Part II
In this part . . .
As the nineteenth century began, America had cut its umbilical cord with Mother Britain and was standing — somewhat shakily — on its own two feet. As the nineteenth century ended, the country was ready to enter adulthood.
But it didn’t have an easy adolescence. It took several wars with foreign countries, and one war with itself. It enjoyed some leaders who were truly great, and endured some who were truly awful.
In this part, America stretches itself from one ocean to another, tests its commitment to the ideals on which it established its government, and begins to find its place in the world.
Call it Manifest Destiny.
Chapter 7
In This Chapter
● Getting the deal of the century — the Louisiana Purchase
● Paving the way to the Pacific — the Lewis and Clark expedition
● Being stuck in the middle between Great Britain and France
● Struggling through the War of 1812
The turn of the century brought what has been called the Revolution of 1800. The term, first used by Thomas Jefferson, refers to the fact that for the first time in the young country’s history, America saw one political party give up power to another.
In this chapter, we see how well it worked, look at the development of the U.S. Supreme Court in the grand scheme of things, sit in on a big land sale, and fight some pirates. We wrap it up with a pretty weird war with the British.
Jefferson Gets a Job
President John F. Kennedy once hosted a dinner party at the White House and invited a guest list so impressive he joked it was the finest group of genius and talent to sit at the table “since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Kennedy’s quip held as much truth as humor. A tall, loose-limbed man who was said to amble more than walk and was thus nicknamed “Long Tom,” Jefferson was a statesman, a writer, an inventor, a farmer, an architect, a musician, a scientist, and a philosopher.
Sally and Tom
When Jefferson ran for reelection in 1804, the nastiest bit of campaigning against him was a claim that he had an affair with one of his slaves, a woman named Sally Hemmings, beginning while he was U.S. envoy to France. Moreover, the story was that he had fathered children by her. Jefferson ignored the charges and easily won reelection.
The issue seemingly died with Jefferson and was largely ignored by historians until the 1970s, when two books revived the rumor and claimed it was true. Jefferson apologists howled, and their arguments ranged from the lack of concrete evidence to back up the assertion, to the idea that Jefferson's nephews were the fathers, to the contention that Jefferson was impotent.
But in 1998, some pretty concrete evidence did surface, in the form of DNA samples taken from the descendants of Jefferson and Hemmings. The conclusion: Jefferson and Hemmings had children together. In 2000, a commission formed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded that the weight of all evidence "indicated a high probability" that Jefferson and Hemmings had been more than friends.
Thus, it may not be surprising that he was also a bundle of contradictions. Jefferson was
● An idealist who could bend the rules when he needed to accomplish something
● A slave owner who hated slavery
● A man who believed Africans were naturally inferior, yet for years had one of his slaves as his mistress
● A believer in sticking to the letter of the Constitution who ignored it on at least one major issue during his presidency
● A guy who preached frugality for the country, yet died $100,000 in debt
But Jefferson’s contradictory nature made him flexible, and flexibility in a president can be a very valuable asset. In addition, Jefferson was a true man of the people, much more so than his predecessors George Washington and John Adams. He did away with the imperial trappings that had built up around the office, sometimes greeting visitors to the White House in his robe and slippers. That kind of informality added to the popularity he already enjoyed as author of the Declaration of Independence.
But public popularity meant pretty much diddly squat in the election of 1800 because of the screwy way the drafters of the Constitution had set up the presidential election process. Republican Jefferson received the votes of 73 members of the electoral college, while Federalist incumbent John Adams snagged 65. But the electors were required by the Constitution to list two names (with the second-highest vote-getter becoming vice president). And as it happened, the 73 electors who voted for Jefferson also listed a New York politician named Aaron Burr, who had helped deliver New York to the Republican side. That meant a tie between Jefferson and Burr, and the winner had to be decided by the House of Representatives, which was still controlled by the Federalists. (The goofy system was done away with by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which was added before the next presidential election in 1804.)
The Federalists took their cues mainly from Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton disliked Jefferson, but he detested Burr, with good reason. To call Burr a reptile is a slur to cold-blooded creatures everywhere. Born to a wealthy New Jersey family and well-educated, Burr established the first true political machine in the United States. He was a power-hungry schemer and a dangerous opportunist.
But even with Hamilton’s grudging support, it took 35 ballots before the House gave the presidency to Jefferson, with Burr becoming vice president. In return, Jefferson privately promised not to oust all the Federalist officeholders in the government — a promise he mostly kept.
