THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN
FOR years before and after the year 1800 all Europe was filled with war
and bloodshed. Most of my readers must have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte,
one of the greatest generals that ever lived, and one of the most cruel
men. He was at the head of the armies of France, and was fighting all
Europe. England was his greatest enemy and fought him on land and sea,
and this fighting on the sea made trouble between England and the United
States.
The English wanted men for their war-vessels and said they had a right
to take Englishmen wherever they could find them. So they began to take
sailors off of American merchant vessels. They said that these men were
deserters from the British navy, but the fact is that many of them were
true-born Americans; and our people grew very angry as this went on year
after year.
What made it worse was the insolence of some of the British captains.
One of them went so far as to stop an American war-vessel, the
"Chesapeake," and demand part of her crew, who, he said, were British
deserters. When Captain Barron refused to give them up the British
captain fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers of the
American crew. The "Chesapeake" had no guns fit to fire back, so her
flag had to be pulled down and the men to be given up.
You may well imagine that this insult made the American blood boil.
There would have been war at that time if the British government had not
owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for the injury. A few years
afterwards the insult was paid for in a different way. Another proud
British captain thought he could treat Americans in the same saucy
fashion. The frigate "President" met the British sloop-of-war "Little
Belt," and hailed it, the captain calling through his trumpet, "What
ship is that?"
Instead of giving a civil reply the British captain answered with a
cannon shot. Then the "President" fired a broadside which killed eleven
and wounded twenty-one men on the "Little Belt." When the captain of the
"President" hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply in a more
civil fashion. He had been taught a useful lesson.
The United States was then a poor country, and not in condition to go to
war. But no nation could submit to such insults as these. It is said
that more than six thousand sailors had been taken from our merchant
ships, and among these were two nephews of General Washington, who were
seized while they were on their way home from Europe, and put to work as
common seamen on a British war-vessel.
At length, on June 18, 1812, the United States declared war against
Great Britain. It had put up with insults and injuries as long as it
could bear them. It did not take long to teach the haughty British
captains that American sea-dogs were not to be played with. The little
American fleet put to sea, and before the end of the year it had
captured no less than five of the best ships in the British navy and had
not lost a single ship in return. I fancy the people of England quit
singing their proud song, "Britannia rules the waves."
Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I do not think it worth
while, for there is much of it you would not care to hear. The war went
on for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there were not many
important battles, and the United States did not win much honor on land.
But on the sea the sailors of our country covered themselves with glory.
Most of the land battles were along the borders of Canada. Here there
was a good deal of fighting, but most of it was of no great account. At
first the British had the best of it, and then the Americans began to
win battles, but it all came to an end about where it began. Neither
side gained anything for the men that were killed.
There was one naval battle in the north that I must tell you about. On
Lake Erie the British had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time
they had everything their own way. Then Captain Oliver Perry, a young
officer, was sent to the lake to build a fleet and fight the British.
When he got there the stuff for his ships was growing in the woods. He
had to cut down trees and build ships from their timber. But he worked
like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels built and afloat. He
found some also on the lake, and in a wonderfully short time he had a
fleet on the lake and was sailing out to find the British war-ships.
The fleets met on September 10, 1813. The Americans had the most
vessels, but the British had the most guns, and soon they were fighting
like sea-dragons. The "Lawrence," Captain Perry's flagship, fought two
of the largest British ships till it was nearly ready to sink, and so
many of its crew were killed and wounded that it had only eight men left
fit for fighting. What do you think the brave Perry did then? He leaped
into a small boat and was rowed away, with the American flag floating in
his hand, though the British ships were firing hotly at him.
When he reached the "Niagara," another of his ships, he sprang on board
and sailed right through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into
their shattered vessels. The British soon had enough of this, and in
fifteen minutes more they gave up the fight.
"We have met the enemy and they are ours," wrote Perry to General
Harrison. He was a born hero of the waves.
Now I think we had better take a look out to sea and learn what was
going on there. We did not have many ships, but they were like so many
bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world looked on with surprise to
see our little fleet of war-vessels making such havoc in the proud
British navy which no country in Europe had ever been able to defeat.
