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June 16 - October 22, 2023
On June 1, 1812, America declared war. After a hot debate, James Madison’s war resolution was passed by a vote of 19–13 in the Senate and 79–49 in the House of Representatives, and, once again, the new nation would be taking on the world’s premier military and economic power: Great Britain.
Now, the nation James Madison led had reached the limit of its tolerance. Great Britain’s kidnapping of American sailors and stirring up of Indian tribes to attack settlers on the western frontier had made life intolerably difficult for many of America’s second generation, including those hardscrabble men and women pushing the boundaries westward.
The unanswered question was: Could America win? Less than thirty years removed from the last war, and with virtually no national army, were Americans prepared to take on Britain and defend themselves, this time without the help of France? The world was about to find out.
The Federalist Party, mainly representing northerners whose economy relied on British trade, had unanimously opposed the war declaration.
Yet peaceful attempts at resolving the conflict with Britain had already been tried—and hadn’t helped the economy much. Five years earlier, when a British ship attacked the U.S. Navy’s Chesapeake, killing three sailors and taking four others from the ship to impress them into service to the Crown, then-president Thomas Jefferson had attempted to retaliate. To protest this blatant hostility, Congress passed the Embargo Act, prohibiting overseas trade with Great Britain. Unfortunately, the act hurt Americans more than the British. In just fifteen months, the embargo produced a depression that
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By the time of the war declaration in June 1812, the number of sailors seized off the decks of American ships had risen to more than five thousand men.
For many years, the Five Civilized Tribes in the region (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) had maintained peaceful relations with the European arrivals. But as more and more white settlers moved into native territories, tensions had risen and open conflict had broken out.
Andrew Jackson’s cobbled-together upbringing would serve him well, though he also gained a reputation as a young man who loved drinking, playing cards, and horse racing.
As a lawyer, a trader, and a merchant, Jackson bought and sold land. By the time Tennessee joined the Union, in 1796, he had won the respect of his neighbors, who chose him as their delegate to the state’s constitutional convention. Jackson then served as Tennessee’s first congressman for one session before becoming a U.S. senator.
thanks to his strong relationships and sound political instincts, he was elected major general of the Tennessee militia, in February 1802. Maintained by the state, not the federal government, the militia was provisioned by local men who supplied their own weapons and uniforms and served short contracts of a few months’ duration.
“Citizens!” he wrote in a broadside. “Your government has at last yielded to the impulse of a nation. . . . Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian czar? No—we are the free-born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world.”
in the autumn of 1812, “Every man of the western country turns his eyes intuitively upon the mouth of the Mississippi.” Together, he observed, “[we are] committed by nature herself [to] the defense of the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans.”5
New Orleans was important—so important, in fact, that upon becoming president a dozen years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had made acquiring it a key objective. Recognizing the city’s singular strategic importance to his young nation, he wrote, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”6
Knowing that Napoleon’s plan for extending his American empire had suffered a major setback in the Caribbean, where his expeditionary force had been decimated by yellow fever, Jefferson sensed an opportunity.
The Louisiana Purchase had been completed in 1803 and, at a purchase price of $15 million for more than eight hundred thousand square miles of territory, the land had been a staggering bargain (the cost to America’s treasury worked out to less than three cents an acre).
The Louisiana city of New Orleans was the great gateway to and from the heart of the country. America’s inland waterways—the Ohio, the Missouri, and the numerous other rivers that emptied into the Mississippi—amounted to an economic lifeline for farmers, trappers, and lumbermen upstream.
these waters flatboats and keelboats were a common sight, carrying manufactured goods from Pennsylvania, as well as crops, pelts, and logs from the burgeoning farms and lush forests across the Ohio Valley, Cumberland Gap, and Great Smoky Mountains. On reaching the wharves, warehouses, and quays of New Orleans, the goods went aboard waiting ships to be transported all over the world. Although Louisiana became a state in April 1812, the British still questioned the legitimacy of America’s ownership of the Louisiana Territory—Napoleon had taken Louisiana from Spain and, to some Europeans, it
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if the British took New Orleans, they could hamstring its economy and prepare to squeeze the young nation.
