by H. W. Brands
The fatal blow began to fall during the summer of 1814. A British fleet penetrated the Chesapeake and landed troops on the Maryland shore. The redcoats proceeded west toward the American capital. “Having advanced within sixteen miles of Washington,” British general Robert Ross reported, “and ascertained the force of the enemy to be such as might authorize an attempt at carrying his capital, I determined to make it. . . . A corps of about 1200 men appeared to oppose us, but retired after firing a few shots.” Nor was the closer defense of the capital more effective. Ross threw his light cavalry and then his infantry against the enemy. “His first line, giving way, was driven on the second, which, yielding to the irresistible attack of the bayonet and the well-directed discharge of rockets, got into confusion and fled.”
Nothing now stood between the British and the seat of American self-government. “I determined to march upon Washington, and reached that city at eight o’clock that night,” Ross explained. The British lacked the numbers to occupy the capital for any length of time, but Ross intended to retaliate for an American raid on York, the capital of Upper Canada, in which various government buildings had been burned. “Judging it of consequence to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay . . . the following buildings were set fire to and consumed: the capitol, including the Senate-house and the House of Representatives, the arsenal, the dockyard, Treasury, War Office, President’s Palace, rope-walk, and the great bridge across the Potomac.” A British veteran of the Napoleonic wars remembered the moment with soldierly satisfaction. “It would be difficult to conceive a finer spectacle,” George Gleig wrote. “The sky was brilliantly illumined by the different conflagrations, and a dark red light was thrown upon the road, sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his comrade’s face. Except the burning of St. Sebastian’s”—taken by Wellington’s army in northern Spain in 1813—“I do not recollect to have witnessed at any period of my life a scene more striking or more sublime.”
The experience was humiliating to every patriotic American. A country that couldn’t protect its capital from enemy assault would quickly become a laughingstock among nations. Small comfort followed the repulse of the same British force when it attacked Baltimore two weeks later. The victory gave Americans an anthem to sing after Francis Scott Key, observing the defense of Fort McHenry, put American words to a British drinking song, but it provided little in the way of confidence or lasting security.
Republicans and a few Federalists tried to mask their mortification with anger at the behavior of the British. On learning that General Ross had been killed by an American sniper at Baltimore, Niles’ Register recommended derisively that a monument be erected to “THE LEADER OF A HOST OF BARBARIANS who destroyed the capitol.” Many Americans joined Henry Clay in lamenting Madison’s ineptitude. One graffitist marked the sooty walls of the Capitol with a damning comparison: “George Washington founded this city after a seven years’ war with England; James Madison lost it after a two years’ war.”
Federalists in New England took the burning of Washington as an opportunity to weaken the hold of the Republicans on the national government, and perhaps of the national government on New England. Gathering at Hartford, Connecticut, they vented their grievances against the war, against the Republicans, and against most of what had happened in American politics since John Adams left the presidency. Some spoke of secession, others of amendments to the Constitution. Just what they said was impossible for outsiders to know, for they barred the door of their meeting hall against ordinary citizens and published neither transcripts nor summary of the debates. After three weeks they produced a report recommending several constitutional amendments designed to make embargoes, war declarations, and the admission of new states more difficult; to reduce the representation in Congress of the South (by negating the three-fifths clause of the Constitution and thereby eliminating slaves altogether from the seat-determining totals); and to limit presidents to one term and prevent a single state—they were obviously thinking of Virginia—from having two presidents in succession.
Radicals among the Federalists complained that the recommendations didn’t go far enough. Few admitted publicly to feeling closer to Britain than to Virginia, but their constant carping against Madison and the war made clear where their loyalties lay. The canny among the separatists counseled tactical patience. “No sensible man ought to expect that the first New England convention would do as much as the last out of several congresses of the patriots of the revolution,” a Boston paper observed knowingly.
When Jackson heard of the Hartford convention he was outraged. The country was at war, the very principle of self-government was in peril, and the Federalists were flirting with Britain. Jackson’s nationalism had always been of a piece with his devotion to popular government; since the Revolutionary War, when he had fought simultaneously against British regulars and American Tories, he had understood the Union to be the best guarantee of popular rule, and vice versa. The Federalists were twice wrong and hence doubly dangerous. “These kind of men, although called Federalist, are really monarchist, and traitors to the constituted Government,” he declared. By the time Jackson got the news the Hartford delegates had dispersed, but he left no doubt what he would have done if given the chance. “Had I commanded the military department where the Hartford convention met, if it had been the last act of my life I should have hung up the three principal leaders of the party.” As an afterthought to his imagined execution, he added, “I am sure an independent court martial would have condemned them.”
The Hartford Federalists didn’t have to fear Jackson, as a thousand miles separated him from them, but they did have to notice the Tennessee general. Jackson’s victory at Horseshoe Bend was a rare bright spot in the miserable war, and in its aftermath Americans from all across the country noticed its author. Newspapers in every city recounted the triumph. Millions of Americans who had never heard of Andrew Jackson now praised his bravery, determination, and skill, which contrasted so favorably with the timidity, fecklessness, and incompetence of nearly everyone else associated with the war.
