1812: The Navy's War (68 page)
The convention lasted three weeks, from December 15 to January 5. As befitted a group who fancied that because of their wealth, education, and virtue, they were wiser than other citizens, their meetings were held in secret. On January 6 the convention issued a report for the public. It announced that the delegates were commissioned to devise means for defense against “dangers” and to obtain relief from “oppressions proceeding from acts of their own government, without violating constitutional principles or disappointing the hopes of a suffering and injured people.”
Theodore Dwight wrote many years later that “the expectation of those who apprehended the report would contain sentiments of a seditious, if not a treasonable character, were entirely disappointed.... Equally free was it from advancing doctrines which had a tendency to destroy the union of the states. On the contrary, it breathed an ardent attachment to the integrity of the republic. Its temper was mild, its tone moderate, and its sentiments were liberal and patriotic.”
Looking at the report, it was hard to disagree with Dwight. Defense matters had occupied most of the convention’s time. The report stressed that state militias could only be called into national service to execute laws, suppress insurrection, or repel foreign invasion, not to invade another country. In fact, the report contended that the whole notion of offensive war was unconstitutional. It went on to insist that states must control their militias and appoint their officers, not the federal government. It maintained that a forcible draft, or conscription, was unconstitutional, as was the impressment of seamen. And the enlistment of minors and apprentices without consent of parents or guardians (as Monroe had proposed) was likewise unconstitutional. The report maintained that a state must interpose its authority to protect its citizens. It must also defend itself if the federal government cannot or will not do so. If the states were forced to provide for their defense, Congress should agree to refund a portion of their taxes paid to the federal government to defray the costs.
The report then proposed seven amendments to the Constitution. The first would eliminate the provision that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining the number of members of Congress from each state, direct taxes, and presidential electors. The second would require a two-thirds vote of Congress for the admittance of a new state into the Union. Third, embargoes would be limited to sixty days. Fourth, a two-thirds vote would be required to pass a non-intercourse law. Fifth, a two-thirds vote would be required to declare war. Sixth, a naturalized citizen would not be eligible for federal office, either elected or appointed. And seventh, the president would be limited to one term, and his successor could not be from the same state.
Before adjourning, the delegates empowered Cabot and two others to call the convention back into session. It was obvious that, for the moment, moderation had triumphed. If the hated war continued, however, more radical measures would undoubtedly be called for and another convention held.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
New Orleans
I
N THE WINTER and spring of 1814, when Liverpool and his colleagues were planning to invade New Orleans, they viewed it as a first step to acquiring the entire Louisiana Territory, including West Florida, and eventually linking up with Canada and the newly acquired base at Astoria on the Pacific coast. Admiral Cochrane and Major General Ross were to direct the invasion, using the same dual-command structure they employed in Chesapeake Bay. Operational details were left to them. As time passed and the exuberance in London following Napoleon’s abdication faded, the planned invasion of New Orleans remained, but what Liverpool intended to do afterward, assuming his army was successful, became nebulous.
N THE WINTER and spring of 1814, when Liverpool and his colleagues were planning to invade New Orleans, they viewed it as a first step to acquiring the entire Louisiana Territory, including West Florida, and eventually linking up with Canada and the newly acquired base at Astoria on the Pacific coast. Admiral Cochrane and Major General Ross were to direct the invasion, using the same dual-command structure they employed in Chesapeake Bay. Operational details were left to them. As time passed and the exuberance in London following Napoleon’s abdication faded, the planned invasion of New Orleans remained, but what Liverpool intended to do afterward, assuming his army was successful, became nebulous.
From the moment Admiral Cochrane arrived on the North American Station in March 1814, he worked on the plan for New Orleans. On June 20, he sent a proposal for the invasion to the Admiralty. He thought he would need a relatively small number of regulars to take the city, given the help he expected from Indians, escaped slaves, and perhaps John Lafitte’s Baratarian pirates. Liverpool supported Cochrane’s approach, although the prime minister planned to send far more troops than the 3,000 Cochrane requested.
Liverpool and Bathurst expected Cochrane’s amphibious forces to assemble at Negril Bay on the west coast of Jamaica no later than November 20. Cochrane and Ross were to depart for the island as soon as operations in Chesapeake Bay were completed. Bathurst sent Ross orders on July 30 and August 10, and the Admiralty dispatched Cochrane’s orders on August 10.
When General Ross was killed during the fighting at Baltimore in September, Bathurst—after rejecting the idea of replacing him with Lieutenant General Lord Hill, Wellington’s second in command—ordered Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s adjutant general and his brother-in-law, to lead the land army at New Orleans. Until Pakenham arrived, however, Cochrane was in command of the entire operation, and he had high expectations for its success. The potential fortune he would derive from the city’s overstuffed warehouses heightened his interest.
