nerals and the ability of the younger
officers.

The loss of the Chesapeake in a duel with the Shannon, on June 1, 1813,
outside of Boston Harbor, left the United States with an available
sea-going navy of just two frigates and a few small sloops. All the
other frigates were shut up in various ports by the British blockade,
which extended from Cape Cod to Florida. The burden of offense during
the rest of the war fell upon privateers. During the war more than five
hundred fitted out in American ports. In the year 1813 they took over
three hundred prizes, while the frigates took but seventy-nine. While
British cruisers were blockading the coast of the United States, these
craft, with their beautiful lines and wonderful spread of canvas,
carried consternation to all British shippers in the English Channel and
in the Irish Sea. They "seize prizes in sight of those that should
afford protection," complained the London _Times_, "and if pursued put
on their sea-wings and laugh at the clumsy English pursuers." No
exploits of the regular navy contributed so much to dispose the British
governing class to peace as the depredations of these privateers.

In the remote Southwest, the war assumed a different character. There
the enemy on the border was not Great Britain but Spain. The people of
the Carolinas and Georgia fully expected to acquire the Floridas while
the North was wresting Canada from British control. Had President
Madison been given his way, this wish would have been gratified; but
Congress refused to countenance the seizure of East Florida, and in May,
1813, Madison very reluctantly ordered the troops to evacuate Amelia
Island. No scruples deterred Congress from authorizing the occupation of
West Florida. In the spring of 1813, General Wilkinson forced the
surrender of the only Spanish fort on Mobile Bay and took possession of
the country as far as the Perdido--"the only permanent gain of territory
made during the war."

During the first year of the war the younger warriors of the Western
Creeks, in what is now Alabama, had been incited to hostilities by
Tecumseh, and in the following spring began depredations which
culminated in the capture of Fort Mims and the massacre of its
inhabitants on August 30, 1813. The horrors of an Indian war brought
every able-bodied settler in the adjoining States to arms. Before the
end of the year seven thousand whites had invaded the Indian territory
and had killed about one fifth o