The Land We Live In Part 11

Thousands on the American and British sh.o.r.es witnessed or listened to the conflict, conscious that upon the result depended the future of the Northwest. None listened with more patriotic eagerness than John Kinzie, already mentioned as the first resident of Chicago, then a prisoner at Maiden, having been removed from Detroit on suspicion that he was in correspondence with General Harrison. Kinzie was taking a promenade under guard, when he heard the guns on Lake Erie. The time allotted to the prisoner for his daily walk expired, but neither he nor his guard observed the fact, so anxiously were they catching every sound from what they now felt sure was an engagement between s.h.i.+ps of war. At length Mr.

Kinzie was reminded that the hour for his return to confinement had arrived. He pleaded for another half hour.

"Let me stay," said he, "till we can learn how the battle has gone."

Very soon a sloop appeared under press of sail, rounding the point, and presently two vessels in chase of her.

"She is running--she bears the British colors," cried Kinzie--"yes, yes, they are lowering--they are striking her flag! Now"--turning to the soldiers, "I will go back to prison contented. I know how the battle has gone."

The sloop was the Little Belt, the last of the British fleet to surrender, after a vain attempt to escape. The Father of Chicago had seen the end of the battle which made possible the Chicago of to-day.[3]

[3] John Kinzie was born at Quebec in 1763. After the war he went back to Chicago, and died January 6, 1828, aged 65 years.

Perry's victory compelled the enemy to evacuate Detroit, and all their posts in American territory except Michilimacinac, which place remained in the possession of the British until the close of the war. Soon after the battle of Lake Erie, General Harrison crossed to the Canadian sh.o.r.e, entered Maiden, and then pa.s.sed on in pursuit of Proctor and Tec.u.mseh, who were in full retreat up the valley of the Thames. In the battle of the Thames, which followed, the British were completely routed, and Tec.u.mseh was slain. The Northwest was now secure. The British had been driven back and their Indian ally, Tec.u.mseh, with his great scheme of an independent Indian power, had pa.s.sed away.

In the Southwest, however, the struggle between whites and Indians continued to rage, the latter being led by a half-breed Creek named Weathersford. The ma.s.sacre of more than four hundred men, women and children by the Creeks at Fort Mimms, in what is now Alabama, aroused the frontiers to fury, and Andrew Jackson, already known as "Old Hickory,"

the idol of his troops and the terror of the feeble War Department, took the field at the head of twenty-five hundred men. He showed himself a master of forest warfare, and in the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Horseshoe Bend he broke the strength of the Creeks forever. Weathersford sought the tent of his conqueror, and asked for mercy for his people--not for himself.

Jackson, who could respect in others the courage with which he was so eminently endowed, granted generous terms to the vanquished, and Weathersford lived thereafter in harmony with the whites. The autumn of 1813 witnessed the subjection of the hostile Indian tribes from the Lakes to the Gulf.

The American navy continued to distinguish itself on the ocean as on the lakes, in heroic defeat as well as in signal victory. While Captain David Porter, in the Ess.e.x, swept British commerce and privateers from the Pacific, starting out with a frigate and starting home with a fleet, all taken by himself during a cruise unsurpa.s.sed for skill, daring and success, Master-Commandant William Henry Allen, of the American brig Argus, lost his life and his vessel in battle with the British brig Pelican. The defeat of the Argus is believed to have been caused by the use of defective powder, which had been taken from on board a prize, and which did not give the cannon shot force enough to do serious damage to the enemy. Allen's death was due to his remaining on deck to direct his men after he had been seriously wounded. He was one of the best officers in the navy. The defeat and capture of the British brig-of-war Boxer, fourteen guns, after a sharp engagement, by the American schooner Enterprise, sixteen guns, in some degree compensated for the loss of the Argus. Captain Samuel Blythe, of the Boxer, nailed his colors to the mast and was killed at the first broadside. Lieutenant William Burrows, of the Enterprise, was mortally wounded, but lived long enough to have the British commander's sword placed in his hands. The splendid cruise of the Ess.e.x ended most unfortunately at Valparaiso, where the frigate was attacked while in port by the British thirty-six-gun frigate Phoebe and eighteen-gun s.h.i.+p-sloop Cherub. The Ess.e.x was in a disabled condition.

The British stood off beyond reach of the American's short guns, and kept up a terrific cannonade with their long guns, of which the two British vessels had thirty-eight and the Ess.e.x only six. Captain Porter held out for about two hours under these unequal conditions, while his men were slaughtered and his vessel cut to pieces--he himself being foremost in exposure and danger. At length he surrendered. "Her colors," said the British commander, "were not struck until the loss in killed and wounded was so awfully great, and her shattered condition so seriously bad, as to render further resistance unavailing."

