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COMMODORE PERRY'S VICTORY.

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gress with a gold medal and fifty thousand dollars for his crew.

The campaign of 1813 was entered upon after much the same fashion as that of 1812, and with corresponding results. There were victories on the sea and ineffective conflicts on land. On Lake Erie Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry created a navy, and captured the entire British navy, sending to General Harrison the famous despatch, "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." For this victory, Perry was complimented by the President in a message to Congress. It enabled Harrison to make further progress, for he met the British under General Proctor, on the River Thames, between lakes St. Clair and Huron, when he defeated him and his Indian allies under Tecumseh,* who was killed. By this victory all was regained that Hull had lost at the beginning of the war.

At the commencement of the war, Tecumseh had in 1805, visited the Indians of the Mississippi valley and the South, and had stirred them to a fanatical antagonism against the whites. The Creeks and the Seminoles carried on their hostilities against the inhabitants of Georgia, and were repressed by General

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*Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawnees, was born near Springfield, O., about 1770. In connection with his brother, an impostor known as the Prophet," he entered into a grand conspiracy against the whites. In 1809, he refused to sign the treaty with the United States when General Harrison had purchased three million acres of land of the Indians, and prepared to destroy the American forces. He collected a considerable body of Indians, which, under command of the prophet (during Tecumseh's absence in the South), burst upon Harrison's army near the mouth of the Tippecanoe, November 7th, 1811, but was routed. Tecumseh thereafter threw himself into the British cause.

Jackson with a force of twenty-five hundred Tennessee volunteers. Again, in August, 1813, they attacked the whites at Fort Mims, firing the houses and massacring all but seventeen of the garrison. Again Tennessee sent out a force larger than the former, and the Indians were completely overcome. The last important battle of the campaign was fought March 27, 1814, at Horse Shoe Bend, and resulted in the destruction of six hundred warriors, and the submission of the chiefs. Among those who fought with Jackson at this time, were Sam Houston and Davy Crockett.

The campaign of 1814 opened with the promise of greater results on the part of the British arms, for the close of the war with Napoleon had enabled the gov ernment to send large reënforcements to the army in America. The outlook for the United States was discouraging. Congress voted an increase of the regular army (for the purpose of defence), and a new loan of twenty-five millions of dollars.

The British admiral Cochrane was peremptorily instructed to " destroy and lay waste all towns and districts in the United States" found accessible to his attacks, and the American seaboard was in sad condition. The coasts of New England had been visited, and some of the towns seized. Others bought their immunity, but Stonington, Ct., when bom barded, was so effectively guarded by its citizens as to inflict considerable loss on the attacking fleet. New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore strengthened their fortifications, and a considerable force was assigned to the protection of Washington.

During two years the Southern coast was ravaged

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