Camp Blount Volunteer Days Gets Underway in Tennessee This Weekend-- Part 1: Played a Major Role in the War of 1812

From the September 28, 2021, Elk Valley Times (Tennessee) "Camp Blount Volunteer  Days gets underway Friday and Saturday" by Lora Scripps.

Members of the Camp Blount Historic Site  Association are getting ready for the first Camp Blount Volunteer Day set for this Friday and Saturday, October 1 and 2.  It will be held on the site of the historic Camp Blount in Tennessee.

The camp was located on the banks of the Elk River, just a little over a half mile south of downtown Fayetteville and is the site where Gen. Andrew Jackson mustered troops for the Creek  Indian War in October of 1813 during the War of 1812.

The muster of volunteers back then was the beginning of a campaign that culminated  in the Creeks defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Nine months later, Tennesseans again mustered at Camp Blount under Jackson and marched to New Orleans where they took part in the Battle of New Orleans, the final defeat of the British in the war.

--Brock-Perry

An American Spy (for the British)-- Part 3: A New Exhibit

Keith Herkalo did 18 months of research on Cadwallader R. Colden and found that Colden was a British loyalist, a regular at the racetracks and lacked a lot of skills.  Herkado termed him  an overall "schmuck."

Colden's story, along with  the fate of the British fleet from the Battle of Plattsburgh, is now the latest exhibit in the War of 1812 Museum in Plattsburgh.

The guy hid in plain sight for over 200 years.  Nobody knew what he had done.

The museum's exhibit features plaques retelling Colden's story, including his influential mother who wrote to early American figures like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and a new display made from walking sticks made from British warships at the Battle of Plattsburgh.

Looks like I am going to have to do some research myself about this act of treason Colden was going to initiate.

--Brock-Perry

An American Spy (for the British)-- Part 2: Will the Real C.D.C. Please Stand Up

The letter was written in disappearing ink and it was initialed, not signed.  The Clements Library at the University of Michigan identified the initials as belonging to  Cadwallader D. Colden, who, according to the library, was  an American militia colonel and former lieutenant governor of New York.

Keith Herkalo found that he wasn't the lieutenant governor, his grandfather was.

He found more discrepancies in the story and started tracing the Colden family and found that  they were indeed rich and influential.  He then took a closer look at the initialed letters and decided that they weren't C.D.C., but C.R.C.

So, the person in question was Cadwallader R. Colden.

So, then Herkalo did another 18 months of research into Cadawallader R. Colden.

Getting to the Bottom of This.  --Brock-Perry

An American Spy (for the British) in the War of 1812-- Part 1

From the September 27, 2021,  Press-Republican " 'In plain sight':  New museum exhibit reveals American spy in War of 1812" by Fernando Alba.

Keith Herkalo, president of the War of 1812 Museum in Plattsburgh, New York, was looking over some documents  from the University of Michigan when he saw something of great interest.  It was from an American merchant to a British merchant in Montreal after the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814.

The merchant wanted to move his goods north into the St. Lawrence River and then on to Halifax in Canada.  The letter was sent just three months after a British invasion had been turned  back at the Battle of Plattsburgh.

Only, that letter was treason since the U.S. had an embargo on.  The merchant was in New York City and wanted to "go around" the embargo and make some money.

But, he would need  support from someone in the British government for safe passage.

So. Who Was This War of 1812 American Spy and What Info Did he Give the British?  --Brock-Perry

Camp Perry Receives Federal Funds

From the September 21, 2021, Sandusky (Ohio) Register by Andy  Ouriel.

Camp Perry, located near Port Clinton, Ohio was the primary training center for the Ohio National Guard for much of the 1900s.  It was established in 1907 and named for Oliver Hazard Perry, a naval War of 1812 hero.

Ohio State's Controlling Board recently  approved $271,000 in federal funding request for Camp Perry and its historical lighting project.

I will be writing more about Camp Perry in my Cooter's History Thing Blog.

Oliver Hazard Perry is the Perry in my signoff.

--Brock-Perry

James Wilkinson: Military Hero or Traitor?

From the September 21, 2021, We  Are the Mighty "4 American traitors more destructive than Benedict Arnold" by Team Mighty.

James Wilkinson was one of the most trusted soldiers in American history, serving in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812.  He took on the role of governor of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and became  one of the Army's most senior officers.

There were many problems with Wilkinson's service, but the foremost among them was that he had been spying for the Spanish most of the time.

