It is March 12th. Welcome to Episode 71 of History in a Year. Today, the Founding Fathers step aside, and a furious new generation takes control of the country. Frustrated by years of British insults and failed embargoes, a wave of aggressive, young Congressmen sweeps into Washington D.C. in 1811. Led by the charismatic Henry Clay and the intense John C. Calhoun, they are dubbed the “War Hawks.” We explore their fierce demands for national honor, their anger over kidnapped sailors, and their secretly ambitious plan to march north and conquer Canada. We watch as these young politicians back a reluctant President James Madison into a corner and drag the nation toward the War of 1812.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 12th. Welcome to Episode 71. For the last few episodes, we’ve watched the United States try to avoid a war with Great Britain.
LEAH:
Thomas Jefferson tried economic warfare with the disastrous Embargo Act. James Madison tried complicated diplomatic tricks. Both of them failed. The British Royal Navy was still blockading the coast and kidnapping American sailors.
STEPHEN:
But there is a very specific reason why Jefferson and Madison were trying so hard to avoid a military conflict.
LEAH:
They were part of the Revolutionary generation. The older politicians in Washington—men like Madison, Jefferson, and the aging Federalists—remembered exactly what a war with Great Britain looked like. They had lived through the burning towns, the freezing winters, and the economic devastation of 1776.
STEPHEN:
They knew the United States was still too weak to survive another round with the greatest military empire on Earth.
LEAH:
But in the congressional elections of 1810, the political landscape of America completely shifted.
STEPHEN:
The older generation started retiring. And replacing them was a massive wave of newly elected, fiercely aggressive young men from the South and the Western frontier.
LEAH:
This was the very first generation of American politicians who had not fought in the Revolution. Most of them had been babies or children when the Constitution was signed.
STEPHEN:
They hadn’t experienced the horrors of the war. Instead, they had grown up on the mythology of it. They had been raised on stories of George Washington’s invincibility and American glory.
LEAH:
And they were absolutely sick and tired of watching their heroes—men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—cower in fear of the British Navy.
STEPHEN:
When the 12th Congress convened in 1811, these young representatives essentially orchestrated a political takeover. And they were led by two men who would go on to dominate American politics for the next forty years.
LEAH:
The first was a 34-year-old lawyer from Kentucky named Henry Clay.
STEPHEN:
Henry Clay was the ultimate Western politician. He was charismatic, he loved drinking and gambling, and he was an absolute master of political theater. He had so much swagger and popularity that on his very first day in the House of Representatives, his peers elected him Speaker of the House. That is completely unprecedented.
LEAH:
The second leader was a 29-year-old from South Carolina named John C. Calhoun.
STEPHEN:
Where Clay was charming and approachable, Calhoun was intense, humorless, and fiercely intellectual. He was a brilliant speaker who viewed the world in absolute terms of honor and disgrace.
LEAH:
An older, conservative Congressman named John Randolph of Roanoke looked at this new block of angry young men led by Clay and Calhoun, and he gave them a nickname. He called them the “War Hawks.” STEPHEN:
The name stuck instantly. And the War Hawks had a very clear, uncompromising agenda. They wanted a second war with Great Britain, and they wanted it immediately.
LEAH:
They had three main grievances. The first was the most obvious: Impressment.
STEPHEN:
Henry Clay gave fiery speeches on the House floor, demanding to know how the United States could call itself an independent nation while foreign warships kidnapped its citizens right off the coast. To the War Hawks, it was a deadly stain on the national honor that could only be washed away with blood.
LEAH:
The second grievance was economic. The British blockades of Europe were devastating the farmers in the South and the West. They couldn’t export their cotton or tobacco.
STEPHEN:
But the third grievance was the most ambitious, and the most revealing.
LEAH:
The War Hawks wanted land. Specifically, they wanted to conquer Canada.
STEPHEN:
At the time, Canada was a British colony. The War Hawks looked up north, and they saw millions of acres of prime real estate just sitting there.
LEAH:
And they were completely, delusionally arrogant about how easy it would be to take it.
STEPHEN:
Henry Clay famously bragged to Congress that the militia of Kentucky alone could conquer Montreal and Upper Canada without any help from the rest of the army. Even Thomas Jefferson got caught up in the hype, writing from his retirement that capturing Canada would be a “mere matter of marching.”
LEAH:
The War Hawks also blamed the British in Canada for arming the Native American tribes on the western frontier. They believed that if they kicked the British off the continent, the Native American resistance would collapse, and white settlers could take the rest of the Ohio Valley.
STEPHEN:
So, Henry Clay used his power as Speaker of the House to pack all the key congressional committees with his fellow War Hawks. They started ramming through legislation to expand the army and build up the navy.
LEAH:
And then, they turned their attention to the President.
STEPHEN:
James Madison was a cautious, methodical thinker. He did not want this war. But the War Hawks essentially surrounded him in the White House.
LEAH:
The year 1812 was an election year. And the War Hawks delivered a very clear, completely ruthless political ultimatum to James Madison.
STEPHEN:
They told him: “If you do not ask Congress for a declaration of war against Great Britain, we will not support your re-election. We will find another candidate, and your political career will be over.”
LEAH:
The Father of the Constitution was being blackmailed by a group of men who were still in law school when he was writing the Bill of Rights.
STEPHEN:
Madison realized he had run out of options. The diplomatic efforts were dead. The Embargo had failed. The country’s honor was bleeding out, and his own political party was threatening to abandon him.
LEAH:
The United States was going to go to war against the British Empire.
STEPHEN:
But before the first American soldier even stepped foot into Canada, a massive, terrifying conflict was already exploding on the western frontier.
LEAH:
Because the War Hawks were right about one thing: The Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley were preparing for war. But they didn’t need the British to tell them to fight.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 72. Tecumseh’s Confederacy. We head deep into the Indiana Territory to meet one of the most brilliant and charismatic military leaders in North American history. We watch as a Shawnee chief named Tecumseh and his brother, a religious mystic known as The Prophet, attempt to unite dozens of warring tribes into a single, massive native empire to stop the American expansion once and for all.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.