Even if Madison had the money and unity he needed, his military leaders were not what they should be: his generals were old, his secretary of war was incompetent, and his secretary of the navy was usually intoxicated. As the year 1812 ended, Madison faced a painful truth: those who wrote the military histories would surely wonder at the misguided way the United States had launched its Second War of Independence.
For months, Jackson awaited word from the War Department. He could do nothing but bide his time at the Hermitage and complain angrily about the “old grannies” in Washington.7 Only in November did he get word from Governor Blount, writing on behalf of President Madison, ordering Jackson to protect the territory of the Mississippi Valley. Finally, the men in Washington were recognizing the needs of the West! Jackson was to assemble a force and proceed to New Orleans immediately to defend it from a likely British invasion.
Jackson issued a call to arms, and a flood of farmers, planters, and businessmen, many of them descendants of Revolutionary War veterans, poured into Nashville. These Volunteers, as their ranks would be called, were eager to fight for their country, to protect their homes, and to serve General Jackson.
Loaded into thirty boats, Jackson and more than two thousand men floated down the Cumberland River only to run into trouble. A cold snap blocked the river with ice, delaying the troops for four days.
The difficult passage took five weeks and cost one boat and three lives.
Jackson took the opportunity to strengthen his relationships with his officer corps. Chief among them was John Coffee,
There were other good men in Jackson’s inner circle, including his chief aide-de-camp, Thomas Hart Benton, a young Nashville lawyer who had impressed Jackson with his diligence, and John Reid, Virginia-born and -educated, whose writing skills earned him the role of Jackson’s secretary. Jackson also named William Carroll, a Nashville shop owner originally from Pennsylvania, to be brigade inspector.
Finally, on March 15, 1813, a much-anticipated letter from the War Department arrived—only to humiliate and infuriate Jackson and his men, who had sacrificed their time, their money, and, in some cases, their lives to travel to defend New Orleans. As a result of America’s many failures early in the war, General John Armstrong had replaced William Eustis as secretary of war in January, and Armstrong had decided to upend all of Eustis’s strategy. “On receipt of this Letter,” General Armstrong had written, “consider [your corps] as dismissed from public service.”9 Armstrong’s focus would not be
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The Volunteers were to abandon their plans to defend New Orleans and return home. Jackson’s confusion gave way to shock and then anger. Eustis had been bad, but this move from Armstrong scarcely seemed an improvement.
Armstrong’s letter specified that Jackson was to confiscate his men’s weapons and to “take measures to have [them] delivered” to James Wilkinson, the overall commander of the American forces in the West.11 Essentially, Armstrong was asking Jackson to disband his army, disarm his men, and leave them to find their way home as best they could. They would not be paid, nor would they be issued supplies. Jackson faced a dilemma: he must follow orders—but to do so would put his men in grave danger.
Jackson and his Tennessee Volunteers faced a long march, one that would take them across five hundred miles of rugged ground, much of it in Indian country.
March 25, 1813, they began the trek—but not before Jackson wrote to his congressman: “As long as I have funds or credit, I will stick by [my Volunteers]. I shall march them to Nashville or bury them with the honors of war—Should I die I know they will bury me.”
“These brave men, at the call of their country, . . . followed me to the field—I shall carefully march them back to their homes.”15
another danger to the people of the West was brewing. As Jackson had feared, the Indian trouble in the region was growing more serious by the day. A warring faction of Creeks called the Red Sticks (the tomahawk-like war clubs they carried were painted red) had allied themselves with the British. Soon enough, Andrew Jackson would have to face them down.
the U.S. Army had captured York, Ontario, in May, although drunken American soldiers had plundered the place, violating the rules of war by burning most of York’s public buildings in celebration. But the rest of the news was bad for the Americans. The British continued to ravage the coast, burning the city of Havre de Grace, Maryland, in May.
