William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812

Essay on Sources

Essay on Sources Any study of William Henry Harrison must begin with the two biographic studies of the early twentieth century: Dorothy Burne Goebel, William Henry Harrison: A Political Biography, Indiana Historical Collections, vol. 14 (Indianapolis: Indiana Library and Historical Department, 1926), and Freeman Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939). Neither of these explores Harrison ’s military career in detail. Unfortunately, Indiana University’s Robert G. Gunderson never completed his biography of which we have preliminary glimpses in his “A Search for Old Tip Himself,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 86 (autumn 1968): 330–51, and “William Henry Harrison: Apprentice in Arms,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 65 (winter 1993): 3–29. A brief inquiry of importance is Reginald Horsman, “William Henry Harrison : Virginia Gentleman in the Old Northwest,” Indiana Magazine of History 96 (June 2000): 125–49. Hendrik Booraem V continues his psychological studies of presidents with “William Henry Harrison Comes to Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage 45 (fall 1987), 3–22, and A Child of the Revolution: William Henry Harrison and His World, 1773–1798 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2012); I was privileged to read the latter before its publication. Useful analyses of Harrison’s relations with Native Americans are found in Robert M. Owens, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), and Adam Jortner, The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Allan R. Millett explores the classical Roman influence on Harrison’s outlook in three articles: “Caesar and the Conquest of the Northwest Territory: The Wayne Campaign, 1792–95,” Timeline 14 (May–June 1997): 2–21; “Caesar and the Conquest of the Northwest Territory: The Harrison Campaign, 1811,” Timeline 14 (July–Aug. 1997): 2–19; and “Caesar and the Conquest of the Northwest Territory: The Second Harrison Campaign, 1813,” Timeline 14 (Sept.–Oct. 1997): 2–21. William Gribbin examines the importance of Charles Rollin’s writings to the eighteenth-century understanding of the classical world in “Rollin’s Histories and American Republicanism,” William and Mary Quarterly 29 (1972): 611–22. The breadth of classical references in Harrison’s correspondence demonstrates his preference for Rollin over Caesar. David Curtis Skaggs published several articles concerning Harrison’s career: “Joint Operations during the Detroit–Lake Erie Campaign, 1813,” in William Cogar, ed., New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Eighth Naval History Symposium of 290 Essay on Sources the U.S. Naval Academy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 121–38; “River Raisin Redeemed: William Henry Harrison, Oliver Hazard Perry and the Midwestern Campaign , 1813,” Northwest Ohio History 77 (spring 2010): 67–84; “The Making of a Major General: William Henry Harrison and the Politics of Command, 1812–13,” Ohio Valley History 10 (spring 1910): 32–52; and “Decisions at Sandwich: William Henry Harrison and the Pursuit to the Thames,” Michigan Historical Review 38 (spring 2012): 107–28. Harrison’s Indiana career is explored in Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1996): 226–60, John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), and Darrel. E. Bingham, ed., The Indiana Territory, 1800–2000: A Bicentennial Perspective (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2001). For early Ohio politics, see R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1839 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986), and Donald J. Ratcliffe, Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793–1821 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). On the War of 1812, important surveys are J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), Stagg, The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). For the international context of the war, see Jeremy Black, The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), and Troy Bickham, The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Critical...