Page 31 - 2021-bfw-henretta-10e

CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787–1820 233

with Great Britain. They pointed to its trade with Indians in the Ohio River Val-
ley in violation of the Treaty of Paris and Jay’s Treaty. Bolstered by British guns
and supplies, the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh revived the Western Confederacy in
1809. His brother, the prophet Tenskwatawa, provided the confederacy with a pow-
erful nativist ideology. He urged Indian peoples to shun Americans, “the children of
the Evil Spirit . . . who have taken away your lands”; renounce alcohol; and return to
traditional ways. The Shawnee leaders found their greatest support among Kicka-
poo, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Ottawa, and Chippewa warriors: Indians of the west-
ern Great Lakes who had so far been largely shielded from the direct effects of U.S.
westward expansion. They flocked to Tenskwatawa’s holy village, Prophetstown, in
the Indiana Territory.
As Tecumseh mobilized the western Indian peoples for war, William Henry
Harrison, the governor of the Indiana Territory, decided on a preemptive strike. In
November 1811, when Tecumseh went south to seek support from the Chickasaws,
Choctaws, and Creeks, Harrison took advantage of his absence and attacked Proph-
etstown. The governor’s 1,000 troops and militiamen traded heavy casualties with
the confederacy’s warriors at the Battle of Tippecanoe and then destroyed the holy Battle of Tippecanoe
village. An attack on Shawnee Indians and their
allies at Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe
River in 1811 by American forces headed by
The War of 1812 William Henry Harrison, Indiana’s territorial
governor. The governor’s troops traded heavy
casualties with the confederacy’s warriors
With Britain assisting Indians in the western territories and seizing American ships and then destroyed the holy village.
in the Atlantic, Henry Clay of Kentucky, the new Speaker of the House of Representa-
tives, and John C. Calhoun, a rising young congressman from South Carolina, pushed
Madison toward war. Like other Republican “war hawks” from the West and South,
they wanted to seize territory in British Canada and Spanish Florida. With national
elections approaching, Madison issued an ultimatum to Britain. When Britain failed
to respond quickly, the president asked Congress for a declaration of war. In June
1812, a sharply divided Senate voted 19 to 13 for war, and the House of Representa-
tives concurred, 79 to 49.
The causes of the War of 1812 have been much debated. Officially, the United
States went to war because Britain had violated its commercial rights as a neutral
nation. But the Federalists in Congress who represented the New England and Middle SKILLS & PROCESSES
Atlantic merchants voted against the war; and in the election of 1812, those regions
cast their 89 electoral votes for the Federalist presidential candidate, De Witt Clinton ARGUMENTATION
of New York. Madison amassed most of his 128 electoral votes in the South and West, What do you think is the most
where voters and congressmen strongly supported the war. Many historians therefore persuasive explanation for the
argue that the conflict was actually “a western war with eastern labels” (see “Firsthand United States’s declaration of
war on Great Britain in 1812?
Accounts,” p. 234).
The War of 1812 was a near disaster for the United States. An invasion of British
Canada in 1812 quickly ended in a retreat to Detroit. Nonetheless, the United States
stayed on the offensive in the West. In 1813, American raiders burned the Canadian
capital of York (present-day Toronto), Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a
small British flotilla on Lake Erie, and General William Henry Harrison overcame a
British and Indian force at the Battle of the Thames, taking the life of Tecumseh, now
a British general.
In the East, political divisions prevented a wider war. New England Federalists
opposed the war and prohibited their states’ militias from attacking Canada. Boston
merchants and banks refused to lend money to the federal government, making the
war difficult to finance. In Congress, Daniel Webster, a dynamic young politician
from New Hampshire, led Federalists opposed to higher tariffs and national conscrip-
tion of state militiamen.
Gradually, the tide of battle turned in Britain’s favor. When the war began, Amer-
ican privateers had captured scores of British merchant vessels, but by 1813 British

Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

08_edwardsAPHS10e_28115_ch07_210_243_3pp.indd 233 15/09/20 8:56 PM