USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 31
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358
Harrison Marches toward Prophetstown.
ish and Americans, by the indiscretions of the prophet during Tecumseh's absence to bring allies to his cause, the inevitable outbreak came with the Indians. On the 17th of July, 1811, the president authorized Har- rison to summon to his aid the Fourth Regiment of infantry, under command of Col. Boyd. On the 26th of September the army took up its march toward Prophetstown, the headquarters of the prophet. Hav- ing marched sixty-five miles up the Wabash, Fort Har- rison was built, on the 5th of October. On the 3Ist, the mouth of the Vermillion river was reached, where a block house was built for the protection of the baggage.
Again resuming his march on the night of the 6th of November, he arrived at Tippecanoe, which was situ- ated about seven miles northwest of the present city of Lafayette. Here Harrison was met by a delegation from the camp of the prophet, which was but a short distance away, where a thousand braves were assem- bled, ready to make a dash at the invaders as soon as a favorable moment came. All hostile intentions, how- ever, were disavowed on both sides, but Harrison ordered his men to encamp that night in order of battle, with their clothes on and their arms by their side; and in case of an attack, the outermost lines were ordered to maintain their ground till reinforced.
At the Indian camp all was silent as the grave. Tecumseh was in the far distant south, in the country of the Cherokees, and had given his brother, the pro- phet, orders not to commence hostilities; but in his rashness he disregarded them, and laid his plans to attack Harrison the next morning. Before the dawn of day a heavy body of Indians made a dash on the left flank of the Americans. The sentinels were driven in, and the conflict was carried into the very camp of the invaders. In a few minutes the whole front, both flanks, and even the rear, were engaged.
The camp fires still lit up the grounds, for daylight had not yet come to the relief of the Americans, and the Indians poured a destructive fire into their ranks from a covert of darkness. With admirable coolness, Harrison
359
Battle of Tippecanoe.
ordered the fires extinguished, which placed the com- batants on equal terms. Now, hand-to-hand encoun- ters, and random shots through the outer darkness, amidst a tumult of yells, raged along the whole line till daylight. A furious charge was then made upon the Indians. They received it with admirable courage at first, but finally fled to an adjacent swamp, where Har- rison did not deem it prudent to follow them.
The American loss was thirty-seven killed and 151 wounded; the loss of the Indians was somewhat smaller.
Tecumseh, with a keen insight into the future, had not intended to precipitate the conflict with the Ameri- cans till his British friends were ready. to render him more substantial aid; and when he returned home and learned that the prophet had disobeyed his orders by mak- ing the first attack, and of the disastrous results of it, his passions rose to a dangerous pitch, and it was with diffi- culty he could be restrained from killing him on the spot.
After the battle, the Indian stores of corn, etc., at Prophetstown were destroyed. The prophet lost his prestige, and nearly all the different tribes of Indians were inclined toward peace. Tecumseh was forced into a lukewarm acquiescence in this state of things among his people, but instead of their taking part in the treaty of peace which followed, went to Malden, in Canada, to take council with his British friends; but the end was not yet.
The Tippecanoe campaign was a great damage to the Indian cause, especially as its result was disastrous to them, and proved an effectual barrier against the Indian confederacy which Tecumseh aimed at, with laudable ambition, as the only means by which his people could be preserved.
The news of the battle spreading through the country came to the ears of John Kinzie, at Charme's trading post (Ypsilanti, Mich.). He was on his way to Detroit, but apprehensive of a general uprising among the Indians, he hastened home to look to the safety of his family, by further strengthening the chain of friendship with the Pottawattamies .*
* Wabun, page 217.
360
Illinois Territory Organized.
While the events of the late campaign had been maturing to the temporary issue at Tippecanoe, settle- ments had been progressing with but little interruption, for the late battle was a sudden spasm of ferocity, which the prophet had prematurely thrust into the arena, before Tecumseh's favorite plan of an Indian confederacy had been executed; and no warning against border war had come to the ears of emigrants. Nor had legislation suspended its progressive action respect- ing the political progress of the western territory.
