Sustained honor Part 25

"Truly, you will not kill a squaw?"

His arm fell powerless at his side. The conciliating smile of an innocent female, appealing to the magnanimity of a warrior, reached the heart of the savage and subdued the barbarity of his soul.

Captain Heald and his wife, by the aid and influence of To-pa-na-hee and Kee-po-tah, were put into a bark canoe and paddled by the chief of the Pottawatomies and his wife to Mackinaw, three hundred miles distant, along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan, and delivered to the British commander. They were kindly received and afterward sent as prisoners to Detroit, where they were finally exchanged.

Lieutenant Helm was wounded in the action and taken prisoner. He was afterward taken by some friendly Indians to Au Sable, and from thence to St. Louis, and was liberated from captivity through the intervention of Mr. Thomas Forsyth, an Indian trader. Mrs. Helm was slightly wounded in the ankle, and had her horse shot from under her, when a.s.sailed by the savage from whom Black Partridge rescued her. After pa.s.sing through many trying scenes and ordeals, she was finally taken to Detroit and subsequently joined her husband. The soldiers, with their wives and children, were dispersed among the Pottawatomies on the Illinois, the Wabash and the Rock Rivers, and some were taken to Milwaukee. In the following spring, they were princ.i.p.ally collected at Detroit and ransomed. A part of them, however, remained in captivity another year, and during that period experienced more kindness than they or their friends had expected.

Captain Wells, the intrepid leader of the Miamies, remained with the Americans after his warriors fled and fell in the ma.s.sacre. On the spot where this ma.s.sacre occurred a little over two generations ago, now stands a city, whose growth is one of the marvels in the history of the progress of our great nation within the present century. It is the centre of a railway system connecting the East with the West by fully twelve thousand miles of railroad, all tributary to Chicago; and that city, which was only the germ of a small village fifty years ago, now has more than a million inhabitants, and is the great grain market of the western continent.

On the b.l.o.o.d.y sands where Captain Heald's small command fought so n.o.bly is now (1893) being held a great international exposition, the "World's Columbian Exposition" in celebration of the discovery of the New World by Columbus.

Thus far, the war with England had not been encouraging to Americans.

Within two months from the time of this declaration, the whole northwest, excepting Forts Harrison and Wayne in the Indian Territory, were in possession of the enemy. Alarm and astonishment prevailed throughout the West. The great ma.s.s of Indians, ever ready to join the successful party, were flocking to the British; but by the spirited exertion of the governors of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, three thousand volunteers were quickly raised and placed under command of General W.H.

Harrison, for the purpose of subduing the Indians and regaining what was lost at Detroit.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PEACE PARTY.

Terrence Malone, with all his frivolity and tendency toward ludicrousness, had a remarkable amount of shrewdness in his composition.

He was a bold, harum scarum fellow, as liable to pull the beard of a king, as to kick a pauper. Though he had fared well for an impressed seaman, Terrence had no love for Great Britain. Like others of his race, he made a n.o.ble American. One can scarcely find, a more patriotic American than the Irish American, who, driven by tyranny from the land of his birth, transfers his love to the land of his adoption. America has never had a war in which the brave sons of the Emerald Isle have not been found under the star-spangled banner, musket in hand, risking their lives for their adopted country.

Young Malone had a double cause to hate England. His father had been driven from Ireland, when Terrence was but a child, by the tyranny of the British, and he had been made to give almost four of the best years of his life to the service of King George.

In January, 1812, Terrence announced to his father his intention of going to Washington City.

"What the divil be ye goin' to Washington City for, me boy?"

"To see the prisident," was the answer.

"You'd better be goin' to school, I'm thinkin'."

"School, father!" said Terrence, with an impatient shrug of his shoulders. "Faith, don't talk to me of schools and colleges, when it's a war we are goin' to have, sure. My next school will be breakin' heads."

"Be the times, you'll have yer own cracked!"

"Not before I've got even with some of the divilish Britons, methinks."

"What be ye goin' to see the prisident about?"

This interview, the reader will bear in mind, was before war had been declared.

"I am going to tell Prisident Madison to give Johnny Bull a good whippin'."

"Prisident Madison will tell yez to moind yer own business," the Hibernian answered.

"We'll see about that!"

