commanders in America have no power to conclude any
armistice or suspension of arms. Terms will be offered to the American
Government at the point of the bayonet. America will be left in a much
worse situation as a commercial and naval power than she was at the
commencement of the war."

[Illustration: SEAT OF WAR. LOUISIANA & FLORIDA]

The reverses to the British arms on Lake Champlain, at Plattsburg, and
at Baltimore, virtually ended hostilities in the Northern States for the
remaining period of the war. Winter approaching, all belligerent
forces that could be marshaled would be transferred to the waters of
the Gulf for operations on the coast there. The malice and wanton
barbarity of the English in burning the national buildings and property
at Washington, in the destruction and loot of houses, private and
public, on the shores of the Chesapeake and Atlantic, and in repeated
military outrages unjustified by the laws of civilized warfare, had
fully aroused the Government and the citizenship to the adoption of
adequate measures of defense for the Northern and Eastern States. It was
too late, however, to altogether repair the injuries done to the army of
the Southwest by the tardiness and default of the head of the War
Department, which, as General Jackson said in an official report,
threatened defeat and disaster to his command at New Orleans. Indignant
public sentiment laid the blame of the capture of Washington, and of the
humiliating disasters there, to the same negligence and default of this
official, which led to his resignation soon after.

GENERAL JACKSON ASSUMES COMMAND OF THE SEVENTH MILITARY DISTRICT OF
THE SOUTHWEST.

General Andrew Jackson had, in July, 1814, been appointed a
major-general in the United States army, and assigned the command of the
Southern department, with headquarters at Mobile. His daring and
successful campaigns against the Indian allies of the British the year
previous had won for him the confidence of the Government and of the
people, and distinguished him as the man fitted for the emergency. At
the beginning of the war British emissaries busily sought to enlist,
arm, and equip all the Indians of the Southern tribes whom they could
disaffect, as their allies, and to incite them to a war of massacre,
pillage, and destruction against the white settlers, as they did with
the savage tribes north of the Ohio River. In this they were
successfully aided by Tecumseh, the Shawanee chief,