When his role in Aaron Burr's own treason was discovered, he placed New Orleans under martial law and imprisoned anyone who might be able to prove Wilkinson was complicit in the plot.

Wilkinson was never caught in his own lifetime, but his papers were discovered in 1854, leading  Theodore Roosevelt to say, "In all our history,  there is no more despicable character."

--Brock-Perry

Vergennes Shipwrights Played Role in Battle of Lake Champlain-- Part 7: A Complete and Total American Victory

During the battle, the massive broadsides of both fleets could be heard as far away as Highgate, on the Canadian-Vermont border.  Macdonough's superior tactics won the day.

He anchored his ships in a way that allowed him to swing his vessels quickly to fire a second  broadside at the British  line of ships.  This means that the Americans would fire a broadside and then the ship would swing around so that the guns on the other side of the ship could then fire a broadside and rake the British ships.

So, for every one broadside the British fired, the Americans would get in two.

The tactic worked to a devastating effect.  In a battle that lasted barely two hours, Macdonough captured the entire British fleet except its swift gunboats, which were able to flee.

The American victory proved to be a turning point in the war.  Having lost the support of the British fleet, the British Army had its supply line threatened and commenced a retreat back to Canada.

The war in North America officially ended  in December 14, 1814, with the Treaty of Ghent, although news of the treaty did not reach America until  weeks afterwards.

Naval historian and future British prime minister Winston Churchill later called the Battle of Plattsburgh, sometimes called the Battle of Lake Champlain, "the most decisive engagement of the war."

If not for the work of the shipwrights at Vergennes, the outcome of this decisive  engagement might have turned out differently.

--Brock-Perry

Vergennes Shipwrights Played Vital Role in Battle of Lake Champlain-- Part 6: A Fairly Even Battle

When the American and British navies met in Plattsburgh Bay (also called Cumberland Bay), the British had a slight advantage in terms of number of ships and guns aboard them.  But the work done at Otter Creek made it a fair fight.

The British shipwrights had had to rush their work to prepare for this battle.  In fact, work aboard the HMS Confiance was still underway when it was launched.  According to one account, the frigate had to stop at Cumberland Head, in Plattsburgh Bay, to drop off the last  of the carpenters aboard before the battle.

Brock-Perry

Shipwrights in Vergennes Were Key to Battle of Champlain-- Part 5: A Naval Arms Race on the Lake

Learning of the new larger threat of the HMS Confiance, Macdonough pleaded with the Navy to build another large ship.  Navy Secretary William Jones rejected this request saying there was not enough money.  However, President James Madison intervened.

This time, the Navy hired Adam Brown, Noah Brown's brother, who brought along with him about 200 shipwrights.  In just 19 days, they built the Eagle, a 120-foot long, 20-gun brig and launched it on August 11,  two weeks before the Confiance was launched.

The Browns and their bands of shipwrights were invaluable to the American cause, as was proven on September  11, 1814.

At the time, the British had troops invading south along the New York side of Lake Champlain and many of those troops were in the Plattsburgh area.  The British commander wanted to wait for the Royal Navy to defeat Macdonough's ships before storming Plattsburgh. (Plattsburgh with an "h" at the end of it because  that's the most common way the Battle of Plattsburgh is described.)

--Brock-Perry

Shipwrights in Vergennes Were Key to Battle of Lake Champlain-- Part 4: Battle at Fort Cassin and the HMS Confiance

The British learned from spies the position of Macdonough's shipyard.  Alarmed by the extent of the American shipbuilding effort,  they sent a small fleet in May 1814 to land a detachment of  more than 150 soldiers.  British vessels intended to blockade the river to prevent Macdonough's fleet from living, while soldiers would   march to the falls to burn the American fleet.

But, Macdonough anticipated the British move and had an earthwork named Fort Cassin constructed at the mouth of Otter Creek. For an hour and a half, the fort traded cannon shots with the British ships. American marksmen positioned themselves on the shore to ward off any attempted troop landing.  The British withdrew.

Unwilling to be outgunned, the British set to work on a large warship at their shipyard at Ile Aux Noix on the Richilieu.  The ship was named HMS Confiance and was designed to carry 37 guns and remains the largest warship ever in service on Lake Champlain.

--Brock-Perry

Shipwrights in Vergennes Were Key to Battle of Lake Champlain-- Part 3:

In a mere 40 days, for example, they built a 143-foot-long, 26-gun frigate named the USS Saratoga, to serve as Macdonough's flagship.

