The chronological order of this timeline has gotten a little scrambled. So here's something I should have posted earlier, plus an update on the Florida front. Next update: more on Florida, plus the Texas filibuster and reactions in New Spain and Kyantine.
We historians have a lot to say about the effect the War of 1837 on the political development of the U.S., Louisiana, Florida, Canada, and to a lesser extent, New Spain. But what about Britain?
The Royal British history books that I’ve read have tended to either dismiss the effect outright or lump it in with the other wars taking place at the time—the Bosnia-Rumelia War, the Persian Civil War. G. L. Smithwick, in his magisterial A History of the the United Kingdom, Volume 6: The 1830s, writes:
Thousands of unemployed men in all parts of the British Isles found employment for a time—some as soldiers in the new regiments, some making ships, weapons and supplies. Their wives and sisters earned money in the new sweatshops where English and Hanoverian wool and Indian cotton were turned into uniforms for these men. This did not restore the prosperity of the long aestal period from 1820 to 1832, but it did much to ameliorate the misery of the Hiemal Period.
At the same time, there was a sense of uncertainty and fear brought about by the wars overseas. But this did nothing to undermine support for Brougham’s government—rather, it endowed that government with popularity it might not otherwise have enjoyed.
None of this is wrong, and it explains why the Whig majority increased by 17 in the ’38 election. Where I believe Smithwick errs is in his assertion two pages later that “the chief concern of all, from Whitehall to the lowest hamlet, was that the Czar should not be permitted to claim Constantinople for his own. Events in North America, the Near and Far East, and the Antipodes, while not irrelevant, were of lesser concern.”
To begin with, a consultation of the historical timeline reveals that “events in the Far East and the Antipodes” did not even begin to become a factor until after the armistice. More importantly, the archives of the Manchester Champion, The Scotsman and the Birmingham Journal tell a different story. For a precise breakdown of the number of column-centimeters devoted to the various wars and the placement of the stories, see Appendix B. Here it is enough to note that the War of 1837 (generally called “the war in America”) received far more coverage than the Bosnia-Rumelia War (generally called “the war in the Balkans”), and the war in Persia only occasionally rated any mention at all.
In terms of prominence, the Bosnia-Rumelia War appeared on the front page of all these papers precisely once from 1836 through 1838—when the war began with the Russian amphibious assault on eastern Thrace. By contrast, all three papers carried not only the American declaration of war on the front page, but also the capture of the St. Lawrence at Fort Niagara (the first time since the war against Napoleon that the Royal Navy had lost a ship in combat), the fall of Toronto (then York), the Battle of Sinepuxent (which very much put Fort Niagara in perspective), the first invasion of Florida, the failed assault on Annapolis (covered more prominently than the successful landings in Maryland and Virginia) and, in the case of The Scotsman, the Battle of Mount Hope. These were all papers of Radical sympathies, of course—indeed, at this point the Champion and Journal were already Chartist—but the far less radical Glasgow Herald covered the wars overseas in a similar way, and the recent opening of the Times archives has made it possible to determine that although their coverage of events overseas was more extensive, the greatest weight was still given to the War of 1837, and particularly to the Navy’s misfortunes (see Appendix B).
It’s easy to understand why. Whatever the importance of Constantinople to British policy, no British territory was at risk in the Balkans, whereas the war in North America represented an assault on two colonies and a protectorate. This meant that although some might question the wisdom of participating in the wars in the Balkans or Persia, only the most doctrinaire pacifists opposed the war in America—to everyone else, it was either righteous or simply necessary. Even the mill owners and workers of the textile industry, who had the greatest motivation to see the war end and trade resume, wished to see these things happen on British terms, not American ones.
More to the point, to the British public it was the Royal Navy that kept the wars overseas and away from their own shores. They could not help being concerned when a foreign power burned or blasted holes in these “wooden walls” with new weapons that no one seemed to have an answer for. Under such circumstances, a cunning and inventive man like Brougham was almost tailor-made for this war—he could be counted on to understand and adapt to the situation.
Of course, Brougham was no soldier, but as Amelia Harrington notes in Charlottean London: “Of the British Prime Ministers who waged the Second Thirty Years War to a partially successful conclusion, nearly all—Viscount Sidmouth, Wiliam Pitt, the Duke of Portland, Spencer Perceval—had found their calling in politics or law. Only Baron Grenville and the Earl of Liverpool had seen even the most perfunctory military service. Thus, Baron Brougham and Vaux’s lack of military experience was seen as no bar.”
And Berrien’s own history as a soldier elicited no admiration at all from his foes. To Whigs, he was the leader of a foreign branch of the same landed aristocracy that they’d had to overcome to end slavery in the Empire. To Tories, he was a demagogue, a glib public speaker with no true talent for statesmanship who had gotten in well over his head and brought his country with him…
Andrea Fessler, The Waves from Sinepuxent
March 20, 1838
Outside Tallawaga[1]
, Florida
For the nineteenth day since this siege had begun, General Twiggs cursed it.
Sieges, until now, were something he had only a theoretical knowledge of, and he hadn’t even liked the theory very much. The idea was to keep moving, to keep your enemy off balance, not to give them a chance to regroup or put their own plans into place. Putting a town under siege meant you’d failed to take it the first time and couldn’t think of anything better to do.
Except he
had failed to take Tallawaga the first time, and he couldn’t leave it behind him or let the men inside it escape south while he was going for Pilaktaka or St. Augustine. So here he was, and his army with him. He’d done what he could to secure his supply lines along the Suwanee, and the Santa Fe north of here had that little drop underground that he doubted even the Indians could paddle a canoe through, but this was Florida. An attack could come from any direction. He’d learned that the hard way six months ago.