In less than two months after war was declared the frigate "Essex" met
the British sloop-of-war "Alert" and took it in eight minutes, without
losing a man. The "Essex" was too strong for the "Alert," but six days
afterwards the "Constitution" met the "Guerriere," and these vessels
were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour the "Guerriere" was
nearly shot to pieces and ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her
men. The others were hastily taken off, and then down went the proud
British frigate to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
All the island of Great Britain went into mourning when it learned how
the Americans had served this good ship. There was soon more to mourn
for. The American sloop "Wasp" captured the British sloop "Frolic." The
frigate "United States" captured the frigate "Macedonian." The
"Constitution" met the "Java" and served it the same way as it had done
the "Guerriere." In two hours the "Java" was a wreck. Soon after the
sloop "Hornet" met the ship "Peacock" and handled her so severely that
she sank while her crew was being taken off.
Later on the British won two battles at sea, and that was all they
gained during the whole war. On the water the honors stayed with the
Americans.
There was one affair in which the British won great dishonor instead of
honor. In July, 1814, a strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay,
with an army of nearly five thousand men on board. These were landed and
marched on the city of Washington, the capital of the young republic.
Their coming was a surprise. There were few trained soldiers to meet
this army, and those were not the days of railroads, so that no troops
could be brought in haste from afar. Those that gathered were nearly all
raw militia, and they did not stand long before the British veterans who
had fought in the wars with Napoleon. They were soon put to flight, and
the British army marched into our capital city.
There they behaved in a way that their country has ever since been
ashamed of. They set fire to the public buildings and burned most of
them to the ground. The Capitol, the President's house, and other
buildings were burned, and the records of the government were destroyed.
Then, having acted like so many savages, the British hurried away before
the Americans could get at them for revenge. That was a victory, I
fancy, which the British do not like to read about.
They had been so successful at Washington that they thought they would
try the same thing with another city. This time they picked out New
Orleans, which was so far away from the thickly settled part of the
country that they fancied it would be an easy matter to capture it. In
this they made a great mistake, as you will soon see.
There was a general in the South who was not used to being defeated.
This was Andrew Jackson, one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won
fame in a war with the Indians of Georgia. He was a man who was always
ready to fight and this the English found when they marched on New
Orleans. There were twelve thousand of them, and Jackson, who had been
sent there to meet them, only had half that many. And the British were
trained soldiers, while the Americans were militia. But most of them
were men of the backwoods, who knew how to shoot.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.]
Some of you may have heard that Jackson's men fought behind cotton
bales. That is not quite true, but he was in such a hurry in building
his breastworks that he did put in them some bales of cotton taken from
the warehouses. The British, who were in as great a hurry, built a
breastwork of sugar hogsheads which they found on the plantations. But
the cannon balls soon set the cotton on fire and filled the air with
flying sugar, so the bales and the hogsheads had to be pulled out. It
was found that cotton and sugar, while good enough in their place, were
not good things to stop cannon balls.
Soon the British marched against the American works, and there was a
terrible fight.
"Stand to your guns, my men," said Jackson to his soldiers. "Make every
shot tell. Give it to them."
Many of the men were old hunters from Tennessee, some of whom could hit
a squirrel in the eye, and when they fired the British fell in rows. Not
a man could cross that terrible wall of fire, and they fought on until
twenty-six hundred of them lay bleeding on the field, while only eight
Americans were killed.
That ended the battle. The men were not born who could face a fire like
that. It ended the war also, and it was the last time Americans and
Englishmen ever fought each other. Jackson became the hero of the
country, and he was finally elected President of the United States. I
cannot say that he was well fitted to be President. He was a very
obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own way, and that is better
in a soldier than in a President. But he was one who loved his country,
and when one of the states of the South sought to secede from the Union,
Jackson, though he was a son of the South himself, quickly gave the
seceders to understand that he was a general as well as a President, and
that no state should leave the ranks of the Union while he marched at
its head.