During the War of 1812, the British blockade of Long Island Sound choked off legitimate merchant activity all along the Connecticut coast. In anger and desperation more than a few ship owners converted their vessels into privateers to raid the British merchant ships which now monopolized the trade.

The town of Pettipauge (now Essex) became a hub for these privateers. Settled in 1648, it was a bustling river port with shipyards, chandleries, blacksmith shops, warehouses, and a 900-foot-long ropewalk. It also lay six miles up the Connecticut River, securely protected by the massive sand bars at its mouth which prevented large naval ships from navigating upriver.

By the spring of 1814, the British had enough of the Pettipauge privateers.

On the night of April 7, 1814, Richard Coote, captain of HMS Borer, set out in six heavily armed large rowboats with 136 Royal Marines and headed up the Connecticut River. They first attacked the fort at Old Saybrook to avoid being trapped on the way out. Finding it unmanned and without guns, they proceeded upriver.
When they arrived at Pettipauge at 3:30 in the morning, they found that the town had been alarmed and the militia on alert, but the town’s defenders were poorly armed with only one four pound gun. The militia on the beach soon withered under a heavy barrage from the marines on the river. No one had expected this sort of thing so far inland.

The Royal Marines swiftly secured the village and proceeded up Main Street to Bushnell’s Tavern. There, Lieutenant Lloyd of the Marines read a proclamation from Captain Coote announcing their intent to destroy shipping, but that no harm would befall the local residents unless they resisted. In that case, he announced, the torch would be put to the entire town.

While the marines held the town, the seamen set about burning all of the vessels that lay at anchor, alongside the wharves, and under construction on the stocks, and looted canvas and cordage from the waterfront warehouses as well as a substantial quantity of rum.

When dawn arrived the British discovered more vessels in North Cove and sent crews to burn them as well. By 10:00 a.m. they had put the torch to six ships, four brigs, six schooners, nine sloops, and several smaller craft. It was now broad daylight and they were six miles deep in American territory.

The British set out with their row boats and two captured privateers, the brig Young Anaconda and the schooner Eagle, filled with the rum, sails, and cordage.  On the way downstream, the captured brig went aground on a sand bar. A little further downriver, Coote anchored his boats and captured schooner and decided to hunker down until nightfall.

By this time American militiamen were approaching the west bank of the river with cannon, and government forces from New London were appearing on the east bank. By late afternoon hundreds of American militiamen from nearby towns, and Marines from New London, had reached the riverbanks. At 7:00 p.m., the British set fire to the remaining privateer and attempted to slip quietly downstream until, off Old Lyme, their escaping row boats were illuminated by bonfires on the shore.

Picket boats in the river carried torches to reveal the escaping enemy. As they ran the gauntlet, the British came under intense cannon and musket fire from both sides of the river. Despite the effort to stop them the British boats reached their warships anchored off Saybrook by 10:00 p.m..

According to official report to the Admiralty, the British set fire to 27 vessels totaling 5,000 tons, including at least six privateers capable of mounting 130 guns. The raid was the largest single attack on American shipping during the war. The maritime loss to Essex was staggering.

Four months later the British would burn Washington, D.C..

Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans determined once and for all that the Mississippi Valley would belong to the United States. But what about Florida?

Florida was owned by Spain, but the British had designs… The Creeks and Seminoles were using it as a base to harass Georgia, and runaway slaves from the plantations of Georgia and South Carolina were escaping there. Assigned by President Monroe to stabilize the situation, Jackson wrote “Let it be signified to me through any channel that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.”

On March 10, 1818, Jackson invaded Florida with 3000 volunteers and 2000 Indian allies. The troops first set out for two supply ships waiting at the mouth of the Apalachicola River near the Gulf of Mexico. By March 15th, they had reached the Negro Fort on the river where they re-provisioned, and then set out into the heart of Seminole territory.

Meanwhile, a small flotilla commanded by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Isaac McKeever sailed from New Orleans. When McKeever arrived in the bay of St. Marks on April 1, his ship, the Thomas Shields, flew a British flag.  The ruse fooled both the Spanish and the Indians, and McKeever was able to lure on board the Creek chieftains Francis the Prophet (or Hillis Hadjo) and Himollemico. The Indians thought they were being received by allies and expected to find ammunition and powder. Instead, Jackson had the two Creek leaders hung.

On April 7th, a day after arriving in St. Marks, Jackson seized the military fortress there, and replaced the Spanish flag with The Stars and Stripes. He captured the two leading British operatives in Florida, Robert Armbrister and Alexander Arbuthnot. He had Armbrister shot;  Arbuthnot was hung from the yardarm of his own ship, the Chance.

Jackson proceeded on to seize Pensacola, the Spanish capitol, and at the end of May Jackson was in a position to notify President Monroe that he had taken northern Florida, quelled Indian resistance, routed the organized Negroes, deprived runaway slaves of their sanctuary, and brought British and Spanish influence in the region to an end.

Jackson returned to the US a hero to the people, but Secretary of War John C. Calhoun recommended his censure, and the House Committee on Military Affairs did the same.

Hundreds of immigrants were wading across the Sabine River every day in search of a better life in the Mexican state of Texas – much better than their old impoverished hardscrabble lives back in Kentucky or Tennessee…

The border seemed terribly porous – public order was breaking down – these newcomers were threatening the old way of life – they had no regard for the laws of the sovereign state – the security of the legitimate native-born residents of Texas was increasingly threatened.

Mexico’s conservative minister of foreign relations, Lucas Alamán y Escalada, was terribly concerned. The government need to push through legislation to stop this tidal wave.