The Madison administration embraced the general as tightly as it could. The War Department published Jackson’s reports from the front. War Secretary Armstrong recommended a promotion. “Something ought to be done for General Jackson,” he told Madison. The obvious thing, from the administration’s standpoint, was to bring Jackson into the regular army, where his light would reflect up the chain of command to Washington, rather than back to Tennessee. A hitch arose on account of the current recess of Congress. “All therefore that can be done at present,” Armstrong informed Jackson, “in reward for your able and gallant conduct during the campaign and in testimony of the public respect these have obtained is to make you a Brigadier of the line, with the brevet of Major General, and to invest you with the command of the Seventh Military District.” But the difficulty disappeared when William Henry Harrison, in a dispute with the War Department, resigned his commission as major general, freeing up that rank for Jackson.
Jackson thought twice about the appointment. For all his embrace of the Union as an ideal, he retained the westerner’s distrust of many of the agents and agencies of the national government. The War Department had done little good for Tennessee or, till now, for him. He recognized the motives of the Madison administration in putting him forward.
But he couldn’t say no. When the nation called, the patriot answered. And the honor was very great. The orphan boy from the Revolutionary War was becoming one of the highest-ranking officers in the country. To be a major general of the Tennessee militia was a fine thing, but to be a major general in the army of the United States was something else again.
With the surrender of William Weatherford, Jackson could confidently declare the Creek campaign over. “Accept the expression of your general’s thanks, and of his admiration,” he told his men. “Within a few weeks you have annihilated the power of a nation that had for twenty years
been the disturber of our peace. . . . Wherever these infatuated allies of our archenemy”—Britain—“assembled their forces for battle, you have seen them overthrown; wherever they fled, you have pursued them and dispersed them. The rapidity of your movements and the brilliancy of your achievements have corresponded with the valor by which you were animated.” Forgetting, or at least ignoring in the moment of victory, the failures and lapses of the mutinous few, Jackson recounted the triumphs of the faithful many: how they had endured hunger and fatigue, how they had marched over mountains and forded swollen rivers, how they had found and defeated the enemy in his woodland fortress. Now the time had come to return home, and their general would gladly lead them there. “In performing this last act of duty I shall experience a satisfaction not to be expressed.”
Jackson had just reached Nashville when his appointment to command the Seventh District came through from Washington. The Seventh District comprised Tennessee, Mississippi Territory, and Louisiana, and its command made Jackson responsible for negotiating the peace settlement with the Creeks. Accordingly he had time only to kiss Rachel hello before he had to kiss her good-bye and head south again.
He knew what he wanted from a treaty. The long marches to and from the lower country had given him plenty of time to think about the future of the Southwest. Despite having accepted the services of some of the Creeks against the others, he saw less to distinguish the friendlies from the hostiles than many of his compatriots did. Defeated hostiles could turn friendly, but irritated friendlies could turn hostile. Jackson may have been harder-hearted than some of his contemporaries, or perhaps he was simply more realistic, yet whatever the cause, he didn’t believe that whites and Indians could live in peaceful proximity. At least they couldn’t so long as the Indians clung to their tribal ways, which included the ability to make war against one another and against the whites. This wasn’t wholly the fault of the Indians. White settlers were endlessly pushy, and foreign whites—British and Spanish—were always eager to provoke the Indians against Americans. Jackson couldn’t do anything about the pushiness of the settlers, which came with human nature. But he could do something about the foreigners and about the Indians’ ability to respond to provocations with a renewal of war.
The “grand policy of the government,” he explained to Tennessee senator John Williams, ought to be to link the white settlements in Georgia with those of Tennessee and Mississippi Territory. The connected settlements would form a “bulwark against foreign invasion” and prevent the “introduction of foreign influence to corrupt the minds of the Indians.” The settlements would also split the Creek nation, diminishing the capacity of irreconcilables among them to start another war. Perhaps surprisingly for the one who had led the fighting against them, Jackson thought the hostile Creeks ought not to be stripped of lands. Politics in the states that had contributed soldiers to the fighting required seizing some of the land to pay the costs of the campaign; Jackson couldn’t prevent that. But even the hostile Creeks had to live. “Humanity dictates that the conquered part of the nation should be allotted sufficient space for agricultural purposes.” Yet that space needn’t be their traditional territory. Some might come from the lands of the friendly Creeks, who would simply have to make room.
The friendly Creeks wouldn’t like Jackson’s plan, and neither would their northern neighbors. Jackson believed that the collapse of Tecumseh’s alliance and the current moment of American victory provided a chance to solve some long-standing problems. Cherokee and Chickasaw lands might be appropriated in the name of national defense. To the Chickasaws in particular, the American government might truthfully say, “You have proved to us that you cannot protect the whites on the roads through your country. The enemy you have permitted to pass through your nation, kill and plunder our nation, and carry off our women and children captives.” Jackson didn’t advocate simply seizing the land; the Indians must receive fair compensation for surrendering their rights. But the transfer was necessary. “Our national security requires it, and their security requires it. . . . It must be done.”
