Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (27 page)
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
Jefferson’s handpicked successor was his secretary of state, fellow Virginian and longtime ally James “Jemmy” Madison, who was elected in 1808 for the first of two terms. When Madison took office, war with England and perhaps with France seemed inevitable.
Who were Tecumseh and the Prophet?
The coming war got some provocation from one of the most remarkable Indian leaders of American history. A young Shawnee chief from the Ohio valley, Tecumseh envisioned a vast Indian confederacy strong enough to keep the Ohio River as a border between Indians and whites, preventing further westward expansion. He and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, an Indian mystic who called for a revival of Indian ways and a rejection of white culture, traveled extensively among tribes from Wisconsin to Florida. With Tecumseh’s organizing brilliance and the Prophet’s religious fervor, younger warriors began to fall in line, and a large army of braves, a confederacy of midwestern and southern tribes, gathered at the junction of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers.
General William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory (and a future president and grandfather of a president), was given the task of confronting Tecumseh, whom he met twice. After one of those meetings, Harrison wrote, “The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him, is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things.”
Harrison took 1,000 men out to camp near the Indians. Tecumseh, then on one of his organizing and recruiting trips, was absent when his brother, the Prophet, ordered a badly calculated assault on Harrison’s troops in November 1811. The Indians inflicted heavy losses, but were eventually driven back and scattered. Harrison and his troops destroyed their food stores, their village, and the Prophet’s claim of invincible magic, shattering Indian confidence and ending hopes for Tecumseh’s confederation.
To western Americans, the Indian confederation was a convenient excuse to fan anti-British sentiment in Congress. Calling Tecumseh’s confederation a British scheme, land-hungry westerners heightened the war fever, clamoring for the expulsion of the British from North America, even if it meant invading Canada to do it.
A
MERICAN
V
OICES
T
ECUMSEH
of the Shawnees:
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.
Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, to give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, “Never! Never!”
Tecumseh died during the War of 1812, fighting alongside the British on the Thames River in Ontario. Tecumseh was shot and killed in October 1813. His body was reportedly skinned and mutilated by Kentucky militiamen, and he was buried in a mass grave near the battlefield, according to R. David Edmunds in the
Encyclopedia of North American Indians
.
What was the War of 1812 about?
With the British encouraging the Indians and the continuing controversy over English impressment of sailors taken from American ships, there was a powerful cry for war among the land-crazed “war hawks” of the West. Led by the bellicose but powerful young House speaker, Henry Clay of Kentucky, Madison was pushed to what Jefferson had tried to avoid, a war with England. The War of 1812 finally got under way in June, in the midst of the presidential campaign.
It was not a war that America was ready to fight. A regular army of 12,000 was scattered and led by political appointees rather than by experienced commanders. There was a small navy, hardly equal in numbers or experience to England’s.
Neither side apparently prosecuted this war with much enthusiasm. The results showed in a meandering war effort that went on for the next two and a half years, ending early in 1815. After its humbling experience in the Revolution, and preoccupied with Napoleon’s armies on the continent, England fought a reluctant war. English commercial interests saw America as an important market and supplier, so their support for war was halfhearted. America didn’t lose this war. Nor did it really win. And the greatest single American victory in the war, at the Battle of New Orleans, came after peace had already been signed.
1812
July
Aiming to conquer Canada, American troops under General William Hull launch an assault. British-Canadian troops, augmented by 1,000 of Tecumseh’s braves, send Hull’s army reeling. Hull is later court-martialed and sentenced to death for cowardice, but is pardoned by Madison.
August–December
A series of surprising American sea victories by the
Constitution
(Old Ironsides) and the
United States
commanded by Stephen Decatur are morale boosters, but have no influence on the war’s outcome.
December
Madison is reelected president, beginning an American political tradition: no president has been turned out of office in wartime. Madison’s new vice president is Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration, who wins a place in posterity for creating another political tradition. Gerry carved Massachusetts into election districts that favored his party. These districts, say his opponents, were shaped like wriggling salamanders, giving the American political dictionary a new word, “gerrymander.”
The British begin a naval blockade of Chesapeake and Delaware bays.
1813
March
Commodore Isaac Chauncey, with the assistance of young Captain Oliver Perry, begins to build warships on Lake Erie to control the Great Lakes.
April
American forces capture York (Toronto) and burn government buildings there.
May
American forces under Winfield Scott take Fort George, forcing British withdrawal from Lake Erie.
June
The American frigate
Chesapeake
is captured by the British. Before dying, the American captain, James Lawrence, orders his men, “Don’t give up the ship.” They listened, prevailed, and the words soon become the American navy’s rallying cry.