Fresh bitterness was added to the struggle about the close of 1813 by the imprudent and inhuman action of General McClure, the American commander at Fort George, in setting fire to the Canadian village of Newark in almost the depth of winter and turning out the inhabitants homeless wanderers in the snow. This outrage provoked but did not justify the ma.s.sacre by the British of the helpless sick and unresisting at Fort Niagara, and the wasting of villages and settlements on the American side of the frontier. The invasion of Canada in 1814 by the Americans under General Jacob Brown proved little more than a border raid, although the Americans won a well-fought battle at Chippewa and a costly victory at Lundy's Lane, on both of which occasions General Winfield Scott gained merited distinction. The tide of war rolled back and forth a good deal like the old border strife between Scotland and England. Each side felt that it had wrongs to avenge, and wounds were inflicted by petty raids and skirmishes deeper and more rankling than those of a regular campaign.

While these were the conditions on the northern frontier, the sh.o.r.es of the Republic were hara.s.sed by the fleet of Admiral c.o.c.kburn from Delaware Bay to Florida. Villages were plundered, plantations devastated and slaves carried off under the false promise of freedom, to be sold in the West Indies. The people living on and near the coast were kept in ceaseless alarm by these marauders, who descended in unexpected places, and inflicted all the damage within their power.

The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814, left the United States alone in hostility to Napoleon's triumphant foe, and the British government prepared to carry on the war vigorously. A powerful fleet appeared in Chesapeake Bay, and landed an army of about five thousand men under the command of General Robert Ross. The authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton were entirely unprepared for the attack, and the British, after defeating an American force, more like a mob than an army, at the battle of Bladensburg, marched into Was.h.i.+ngton. There, in a manner worthy of vandals, the public buildings, including the Capitol and the President's house, were given to the flames. While this act of barbarism was disapproved by the English people, it is not to be forgotten that it was hailed with delight and laudation by the British Government, and that a monument to General Ross was erected in Westminster Abbey. The British followed up the firing of Was.h.i.+ngton by an effort to capture Baltimore.

The brave defenders of Fort McHenry held out successfully against c.o.c.kburn's fleet, and General Ross lost his life while attempting to co-operate with the fleet. Francis S. Key, a resident of Georgetown, D. C., was detained on board a British s.h.i.+p while Fort McHenry was being bombarded, and in the depth of his anxiety for his country's flag he wrote that famous song, "The Star Spangled Banner." Finding that their vandalism only served to inflame American patriotism instead of "chastising the Americans into submission," as c.o.c.kburn had been ordered to do, the invaders withdrew to their vessels.

CHAPTER XXVII.

British Designs on the Southwest--New Orleans as a City of Refuge--The Baratarians--The Pirates Reject British Advances--General Jackson Storms Pensacola--Captain Reid's Splendid Fight at Fayal--Edward Livingston Advises Jackson--Cotton Bales for Redoubts--The British Invasion--Jackson Attacks the British at Villere's--The Opposing Armies--General Pakenham Attempts to Carry Jackson's Lines by Storm--The British Charge--They Are Defeated with Frightful Slaughter--Pakenham Killed--Last Naval Engagement --The President-Endymion Fight--Peace--England Deserts the Indians as She Had Deserted the Tories--Decatur Chastises the Algerians.

An invasion of the Southwest by way of the Mississippi, and the seizure of New Orleans, were also included in the British plans. New Orleans at this time, although many good people were included among its inhabitants, attracted the refuse of the United States. The character of the place can be judged from an incident which occurred in Boston about the period of which I am writing. A merchant who had formed an establishment in Louisiana, happening to be in Boston, saw in a newspaper of that city a vessel advertised to sail thence for New Orleans. He called upon the owner, and asked him to consign the s.h.i.+p to his house. The owner told the applicant in strict confidence that he had no intention of sending the vessel to New Orleans, but had advertised that alleged destination in the hope that among the persons applying for a pa.s.sage he should find a rascal who had defrauded one of his friends out of a considerable sum of money, "New Orleans," he added, "being the natural rendezvous of rogues and scoundrels." Among persons answering the latter description were the pirates known as "Baratarians," because they lived on Barataria Bay, just west of the mouths of the Mississippi River. They pretended to prey upon Spanish commerce only, but they made very little distinction and sold their plunder openly in the markets of New Orleans. The slave-trade was, however, their chief resource. They captured Spanish and other slaves on the high seas, and sold them to planters who were glad to buy for from $150 to $200 each, negroes worth three or four times that amount in the regular market. Jean Lafitte was the chief of these marauders. A Frenchman by origin he felt some attachment, it appears, to the country which tolerated him and his fellow-pirates, and when the commander of the British Gulf Squadron offered to pay the Baratarians to join him in an attack on New Orleans, Lafitte at once sent the dispatches received from the British to Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana. The people of New Orleans, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Edward Livingston, the noted jurist, and former mayor of New York, organized a Committee of Safety, and prepared to a.s.sist in repelling the enemy. General Jackson, now major-general in the regular army, and in command of the Department of the South, repulsed the British from Mobile, and took Pensacola by storm, and thus freed from apprehension of an attack from Florida, he proceeded to defend New Orleans.

