Few American settlers in the southwest—or those planning to move there—wanted those lands returned. Yet US forces had little leverage to prevent the British from pressing the issue, and the Madison administration did not wish to resume hostilities. The White House and Capitol remained in blackened ruin from the British destruction of Washington, DC, driving home the appeal of any armistice for top American officials. Loyal Creeks, such as Big Warrior and his followers, hoped to achieve some amiable resolution to the disagreement over their ancestral lands. After all, they stood with whites at the battles of Horseshoe Bend, Fort Bowyer, and New Orleans. Without them, who can say if those victories would have been possible? President Madison agreed, and only Andrew Jackson stood between the loyal Creeks and the return of their land in Alabama and Georgia, as a reward for honorable service.
Andrew Jackson gained lasting fame and captured the imaginations of many Americans on January 8, 1815, in his successful defense of New Orleans from British assault. Here the controversial Major General captured widespread and enduring fame. Sharp-eyed yeoman farmers from America’s thriving West, poor but proud, stared down Europe’s fi nest men, so the quickly spreading story went, and cut them down with superior rifle skill. It is perhaps both ironic and appropriate that Jackson’s victory came nearly two weeks after emissaries at Ghent signed a treaty effectively ending the war, and that he owed his triumph to modern artillery and a racially diverse force of various Indian tribes (including some Alabama Creeks), free blacks, and even middle-class whites, not the poor woodsmen of legend. Americans wanted to believe that plain farmers had left their plows to defeat the invading British, much as they believed their parents had done during the Revolutionary War. In fact, the most “legendary” of these yeomen, immortalized in song as the “Hunters of Kentucky,” ran away. “The Kentucky reinforcements,” Jackson noted after the battle, “in whom so much reliance had been placed, ingloriously fled.” But what does Jackson’s victory at New Orleans reveal about how the eastern portion of the Mississippi territory, soaked in blood and torn by war, at last became Alabama? As it turns out, a good bit. In its First Article, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, stipulated: “All territory, places, and possessions whatsoever taken by either party from the other, during the war, or which may be taken after the signing of this Treaty, excepting only the islands hereinafter mentioned, shall be restored without delay and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any of the artillery or other public property originally captured in the said forts or places.” On the face of it, the language sounds like little more than an attempt to help American and British lawmakers pass the treaty through their respective legislatures. Yet, what of the twenty-three million acres of Creek land ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson? If the treaty were enforced as written, those lands would return to Creek control, just as American conquests in Canada returned to British rule.
Few American settlers in the southwest—or those planning to move there—wanted those lands returned. Yet US forces had little leverage to prevent the British from pressing the issue, and the Madison administration did not wish to resume hostilities. The White House and Capitol remained in blackened ruin from the British destruction of Washington, DC, driving home the appeal of any armistice for top American officials. Loyal Creeks, such as Big Warrior and his followers, hoped to achieve some amiable resolution to the disagreement over their ancestral lands. After all, they stood with whites at the battles of Horseshoe Bend, Fort Bowyer, and New Orleans. Without them, who can say if those victories would have been possible? President Madison agreed, and only Andrew Jackson stood between the loyal Creeks and the return of their land in Alabama and Georgia, as a reward for honorable service. Comments are closed.
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Becoming Alabama:
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