September
The American fleet on Lake Erie, led by Oliver Hazard Perry, defeats a British counterpart, giving the United States control of this strategic waterway. Perry’s message to a happy President Madison: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”
October
The Battle of the Thames. Americans under William Henry Harrison defeat retreating British and Indian forces. Harrison’s Indian adversary, Tecumseh, is killed in the battle, depriving the Indians of the strong leader who might have united them.
November
American forces under James Wilkinson are defeated at Montreal. A disgraced Wilkinson is later court-martialed for cowardice, but is acquitted.
The British navy extends its blockade north to Long Island. Only ports in New England remain open to commerce, and merchants in New York and New England continue to supply the British.
1814
March
While the war against the British goes on, General Andrew Jackson of the Tennessee militia has been fighting the Creek Indian War. Jackson achieves a decisive victory in this war at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, ending the Creek War.
April
Napoleon Bonaparte is overthrown, freeing some 14,000 British troops to concentrate on the war in America.
The British blockade is extended to New England. The Americans retaliate by privateering, and capture 825 British vessels by the summer.
July
Battle of Chippewea. Outnumbered American forces under Winfield Scott defeat British forces.
August
Peace negotiations begin in Ghent.
After routing an American army at Bladensburg in a battle watched by President Madison, British troops march unopposed into Washington, D.C. In retaliation for the earlier American burning of York, the British set fire to the Capitol, the president’s mansion, and other government buildings. The British withdraw from the capital for an attack on Baltimore, and Madison returns to Washington at the end of August.
A
MERICAN
V
OICES
F
IRST
L
ADY
D
OLLEY
M
ADISON,
in a letter to her sister (August 23–24, 1814):
Will you believe it, my sister? We have had a battle, or skirmish, near Bladensburg, and here I am still, within sound of the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not. May God protect us! . . . At this late hour a wagon has been procured, and I have filled it with plate and the most valuable portable articles, belonging to the house. . . . I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out. It is done!
After the war, the president’s mansion was painted white to cover the scorch marks left by the British. That is when everyone started to call it the White House.
September
An American victory on Lake Champlain forces the British to abort a planned offensive south from Canada.
The siege of Baltimore. A successful defense of the city and Fort McHenry is witnessed by Francis Scott Key, an American civilian held on board a British ship, who is inspired to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Two elements of the British strategy, one assault from Canada and another into the middle states, have now been thwarted, leaving a third British army aimed at the Gulf Coast.
December
Andrew Jackson arrives in New Orleans, unaware that a large British invasion fleet is sailing there from Jamaica. When he learns of the attacking force, he begins preparing a defense of New Orleans, and an elaborate system of fortifications is completed just before Christmas.
December 24
The Treaty of Ghent is signed, ending the war. The treaty leaves unresolved most of the issues that led to the fighting, including impressment, now a moot point because the end of the Napoleonic wars ends the British need for more sailors. Clear boundaries between Canada and the United States are set, and a later agreement demilitarizes the Great Lakes. The Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest is placed under joint British-American control for a period of ten years.
1815
January
The Battle of New Orleans. Unaware that peace was made two weeks earlier, the British attack. The American defenders, under General Andrew Jackson, are aided by the French privateer Jean Lafitte, who has been courted by the British as well. Heavily outnumbered by British troops fresh from the victory over Napoleon’s armies, the Americans use artillery and sharpshooting riflemen to repulse numerous British charges against their defensive position, inflicting massive losses. The British suffer more than 20,000 dead; U.S. casualties are 8 dead and a small number wounded. Although the war’s outcome is unaffected by this rout, Jackson becomes an instant national hero. The news of the Treaty of Ghent finally reaches America in February.
America suffered one notable casualty in the War of 1812. The Federalist Party, which had opposed the war, was mortally wounded. Peace had delivered a large political bonus for Madison and his party. In 1816, the Federalists barely mounted opposition to Madison’s chosen successor, James Monroe, next in the “Virginian dynasty” that started with Washington, was delayed by Adams, and continued through Jefferson and Madison.
Elected at age fifty-eight, Monroe had seen much in his life. A veteran of the War of Independence, he had fought at Trenton, was twice governor of Virginia and then a senator from that state. As a diplomat he helped engineer the Louisiana Purchase. Like Jefferson and Madison before him, he had served as secretary of state, giving that post and not the vice presidency the luster of heir apparent’s office.
With the great foreign disputes settled and the nation comfortably accepting one-party rule, Monroe’s years were later dubbed the Era of Good Feelings. It was a period of rapid economic expansion, especially in the Northeast, as manufacturing began to replace shipbuilding as the leading industry. These calm years saw the beginnings of the machine age, as men like Eli Whitney, Seth Thomas of mechanical clock fame, and Francis Cabot Lowell were bringing America into the first stages of the Industrial Revolution. A series of postwar treaties with the British solidified the nation’s boundaries and eliminated the threat of another war with England.