Fortunately for the American cause Captain Samuel C. Reid, commander of the privateer General Armstong, being attacked in the neutral harbor of Fayal by the British commodore, Lloyd, and his squadron, resisted the onset with such extraordinary courage and energy as to severely cripple his a.s.sailants. Captain Reid was obliged to scuttle his s.h.i.+p to prevent her from falling into the hands of the British, but the latter lost one hundred and twenty killed and one hundred and thirty wounded in the unequal battle, and Lloyd's squadron was not able to join the expedition at Jamaica until ten days after the date appointed for departure. The General Armstrong lost only two men killed and seven wounded in this memorable fight, which gave Jackson ample time to prepare the defence of New Orleans.

To New Orleans had resorted many adherents of the old Bourbon monarchy, driven from France by the Revolution, and also at a more recent date some of the followers of Napoleon. Among the former was a French emigrant major named St. Geme, who had once been in the English service in Jamaica, and now commanded a company in a battalion of citizens. This officer had been a favored companion of the distinguished French general, Moreau, when the latter, on a visit to Louisiana, a few years previously, had scanned with the critical eye of a tactician, the position of New Orleans and its capabilities of defence. Edward Livingston, who acted as an aide-de-camp to General Jackson, advised the general to consult St.

Geme, and the latter pointed out the Rodriguez Ca.n.a.l as the position which Moreau himself had fixed upon as the most defensible, especially for irregular troops. Jackson approved and acted upon the advice thus given, and hastened to cast up intrenchments along the line of the ca.n.a.l from the Mississippi back to an impa.s.sable swamp two miles away. In building the redoubts the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth almost unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The requisite cotton was at once taken from a barque already laden for Havana. The owner of the cotton, Vincent Nolte, complained to Edward Livingston, who was his usual legal adviser. "Well, Nolte," said Livingston, "since it is your cotton you will not mind the trouble of defending it."[1] Before the final battle a red hot ball set fire to the cotton, thereby endangering the gunpowder, and the cotton was removed, leaving only an earth embankment about five feet high, with a ditch in front to protect the Americans.

[1] A similar remark has been incorrectly attributed to Jackson.

The British troops, about 7000 in number, disembarked at Lake Borgne, after capturing an American flotilla which had been sent to prevent the landing. About nine miles from New Orleans, at Villere's Plantation, the invaders formed a camp, and they were suddenly attacked by Jackson on the evening of December 23. The battle raged fearfully in the darkness, Jackson's Tennesseans using knives and tomahawks with deadly effect. The Americans had the advantage, but in the fog and darkness Jackson could not follow up his success. Lieutenant-General Edward Pakenham, one of the bravest and ablest of Wellington's veterans, landed on Christmas Day with reinforcements which made the British army about 8000 strong. Jackson had planted heavy guns along his line of defence, and had about 4000 men to receive Pakenham. Among the most efficient of these were the 500 riflemen who fought with Jackson against the Creeks, and who were known as Coffee's brigade, from their commander's name. Trained in repeated encounters with the savages they knew little of military organization, but were inaccessible to fear, perfectly cool in danger, of great presence of mind and personal resource, and above all unerring marksmen.

Among the New Orleans militia were several officers who had served under Napoleon, and had met on the battlefields of Europe the British veterans they were now about to confront in America. The Baratarians, too, should not be forgotten, and these, with the regular troops, the militia and the citizens, and many negroes, free and slave, composed about as mixed an array as ever fought a battle on American soil.[2]

[2] More than half of Jackson's command was composed of negroes, who were princ.i.p.ally employed with the spade, but several battalions of them were armed, and in the presence of the whole army received the thanks of General Jackson for their gallantry. On each anniversary the negro survivors of the battle always turned out in large numbers--so large, indeed, as to excite the suspicion that they were not all genuine.--_Albert D. Richardson._

The British made an a.s.sault on the twenty-eighth, and were repulsed with loss. On the night of December 31, they prepared for the closing struggle by erecting batteries upon which they mounted heavy ordnance within six hundred yards of the American breastworks. On the morning of January 1, 1815, the British opened fire, Jackson replying with his heavy guns. The British batteries were demolished, an attempt to turn the American flank was repulsed by Coffee and his riflemen, and the day ended in gloom and disaster for the invaders. The American forces, strengthened by the arrival of one thousand Kentuckians, awaited the renewal of the attack.

