When he reached the top he cut down the British flag and suspended that of the United States. This greasy trick may have been the act of some wag of the retiring fleet, and might have been taken for a joke had it not been followed by hostile acts which indicated that this was the initial step in a long course of hostility and meanness.

But it was soon followed by the retention of the lake forts which fell into British hands during the Revolutionary War, and which, by the terms of the treaty, were to be surrendered. Instead of surrendering them according to the stipulations of the treaty, they held them, and not only occupied them for thirteen years, but used them as storehouses and magazines from which the Indians were fed and clothed and armed and encouraged to tomahawk and scalp Americans without regard to age or sex. And then followed a series of orders in council, by which the commerce of the United States was almost swept from the seas, and their sailors forcibly taken from American ships to serve on British. These orders in council were so frequent that it seemed as if the French on one side of the British Channel and the English on the other were hurling decrees and orders at one another for their own amusement while inflicting dire injuries on other nations, and especially the Americans.

Had it not been for these hostile acts of the British there would have been no War of 1812. Had they continued to treat the young republic with the justice and liberality to which they agreed in fixing its western boundary in the treaty of 1783, no matter what their motive may have been, there would have been no cause for war between the two countries. The Americans had hardly recovered from the wounds inflicted in the Revolutionary War. They were too few and too weak and too poor to go to war with such a power as 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 at Tippecanoe, in 1811, to the final battle at New Orleans in 1815, which crowned the American arms with a glory never to fade.

The Filson Club, whose broad field of work in history, literature, science, and art is hardly indicated by the name of the first historian of Kentucky, which it bears, has deemed three of the battles which were fought during the War of 1812 as the most important of the many that were waged. These three were, first, the battle of Tippecanoe, regarded as the opening scene of the bloody drama; second, the battle of the Thames, by which the power of the British was crushed in the west and northwest, and third, the battle of New Orleans, which ended the war in a glorious victory for the Americans. The Club determined to have the history of these three battles written and filed among its archives, and to have the matter published for the benefit of the public. Hence, the task was undertaken by three different members of the Club.

The first of these, "The Battle of Tippecanoe," was prepared for the Club by Captain Alfred Pirtle, and published in 1900 as Filson Club Publication Number 15. It is an illustrated quarto of one hundred and sixty-seven pages, which gives a detailed account of the battle of Tippecanoe and the acts of the Indians and British which led to it and the important consequences which followed. The names of the officers and soldiers, and especially those of Kentucky who were engaged in it, are given so far as could be ascertained, and the book is a historic record of this battle, full enough and faithful enough to furnish the reader with all of the important facts.

The second, "The Battle of the Thames," the 5th of October, 1813, was undertaken by Colonel Bennett H. Young, and appeared in 1903 as the eighteenth publication of the Filson Club. It is an elaborately illustrated quarto of two hundred and eighty-six pages, and presents a detailed account of the acts which led up to the main battle and the engagements by land and water which preceded it. It contains a list of all the Kentuckians who as officers and privates were in the battle. The reader who seeks information about this battle need look no further than its pages.

The third and last of these important battles occurred at New Orleans the 8th of January, 1815. Its history was prepared for the Club by Mr. Z.F. Smith, and now appears as Filson Club Publication Number Nineteen, for the year 1904. It is an illustrated quarto in the adopted style of the Club, which has been so much admired for its antique paper and beautiful typography. It sets forth with fullness and detail the hostilities which preceded and led to the main battle, and gives such a clear description of the final conflict by the assistance of charts as to enable the reader to understand the maneuvers of both sides and to virtually see the battle as it progressed from the beginning to the end. This battle ended the War of 1812, and when the odds against the Americans are considered, it must be pronounced one of the greatest victories ever won upon the battlefield. The author, Mr. Z.F. Smith, was an old-line Whig, and was taught to hate Jackson as Henry Clay, the leader of the Whigs, hated him, but he has done the old hero full justice in this narrative, and has assigned him full honors of one of the greatest victories ever won. Although his sympathies were with General Adair, a brother Kentuckian, he takes up the quarrel between him and General Jackson and does Jackson full and impartial justice. If Jackson had been