendum in the Register of Debates to clarify that he “did not believe that any slave, or any other property, was lawfully impressed, during the late war, into the public service; and, therefore, according to his opinion, there is no obligation to pay for them out of the public Treasury.” In this addendum, Forsyth also denounced the bill's bias against claimants for lost slaves. “Congress,” he wrote, “proposing to consider all impressment of property during the war lawful, cannot make a distinction between different species of property without injustice.” In that regard, Forsyth insisted that he had only proposed his amendment because he “thought it his duty to give the opportunity to those who believe the principle [of the bill] correct, to apply it to a species of property heretofore excluded.” “It must be very obvious, however,” he proceeded to conclude, “that the rejection of [the amendment] must have excited that feeling always produced by legislation, which appears to be partial” (Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2nd sess., January 6, 1825, 148).

114. As a congressman and Supreme Court justice, Philip Pendleton Barbour fervently opposed liberal constructions of the Constitution. He was, therefore, instrumental in the South's resistance to implementing various federal policies, ranging from protective tariffs to internal improvements. However, historians disagree over whether Barbour himself used strict constructionism as a mere pretext for defending slavery. On the one hand, Robert Forbes depicts that Barbour was a “key early spokesman for southern solidarity” (Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath, 40). On the other hand, William Belko contends that Barbour “genuinely railed against unwarranted and dangerous centralizing tendencies coming from an ever-loose construction of the Constitution (Belko, William, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew's Court [Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016], 101Google Scholar). Regardless, there is no question that Barbour consistently defended the right to hold property in slaves.

115. This was an impressive display of Northern unity. Even during the Missouri crisis in 1820, fourteen Northerners still voted alongside the South to admit Missouri into the Union as a slave state (Richards, The Slave Power, 80).

116. U.S. Congress, Senate, Peter Hagner, Payment for Property Lost, Captured, or Destroyed, 19th Cong., 2nd sess., January 25, 1827, no. 36, all pages. According to Hagner's report, there were also sixteen claimants from Maryland, one from Washington, DC, seven from Virginia, eight from Michigan, and one from Louisiana.

117. The federal government's creation of an ad hoc bureaucracy to receive, evaluate, and adjudicate claims from the War of 1812 supplements the work of those historians who have been arguing that the early American state was relatively responsive and authoritative. For more on this historiographical trend, see: Novak, William, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State, The American Historical Review 113 (2008): 752–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118. U.S. Congress, House, Memorial of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan, 20th Cong., 1st sess., December 20, 1827,  no. 17, 3.

119. Peter Hagner to William Brook, Jr. May 31, 1825, unpublished letter in Volume II of the “Letters Sent by the R.B. Lee Commission,” 26; RG 217, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

120. Memorial of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan, 4.

121. Executer of Mary Sears, Deceased, 2.

122. Ibid., 273.

123. The federal government administered claims for property lost in other military conflicts throughout the remainder of the antebellum period. At the same time, those who had lost property in the War of 1812 continued to petition Congress. Finally, in 1852, Congress passed an act that allowed for outstanding claims to be reopened and settled using the legal guidelines from 1825. The R.B. Lee Commission was officially disbanded in 1857.

124. The Southern Claims Commission consisted of three commissioners who served for 10  years. The Commission received nearly 22,300 applications for more than $60,000,000 worth of lost property. To receive compensation, applicants had to prove through a “rigorous examination” that they had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. The 6,960 applicants who met this standard received almost $4,637,000 in compensation. For more information, see Klingberg, Frank Wysor, “The Southern Claims Commission: A Postwar Agency in Operations,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 32 (1945): 195–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a legal history of property confiscation in the Civil War, see: Hamilton, Daniel, The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007)Google Scholar. For a legal history book about the Union's policy regarding the seizure of slaves in the South during the Civil War, see: Siddali, Silvana, From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

125. Lawrence, William, “War Claims Against the United States,” The American Law Register 22 (1874): 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126. Hoar, George F., Charles Sumner: His Complete Works (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1900), 30Google Scholar.

127. Ibid., 28, 30.