Pakenham determined to carry Jackson's lines by storm. At dawn on January 8, the British advanced in solid column under a most destructive fire from the American batteries. On marched the men before whom the best troops of Napoleon had been unable to stand--on they marched as steadily as if on parade, the living closing in as the dead and wounded dropped out. Was it to be Badajos over again?

The British were within two hundred yards of the American breastworks.

Suddenly the Tennessee and Kentucky sharpshooters, four ranks deep, rose from their concealment, and at the command--"Fire!"--a storm of bullets swept through the British lines. And it was not a single volley. As the Tennesseans fired they fell back and loaded, while the Kentuckians fired.

And so the deadly blast of lead mowed down the British ranks while round and grape and chain-shot ploughed and shrieked through the now wavering battalions. General Pakenham, at the head of his men, urged them forward with encouraging words, while he had one horse shot under him and his bridle arm disabled by a bullet. The British rallied and rushed forward again amid the tempest of death. Pakenham, mortally wounded, was caught in the arms of his aid, and his troops, no longer sustained by their leader's presence and example, fell back in disorder. In this fearful charge the British lost 2600 men, killed, wounded and made prisoners. The Americans lost only eight killed and thirteen wounded. On the night of January 19, the British retired to their fleet.

The last naval engagement of the war took place in January, 1815, between the American frigate President, forty-four guns, commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur, and the British frigate, Endymion, forty guns, Captain Hope. The battle began about three o'clock in the afternoon, and lasted until eleven o'clock at night, both commanders showing remarkable skill and resolution in the conflict, which was at long range. The Endymion was nearly dismantled and about to surrender when three other British men-of-war came up, and Decatur, being overpowered, had to strike his colors. The President had twenty-four men killed and fifty-six wounded, and the Endymion had eleven killed and fourteen wounded.

A treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent between the American and British commissioners on Christmas Eve, 1814. England yielded nothing and received nothing. The issues which had provoked the war were ignored in its termination--indeed it was unnecessary to deal with them. As _Niles Register_ stated the case in December, 1814: "With the general pacification of Europe, the chief causes for which we went to war with Great Britain have, from the nature of things, ceased to affect us; it is not for us to quarrel for forms. Britain may pretend to any right she pleases, provided she does not exercise it to our injury." The moral effect of the war was, however, favorable to the United States. American naval victories and the battle of New Orleans taught England that America was not an enemy to be despised on either sea or land. The War of 1812 has sometimes been called the second War of Independence, and its effect certainly was to establish for the United States a respectable position among independent powers. Even England's satellites in the confederacy against Napoleon could not but admire the courage of the American people in bearding the British lion, and the chief magistrate of Ghent voiced the feeling of Europe when he offered the sentiment, at a dinner to the American Commissioners--"May they succeed in making an honorable peace to secure the liberty and independence of their country."

England had to give up her demand for special terms for the Indians who had a.s.sisted her in the war. The scheme to create an Indian nation in the Northwest, with permanent boundaries, not to be trespa.s.sed by the United States, was abandoned, although at first declared by the British Commissioners to be a _sine qua non_ and the Indians had to accept terms dictated by the United States. The British had made lavish promises to the Indians when seeking them for allies, but the red men were deserted, as the loyalists of the Revolution had been deserted, at the close of hostilities. The Indians felt this keenly, especially as the Americans treated them as generously as if no hostilities had interrupted former relations.

Peace with England gave the United States opportunity to chastise the Algerians, whose Dey, Hadgi Ali, a sanguinary tyrant, had been committing outrages on American commerce ever since the beginning of the war with the British. Commodore Decatur was sent to the Mediterranean in May, 1815, with a squadron to chastise the Dey. He had no difficulty in encountering the Algerian corsairs, who supposed that the American navy no longer existed. Decatur, after a brief engagement, captured the Dey's flags.h.i.+p, and this was followed by the capture of another man-of-war belonging to the pirates. Decatur then sailed for Algiers with his squadron and prizes. The terrified despot appeared on the quarter-deck of Decatur's flags.h.i.+p, the Guerriere, gave up the captives in his hands, and signed a treaty dictated by the American commodore. Decatur then sailed to Tunis and Tripoli, and compelled the rulers of those States to make rest.i.tution for having allowed the British to capture American vessels in their harbors. In view of the services of the Danish consul, Mr. Nissen, when Captain Bainbridge was a prisoner in Tripoli, it is gratifying to know that Commodore Decatur, while in that port, secured the release of eight Danish seamen. History does not record whether Decatur, on this occasion, visited the lonely grave supposed to contain the mortal remains of Somers, the companion of his youth, and the hero of the gunpowder enterprise during the war with Tripoli. What emotions must have filled Decatur's mind as the old scenes brought back to him the memory of his own brave exploit--the destruction of the Philadelphia--and of the unhappy fate of his bosom friend!

