The Jeffersonians by Kevin R. C. Gutzman

Author:Kevin R. C. Gutzman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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Madison’s Annual Message was delivered to Capitol Hill on December 7, 1813.1 He began by noting his disappointment that the British had rejected Alexander’s offer of mediation. He asserted that this left America no alternative but to rely on her strength, which he illustrated by recounting a string of naval victories of which Perry’s was the most notable and important. It had led to the success in the Battle of the Thames, “which quickly terminated in the capture of the British and dispersion of the savage force.” Harrison, Johnson, and Governor Shelby—“whose heroism, signalized in the war which established the Independence of his Country, sought at an advanced age, a share in hardships and battles, for maintaining its rights and its safety”—drew particular praise. Progress on the banks of Lake Ontario, which like Lake Erie had come to be dominated by American arms, had been foiled in its beginnings by the weather, so that the planned campaign along the St. Lawrence had come to naught.

Madison lamented that the British, rather than emulating the Americans in not enlisting Indian nations into their forces, thus “mitigating [the war’s] calamities,” had instead employed them. “Wherever they could be turned against us, no exertions to effect it, have been spared.” In the Southwest “a bloody fanaticism, recently propagated among them” had made it “necessary to crush such a war before it could spread among the contiguous tribes, and before it could favor enterprises of the Enemy into that vicinity.” He then made reference to the American victories at Tallushatchee and Talladega only a few weeks earlier, where as many as five hundred Creek warriors met their ends. Here for the first time the name of Major General Andrew Jackson, “an Officer equally distinguished for his patriotism and his military talents,” came to national attention.2 Madison lamented that the British perseverance in recruiting Indian allies into their service had at last “forced upon us” a “departure from our protracted forbearance to accept the services tendered by them.” Even in accepting groups of Indians into their ranks, he insisted, the Americans had not followed “the example of the enemy, who owe the advantages they have occasionally gained in battle, chiefly to the number of their savage associates; and who have not controuled them, either from their usual practice of indiscriminate massacre on defenseless inhabitants, or from scenes of carnage without a parallel, on prisoners to the British arms, guarded by all the laws … of honorable war.”

Ruminating on this subject naturally led Madison into a lengthy passage on British treatment of American immigrants from Britain taken prisoner during the war. As they had been sent to Britain “for trial as criminals,” “a like number of British prisoners of war were put into confinement, with a notification that they would experience whatever violence might be committed on the American prisoners of war, sent to Great Britain.” When the British responded to this by putting twice as many Americans under close confinement and warning of the destruction they would mete out on American coastal towns in case the U.

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