On the night of December 29, 1837, Canadian militia operating under British command burned the U. S.-flagged steamer ship Caroline, which was moored in U. S. waters at the settlement of Fort Schlosser, New York, at Niagara Falls. The incursion briefly threatened to throw the United States and the British Empire into war.
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In 1837 anticolonial uprisings had broken out in Lower Canada (now Quebec and vicinity), Upper Canada (now Ontario and vicinity), and the western British territories. The rebel “Patriots” (or “Patriotes” in the francophone sections) called for the establishment of independent republics and eventual annexation to the United States.
Seeking to nip the brewing revolution in the bud, the British had preemptively arrested the rebel leaders, forcing the Patriot volunteers into battle before they had organized as a militia. Consequently, the disorganized and poorly led Patriot army in Upper Canada had been routed almost from the moment the new republic was declared. The rebel leader, William Lyon MacKenzie, made a daring flight to safety in the United States, where sympathizers were already forming support organizations, called “Hunter’s Lodges” along the Upper Canada border and “Freres Chasseurs” along Lower Canada, to help launch a guerrilla campaign. Arriving in Buffalo, New York, on December 11, 1837, MacKenzie was given a hero’s welcome by the citizenry, many of whom immediately volunteered for his cause.
Having procured the use of the USS Caroline and a considerable arsenal from local law-enforcement and militia groups, MacKenzie established himself on Navy Island, lying between the Canadian and American shores just above Niagara Falls, and began to ferry arms, ammunition, and supplies to the republican guerrillas across the river. Two weeks later, loyalist units assaulted the island and burned the Caroline as it lay off the opposite shore. An American was killed in the assault, and when one of the loyalists, Alexander McLeod, was later arrested on the New York side of the river, he was criminally charged with murder and arson.
Great Britain, already enraged by the widespread participation of American citizens in the guerrilla attacks, threatened full-scale war. The British threat to widen and formalize the hostilities grew out of their belief that Canada was ultimately indefensible in the face of a sustained onslaught from the populous new American nation. The threat was intended to remind American officials that the British navy could still inflict vast damage on the already troubled American economy in retribution if Canada was lost.
For their part, President Martin Van Buren and his advisers were well aware that only last-minute American victories had turned humiliating defeat to honorable peace in the War of 1812. Already struggling with the unprecedented economic crisis of the panic of 1837, they had no desire for a costly rematch with their nemesis. Van Buren’s administration applied increasing pressure on the local authorities along the northern border to disarm the Patriot armies and halt the smuggling of supplies. MacKenzie and other Patriot leaders were arrested and jailed for violation of the Neutrality Act. By the end of 1838, the Canadian revolution had been brutally crushed through the execution and deportation to Australia of rebels, including U. S. citizens.
The 1837-38 revolution prompted sweeping reforms in Canada, but their experience in the United States embittered MacKenzie and other Patriot leaders towards the republic they had previously idealized. A general pardon allowed them to return to Canada in 1849. Relations between the United States and Great Britain remained tense, however, and raw anger along the border fed the so-called Aroostook War of 1838-39.
Further reading: Mary Beacock Fryer, Volunteers and Redcoats, Rebels and Raiders: A Military History of the Rebellion in Upper Canada (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1987); William Kilbourne, Firebrand: William Lyon MacKenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada (Toronto, Canada: General Publishing, 1977); Major L. Wilson, The Presidency of Martin Van Buren (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984).
—Dorothy Cummings
Carson, Kit (1 809-1 868) frontiersman, soldier Kit Carson was a frontier scout and Indian agent whose contributions to westward expansion made him a folk hero. Christopher (Kit) Carson was born in Madison, Kentucky, on December 24, 1809, and shortly thereafter moved with his family to Howard County, Missouri. He was almost bereft of education and functionally illiterate throughout his life. In 1824, while he was in his teens, Carson’s father died, and the young Kit became apprenticed to a saddle maker. Finding the work distasteful, he ran away by joining a wagon train on the Santa Fe Trail in 1826. For three years, he worked as a teamster, interpreter, and cook, but in 1829 Carson accompanied Ewing Young on a fur-trapping expedition into the Southwest. The experience impressed him indelibly, and over the next 10 years Carson hunted, trapped, and roamed throughout the western interior. He took readily to such an arduous, adventurous lifestyle and eventually became renowned as a skilled, honest, yet soft-spoken frontiersmen. Also well known among the various Plains Indians, he successively took Arapaho and Cheyenne women as wives. Carson met his third and final wife, Maria Josepha Jaramilla, at Taos, New Mexico, where he was also baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. The dusty frontier community of Taos then became the beloved home to which he inevitably returned.