Congress on February 3, 1809, constituted the new territory of Illinois. On the east it was bounded by the Wabash river from its mouth to Vincennes, thence by a line due north to the Canada line (which line, of course, would cross Lake Michigan lengthwise), on the north by the British possessions, on the west by the Mississippi river, and on the south by the Ohio, between the mouth of the Wabash and the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi.
Ninian Edwards was transferred from the post of chief justice of Kentucky to the governor's chair of the new territory, and Nathaniel Pope, whose home was already at Kaskaskia, was appointed secretary by Presi- dent Madison. Early in March Mr. Pope organized the territory, and the following June, on the 11th, Mr. Edwards took his seat as governor at Kaskaskia.
The code of Indiana territory, under which the inhabi- tants had lived for the eight years previous, was at first adopted, but soon afterward detailed penalties were affixed for the punishment of every possible form of offense, some of which have long since been repealed as unwarrantable. St. Clair and Randolph were the first two counties organized. Their limits can hardly be given, in the great waste of unsettled domain over which the jurisdiction of Illinois then extended.
The extreme southern portions of the state were sparsely sprinkled over with new settlements from Vir- ginia and Kentucky. St. Louis was a thriving town, largely composed of French fur traders. Fort Madison had been built on the west bank of the Mississippi, where the city of the same name now stands in Iowa.
36I
The Great Earthquake.
Prairie du Chien, then a thrifty trading post, at the mouth of the Wisconsin river, was within the jurisdic- tion of the new territory, as well as La Pointe and Green Bay, while Chicago was only known as an Indian portage, and the locality of a weakly garrisoned fort.
At Peoria was a French village, established after a hiatus of many years since La Salle first built Fort Crevecœur there.
This second founding was of an uncertain date, but it was many years subsequent to the settlement of the French villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia.
Besides the battle of Tippecanoe, three remarkable events occurred during the year 1811 in the northwest. A severe frost almost entirely destroyed the corn crop. The first steamboat that ever made its appearance on western waters made a trip from Pittsburgh, where she was built, to New Orleans. And a violent earthquake was felt throughout the entire country. It took place in December, and continued several days in a succes- sion of violent shocks of the ground, lashing the forest trees against each other with fearful violence. At times, through opening fissures in the ground, steam hissed out like the escapement of pent up and heated vapors, during which phenomenon loud reports, like the muffled sounds of thunder, continued to peal forth, as if from an invisible source. It was felt the severest at New Madrid, on the Mississippi, where a large area of land sank into the bowels of the earth, and, to fill the chasm, the Mississippi from below flowed backward for several hours.
CHAPTER XVI.
Jay's Treaty of 1794-Its Beneficial Effects-Decrees of Berlin and Milan-Retaliatory British Orders-The Continental System-America Victimized by It-The Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts-Fruitless Nego- tiation between Great Britain and the United States- Complications with France-The French Decrees Re- voked-The United States Declares War against England-The British on the Lakes-General Hull Reaches Detroit with an Army-Crosses into Canada -Reconnoisance of Colonel Cass-First Hostile Shot in the War of 1812-General Hull Returns to Detroit -Michilimackinac Taken by the English-Tecum- seh in the British Service-Indian Raid on Lee's Place-Panic at Chicago-General Hull at Detroit- He Crosses the River into Canada -- His Perplexities -His Surrender.
Jay's treaty of 1794 has already been alluded to. A brief detail of the conditions which brought it into being from the master mind that took within its grasp those conditions, and first caused the rights of America, as a member of the family of nations, to be acknowledged by England, forms a bright page in American history; and inasmuch as the most vital part of these conditions grew into being in the northwest, a record of them will here be made.
