Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (44 page)

“Kentuckians are famed for their bravery—you have the double character of Americans and Kentuckians to support!”

This is more than posturing. Kentucky is a world unto itself, as different from Maine and New York as Scotland from Spain. No frustrated general will need to prod the Kentuckians across the Canadian border; they will, if necessary, swim the Detroit River to get at the British. When, the previous May, the Governor called for volunteers to fill Kentucky’s quota of fifty-five hundred men, he found he had too many on his hands. Clay at the time wrote to the Secretary of State that he was almost alarmed at the enthusiasm displayed by his people.

Now, on the very day of Hull’s defeat, Clay fires up the troops, who confidently believe that the American forces are already halfway across Canada. And why not? Kentucky has been told only what it wants to hear. The newspaper stories from the frontier have been highly optimistic. Editors and orators have bolstered the state’s heroic image of itself. In these exhortations can be heard echoes of the Revolution. “Rise in the majesty of freedom,” the Governor, Charles Scott, has pleaded; “regard as enemies the enemies of your country. Remember the Spirit of ’76.”

The troops who are to march off through the wilderness of Michigan and into Canada expect the briefest of wars—a few weeks of adventure, a few moments of glory (swords glistening, bugles calling, drums beating, opponents fleeing), then home to the family farm with the plaudits of the nation and the cheers of their neighbours ringing in their ears.

Most have signed on for six months only, convinced that the war cannot last even that long. On this warm August day, standing in ragged, undisciplined lines, basking in Clay’s oratory, they do not contemplate November. They wear light shoes and open shirts of linen and cotton: no coats, no blankets. Not one in twenty is prepared for winter. The war department has lists of goods needed
for the campaign, but no one has paid much attention to that. The army is without a commissariat; private contractors, whose desire for profit often outweighs their patriotism, have been hired to handle all supplies. As for the Congress, it has not been able to screw up enough courage to adopt new taxes to finance the war; the unpopular resolution has been postponed, and Clay and his Hawks, eager to get on with the fighting, have gone along with the delay without a whimper.

Every able-bodied man in Kentucky, it seems, wants to fight. Six congressmen don uniforms. One, Samuel Hopkins, becomes a major-general; two are happy to serve as privates. Clay remains behind to fight the war in Congress, but his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Hart, goes as a captain, and so does John Allen, the second most eminent lawyer in the state. Thomas Smith, editor of the Kentucky
Gazette
, inflamed by the optimistic reports in his own newspaper, quits his desk and signs up to fight the British and the Indians. Dr. John M. Scott, a militia colonel and an old campaigner, insists on his right to command a regiment even though he is desperately ill; his friends expect (rightly) that he will not return alive. By the end of the year there will be more than eleven thousand Kentuckians in the army.

Most of these will be in the volunteer forces, for the people of Kentucky are confident that the war will be fought to a speedy conclusion by citizen soldiers enrolled for a single, decisive campaign. Regulars are sneered at as hired mercenaries who cannot compete for valour or initiative with a volunteer who has a direct interest in the outcome of the struggle.

The idea of individual initiative is deeply ingrained in the Kentucky character. They are a hardy, adventurous people, confident to the point of ebullience, optimistic to the point of naïveté—romantic, touchy, proud, often cruel. Not for them the effete pastimes of settled New England. Their main entertainments are shooting, fighting, drinking, duelling, horse racing. Every Kentucky boy is raised with a rifle. An old state law provides that every white male over sixteen must kill a certain number of crows and squirrels each year. Instead of raffles, Kentuckians hold shooting contests to pick
winners. The very word “Kentuck” can cause a shiver of fear in the Mississippi River towns, where their reputation is more terrifying than that of the Indians. As scrappers they are as fearless as they are ferocious, gouging, biting, kicking, scratching. Kentuckians like to boast that they are “half horse and half alligator tipped with snapping turtle.” A future congressman, Michael Taul, is elected captain of his militia company not because he has any military training—he has none—but because he has beaten his opponent, William Jones, in a particularly vicious encounter—a “hard fight,” in Taul’s words, “fist and skull, biting and gouging, etc.”