The defining moment in Carson’s life occurred in 1842, when he had a chance encounter with Army explorer Lieutenant John C. Fremont, then headed west on an expedition to South Pass. The two men formed an abiding
Friendship, and Carson became employed as a scout. In 1843, he again assisted Fremont on a second expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and accompanied a third to CALIFORNIA in 1846. There Carson became caught up in the Bear Flag Revolt against Mexico at Fremont’s behest and also participated in the capture of Los Angeles and San Diego. In 1847, he was entrusted with carrying important dispatches back to Washington, D. C., but en route he ran into Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny. In need of an experienced guide, Kearney ordered Carson to accompany his column back to California, and he complied. He subsequently played a conspicuous role in the ill-fated, December 1847 Battle of San Pascual against mounted Californians, and he further distinguished himself by riding singlehandedly back to San Diego for reinforcements. Given this exemplary performance, President James K. Polk proffered him a lieutenant’s commission in the elite Mounted Rifles Regiment. However, the Senate obstructed his confirmation in an attempt to further embarrass Fremont, who was then being court-martialed over a dispute with Kearny.
After the Mexican-American War, Carson returned to Taos and served as an Indian agent among the Ute, Pueblo,
Christopher "Kit" Carson (Library of Congress)
And Apache tribes. He functioned quietly and capably in this capacity and distinguished himself from many contemporaries by calling for better and fairer treatment of Native Americans. Shortly after the Civil War commenced in April 1861, Carson was commissioned colonel of the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. He skirmished with an invading Confederate column advancing from Texas and won plaudits for his handling of the Navajo crisis of 1863. When this large nation refused to move peacefully onto reservations, Carson was dispatched by General James H. Carlton to subdue them by force. This he accomplished by waging a scorched-earth policy that destroyed dwellings, crops, and livestock. Such harassment eventually drove the weary and half-frozen warriors onto the Bosque Redondo Reservation. However, when war erupted in the Texas panhandle, Carson further enhanced his reputation as a peerless Indian fighter by battling several thousand mounted warriors to a standstill at the Battle of Adobe Walls, November 1864. In light of such sterling service, Carson’s final wartime rank was brevet brigadier general of volunteers.
After the war, Carson resigned his commission, resumed his Indian agent activity at Taos, and gained appointment as superintendent of Indian affairs for Colorado Territory. However, he had no sooner assumed that office than he died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, on May 23, 1868. Carson’s remains were subsequently interred near his home at Taos. By this time, he was a legendary frontier figure, renowned for his honesty, humility, and sagacity. Carson’s activities were also celebrated nationally, thanks to the various publications of Fremont, and he had proved supremely important to the exploration, conquest, and settlement of the far West. Short and physically nondescript, Carson was certainly among the most skilled frontiersmen of his generation, an icon whose reputation only increased with his passing. A river, a mountain pass, and the capital of Nevada perpetuate his memory.
Further reading: Thomas W. Dunlay, Kit Carson and the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); R. C. Gordon-McCutchan, ed., Kit Carson: Indian Fighter or Killer (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1996); Daniel Roberts, A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, and the Claiming of the American West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).
—John C. Fredriksen
Cass, Lewis (1782-1866) politician Lewis Cass’s 54 years of public service spanned the tumultuous early to mid-19th century. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, Cass emigrated to the Northwest Territory in 1801, where he studied law privately and was admitted to the bar in 1802. In 1806 he was elected to the Ohio legislature,
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Where his staunch opposition to Aaron Burr’s endeavors and strong support of President Thomas Jefferson resulted in his appointment by Jefferson as United States Marshal for the District of Ohio in 1807.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Cass resigned his position as marshal to enlist in the army where he served as a colonel of the Third Infantry under the command of General William Hull, a former Revolutionary War hero who was in command of Fort Detroit and who surrendered the fort to a much smaller British force without firing a shot. Cass was present at the surrender, wrote a report scathingly critical of Hull’s performance, and testified against Hull at the court-martial proceedings. Hull was found guilty of treason and was sentenced to death by firing squad. Only his Revolutionary War service record allowed him to avoid execution.