Terrence was determined on making the journey, and he set out next day by the mail coach for Washington City. Public houses in Washington were not numerous then, yet there were a few good hotels, and he put up at the old Continental House. Terrence, with all his reckless impetuosity, proceeded carefully to his point. Where boldness won success, he was bold; where caution and prudence were essential to win, he was cautious and prudent.

He noticed a door opening into a room from the main corridor, over which was tacked a strip of white canvas bearing in large black letters the words:

"HEADQUARTERS OF THE PEACE PARTY."

Men were coming and going from this apartment with grave and serious faces and corrugated brows, as if they had the weight of all the world on their shoulders. Terrence watched the comers and goers awhile and then halted a colored chambermaid, and, in an awe-inspiring whisper, asked who was sick in the room "ferninst." He was told no one. He thought some one must be dangerously ill, people went in and out so softly and talked in such low tones; but she a.s.sured him it was the room where the "peace party" met to discuss means to prevent President Madison and congress from declaring or prosecuting war against Great Britain. That those men were congressmen or merchants from Boston and other New England towns, who opposed war.

Terrence was opposed to peace, and he knew no better way to declare war than to begin it on the peace party. A bull was never made more furious at sight of a red flag, than Terrence Malone at the streamer of the peace party. One who knows what Terrence had suffered cannot blame him.

At the very outset of the war, the government encountered open and secret, manly and cowardly opposition. The Federalists in congress, who had opposed the war scheme of the administration from the beginning, published an address to their const.i.tuents in which they set forth the state of the country at that time, the course of the administration, and its supporters in congress, and the minority opinion for opposing the war. This was fair and, if they acted on their convictions and not from political prejudices, was honorable; but outside and inside of congress there was a party of politicians composed of Federalists and disaffected Democrats, organized under the name of the Peace Party, whose object was to cast obstructions in the way of the prosecution of war, and to compel the government, by weakening its resources and embarra.s.sing the operations, to make peace. They tried to derange the public finances, discredit the faith of the government, prevent enlistment, and in every way to cripple the administration and bring it into discredit with the people. It was an unpatriotic and mischievous faction, and the great leaders of the Federalists, like Mr. Quincy and Mr. Emot, who, when the war began, lent their aid to the government in its extremity, frowned upon these real enemies of their country; but the machinations of the Peace Party continued until the close of the war, and did infinite mischief unmixed with any good. [Footnote: Lossing's "Our Country," Vol.

V., Page 1203.]

This was the contemptible Peace Party at whose headquarters Terrence Malone stood gazing. He determined to venture into the den and see what it was like. The hour for the opening of congress had arrived, and men with bundles of papers in their hands and anxious looks on their faces hurried away to the capitol building. Some were congressmen, but most of them were New England merchants. Terrence waited until all were gone, then, as the door of the headquarters stood wide open inviting him to enter, he walked boldly into the apartment.

A man about thirty-five, dressed very neatly, with gla.s.ses on, was writing at a table littered with papers.

"Good morning to yez," said Terrence entering.

"Good morning, sir," said the writer, giving him a glance and resuming his writing as if the fate of the nation depended on it.

"An' so this is the place where ye make peace?"

"It's the place where we keep peace. It's the place where we oppose the foolish and suicidal policy of President Madison," was the curt answer.

"Who are you, misther?"

"I am Ebenezer Crane, sir, secretary of the Peace Party."

"Well, Misther Ebenezer Crane," and Terrence glanced at the secretary's long legs, as if he thought the name no misnomer, "will yez answer me a few questions?"

"Certainly," and Mr. Crane threw down his pen, wheeled his chair about and looked vastly important. "What have you to ask?"

"Why do you oppose the war?"

"Why should I favor it?"

"Don't the government promise protection to its citizens? Is not the blissed stars and stripes insulted by the British? Have not they set the murdherin' haythin to killin' innocent women and children on the frontier, and have they surrendered the posts as they should?"

Mr. Crane, with one wave of his hand, swept away every objection.

"That is all nothing!" he cried.

"Nothing! howly mother, sir! do you call it nothing for Americans to be knocked down, carried aboard British ships, to be made slaves, to be flogged until they die, and shot if they object?"

"Oh, those are all senseless, sensational stories, told for effect."

"But I say they are true. I have jist returned from nearly four years service on a British man-o-war."