As president, Jefferson played to his supporters, who were mainly in the South and West. He pushed bills through Congress that changed the time required to become a citizen from 14 to 5 years and repealed the tax on whiskey. Because he wasn’t very good at finances, he left the government’s financial fortunes in the hands of his Swiss-born secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, and Gallatin managed to cut the national debt almost in half.
Disorder in the Court
One of the last things the Federalist-controlled Congress did before giving way to the Jeffersonian Republicans in early 1801 was to create 16 new federal circuit court judgeships. Federalist Pres. John Adams then spent until 9 p.m. the last day of his term filling the judgeships — with Federalists.
Void this, Mr. President
"The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supported to be essential in all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void."
— Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803.
But when the Republicans took over, they promptly repealed the law creating the judgeships, and the judges were out of a job, along with a few dozen other judicial appointees made by Adams in his last days as president. One of them, a guy named William Marbury, didn’t take it gracefully. Marbury sued Jefferson’s secretary of state, James Madison, for refusing to give him his judicial commission, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1803, the court made a historic ruling. The justices said that while Marbury’s appointment was legal, another section of the 1789 law that created the federal judiciary in the first place was unconstitutional because it gave powers to the judiciary that weren’t spelled out in the Constitution and weren’t within the power of Congress to create.
The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court ruled an action taken by Congress to be unconstitutional. The result was that the Court asserted its place as a co-equal with the legislative (congressional) and executive (presidential) branches.
But the Republicans weren’t done. A Supreme Court justice named Samuel Chase, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, so irritated the Jeffersonians with his harangues from the bench that they took to naming vicious dogs after him. Then in 1804, the Republican-controlled Congress took it a step further by impeaching him.
John Marshall: A memorable man
John Marshall quite possibly represented the most important accomplishment of the John Adams administration, becoming the patron saint of the U.S. Supreme Court.
A distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson, Marshall was born in 1835 in a log cabin in Virginia, where his father was active in politics. After serving in the Continental army — including the winter at Valley Forge — Marshall earned his law degree and entered politics. In 1799, he went to Congress; in 1800, he became Adams's secretary of state; and in January 1801, Adams appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court.
It was a job Marshall held until his death, 34 years later. During his tenure as chief justice, he led a series of landmark decisions that established the court's role as a key player in American government and strengthened the power of the federal government. But he also had a good time.
According to one story, Marshall suggested to his fellow justices that on days they were considering a case, they should only drink hard spirits if it was raining. When the sun continued to shine in Washington, however, Marshall decided that because the court had jurisdiction over the entire nation, justices should drink only when it rained somewhere in America.
Chase was tried by the Senate, but because he really hadn’t done anything that would warrant removing him from the court, he was acquitted. It was the last attempt by one political party to reshape the Supreme Court by pushing judges appointed by another party off the bench. Free from becoming partisan political puppets, justices were also free to make decisions based on the law as they saw it.
Growing by Leaps and Bounds
The young United States was a restless rascal. And like most kids, it was growing so fast, you couldn’t keep it in shoes. The census of 1800 reported a population of 5.3 million (including about 900,000 slaves), a whopping 35 percent increase over 1790. About eight in ten Americans lived and worked on farms.
The largest states were still Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. More significantly, however, the fastest-growing were Tennessee and Kentucky, which had nearly tripled in population since 1790. Americans were moving West.
One of the reasons for this move was that in some areas, they had literally worn out their welcome. Tobacco can be as tough on soil as it is on lungs, and the crop had depleted a lot of land in the South. In the North, the growing population had helped drive up the price of land to anywhere from $14 to $50 an acre.
But in the West — which in 1800 was what was or would become Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois — federal government land could be bought for less than $2 an acre. Of course, Native Americans occupied some of it, but in the first few years of the nineteenth century, government officials such as Indiana Territory Gov. William Henry Harrison were more willing to buy the land than steal it.
So thousands and thousands of Americans began to do something they would do for most of the rest of the century — move West. “Out West” was more an idea than a location, the latter of which changed as the country’s borders changed. And the borders changed big time, in large part because of a slave revolt in Haiti.
Johnny Appleseed: A media-made legend
His real name was John Chapman, but his place in American history was secured by the character he became. Chapman was born in Massachusetts in 1774. Little is known of his childhood. In 1797, he began wandering through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, planting apple orchards.