To give Noah Brown and his men a head start on a second vessel, Macdonough purchased  the completed hull of a merchant steamship under construction in the yard.  Macdonough decided to convert it into a sailing vessel.  It was a safer  course of action as  steam power was notoriously  unreliable and never used in battle at the time.

Macdonough had Brown use the steamer's hull as part of a 120-foot sailing  schooner which was armed with 17 guns and christened the USS Ticonderoga.

The shipwrights also built  six 70-ton row galleys, each measuring about 75 feet in length.  These each were armed with two large cannons.

The galleys were named the Viper, Nettle, Allen, Borer, Burrow and Centipede (the latter perhaps because of its appearance when using the oars).

Once work was completed, Brown and his workers returned to New York.

Shipwrights in Vergennes Were Key to Battle of Lake Champlain-- Part 2: On to Noah Brown and Otter Creek

The two American sloops lost to the British on July 3, 1813, were the USS Growler and USS Eagle, each with 11 guns.

Subtracting those two sloops from the American side and adding them to the British essentially gave them control of Lake Champlain.

The U.S. Navy authorized Thomas Macdonough to spend the money needed to bolster  his Lake Champlain fleet.  When winter came in 1813, he moved his ships six miles up Otter Creek from its delta on Lake Champlain, where they would be safer from naval attack from the British.

There, below the falls of Vergennes, Macdonough took over and expanded an existing commercial shipyard.  The location was ideal.  It was near forests that could provide plenty of lumber, and furnaces and forges that produced iron.

The Navy hired shipbuilder Noah Brown of New York City to supervise the shipyard.  The work accomplished in just a few months by Brown and the more than 100 workers he brought with him is staggering.

--Brock-Perry

Shipwrights in Vergennes Key to Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814-- Part 1

From the September 12, 2021, Vermont Digger  "Then Again:  Shipwrights in Vergennes were key to critical 1814 battle" by Mark Bushnell.

September 11, 1814, was the day Americans won a critical engagement in the War of 1812 called the Battle of Lake Champlain.  The British lost that battle and the war turned out to be essentially a draw, but it might have been a different conclusion had they won at the fight.

And, this victory was in large part because of the prodigious work  of an accomplished naval shipyard  on the banks of Otter Creek.  This place built the vessels that helped repel the British invasion on Lake Champlain. 

As it had in the American Revolution, Lake Champlain played a vital role in the military strategy of the conflict.  American commanders knew that the British would likely use the lake as an invasion path. 

Twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Macdonough was given a really small fleet of ships to stop the British.  Under his command  were six sloops and two 40-ton row galleys.  This small fleet was further diminished  in July 1813, when two of the sloops ventured too far up the Richelieu River at the north end of the lake and were seized by British forces, who repaired the damage they did to them and began using them against the Americans.

--Brock-Perry

Interviews with First Responders Told the Story of 9/11

From the September 10, 2021, Chicago Tribune.

Karen Lamanna was a paramedic on an EMS unit summoned from the Bronx.  She and her partner got separated amid the confusion of Manhattan's unfamiliar streets.  But she made her way to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal where she heard pleasure craft and tugs were arriving.

She bandaged civilian victims before they were ferried to hospitals on Staten Island or New Jersey.

"A lot of firefighters wanted to be treated, and they went right back to the scene," Lamanna recalled.  "There was just no way of keeping them out."

When things slowed down, Lamanna was able to phone a friend and try to locate her partner.  Two days later, they met and exchanged hugs.

Liz and My 9/11 Experience

Every September 11, I take time out on all my blogs to remember this day.

Liz was at Ellis  Elementary School in Round Lake Beach, Illinois,  teaching 3rd graders when she was told about what had happened and was told not to say anything about it for fear her students wouldn't know what was going on and get afraid.

I found out about what happened between 1st and 2nd periods at John T. Magee Middle School in Round Lake, Illinois, as I was watching the hallway during passing time.  A fellow teacher came down the hall and was quietly telling teachers about what was happening.

That was it for my plans for the day.  The rest of that day was spent listening to the radio after I was unable to get anything on my TV.  I would locate the places on a map in the room (I taught social studies, so, of course, had lots of maps) and talked about how the the hard feelings between Arabs and non-Arabs goes back to the Roman times.

We spent the next several days talking about it and I had the students write 500 word reports on their experience since I told them this was, in effect, their Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination.

