The road to glory

by E. Alexander Powell

The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming troopers, broke and ran.

The prophet, who had been chanting appeals to the Great Spirit from the top of a rock within view of his warriors but safely out of range of the American rifles (he evidently had some doubts as to the efficacy of his charms), realized that, as a result of the unforeseen obstinacy of the Americans’ resistance, victory was fast slipping from his grasp and that his only hope of success lay in an overwhelming charge. Roused to renewed fanaticism by his fervid exhortations, the Indians once again swept forward, whooping like madmen. But the Americans were ready for them, and as the yelling redskins came within range they met them with a volley of buckshot which left them wavering, undecided whether to come on or to retreat. Harrison, whose plan was to maintain his lines unbroken until daylight and then make a general advance, and who had been constantly riding from point to point within the camp to keep the assailed positions reinforced, realized that the crucial moment had arrived. Now was his chance to drive home the deciding blow. Boyd, recognizing as quickly as Harrison the opportunity thus presented, ordered a bugler to sound the charge, and his infantry roared down upon the Indian line in a human avalanche tipped with steel. At the same moment he ordered up the two squadrons of dragoons which he had been holding in reserve. “Right into line!” he roared, in the voice which had resounded over so many fields in far-off Hindustan. “Trot! Gallop! Charge! Hip, hip, here we go!” It was this charge, delivered with the smashing suddenness with which a boxer gets in a solar-plexus blow, which did the business. The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming troopers in their brass helmets and streaming plumes of horsehair, broke and ran. Tippecanoe was won, though at a cost to the Americans of nearly two hundred killed and wounded, including two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, five captains, and several lieutenants. The discredited prophet, now become an object of hatred and derision among his own people, fled for his life while the victorious Americans burned his town behind him. Tecumseh, returning from the south to be greeted by the news of the disaster to his plans resulting from his brother’s folly, threw in his lot with the British, commanded England’s Indian allies in the War of 1812, and died two years later at the battle of the Thames, when his old adversary, Harrison, once again led the Americans to victory. For his share in the Tippecanoe triumph, Boyd received a brigadier-general’s commission. Harrison was started on the road which was to end at the White House. The peril of the great Indian confederation was ended forever, and the civilization of the West was advanced a quarter of a century.

THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR

THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR

I  WONDER how many of the white-clad, white-shod folk who lounge their winters away on the golf-links at St. Augustine or in wheeled chairs propelled by Ethiopians along the fragrant pathways of Palm Beach ever speculate as to how it happens that the flags which fly over the Ponce de Leon and the Royal Poinciana are made of red, white, and blue bunting instead, say, of red and yellow. Not many of them, I expect, for professional joy hunters have no time to spare for history. I wonder how many of those people who complacently regard themselves as well-read and well-informed could tell you offhand, if you asked them, how Florida became American or give you even the barest outline of the conception and execution of that daring and cynical scheme whereby it was added to the Union. I wonder how many professors of history in our schools and colleges are aware that Florida was once a republic—for but a brief time, it is true—with a flag and a president and an army of its own. I wonder how many of our military and naval officers know that we fought Spanish soldiers and stormed Spanish forts and captured Spanish towns and hauled down Spanish colors (all quite unofficially, of course) fourscore years before Schley and Sampson sunk the Spanish fleet off Santiago. And, finally, I wonder how many people have ever so much as heard of the Emperor McGillivray, who held his barbaric court at Tallahassee and was a general in the armies of England, Spain, and the United States at the same time; of Sir Gregor MacGregor, the Scottish soldier of fortune who attempted to establish a kingdom at Fernandina and died King of the Mosquito Coast; or any of those other strange and romantic figures—De Aury, Hubbard, Peire, Humbert—who followed him. It is a dashing story but a bloody one, and those who have no stomach for intrigue and treachery and massacre and ambushes and storming parties and filibustering expeditions had better turn elsewhere for their reading.

Some one has aptly remarked that the history of Florida is but a bowl of blood, and that, were a man to cast into it some chemical that would separate the solid ingredients from the mere water, he would find that the precipitate at the bottom consisted of little save death and disappointment. Certainly the Spaniards were rewarded by little more, for after they had ruled it for two hundred and fifty years the net results of their labor were the beggarly settlements at Pensacola and St. Augustine. In 1763 England ceded Havana to Spain in exchange for Florida, and for a brief time that harassed country was on speaking terms with peace and prosperity, for the English established settlements and built roads and started schools, as is the quaint Anglo-Saxon way. But with the loss of her American colonies, in 1783, England suddenly concluded that it was not worth her while to retain this now isolated province; so she ceded it back to Spain, and the settlers found that their work had gone for nothing. A Spanish lethargy promptly settled upon the land; grass sprang up in the main streets of the towns; the noon-hour was expanded into a siesta which lasted from twelve to four; the indigo plantations started by the English colonists were neglected and ran out; the injustice, cruelty, and oppression which everywhere characterized Spanish rule entered upon a return engagement; and Florida became a savage and lawless borderland, where Indians, runaway slaves, filibusters, frontiersmen, and fugitives from justice fought each other and united only in jeering at the feeble rule of Spain.

At this time the colony was divided into two provinces, known as East and West Florida. The former province was virtually identical with the present State, extending from the Perdido River (now the boundary-line between the States of Florida and Alabama) eastward to the Atlantic Ocean, including the great peninsula lying south of Georgia and stretching across almost six degrees of latitude. On its Atlantic seaboard were the towns of Fernandina and St. Augustine, and on the Gulf coast the ports of Pensacola and St. Marks. The province of West Florida extended from the Perdido westward, according to the Spanish claims, to the Mississippi and included the river town of Baton Rouge and the Gulf port of Mobile. It will be seen, therefore, that Spain was in possession of all that great semicircle of Gulf coast stretching from Key West to New Orleans.

In 1803, Napoleon, hard-pressed for funds with which to continue his European campaigns, sold the colony of Louisiana to the United States as unconcernedly as though he were disposing of a suburban building lot. This proceeding was typical of the utter indifference with which the sovereigns of the Old World were accustomed to transfer their colonies in the New. The colonists, however much they may have loved their sovereign, their country, or her institutions, were bought, sold, or given away, without their consent and often without their knowledge. This enormous addition to the national domain made it not only desirable but imperative that the United States acquire ports upon the Gulf of Mexico, so that the settlers in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and western Georgia might have an outlet for their products. The gentlemen in frock coats and high black stocks who were at the tiller of our ship of state determined, therefore, that the Floridas must become American—peacefully if possible, forcibly if there was no other way.

Now, it must be borne in mind that at this time Spain had no diplomatic intercourse with the United States, the gigantic policy of Napoleon having, for the time being, erased her from the list of nations. Thus overwhelmed at home, her possessions in America were either in a state of open revolt or in so defenseless a condition that they were ready to drop like ripe plums into the hands of any nation which shook the tree. It will thus be seen that the gentlemen in Washington quite evidently knew what they were about when they chose a time when Mother Spain was confined to her bed, as the result of the beating up she had received from Napoleon, to elope with her daughter Florida.