In preparation for the upcoming John Sevier Days: War Hawk and Hero, a War of 1812 special event, we have a two part blog series on the history of John Sevier's role during this oft forgotten war. Please plan to join us Saturday, September 23 from 9:00am to 4:00pm as we recognize John Sevier's achievements in the latter days of his life.
Part
I
On a rainy Friday morning in November, after a long
journey on horseback from his home in Tennessee, John Sevier took his seat in
the House of Representatives.[1] The first session of the 12th Congress
of the United States had commenced four days earlier.[2] From the outset, the most pressing issue to
this Congress was the question of relations with the United Kingdom[3].For
more than a decade, the U.K. had been fighting a desperate and extremely costly
war against Napoleon, who had invaded and conquered half of Europe and was set
on bringing the rest of the continent under the control of his new empire. The Royal Navy, constantly in need of
manpower and raw materials and not wanting neutral cargoes to aid their
enemies, had been pressing foreign merchant seamen into service and
confiscating cargoes from neutral ships.[4] The American and British governments had
imposed blockades on each other’s merchant ships, but, by early 1812, the
president, James Madison, and many members of Congress felt that a more
aggressive approach was needed.
Madison, a Democratic-Republican from Virginia who
harboured a lifelong hatred of the British, and the pro-war congressmen were
also angry about the British blockade of French ports and the ports of France’s
allies, as the blockade had been hindering the U.S.’s ability to trade with
those countries. Additionally, the
pro-war faction accused Britain of helping Native Americans defend their lands
against the encroachment of American settlers. It was also no secret that an American
invasion and conquest of Canada would be a goal of the war.[5]The congressional debates leading up to
the declaration of war demonstrated that, almost half a century before the
outbreak of the Civil War, the new nation was already seriously ideologically
divided. This was not a clear-cut
division between North & South, but a distinction between northern &
southern voting trends was apparent. The
division down party lines was even more evident.[6] Bitter arguments ensued both within the
chambers of Congress and without. Some
northern congressmen referred to certain of the war hawks as “the madmen from
Tennessee and Kentucky”, while some of their southern counterparts accused New
England Federalists of desiring reunion with Britain.[7]
Though Sevier almost
never spoke on the House floor, his diary and other written records show him to
have been a man who was actively involved in his work, dispatched frequent
letters to keep the leaders of his home state up to date on the latest developments
in Washington, and spent many of his evenings and weekends in the company of
cabinet members, high-ranking military personnel, and fellow congressmen. From the time he took his seat in the House until June
1812 (when Congress declared war), he dined with President Madison on no less
than three occasions and attended five of Mrs. Madison’s “Wednesday Drawing
Rooms”.[8]He
dined with House Speaker Henry Clay twice and, perhaps even more significantly,
he dined with the French ambassador, Louis Sérurier, thrice, and even spent
Christmas 1811 with him. Sevier was of
French descent himself and remained on friendly terms with Sérurier throughout
the war.[9]
Sevier also spent a great
deal of time with various military leaders, meeting with Abimael Nicoll, the Adjutant
General of the Army, in January; dining with Paul Hamilton, Secretary of the Navy,
twice; visiting the Navy Yard in April; dining twice with Secretary of State James
Monroe; and visiting Secretary of War William Eustis in April.[10] He wrote a letter to Tennessee governor
William Blount on Nov. 11th, 1811, three days after taking his seat
in the House, and again on Feb. 23rd, 1812.In a letter written to
his son, Col. George Washington Sevier, on Jan. 13th, 1812, Sevier
hints at the coming war, updating his son on measures passed in Congress to
raise an army, and assuring him that his friends in Washington will “do
everything” for his (George’s) promotion in the army. At the end of May 1812,
he forwarded a communication from Joel Barlow, the American ambassador to
France, to Governor Blount and the heads of the militias of several counties in
Tennessee.[11]
By May, the question of
repealing the embargo against the U.K. was a daily topic of debate in the
House. On May 6th, the
representatives voted on whether to postpone considerations of petitions to end
the embargo until the 4th of July.[12]Sevier
did not speak during the debate, but another representative from Tennessee,
John Rhea, spoke in favor of the embargo and of declaring war. Sevier and Rhea both voted “yea”. On the
following Monday, a representative from Pennsylvania presented petitions from
his constituency to end the embargo.
