Hidden History: The War of 1812

Episode 6: War, Uprising and Southern Solidarity

A New History of the American South

Dr Edward Ayers (2018)

Film Review

I especially enjoyed this lecture as I learned virtually nothing about the War of 1812 in school..

According to Ayers, the US had three main grievances leading up to the War of 1812:

1. The British were seizing US ships and conscripting US sailors to fight with the British Navy against Napoleon.
2. The British refused to evacuate the forts they lost in the Revolutionary War as agreed in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
3. The British were supporting Native Americans on the western frontier in attacking American settlers.

According to Ayers, the British believed the Americans, who achieved no decisive battles, only won the Revolutionary War by default – when Britain pulled their troops to deploy them in European wars.

The US was divided about a new war on Britain. The southern and southwestern territories, led by Speaker of the House Henry Clay, believed the war was necessary to get Native Americans “under control” and open western territories to settlement. East Coast commercial and maritime interests opposed it.

Shortly after declaring war, the US experienced one military defeat after the other. The British successfully blockaded the entire US coast line (except for New England*). Things worsened in 1814, after Britain defeated Napoleon in Europe and engaged their entire military force against America.

The Seminoles (of whom 10% were escaped African American slaves) and a coalition of Shawnees, Choctaws, Cherokees, escaped slaves and dissident Creeks (known** allied themselves with the British (and Spanish***) under the warrior Tecumseh. Escaped slaves formally adopted by the Seminoles inspired them with stories of the 1791 revolution in Haiti in which African slaves won their freedom by driving white settlers out of the country.

The course of the war turned in favor of the Americans after Tennessee militia leader Andrew Jackson defeated the British in Mobile in 1814. When the British attacked New Orleans in January 1815 (which, according to Ayers, was a tactical area as the region mainly wetlands and extreme difficult to navigate by ship or on foot), Jackson assembled a motley force (5700) of army regulars, Virginia and Tennessee militia, pirates and Creeks to defend the city against 8000 British Red Coats.

Stalling in signing a peace treat at Ghent, the British capitulated on learning of their defeat at New Orleans. Jackson went on to attack the Seminoles in 1818. Mississippi came under US control in 1819. Georgia militias fought Spanish, Creeks, British and Seminoles along the Florida border until 1820.

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*Owing to New England’s opposition to the war, the British hoped the northern states would secede from the US and resume their status as British colonies.

**Ayers uses about a third of the lecture to explain to explain extreme divisions occurring among the Cree tribes. Following the Revolutionary War, powerful Creek leaders in western Georgia, most of Alabama and northern Florida accumulated (by collaborating with European settlers) large private properties, cattle and slaves. Encouraging Creek women to learn to spin, they developed a textile industry that shipped cotton to the Gulf Coast. Infuriated by the bribery and corruption of their leaders, rebel “Redstrick” Creeks raided the farms of their wealthy leaders, killing their cattle and destroying their spinning wheels. In the resulting civil war, 15 percent of the Creeks lost their lives, as towns were destroyed and deforestation of deer hunting grounds led to mass starvation. Those who survived were forced to sign a treaty handing over 23 million acres (50% of all Creek-owned real estate) to the US government. This amounted to 3/5 of the modern state of Alabama and 1/5 of the modern state of Georgia.

***When US forces invaded Spanish-held land (Florida) in 1812, the Spanish fought to protect their holdings, teaming up with the British in the process. Spain didn’t formally cede Florida to the US until 1819.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/war-uprising-and-southern-solidarity

The Constitution Did Not Create a Democracy

A Skeptics Guide to American History

Episode 3 The Constitution Did Not Create a Democracy

Dr Mark A Stoler

Film Review

I find it extremely ironic how little I know about early US history despite studying it every year in social studies between age 10 and 16. In fact, I was surprised how much new information I gleaned from this presentation.