Promoted to brigadier general in March 1813, Cass went on to be instrumental in the American victory at the Battle of the Thames the following year. Cass’s distinguished military service, as well as his Jeffersonian political views, resulted in his appointment as military and civil governor of Michigan Territory, a post he would hold until 1831. During his tenure, Cass secured the territory around the Great Lakes, improved the territory’s infrastructure, and negotiated treaties with the Chippewa and other Native American nations.
Cass’s experience in dealing with the Native Americans of the Northwest Territory and his ideas about the “Indian Question” were instrumental in his appointment by President Andrew Jackson as secretary of war in 1831. Cass was at the forefront of formulating government policy regarding Native Americans, and he was a central figure in promoting their removal as a general policy during his tenures as governor and as secretary of war.
In 1836 Cass resigned from the cabinet when Jackson appointed him to a diplomatic post, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to France. He served in this capacity until 1842. While Cass was successful in many of his diplomatic endeavors regarding American and French relations, he was often at odds with the Jackson administration because of his outspoken anti-British views. Such negative public rhetoric led to a serious disagreement with Secretary of State Daniel Webster and prompted Cass’s resignation in 1842.
Returning to Detroit, Michigan, Cass decided to reenter public service. He was easily elected to the U. S. Senate in 1845, but resigned his seat when he received the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1848. The nominating conventions and presidential election of 1848 reflected the divisiveness of the nation over the issue of the expansion of slavery. Cass favored letting the residents of territories decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery—a concept that he termed popular
Lewis Cass (Library of Congress)
Sovereignty. That did not sit well with southern Democrats, who wanted the areas acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War to allow slavery. The whigs nominated Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor. His long military record would appeal to northerners; his ownership of slaves would lure southern votes. Taylor would not commit himself on the issue of Congress’s power over slavery in the territories.
A third party, the Free-Soil Party, made its debut in 1848. Formed by New York Democrats who unequivocally opposed the extension of slavery into the new territories, the Free-Soilers nominated former president Martin Van Buren. The Free-Soil platform appealed to antislavery Whigs and northern Democrats, and Van Buren won more than 10 percent of the national vote. In New York, he won more than 120,000 votes—votes that otherwise would have been cast, largely, for Cass. This effectively gave Taylor New York’s electoral votes.
After his unsuccessful bid for the presidency, Cass returned to the U. S. Senate, serving there until 1857, when President James Buchanan named him secretary of state. As a senator, Lewis Cass was a strong advocate of compromise, and worked diligently for passage of the COMPROMISE OF 1850. However, after joining the Buchanan cabinet as secretary of state, Cass became convinced that stronger measures were necessary. When President Buchanan refused to fortify Fort Sumter and other federal garrisons as the South began to threaten disunion, Cass resigned from the cabinet. He retired to his home in Detroit, where he spent his last years writing and where he died on June 17, 1866.
Further reading: Willard C. Klunder, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996); Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass: The Last Jeffersonian (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950; New York: Octagon Books, 1973).
—Richard L. Friedline
Catlin, George (1796-1872) American artist Best known for his paintings of Native Americans and Western scenes—the first American artist to focus on these subjects—George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1796. His interest in Native American cultures can be partially traced to his family experiences. Catlin’s mother, Polly Sutton Catlin, was captured by Indians as a child. He learned about Indian ways from her and from the visitors to the Catlin home during his childhood: trappers, traders, and soldiers who had dealings with the Indian of the trans-Appalachian region. Although Catlin received little formal education, he learned hunting, fishing, and other skills necessary for life in rural Pennsylvania. He was always interested in exploring nature and collected Indians artifacts on his outings.
In 1817 Catlin went to Litchfield, Connecticut, to study law in the offices of the well-known jurist Tapping Reeve. While in Litchfield, he began to make a name for himself as an amateur artist, painting mostly portraits of political figures. After finishing his studies in 1818, he practiced law in Luzerne, Pennsylvania, until 1823. He then moved to Philadelphia, determined to paint professionally. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and at the National Academy of Design in New York. For the next few years, he earned his living by painting portraits, many of prominent figures such as New York governor DeWitt Clinton and former First Lady Dolly Madison. From 1824 to 1829 he spent most of his time in Washington, D. C., painting political figures. In 1828 he married Clara B. Gregory in Albany, New York. She was supportive of his career and joined him on many of his later journeys to the West.
