the Indian villages and that the threatened storm was about to break
served to hasten Harrison’s preparations. The small, but exceedingly
businesslike, expedition which marched out of Vincennes on the 1st day
of November under the leadership of Governor Harrison, with Colonel
Boyd in direct command of the troops, consisted of the nine companies
of regulars which Boyd had brought from Pittsburg, six companies of
infantry of the Indiana militia, two companies of Indiana dragoons,
two companies of Kentucky mounted rifles, a company of Indiana mounted
rifles, and a company of scouts--about eleven hundred men in all.
Their uniforms would have looked strange and outlandish indeed to one
accustomed to the serviceable, dust-colored garb of the present-day
soldier, for the infantry wore high felt hats of the “stovepipe”
pattern, adorned with red-white-and-blue cockades, tight-waisted,
long-tailed coats of blue cloth with brass buttons, and pantaloons as
nearly skin-tight as the tailor could make them. The dragoons were
gorgeous in white buckskin breeches, high, varnished boots, “shell”
jackets which reached barely to the hips, and brass helmets with
streaming plumes of horsehair. Because the mounted riflemen who were
under the command of Captain Spencer wore gray uniforms lavishly
trimmed with yellow, they bore the nickname among the troops of
“Spencer’s Yellow-Jackets.” The only men of the force, indeed, who
were suitably clad for Indian warfare were the scouts, who wore the
hunting-shirts, leggings, and moccasins of soft-tanned buckskin, which
were the orthodox dress of the frontier.
Commanded by men of such wide experience in savage warfare as Harrison
and Boyd, it is needless to say that every precaution was taken against
surprise, the column moving in a formation which prepared it for
instant battle. The cavalry formed advance and rear guards, and small
detachments rode on either flank; the infantry marched in two columns,
one on either side of the trail, with the baggage wagons, pack-animals,
and beeves between them, while the scouts, thrown far out into the
forest, formed a moving cordon of skirmishers. After crossing the
Vermilion River the troops found themselves upon an immense prairie,
which stretched away, level as a floor, as far as the eye could see--as
far as the Illinois at Chicago, the guides asserted. It filled the
soldiers, who came from a rugged and heavily forested country, with the
greatest astonishment, for few of them had ever seen so vast an expanse
of level ground before. Shortly afterward, however, they left the
prairie and marched through open woods, over ground gashed and furrowed
by deep ravines. Here the greatest precautions had to be observed, for
clouds of Indian scouts hung upon the flanks of the column, and the
broken nature of the country fitted it admirably for ambushes.
Late in the afternoon of November 6, 1811, in a cold and drizzling
rain, Harrison gave orders to bivouac for the night on a piece of high
but swamp-surrounded ground on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, near
its junction with the Wabash, and barely five miles from the Prophet’s
Town. It was a triangular-shaped knoll, dotted with oaks, one side of
which dropped down in a sharp declivity to a little stream edged with
willows and heavy underbrush, while the other two sides sloped down
more gradually to a marshy prairie. The camp was arranged in the form
of an irregular parallelogram, with the regulars--who were the only
seasoned troops in the expedition--forming the front and rear, the
flanks being composed of mounted riflemen supported by militia, while
two troops of dragoons were held in reserve. In the centre of this
armed enclosure were parked the pack-animals and the baggage-train.
Though late in the night the moon rose from behind a bank of clouds;
the night was very dark, with occasional flurries of rain. The troops
lay on the rain-soaked ground with rifles loaded and bayonets fixed,
but they slept but little, I fancy, for they had brought no tents, few
of them were provided with blankets, and top-hats and tail-coats are
not exactly adapted to camping in the forest in November.
From his experience in previous campaigns, Harrison had learned
that, while in the vicinity of any considerable body of Indians, it
was the part of precaution to arouse his men quietly an hour or so
before daybreak, for it was a characteristic of the Indians to deliver
their attacks shortly before the dawn, which is the hour when tired
men sleep the soundest. Meanwhile, in the Indian camp preparations
were being stealthily made for the surprise and extermination of the
white invaders. Tecumseh was not present, being absent on one of his
proselyting tours among the southern tribes, but the prophet brought
out the sacred torch and the magic beans, which his followers had only
to touch, so he assured them, to become invulnerable to the enemy’s
bullets. This ceremony was followed by a series of incantations, war
songs and dances, until the Indians, now wrought up to a frenzy, were
ready for any deed of madness. Slipping like horrid phantoms through
the waist-high prairie grass in the blackness of the night, they crept
nearer and nearer to the sleeping camp, intending to surround the
position, stab the sentries, rush the camp, and slaughter every man in
it whom they could not take alive for the torture stake.
