A Nation Rising (10 page)

W
AR AS A
coming-out party had never been on Jefferson's presidential agenda. As a matter of national policy and personal philosophy, he aimed to avoid “foreign entanglements.” After the successful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, Jefferson was reelected in 1804 in a landslide victory. The opposition Federalists of the defeated Adams and the late Alexander Hamilton were nearly extinct as a viable national opposition party.

For Jefferson, the only unpleasantness hanging in the air during these heady days came from the charge that, as the master of Monticello, he was involved in a sexual relationship with a slave, Sally Hemings. The localized whispers of the relationship became public in 1802, when James Callender, writing in the
Richmond Recorder
, first accused Jefferson of having had several children with Sally Hemings, who was also the half sister of Jefferson's late wife, Martha. Callender had revealed Alexander Hamilton's liaison with Maria Reynolds in 1797, and was thus responsible for Hamilton's downfall. A practitioner of the down and dirty mudslinging politics of his time, Callender had worked for Jefferson's campaign and produced acidic anti-Federalist propaganda during the elections of 1796
and 1800. But when he had requested a patronage job in the new Jefferson administration, the scandalmonger was rebuffed. For that and other reasons, Callender began his very public campaign in the press about Sally Hemings.
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The opposition Federalist newspapers tried to make campaign hay of this story, but the budding scandal made no difference to the outcome in 1804.

Still, Jefferson might have been contemplating Callender in his second inaugural:

With his overwhelming victory, Jefferson thought that the two-party system was finished and that only peace and prosperity lay ahead: “The new century opened itself by committing us on a boisterous ocean. But this is now subsidiary, peace is smoothing our paths at home and abroad, and if we are not wanting in the practice of justice and moderation, our tranquility and property may be preserved.”
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But it was not to be. In the early nineteenth century, America
was still a small, untested, ill-defended nation—practically a defenseless and powerless pawn in the affairs of Europe's great powers. America's weaknesses and vulnerabilities were on display as Napoléon—who had sold off Louisiana at fire sale prices to raise cash for his wars—turned much of the world into a battleground between 1803 and 1815. Jefferson desperately wanted to keep the United States, with its paltry army, skeleton navy, and starving treasury, out of these European wars by remaining neutral. Initially, many Americans had actually profited from the Napoleonic wars, as the French and English eagerly sought American goods and ships.

But declarations of neutrality by the United States did not prevent its merchant ships from being stopped on the high seas, often by British vessels, whose officers could take any British subject and “impress” him into the service of the Royal Navy. On board ships at sea, such polite legalisms as “naturalized citizen” were meaningless concepts. As American sailors were being seized on the high seas along with British subjects, there was a rising anger at the British.

In 1807, Jefferson got Congress to agree to the first of three Embargo Acts, which prohibited all exports into America. Jefferson hoped to use economic retaliation against the British impressment policy and to show the two warring European empires how important their trade with America was. Jefferson's plan backfired badly; the Embargo Acts proved to be among the most unpopular, unsuccessful, and costly laws in U.S. history. Instead of teaching the British and French a lesson, the embargo merely hurt American merchants and devastated the American shipping industry. In particular, New England, where the old Federalist Party retained its last vestiges of power, was hard hit. Smuggling soon became
rampant throughout America. Just as Prohibition in the twentieth century would lead to an explosion of organized crime, the Embargo Act “incentivized” lawbreaking.

By the end of his second term, Jefferson recognized the disaster, and sought to fix it by replacing the Embargo Acts with the Non-Intercourse Act, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except those destined for British or French ports. It, too, failed miserably to halt the continued kidnapping of Americans at sea, and the economic hardship for American merchants and shippers continued to worsen.

When James Madison succeeded Jefferson in March 1809, war with England and perhaps with France seemed likely, if not inevitable. The coming war was set against the other constant threat—Indian uprisings. Spain's involvement in stirring up the Creeks was precisely the reason why so many southerners—Andrew Jackson vocally among them—hated the nation that still controlled Florida and why they had been so willing to embrace Aaron Burr's cause a few years earlier.

Thomas Jefferson may have temporarily eased matters when he bought Louisiana from France in 1803. But there were vast portions of mostly unexplored North American lands still up for grabs. The competition among the United States, England, Spain, and France—as well as the Native nations who still occupied large pieces of that territory—was fierce, and sufficient cause for war. In the U.S. Congress, a vocal group advocating war with England over impressments and the British support of Indians became known as “War Hawks.” This group was led most conspicuously by Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

Following the official declaration of war in June 1812, much of the fighting had taken place around the Great Lakes and upstate New York, as the United States focused its military attention on British armies moving out of Canada. The only action near Fort Mims was the relatively uneventful and bloodless capture of the fort at Mobile, then a Spanish outpost on the Gulf of Mexico.

The first city built in the Louisiana Territory, Mobile had been founded by the French in 1710 and was the capital of the Louisiana Territory before being surpassed in significance by New Orleans. Mobile had changed hands several times over the years but was under Spanish control in April 1813. Assaulted by a modest force of only sixty men, the Spanish fort there surrendered without a shot being fired. The conquering American forces were led by none other than General James Wilkinson—still in the employ of Spain as “Agent 13.”

The unlikely survivor of a disastrous performace at Aaron Burr's trial, Wilkinson had already dodged one court-martial and a series of congressional investigations into his behavior and his highly questionable dealings in Louisiana. But with more lives than the proverbial cat—and an unmatched ability to cover his traitorous tracks as a paid agent of Spain—Wilkinson was commissioned a major general as the war with England opened. Despite his spotty record, he was one of the few Americans with actual military experience. Later in the war, he was brought before a military court yet again after his defeat at the hands of a much smaller British force near the Canadian border. Wilkinson was never given another command, and eventually he returned to his plantation near New Orleans. He died in Mexico City awaiting a land grant in Texas in 1825. His one
significant contribution to the American cause was keeping Mobile and its harbor out of British hands.