The first thing Cochrane attended to was organizing more Indian resistance in the south. On March 14, 1814, he ordered Captain Hugh Pigot to load the frigate
Orpheus
with arms for the Creeks and other tribes. Bathurst wrote to General Ross that by “supporting the Indian tribes situated on the confines of Florida, and in the back parts of Georgia, it would be easy to reduce New Orleans, and to distress the enemy very seriously in the neighboring provinces.”
Orpheus
with arms for the Creeks and other tribes. Bathurst wrote to General Ross that by “supporting the Indian tribes situated on the confines of Florida, and in the back parts of Georgia, it would be easy to reduce New Orleans, and to distress the enemy very seriously in the neighboring provinces.”
Pigot sailed south in company with the schooner
Shelburne
, a former American privateer. His first stop was Nassau on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, where he conferred with Governor Cameron about the Creeks. Pigot then sailed to the mouth of the Apalachicola River in Florida to consult with Creek and other Indian chiefs, arriving on May 10. He reported to Cochrane that the Indians gave him a warm reception.
Shelburne
, a former American privateer. His first stop was Nassau on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, where he conferred with Governor Cameron about the Creeks. Pigot then sailed to the mouth of the Apalachicola River in Florida to consult with Creek and other Indian chiefs, arriving on May 10. He reported to Cochrane that the Indians gave him a warm reception.
Pigot thought that as many as 2,800 Creeks could be enlisted for an attack on New Orleans and an equal number of Choctaw, along with perhaps 1,000 other tribesmen. He suggested training them and then using them alongside regular troops. He recommended landing on the Florida coast at Mobile and from there pushing two hundred miles west to Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River, eighty miles from New Orleans. With Cochrane’s fleet offshore and the British army at Baton Rouge, New Orleans would fall easily. Once the city was in British hands, a determined movement north along the Mississippi and eventually to the Canadian border could follow. Pigot left behind George Woodbine, a brevet captain of marines, with some aides to coordinate with the Indians.
Pigot’s assessment was wildly optimistic. Major General Andrew Jackson, commander of Military District 7, had already crushed the Creeks in March 1814. Their destruction as a military force began months before, in August 1813, when some of their younger members, inspired by Tecumseh and by their experiences with white settlers, became embroiled in a war with the United States.
Armed conflict became inevitable when, following Tecumseh’s vision, the younger Creeks refused to abandon their traditional way of life and become farmers. The American Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins had worked hard, and successfully, to convince many older Creeks to change their ways, but the younger warriors decided to fight for their land and their traditions. They became known as Red Sticks. Their leader was Red Eagle, also known as William Weatherford, a man at home with either whites or Indians.
At the time, there were perhaps 18,000 Creeks. Of these, only 4,000 or so were warriors. They relied principally on the bow and arrow, although reportedly they had 1,000 muskets. Their territory was around three hundred square miles in the southeastern part of the United States, extending from the middle of Georgia to the Mississippi Territory and from the Gulf of Mexico to Tennessee.
The war engendered by the Red Sticks began in earnest on August 30, 1813, when Red Eagle led an attack on Fort Mims, the fortified residence of merchant Samuel Mims, on the east bank of the Alabama River, forty miles north of Mobile. Red Eagle’s 1,000 Red Sticks massacred 400 of the 500 people at the fort, including women and children. The stories of his atrocities were gruesome. The attack was in retaliation for the ambush of Creek leader Peter McQueen at Burnt Corn Creek in Alabama, sixty-five miles north of Pensacola on July 27, 1813.
The episode at Fort Mims signaled not a triumph for the Creeks, but the beginning of the end of their power. Shortly after the massacre, Oliver Hazard Perry won his great victory on faraway Lake Erie, which led to the collapse of British influence in the Northwest and the death of Tecumseh. The great Indian leader had hoped to unite all Indians north and south in a war against the United States, but with his passing, any hope for the Choctaws, Chickasaw, Creeks, and other tribes to resist American expansion died as well.
The massacre at Fort Mims outraged and frightened people in western Tennessee—indeed in the whole Southeast. Their anger would fuel reprisals that would eventually be fatal for the Red Sticks and all the Creeks. Combining forces against the Red Sticks in the various states and territories, however, proved impossible for many months. Small units from Georgia, the Mississippi Territory, and Tennessee fought a few inconclusive battles. Ultimately, the task of crushing the Red Sticks fell by default to an obscure, backwoods militia general from western Tennessee, Andrew Jackson. He took the field with a relatively small number of militiamen with limited terms of enlistment, and by the end of 1813, his force had reached a low ebb. It looked as if his entire army would desert him. The few men Jackson had left were in danger of being wiped out by Red Eagle.