In pursuance of his custom of early rising, Harrison was just pulling
on his boots before the embers of a dying camp-fire, at four o’clock in
the morning, preparatory to rousing his men, when the silence of the
forest was suddenly broken by the crack of a sentry’s rifle. The echoes
had not time to die away before, from three sides of the camp, rose
the shrill, hair-raising war-whoop of the Indians. As familiar with the
lay of the land as a housewife is with the arrangements of her kitchen,
they had effected their plan of surrounding the camp, confident of
taking the suddenly awakened soldiers so completely by surprise that
they would be unable to offer an effectual resistance. Not a warrior of
them but did not look forward to returning to the Prophet’s Town with a
string of dripping scalp-locks at his waist.
The Indians, quite unlike their usual custom of keeping to cover,
fought as white men fight, for, made reckless by the prophet’s
assurances that his spells had made them invulnerable and that bullets
could not harm them, they advanced at a run across the open. At sight
of the oncoming wave of bedaubed and befeathered figures the raw levies
from Indiana and Kentucky visibly wavered and threatened to give way,
but Boyd’s regulars, though taken by surprise, showed the result of
their training by standing like a stone wall against the onset of the
whooping redskins. The engagement quickly became general. The chorus
of cheers and yells and groans and war-whoops was punctuated by the
continuous crackle of the frontiersmen’s rifles and the crashing
volleys of the infantry. Harrison, a conspicuous figure on a white
horse and wearing a white blanket coat, rode up and down the lines,
encouraging here, cautioning there, as cool and as quiet-voiced as
though back on the parade-ground at Vincennes.
The pressure was greatest at the angle of the camp where the first
attack was made, the troops stationed at this point having the greatest
difficulty in holding their position. Seeing this, Major Joseph H.
Daviess, a brilliant but hot-headed young Kentuckian who had achieved
fame by his relentless attacks on Aaron Burr, twice asked permission to
charge with his dragoons, and twice the governor sent back the answer:
“Tell Major Daviess to be patient; he shall have his chance before the
battle is over.” When Daviess for a third time urged his importunate
request, Harrison answered the messenger sharply: “Tell Major Daviess
he has twice heard my opinion; he may now use his own discretion.”
Discretion, however, was evidently not included in the Kentuckian’s
make-up, for no sooner had he received Harrison’s message than, with
barely a score of dismounted troopers, he charged the Indian line. So
foolhardy a performance could only be expected to end in disaster.
Daviess fell, mortally wounded, and his men, such of them as were not
dead, turned and fled for their lives.
[Illustration: The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the
oncoming troopers, broke and ran.]
The prophet, who had been chanting appeals to the Great Spirit from the
top of a rock within view of his warriors but safely out of range of
the American rifles (he evidently had some doubts as to the efficacy of
his charms), realized that, as a result of the unforeseen obstinacy of
the Americans’ resistance, victory was fast slipping from his grasp and
that his only hope of success lay in an overwhelming charge. Roused to
renewed fanaticism by his fervid exhortations, the Indians once again
swept forward, whooping like madmen. But the Americans were ready for
them, and as the yelling redskins came within range they met them with
a volley of buckshot which left them wavering, undecided whether to
come on or to retreat. Harrison, whose plan was to maintain his lines
unbroken until daylight and then make a general advance, and who had
been constantly riding from point to point within the camp to keep the
assailed positions reinforced, realized that the crucial moment had
arrived. Now was his chance to drive home the deciding blow. Boyd,
recognizing as quickly as Harrison the opportunity thus presented,
ordered a bugler to sound the charge, and his infantry roared down
upon the Indian line in a human avalanche tipped with steel. At the
same moment he ordered up the two squadrons of dragoons which he had
been holding in reserve. “Right into line!” he roared, in the voice
which had resounded over so many fields in far-off Hindustan. “Trot!
