by H. W. Brands
To rally support for his insubordination, Jackson published an article in the Nashville Democratic Clarion entitled “The Massacre at the Mouth of Duck River.” “It is now nearly two months since this cruel outrage, this act of war against the peaceful inhabitants of our country,” Jackson wrote. “No vengeance has yet been taken; no atonement has yet been made.” Jackson still hoped the government would shake off its criminal lethargy. But if it didn’t, the people of Tennessee must act on their own. “It is impossible for them to permit the assassins of women and children to escape with impunity and with triumph. They cannot submit to the prospect of an Indian war, protracted through several years and kept alive by the murder of peaceful families in the dead hour of the night.” The people had elected him to military command, and now he called on them. “Citizens! Hold yourselves in readiness. It may be but a short time before the question is put to you: Are you ready to follow your general to the heart of the Creek nation?”
Though Jackson didn’t know it as he prepared to lead the Tennessee militia into battle, war had already been declared. In June 1812 Madison finally yielded to the demands of the war hawks and laid a bill of particulars against Britain before Congress. “British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great high way of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it,” the president said. “Our commerce has been plundered in every sea; the great staples of our country have been cut off from their legitimate markets.” British agents in the West consorted with Indians engaged in “a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex, and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity.” Diplomacy had been tried to the limits of American patience and honor. War was the sole remaining resort.
Congress agreed with the president and on June 18 declared war. Yet the vote wasn’t nearly unanimous: 79 to 49 for war in the House, 19 to 13 in the Senate. The 62 nays were mostly Federalists but included 22 Republicans, and they were predominantly—49 of the 62—from the Northeast. The war hawks had won in Congress, but their victory was tentative. If American armies stumbled in the field, recriminations would surely follow.
Jackson was overjoyed at Madison’s action, belated though he judged it. Yet he wondered if the president really understood the danger America faced. Madison had mentioned the Indian threat almost as an afterthought to the main theme of his war message. This made sense in terms of national politics. All Americans could rally against Britain, but what did Pennsylvania or New Jersey care for the troubles of Tennessee? Yet to Jackson and most westerners, the Indian threat lay at the heart of the reason for war. Tecumseh had accomplished something no Indian leader since Pontiac had achieved: an alliance of several tribes against the whites. Memories of Pontiac’s War—of the terror unleashed against men, women, and children; of refugees fleeing farms and villages for their lives—remained an active part of the western consciousness. The old folks told their children, who told their children, who shivered in their beds at the thought. Now the scourge had returned. The tomahawk and scalping knife were sharpened and raised. By all evidence, Tecumseh was even more adroit and persuasive than Pontiac had been. This new alliance was broader, stretching from the Great Lakes to the lower Mississippi. And it had the backing of the British, who had never scrupled to employ the natives against enemies of the Crown.
Jackson wanted to fight the British, but the Indians came first. “Before we march,” he told his officers and men, “we must have an assurance that our wives and children are to be safe in our absence; and that assurance can only be derived from the surrender and punishment of the assassins who have taken refuge with the Creeks, or by marching an army into their country and laying it waste with fire and sword.” Every able-bodied Tennessean must rally to the cause. “Woe to the man who is unwilling to do so! . . . The wretch who can view the massacre at the mouth of Duck river, and feel not his spirit kindle within him and burn for revenge, deserves not the name of a man; and the mother who bore him should point with the finger of scorn, and say, “He is not my son.”
Tecumseh was even happier than Jackson at the commencement of hostilities between the Americans and the British. The race war Tecumseh had been preaching—of Indians against whites—had already started, and it wasn’t going well. After his confrontation with William Henry Harrison at Vincennes in 1810, Tecumseh had continued to travel and to stir up anger against the whites. Harrison couldn’t track Tecumseh’s movements in detail, but he knew what the Shawnee chief intended and how he aimed to achieve it. And in the autumn of 1811, when he learned that Tecumseh was away in the South, the Indiana governor determined to preempt the resistance Tecumseh was raising.
Harrison led a force of army regulars and militiamen up the Wabash River from Vincennes toward Prophetstown, a village at the mouth of the Tippecanoe River where Tecumseh’s brother had gathered a large band of warriors. Harrison cited Indian attacks on white settlements as justification for invading what he conceded to be Indian land, but his own words and subsequent events revealed that he was seeking an excuse for battle, which he expected to win easily. “I have no reason to doubt the issue of a contest with the savages,” he boasted to the secretary of war.
Tecumseh knew his alliance wasn’t ready to take on the blue coats, which was why he had urged the Prophet to avoid a confrontation with the Americans at least until he returned from the South. Harrison knew this, too, which was why he was pressing ahead just now. As things developed, important factions of several nearby tribes chose to sit out the approaching battle, and some—notably the Delawares—provided Harrison intelligence about the Prophet’s force.
Upon the Americans’ approach, the Prophet assumed a brave posture. Perhaps he sincerely believed in the magic he promised his fighters. Perhaps he was simply trying to boost morale. Either way, he announced that the Great Spirit would strengthen their arms and shield them from the white men’s bullets. And when the Americans, who outnumbered the Indians by two to one, encamped a mile from Prophetstown, he ordered a daring nighttime attack.