When Twiggs had heard of Jesup’s attack, he’d wondered why he hadn’t been the one to think of it. In this low-lying, soggy land, a man in a canoe could move so much faster than one on horseback. How could a War Department bean-counter like Jesup have been the first American to taken advantage of it?[2] But from what he heard, as fast as they were on the water, they were much slower on land—unlike real dragoons, over land they had to carry their canoes instead of the other way around. Which meant it paid to know every bend in every river and all the shortest paths between them. Which meant that style of warfare was still one that gave the advantage to the defense.
And so the attack still failed. It was smart, but it failed. It’d be nice to win something, but maybe now people will shut up about what happened in September.
And this morning… well, maybe he could get the town to surrender without any more fighting. Then he could get back to fighting the real enemy. What was this leader’s name again? Twiggs checked his notes.
That can’t be right. That’s not a name, it’s mulligatawney stew made out of letters.
An aide stuck his head in. “Thock… Flock… uh, Mr. Huggy is here to see you, sir.”
So apparently it is a real name after all. “Send him in.”
The man who came in was on the tall side, in his forties. He was wearing one of those turbanlike cotton cloths the Creeks favored with a few long feathers stuck in it, a loose cotton shirt and a buckskin kilt. What looked like the tail of a big swamp cat[3] hung from his belt, dried to leather and starting to shed. For a long time, he just stood there, calm and apparently untroubled, looking at Twiggs and smiling a little, as if waiting for him to respond.
“Please sit down.”
“Thank you, General Twiggs,” he said, very slowly but almost without accent. “By the way, my name is in fact Thlocklo Tustenuggee. If you find that hard to pronounce, you may call me Tiger Tail.” He gestured toward the tail on his belt.
“Well, Mr. Tail, are you the mayor of this town or the commanding officer?”
“Yes.” Tiger Tail smiled more broadly.
“Meaning you occupy both offices?”
“That is indeed what I mean.”
“Seems like a lot of work for one man.”
“At the moment, our people have no other business beyond fighting for our survival. Under these circumstances, there is no real distinction between military and civilian matters.”
“Well, speaking of your survival, you must know your governor, ‘Lord’ Brougham, Her Majesty—they’re all more than happy to fight to the last Creek.”
“Really?” That seemed to get his attention. “How interesting. Please tell me more.”
“If the order came from London to kill the lot of you and make room for white men, you think Morrison would even hesitate?”
“No. But that order has not come. Morrison has dealt justly with us. As did MacCarthy before him, and Raffles before him. It’s a pleasant surprise when a white man keeps his word to us. We can’t help remembering it.”
“They only let you into Florida because they needed somebody willing to fight us. They’re using you, the same as they’re using those black Hessians.”
“Black Hessians? Is that what you’re calling them—the mercenaries from Haiti? The name fits. How many do you suppose Lord Brougham can hire?”
“How am I supposed to know—never mind. That’s not the point. The point is that they don’t care what happens to you.”
“Then should we have become your allies instead, like the Cherokees? How are they faring these days?”
Better than they should. They were all supposed to be dead by now. But Twiggs knew better than to say so. “They still have some slaves. That’s more than you have.”
“Yes. Now we must endure the Negroes watching our backs with muskets in hand, instead of glaring resentfully at our backs with cane-knives in hand. What a tragedy.” Twiggs was starting to suspect that this Tiger Tail was making fun of him.
“You could’ve gone west. Plenty of Indians have done that.”
“We could have, but we didn’t. So here we are in Florida, with our backs to the sea. We can retreat no further. We must fight. As for the nations that chose to go west… I wish them well. But sooner or later they will find themselves in the same predicament.”
“Speaking of predicaments, we’ve got you surrounded and we have reinforcements coming,” said Twiggs. “So here’s my offer. You surrender. Your men lay down their arms and let us occupy the town. Let us treat our wounded there and resupply ourselves from your food stores. In return, I give you my word that your people here will not be harmed.”
Tiger Tail nodded. “That does sound honorable. But here is my difficulty, General Twiggs. I lead here. If I make a promise, Tallawaga will keep it. If I tell my warriors in the town to lay down their arms, that is what they will do. But you are only one general. If you promise that we will not be slaughtered wholesale, or driven from our homes… again… even if you yourself, and the men under your command here, keep that promise—which I doubt you will—what is to stop your President Berrien from giving an order to some other commander, a month or a year from now, to do those very things to us?”
Nothing. Because you’re supposed to die. “If you don’t trust me to do what I say I’ll do, then why the Sam Hill did you ever agree to this parley in the first place? What was the point?”
“The point,” said Tustenuggee, speaking slower than ever, “is that every moment that we devote to speaking… my warriors may spend resting. Eating. And recovering their strength. Every moment, Osceola comes closer. As do Erskine and Morrison himself. And by now you will have heard… that Cole and FitzGerald are coming up the coast. From Tocobaga. They may have already reached the town of Suwanee by now.”
“Do I need to go into what’s likely to happen to you—women and children and all—when we take your town?”
“Not at all. We know exactly what your mercy looks like. So you see… there is nothing you can threaten us with that you wouldn’t do anyway.”
[1] OTL Gainesville
[2] If you’re curious, the reason is that it takes a logistics expert to come up with that many canoes in a reasonable amount of time.
[3] A Florida panther.
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