In a matter of days, two events would alter the course of Jackson’s life. One almost killed him, and the other accelerated his rise to the status of genuine American hero.
Jackson, known for his fiery temper, had fought several duels. As an angry twenty-two-year-old, he had issued a challenge over a minor courtroom disagreement, but both duelists had fired harmlessly in the air, realizing their argument was not worth dying for.1 The more serious matter of a slander to Rachel Jackson’s honor had led Jackson to an armed face-to-face with the sitting governor of Tennessee, John Sevier, in 1803.
Jackson had sustained a chest wound when a lead ball broke two ribs and lodged deep in his left lung (the injury would never entirely heal, causing periodic lung hemorrhages later in life).
Emerging from his fever-induced delirium, Jackson absorbed the news and saw the call to action: Fort Mims must be avenged and, soon enough, Governor Blount and President Madison so ordered. (It wasn’t lost on Jackson that Fort Mims, located within range of the Gulf Coast, would bring him much closer to New Orleans, once again raising concern about a possible British invasion.)
Impatient though he was, Jackson considered with care information on the enemy provided by friendly Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees. Setting aside his deep distrust of Indians, he urged his commanders to make allies of Native Americans who had chosen not to join the Red Sticks’ uprising. Out of instinct rather than military training—of which he had little—Jackson understood that intelligence concerning his enemies’ forces would be invaluable.
And Jackson gained a new nickname: to the Red Sticks, he became Sharp Knife.
In the back of his mind was the worry about a British advance on New Orleans (in fact, a British admiral had quietly proposed such a move a full year earlier1), but much more immediate concerns occupied Jackson’s attention.
The Indians needed to be “exterminated or conquered,” said Jackson, and he challenged the governor to act. “Are you, my dear friend, sitting with your arms folded?”
“Arouse from your lethargy,” he wrote. “Give me a force for 6 months in whose term of service there is no doubt . . . and all may be safe. Withhold it, and all is lost.”7
Jackson’s spies brought word that British troops had landed at Pensacola. This could mean only one thing: as long expected, the enemy had to be preparing to assault the Gulf Coast—and, in particular, its most important city, New Orleans. Jackson knew he must, somehow, keep his army together. He must prevail against this first foe—and be ready for the next.
The Creek chief survived to fight another day. As for Andrew Jackson, he could only hope that when that day came, the two of them would finally look each other in the eye across the line of battle.
Jackson’s reputation was beginning to travel farther afield, and, for the first time, U.S. Army regulars were put under his command in addition to the Volunteers, raising the total troops in Jackson’s army to more than 3,500 men.
The British were known to be providing the Creeks with supplies—a few months before, American militiamen had intercepted the Creeks with wagonloads of supplies offloaded from the British at Pensacola.
Jackson’s scouts—among them, Davy Crockett—informed him that the Indians were camped at a place called Horseshoe Bend.
Despite Jackson’s inexperience with military strategy, he was undaunted. After all, he had attributes that couldn’t be taught: unrivaled courage, natural leadership, and—he would soon discover—uncanny battlefield instincts. Working with his advisers, he devised a plan.
To the surprise of his men, Old Hickory did not order Weatherford’s imprisonment or execution. Instead, Jackson offered Red Eagle a deal: He would grant him his life and liberty if he would serve as a peacemaker to the Creeks who were still fighting. If he chose to fight again, “his life should pay the forfeit of his crimes.” If he chose peace? “[You will] be protected.”15
With the U.S. victory at Horseshoe Bend, the Creek War was effectively over. The Creeks recognized that their only choice was to bargain, and, with the help of Red Eagle, Jackson negotiated the Treaty of Fort Jackson. On August 9, 1814, the Creek chiefs signed it, agreeing to give the United States—and the man they called Sharp Knife—more than twenty-two million acres of land. American settlers were now safe and had room to expand.
