Tecumseh and Brock (7 page)

For nearly three decades, Tecumseh served his apprenticeship. He learned the skills of the warrior, acquired the responsibilities of the chief, and knew the strategic lay of the land for the Shawnee and other native peoples. In the next phase of his life, the mantle of leadership in a great cause was placed on his shoulders. During the years following the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the tension between the Ohio and Indiana Territory settlers and the forces of native resistance moved inexorably toward a flashpoint. More than any other individual, Tecumseh would lead that resistance, not only in the
region of the Great Lakes but also on a continental scale. Inevitably
,
the resistance movement was deeply influenced by the expansion of the
United States, its rapid growth in population, and its transition from a series of states located along the Atlantic coast to a continental power that was pushing into the interior.

As for the Americans, their drive inland not only sharpened the conflict with native peoples, it inflamed tensions with the old imperial power. A new generation of American leaders was convinced that as long as the British remained a power on the continent, the United States could not achieve its territorial ambitions. As a new round of wars roiled Europe, influential Americans toyed with the
idea of driving the British out of North America, and particularly the
Canadas, whose territory thrust a dagger into the heart of the continent.

Chapter 3

A New Power

T
HOUGH GEORGE WASHINGTON,
the first president of the fledgling United States, famously warned his fellow citizens against “foreign entanglements,” the U.S. was hopelessly entangled with European power struggles. By the dawn of the new century, the French Revolution had been succeeded by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who set himself up as first consul of France following a coup d'état in 1799.

Napoleon's ascent was based on the success of French armies that swept to victories against neighbouring powers, thus securing dominance for France in Europe. During his rise to the position of French emperor in December 1804, Napoleon consolidated his continental system, in which he and his relatives and military commanders took ruling positions in a host of satellite states. The sole major European power to hold out against domination by the French Empire was Great Britain.

Struggles for power on both sides of the Atlantic swirled around the central conflict between Britain and France. Although a rising power in its own right, the United States was continually buffeted by the effects of the Napoleonic Wars. The new republic was the world's largest “neutral” trader, and American seaports thrived or withered depending on how their access to the high seas was affected by the combat between Britain and France. Despite the United States' recurring tendency throughout its history to withdraw from the world, the new country was of and in the world whether its leaders liked it or not.

At home, with its population increasing and its commerce burgeoning, the United States was bursting at the seams on the Atlantic seaboard and in the western interior. Just over five million Americans resided in the nation's sixteen states (Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee having been added to the original thirteen). About sixty thousand American settlers lived in the country's frontier territories,
the Ohio Territory and the Indiana Territory. In future decades, the
states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would be established in this vital region, and the states of Alabama and Mississippi would be created in the territories south of Tennessee.

In the south, Spain exercised erratic control on the Gulf Coast, while to the north, the United States butted against the British North American colonies, the largest of which were the great inland colonies of Lower and Upper Canada.

American settlers were on the move westward to acquire land from the native peoples, mainly in the Ohio and Indiana Territories and in the territories south of Tennessee. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the population of the United States rose at a prodigious rate, soaring to over seven million, an addition of two million people that was driven by immigration and natural increase.

Politically, the new country avoided the lapse into one-party rule that so many had predicted for it. In 1801, the peaceful transition from the Federalist administration of John Adams to Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican presidency tested the capacity of the United States to allow rival political parties to function. In 1808, James Madison, a member of Jefferson's party and a key figure in drafting the U.S. Constitution, won the presidential election and succeeded Jefferson as chief executive. Constitutional government was succeeding, but it was still in its early stages and required prosperity and territorial expansion to sustain it.

In 1803, a one-year period of peace ended in Europe, and Britain and Napoleonic France plunged into war. The European conflict bestowed a glittering opportunity for the United States government to extend its borders. In 1800, Spain transferred the vast Louisiana Territory, comprising all or part of fifteen current U.S. states and covering 2.1 million square kilometres, to France under the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. Spain had held the territory since 1762. (The actual transfer of authority was not completed until the end of November 1803.) In 1801, Napoleon dispatched a military unit to secure control of New Orleans, a move that shocked Americans and their political leaders. Jefferson's Federalist opponents accused the president of failing to defend American interests and called for war against France. Jefferson one-upped them not only by threatening war against France but also by touting the possibility of an alliance with Britain.