Kentucky lies on the old Indian frontier, and though its Indian wars are history, bloody memories remain. Youths are raised on tales of British and Indian raiders killing, scalping, and ravaging during the Revolution. Tippecanoe has revived a legacy of fear and hatred. The reports of British weapons found at Prophet’s Town confirm the people of the state in their belief that John Bull is again behind the Indian troubles.

Tippecanoe is seen as the real beginning of the war. “War we now have,” the Kentucky
Gazette
exulted when news of the battle reached Lexington. The shedding of Kentucky blood on the banks of the Wabash fuelled the latent desire for revenge, so that when war was declared Kentucky indulged in a delirium of celebration. Towns were illuminated, cannon and muskets discharged in the villages. And in the larger towns, Senator John Pope, the one Kentucky member of the Twelfth Congress to vote against the war, was hanged in effigy.

On the Fourth of July, the state wallowed in patriotic oratory. At a public celebration in Lexington no fewer than eighteen toasts were drunk, the celebrants raising their glasses to “Our volunteers—Ready to avenge the wrongs and vindicate the right of their country—the spirit of Montgomery will lead them to victory on the Plains of Abraham.” Little wonder that a Boston merchant travelling through Kentucky a little later described its people as “the most patriotic … I have ever seen or heard of.”

This yeasty nationalism springs out of Kentucky’s burgeoning economy. It has become the most populous state west of the
Alleghenies. In two decades its population has leaped from 73,000 to more than 406,000. Log cabins have given way to handsome brick houses. Frontier outposts have become cities. But all this prosperity depends on a sea-going trade—a trade now threatened by Great Britain’s maritime strictures. The opposite side of the coin of nationalism is a consuming hatred of Great Britain. Henry Clay is its voice.

What Clay wants, Clay is determined to get; and Henry Clay wants William Henry Harrison to command the army going north to subdue the Indians and to reinforce General Hull at Detroit. The Hero of Tippecanoe is by all odds the most popular military leader in the state. Every Kentuckian, it seems, wants to serve under him; but the Secretary of War has long since chosen James Winchester of Tennessee to take command. Now an active campaign, spearheaded by Clay and orchestrated with all the cunning of a political
coup d’état
, is mounted to force the government’s hand and replace Winchester with Harrison. In this enterprise, Clay has Harrison’s willing cooperation. The Hero of Tippecanoe himself tours the state, rousing martial feeling, fuelling the clamour for his appointment.

Early in August a caucus of influential Kentucky politicians, including Scott, the retiring governor, Isaac Shelby, the governor-elect, and several of the War Hawks, agrees to appoint Harrison a brevet (honorary) major-general in the Kentucky militia. He accepts command of two regiments of infantry and one of mounted rifles (under Clay’s young congressional colleague, Richard M. Johnson) which have already left to join General Winchester in Cincinnati. But Clay wants more. Harrison outranks Winchester, but Winchester is a regular army man. It is important that there be no ambiguity about who is in charge. Once more he puts pressure on James Monroe, the Secretary of State, rising to heights of hyperbole, which, even for Henry Clay, are more than a little florid:

“If you will carry your recollection back to the Age of the Crusades and of some of the most distinguished leaders of those expeditions, you will have a picture of the enthusiasm existing in this country for the expedition to Canada and for Harrison as the commander.”

Up to this point, James Monroe has fancied himself for the post of commander-in-chief of the Army of the Northwest. The cabinet, in fact, has been seriously considering his appointment. But now, with Clay and his cronies in full cry, the Secretary’s military ambitions are dashed. The pressure is too great. Harrison it will be.