Gallop! _Charge!_ Hip, hip, here we go!” It was this charge, delivered
with the smashing suddenness with which a boxer gets in a solar-plexus
blow, which did the business. The Indians, panic-stricken at the
sight of the oncoming troopers in their brass helmets and streaming
plumes of horsehair, broke and ran. Tippecanoe was won, though at
a cost to the Americans of nearly two hundred killed and wounded,
including two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, five captains, and
several lieutenants. The discredited prophet, now become an object of
hatred and derision among his own people, fled for his life while the
victorious Americans burned his town behind him. Tecumseh, returning
from the south to be greeted by the news of the disaster to his plans
resulting from his brother’s folly, threw in his lot with the British,
commanded England’s Indian allies in the War of 1812, and died two
years later at the battle of the Thames, when his old adversary,
Harrison, once again led the Americans to victory. For his share in the
Tippecanoe triumph, Boyd received a brigadier-general’s commission.
Harrison was started on the road which was to end at the White House.
The peril of the great Indian confederation was ended forever, and the
civilization of the West was advanced a quarter of a century.
THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR
THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR
I wonder how many of the white-clad, white-shod folk who lounge their
winters away on the golf-links at St. Augustine or in wheeled chairs
propelled by Ethiopians along the fragrant pathways of Palm Beach
ever speculate as to how it happens that the flags which fly over the
Ponce de Leon and the Royal Poinciana are made of red, white, and blue
bunting instead, say, of red and yellow. Not many of them, I expect,
for professional joy hunters have no time to spare for history. I
wonder how many of those people who complacently regard themselves as
well-read and well-informed could tell you offhand, if you asked them,
how Florida became American or give you even the barest outline of the
conception and execution of that daring and cynical scheme whereby it
was added to the Union. I wonder how many professors of history in our
schools and colleges are aware that Florida was once a republic--for
but a brief time, it is true--with a flag and a president and an army
of its own. I wonder how many of our military and naval officers know
that we fought Spanish soldiers and stormed Spanish forts and captured
Spanish towns and hauled down Spanish colors (all quite unofficially,
of course) fourscore years before Schley and Sampson sunk the Spanish
fleet off Santiago. And, finally, I wonder how many people have ever
so much as heard of the Emperor McGillivray, who held his barbaric
court at Tallahassee and was a general in the armies of England, Spain,
and the United States at the same time; of Sir Gregor MacGregor, the
Scottish soldier of fortune who attempted to establish a kingdom at
Fernandina and died King of the Mosquito Coast; or any of those other
strange and romantic figures--De Aury, Hubbard, Peire, Humbert--who
followed him. It is a dashing story but a bloody one, and those who
have no stomach for intrigue and treachery and massacre and ambushes
and storming parties and filibustering expeditions had better turn
elsewhere for their reading.
Some one has aptly remarked that the history of Florida is but a bowl
of blood, and that, were a man to cast into it some chemical that
would separate the solid ingredients from the mere water, he would
find that the precipitate at the bottom consisted of little save
death and disappointment. Certainly the Spaniards were rewarded by
little more, for after they had ruled it for two hundred and fifty
years the net results of their labor were the beggarly settlements at
Pensacola and St. Augustine. In 1763 England ceded Havana to Spain in
exchange for Florida, and for a brief time that harassed country was on
speaking terms with peace and prosperity, for the English established
settlements and built roads and started schools, as is the quaint
Anglo-Saxon way. But with the loss of her American colonies, in 1783,
England suddenly concluded that it was not worth her while to retain
this now isolated province; so she ceded it back to Spain, and the
settlers found that their work had gone for nothing. A Spanish lethargy
promptly settled upon the land; grass sprang up in the main streets of
the towns; the noon-hour was expanded into a _siesta_ which lasted from
twelve to four; the indigo plantations started by the English colonists
were neglected and ran out; the injustice, cruelty, and oppression
which everywhere characterized Spanish rule entered upon a return
engagement; and Florida became a savage and lawless borderland, where
Indians, runaway slaves, filibusters, frontiersmen, and fugitives from
justice fought each other and united only in jeering at the feeble rule
of Spain.