Jefferson did more than posture. He sent Robert R. Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, to Paris to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans. When the possibility of acquiring the entire Louisiana Territory was broached, Jefferson also sent James Monroe, the previous U.S. minister to France (and future secretary of state and U.S. president) to meet with French authorities. Having concluded that the Royal Navy would almost certainly seize New Orleans and that the Louisiana Territory would be lost to France in any event, the French emperor had already reconciled himself to the purchase. Napoleon had had enough of the western hemisphere by then: France had squandered an army of thirty-five thousand men during the Haitian revolution led by Toussaint Louverture.
1

On April 30, 1803, Livingston and Monroe signed the Louisiana Purchase Agreement. Although Jefferson faced some domestic oppo
sition for the purchase, he announced the deal to the American people
on July 4, and on October 20, the U.S. Senate ratified the agreement. On December 20, the United States took possession of New Orleans; on March 10, 1804, the U.S. formally acquired ownership of the Louisiana Territory at a ceremony in St. Louis and organized its possession of the territory effective October 1.

For the paltry sum of approximately fifteen million dollars, the deal transformed the United States into a continental nation that now controlled the lands on both shores of the Mississippi and at New Orleans, the mouth of this essential corridor of commerce. By this time, the U.S. was already a nation pointed westward, with settlers flooding into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee — a flow of settlement that confronted the native peoples of the region with a threat to their very survival.

Jefferson's brilliant coup in acquiring the Louisiana Territory gave the leaders of the new nation the assurance that the United States was destined to become a first-rank power. The purchase was bound to exacerbate hostilities with the native peoples in the interior. And this was happening at a time when the U.S. was being drawn into tense relations with both Britain and France as a result of the interference by the two powers with American commerce on the seas.

Throughout the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars from 1793 to 1815, strategists in Britain and France regarded economic warfare as an indispensable weapon. Both countries issued instructions to their navies to disrupt the commerce of the enemy, with dire consequences for American merchants. The U.S. government insisted that the goods on board “neutral” ships must be free from interference, a doctrine that the French and British stoutly rejected.

In July 1805, the British Admiralty Court issued a ruling that heightened tensions with the United States. The case involved the
Essex
, an American ship that loaded a cargo in Barcelona that was ultimately intended for Havana (in Spanish-ruled Cuba). Since Barcelona was within Napoleon's continental sphere, the vessel was liable to be seized by the Royal Navy. The American practice was to
undertake what were called “broken” voyages to avoid British seizure,
by landing en route at an American port, in this case Salem, Massachusetts. There the cargo was offloaded, and the ship was repaired and reloaded to set sail for Havana. It was then that the British took possession of the vessel. The British court ruled that since Havana had been the intended destination all along, the seizure was legitimate.

The only way around such a seizure would have been for the shipper to pay an import duty when landing in the U.S., before the cargo was shipped elsewhere. The
Essex
decision gave the Royal Navy licence to take over U.S. vessels involved in the re-export trade.
2

Britain reinforced this tough stance by blockading major portions of the European coast. To this provocation, Napoleon responded with the Berlin Decree, which banned all trade with Britain. In turn, Britain shot back with the Orders in Council, which stipulated that neutral ships en route for Europe, most of which were American, must first call at a British port to be inspected and licensed and to pay customs duties. Britain's foreign minister, George Canning, convinced the Tory government in London that a prohibition on the neutral carrying trade between the West Indies and Europe would be the surest way to retaliate against Napoleon. This edict was particularly resented by the United States because it hindered American commerce with Britain's competitors.
3

In December 1807, Napoleon answered with the Milan Decree, which permitted France to seize ships that followed the rules set down by the British Orders in Council. This pair of duelling decrees, if fully implemented, would ban virtually all American trade with Europe.
4

In 1807, even before learning of the Milan Decree, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson prompted Congress to pass the Embargo Act,
5
which made it illegal for American vessels to sail to any foreign port. The effect of the act was to call a halt to American exports. While foreign vessels remained free to carry imports to the United States, they too were barred from carrying American exports to foreign destinations on their return trips. Few foreign shippers were much interested in one-way trade. Through the Embargo Act, the U.S. was cutting off its nose to spite its face. The primary victims of the act were American ports, shippers, and commercial interests.

