Tecumseh
Andrew Jackson also began his military experience by operations against
Indians. The southern redskins had been incited to war upon us by
British and Spanish emissaries along the Florida line. Tecumseh had
visited them in the same interest. The horrible massacre at Fort Mims,
east of the Alabama above its junction with the Tombigbee, was their
initial work. Five hundred and fifty persons were there surprised, four
hundred of them slain or burned to death. Jackson took the field, and in
an energetic campaign, with several bloody engagements, forced them to
peace. By the battle of the Horse-Shoe, March 27, 1814, the Creek power
was entirely crushed.
Subsequently placed in command of our force at New Orleans, Jackson was
attacked by a numerous British army, made up in large part of veterans
who had seen service under Wellington in Spain. Pakenham, the hero of
Salamanca, commanded. Jackson's position was well chosen and strongly
fortified. After several preliminary engagements, each favorable to the
American arms, Pakenham essayed to carry the American works by storm.
The battle occurred on January 8, 1815. It was desperately fought on
both sides, but at its close Jackson's loss had been trifling and his
line had not been broken at a single point, while the British had lost
at least 2,600, all but 500 of these killed or wounded. The British
immediately withdrew from the Mississippi, leaving Jackson entirely
master of the position.
But the naval operations of this war were far the most famous, exceeding
in their success all that the most sanguine had dared to hope, and
forever dispelling from our proud foe the charm of naval invincibility.
The American frigate Constitution captured the British Guerriere. The
Wasp took the Frolic, being soon, however, forced to surrender with her
prize to the Poitiers, a much larger vessel. The United States
vanquished the Macedonian, and the Constitution the Java. One of the
best fought actions of the war was that of McDonough on Lake Champlain,
with his craft mostly gunboats or galleys. His victory restored to us
the possession of Northern New York, which our land forces had not been
able to maintain.
Oliver H, Perry.
[1813-1814]
The crowning naval triumph during the war, one of the most brilliant, in
fact, in all naval annals, was won by Oliver Hazard Perry near
Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September 10, 1813, over the Briton, Barclay, a
naval veteran who had served under Nelson at Trafalgar. The fleets were
well matched, the American numbering the more vessels but the fewer
guns. Barclay greatly exceeded Perry in long guns, having the latter at
painful disadvantage until he got near. Perry's flag-ship, the Lawrence,
was early disabled. Her decks were drenched with blood, and she had
hardly a gun that could be served. Undismayed, Perry, with his insignia
of command, crossed in a little boat to the Niagara. Again proudly
hoisting his colors, aided by the wind and followed by his whole
squadron, he pressed for close quarters, where desperate fighting
speedily won the battle. Barclay and his next in command were wounded,
the latter dying that night. "We have met the enemy and they are ours,"
Perry wrote to Harrison, "two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one
sloop."
Triumph far more complete might have attended the war but for the
perverse and factious federalist opposition to the administration. Some
Federalists favored joining England out and out against Napoleon. Having
with justice denounced Jefferson's embargo tactics as too tame, yet when
the war spirit rose and even the South stood ready to resent foreign
affronts by force, they changed tone, harping upon our weakness and
favoring peace at any price. Tireless in magnifying the importance of
commerce, they would not lift a hand to defend it. The same men who had
cursed Adams for avoiding war with France easily framed excuses for
orders in council, impressment, and the Chesapeake affair.
Apart from Randolph and the few opposition Republicans, mostly in New
York, this Thersites band had its seat in commercial New England, where
embargo and war of course sat hardest, more than a sixth of our entire
tonnage belonging to Massachusetts alone. From the Essex Junto and its
sympathizers came nullification utterances not less pointed than the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, although, considering the sound
rebukes which the latter had evoked, they were far less defensible.
Disunion was freely threatened, and actions either committed or
countenanced bordering hard upon treason. The Massachusetts Legislature
in 1809 declared Congress's act to enforce embargo "not legally
binding." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut declined to aid, as requested
by the President, in carrying out that act, summoning the Legislature
"to interpose their protecting shield" between the people and "the
assumed power of the general Government." "How," wrote Pickering,
referring to the Constitution, Amendment X., "are the powers reserved to
be maintained, but by the respective States judging for themselves and
putting their negative on the usurpations of the general Government?" A
sermon of President Dwight's on the text, "Come out from among them and
be ye separate, saith the Lord," even Federalists deprecated as hinting
too strongly at secession. This unpatriotic agitation, from which, be it
said, large numbers of Federalists nobly abstained, came to a head in
the mysterious Hartford Convention, at the close of 1814, and soon began
to be sedulously hushed--in consequence of the glorious news of victory
and peace from Ghent and New Orleans.
Perry transferring his Colors from the Lawrence to the Niagara.
While the Congregationalists, especially their clergy, were nearly all
stout Federalists, opposing Jefferson, Madison, and the war, the
Methodists and Baptists almost to a man stood up for the administration
and its war policy with the utmost vigor, rebuking the peace party as
traitors. [Footnote: The writer's grandfather, a Baptist minister, was
as good as driven from his pulpit and charge at Templeton, Mass.,
because of his federalist sympathies in this war.] Timothy Merritt, a
mighty Methodist preacher on the Connecticut circuit, has left us from
these critical times a stirring sermon on the text, Judges v. 23, "Curse
ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
thereof; because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help
of the Lord against the mighty." Meroz was the federalist party and
England's ministry and army were "the mighty."
Czar Alexander, regarding our hostility as dangerous to England, with
whom he then stood allied against Napoleon, sought to end the war. The
Russian campaign of 1812 practically finished Napoleon's career, so
leaving England free to press operations in America. In April, 1814,
Paris was captured. The United States therefore accepted Alexander's
offices. Our commissioners, Adams, Clay, Gallatin, Marshall, Bayard, and
Russell met the English envoys at Ghent, and after long discussions, in
which more than once it seemed as if the war must proceed, the treaty of
Ghent was executed, December 24, 1814, a fortnight before the battle of
New Orleans.
It was an honorable peace. If we gained no territory we yielded none.
The questions of Mississippi navigation and the fisheries were expressly
reserved for future negotiations. Upon impressment and the abuse of
neutrals, exactly the grievances over which we had gone to war, the
treaty was silent, and peace men laughed at the war party on this
account, calling the war a failure. The ridicule was unjust. Had
Napoleon been still on high, or the negotiations been subsequent to the
New Orleans victory, England would doubtless have been called upon to
renounce these practices. But experience has proved that such a demand
would have been unnecessary. No outrage of these kinds has occurred
since, nor can anyone doubt that it was our spirit as demonstrated in
the war of 1812 which changed England's temper. Hence, in spite of our
military inexperience, financial distress, internal dissensions, and the
fall of Napoleon, which unexpectedly turned the odds against us, the war
was a success.
End of Volume II.