At this time the colony was divided into two provinces, known as East
and West Florida. The former province was virtually identical with the
present State, extending from the Perdido River (now the boundary-line
between the States of Florida and Alabama) eastward to the Atlantic
Ocean, including the great peninsula lying south of Georgia and
stretching across almost six degrees of latitude. On its Atlantic
seaboard were the towns of Fernandina and St. Augustine, and on the
Gulf coast the ports of Pensacola and St. Marks. The province of West
Florida extended from the Perdido westward, according to the Spanish
claims, to the Mississippi and included the river town of Baton Rouge
and the Gulf port of Mobile. It will be seen, therefore, that Spain was
in possession of all that great semicircle of Gulf coast stretching
from Key West to New Orleans.
In 1803, Napoleon, hard-pressed for funds with which to continue his
European campaigns, sold the colony of Louisiana to the United States
as unconcernedly as though he were disposing of a suburban building
lot. This proceeding was typical of the utter indifference with which
the sovereigns of the Old World were accustomed to transfer their
colonies in the New. The colonists, however much they may have loved
their sovereign, their country, or her institutions, were bought,
sold, or given away, without their consent and often without their
knowledge. This enormous addition to the national domain made it not
only desirable but imperative that the United States acquire ports upon
the Gulf of Mexico, so that the settlers in Tennessee, Mississippi,
Alabama, and western Georgia might have an outlet for their products.
The gentlemen in frock coats and high black stocks who were at the
tiller of our ship of state determined, therefore, that the Floridas
must become American--peacefully if possible, forcibly if there was no
other way.
Now, it must be borne in mind that at this time Spain had no diplomatic
intercourse with the United States, the gigantic policy of Napoleon
having, for the time being, erased her from the list of nations. Thus
overwhelmed at home, her possessions in America were either in a state
of open revolt or in so defenseless a condition that they were ready to
drop like ripe plums into the hands of any nation which shook the tree.
It will thus be seen that the gentlemen in Washington quite evidently
knew what they were about when they chose a time when Mother Spain was
confined to her bed, as the result of the beating up she had received
from Napoleon, to elope with her daughter Florida.
Once set in motion, the machinery of conquest proceeded to pare off
slices of Florida with the neatness and despatch of a meat-cutting
machine. The plans of the American Government worked out as smoothly
as a church wedding which has been rehearsed beforehand. The
carefully laid scheme first manifested itself in October, 1810, when
a revolution broke out in that portion of West Florida bordering
upon the Mississippi. In that region there was a family of American
settlers named Kemper who had suffered many injustices under Spanish
rule. Two of these men, Samuel and Reuben (the same Reuben Kemper, by
the way, whose exploits in Mexico are described in “Adventurers All”),
determined to get rid of their hated rulers, incited the neighboring
settlers to rise in armed revolt. Assembling at St. Francisville, they
marched through the night, arrived before Baton Rouge at dawn, took
it by surprise, and after a skirmish in which the Spanish governor
was killed drove out the garrison and occupied the town. In order
to throw a cloak of legality over their acts, the revolutionists
organized a convention, issued a declaration of independence modelled
on Jefferson’s immortal document, elected Fulwar Skipwith, formerly
American diplomatic agent in France, president of the new republic,
and hoisted over the captured town a flag with a single star--the same
emblem under which the Texans were to win their independence thirty odd
years later. This done, the infant republic asked the United States to
recognize it as an independent nation. But President Monroe, instead of
extending recognition, asserting that the revolted province had been
ceded by Spain to France along with Louisiana in 1800, and therefore,
being part and parcel of Louisiana, belonged to the United States
anyway, declared the Territory of West Florida, as far east as the
Pearl River, an American possession.
Shortly after the capture of Baton Rouge Colonel Kemper, acting under
orders from the revolutionary government, led another expedition
against Mobile. Made overconfident by their easy triumph at Baton
Rouge, the filibusters encamped a few miles above Mobile and spent the
night in a grand carousal in celebration of their anticipated victory
on the morrow. But the Spanish governor, learning from a spy of the
Americans’ befuddled condition, sallied out at the head of three
hundred men, took the revolutionists by surprise, and completely routed
them. A major and nine men who were taken prisoners were transported
to Havana, where they paid for their affront to the majesty of Spain by
spending five years in Morro Castle. A few weeks later a strong force
of American regulars arrived off Mobile and coolly sat down within
sight of the Spanish fortifications. They explained their presence to
the Spanish governor by saying that they had been sent by the American
Government to protect him and his men from further attacks by the
insurgents. The gentlemen who were shaping the policies of the nation
in Washington certainly must have had a sense of humor. Though the
Spanish flag still flew over Mobile, the United States was now, to all
intents and purposes, in complete possession of West Florida. In the
spring of 1812, when the American Government finally determined on a
war with England, the strategic importance of Mobile became apparent
and President Monroe, deciding that the time had come to end the farce,
despatched an expedition under General Wilkinson to oust the Spanish
garrison and formally occupy the city. The United States was now in
full possession of one of the Gulf ports she had so long been coveting,
and the machinery of conquest was still in working order.