After the peace of 1783, which guaranteed to us simple independence only, the United States found themselves but a loosely bound confederacy of thirteen colonies, without even a constitution. The English court did not even honor us with a minister till 1789,
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363
Jay as a Negotiator.
and, all the while, excluded our commerce from all their colonial ports, thereby forcing American merchants to trade, largely through English channels, under the monopolizing system that she had established by means of her armament on the high seas, directed by her laws of trade .* Her vessels of war seemed almost omnipresent. They swept the American lakes and constantly supplied their forts, then held on American soil, and from these forts they supplied the Indians with all the material they wanted wherewith to make the border a scene of strife and bloodshed. This aroused the indignation of the western people in par- ticular, and embittered the whole nation against Eng- land. Still war was impossible, for we had no means out of which to establish it. Under these circumstances, even while struggling to allay dissensions at home con- sequent upon uniting under a constitution, and contend- ing against poverty and an onerous public debt, Washington, impressed with the necessity of a treaty to establish our commercial relations on a firmer and more profitable basis, selected Mr. Jay as the fittest one to negotiate it.
His task was a difficult one. As to any commercial relations, the English already had everything as they wanted it, and were reluctant to enter into any obliga- tions which could bring nothing to them.
But Mr. Jay was equal to the emergency. His accomplishments challenged the respect of the British minister, and secured the signing of his famous treaty of 1794, by which American vessels were first allowed to trade direct with the East Indies and other British dependencies. This was all that could be expected in a pecuniary way. Next came the points of honor, so vital to the western spirit of independence, which was that the English should relinquish the western posts. This point they also conceded on the terms stated in a previous chapter, and the treaty was signed in London,
* In 1744, England laid the foundation for her unexampled prosperity as a trading nation by establishing a maxim, monopolizing all the trade of her colonies to herself. In 1760, the machinery for enforcing these conditions became still more perfect, and the United States were, up to 1794, circumscribed within its toils.
364
Decrees of Berlin and Milan.
November 19, 1794, and promptly ratified by Wash- ington.
A lucrative trade immediately sprang up as a conse- quence of the treaty, and continued till the sanguinary character which the war between England and France afterward assumed transcended the comity of nations, and swept away not only all treaty rights, but the national rights of neutrals.
Eleven years after Jay's treaty, 1805, England destroyed the French fleet at Trafalgar, after which all opposition to her on the ocean vanished-not a French vessel daring to come within the reach of her guns. Meantime, the eyes of the world turned toward the conquests of Napoleon on the land. The victories of Austerlitz and Jena made him master of southern Europe, and from Berlin, the capital of Prussia, in November, 1806, he issued decrees, followed by the decrees of Milan early the next year, the objects of which were to undermine the power of England. These decrees made not only British vessels and goods liable to confiscation in the ports of France and her allies, but also the ships and goods of neutrals bound for English ports.
To counteract the effect of this blow aimed at the vital fountains of her prosperity, England issued in November, 1807, plenary orders for the confiscation of ships and goods bound for the ports of France and her allies, from wherever they might come; and her ability to execute these orders made them effective, and ulti- mately recoiled with force against Napoleon, the prime mover in this attempt to fight natural destiny. The United States was victimized by the decrees of both nations, particularly by the English orders, among which were the following:
" All trade directly from America to every port and country in Europe, at war with Great Britain, is totally prohibited. All articles, whether of domestic or colon- ial produce, exported by America to Europe, must be landed in England, from whence it is intended to per- mit their re-exportation under such regulations as may hereafter be determined." Such was the continental
-
365
The Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts.
system. It embraced within its toils an issue, vital to the interests of any part of the world that wished to trade with England or France, or their allies, and with dogged resolution these Titanic powers watched both sea and land to augment the force of war by their extreme as well as novel measures.
Smarting under its effects, the United States dipped her oar into the great sea of hostile diplomacy, by passing the embargo act of December, 1807, and the non-intercourse act of March, 1809. These acts, together with certain municipal regulations which pre- ceded them, were designed, first to prohibit certain articles of foreign importation, and finally to cut off all exportation to England and France, by with- drawing American commerce from those countries, under an impression that they could not carry on their wars without our bread supplies, and would as a meas- ure of compromise, modify their indiscriminate laws against trade so as to admit our vessels to their ports.
