President James Madison named William Hull, governor of the Michigan Territory, to command the western war effort in the War of 1812. Hull’s primary mission was to capture Fort Malden, the main British outpost in the region. Hull’s task was formidable for several reasons, but primarily because his supply line stretched for 200 trackless miles through hostile Indian country. Hull arrived at Detroit on July 5 and, one week later, crossed his army into Canada and moved south to capture Fort Malden. While waiting for his field guns to arrive to commence the assault, Hull received the disturbing news that Fort Mackinac had been captured by the British, meaning that several thousand Indians who had participated in that attack would soon be coming down from the north. On August 15, General Isaac Brock, governor of Ontario, appeared with 1,500 men on the opposite bank of the Detroit River and demanded Hull’s surrender.

In June of 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain for refusing to honor American maritime rights. Madison’s hand was forced by the young firebrands who made up the Twelfth Congress. Support for the war was not unanimous, as New England, dominated by Federalists, strongly opposed the conflict. But to the Democratic-Republicans, Canada seemed an easy conquest, with Thomas Jefferson stating that “the acquisition of Canada…will be a mere matter of marching.” When the vote on Madison’s request was taken on June 18, 1812, it was the closest in our country’s history on a declaration of war. 

On September 24, 1811, General William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, led an army north from the territorial capital of Vincennes. His objective was to break up a large gathering of Indians that were part of a confederacy organized by Tecumseh to resist American settlement in the Ohio Country. Although advised by his officers to immediately strike the village, Harrison was under strict orders from Secretary of War William Eustis to maintain peace if possible and not initiate an attack. Tecumseh happened to be away recruiting southern tribes for his confederacy so the responsibility for dealing with the American army fell to the Prophet. Although prior to leaving Tecumseh had stressed that a battle was to be avoided at all costs, the Prophet felt he must do something.

Tecumseh’s War was the last great Indian war in the Northwest Territory and raged from 1811 to 1817. Tecumseh was a Shawnee born in 1768 in today’s central Ohio. By the late 1780s, Tecumseh began participating in raids into Kentucky and fought at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. Despite Tecumseh’s prowess, he may have remained unknown to history were it not for his brother Tenskwatawa, better known as the Prophet, who rose to prominence in 1805 following a series of visions. Part of the reason why the Prophet’s message resonated so well with Indians in the Great Lakes region was their growing frustration over repeated land cession treaties between willing chiefs and the United States.

At the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British gained possession of all French lands in North America, including the Northwest Territory, which was then part of Canada. Unlike the French who allied themselves with the Indian nations, the British treated the natives as a conquered people and for the next fifty years there was continuous conflict between white settlers and Indians in this region. 

In February 1789, James Madison was elected to the House of Representatives for the first Congress under the Constitution. Besides leading the House, Madison helped shape the Washington administration, drafting President Washington’s inaugural address and recommending Alexander Hamilton for Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson for Secretary of State. But a break soon developed between the Madison-Jefferson faction, known as Democratic-Republicans, and Washington’s Federalist administration over Hamilton's plan for the national government to assume state debt incurred during the war.

In 1787, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton organized the Constitutional Convention not simply to fix flaws in the Articles of Confederation but rather to create a new vibrant national government under which the United States could flourish. The most critical issue to be resolved was how representation in Congress would be determined, for with more representatives came more power. Madison’s Virginia Plan comprised fifteen resolutions that became the basis for our constitution and called for representation according to population in both the House and the Senate. After the convention, Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, drafted eighty-five essays known as The Federalist Papers, the greatest collection of writings ever on a federal constitutional government. No other Founding Father played such an outsized role in creating our nation’s Constitution.

In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which effectively shut down the city of Boston and revoked the historic charter of Massachusetts, replacing it with royal authority. This affront to the liberties of American colonists greatly troubled Madison and pushed him into the camp of American separatists, and it was here that Madison found his true calling and to which he would devote the rest of his life. Madison was elected to the Confederation Congress, where his brilliant mind and extraordinary work ethic soon gained the young Virginian the admiration of his fellow congressmen and made him a leader in the national assembly.

James Madison was one of our nation’s most important founding fathers and played a critical role in the shaping United States. Known to history as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison’s brilliant mind was among the finest the nation has ever produced and his grasp of the theories of republican government and his efforts to implement those theories were unparalleled.