Jefferson hoped to teach both the British and the French the lesson that if they persisted in their ways, they would have to live without American goods. As a consequence, the value of American exports plunged from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, while imports to the United States contracted from $138 million to $57 million. Not surprisingly, Jefferson's attempt to isolate the U.S. from Europe generated a sharp rise in smuggling, not least between British North America and the U.S. With their strong trading interests, New Englanders particularly loathed the Embargo Act. Their Federalist opposition to Jefferson's Republicans expressed the fury of the region.

Early in 1809, during its last days, the Jefferson administration pushed the Non-Intercourse Act through Congress to replace the reviled Embargo Act.
6
The new act banned trade only with Britain and France. Before the end of 1809, further legislation allowed American ships to trade anywhere but kept the ports of the United States closed to British and French ships.

British and French interference with American trade, combined with Jefferson's ineffective response, left Americans in a surly mood. But American rage was further provoked by an action undertaken by the British alone.

Throughout the presidency of Thomas Jefferson and in the early years of the Madison administration, American resentment mounted against the British for their actions on the seas and in the North American interior. Power brokers in federal politics were well aware that the United States was a sanctuary for British sailors looking for a better life than the one they had in the Royal Navy.

In 1805, an estimated eleven thousand sailors on American merchant ships were Royal Navy veterans or deserters. The United States allowed British deserters to become naturalized American citizens, but Britain did not respect the right of the U.S. to naturalize anyone born in the United Kingdom. The British claimed the right to halt American ships on the seas and search for sailors who had deserted from the Royal Navy. On occasion, the Royal Navy executed men they seized from American ships; others were flogged, and most were “impressed” (forced back into service). This form of impressment infuriated Americans, who saw it as an assault on the sovereignty of the United States.

In June 1807, for example, a British naval squadron lay in wait on the waters of Chesapeake Bay, hoping to intercept two French ships in the vicinity. The presence of British warships in Chesapeake Bay, near the crucial ports of Baltimore and Annapolis and close to the republic's federal capital in Washington, D.C., infuriated the United States, but there was little they could do about it. In addition, the close proximity of the American coast proved too great a temptation to a number of sailors on the British ships. They deserted.

An incident on Chesapeake Bay brought Britain and the United States to the brink of war. The fifty-gun HMS
Leopard
,
7
commanded by the Royal Navy's Captain Salusbury Humphreys, pursued and intercepted the USS
Chesapeake
, an American frigate, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. U.S. Commodore James Barron refused the British demand to turn over British deserters to the Royal Navy. Operating under orders from Vice Admiral George Berkeley, the commander of the Royal Navy's North American station, Humphreys opened fire on the
Chesapeake
, killing three Americans, wounding eighteen others, and forcing the U.S. vessel to strike its colours. The British seized four members of the
Chesapeake
's crew and carried them off. One of them, Jenkin Ratford, a well-known deserter, was later hanged from the yardarm of the HMS
Halifax
.

Two of the Americans seized had volunteered for service in the Royal Navy in 1806. They were both sentenced to receive five hundred lashes, but their sentences were later commuted. When the
Chesapeake
sailed back to Hampton Roads, the report of the incident provoked American fury and demands for retaliation. Realizing that its forces had gone too far, the British government decided to disavow Berkeley and issued an apology to the United States. By the autumn of 1807, the war fever had abated.
8
Although the
Chesapeake
incident did not lead to war, the Americans and the British remained deeply and bitterly divided over impressment.
¶
9
,
10