It required no small measure of sacrifice to take these steps. The people had been enriching themselves out of the misfortunes of Europe in their disuse of the plow and sanguinary practice of the sword, but now this source of wealth was entirely cut off by their own acts, which, instead of improving their condition, made it worse. The resentment of France was aroused, and the April following the embargo act she passed the decrees of Bayonne, and later those of Rambouillet, by which every American vessel in French ports was a law- ful prize. The apology for this act was, that any American vessels in their ports were there in violation of the embargo act, and consequently were British property (a deduction that hung on an uncertain con- tingency, and exhibited more defiance than discretion).
England, armed with iron-clad dignity, took but little notice of these retaliatory measures of the United States, but continued her right of search and its conse- quent impressment of American seamen into her ser- vice, a very questionable prerogative that she had never abandoned since our colonial vassalage, if her necessi- ties required its practice.
366 Fruitless Negotiations for Commercial Rights.
The colossal proportions which the war between Eng- land and France had now assumed, by which they were daily weakening each other, may have extended the limit of American forbearance to declare war; instead of doing which she made an offer to England to rescind her embargo and non-intercourse acts, if she, England, would abolish her orders of 1807.
This offer England rejected, on the ground that she would not accept a favor from America which might benefit France.
Under this duress the United States were placed in a position in which they must either bear their griev- ances with patience, or commit the absurdity of declar- ing war against two nations at war with each other. The following abstract of a report made to the house of representatives, in November, 1809, will show the complex attitude of our grievances which had thus far set negotiation at defiance:
"The aggressions of England and France, affecting almost the whole of our commerce, are no less than a war waged by both nations against our trading interests. It is evident that the only effectual way of resistance is war. A permanent suspension of commerce, after re- peated and unavailing efforts to obtain peace, would not properly be resistance. It would be withdrawing from the contest and abandoning an indisputable right to navigate the ocean.
"The present unsettled state of the world, the extra- ordinary situation in which the United States are placed, and the necessity, if war be resorted to, of making it against the two most powerful nations of the world, are the causes of hesitation."
Matters remained in these phases of discontent till 1810, up to which time several years of fruitless dip- lomacy had been wasted in vain attempts to restore American commerce to its natural rights in the family of nations. Two different compromises, almost con- cluded between England and the United States, had been broken off, one by the president of the United States, because it did not relinquish the right of search, and the other by the British king, because his minister,
Proposed Rescission of Berlin and Milan Decrees. 367
Mr. Erskine, had exceeded his instructions as to its terms. Mr. Jefferson, then president, drew upon him- self much censure from the New England states for rejecting this compromise (the former) without allowing it to come before the senate, which was then in session. Its provisions conceded all the United States asked for except the clause as to impressment, and on this point the British government had given Mr. Monroe and Mr. Pinckney, our peace commissioners, informal assurance that its practice should be abandoned.
This satisfied the New England mind, which was ready to seize upon any plausible pretext as a basis of peace by which to bridge over the war spirit of the times till more considerate counsels could be lis- tened to.
Pending this turmoil, the grip of Napoleon's decrees, which had fastened upon all the nations of Europe, except Turkey and Sweden, began to weaken. Eng- lish goods found their way almost everywhere through clandestine channels, and it became evident that the Berlin and Milan decrees were a failure. As a proof of this, on August 5, 1810, M. de Champagny, the French minister of foreign affairs, proposed to the American minister in Paris to repeal the Berlin and Milan decrees, on the same conditions that had been proposed by the United States herself two years before, and also accepted on the part of the British minister, but rejected by the crown.
These terms were substantially that all hostile legis- lation as to international trade should cease on both sides. This proposition was hailed with delight by Mr. Madison, who had succeeded Jefferson as president.
* Jefferson's mission to France, terminating in 1789, had weil nigh turned his brain, and made it impossible for him to look with candor upon the issue that then hung over the country -- so prejudiced was he in favor of the extreme rights of man, as promulgated by the revolu- tionary spirit of France in that eventful period. This accounts for his rejection of the compromise of England without consulting the senate. Naturally inclined to espouse the cause of the people and gain popular applause, he became the champion of radical democracy in America, and accused Washington, Hamilton, John Adams and the whole body of federalists, of being Anglo-monarchic aristocrats -- friends of Eng- land and enemies of France in their contest. See his letter to Mazzei, dated Monticello, April 24, 1796. It is published officially in the pro- ceedings of the Hartford convention. - AUTHOR.