He was, by most accounts, an unkempt little guy who went around barefoot most of the time. He was also uncommonly well-liked by both whites and Native Americans and seemed to travel around with little problem. He was a follower of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and provided preaching with his apples, but the apples were better received, and he made few converts.
The most famous stories about Chapman concern his alleged penchant for planting thousands of apple trees on other people's land and giving away hundreds of thousands of seeds to strangers. But there's no evidence any of that is true. The stories about Chapman were popularized in a magazine article printed in 1871, 26 years after his death. He thus became one of the earliest American examples of man-meets-media-hype-and-becomes-legend.
Capitalizing on Napoleon's going-out-of-business sale
Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, scourge of Europe, and namesake of a pretty good dessert pastry, was in kind of a jam. In 1800, Spain had reluctantly transferred its control of the vast territory of Louisiana, including the key city of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, to France. Napoleon had taken it with the idea of creating a vast new French empire on the North American continent.
The following year, Spanish and French officials clamped down on the rights of Americans to use the Mississippi to float their goods and produce to New Orleans for overseas shipment. U.S. farmers and traders howled, and Jefferson considered siding with the British against France. “The day France takes possession of New Orleans,” he wrote, “we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”
Instead, he decided to try to buy a way out first. So he sent his friend James Monroe to France in 1803 and instructed Monroe and Robert Livingston, the U.S. ambassador to France, to offer up to $10 million for New Orleans and Florida, or $7.5 million for New Orleans alone.
But by 1803, Napoleon’s plans for an American empire had hit a snag on what is now the island of Haiti. Napoleon had sent 35,000 crack French troops to the island to crush a rebellion led by a brilliant former slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, and it proved to be a very bad idea. More than 24,000 of the French soldiers were wiped out by the Haitians or yellow fever, and the disaster soured the French dictator on the whole subject.
So when the Americans made their pitch, the French flabbergasted them with a counteroffer: Why not buy all of Louisiana? After some dickering, they struck a deal. For 60 million francs (about $15 million), the Louisiana Purchase gave the United States an area that stretched from New Orleans to Canada, and from the Mississippi River to what is now Colorado and Idaho (see Figure 7-1). That’s 828,000 square miles for about 3 cents an acre, surely one of the best real-estate bargains in history.
But there was a problem. Under the Constitution, Jefferson had no legal power to make such a deal without congressional approval first. And he knew it, confessing privately that he had “stretched the Constitution till it cracked.” Undaunted, he pushed a treaty ratifying the sale through the Senate, and America doubled in size almost overnight. Now it was time to go see what the new half looked like.
Figure 7-1: Territory gained by the Louisiana Purchase.
Duel to the death
Vice President Aaron Burr was a sore loser. So when he lost a bid to become governor of New York in April 1804, he was more than a little angry at his old enemy, Alexander Hamilton, who had helped engineer his defeat. In June, Burr sent a letter to Hamilton demanding an apology for slurs on Burr's character in the newspapers, which had been attributed to Hamilton. When the former treasury secretary refused, Burr challenged him to a duel.
The two met on July 12, on the bluffs above the Hudson River near Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton, who detested dueling and who had lost a son in a duel a few years earlier, reportedly fired into the air. But Burr aimed at his rival and shot him. Hamilton died the next day.
Burr continued to be a slimeball. In 1807, he was charged with treason for plotting to overthrow the government, and, failing that, to create a new country in the West. He was acquitted because of a lack of witnesses and then spent the next few years in Europe, trying to find support for an invasion of Mexico. He died in 1836, largely, and deservedly, despised.
Lewis, Clark, and the woman on the dollar coin
Even before the purchase of the Louisiana territory was a done deal,
Jefferson had a hankering to send an expedition west. So in late 1803, he appointed a 29-year-old army officer named Meriwether Lewis to lead a group to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis, who was Jefferson’s former private secretary, enlisted a friend and former army colleague named William Clark as his co-captain (see Figure 7-2). Their mission was to find a good route to the Pacific through the mountains, open the area to American fur trading, and gather as much scientific information as they could. Accompanied by a force of 34 soldiers, 10 civilians, and Seaman, Lewis’s big Newfoundland dog, the expedition left St. Louis in 1804.