Though the Americans had slept on their arms, the stealth and swiftness of the Indian attack staggered them. The regulars formed a defensive line but the militia scattered among the trees, the wagons, and anything else that afforded shelter from the Indian musket fire. The Americans had built bonfires against the autumn cold and rain; these now served to silhouette them and assist the Indians’ aim. The Indians, for their part, kept to the woods around the American camp and were all but impossible to see. During the first hour of the fighting, the American position was in constant danger of being overrun.
Yet the defenders held on, aided by their greater numbers and by the Indians’ short supply of ammunition. And as the eastern sky slowly brightened, the balance of the battle began to tip. Finally the Americans could see their attackers, had a chance of hitting them, and could consider a counterattack. Harrison had been individually targeted by the Indians but been spared by fate as another officer, who had mounted Harrison’s easily recognizable horse, was killed instead. When Harrison ordered the counterattack, his men, desperate to escape the positions where they had been pinned down, surged forward. They drove the Indians from the camp and thanked heaven for having survived.
The Americans got the worst of the fighting in terms of casualties. “Our killed and wounded amounted to 179,” Harrison reported the next day. “Of these 42 are now dead and seven or eight more will certainly die.” The Indian losses were considerably fewer, though harder to gauge. Yet the end of the battle left the Americans in command of the field.
Decades later Harrison’s supporters would treat the Battle of Tippecanoe as the turning point in the struggle for the Northwest. At the time, the battle itself was overshadowed by Harrison’s obliteration of Prophetstown, which was left undefended upon the Indians’ retreat. Even this accomplishment was less important than the destruction of the Indians’ store of food for winter. As always, the weakest link in the chain of Indi
an defense was the need of their women and children to eat.
The unintended consequence of the American victory was to throw Tecumseh more to the side of the British than ever. The Prophetstown battle showed that the Americans could crush the Indians and that Harrison wouldn’t hesitate to do so. But British backing might level the field.
This prospect explained why Tecumseh was so relieved when he learned that war between the British and the Americans had begun, and why he moved at once to exploit the opportunity it afforded. Not long after the American declaration, the government at Washington appointed William Hull, an ailing veteran of the Revolutionary War with healthy political connections, to lead an attack on Canada opposite Detroit. But Tecumseh forged a coalition of Indians from several tribes and inflicted a sudden sharp blow against an American advance party. The ambush frightened Hull, who knew every Indian atrocity story and sweated nights wondering what Tecumseh’s red demons would do next. Hull’s sleep was additionally disrupted when he learned that the American post at Mackinaw, on the strait linking Lakes Michigan and Huron, had surrendered to a large enemy force. This “opened the northern hive of Indians,” Hull said afterward, “and they were swarming down in every direction.” In a panic, he aborted the campaign against Canada and prepared to retreat to Ohio, only to be trapped by the arrival of a fresh regiment of British troops and enemy Indians. Its commander, Isaac Brock, knew of Hull’s obsession with Indians and used it against him. Brock forged and let slip to the American general a document describing an Indian army approaching Detroit; in offering to let Hull surrender, Brock explained, “It is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermination, but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond control the moment the contest commences.” Hull’s first response was horror at the fate that might befall the civilians in the fort. “My God!” he told an aide. “What shall I do with these women and children?” His second response was to accept Brock’s terms and capitulate.
A worse disaster completed the northern debacle. While surrendering Detroit, Hull ordered the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, on the western shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago River. Most of the garrison preferred their chances behind the fort’s walls to their prospects on the prairies outside, but the commander followed Hull’s orders. He arranged an escort of Potawatomi Indians who pledged to see the whites to safety. But once in the open the Indians turned on the whites, killing most of them and, according to an eyewitness, beheading one officer and eating his heart.
The news stunned Nashville. The Anglo-Indian victories in the North couldn’t but encourage the tribes throughout the West and heighten the danger everywhere. Jackson, busy trying to enlist militiamen, recognized the blow to public morale and fought back. “The disaster of the northwestern army should rouse from his apathy every man who has yet slumbered over the public welfare,” he told potential recruits. “These are the times which distinguish the real friend of his country from the town-meeting bawler and the sunshine patriot. While these are covering their conduct with the thinnest disguises and multiplying excuses to keep them at home, the former steps forth and proclaims his readiness to march.”
Jackson’s words produced the desired effect. Nearly three thousand volunteers enlisted (giving Tennessee grounds for the nickname it would employ ever after: “the Volunteer State”). Confusingly, they didn’t all enlist under the same conditions or for the same term of service. Some signed on for twelve months, some for six, some for three, some for as little as two. The short termers weren’t necessarily less patriotic than the longer termers; often they were simply more skeptical about the possibility of actual battle or more committed to family or business affairs. In the enthusiasm of the muster, the discrepancy appeared hardly worth bothering about.
Shortly Jackson received his marching orders. The War Department had determined that the Tennessee militia should descend the Cumberland and the Mississippi to New Orleans, there to defend against a seaborne British assault.