368
Repeal of the French Decrees.
A message was issued to take the necessary action by which the proposal should become a permanent international law. But various complex conditions were brought to the surface by the British, relative to how far this comity extended to France should affect the interests of England.
France meantime did repeal her obnoxious decrees, at least upon the contingency that the United States, after opening commercial relations with herself, should still enforce her commercial restrictions against Eng- land, unless that power should fully revoke her orders of 1807. Accordingly by official notice of the French revocation of the decrees bearing date of November I, 1810 (which embodied all her offensive legislation against American trade), was duly sent to the United States, and published in the Moniteur, the official organ of the French court at Paris, but no notice of it was sent to the English court. Subsequently, some American vessels, either through ignorance or design, were seized as prizes by the French. From these cir- cumstances, and in default of the formality of a notice of revocation, the English insisted that the Berlin and Milan decrees were still in force. During the progress of these conciliatory overtures from the French nation, a strong appeal was made by the Americans to the English court to repeal their orders of 1807, on the ground that the French decrees had already been repealed. On the 30th of May, 1812, a final reply was made by England to this appeal, from which the follow- ing is taken:
"The Berlin and Milan decrees have never been revoked. Some partial and insidious relaxations of them may have been made, in a few instances, as an encouragement to America to adopt a system beneficial to France and injurious to Great Britain; while the conditions on which alone it has been declared that those decrees will ever be revoked are here explained and amplified in a manner to leave no hope of Bona- parte having any disposition to renounce the system of injustice which he has pursued, so as to make it possi- ble for Great Britain to give up those defensive meas-
369
War Declared against England.
ures she has been obliged to resort to. * It is now manifest that there was never more than a con- ditional offer of repeal made by France, which we had a right to complain that America should have asked us to recognize as absolute, and which, if accepted in its extent by America, would only have formed fresh matter of complaint, and a new ground for declining her demands." This final reply of the English court was in justification of the declaration made by her the previous month, as follows: "If at any time hereafter the Berlin and Milan decrees shall, by some authentic act of the French government, publicly promulgated, be expressly and unconditionally revoked, then the order in council of the 7th of January, 1807, shall be revoked."
To make amends for past grievances against America must have been the incentive of France in abolishing her decrees, but it may well be doubted that England was to share any of the benefits of this measure, inas- much as the two countries were still at war with each other. That the ambiguous demeanor of France toward England in this affair grew out of a desire to bring about a war between England and the United States was evident, from the arch diplomacy which preceded it, healing, as it did, the differences between their own nations. Meantime, the late official action of the British had indefinitely postponed the time when she would repeal her laws against the rights of neutrals; and notwithstanding the New England people were in favor of peace, the tenacity of the British in adhering to their orders turned the scale.
The United States were now relieved from complica- tions with France, and inasmuch as England had given no encouragement that her rigid restrictions on our commerce or her unjust impressment of American sea- men would be discontinued, the United States hesi- tated no longer, and declared war against England June 18th, 1812.
That the declaration was premature, inasmuch as the United States had made no preparation for war, the disastrous results of the first campaign fully proved ;
370
The Issue of the War.
and yet, to add to the complexity of our position, the declaration might have been made with equal propriety any time within the four years previous, but for our complications with France. Never before in the history of enlightened nations did such a juxta, as well as absurd issue, result in war. The sword was drawn to. fight England under a just sense of resentment for grievous practices that she (England) was willing to apologize for, as well as to discontinue, but would not condescend to enter into a treaty to do so. The sum- ming up of the cause between the two nations centered in the following two points: First, as to the impress- ment of American seamen, which England gave our commissioners, Mr. Monroe and Mr. Pinckney, assur- ance should be discontinued. Second, the English orders in council against our commerce, which England offered to revoke as soon as Napoleon should revoke the decrees of Berlin and Milan, an act which the United States contended had already been executed, and which act only lacked a bit of red tape (to use a. metaphor) to satisfy the English ministers.
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