One of the civilians was a French trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, who served as an interpreter with the Native Americans. Another was Charbonneau’s wife, a Shoshone Indian named Sacajawea. Sacajawea, who was also known as “Birdwoman,” gave birth to a son on the expedition and ended up carrying him on her back much of the way. She was the star of the trip. Not only did she know many of the tribes’ customs, her presence with an otherwise all-male group helped convince Native Americans that the tourists’ goals were peaceful. For her efforts, 196 years later, Sacajawea’s image was chosen for the U.S. dollar coin that was first issued in early 2000.
The expedition trekked up the Missouri River through what are now the Dakotas, then took a left through Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. Traveling by boat, foot, and horseback, they reached the Pacific near the mouth of the Columbia River in late 1805. After wintering there, they returned to St. Louis in the fall of 1806, having traveled a distance of nearly 7,000 miles in a bit less than three years.
The trip cost $2,500, and it was a smashing success. Only one man died, of a burst appendix. Trouble with the Native Americans was kept to a minimum and a vast storehouse of knowledge was gained, from scientific information on plants and animals, to whether there was land suitable for farming (there was), to whether it was possible to get there and back. Much of the country was thrilled by the stories of a strange new land just waiting to be Americanized.
Figure 7-2: Lewis and Clark on expedition.
Fighting Pirates and the "Dambargo"
Things were going so well for the country in 1804 that Jefferson was reelected in a landslide. But while everyone was excited about what was going on in the West, there was trouble over the eastern horizon.
"To the shores of Tripoli. . .”
For several years, America — as well as other countries — had been paying a yearly tribute to the Barbary States of Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli in North Africa as protection insurance against pirates. But in 1800, the Dey (or leader) of Algiers humiliated the U.S. ship that brought the tribute by forcing it to fly the flag of the Ottoman Empire while in Algiers Harbor. The action angered American officials and hastened the building of naval ships that the penny-pinching Jefferson Administration had only reluctantly supported.
The following year, the Pasha (or leader) of Tripoli declared war on the United States because it wouldn’t increase its tribute. Over the next four years, the fledgling American navy dueled with the Pasha and his pirates with mixed success. Then in 1805, William Eaton, the former U.S. counsel to Tunis, led a motley force of about 200 Greek and Arab mercenaries — and 9 U.S. Marines (which is where the “to the shores of Tripoli” line in the “Marines’ Hymn” comes from) — on a 600-mile desert march. Eaton’s force captured the city of Derna. Coupled with the presence of American warships off its harbors, Tripoli was forced to sign a peace treaty, free the American prisoners it was holding, and stop exacting tribute.
Although fighting with other pirates continued off and on for another six or seven years, the victory was a huge shot in the arm for American morale. But the real foreign threat about to surface was from a more familiar source.
No one likes a bloodless war
Britain and France were at war again, and the United States was trying to stay out of it — again. One reason for staying out of it was that it was hard to figure out which side to like less. Both countries decided to blockade the other, and that meant French naval ships stopped American ships bound for Britain and seized their cargoes, and the British navy did the same to U.S. ships bound for France or its allies.
But the British also had the maddening habit of impressments — pressing Americans into British naval service. Britain relied on its navy for its very survival. But it treated its sailors so poorly that they deserted by the hundreds and sometimes took refuge in the American merchant fleet, where treatment and pay were better. So British warships often stopped American ships and inspected their crews for deserters. And just as often, they helped themselves to American citizens when they couldn’t find deserters.
In one particularly galling case in June 1807, the British frigate Leopard fired on the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, forced the Chesapeake to lower its flag, took four “deserters” — including a Native American and an African American — and hanged one of them. The incident infuriated much of the country and the louder members of Congress called for war.
America gets bookish
On April 24, 1800, Congress passed a resolution creating the Library of Congress, even though it didn't have any books or papers to put in it yet or any building in which to put them. But there were books out there. According to the 1800 census, the country had 50 public libraries, with a total collection of 80,000 books. In 1803, the first tax-supported library opened in Salisbury, Connecticut.
The Library of Congress eventually got settled in Washington and began building a collection under John James Beckley, who was appointed its first chief librarian by Jefferson. Ironically, Jefferson had probably the largest private library in America — some 15,000 volumes. They ended up in the Library of Congress because Jefferson was forced to sell them to the government in later years to pay his private debts.
But Jefferson wanted to avoid that. Instead, he decided to put pressure on Britain economically. In late 1807, he prodded Congress into passing the Embargo Act, which essentially ended all American commerce with foreign countries. The idea was to hurt Britain — and France too — in the wallet, and force them to ease off American shipping.
