Almost half of the Representatives who had passed Macon’s Bill No. 2 were not reelected in 1810-11. [1] Instead, a new breed of young politicians took their place. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun were the most prominent. Their reason for war centered on the safety of the western frontier, not on impressment.[2]
As the nation grew, moving westward, pioneers were concerned about their safety. Native American twin brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskswatawa, managed to unite tribes on America’s frontier into a powerful confederacy, threatening new settlements. Tecumseh was the warrior; Tenskwatawa was revered as “The Prophet.” As The Prophet preached a prohibition of liquor among the tribes, Tecumseh organized the tribes’ warriors into a fighting force. Forced off their lands by pioneers, the Shawnee twins established a new headquarters where the Tippecanoe Creek flowed into the Wabash River in Indiana.
Governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, countered the growing threat by recruiting disaffected members of the tribe to negotiate a treaty. The agreement secured three million acres of land in Indiana opening up pioneer settlements within fifty miles of Tecumseh’s headquarters.[3]
Next: How Tecumseh Responded
[1] Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, V. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 402.
[2] Morison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic, 405.
[3] Morison and Commager, Growth of the American Republic, 406.
