by James Laxer
But many of the men could endure no more. Jackson had to mobilize his volunteers to stop some of the militiamen from leaving, but the following day, the volunteers decided they too could take it no more. Jackson urged them to wait two more days for the supplies. Then the men in his three brigades voted on what to do. One brigade voted to remain with the general; a second voted to remain for two more days; and the third, the volunteers, voted to depart. This time Jackson did not try to stop them. He did get them to agree to return to Fort Strother as soon as they could and to bring provisions with them. Davy Crockett was among the volunteers who left, and after going home to obtain a new horse, he returned once more to take up the fight against the Red Sticks. Most of the volunteers did not come back.22
Two days passed, but the relief column did not arrive. Forced to march north, Jackson convinced just over 100 men to remain behind and safeguard Fort Strother. Twenty miles into their march, Jackson’s soldiers ran into a supply column heading south from Fort Deposit with a herd of 150 cattle and 9 wagons laden with flour. The ravenous troops slaughtered the cattle at once and ate decently for the first time in days.
Jackson was now determined to lead his force back to Fort Strother, but one company resumed the march north. The general confronted the men and threatened to open fire on them if they did not follow his order and return to camp. Reluctantly, they did so. The mutinous mood had not passed, however. Another brigade began preparations to depart for the North. The general wielded a musket with his good arm and aimed it at the disobedient troops. “You say you will march,” he declared. “I say by the Eternal God you shall not march while a cartridge can sound fire.” The standoff continued for some moments, until several officers and loyal soldiers joined the general, their weapons bristling. The rebellious soldiers backed down.23
While Jackson had spent much time and energy keeping his own force in the field, other American units were carrying on the fight against the Red Sticks. In late November, a force of about 950 Georgia militiamen and 400 Cherokee warriors, under the command of General John Floyd, launched an attack on the Red Stick stronghold of Autossee, located on the eastern bank of the Tallapoosa River.24
On a cold morning, with frost covering the country around the town, the Georgians attacked Autossee and a small settlement a few hundred yards away. The fight was long and fierce. In the end, the Georgians prevailed, their artillery particularly effective in smashing the homes where their foes were holed up. Many of the Red Stick warriors died in the flames, while others carried on the fight from the brush surrounding the town. Two hundred Red Stick warriors were killed, according to the count carried out by the Georgians, who lost eleven men and had fifty-three wounded. Among the Muscogee dead was the venerable chieftain Big Warrior.25
As had been the case at Talladega, despite their victory and the destruction of Autossee, the Georgians failed to prevent most of the Red Stick warriors from escaping. Short of supplies, Floyd decided to lead his Georgians east to Fort Mitchell, their supply base on the Chattahoochee River, on the border of Georgia. As they set out on their march, the Red Sticks launched their own surprise attack. Four or five Georgians died, but Floyd’s men repelled the assault and continued to Fort Mitchell.26
The fighting between the Americans and the Red Sticks continued into 1814. Reinforced with eight hundred new recruits, Jackson decided to launch an assault on a key Red Stick position called Tohepeka, or Horseshoe Bend. The Red Sticks did not wait for Jackson’s troops to reach their base. They struck the Tennessee force, attacking the Americans in three places simultaneously, the very tactic the U.S. troops had been using against them. Jackson’s soldiers just managed to hold their ground against the attack, and the general concluded that he needed more men to win at Horseshoe Bend. He led his troops in a retreat back toward Fort Strother and was once again struck by a Red Stick attack, which he fended off.27
A few weeks after the American troops were driven back to Fort Strother, volunteers from eastern Tennessee and the 39th Regiment of U.S. Infantry reached the fort. This infusion of fresh blood brought the general’s numbers back up to make good the loss of those who had left when their enlistment times were up. On March 14, 1814, Jackson led the bulk of his troops south while leaving a covering force behind at the fort. The general’s army numbered about four thousand men, including Cherokee and Choctaw warriors and Muscogees who had sided with the United States. Their target was Horseshoe Bend, about 160 kilometres to the south, on a loop in the Tallapoosa River. Here the Red Stick warriors numbered about one thousand, and about three hundred women and children were at the site. The Red Sticks had chosen a defensive position on a peninsula and had constructed breastworks made of logs to shield them against attack. In the breastworks were portholes through which the warriors could fire.
On March 27, 1814, Jackson launched his attack, which opened with an ineffectual artillery bombardment during which the Americans and their native allies managed to make it over the barricade and drive back their foes. While a few Red Sticks got away, the rest fought to the finish, unwilling to surrender when Jackson sent forth a flag of truce. In its latter phases, what happened at Horseshoe Bend was a slaughter. In one incident, a young soldier saw his officer rubbing his eyes. The officer told him that a Red Stick bullet had hit a tree and deflected bark into his eyes. “I want you to kill an Indian for me,” the officer said. The soldier saw an old Muscogee sitting on the ground, pounding corn, refusing to acknowledge what was happening around him. He took deliberate aim and shot the old man dead. Another soldier beat a small Muscogee boy to death with the butt of his weapon. When an officer reprimanded him, the soldier explained that the little boy would one day have grown up to become a Red Stick.28
In a letter he later wrote to his wife, Jackson conceded that “the carnage was dreadful.” When the Americans made their count of the fallen Red Sticks, they concluded that close to 900 had died — 557 lay dead on the ground and an estimated 300 had perished in the river.