For a brief time Jackson was almost alone, but on January 14, 1814, he acquired eight hundred raw militiamen, and he reconnoitered Red Eagle’s stronghold at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River in what was then the Mississippi Territory and is now Alabama. Red Eagle attacked him at Emuckfaw Creek with a much larger force, and Jackson prudently withdrew. As he retreated, he was attacked again at Enotachopco Creek but managed to fight and then withdraw without having to surrender.
Jackson was later able to reconstitute and expand his army. By the end of February, with help from his friend Willie Blount, the governor of Tennessee, Jackson built an army of 4,000 men, and he marched 3,000 of them back to Horseshoe Bend. At the time, Red Eagle was away, and only 1,200 Red Sticks were present. Jackson attacked on March 27, provoking a savage battle. The Red Sticks had a few rifles and muskets, but mostly they used more primitive weapons. They did not have a chance. Jackson overwhelmed them with numbers and superior weapons.
Jackson did not have the satisfaction of capturing Red Eagle, but Creek power was broken. Jackson moved on to the Creek camp at the junction of the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers, known as the Holy Ground. Chiefs came and submitted to him, including Red Eagle. The great chief asked sustenance for his women and children, and Jackson, admiring the chief’s courage, extended help. Red Eagle recognized sadly that his people were defeated and had to come to terms with the Americans. Jackson gained immense respect for the chief, who later became useful in subduing other Creeks. Red Eagle eventually became a farmer with a large plantation and a friend of Jackson’s, even visiting him at the Hermitage from time to time.
Jackson still had unfinished business with the Creeks, however. He wanted to destroy their power forever. He was determined to prevent the British and Spanish from using them anymore, and on August 9, 1814, he forced the chiefs, even those who were friendly, to sign the suicidal Treaty of Fort Jackson, in which the Creeks ceded twenty-two million acres—half their territory—to the United States, destroying their nation forever. Many Red Sticks wanted to continue the fight, and they had already fled to Florida. They were the Creeks who met Captain Pigot in the spring of 1814, but by then they were too few in number to be of real help to Cochrane against Jackson.
ON JULY 23, 1814, Cochrane dispatched Major Edward Nicholls to Pensacola (in Spanish territory) with one hundred men to negotiate an understanding with the Red Stick Creeks and to facilitate slaves leaving their masters. Nicholls had arms for the Indians, but what Indians wanted most was evidence of British strength. Captain William Percy in the
Hermes
and the sloop
Carron
transported Nicholls and his munitions. Percy was directed to remain in the Gulf of Mexico and take command of the small squadron there. When Nicholls arrived on August 14, he established himself at Pensacola. The Spanish governor, fearing an attack from Jackson, had invited him.
Hermes
and the sloop
Carron
transported Nicholls and his munitions. Percy was directed to remain in the Gulf of Mexico and take command of the small squadron there. When Nicholls arrived on August 14, he established himself at Pensacola. The Spanish governor, fearing an attack from Jackson, had invited him.
Jackson was paying close attention to what the British and Spanish were doing. Expecting a British attack in the Gulf, he left Fort Jackson with his army and traveled four hundred miles south, down the Coosa and Alabama rivers to Mobile, arriving on August 22. He went immediately to work reconstituting Fort Bowyer, which sat on a spit of beach commanding the entrance to Mobile Bay. Jackson put Major William Lawrence of the Second Infantry in command at the fort with a hundred sixty regulars. In two weeks Lawrence had twenty guns mounted, mostly twelve- and nine-pounders, and two larger guns.
From his base in Pensacola, Major Nicholls planned an attack on Fort Bowyer with Captain Percy. On September 12 Percy approached Mobile Bay with four warships—the 20-gun sloop of war
Hermes
, his flagship; the 20-gun
Carron
, under Captain Robert Churchill Spencer; the 18-gun
Sophie
, under Captain Nicholas Lockyer; and the 18-gun brig-sloop
Childets
, under Captain John Umfreville. Major Nicholls was aboard the ships with sixty marines, twelve marine artillery pieces, and one hundred and thirty Indians.
Hermes
, his flagship; the 20-gun
Carron
, under Captain Robert Churchill Spencer; the 18-gun
Sophie
, under Captain Nicholas Lockyer; and the 18-gun brig-sloop
Childets
, under Captain John Umfreville. Major Nicholls was aboard the ships with sixty marines, twelve marine artillery pieces, and one hundred and thirty Indians.
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