Jackson still thought Tecumseh the greater immediate danger, but he wouldn’t complain of a chance to fight the British, who were what made Tecumseh such a threat. “Every man of the western country turns his eyes intuitively upon the mouth of the Mississippi,” he told his troops. “At the approach of an enemy in that quarter, the whole western world”—the American West, he meant—“should pour forth its sons to meet the invader and drive him back into the sea.” Jackson said he was counting on his friends and neighbors. “Let us demonstrate to our brethren in all parts of the Union that the people of Tennessee are worthy of being called to the defence of the Republic.”
Preparing for the journey south was a job in itself. Most of his men had never fought before; some had hardly been away from home. They required instruction on how to prepare for the campaign and what to bring. As this was a militia rather than a regular army, the men would supply most of their needs themselves. Jackson ordered the cavalry to report with sabers and pistols, the infantry with rifles. The noncommissioned officers and men must come with blankets. All would furnish their own uniforms. As winter was approaching, these should be supplemented by foul-weather gear.
The men responded enthusiastically, but one thing after another kept the expedition from departing. Many of the recruits simply lacked weapons; Jackson wrote to Washington pleading for “500 swords and 250 cases of pistols.” The War Department issued notes to pay the men, but the Nashville economy lacked the money—and confidence in the government scrip—to convert the notes into cash. The problem wasn’t merely a matter of accounting; the men needed real money to purchase supplies for the campaign and to provide for their families in their absence.
Jackson fretted the more with each delay. “The success of military men depends on celerity of movement and ought to be like lightning,” he grumbled. He solved the money problem, or rather deferred it, by shaming a local banker into advancing a portion of the troops’ pay in hard currency. And he decided to march without the swords and pistols, hoping they would catch him en route.
Just before leaving he bade Rachel good-bye. She had observed the approach of war with an ambivalence born at once of her personal experience on the frontier, which inclined her to endorse whatever measures were necessary to end the Indian threat, and her love for the man who would lead the Tennessee troops into battle, which made her wish the war might never come. When it did arrive, she took greater charge of affairs at the Hermitage, freeing Jackson to concentrate on raising the militia. And as he prepared to head south, she gave him a miniature of herself for a keepsake.
“I shall wear it near my bosom,” he promised. But the gesture, though deeply appreciated, was unnecessary. “My recollection never fails me of your likeness.” Jackson wasn’t especially religious at this stage of his life, but Rachel was, and he knew it eased her fears when he spoke in religious terms. “We part but for a few days, for a few fleeting weeks, when the protecting hand of Providence, if it is his will, will restore us to each other’s arms. In storms, in battles, amidst the raging billows, recollect his protecting hand. . . . Let us not repine; his will be done.” To the extent he considered the matter, Jackson believed that heaven smiled on America’s cause; for this reason Rachel need not worry. “The god of battle and justice will protect us. Hence then dispel any gloomy ideas that our separation may occasion. Bear it with Christian cheerfulness.”
And say good-bye to young Andrew. “Kiss him for his papa.”
At the beginning of 1813—the calendar had turned before Jackson’s army finally got away—the motive force of choice for travelers from Tennessee to the “lower country” along the Mississippi remained what it had been for travelers since the Stone Age: gravity. Jackson and his men piled into thirty boats at Nashville and headed down the Cumberland. The weather tested the novices among the troops. “We had an extreme hard frost last night, and many of us who were not accustomed to being exposed slept badly,” wrote one of the exp
editioners on the second day out. Ice clogged the Cumberland and closed some of its tributaries. But even winter occasionally smiled. “The morning burst forth in all the radiance of a clear sun, shining on the white frosted trees, which bended over the stream of the Cumberland. It was cold, but the sun suffused his warmth.” Mishaps weren’t many yet startled those to whom they occurred. One boat developed a leak and sank beneath its cargo of men, who crowded into another boat. At a Sunday service held aboard a third boat, the superstructure collapsed under the weight of the congregation.
Where the Cumberland met the Ohio, the ice delayed the fleet for four days. After the ice cleared and the boats set off again, the weather closed in. “It rained, hailed, and snowed all this day and night,” the chronicler of the voyage recorded on January 25. The men—or at least their diarist—got a thrill at the Mississippi. “Who can withhold his emotions while viewing the beauties of this august river, this Father of Waters? It is the grand reservoir of the streamlets from a thousand hills! . . . The productions of every climate are destined to float on its bosom!” To see the great river was to know why it must be defended, why it must remain American.
Passage on the Mississippi was swift but dangerous. Snags lurked just below the surface. A boat hit a “sawyer,” which ripped its hull and started it filling with water. For a horrifying moment all on board appeared doomed. “But Providence held the destiny of those men by a hair, and made Captain Martin the instrument of their salvation. . . . He was propelled as it were by instinct. His men rowed with Herculean strength.” They reached the shore with seconds to spare.
A south wind warmed the men but increased their labors, for now all put oars to water to maintain their pace. On February 16 they reached their goal. “On our landing at Natchez the strand was crowded with spectators welcoming the largest army that ever appeared in view of Natchez.” The next day the army made its grand entrance into the town. “We excited very general attention of the inhabitants, by whom we were treated with distinguished politeness, and also by all the officers both civil and military whom we met with.”