South America Free.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

England and Spanish America--A Significant Declaration--The Key to England's Policy in South America--Alexander Hamilton and the South Americans--President Adams' Grandson a Filibuster--Origin of the Revolutions in South America--Colonial Zeal for Spain--Colonists Driven to Fight for Independence--A War of Extermination--Patriot Leaders--The British a.s.sist the Revolutionists--American Caution and Reserve--The Monroe Doctrine--Why England Championed the Spanish-American Republics-- A Free Field Desired for British Trade--The Holy Alliance--Secretary Canning and President Monroe--The Monroe Declaration Not British, But American.

The same motives which had prompted England to impose oppressive restrictions upon American trade, thereby driving the colonies to strike for independence, prompted her to a.s.sist South America in throwing off the yoke of Spain. England did not expect to conquer Spain's American colonies for herself, but she desired to liberate them in order to annex them commercially. Hardly had King George recognized the independence of the United States when his ministers were scheming to effect the independence of South America. As early as June 26, 1797, Thomas Picton, governor of the British island of Trinidad, in the West Indies, issued an address to certain revolutionists in Venezuela in which, speaking by authority of the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, he said:

"The object which at present I desire most particularly to recommend to your attention, is the means which might be best adapted to liberate the people of the continent near to the Island of Trinidad, from the oppressive and tyrannic system which supports, with so much rigor, the monopoly of commerce, under the t.i.tle of exclusive registers, which their government licenses demand; also to draw the greatest advantages possible, and which the local situation of the island presents, by opening a direct and free communication with the other parts of the world, without prejudice to the commerce of the British nation. In order to fulfill this intention with greater facility, it will be prudent for your Excellency to animate the inhabitants of Trinidad in keeping up the communication which they had with those of Terra Firma, previous to the reduction of that island; under the a.s.surance, that they will find there an _entrepot_, or general magazine, of every sort of goods whatever. To this end, his Britannic Majesty has determined, in council, to grant freedom to the ports of Trinidad, with a direct trade to Great Britain.

"With regard to the hopes you entertain of raising the spirits of those persons, with whom you are in correspondence, toward encouraging the inhabitants to resist the oppressive authority of their government, I have little more to say, than that they may be certain that, whenever they are in that disposition, they may receive, at your hands, all the succors to be expected from his Britannic Majesty, be it with forces, or with arms and ammunition to any extent; with the a.s.surance, that the views of his Britannic Majesty go no further than to secure to them their independence, without pretending to any sovereignty over their country, nor even to interfere in the privileges of the people, nor in their political, civil or religious rights."

This declaration is the key to Great Britain's policy in Spanish America during the century since it was issued. The conspiracy which evoked Governor Picton's plain statement of England's att.i.tude toward the South American colonies, was discovered by the Spanish authorities, and J. M.

Espana, one of its leaders, was executed.[1] William Pitt continued to scheme for Spanish-American independence, and succeeded in enlisting the sympathy of Alexander Hamilton and Rufus King, American Minister at London. President John Adams, however, would have nothing to do with the movement, which he regarded as a plot to drive the United States into a British alliance against the French, and possibly this may have been in the mind of Pitt. The American people were not as cold as the President, however, on the subject of South America, and Francisco Miranda, a voluntary exile from Venezuela on account of his republican principles, succeeded in organizing a filibustering force in New York, one of the members of which was a grandson of the President himself. The expedition was defeated and nearly all engaged in it were captured by the Spaniards, among them young William S. Smith, John Adams' grandson. Yrujo, the Spanish Minister at Was.h.i.+ngton, offered to interpose in behalf of a pardon for the young man, but President Adams declined to use his exalted office to obtain any respite for the youth who had so unfortunately proved his inheritance of the old Adams' devotion to liberty. "My blood should flow upon a Spanish scaffold," wrote America's chief magistrate, "before I would meanly ask or accept a distinction in favor of my grandson." The young man's life was spared, however, and he returned to the United States.