Meanwhile the American Government, having heard rumors that the British
were about to assume control of East Florida under the provisions
of a secret arrangement with Spain, asked permission of the Spanish
authorities to occupy that province with troops that it might not be
used by the British as a base of operations. (The occupation was to
be purely temporary; oh, yes indeed, the American troops would be
withdrawn as soon as the war-clouds which were piling up along the
political horizon lifted a little.) It is scarcely to be wondered at,
however, that Spain curtly refused the request, whereupon Congress,
in secret session, passed an act authorizing the seizure of East
Florida. But it would have smacked too much of highway robbery or of
burglary, whichever you choose to call it, for the United States to
have sent a military expedition into the province and taken it by force
of arms. That would have been just a little too coarse and crude and
might, moreover, have called forth a European protest. But surely no
blame could be attached to the United States because the settlers in
southern Georgia, exasperated, they said, by the lawless conditions
which prevailed in the adjacent Spanish province, suddenly determined
to follow the example of their neighbors in West Florida and organize
a republican form of government in East Florida as a preliminary to
applying for admission to the Union. It was a strange coincidence, was
it not, that the instigator of the revolution, General George Mathews,
a former governor of Georgia, had been appointed a commissioner, under
the secret act of Congress, to secure the province? Amelia Island,
lying just off the Florida coast and a little below the boundary of
Georgia, provided an admirable base of operations. The fine harbor of
its capital, Fernandina, was just becoming of considerable commercial
importance and in Spanish hands might prove a serious menace to
the United States in the approaching war with England. Hence the
acquisition of this island and harbor was regarded by the American
authorities as a military necessity. Early in 1812, therefore, a force
of some two hundred Georgian frontiersmen under General Mathews moved
down upon Fernandina and sent a flag of truce, demanding the surrender
of the town and island. As a flotilla of American gunboats, by a
streak of the greatest good luck, happened into the harbor at this
psychological moment, and a force of American regulars, by another
singular coincidence, appeared upon the scene and placed themselves
under Mathews’s orders, there was nothing left for the Spanish
commandant but to haul down his flag. Whereupon General Mathews,
assuming the attitude of a protector, took possession of the place in
the name of the United States. With the precedent of Baton Rouge to
guide him, Mathews naturally supposed that the secret and ambiguously
worded instructions under which he had gone to Fernandina meant that
he was to take possession of East Florida, and he was strengthened
in this supposition by the condition of affairs that he found there.
St. Mary’s River was filled with British vessels engaged in smuggling
British merchandise into the United States in defiance of the Embargo
Act, while Amelia Island was a notorious rendezvous for smugglers, upon
whom the Spanish authorities looked with marked tolerance, if, indeed,
they did not lend them actual assistance. As soon as the Americans
took possession a custom-house was established, the smuggling promptly
ceased, and over the fort was raised a flag bearing the inscription:
“_Vox populi lex salutis._” Though the uneducated frontiersmen were
a trifle hazy as to the motto’s meaning, it sounded well and lent
a certain air of dignity to the proceedings. The next move of the
insurgents, now become eight hundred strong by reinforcements from
Georgia, was to besiege the Spanish governor in St. Augustine, for
Mathews, confident that Congress would pass a bill sanctioning his
seizure of the province, ran things with a high hand. As a matter
of fact, such a bill was passed by the House in secret session, but
was rejected by the Senate, whereupon President Madison disavowed
the act of Mathews and ordered him to evacuate the territory he had
seized--probably because it was deemed unwise to provoke hostilities
with another power at the very moment we had declared war on England.
But the conquest of Florida was not abandoned--merely postponed.