During his time in Philadelphia, Catlin encountered Indian chieftains who visited Charles Willson Peale’s famous American Museum. The young artist was enthralled with these Native Americans and the cultural artifacts they brought with them. Believing that the Indians and their ways of life were declining, he decided to use his artistic abilities to document their vanishing culture for posterity. He began by painting Indians on reservations in western New York, and then traveled to the Ohio River and Mississippi River regions. Catlin’s premonition that he was documenting an endangered culture was perceptive. As European-American settlement moved further west, demand for Indian lands increased, and thus the transAppalachian Indians were forced further west onto reservations. The decline of the fur trade and the spread of disease also threatened their cultural stability. Catlin’s paintings depict a conflicted, chaotic time for these displaced nations as they struggled to maintain their cultural practices and economic viability.
From 1830 to 1836 he spent his summers following various Indian nations; in winter, he would return to the East to paint what he had seen and to raise money so he could return to the West. One of his most important early works was his moving portrait of the aging Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa (brother of Tecumseh), painted in 1830. Also that year, Catlin met explorer William Clark, then the superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis. He accompanied Clark on a trip to solidify Indian treaties. During the journey, he painted Iowa, Missouria, Otoe, Omaha, Sauk and Fox, and Sioux Indians. In 1832 he traveled up the Missouri on the Yellow Stone. Owned by the American Fur Company, this steamboat was the first to reach Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. By traveling to this remote territory, Catlin was able to depict nations not previously familiar to Americans in the East and Europeans, such as the Blackfeet, Crow, Plains Cree, Mandan, and Yankton Sioux. He continued to travel further west, journeying to Pawnee and Comanche country in 1834 and becoming the first non-Indian to see the red stone quarry in southwestern Minnesota. The distinctive red stone, used by many tribes to make pipes, was later named Catlinite in his honor.
During the 1830s Catlin painted over 500 portraits of Indian men and women in Native dress. He also painted scenes of Indian villages, religious ceremonies, games, and legends. From 1837 to 1852 he lectured and exhibited his paintings in the United States and Europe. Called “Catlin’s Indian Gallery,” this exhibition was a success in other countries but not particularly well received in America. In an attempt to ease his financial woes, he offered to sell his collection of Indian paintings to Congress in 1852 but was refused. Instead, he borrowed money from Joseph Harrison of Philadelphia, who took the collection as collateral. Catlin was never able to recover the paintings, but Joseph Harrison’s family eventually donated the collection to the United States National Museum.
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After 1852, Catlin continued to paint and write about his experiences with Indians. His most important early writings were published in a series of accounts, “Notes of Eight Years Travel Amongst the North American Indians,” in the New York Daily Commercial Advertizer from 1830 to 1839. Other works include: Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (1841); Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio: Hunting, Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America (1845); Catlin’s Notes of Eight Years’ Travels and Residence in Europe (1848); and Life Among the Indians (1867). In later years, he traveled among and depicted the Indians of South America as well, writing Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1868).
Catlin’s paintings of Indian life are important because he captured a disappearing way of life, depicting Indians specifically and candidly. He respected his Indian subjects and worked tirelessly to educate whites about their culture. His works provide valuable records of nations that did not survive contact with Europeans. His documentation of the Mandan of the upper Missouri was particularly important, since they were practically wiped out by smallpox in 1837. Most respected for his descriptive powers, he was less concerned with technical accuracy in perspective. Thus, his paintings evoke historically significant figures and themes, not classical aesthetic concerns. Most of his works are now owned by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C.; the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha; and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
George Catlin died in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1872. Although he was financially unsuccessful and received only little recognition during his lifetime, he is now considered one of the most important and original American artists of the 19th century. As he had intended, Catlin’s works have visually preserved the vital Indian cultures that were forever transformed by the American expansion to the West.
Further reading: George Catlin, The George Catlin Book of American Indians (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1977); William H. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979).
—Eleanor H. McConnell
World History
