After Tippecanoe: Some Aspects of the War of 1812

Preface

ix PREFACE Philip P. Mason As Hazen E. Kunz, then president of the Algonquin Club, pointed out in the foreword to After Tippecanoe: Some Aspects of the War of 1812, the lectures published here were presented in Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, during the winter of 1961–62. In addition to the six main speakers, all of them distinguished authorities in their respective research and writings on the War of 1812, the Algonquin Club also invited Dr. Fred Coyne Hamil, professor of history at Wayne State University, to prepare an overview of the war, especially as it affected Michigan and Ontario. Hamil was educated at Queens College in Kingston, Ontario, at Columbia University, and at the University of Michigan, which in 1933 awarded him a PhD in history. He was author of The Valley of the Lower Thames, 1640 to 1850, and Lake Erie Baron: The Story of Colonel Thomas Talbot. InHamil’sintroduction,hepointsoutthattheyear1811markedthe culmination of the Indians’ efforts to resist the American penetration of their lands in the Old Northwest. By that point the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, known as “The Prophet,” had been engaged for nearly two years in an attempt to form a confederacy of tribes to preserve the old ways of life and stem the tide of white settlement. However, in November 1811, following Tecumseh’s refusal to recognize a new cession of lands along the Wabash River, the Americans marched to the edge of his village, Prophetstown, at the mouth of Tippecanoe Creek. This triggered the Indians to launch an attack that was doomed to failure and an end to all hope of an Indian federation. The Battle of Tippecanoe also gave fuel to the war party in Congress , which blamed the British for providing arms to the Indians and clamored ever more loudly for war to end England’s power in North America. Thus, it may be claimed that Tippecanoe was the overture to the War of 1812. x The war was a strange one, and, to paraphrase a statement made by Woodrow Wilson while he was a young professor at Princeton University , the results of the war were “singularly uncertain.” However, the fact remains that in the two centuries since then Canada and America have shared a continent in peaceful and friendly cooperation. The first presenter at the Quaife-Bayliss Lectures, Dr. William T. Utter, professor of history at Denison University, received his education at Northwest Missouri Teachers College and the University of Chicago, which awarded him a PhD in history in 1929. He taught history at Ohio State University from 1924 to 1929 before joining the faculty at Denison. He was the author of Granville: The Story of an Ohio Village and The Frontier State, 1803–1825. Dr. Utter died shortly after his lecture, but fortunately a tape recording of his talk was preserved, and from it a transcript was prepared for this book. As editor of the collection, I made minor changes to the transcript and added citations to quotations. Although Professor Utter intended to delete his extemporaneous remarks at the beginning and ending of his lecture, I believe they bear repeating to illustrate his personal interest in the War of 1812. He opened his lecture as follows: When I attended Charter Oak, a rural grammar school near Los Angeles, we learned to sing all the verses of The Star Spangled Banner, including the verse which started with the question: And where is that band who so vauntingly swore / That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion / A home and a country should leave us no more? The poet’s answer to his own question was this: Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. Even to a ten-year-old this answer seemed a bit sanguinary, and I had trouble picturing just what was going on. We learned that the central idea in the national anthem was in the lines: Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. And this be our motto—In God is our Trust. Miss Thompson taught us about the War of 1812 in the spirit of those words. I could take a lot of time discussing the modifications which have come to my understanding of that war in the years since. The epilogue to Dr. Utter’s speech helps explain the warm rapport he established with his audience. I am sure that I have never before deliberately added an epilogue to a speech, although...