Following the bloody victory, Jackson declared to his men that “the fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer murder our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders.”29 He then led his force south to the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, the heart of the Muscogee territory, and constructed Fort Jackson. Having fought his way through the Muscogee country, Jackson sent word to Muscogee settlements that they faced a stark choice: surrender or destruction. Many agreed to surrender. To complete his triumph, the general demanded that the Muscogees turn William Weatherford, Red Eagle, over to him. Red Eagle did not wait for others to come for him. He walked into Jackson’s camp and declared, “My warriors can no longer hear my voice. Their bones are at Talledega, Tallushatchee, Emuckfaw and Tohopeka . . . I now ask for [peace] for my nation, and for myself.” With this, Red Eagle went about the task of talking the remaining Red Sticks into giving up.
Jackson’s war against the Creeks was over. The general returned to Nashville to a hero’s welcome. That summer, he came back to Fort Jackson to dictate the terms of the Treaty of Fort Jackson to the shattered Muscogee nation. The United States took more than half the territory of the Muscogees, twenty million acres of land.30 The Muscogee chiefs were astonished by the harshness of the terms. Those who had remained allies of the Americans anticipated generosity in return. They had expected land to be taken from the areas in which the Red Sticks had been strongest, but they did not imagine that the Americans would seize the heart of the territory of the whole Muscogee people.
The general’s rejoinder was that the whole Muscogee nation had to pay the price for the Red Stick rebellion. He told the chiefs that the Muscogees should have taken Tecumseh prisoner when he came to draw them into his confederation. Now the Muscogees would suffer for the choice they had made.31
Andrew Jackson built his career, which culminated in two terms as president of the United States, on his reputation as a warrior on behalf of the new West. He stoo
d up for the settlers west of the Appalachians and defied the established ways and institutions of the East. He fought against the power of eastern banks and championed a financial system in which local banks would meet farmers’ and industry’s need for capital.
In the conventional version of American history, Jackson is recorded as a leader who broadened the concept of democracy. He is the author of so-called Jacksonian democracy. Every year, the Democratic Party of the United States holds its annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, named in honour of two of its greatest champions, the first a slave owner, the second a man who won his spurs in the systematic destruction of an entire people. The Creek War was one more chapter in the Endless War, the war to which Tecumseh had dedicated his life.
* * *
¶¶¶ Before the attack on Hillabee Creek, Jackson and Cocke had had their problems coordinating what was supposed to be a joint operation. Now the two fell out. Jackson was determined to shift the blame for the massacre and the consequent prolongation of the Creek War onto the shoulders of Cocke. Eventually, this led to Jackson preferring charges against Cocke and the calling of a court martial to judge the conduct of the major general. Although Cocke thought Jackson supporters had stacked the court martial against him, he was acquitted.
In fact, Cocke had let Jackson know prior to the massacre that he intended to launch an attack on the Hillabee towns. When Jackson, who was thus aware of the planned assault, wrote back to Cocke to inform him of the offer to surrender made by the Hillabee chiefs, he did not mention Cocke’s plan to attack the towns.
Chapter 15
Out of the Furnace of War,
an Upper Canadian Identity
WHEN THE WAR OF 1812 ERUPTED, political identities were fluid on both sides of the border. The Americans did have their revolution behind them, as well as the founding documents of the civil religion of American patriotism: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. Although the United States was on the way to a national identity, it was not there yet. The political divisions between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists were more than schisms between parties; they expressed dangerous regional chasms, most importantly that between New England and the rest of the country.
Unlike French Canada, with its firm and long-established identity, the settler communities in Upper Canada at the turn of the nineteenth century were fragmented. Some were Loyalist, some were American, some were British. A rainbow of loyalties was on offer. The war would change that.
For French Canadians, the threat from the south called up vivid memories of the invasions of the past, most recently the one undertaken by American Patriots in 1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence. They did not view the Americans as liberators but rather as descendants of those who had waged bloody struggles against them for nearly two centuries. Preserving their language, religion, and way of life meant halting the invader, even if it meant fighting under the folds of the Union Jack, a flag that provoked mixed feelings, at best, among the Canadiens.
On the eve of the war, the Lower Canada legislature unanimously passed the Army Bills Act, which approved funding for the local military effort.1 The legislature also passed an act that authorized the establishment of an “incorporated militia” to number two thousand men. The governor-general-in-council — made up of the governor general and his appointed advisors, in effect his cabinet — increased the number to four thousand, which remained the official size of this militia until the end of the conflict.