Bad idea. While smuggling made up some of the loss, American commerce plunged. U.S. harbors were awash in empty ships, and farmers watched crops once bound for overseas markets rot. Jefferson received hundreds of letters from Americans denouncing the “dambargo,” including one purportedly sent on behalf of 4,000 unemployed seamen. Meanwhile, France and Britain continued to slug it out.
Finally, in early 1809, just before leaving office, Jefferson relented and Congress passed a milder version of an embargo. But the damage had been done and the bloodless war was on its way to being replaced with a real one.
"Little Jemmy" Takes the Helm
If James Madison were alive today, he might well be a computer nerd. He was extremely intelligent, conscientious, and focused on the task at hand. A neat dresser who was slight of build (5 feet 4 inches, but he had a big head) and shy in public settings, Madison was referred to by both friend and foe as “little Jemmy.” He could also be very stubborn.
Madison was easily elected president in 1808, mostly because
● He was well regarded as the father of the U.S. Constitution.
● Thomas Jefferson handpicked Madison to be his successor.
● The opposing Federalist Party was so disorganized it would have had a hard time organizing a one-coach funeral.
Madison inherited a messy foreign situation. France and Britain were still at war, and both countries had continually raided American ships. Jefferson’s efforts to stop this practice by cutting off all U.S. trade with foreign countries had nearly sunk the buoyant U.S. economy.
So Madison and Congress tried a different approach. In 1809, Congress passed a law that allowed U.S. ships to go wherever they wanted, but banned French and British ships from U.S. ports. The following year, Congress lifted all restrictions but gave the president the power to cut off trade with any country that failed to recognize America’s neutrality.
The French dictator Napoleon then announced the French would stop their raids if the British agreed to end their blockades of European ports. The British, quite correctly, didn’t trust Napoleon and refused. But Madison decided the French despot was sincere and re-imposed the U.S. trade ban on Britain. American merchants, especially in New England, moaned, and the British seethed, but Madison refused to change his mind.
Dolley Madison: Proof that opposites attract
If James Madison was kind of a nerd, his wife was anything but. Born in 1768 to a poor Quaker family in Philadelphia, Dolley Payne Todd's marriage to Madison was her second. After her first husband died in 1793, Aaron Burr introduced her to Madison. Within a few months, she was married to "the great little Madison," as she called him.
She took to being First Lady like a duck to water. After all, she had practiced for the job for eight years as the White House's unofficial hostess while Thomas Jefferson, a widower, was president. When Madison took over, Dolley assumed the task of decorating the great house. Her charm also made her a great political asset to her husband. "She is a fine, portly, buxom woman who has a smile and a pleasant welcome for everybody," observed the writer Washington Irving.
Dolley also showed her pluck when the British army invaded Washington and burned the White House. With British soldiers less than a rifle shot away, Dolley stubbornly refused to flee until a portrait of George Washington by the famous artist Gilbert Stuart could be saved. "It is done," she wrote her sister shortly before fleeing. "I must leave this house . . . when I shall write to you again, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell."
Dolley died in 1849 at the age of 81, 13 years after her husband's death.
New kids on the block
Madison’s decision was cheered by a new group of congressmen who took office in 1811. They were led by the new speaker of the House of Representatives, a 34-year-old Kentuckian named Henry Clay and a 29-year-old lawyer from South Carolina named John C. Calhoun. This new Washington brat pack had missed a chance to participate in the American Revolution, and because so many of them wanted their own chance to fight the British, they became known as the War Hawks.
But there was more to the War Hawks’ desire for war than just a chance to kick some British butt. Canada belonged to the British Empire, and more than a few land-hungry Americans thought it should belong to the United States. A war with Britain would provide the perfect reason to conquer the neighboring northern nation.
Fighting the Native Americans — again
There was also the perennial vexing issue of what to do about the Native Americans. For the first decade of the century, the American policy had been to buy, coerce, bully, and swindle Native Americans out of their land in the Northwest rather than go to war.
By 1811, an inspirational Shawnee chief named Tecumseh had had enough. Aided by his religious fanatic brother Tenskwatawa, who was also known as “The Prophet” and who urged a holy war against the whites, Tecumseh rallied tribe after tribe to join his confederacy and stop the white men’s invasion. He urged the Native Americans to give up everything white — their clothes, their tools, and especially their alcohol.