When the Democratic-Republicans came to power in 1800, the Jefferson administration effectively shut down and disbanded both the United States Army and Navy. As a result, when American merchant ships were illegally seized as contraband of war by both the British and the French during the Napoleonic wars, the United States was helpless to respond. Consequently, President Jefferson, who was philosophically opposed to war, decided to strike back economically rather than militarily.

In June 1807, several British sailors deserted from Royal Navy ships stationed near Norfolk, Virginia, and signed on with the USS Chesapeake, a 50-gun frigate commanded by Captain James Barron that was preparing to sail to the Mediterranean. Admiral George Berkeley, who commanded the British fleet in North American waters, was frustrated at the repeated desertions and sent word via the British frigate Leopard, commanded by Captain Salusbury Humphreys, to the British squadron to detain and search the Chesapeake for deserters. On the morning of June 22, Captain Humphreys had a message delivered declaring that there were deserters on board the Chesapeake and requesting permission to inspect the crew. Captain Barron denied the request, and the Leopard then fired two warning shots across the bow of the Chesapeake. Two minutes later, the Leopard poured a full broadside of solid shot and canister at point blank range into the helpless American frigate.

The War of 1812 has been called the “second American Revolution,” but the facts do not fully support that assertion. It is true that in both cases America’s enemy was Great Britain and the main catalyst that took us to war was American anger resulting from British transgressions, but the road to this second fight between these two countries was largely an unintended consequence of the almost continuous war that raged from 1793 to 1815 between England and France. 

After the city of Derne fell to General William Eaton’s expedition on April 27, 1805, Yusef Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli, knowing his capital city was next, again sent word to Tobias Lear, the American Consul to Algiers that he wanted peace. The final terms included an exchange of prisoners and the end of all tribute payments to Tripoli, the first agreement of its kind ever reached with a Barbary State.

In 1804, William Eaton, the former Consul to Tunis, hatched a plan to end the war with Tripoli. Eaton proposed to invade Tripoli, drive the Pasha, Yusef Karamanli, from the throne, and replace him with his older brother Hamet. In the process, all American prisoners would be released, and all tribute demands ended. In early March 1805, Eaton began a 400-mile trek to his first objective, the city of Derne, an important Tripolitan seaport east of the capital. Following a harrowing fifty-four-day march, the army arrived on the outskirts of town and Eaton sent surrender demands into the city to which the Governor responded, “My head or yours.” Taking that as a “no,” Eaton launched his attack on April 27, while three ships from the Mediterranean squadron fired on the town.

In January 1804, Captain Edward Preble sent Lieutenant Stephen Decatur the following instructions: “It is my order that you proceed to Tripoli…enter that harbor in the night, board the Philadelphia, burn her and make good your retreat with the Intrepid.” The plan was audacious and filled with risk as the Philadelphia was surrounded by a dozen Tripolitan warships. On the evening of February 16, Decatur entered the harbor and the Intrepid slowly drifted towards the Philadelphia, whose guards hailed the ship asking its intention. Decatur’s Sicilian pilot stated his ship had lost its anchor in the storm and requested permission to tie his ship to theirs for the night and they agreed.

On May 10, 1801, Tripoli declared war on the United States, hoping to coerce President Thomas Jefferson to increase tribute payments, but Jefferson felt the honor of the United States was at stake and he refused. Instead, Jefferson sent Commodore Richard Dale and a small fleet of American frigates to impose a blockade of Tripoli. In September 1803, to better prosecute the war, additional warships were sent to the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Edward Preble along with a star-studded cast of future naval heroes including Oliver Hazard Perry, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers. But before Preble’s fleet was on station and aggressive action could be taken, one of the American ships, the frigate USS Philadelphia under Captain William Bainbridge, met with disaster.

For several centuries, the northern crescent of Africa had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and consisted of several puppet states including Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. Each of these Muslim provinces, known collectively as the Barbary States, derived their main revenue from seizing unarmed merchant ships, taking the crews prisoner, and offering to return them for a ransom payment, or, failing that, selling them into slavery. After the American Revolution, as American merchantmen began to ply the waters of the Mediterranean without the protection of the Royal Navy, they suffered the same fate.