Married volunteers were not encouraged to join this force, whose members had to serve for two years. Half the members of the militia could be discharged each year, with new recruits topping up the strength of the corps. Men who had served and been discharged formed a trained reserve that could be recalled to active duty in the event of an emergency. By law, all able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were required to enroll with the local militia captain during the month of April. They were also obliged to attend four muster parades, where they learned the basic elements of drill. Once a year, they were mustered for an inspection carried out by a superior officer assigned by the commander-in-chief.
Of Lower Canada’s total population of 330,000, 52,000 were enrolled in the militia.2 In Upper Canada, only 11,000 men were enrolled, out of a population of under 100,000. From this total enrollment, called the “sedentary militia,” members were activated when they volunteered or were selected by ballot.
The local British North American regulars played an important role in the defence of the territory. Among them were the Canadian Fencibles, the Voltigeurs of Lower Canada, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the New Brunswick Regiment, the Royal Veterans, and the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles. Drawn from Roman Catholics from the Scottish Highlands who had migrated to Glengarry County, in Upper Canada on the St. Lawrence River, the Glengarrys numbered eight hundred men. The manpower of the six corps totalled about four thousand soldiers.3
On the eve of the war, Brock worried that the Upper Canadians’ response to an invasion might be tepid, with most settlers waiting to see which way the wind would blow. When U.S. General William Hull set foot on Canadian soil in the summer of 1812, he was gratified that several hundred Canadian residents answered his call to support the United States, and that several dozen Canadian militiamen deserted from Fort Malden to join the American forces. But much of the initial Canadian enthusiasm for the American invaders was soon put to rest at Detroit and Queenston. And in the aftermath of the burning of public buildings in York and later atrocities on Canadian soil, public opinion turned sharply against the Americans. The fires of war were forging an identity in Upper Canada, whose elements would be evident for many decades to come. Indeed, the contemporary political culture of Ontario has its roots in the war.
While the Upper Canadian identity would one day embrace democrats as well as political and social reformers, its bedrock was Tory. Loyalty to the British Crown was its central point of reference. That hard truth was driven home by the American invasions. John Strachan, the Anglican cleric who did so much to annoy American military leaders during their brief occupation of York, personified Upper Canadian Toryism. Unlike Brock and Tecumseh, who fought on Canadian soil by happenstance rather than design, Strachan was in Canada for the duration. Not surprisingly, he was a staunch admirer of Brock and the military alliance with the native confederacy.
Even before the U.S. attack on York, John Strachan had become a constant critic of the government, cheering on those he thought were putting up a valiant fight against the American invaders and writing scathing attacks on those who he thought were weak-kneed in their defence of the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada. On September 30, 1812, he wrote to the Honourable John Richardson, an influential Montreal merchant, to rail against “the languid manner in which the war is carried on.” He outlined a long series of steps that the military should take to pursue the war more vigorously, and he set out the political benefits that would flow from taking the offensive. “We are told that some wise acres,” he concluded, “find fault with General Brock for employing the Indians, but if he had not done so, he and all his men must have perished.”4
A few weeks later, in a lengthy missive to the Honourable William Wilberforce, the British politician renowned for his campaign against the slave trade, Strachan set out the case for an alliance with the native peoples in the prosecution of the war against the United States. Rehearsing the historic mistreatment of native peoples in the U.S., Strachan said, “The Americans drive them [natives] from their hunting ground . . . and the American government makes fraudulent purchases of their lands from Indians who have no power to sell — one or two insignificant members of a village for example.” He referred to the reasons for the war of the native peoples against the Americans as given “by the Famous Chief Tecumseh to General Brock when he was lately at Detroit on his expedition against General Hull. This Indian Chief unites the most astoni
shing wisdom to the most determined valour — he has been employed for several years in uniting all the Indians against the Americans.”5
In another letter to Richardson, Strachan made the case that despite the other stated causes of the war, the true object of the United States was Upper and Lower Canada. “The importance of this country to them is incalculable,” he wrote. “The possession of it would give them the complete command of the Indians who must either submit or starve within two years and thus leave all the Western frontier clear and unmolested. The Americans are systematically employed in exterminating the Savages, but they can never succeed while we keep possession of this country. This my Dear Sir is the true cause of the war.”6
Strachan’s distaste for the invaders was captured in a letter to the Marquess Wellesley in November 1812, in which he advocated the establishment of a University of Upper Canada. He hoped to create a university “upon an extensive and liberal plan so as to prevent in future our young men from going to the United States to finish their education, where they learn nothing but anarchy in Politics and infidelity in religion.”7
Strachan was an authentic voice of the Upper Canada to come, an Upper Canada in which loyalty to the Crown and distance from the republic to the south were deeply embedded values.
For the balance of the war, the people of the Canadas and their defenders carried on the gruelling fight against a succession of American invasions, and many Upper Canadians had to put up with the misery of occupation by U.S. troops. Occupation brought with it the horrors of day-to-day intimacy between occupiers and occupied: destruction of property, the commandeering of farm animals and crops, guerilla warfare, treason, the naming and punishment of traitors.
