Oft-Overlooked War of 1812 Forged American Heroes

On May 27, 1813, more than a dozen ships of the United States Navy knifed through the early morning fog that cloaked the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Among the thousands of soldiers and sailors crowding their decks, none was more anxious to prove himself in the coming operation than the American colonel in charge of it. He was magnificent specimen of a warrior — six-and-a-half feet in height, with a deep chest and graceful carriage. His narrow, penetrating eyes and prominent nose gave him the visage of a predatory bird.
During Winfield Scott’s first taste of battle several months earlier, however, he’d been the prey. Shortly after the War of 1812 began, a bungled invasion of Canadian territory near Niagara Falls resulted in the capture of a thousand Americans, including Scott. Freed in a prisoner exchange, Scott resolved to help America wrest full control of the Niagara region. Working with another young officer eager to establish his reputation, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry of the U.S. Navy, Scott planned one of the first large-scale amphibious assaults in American history.
It succeeded. And Winfield Scott showed that he was no mere strategist content to scribble plans in a tent. Scrambling out of one of the first boats to make landfall on May 27, 1813, Scott drew his sword to parry a thrust from a British bayonet while barking orders to his blue-coated regulars wading ashore. Later, as Scott led them towards their target, British-held Fort George at the mouth of the Niagara River, a massive explosion knocked him flat and broke his collarbone. He rose and pressed on. They took the fort.
 Scott: 'The Greatest Living Soldier'
Winfield Scott became one of America’s greatest war heroes. During the Mexican War, his dazzling 1847 campaign to capture Mexico City — a campaign that also began with an audacious amphibious operation — prompted the awestruck Duke of Wellington, reading newspaper accounts from England, to call Scott “the greatest living soldier.” Yet his brilliant military career began in the midst of an ill-conceived war carried out by an ill-prepared country with ill-defined goals.
 Just as a thick fog obscured Winfield Scott’s approach from the British defenders of Fort George, the thick blanket of complexity and ambiguity around the War of 1812 keeps many people from seeing its historical importance. Although President James Madison and other leaders blundered badly in believing that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, acquiring Canada would be “a mere matter of marching,” the seemingly inconclusive war set the United States on a clear course to preeminence in the Americas and parity among the great powers. Historian Walter Borneman memorably described the conflict as “the war that forged a nation.”
 In his magisterial work, "The Americans," Daniel Boorstin explored one of its underappreciated consequences: the creation of the country’s first true hero culture. “Feeling more themselves more secure” after fighting the mighty British empire to a draw, he wrote, Americans began to “look on themselves with a new detachment” which is “required for the heroic.” Winfield Scott was only one of many American warriors catapulted to prominence by their service.
Meet heroes of War of 1812
Here are some examples:
Andrew Jackson: Although the future president was already a public figure before war with Britain erupted in 1812 — having served as a prosecutor, congressman, supreme court judge, and U.S. senator from Tennessee — his command of the successful 1813-14 campaign against the British-allied Red Stick Creeks in Georgia and Alabama made him a national hero even before his famous victory in the Jan. 8, 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
Davy Crockett.: After serving as a scout under General Jackson, the flamboyant and charismatic David Crockett (as he preferred to be called) embarked on a political career in Tennessee that included stints as a local official, state legislator, and congressman. A master of the “tall talk” style of frontier braggadocio, Crockett was transformed from folk hero to mythic martyr at the Alamo.
Sam Houston: Jackson’s southern campaign culminated with the March 27, 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Among its American casualties was Lieutenant Sam Houston, one of the first soldiers to breach the Red Stick fortifications. Wounded in the arm, shoulder, and groin, he miraculously survived to launch his own political career in Tennessee, including stints as congressman and governor. Driven to drink and exile by a failed marriage, Houston also found redemption during the Texas revolution, becoming the new republic’s first governor and, later, the new state’s U.S. senator.
Oliver Hazard Perry: Only 27-years-old when the war began, Perry was made commander of the American squadron on Lake Erie. It was a notional command at first, given the limited resources at his disposal, but by the fall of 1813 Perry has managed to assemble enough ships and crews to challenge British control of the pivotal waterway. At the Sept. 10, 1813 Battle of Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio, the American squadron achieved total victory, prompting Perry to write these famous words: “We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.”
William Henry Harrison:  The general to whom Perry sent that message, future president William Henry Harrison, might otherwise have ended the War of 1812 as a frustrated mediocrity. Although technically the victor of the battle of Tippecanoe, which predated the war but involved a long-simmering conflict with the British-allied confederacy of Chief Tecumseh, Harrison lost many men. His forces also suffered early setbacks at Tecumseh’s hands during the ensuing war. But when Perry’s naval victory severed the British supply line across Lake Erie, British and Indian forces were forced to abandon Michigan and retreat into Canada, where Harrison delivered them a decisive defeat at the Oct. 5, 1813 Battle of the Thames.
Zachary Taylor: While many frontier commanders proved inadequate to the task when war broke out, Captain Zachary Taylor wasn’t one of them. With only a few dozen soldiers at his disposal, Taylor won one of America’s first victories in September 1812 by defending a fort near present-day Terre Haute, Indiana from assault by some 600 of Tecumseh’s Indian allies. Like Winfield Scott, Taylor won even greater acclaim for his generalship during the Mexican War and was elected president in 1848, the year that war ended.
War made 'Americans feel more American'
Ironically, while Winfield Scott enjoyed a longer and more illustrious military career than any of them, he was less successful at translating his reputation into political success. Twice passed over for the presidential nomination of the Whig Party, in 1840 and 1848, Scott finally secured it in 1852 only to lose the general election to Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce.
Still, Scott’s half-century of heroic service to the United States serves as a powerful testament to the proposition that the War of 1812 was a crucible within which a durable tradition of American heroism was forged. Albert Gallatin, Madison’s treasury secretary, recognized its import as early as 1816. “The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessened,” he wrote. “The people are more American; they feel and act more as a nation.”
May we always follow their example.
 
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