Southwest Georgia Played Key Role in War of 1812-- Part 3: Forts, Fort Mims, Battle of Horseshoe Bend and Negro Fort

Not only was a trail hewed from the Wilderness, but Gen. David Blackshear also built a series of forts along that trail:  Fort Telfair, Fort Twiggs, Fort Jackson, Fort Pike, Fort Mitchell, Fort Green Fort Lawrence, Fort Adams, Fort Clark and Fort McIntosh.

Other forts in the region included  Fort Gaines, Fort Mitchel, Fort Morgan and Fort Scott.

Military action in the region began on August 30, 1813, when a war party of Creek Indians under Spanish and English influence, attacked  Fort Mims in what is now in Alabama and 500  mostly white settlers were killed.  In retaliation, Gen. Andrew Jackson would lead his Tennessee volunteers with the aid of Cherokee warriors, killing around  800 Creeks in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Another battle of note which highlighted the alliances formed during the War of 1812 would take place on the Apalachicola River at a fortification called British Fort, but more commonly known as Negro Fort.  There, the British enlisted runaway slaves and Indians to harass the white settlers of the region.

--Brock-Perry

Southwest Georgia Played a Key Role in the War-- Part 2: The Blackshear Trail and Andrew Jackson

Much of the defense of Georgia's south border fell to General David Blackshear, who was instructed to construct a series of  fortifications for that purpose.  Blackshear, like many who fought in the War of 1812, had gained military experience during the American Revolution.  He had been at an early engagement of that war at Moore's Creek Bridge in North Carolina.

After the war, he became a surveyor, moving to Springfield in Laurens County, Georgia, settling on a land grant he received for his Revolution service. 

After war was declared in June 18, 1812, he returned to military service and was authorized to construct 11 forts along Georgia's southern and western borders.

The first clue to this effort he made can be found on a Georgia historical marker on Highway 300 in  Crisp County.  It reads:  "Blackshear Trail. made by General David Blackshear during the War of 1812, was used by General Andrew Jackson when he led  his troops from Fort Hawkins, near Macon,  through Hartford, now Hawkinsville, to Fort Early in 1818.

"The section was roadless except for this and a few Indian trails.  General Jackson used it in his campaign against the Seminole and Creek Indians.  The Battle of Skin Cypress Pond was fought on the Blackshear Trail.  During the battle, three  U.S. soldiers and a number if Indians were killed.

"They were buried at the site in unmarked graves."

--Brock-Perry

Southwest Georgia Played a Key Role in the War of 1812-- Part 1: The Causes of the War

 From the September 7, 2021, Albany (Georgia) Herald by Tom Seegmueller.

Sometimes referred to as America's Second War for Independence, the War of 1812 was fought against Britain and its Canadian and Indian allies.  Many Americans know about the battles along the country's northern borders, the iconic naval battles, the burning of the White House, Battle of Fort McHenry and Andrew Jackson victory at the Battle of New Orleans (after the war was over).

One of the primary reasons often cited as a reason for the war was the impressment of American sailors into the British Navy, estimated to have been as high as 15,000.

There is also proof that the British were stirring up the Indians, who were increasingly fearful of American encroachment on their lands.

Florida was under Spanish control at the time and that too was a threat to the U.S., especially in the state of Georgia.

--Brock-Perry

This Month in the War of 1812: Two Big Naval Victories and 'The Star-Spangled Banner'

From the September 2021 American Battlefield Trust calendar.

These events took place in September during America's "Forgotten War."  I say it's not so forgotten.

SEPTEMBER 10, 1813

Battle of Lake Erie, Ohio  "We have met the enemy...."

SEPTEMBER 11, 1814

Battle of Lake Champlain, New York

SEPTEMBER  12, 1814

Battle of North Point, Maryland

SEPTEMBER 13, 1814

Bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland

--Brock-Perry

This Month in the American Revolution: A Treaty, Saratoga, Nathan Hale and Yorktown

From the American Battlefield Trust 2021 Calendar, September.  Since this was the First War for American Independence and the War of 1812 is sometimes called the Second War for American Independence.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1783-- The Treaty of Paris was signed, bringing the American revolution to an end.

SEPTEMBER 19, 1777--  After a series of defeats,  Continental soldiers fighting under  American General Horatio Gates defeated the British at Saratoga, New York.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1776--  American patriot Nathan Hale was hanged for spying on the British.  As he was led to the gallows, he uttered the famous words:  "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

SEPTEMBER 28, 1781--  The Siege of Yorktown, Virginia begins.

--Brock-Perry