Stephen Van Rensselaer - Politics and The War of 1812

Politics and The War of 1812

Van Rensselaer also spent a great deal of time in political pursuits; it is said that he did this more out of a sense of duty than of ambition. He was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1789 to 1791, and the New York State Senate from 1791 to 1796. He was elected as and honorary member of the New York Society of the Cincinnati in 1781.

He was Lieutenant Governor of New York from 1795 to 1801, elected with Governor John Jay. Van Rensselaer, over his time in politics, acquired a reputation as something of a reformer, voting in favour of extending suffrage and going against much of New York's upper class in doing so. He was one of the first to advocate for a canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes and was appointed to a commission to investigate the route in 1810.

In 1786, Van Rensselaer was made a major of the United States militia, which set him on a brief military career. Though the military was not Van Rensselaer's major pursuit, he was a militia major-general by 1801, a path which would come to a head during the War of 1812. Van Rensselaer, despite having held high rank in the militia for several decades, was, like most American militia officers at the time, virtually untrained and inexperienced. Clearly, Van Rensselaer was not a good choice to command an entire American army, but politics as much as military tactics dictated many of the military appointments of the day.

Van Rensselaer was a leading opposition candidate for Governor of New York, and he made the incumbent Daniel D. Tompkins quite wary of running against him. Therefore, the Democratic-Republican Tompkins devised a way to remove van Rensselaer from the picture. He did this by offering him command of the United States Army of the Centre. If Van Rensselaer, who was, technically, a militia major-general, declined the post, then he would lose esteem in the eyes of the voters. If he accepted, he would be unable to run for Governor with the Federalists. If Van Rensselaer proved a poor general (which seemed likely), he would be discredited and his reputation would be damaged. However, even if Van Rensselaer proved a natural and was able to do well, he would not be able to run for Governor because the military powers-that-be would refuse to remove him. Tompkins' clever maneuvering had eliminated his main rival, but it had given short shrift to the war that had only just begun.

Van Rensselaer accepted the post, and with his decidedly more soldierly cousin Solomon as his aide-de-camp, attempted to safeguard the honour of his country in the war (despite the fact that, as a Federalist, he had been against the war in the first place). But the Army of the Centre consisted largely of soldiers like himself — untrained, inexperienced militiamen, who, under the Constitution, did not actually have to cross over into Canada to fight. The British were in the process of fortifying the Queenston Heights that van Rensselaer would have to attack, and his officers were itching for action despite their general's desire to delay. To make matters worse, Brigadier-General Alexander Smyth, Van Rensselaer's subordinate, had a large force of trained regulars that was theoretically under Van Rensselaer's overall command. However, Smyth, a regular soldier, continuously refused to obey van Rensselaer's commands or answer his summons. With his officers planning to try and force van Rensselaer out, the General saw that he had to act without Smyth against the fortified Queenston Heights position. It was a prodigious miscalculation.

On 13 October 1812, Van Rensselaer launched an attack on the British position that would evolve into the Battle of Queenston Heights, in which van Rensselaer's forces were badly beaten by the British generals Isaac Brock and, after Brock's death, Roger Hale Sheaffe. van Rensselaer's preparations and his plan of attack were clearly a major reason for the scale of the defeat. He was unable to secure the element of surprise, he did not procure enough boats for his men to cross easily, and he was even unable to supply his soldiers with sufficient ammunition. Despite significantly outnumbering the British in the early stages of the battle, the American soldiers, untried and untrained, sometimes refused to cross the river. Van Rensselaer was not even able to coax the boatmen into going back over to rescue the doomed attack force. The defeat at Queenston Heights spelled the end to van Rensselaer's military career, and after the battle, he resigned his post. Van Rensselaer's political ambitions were far from over, but, as Daniel Tompkins had hoped, Van Rensselaer would never become Governor of New York: He lost the gubernatorial election in April 1813 to Tompkins – Tompkins 43,324 votes, Van Rensselaer 39,718.