On the downside, Stoler isn’t nearly as skeptical as I had hoped. While he reminds us that the most democratically minded of the founding fathers (Patrick Henry, Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson) were excluded from the secret 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he fails to mention that the men who wrote the Constitution were merchants, bankers, traders and land speculators with the primary goal of protecting their business interests.

Between 1776 and 1781, the Second Continental Congress governed the newly independent US. From 1781-89, the country was governed by the Congress of the Confederation, whose founding document was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were first were presented to the states in 1777. However owing to early colonists’ extreme distrust of central government, they weren’t fully ratified (by the required nine states) until 1781.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the new government successfully negotiated the Treaty of Paris (ending the War of Independence) in 1783 and passed the Northwest Ordinance. The latter provided for all federal land west of the Appalachians, east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River to be surveyed and sold for $1 per acre and required the new territories to guarantee trial by jury, freedom of religion and to prohibit slavery.

Stoler claims the main weakness of the Articles was their failure to give the Congress of the Confederation the authority to issue money, tax or establish a standing army.* In arguing the importance of a standing army, he seems to side with the imperialist ambitions of wealthy merchants and land speculators eager to seize western lands occupied by Native Americans.

He acknowledges that Shay’s Rebellion was the likely the main impetus behind the Constitutional Convention. However he also implies the farmers (the vast majority of the population) who participated in the rebellion as “anarchists” who “threatened tyranny from below.” In fact, he makes no mention whatsoever of the corrupt banking practices that led to Shay’s Rebellion,**

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*In my view these are strengths, rather than weaknesses. Thomas Jefferson (deliberately excluded from the Constitutional Convention) strongly opposed the creation of a standing army during peacetime. See http://thomasjeffersonleadership.com/blog/thomas-jefferson-on-the-danger-of-a-standing-army/

**When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the farmers who served in the Continental Army returned home to find their discharge pay (in British pounds) was worthless. All 13 states were on the verge of economic collapse, due to heavy war debts they owed European banks. 80% of the prison population in Western Massachusetts (where Daniel Shay had his farm) were there for non-payment of debts. Determined to keep their economies from collapsing, many states issued paper money to allow trade to continue. The colony’s bankers, fearing the inflation risk of paper money, demanded, above all, that the new constitution immediately strip states of the power of money creation. Ironically, although the US Constitution gives Congress the sole power to create money, Congress quickly handed this power over to private banks – where it remains to the present day.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/constitution-did-not-create-democracy

Hidden History: There Were 15 (not 13) Colonies in the Revolutionary War

The Lost History of America

First Documentary (2018)

Film Review

This documentary traces the hidden history of St Augustine (Florida), the first permanent European settlement in North America. It was founded in 1565 by Spanish colonists, 42 years before the English founded Jamestown (Virginia), the first “official” North American colony. History textbooks gloss over the fact that England had 15, not 13 North American colonies at the time of The Revolutionary War. They always neglect to mention East and West Florida (which were transferred from Spain to England by the 1763 Treaty of Paris. For two main reasons 1) because the Florida colonies fought for the British rather than the colonists and 2) because under Spanish rule, both East and West Florida outlawed slavery and offered sanctuary to runaway slaves.

After the war, the US ceded East and West Florida to Spain as a reward for Spanish financial and military support. However the land came the condition, imposed by Secretary of State (and slaveholder) Thomas Jefferson, that both colonies would cease to provide sanctuary for slaves from northern states.

The Seminole tribes ignored Jefferson and continued to shelter runaway slaves in Florida swamps where slave catchers couldn’t pursue them.

In 1812, the governor of Georgia raised a private army, assisted by the US Navy, to invade Florida in a military action known as the Patriot’s War. A coalition of Seminoles and freed slaves attacked the new plantations opened up by northern settlers, burned them and freed their slaves. In 1818 General Andrew Jackson launched the infamous Seminole War in retaliation.

In 1821, Spain officially ceded Florida to the US, forcing most of the free African families who had founded St Augustine to flee to the Bahamas – where the British had banned slavery.