With support from President Anastasio Bustamante, the Mexican congress played its trump card and passed “The Law of April 6, 1830” which addressed this issue head on:

• The government was authorized to take lands suitable for fortification or arsenals, and funds were allocated to construct fortifications.
• The introduction of foreigners across the northern frontier was prohibited under any pretext whatsoever, unless the foreigners had proper documentation – a valid passport issued by the agent of the republic of their origin.
• It was prohibited that emigrants from nations bordering on this republic settle in the states or territory adjacent to their own nation. All contracts not already completed and not in harmony with the law were suspended.
• The government was authorized to expend five hundred thousand pesos in the construction of fortifications and settlements on the frontier.
• Convicts would be sent to Texas to build fortifications and roads.
• Mexican settlements in Texas were encouraged and subsidized as a counter-measure.
• The government was instructed to regulate the establishment of the new colonies, and to present to Congress, within a year, a record of the emigrants and immigrants established under the law, with an estimate of the increase of population on the frontier.

A girl named “Amonute,” was born in 1596 to an important family in the land now called Virginia.  Her family called her by the private name of “Matoaka”, but she became popularly known as “Pocahontas” which meant “playful one” because of her frolicsome nature, and she was the daughter of the chief of the Powhatan nation, which had a population at the time of about 25,000 and included more than 30 tribes..

When the English arrived in Jamestown in 1607, Pocahontas was about eleven years old. That winter Captain John Smith was captured and brought to the capital of the Powhatan Chiefdom. When Smith was brought in front of the Chief of the Powhatan, two large stones were placed on the ground and Smith’s head was forcibly held on the stones.

Just as a warrior raised a club to smash in his brains, Pocahontas rushed in and placed her head upon his, and stopped the execution.

Thanks to the young girl’s intervention Smith was allowed to return to Jamestown along with gifts of food for the starving English. Pocahontas became a sign of peace to the English as she put them at ease with her antics, cart-wheeling through the settlement with the young English boys, as she accompanied the Indian envoys.

However relations between the two peoples soon deteriorated; Smith left Virginia and Pocahontas was not allowed to visit Jamestown anymore.

When she turned fourteen, Pocahontas married a young man Kocoum, who might have been one of her father’s bodyguards. It is not clear if she married for love or not, but her marriage was soon interrupted when Captain Samuel Argall hatched a plot to capture her and use her as leverage in the English colonists’ relations with the Powhatan.

Pocahontas was kidnapped and brought to Jamestown and put under the charge of Reverend Alexander Whitaker where she learned more of the English language, religion and customs. It was not an easy time, but during her religious instruction, Pocahontas met an attractive young widower, John Rolfe, who was known for introducing tobacco to the settlers in Virginia.

By all accounts, the two fell in love.

Powhatan was sent word that Pocahontas and Rolfe wanted to marry, and he consented and sent an uncle of Pocahontas’ to represent him and her people at the wedding. Kocoum, her first husband, realized divorce was inevitable.

In 1614, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and was baptized “Rebecca.” In April 1614, she and John Rolfe married. The Rolfes soon had a son named Thomas, and then traveled to England in 1616 on a delayed honeymoon excursion, their expenses paid by the Virginia Company of London.

Pocahontas, known as “Lady Rebecca Rolfe,” was accompanied by about a dozen Powhatan men and women. The party toured the country – Pocahontas attended a masque where she sat near King James I and Queen Anne. Eventually, the Rolfe family moved to Brentford, where Pocahontas again encountered Captain John Smith.

In March 1617, the Rolfes were ready to return to Virginia. They sailed down the Thames River, but Pocahontas got terribly sick just as they were about to set sail.

She was taken ashore in the town of Gravesend, where she died.
Pocahontas, aged about twenty-one, was buried at St. George’s Church on March 21, 1617.

“The next day after our entry into the city, on passing out from Clay Street, from Jefferson Davis’s house, I saw a crowd coming, headed by President Lincoln, who was walking with his usual long, careless stride, and looking about with an interested air and taking in everything.

Upon my saluting he said: ‘Is it far to President Davis’s house?’ I accompanied him to the house, which was occupied by General Weitzal as headquarters. The President had arrived about 9 o’clock, at the landing called Rocketts, upon Admiral Porter’s flag-ship, the Malvern, and as soon as the boat was made fast, without ceremony, he walked on shore, and started uptown. As soon as Admiral Porter was informed of it he ordered a guard of marines to follow as escort; but in the walk of about two miles they never saw him, and he was directed by negroes.

At the Davis house, he was shown into the reception-room, with the remark that the housekeeper had said that the room was President Davis’s office. As he seated himself he remarked, ‘This must have been President Davis’s chair,” and, crossing his legs, he looked far off with a serious, dreamy expression.

At length he asked me if the housekeeper was in the house. Upon learning that she had left he jumped up and said, with a boyish manner, ‘Come, let’s look at the house!’

We went pretty much over it; I retailed all that the housekeeper had told me, and he seemed interested in everything. As we came down the staircase General Weitzel came, in breathless haste, and at once President Lincoln’s face lost its boyish expression as he realized that duty must be resumed.

I accompanied President Lincoln and General Weitzel to Libby Prison and Castle Thunder, and heard General Weitzel ask President Lincoln what he (General Weitzel) should do in regard to the conquered people.

President Lincoln replied that he did not wish to give any orders on that subject, but, as he expressed it, ‘If I were in your place I’d let ’em up easy, let ’em up easy. “