By late 1811, Tecumseh had put together a force of several thousand Native Americans. An army of about 1,000 U.S. soldiers, led by Gen. William Henry Harrison, marched to the edge of the territory claimed by Tecumseh at Tippecanoe Creek, Indiana. While Tecumseh was away, his brother, The Prophet, led an attack against Harrison. The result of the battle was a draw, but Tecumseh’s confederacy began to fall apart.
No deal
"Sell our country? Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?"
— Chief Tecumseh, speaking to Gen. William Henry Harrison, 1810.
Why Not Invade Canada This Year?
In Britain, the long war with Napoleon and the trade fights with America had caused hard times, and a lot of British wanted to drop the squabbling with the former colonies and focus on the French. On June 16, 1812, the British government decided to stop raiding American ships. But there was no quick way to get the news to America, which was too bad, because two days later, Congress declared war on England under the rallying cry of “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”
War was a bold — and foolhardy — move for a country with such a shabby military system. The U.S. Army had about 7,000 men and very few competent officers. Many of the top officers were antiques from the Revolutionary War 30 years before. One army official, Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn, was so fat he had to travel in a specially designed cart. The U.S. Navy consisted of 16 ships and a bunch of little gunboats that had been a pet project of Jefferson’s and proved to be completely useless. And a fair-sized segment of the population was against the war, particularly in New England.
It took about a month to demonstrate just how unready America was. A U.S. command of about 1,500 troops marched to Detroit, as a staging ground for an invasion of Canada. When a Canadian army showed up to contest the idea, the American general, William Hull, surrendered without firing a shot.
It was the first of several failed U.S. efforts to conquer Canada, which had looked so easy on paper. After all, the U.S. population was more than 7 million by 1810, while there were fewer than 500,000 white Canadians, many of whom were former Americans. The British army had about 5,000 soldiers in Canada, but there wasn’t much chance of them being reinforced because the English were busy fighting Napoleon.
Still, the U.S. efforts managed to fail. After Hull’s defeat at Detroit, another U.S. force tried to invade from Fort Niagara. It flopped when many of the New York militia declined to fight outside their own state and refused to cross the river into Canada. A third army set out from Plattsburg, New York, bound for Montreal, and marched 20 miles to the border, only to quit and march back to Plattsburg.
In September 1813, a U.S. Navy flotilla built and commanded by Capt. Oliver Hazard Perry destroyed a British fleet on Lake Erie. Perry’s victory was notable not only for the famous saying that came from it— “We have met the enemy and they are ours” — but because it forced the British out of Detroit and gave Gen. William Henry Harrison a chance to beat them at the Battle of the Thames River. Tecumseh, the Native American leader who was now a brigadier general in the British army, was killed and, thus, the Native American-Britain alliance was squelched.
Everyone's relative
Sam Wilson was a nice guy. He was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1766, served as a drummer boy and then a soldier in the American Revolution, and in 1789 moved to Troy, New York, to start a meatpacking company. Everyone liked him for his good humor and fair business practices.
In 1812, Wilson's solid reputation landed him a contract to supply meat to the American army. He began the practice of stamping "U.S." on the crates destined for the troops. Because the term
"United States" still wasn't often used, federal meat inspectors asked one of Wilson's employees what it stood for. The guy didn't know, so he joked "Uncle Sam," referring to Wilson.
Soon troops all over were referring to rations as coming from "Uncle Sam," and by 1820, illustrations of "Uncle Sam" as a national symbol were appearing in newspapers. Wilson died in 1854, at the age of 88. His claim to be the original Uncle Sam was recognized by Congress in 1961.
The victories of Perry and Harrison kept the British from invading the United States through Canada, but the American efforts to conquer Canada were over.
Things were a little better at sea. With most of Britain’s navy tied up in Europe, U.S. warships like the Constitution, United States, and President won several one-on-one battles with British ships and so cheered Congress that it decided to build more ships. But none of the naval engagements were very important from a military standpoint, and after the rest of the formidable British fleet showed up and bottled most of the U.S. Navy up in American ports, the victories at sea ceased.
Three Strikes and the Brits Are Out
By mid-1814, the British had finally defeated Napoleon and sent him into exile. Now they could turn their full military attention to the war in America — and unlike the first war with Britain, America wouldn’t be getting any help.
