This is the major historical and genealogical source for information on the part played by the Mississippi Territory in the campaign against the British and the Creeks during the War of 1812. Mrs. Rowland's detailed historical narrative discusses all the major conflicts in the Mississippi theater, commencing with the Battle of Burnt Corn in July 1813 and the massacre at Fort Mims--which resulted in Andrew Jackson's assumption of command--through the Battle of Horseshoe Bend to the legendary Battle of New Orleans. Of greater genealogical interest, however, the book boasts of "Rolls of Mississippi Commands in the War of 1812," a 76-page section giving the names and ranks of upwards of 7,500 soldiers and officers. The roster is arranged by regiment and battalion and detachment and company, and thereunder alphabetically. Excerpted with permission from Volume IV of "Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society," Mrs. Rowland's book is an authoritative reference compiled from primary sources and transcriptions, photostats of which appear throughout the volume.
Russell P. Strange "Book of the Year" Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012. On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. Split off from Indiana Territory in 1809, the new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. The extreme southern part of the region was rich in timber, but the dominant feature of the landscape was the vast tall grass prairie that stretched without major interruption from Lake Michigan for more than three hundred miles to the south. The territory was largely inhabited by Indians: Sauk, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others. By 1812, however, pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, in which white settlers faced both Indians resistant to their encroachments and British forces poised to seize control of the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes. The war ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Sometimes led by skillful tacticians, at other times by blundering looters who got lost in the tall grass, the combatants showed each other little mercy. Until and even after the war was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. In this engrossing new history, published upon the war's bicentennial, Gillum Ferguson underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences. Endorsed by the Illinois Society of the War of 1812 and the Illinois War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.
The August 30, 1813, massacre at Fort Mims left hundreds dead and ultimately changed the course of American history. The Indian victory shocked and horrified a young America, ushering in a period of violence surrounded by racial and social confusion. Fort Mims became a rallying cry, calling Americans to fight their assailants and avenge the dead. In A Conquering Spirit, Waselkov thoroughly explicates the social climes surrounding this tumultuous moment in early American history with a comprehensive collection of illustrations, artifact photographs, and detailed accounts of every known participant in the attack on Fort Mims. These rich and extensive resources make A Conquering Spirit an invaluable collection for any reader interested in America's frontier era. * Winner of the Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award by the Alabama Library Association* Winner of the Clinton Jackson Coley award from the Alabama Historical Association
Historians have traditionally viewed the Creek War of 1836 as a minor police action centered on rounding up the Creek Indians for removal to Indian Territory. Using extensive archival research, John T. Ellisor demonstrates that in fact the Second Creek War was neither brief nor small. Indeed, armed conflict continued long after peace was declared and the majority of Creeks had been sent west. Ellisor’s study also broadly illuminates southern society just before the Indian removals, a time when many blacks, whites, and Natives lived in close proximity in the Old Southwest. In the Creek country, also called New Alabama, these ethnic groups began to develop a pluralistic society. When the 1830s cotton boom placed a premium on Creek land, however, dispossession of the Natives became an economic priority. Dispossessed and impoverished, some Creeks rose in armed revolt both to resist removal west and to drive the oppressors from their ancient homeland. Yet the resulting Second Creek War that raged over three states was fueled both by Native determination and by economic competition and was intensified not least by the massive government-sponsored land grab that constituted Indian removal. Because these circumstances also created fissures throughout southern society, both whites and blacks found it in their best interests to help the Creek insurgents. This first book-length examination of the Second Creek War shows how interethnic collusion and conflict characterized southern society during the 1830s.
The Battle of New Orleans was the climactic battle of America's "forgotten war" of 1812. Andrew Jackson led his ragtag corps of soldiers against 8,000 disciplined invading British regulars in a battle that delivered the British a humiliating military defeat. The victory solidified America's independence and marked the beginning of Jackson's rise to national prominence. Hailed as "terrifically readable" by the Chicago Sun Times, The Battle of New Orleans is popular American history at its best, bringing to life a landmark battle that helped define the character of the United States.
From Jay Feldmen comes an enlightening work about how the most powerful earthquakes in the history of America united the Indians in one last desperate rebellion, reversed the Mississippi River, revealed a seamy murder in the Jefferson family, and altered the course of the War of 1812. On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God—or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh. That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air. A prophecy by Tecumseh was about to be fulfilled. He had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale. Centered in what is now the bootheel region of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada; New York; New Orleans; Washington, DC; and the western part of the Missouri River. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards. The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. In When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life. Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on this now-obscure yet pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era's dramatic geophysical, political, and military upheavals. Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life—and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is popular history at its best.
The publication of these final two volumes of the Mississippi Provincial Archives brings to a close the important scholarly project initiated by Dunbar Rowland and A. G. Sanders in the 1920s, suspended at the time of the Great Depression, and then revived in 1979 under the editorship of Patricia Kay Galloway. The Mississippi Provincial Archives assembles and translates the documents in French archives relating to military, diplomatic, colonial, and economic activities in the lower Mississippi Valley from the founding of the original settlement at Ocean Springs, or “Old Biloxy,” in 1699 through the abandonment of the French Louisiana colony in 1763 at the close of the French and Indian War with England. The two present volumes focus on the years 1744 through 1763, but also contain material supplemental to the earlier volumes concerning the Natchez War (1730), the first Chickasaw campaign (1736), the second Chickasaw campaign (1739–1740), and additional documents that chart the rise of the Choctaw chief Red Shoe. The twenty-year period chronicled in-depth in Volumes IV and V was a time of intense rivalry with the English for Choctaw trade and allegiance. The documents chronicle the events of King George’s War (1744–1748) and of the concurrent struggle for control within the Choctaw nation that began with the revolt of a large faction led by Red Shoe and expanded into a civil war after the chief’s death at the hands of pro-French Choctaws. The settlement of this conflict was soon followed by the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1756–1763), at the end of which the French were forced to give up their colony—but not before concluding diplomatic arrangements with the Indians that would plague the victorious English for years to come. Mississippi Provincial Archives provides an invaluable source for understanding the history of French and English relations with the Indian nations of the South. But these collections also document many other aspects of the social history of the French colony, including the activities of merchants and other entrepreneurs, the development of the lumber industry along the coast, military justice and the founding of military outposts in the interior, and the relationships between the military governors and their civilian counterparts. Extensively annotated, these two volumes complete—after a delay of more than fifty years—a work of great significance for the study of the French Louisiana colony.
On June 18, 1812, the United States formally declared war for the first time. President James Madison’s call to arms against Great Britain provoked outpourings of patriotic fervor and vigorous—some said treasonous—domestic opposition. Over the next three years the War of 1812 would prove as divisive as it was rich in nationalist myth-making: We have met the enemy, and he is ours . . . Don’t give up the ship! . . . Oh, say can you see . . . . Now, on the bicentennial of a conflict that shaped the future of a continent, here is the first comprehensive collection of eyewitness accounts in over a century. Reflecting several generations of scholarly discoveries, it covers all the theaters of war, from frontier battles in Canada, Michigan, and New York to naval confrontations on the high seas and Great Lakes, from the burning of Washington to the defense of New Orleans. Here are 140 letters, memoirs, poems, songs, editorials, journal entries, and proclamations by more than 100 participants, both famous—Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Tecumseh, Dolley Madison, and the Duke of Wellington, among others—and less well known, such as Laura Secord, the Canadian Paul Revere, and William B. Northcutt, whose remarkable diary provides a common soldier’s view. Features helpful notes, a chronology of the war, and full color endpaper maps.