But after the Fort Mims Massacre, that American victory was small comfort to the people of the Alabama Territory. Fear bordering on panic quickly spread throughout the Southeast. From Louisiana through Georgia and Tennessee, emotions ran high. In Nashville, Tennessee, the state legislature called for 3,500 volunteers to respond to the massacre. Among the frontiersmen eager for vengeance was David Crockett, who wrote to his wife, “My countrymen had been murdered, and I knew that the next thing would be, that the Indians would be scalping the women and children all about there if we didn't put a stop to it…. The truth is my dander was up, and nothing but war could put a stop to it.”
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At the Hermitage, his plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, Andrew Jackson, now wealthy and influential, clearly shared Crockett's views. In a letter about an alleged Creek attack on white settlers, sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1808, Jackson wrote, “These horrid scenes bring fresh to our recollection the influence, during our revolutionary war, that raised the scalping knife and tomahawk, against our defenseless women and children. The blood of our innocent citizens must not flow with impunity—justice forbids it and the present relative situation of our country with foreign nations require[s] speedy redress, and a final check on these hostile murdering Creeks.”
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But when word of the Fort Mims Massacre reached Nashville in 1813, Andrew Jackson seemed to be in no shape to lead the Tennessean troops who would respond to the desperate pleas for help. At the moment, he was recovering from a serious wound—the result
of a gunshot he had received in a street fight with two brothers, Thomas and Jesse Benton. Thomas Hart Benton was actually Jackson's protégé and aide. But in frontier America, family ties were thicker than political loyalty and Thomas Benton had sided with his brother, Jesse.

The fight had begun over an almost trivial argument that led to a duel between Jesse Benton and William Carroll, another friend and subordinate of Jackson's. The duel left both men alive—but Jesse Benton had a pistol ball in his buttock. The wound was painful and embarrassing. On September 4, 1813, just a few days after the Fort Mims Massacre, Jackson encountered Thomas Hart Benton—who would go on to become a powerful Senator from Missouri—and his brother, Jesse Benton. Standing by the City Hotel in Nashville, the men soon had words over the duel, and Andrew Jackson drew his gun. As some of Jackson's friends and family members passed by the scene, the situation escalated into a pitched gunfight and knife fight. Sometime during the course of the melee, Jesse Benton shot Jackson.

No stranger to duels and violence, Andrew Jackson had already killed one man, Charles Henry Dickinson, in a duel in 1806. Dickinson and Jackson had fought, it is generally agreed, over a horserace, and their argument led to words about Jackson's controversial marriage. In 1791, Jackson had married Rachel Donelson Robards, who believed that she had been divorced from her first husband. But she and Jackson had to be remarried in 1793 after it became known that her divorce papers were never finalized. The insults and scandal about their supposed “adultery” would dog Jackson throughout his political career, and the assaults on Rachel's honor infuriated him.

Tennessee had banned duels, so the two men went to neighbor
ing Kentucky to settle their score. Dickinson fired first and hit Jackson just beside his heart. Jackson's pistol then misfired, so he calmly reloaded and shot Dickinson in the abdomen. Dickinson died hours later, in agony. Dickinson's bullet remained in Jackson's chest for years, causing abscesses that plagued him for the rest of his life.

After the gunfight with the Benton brothers, Jackson lost a great deal of blood. The doctors who treated him recommended amputating his arm below the shoulder wound, but Jackson refused. Weeks later, he was still recuperating and very weak when panicked settlers began spreading the horrific news of the Fort Mims Massacre. Gaunt and in excruciating pain, the forty-six-year-old Jackson was nonetheless ready for action. Despite his limited experience of field command, Jackson had inspired a devoted following among the Tennessee militiamen, who called him Old Hickory for his toughness. Marching toward Creek lands with a force of 1,000 infantrymen and some allied Creek and Choctaw Indians, Jackson pursued a ruthless “scorched earth” policy, attempting to destroy the Creek food stores and uprooting their villages. This was not war against an enemy army but an assault on the civilian population that supported the enemy.

Jackson's campaign against the Red Stick Creeks was troubled from the outset. Occasionally doubling over in pain as he rode, Jackson was also bedeviled constantly by the failure of the Tennessee state government to support his troops. Supplies, especially food, for the men and horses were a persistent problem. Jackson's soldiers were reduced to meager rations, and morale plummeted. Eager for vengeance on the Creeks and spoiling for a quick fight, many of Jackson's militiamen were untrained and proved poor soldiers. Giddy
and overconfident when they set out, they eventually turned mutinous as the campaign stretched into weeks of scanty rations, difficult marches through tough wilderness terrain, and long stretches of inaction.

The situation began to change in November 1813, when Jackson was finally able to bring his troops into combat against a Red Stick force at the village of Talladega. Jackson had planned well, and the Red Sticks were lured into an open field, where Jackson's troops made short work of them. Davy Crockett later wrote, “We shot them like dogs.”

In the aftermath of that first battle, a Creek infant was discovered near the body of his dead mother. Some of the troops discussed returning the child to other Creek women. Others suggested killing him. Jackson rode up and intervened. He had the infant taken to his tent, and later the boy was sent back to Nashville, where he was raised in the Jackson home as Jackson's adoptive son. Perhaps it was the recollection of having been a war orphan himself that softened Jackson on this battlefield. But the picture of the hardened commander, on a battlefield, stepping in to save a war orphan adds to the complex picture of his character. On the other hand, the boy was far from the last orphan created by Jackson's military and political decisions.