Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

It is needless to say that no fine sense of right and justice existed either in the mind of the white land-grabber or in that of his red antagonist. Many unlawful invasions of the Indian lands were made. Moreover, many of the fur-traders along the Wabash were of the lowest type of humanity. They employed any and all means to cheat and defraud the Indians by the barter and sale of cheap trinkets and bad whiskey and often violated every principle of honesty and fair-dealing. This kind of conduct on the part of the settlers and traders furnished ample justification in the mind of the ignorant savage for the making of reprisals. Many horses were stolen by them and often foul murders were committed by the more lawless element. This horse-stealing and assassination led in turn to counter-attacks on the part of the whites. In time, these acts of violence on the part of the vicious element in both races spread hate and enmity in every direction.17

William Henry Harrison, the son of Benjamin Harrison, signatory to the Declaration of Independence, was the governor of the Indiana Territories, appointed to this post originally by second president John Adams and renewed in it by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. While he also speculated in land himself, his job was to acquire rights to as much Indian land as he could as an agent of the US government. He proved a master at taking advantage of—or recognizing that—the Indians had scant notion of themselves as landowners. In 1805, for instance, he secured control over an astounding 51 million acres, constituting a substantial portion of what are today Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

Harrison, a lifetime soldier, frequently went out of his way to stir up fear regarding the threat posed to prospective settlers by the combined interests of the Indians and the British. His role in acquiring land on behalf of the government played a central part in the instigation of President Madison’s expressed concern about the Indian “savages” that was crucial to the US declaration of war in 1812.

To see the linkage between Harrison’s land acquisition, western settler interests, and the War of 1812, it is useful to take a look at the Treaty of Fort Wayne concluded in 1809 between Harrison and the alleged chiefs of several Indian tribes. In exchange for the nearly 3 million acres of Indian land handed over in this treaty and in keeping with a policy first established by President Jefferson, “the said United States being desirous that the Indian tribes should participate in the benefits to be derived . . . hereby engage to deliver yearly and every year for the use of the said Indians, a quantity of salt not exceeding one hundred and fifty bushels, and which shall be divided among the several tribes in such manner as the general council of the chiefs may determine.” This annuity, in the terms of the time, meant that the US government agreed to annual payments of $500 to the Delaware, Miami, and Potawatomie tribes as well as $250 to the Eel River tribe.18

Harrison apparently was unconcerned whether the chiefs who signed the treaty represented the Indians who actually lived on the land in question. This would not be the first or last time he exploited Indians, although he stated, “This is the first request that your new Father [Madison] has ever made of you and it will be the last, he wants no more of your land.”19 Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader, rejected Harrison’s treaty on the grounds that those who signed it were not the chiefs of those whose land was covered by the treaty. He formed a confederation of tribes to resist the growing pressure of settlers. In response, Harrison took about a thousand troops to destroy the Indian’s principal village, known variously as Prophetstown and Tippecanoe. Forewarned of Harrison’s intention, Tecumseh attacked with his much smaller force of about five hundred warriors and succeeded in destroying about one fifth of Harrison’s force. Still, Harrison succeeded in sacking the village. Later Tecumseh and his confederation fought alongside Britain in the War of 1812. He was killed in the Battle of the Thames in 1813. The shattering of his confederacy removed the last serious Indian impediment to US westward expansion and was, therefore, a critical contributor to the interest of the leaders of America’s second war of independence in ridding themselves of the Indian “savages.”

The 1812 Second War of American Expansion

ONCE CONGRESS HAD DECLARED WAR, BY ALL APPEARANCES PRESIDENT Madison did not actually want to fight the war he had asked for. No sooner had war been declared than he sent a delegation to negotiate peace. The British representative to the United States, Augustus Foster, reported, after visiting Madison following the declaration of war, that

the President was white as a sheet and very naturally felt all the responsibility he would incur. He was, too, believed by many to have been much disappointed at the Senate’s decision. A day or two afterwards, as I affected to know nothing of the Declaration, I received an invitation to call on Mr. Monroe [Madison’s then secretary of state and later his secretary of war and the fifth president of the United States] when he put it into my hands with many expressions of regret and of hope that matters would soon be again arranged, which I believe for his part he very sincerely desired. He also intimated to me that Mr. Madison would be glad if I would call upon him which I immediately did; he assured me that he would use his best endeavours to prevent any serious collision and appeared to wish to impress me with an idea that the war would be but nominal.20

Naturally, given both Madison’s reluctance and the reality that the United States possessed woefully inadequate military capabilities compared to those of the British navy and army, the British thought that actual hostilities were unlikely.21 Nevertheless, fighting ensued and the war was on.

Given his reluctance, why did Madison support and why did Congress declare war on Britain? We begin our answer speculatively and then, in the remainder of this chapter, work our way through the evidence that seems fully consistent with our speculation. As we have seen, while the British may have thought the real issues were impressment and the Orders in Council, both of which were largely rectified before fighting began, the motivation for war among the congressional War Hawks was territorial expansion and removal of the Indians from the frontier, opening the land to exploitation by American settlers. Why, then, did Madison emphasize, at the outset, the maritime grievances regarding impressment and interference with trade, grievances that little affected the voters who backed the Republican majority in Congress or that had elected him in 1808?

Madison, as an architect of the Constitution, believed deeply in crafting a strong office of president. His ideas about the executive however were hemmed in by other elements that shaped his thinking, especially regarding questions of war. First, the motivation for structuring the Constitution was to escape what he understood to be the inability of the nation to make policy under the crippling Articles of Confederation, the precursor to the Constitution. The president of the first American government, the Continental Congress, was a mostly inconsequential figure with no executive authority. So, on the one hand, Madison sought to create a presidency with substantially more authority than existed under the Articles. On the other hand, he decidedly did not want a presidency with such power that the holder of that office would rival an “absolute” monarch in authority. Madison wanted a president who had real authority but was subject to checks and balances as created by the separation of powers. On no subject was this separation of powers of greater significance than in the authority to commit the nation to war. Here Madison insisted on congressional authority—not merely oversight, but genuine and exclusive authority to declare war.