And so it was. When the Creeks gathered at Fort Jackson, the leaders of the friendly bands predictably expected a reward for their loyalty. They discovered to their shock that Jackson proposed to punish them: for failing to keep order within the Creek nation and for thereby allowing the Red Sticks to commit their depredations against the whites. “The truth is,” Jackson told a delegation of the Creek leaders, “the great body of the Creek chiefs and warriors did not respect the power of the United States. They thought we were an insignificant nation, that we would be overpowered by the British.” How did Jackson know this? By the Creeks’ response to Tecumseh. “If they had not thought so, Tecumseh would have had no influence. He would have been sent back to the British, or delivered to the United States as a prisoner, or shot. If my enemy goes to the house of my friend, and tells my friend he means to kill me, my friend becomes my enemy if he does not at least tell me I am to be killed.” Jackson expressed sorrow that the Creeks had not heeded the words of their wise chiefs who had counseled continued attachment to the United States. “Had you listened to them, you would yet have been a rich, powerful, and happy people. Your woods would yet have been filled with flocks, and herds of cattle; your fields with corn. Your towns and villages would not have been burned, nor your women and children wandering in the woods, exposed to starvation and cold. But you listened to prophets and bad men; your warriors have been slain, your nation is defenceless—you are reduced to such want as to receive food from your father the President of the United States.”
The Creek delegation protested Jackson’s patent disingenuousness. He had been happy to exploit the division among the Creeks while the battle raged, they pointed out, but now he claimed that no such division existed. Big Warrior, speaking for his fellows, didn’t deny that the Red Sticks had warred upon the whites. But many other Creeks had refused to join them, and the result had been the war within the Creek nation. “The spilling blood of white people, and giving satisfaction for it, was the cause of war amongst us, and nothing else.” How could Jackson say the friendly Creeks had done nothing to restrain the wrongdoers? What more could they have done? Big Warrior appealed to the memory of the first of the Great Fathers, General Washington, who had held out the arm of friendship to the Creeks and signed the initial treaty with them. “To that arm of friendship I hold fast.” Beyond the claims of friendship and justice, Big Warrior reminded Jackson that not all the Creeks were reconciled to peace with the Americans and that the British were still bent on trouble. A punitive peace, by destroying the credibility of the friendly Creeks, would make the task of the British easier.
Jackson didn’t need reminding of the British threat. In fact it was his fear of the British, more than his feelings about the Creeks, that motivated his peace plan. “The war is not over,” he told Big Warrior and the others, regarding the conflict with Britain. And until that war was over the Americans had to look first to their security. Jackson pointed out that under the treaty with General Washington that Big Warrior cited, the Creeks were obliged to hand over enemies of the United States, including the likes of Tecumseh. They hadn’t. “The United States would have been justified by the Great Spirit had they taken all the lands of the nation merely for keeping it a secret that her enemies were in the nation.” The United States was not taking all the lands of the Creeks. They were left with more than enough to support themselves. But the American government insisted on separating the Creek lands from Spanish Florida, lest British agents or their Spanish accomplices continue to foment rebellion among the Creeks—a rebellion that would end only in the utter destruction of the Creeks. “We will run a line between our friends and our enemies. We wish to save our friends, protect them, support them. We will do all these things. We will destroy our enemies because we love our friends and ourselves. The safety of the United States and your nation requires that enemies must be separated from friends. We wish to know them from each other
. We wish to be able to say to our soldiers: Here is one, there is the other. . . . Therefore we will run the line.”
Jackson wouldn’t force the Creek leaders to sign the treaty. “Our friends will sign the treaty,” he said. And they would receive food, clothing, and the protection of the United States. Those who didn’t sign the treaty would be considered enemies. But they would be allowed to go, with Jackson’s help. “They shall have provisions to carry them away. We do not want them. We wish them to join their friends that all may be destroyed together.”
Here Jackson wasn’t being disingenuous, merely blunt. He knew that Big Warrior and the other chiefs had little alternative to signing the treaty. “The whole Creek nation is in a most wretched state,” he wrote the War Department. Two seasons of war—and his own scorched-earth policy—had driven it to the brink of starvation. “Could you only see the misery and wretchedness of those creatures perishing from want of food and picking up the grains of corn scattered from the mouths of the horses and trodden in the earth,” he told Rachel, “I know your humanity would feel for them.” Jackson’s humanity felt for them, too, but so did his strategic sense. After Big Warrior and the other chiefs signed the treaty, as Jackson guessed they would, he wrote to the War Department, “They must be fed and clothed or necessity will compel them to embrace the proferred friendship of the British.”
