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Who was William Henry Harrison, and what does his military career reveal about the War of 1812 in the Great Lakes Region? In his study of William Henry Harrison, David Curtis Skaggs sheds light on the role of citizen-soldiers in taming the wilderness of the old Northwest. Perhaps best known for the Whig slogan in 1840—\"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too\"—Harrison used his efforts to pacify Native Americans and defeat the British in the War of 1812 to promote a political career that eventually elevated him to the presidency. Harrison exemplified the citizen-soldier on the Ohio frontier in the days when white men settled on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains at their peril. Punctuated by almost continuous small-scale operations and sporadic larger engagements, warfare in this region revolved around a shifting system of alliances among various Indian tribes, government figures, white settlers, and business leaders. Skaggs focuses on Harrison's early life and military exploits, especially his role on Major General Anthony Wayne's staff during the Fallen Timbers campaign and Harrison's leadership of the Tippecanoe campaign. He explores how the military and its leaders performed in the age of a small standing army and part-time, Cincinnatus-like forces. This richly detailed work reveals how the military and Indian policies of the early republic played out on the frontier, freshly revisiting a subject central to American history: how white settlers tamed the west—and at what cost.

The remarkable military career of General Winfield Scott spanned fifty-three years, fourteen presidents, and six wars, both foreign and domestic. However, his lengthy service did not secure his rightful place among the nation’s pantheon of great military leaders. Instead, he is most often remembered as the aged, overweight, and sickly commanding general who was replaced by George McClellan at the beginning of the Civil War. Originally published in 1864, only two years before his death, Scott’s memoirs touch on many of the significant events of the early and mid-nineteenth century. This new edition of those remembrances, expertly edited by Timothy D. Johnson, showcases Scott’s rare strategic insights, battlefield prowess, and diplomatic shrewdness, restoring him to his proper place as arguably the most important American general to ever serve his country. Scott joined the army in 1808, earned the rank of brigadier general in 1814, and was promoted to commanding general in 1841. During the Mexican-American War, he commanded one of the most brilliant military campaigns in American history and mentored the generation of officers who fought the Civil War, including Generals Grant, Lee, Longstreet, Beauregard, Jackson, and Meade. As a young general, he wrote the first comprehensive set of regulations to govern the army and pushed for the professionalization of the U.S. officer corps. Yet, he was ridiculed at the beginning of the war for his prescient prediction that the Civil War would be a prolonged conflict requiring extensive planning and superior strategic thinking. With this edition, Johnson has merged Scott’s large two-volume memoir into a single, manageable volume without losing any of the original 1864 text. Extensive new annotations update Scott’s outdated notes and provide valuable illumination and context. Covering a wide range of events—from the famous 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton through the end of the Civil War—Scott’s extraordinary account reveals the general as a sometimes egocentric but always astute witness to the early American republic. Timothy D. Johnson, professor of history at Lipscomb University in Nashville, is the author of Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory and A Gallant Little Army: The Mexico City Campaign . He is coeditor, with Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr., of A Fighter from Way Back: The Mexican War Diary of Lt. Daniel Harvey Hill and Notes of the Mexican War by J. Jacob Oswandel.

Winfield Scott (1786-1866) was arguably the premier soldier of his era.More than any other, he was responsible for the professionalization of the U.S.Army during his long career (1807-61).He served as general in the War of 1812, commander of the U.S.

A fur trader in the Michigan Territory and confidant of both the U.S. government and local Indian tribes, Jacob Smith could have stepped out of a James Fenimore Cooper novel. Controversial, mysterious, and bold during his lifetime, in death Smith has not, until now, received the attention he deserves as a pivotal figure in Michigan's American period and the War of 1812. This is the exciting and unlikely story of a man at the frontier's edge, whose missions during both war and peace laid the groundwork for Michigan to accommodate settlers and farmers moving west. The book investigates Smith's many pursuits, including his role as an advisor to the Indians, from whom the federal government would gradually gain millions of acres of land, due in large part to Smith's work as an agent of influence. Crawford paints a colorful portrait of a complicated man during a dynamic period of change in Michigan's history.

History has not always been kind to Sagoyewatha, or, as he is more commonly known, Red Jacket. One of the most eloquent spokesmen for Native sovereignty in the early national period, Sagoyewatha was nonetheless accused by his peers of cowardice, alcoholism, and egotism. Fortunately, this picture is beginning to change. Christopher Densmore's recent biography has helped to clear away the cloud of demonization that obscured Red Jacket's life. Literary scholars and historians have begun to frame Sagoyewatha's career as an influential contribution to discourse about Native sovereignty. In this article, the author focuses on one of Red Jacket's best-documented performances, the Ogden Council of July 1819, where the Senecas rejected the offer of the Ogden Land Company to buy most of their remaining reservations. In addition to being one of Sagoyewatha's finest performances--and most effective--it is also one of his least known, the text not seeing formal publication until more than ten years after his death in William Leete Stone's 1841 biography. The author argues that Red Jacket's accomplishment at the 1819 Ogden Council was to wear the ethos of republican virtue more effectively than his opponents, who initially claimed the same mantle. In this sense Red Jacket was one of many marginalized \"others\" of the early U.S. political and literary tradition, including oratorical African Americans and women, who extended the egalitarian promise of republican virtue to include those who were initially excluded from mainstream national thought. But rather than employing republicanism strictly as a political philosophy, Red Jacket interpreted and dramatized republicanism as a performative literary rhetoric. Sagoyewatha not only reminded his audiences of Washington's promises of fidelity to the Indians but also presented himself and his nation--not his Euroamerican auditors--as the fitting heirs of the tradition of virtue for which Washington stood. (Contains 37 notes.)

[...]although there is an index which is helpful in assisting users to locate where a person, ship, or location, is mentioned, it will not help users find where in the chronology the impressment of American sailors by the British is mentioned, or where to find passages about the disruption of American trade, or about Indian-British military alliances, etc. Nonetheless, this is overall an excellent, detailed resource on the military particulars of the War of 1812. Because of the level of martial specificity here, this resource seems most appropriate for military libraries, or any academic or public library with a strong military history component to its collection.-Mike Tosko, Information Literacy Coordinator, The University of Akron, Ohio

Cutt reviews four titles in Documenting the War of 1812 Series such as: What Caused The War of 1812 by Sally Senzell Isaacs, Famous People of the War of 1812 by Robin Johnson, Major Battles of the War of 1812 by Gordon Clarke and The Legacy of the War of 1812 by Lizann Flatt.

New titles in military history are reviewed. Among the books discussed are Loose Cannons: 101 Myths, Mishaps and Misadventurers of Military History by Graeme Donald and Fields of War: Fifty Key Battlefields in France and Belgium by Robert Mueller.

Each year, in anticipation of Black History Month in February, LJ presents an overview of new and forthcoming titles on African American history and culture. Several books are reviewed, including: 1. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. 2. The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement by Taylor Branch. 3. African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album by Ronald S Coddington. 4. The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South by Bruce Levine. 5. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States by James Oakes. 6. Black Jews in Africa and the Americas by Tudor Parfitt. 7. The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America's Military by James Rawn Jr. 8. The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom by Marcus Rediker.

Itkin reviews \"American Military Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary\" by John C. Fredriksen.