s England, and moreover wanted a continuance of
the peace by which they were adding to the population and wealth of
their country. What they had acquired in the quarter of a century since
the end of the Revolutionary War was but little in comparison with the
accumulations of England during long centuries, and they were not
anxious to risk their all in a conflict with such a power; but young and
weak and few as they were, they belonged to that order of human beings
who hold their rights and their honor in such high regard that they can
not continuously be insulted and injured without retaliation. The time
came when they resolved to bear the burdens of war rather than submit to
unjustice and dishonor.

In the French and Indian war which preceded the Revolution there was
fighting for some time before a formal declaration of war. The English
drove the French traders from the Ohio Valley, and the French forced out
the English while the two nations were at peace. The French chassed from
one of their forts to another with fiddles instead of drums, and the
English with fowling-pieces instead of muskets rambled over the forest,
but they sometimes met and introduced each other to acts of war while a
state of hostility was acknowledged by neither. Something like a similar
state of things preceded the War of 1812. Tecumseh was at work trying to
unite all the tribes of Indians in one grand confederacy, ostensibly to
prevent them from selling their lands to the Americans, but possibly for
the purpose of war. While he was at this work his brother, the Prophet,
had convinced the Indians that he had induced the Great Spirit to make
them bullet-proof, and the English so encouraged them with food and
clothing and arms that they believed they were able to conquer the
Americans, and began to carry on hostilities against them without any
formal declaration of war by either party. The battle of Tippecanoe,
which came of this superstition among the Indians and this encouragement
from England, may be considered the first clash of arms in the War of
1812. The English took no open or active part in this battle, but their
arms and ammunition and rations were in it, and after it was lost the
Indians went to the English and became their open allies when the War of
1812 really began. Whether the English were allies of the Indians or the
Indians allies of the English, they fought and bled and died and were
conquered together after the initial conflict