Again the House voted on
whether to consider the petitions or postpone deliberating them. Once more, Sevier did not speak but voted in favor
of postponement.[13]
On June 1st, 1812, Madison sent a secret
message to both houses of Congress, instructing them to declare war on the
U.K. The doors of the House were closed
and the message read. For the next three
days, the House met behind closed doors, under an official injunction of
secrecy, and passed the war resolution on the 4th of June with
Sevier, of course, voting in favor. The
Senate was even more divided than the House on the matter and almost did not
pass the bill. The “yeas” in the Senate
eventually prevailed on June 17th, and the president signed the war
declaration the following day. In both
houses, the decision to declare war was the closest and most contested war vote
in American history.[14]
Works Cited
1 - Belt, Gordon T. John Sevier: Tennessee’s First Hero.
Charleston SC: The History Press,
2014.
2 - Borneman, Walter R. 1812: The War That Forged a Nation. New
York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2004.
3 - Colley, Linda. Britons:
Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Second edition. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005.
4 - Driver, Carl Samuel. John Sevier: Pioneer of the Old Southwest.
Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press,
1932.
5
–“John Sevier’s Diary”, in Heiskell, Samuel Gordon,Andrew
Jackson and Early Tennessee
History, vol. 2. Nashville: Ambrose Printing Co., 1920. (Includes reprint of entire
diary
of John Sevier)
6 - Sevier, Cora Bales. Sevier Family
History: With Collected Letters of Gen. John Sevier, First Governor of
Tennessee. Washington: N.S. Madden, 1961.
7 - Stagg, J.C.A. The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent,
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012.
8 - Twelfth Congress,
first session. The Debates &
Proceedings of the Congress of the
United States. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1853.
9 - U.S.
House of Representatives Offices of the Historian, Art & Archives, &
Clerk. “History, Art & Archives: People Search & Session Dates” 2017. United
States House of Representatives. Accessed 5 September 2017. <http://history.house.gov/People/Search/>; <http://history.house.gov/Institution/Session-Dates/10-19/>
10 - Vogel, Steve. Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That
Saved the Nation. New York:
Random House, 2013.
[1] Heiskell 592
[3] The United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had been formed by an Act of Parliament on
January 1st, 1801. Great
Britain was formed by the union of England and Wales with Scotland in 1707
(England and Wales having been joined since 1536). (Colley 11, 322) During the debates in the House, the
representatives seemed only to refer to the country as “Britain” or “Great
Britain” and never “the United Kingdom”.
However, the language of Madison’s proclamation of June 19th,
1812, does employ the title “the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland
& the dependencies thereof.” (Stagg 47)
[4] Vogel 17-18;
Colley 150; Stagg 28-29. The practice of
impressment, or forcing civilians into military service, was not new. The Royal Navy had used press gangs to take
men since at least the mid-18th century, and had been “impressing”
seamen from various other countries before it began seizing men from American
ships. (Colley 65; Stagg 28)
[5]Borneman
57-59; Stagg 18-22; Vogel 17-18
[6] The
representatives from states that would later join the Confederacy (GA, NC, SC,
TN & VA) voted decisively for war, with 34 yeas + 8 nays (AL, AR, FL, LA,
MS & TX were not yet states as of 1812).
The representatives from states that would remain with the Union were
more ideologically & politically diverse, with 45 voting pro-war vs. 41
voting against (though if we include the Civil War border states of MD &
KY, which were officially part of the Union but were, in practice, largely
pro-Confederacy, as part of the southern states’ tally, the North/South divide
is even clearer: 45 yeas + 11 nays from the South vs. 34 yeas + 38 nays from
the North. The only major anomaly in
this pattern was PA, which had more Representatives in the House than any other
state, save VA: 16 of PA’s 18 Representatives voted for war. In party terms, every single Federalist in
the House voted against the war resolution, while 15 Democratic-Republicans
voted nay and 79 voted yea. (12th Congress, 1632-38; Vogel 19; U.S.
HoROffices of the Historian, Art
& Archives, & Clerk people search)
[7]Sevier, Cora
183
[8] Heiskell
592-99; Belt 146. Congressmen,
businessmen, federal officials, and diplomats attended Mrs. Madison’s weekly
open houses. The President was usually
present, sitting “unobtrusively in a corner” and conversing with a small group.
(Vogel 112)
[9] Heiskell 509, 592-99
[12] As noted by several representatives,
postponement of consideration of the petitions until the end of the
congressional session effectively meant quashing them.
[14] Twelfth Congress, first session 1478-82,
1587-88, 1624-29, 1632-38; Borneman 51; Stagg 19-22, 45-47; Vogel 19
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