Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812 by Joshua M. Smith (review)

Reviewed by: Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812 by Joshua M. Smith Liam Riordan (bio) Keywords Maine, Massachusetts, War of 1812, Smuggling, Trade, Privateers Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812. By Joshua M. Smith. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Pp. 212. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $34.95.) This detailed examination of the District of Maine in the War of 1812 reveals how the war supercharged conflicts among local, state, and national actors and led to Maine statehood. The book furthers Joshua M. Smith's standing as a leading historian of Maine in the early republic in the wake of the landmark studies by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Alan Taylor in 1990. The breadth of Smith's research into widely scattered personal papers, period newspapers and imprints, town and county histories, published memoirs, federal and state as well as British and provincial official records (in addition to a mostly article-based scholarly secondary literature) is truly impressive. He leaves few stones unturned. The book gives fine-grained attention to sharp differences that arose from the mobilization to fight the land war and equally divisive dynamics at sea. The travails of "stringbeaners," poor rank-and-file members of [End Page 126] ill-equipped militia companies, and their largely incompetent officers, get close scrutiny as do the actions of small privateer ships, derisively called "shaving mills," that to critics mobilized for plunder rather than patriotism. Massachusetts leaders objected to the assertion of national authority to restrict trade and to control the state militia during the war, and popular opinion in Maine was sharply divided about the war. The often shadowy nature of privateers' sanctioned piracy and the legal adjudication of their prizes led to lengthy and acrimonious claims. A third major subject is the risk and reward of trade across the uncertain international border with British North America. Trade with the enemy left elusive documentation beyond dramatic charges by the rare officials who tried to combat illegal commerce, who were pitted against people who embraced such trade as a lucrative and sometimes life-sustaining right. The war itself is the vivid heart of Making Maine, and following British control of eastern Maine in the summer of 1814 conditions spiraled downward. Lack of provisions and decisive British power led to pragmatic collaboration with occupying forces Down East, while a mobilization to oust the enemy heightened the clash between militia and army interests in other parts of the District, especially around Portland. Henry Dearborn, a Maine resident who had been Jefferson's secretary of war and suffered major battlefield defeats in the invasion of Canada, appears nearly venal in his debilitating quarrels with Massachusetts Federalists like Governor Caleb Strong. William King, one of the few skilled militia commanders, became the leader of the Maine statehood movement and was overwhelming elected its first governor, yet he profited from illegal trade (even while commanding the militia), and his policies enhanced his great wealth. At almost every turn political and military officials were self-interested and self-serving. Smith finds some solace in this, since the republic persevered in spite of severely flawed leadership. Local circumstances and severe denunciations of opponents often occluded a clear sense of events on the ground both at the time and today. A compelling example is when Colonel George Ulmer, a Republican partisan, led a group of quasi-militia volunteers from Penobscot Bay to join the army at distant Eastport, where he faced a bewildering situation. The regular army lieutenant in charge of Fort Sullivan refused to provision or lodge the new arrivals. Army and customs officials at Eastport also opposed Ulmer's attempts to limit brazen smuggling. The seemingly well-intentioned Ulmer took on personal debts to feed and supply his men, leading to his month-long imprisonment at Machias for insolvency. [End Page 127] Relieved of his command following riotous clashes between volunteers and authorities in Castine, Ellsworth, and Eastport in the summer of 1813, Ulmer was arrested again, and, thoroughly demoralized, wrote of wanting to die on a battlefield in Canada (66–75). Smith delves into such internecine matters and helps to clarify the messy forces at play, though the anecdotal detail required to recover this...

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