AS THE CABINET VACILLATES
over the choice of a commander for the new northwest army, Harrison marches to Cincinnati at the head of his troops. He is convinced that he can persuade Winchester to allow him to take command of all the forces for the relief of Detroit. On August 26, he receives the dreadful news of Hull’s surrender. Two days later, he reaches Winchester’s camp at Cincinnati and immediately assumes command of all the Kentucky militia, leaving Winchester in charge of the regulars. Stiff little notes pass between the generals’ tents. Harrison insists that he, as a majorgeneral, outranks Winchester. Winchester objects, points out that Harrison is only a political appointee, but when Harrison persists, Winchester at last gives in: Harrison can assume command under his own responsibility. Winchester returns to Lexington to continue recruiting.

The new commander has some twenty-one hundred men at Cincinnati; an equal number are on their way to join him. They inspire mixed feelings. The Kentuckians, in his opinion “are perhaps the best materials for forming an army the world has produced. But no equal number of men was ever collected who knew so little of military discipline.” It is a shrewd assessment.

He has neither time nor personnel to instruct his raw recruits in the art of soldiering. He is, in fact, short of almost everything—of food, clothing, equipment, weapons, ammunition, flints, swords. His only ordnance piece is an ancient cast-iron four-pounder. Autumn is fast approaching with its chilling rain and sleet. He must hack new roads through forest and swamp, build blockhouses and magazines, all the time watched and harassed by the Indians on his flank.

And he must move immediately, for word has come that the British and the Indians are planning an attack on Fort Wayne, the forward outpost on the Maumee. Three hundred Indians are laying siege to the fort, a British column is moving south, houses have been burned, crops and livestock destroyed. The commander, James Rhea, has some eighty men with whom to withstand the siege but is himself nervous and frequently drunk. Harrison’s first task is to relieve the fort.

That same day he dispatches all his available troops on that mission. He joins them at Dayton on September I. Here are more cheers for Harrison and a salute of cannon, marred only by the tragic incompetence of the gunners. During the salute one man is seriously wounded, another has both hands blown off. And here Harrison receives a blow of a different kind: the government has officially confirmed his commission, but only as brigadier-general. Winchester now outranks him.

He does not give up. In another letter to Washington, he subtly advances his cause: “The backwoodsmen are a singular people.… From their affection and an attachment everything may be expected but I will venture to say that they never did nor never will perform anything brilliant under a stranger.”

The message, though self-serving, is undoubtedly true. Winchester is unpopular largely because he is a stranger. Harrison is a known hero. All along his route of march, volunteers have flocked to his banner. At Piqua, en route to Fort Wayne, he makes from the tailboard of a camp wagon one of those tough little stump speeches for which he is famous. He is planning a forced march on half-rations, and some of the Ohio militia are hesitating. To them Harrison declares that “if there is any man under my command who lacks the patriotism to rush to the rescue, he, by paying back the money received from the government, shall receive a discharge. I do not wish to command such.…” Only one man makes this choice. His comrades are given a permit to escort him part of the way home. They hoist him onto a rail and with a crowd following duck him several times in the river.

Harrison, at the head of three thousand men, reaches Fort Wayne on September 12. The fort is relieved without a shot being fired though not entirely bloodlessly, since during the march one man has been shot and killed in error by one of the guards. The bodies of two sentinels, killed by the Indians and buried within the palisade, are disinterred and brought out to be buried with full military honours. The troops, many of whom have never seen a dead man, stand by in awe. William Northcutt, a young dragoon in Captain William Garrard’s company of “Bourbon Blues” (made up of men from Bourbon County, Kentucky, all uniformed in blue broadcloth), cannot help shedding tears as the corpses are brought out through the gate, even though the men are complete strangers. But before his term of service is over, Northcutt becomes so hardened that he could, if necessary, sleep on a corpse, and it occurs to him as the war grows nastier that “the man that thinks about dying in a Battle is not fit to be there and will do no good for his country.…”