Britain’s first big effort came in August 1814, when a force of about 4,000 veteran British troops landed in the Chesapeake Bay area east of Washington, D.C. At the village of Bladensburg, the Brits encountered a hastily organized force of 6,000 American militiamen who quickly showed they had no stomach for a fight. Almost as soon as the shooting started, the militia ran like scalded dogs, and the British army easily strolled into America’s capital.
The government officials fled, and the British burned every public building in the city (see Figure 7-3). The burnings were partially to avenge the American torching of the Canadian city of York, and partially to take the heart out of the Yanks. Instead, they enflamed U.S. anger and delayed the British advance on Baltimore, which was the real military target.
By the time the British forces got to Baltimore, the city’s Fort McHenry had been fortified. An all-night bombardment of the fort accomplished nothing, except to inspire a Washington lawyer who watched it from the deck of a British ship, where he was temporarily a prisoner. Francis Scott Key jotted down his impressions in the form of a poem, on the back of a letter. After the battle, he revised it a bit and showed it to his brother-in-law, who set it to the tune of an old English drinking song called “Anacreon in Heaven.” It was published in a Baltimore newspaper as “Defense of Fort McHenry” but was later renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Soon soldiers were singing it all over the country. Meanwhile, the British efforts to invade Baltimore ended.
A second, even larger British force attempted an invasion of the United States via a land-water route through New York. In September 1814, a British fleet sailed against an American fleet on Lake Champlain, near Plattsburg. The U.S. fleet, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, was anchored, and Macdonough rigged his ships so they could be turned around to use the guns on both sides. After a savage battle, the American fleet prevailed thanks to Macdonough’s trick, and the shaken British force retired to Canada.
The third and last major British effort took place at New Orleans. A 20-ship British fleet and 10,000 soldiers squared off against an army of about 5,000 American soldiers, backwoods riflemen, and local pirates who disliked the British more than they disliked the Americans.
The American force was under the command of a tall, gaunt Tennessee general named Andrew Jackson. Jackson had already made a name for himself as a great military leader by defeating the Creek Indians earlier in the war. After a few fights to feel each other out, the two sides tangled in earnest on January 8, 1815.
Actually, it was more of a slaughter than a fight. The British charged directly at Jackson’s well-built fortifications, and U.S. cannon and rifles mowed them down. In less than an hour, more than 2,000 British were killed, wounded, or missing, compared to American losses of 71. The British retreated. It was a smashing victory for the United States. Unfortunately for those killed and wounded, it came two weeks after the war had formally ended.
Figure 7-3: The British army burns the White House.
Calling It Even
Almost as soon as the war started, Czar Alexander I of Russia offered to mediate between Britain and America, mostly because he wanted to see Britain concentrate its military efforts against Napoleon. But nothing came of the offer.
Early in 1814, however, both sides agreed to seek a settlement. A few months later, America sent a team of negotiators to Ghent, Belgium, led by its minister to Russia, John Quincy Adams, and House Speaker Henry Clay.
At first, the British negotiators dragged things out while waiting to see how their country’s offensive efforts worked out on the battlefield. England then demanded America turn over loads of land in the Northwest Territory and refused to promise to stop kidnapping American sailors off U.S. ships. But when news of the defeats at Plattsburg and Baltimore reached Ghent, the British tune changed.
They dropped their demands for territory, agreed to set up four commissions to settle boundary disputes, and agreed to stop the habit of impressing American seamen. On December 24, 1814, both sides signed a treaty that basically just declared the war over.
“I hope,” said John Quincy Adams in toasting the treaty, “it will be the last treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States.” It was — the countries have never gone to war against each other again.
In New England, meanwhile, Federalist Party officials had been chafing for awhile about the dominance of the Democratic-Republican Party and the waning influence of the region as the country moved west. In late 1814, representatives from five New England states sent delegates to Hartford, Connecticut.
They met for about three weeks and came up with some proposed amendments to the Constitution, including requiring approval by two-thirds of the states before any future embargoes could be set, before war could be declared, or before any new states could be admitted.
There was even some talk about states leaving the Union. (Although it didn’t amount to much, it was a chilling harbinger of things to come.) Eventually, three of the delegates were sent to Washington with the demands. They got there just in time to hear about the victory at New Orleans and the treaty at Ghent. They left town quietly.
Thus did a goofy war end. Fewer than 2,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed. No great changes came immediately from it. But the War of 1812 did serve to establish America firmly in the world’s eye as a country not to be taken lightly. It might not always choose its fights wisely, or fight with a great deal of intelligence. But it would fight.