Bucker Dudley. It's what you want to read.

Here's a scary thing. I just spent seven years writing a young adult historical novel. None of my publishing contacts thought they could sell it. I know only four or five young persons of fourteen and up, only one of them reads, and I'm not sure she even has a Kindle. Nevertheless I've decided to offer BUCKER DUDLEY as a Kindle serial of maybe five episodes, and see whether anybody buys it.

Ninety-nine cents an episode. If you have a Kindle, the first episode is free! Find it HERE. If you don't have a Kindle, you can pay 99¢ for the first episode and read it on a free Kindle app on your computer, smartphone or tablet. You can download a Kindle app HERE.

I'll sweeten the pot. Enter my contest. If you win I'll buy you a Kindle.

Now, you're asking yourself: Why would I spend my precious time in this short life reading about Polly McCaskie's adventures in the War of 1812, when there are so many reasons not to? First of all, she's Canadian. (I had an editor tell me some years ago, before the rise of Louise Penny, that nobody wanted to read about Canadians.) Secondly, it's the War of 1812, for cat's sake. Nobody but Canadians even likes that war. We in the U.S. are embarrassed by it. The British marched into Washington and burned the White House. President Madison ran like a hare. We don't want to hear about that. It's humiliating.

Furthermore the adventures in this book, while taking place in the Regency time period, are so far from the fashionable clubs and drawing rooms of London that they might as well be happening in another universe. Nobody says, “La, indeed, sir.” Nobody even wears corsets, except maybe in Sackets Harbor, and then they don't talk about them. Captain Leonard of the United States Navy is a rake, I guess, but he isn't an attractive rake, and he gets in serious trouble for it. Are there ladies? No, not a lot of ladies. Half of the major female characters make love for a living. Others are tough Indians scratching out a hard existence in the Canadian woods.

Actually that's why you want to read it. BUCKER DUDLEY will take you out of this worrisome world of the twenty-first century and carry you off to sea, and into the deep woods of Canada, with a girl who retains her light-hearted outlook in spite of war and dreadful vicissitudes. In the end she rediscovers her true love, an American seaman. Between the two of them they strike the blow that puts an end to this miserable war.

I would recommend it to teachers as an aid to teaching the War of 1812, if anyone wanted to teach that, and if the prostitutes didn't play such a prominent role in the plot. As it is I can hear the parents screaming. Oh, well. Leave me a comment if you want to be included in the drawing for the Kindle.

Why We Fought the British in 1812: The Thing with the Indians

The Battle of Tippecanoe

They wanted the Northwest Territory.

They were encouraged in their desires by the British, who occupied trading posts and forts throughout the Western frontier of the United States long after the Treaty of Paris concluded the American Revolution. With British encouragement the Indians continued to believe it was possible for them to hold the Northwest Territory against the Americans and stop the encroachment of land-hungry American settlers on their hunting grounds.

Even after the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 (on the site of present-day Toledo), when Mad Anthony Wayne drove their warriors before him and the British refused to open the doors of their fort to let them in, some of them thought, we can still unite the tribes and resist the Americans.

This was Shawnee leader Tecumseh's plan, when territorial governor William Henry Harrison refused to relinquish the three million acres along the Wabash River ceded in the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. The "Delawares, Putawatimies, Miamies and Eel River Miamies" were the signatories to the treaty, and for the three million acres they were to receive the following: "to the Delawares a permanent annuity of five hundred dollars; to the Miamies a like annuity of five hundred dollars; to the Eel river tribe a like annuity of two hundred and fifty dollars; and to the Putawatimies a like annuity of five hundred dollars." Tecumseh's position was that the Indians were one, and the separate tribes had no authority to sell land that belonged to all the Indians.

In the real world such a position can be maintained only by force of arms. The British happily provided rifles. Tecumseh went on a tour of the southern tribes to gather support, leaving his brother, Tenskwatawah the Prophet, in charge of the Shawnee capital of Prophetstown, where the Tippecanoe flows into the Wabash River. Now Tenskwatawa was a man venerated by the Shawnee as a person of supernatural powers. He preached a return to the old Indian ways, and he told the warriors of the tribe that the American bullets could not wound them if their hearts were pure. Before you say, "foolish native superstition," you might reflect that this was also the belief of Duncan McColl, a devout Scot.

It was to Prophetstown that William Henry Harrison came with a thousand men to parley with the Indian leaders. "We will talk to you tomorrow," they said. The Americans made camp nearby and went to sleep.

At four in the morning the bravest of the Indians came creeping into the camp with orders to murder Harrison and his senior officers. They were followed by three waves of charging warriors, secure, at least at first, in their invincibility. But God was not on their side, after all. Harrison escaped death, his forces overcame those of the natives, and he was able to mount and lead a cavalry charge that drove the Indians into a swamp before he burned Prophetstown to the ground. Thirty-eight of the Indian dead were found in Harrison's camp. It was a terrible defeat for them; Indians never left their dead if they could help it. Most of the survivors lost all faith in Tenskwatawa.

This and many other ripping stories can be found in Col. John R. Elting's sardonic account, Amateurs, to Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812. He begins it, "The United States swaggered into the War of 1812 like a Kansas farm boy entering his first saloon. And, like that same innocent, wretchedly gagging down his first drink, the new nation was totally unprepared for the raw impact of all-out war." The book goes on in that vein. You want to read it.

Of Tecumseh, more later.

1812: Why we Fought

Last week I promised to fill you in on some of the more bizarre details of this strange conflict. The most bizarre thing about the War of 1812, as near as I can determine, was that it was the American government who declared it.

Why start a war with the strongest naval power on the planet? Well, we were mad at them. Free Trade and Sailor's Rights was the rallying cry at the time, and that had to do with arrogant British sea power interfering with American commerce and impressing American seamen to serve on British warships. But there were other issues.

In the West (which is to say, places like Ohio and Kentucky) the American settlers were solidly behind any war that would get rid of the Indians, who allied themselves with the British. The Americans wanted the Indians' land. They moved onto it in droves. In response the Indians became the first anti-American terrorists. Mutilated corpses make for a lot of bad feeling; the Indians were hated and feared.

Population pressures drove a lot of pro-war sentiment. In that agrarian society the average American family needed enough fertile land to grow food. Not only Indian land looked good to them but Canadian land as well (and eventually, Mexican land, but that's another story). The conquest of Canada, as Thomas Jefferson once famously remarked, was a mere matter of marching. Resistance to Yankee forces was not expected.

After all, the British were busy fighting the French. How much trouble could a few Canadian farmers possibly be? So with a tiny standing army, a few inadequate forts, an ill-trained and skittish militia, and a navy consisting of six huge frigates and a number of lesser vessels, the United States of America went to war.

Not everyone liked the idea. The day after war was declared a Baltimore newspaperman published an issue of his paper denouncing the war. Outraged Baltimoreans converged on his newspaper office, broke up his presses, and pulled the building down. Then they attacked his supporters, killing some and wounding others.

Next: New England.