Always to be Calling it, Please, Research

Tom Lehrer fans will recognize this line from his immortal hit, "Plagiarize." When I set out to write BUCKER DUDLEY it was not my intention to rip off other people's work, but to write something fresh and original about a very old idea: the sailor girl who went to sea dressed as a boy.

And I wanted to write about the War of 1812.

I didn't know a whole lot about the War of 1812 before I started reading. Americans don't. It's a big deal in Canada, because they figure they won it, which they did, sort of, and yet not. The idea of a shooting war between Canadians and Americans intrigued and horrified me. My father was American, my mother Canadian. They grew up thirty miles from each other.

What most Americans know about the war is the part where the British burned Washington, and then were repelled from Baltimore, where our flag still flew from Fort McHenry in the dawn's early light, after which they sailed off to New Orleans and got soundly whupped by Andrew Jackson's troops.

There was a lot more to it than that. First off the Americans declared war on Great Britain, the most powerful naval force on earth, without having an effective army or navy. It was not a popular war. President Madison sent raw troops to Canada under incompetent officers in the mistaken belief that their invasion would be welcomed. The troops were terrified of Indians, who wouldn't fight by the rules. The New Englanders were so distressed by the whole mess that they started making plans to secede from the Union.

Showing the craziness through the eyes of an adolescent girl who found herself in the middle of it became the task of writing the novel. Bucko does fine. Good health, a cheerful outlook, and remarkable athletic ability see her through most of her trials. The first draft of BUCKER DUDLEY showcased many fascinating characters that I came upon in my reading, but the multiple point of view necessary to feature them pulled focus from Bucko's struggles.

John Norton, the half-Scot, half-Cherokee Mohawk war chief, was too good to cut out of the book in the second draft: handsome, fascinating, bloodthirsty, irresistible to women, ultimately a tragic figure. So he is Bucko's cousin, on the Scottish side, her last remaining relative. She must go into the woods to find him after her ship is destroyed.

In the coming weeks I'll blog about the characters I had to cut. I already told you about Duncan McColl, the soldier minister who was a force for peace on the Maine-New Brunswick border, and Alexander Contee Hanson, the newspaper publisher who detonated the Baltimore riots, and my beloved Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy (Nelson's Hardy), whose aristocratic young wife never appreciated him. There are many others of interest, both noble and debased. Check back here from time to time to find out all about them.

Civil Unrest and the War of 1812

Civil unrest in this country is nothing new. Folks have been rioting here since the white people first annoyed the Indians. Sometimes the protestors are opposed by the police and the civil authorities, the way they were in the nineteen sixties, the way they are today in the Occupy Wall Street movement. At other times, the civil authorities ignore the protestors, even cooperate with them.

This is how it was in the first Baltimore Riot, when the very first casualty of the War of 1812 was created by a protestor dropping a rock on the foot of a passerby. The police were absent. The mayor was there, passing among the rioters, remonstrating gently with them.

What were the people of Baltimore upset about? Not the war. They were delighted when the country declared war on Britain on June 18, 1812. Federalists were against the war, but those of the Democratic-Republican persuasion were hot to get started fighting. In Baltimore, a city of 41,000 and growing apace, many of the residents were French, German, and Irish immigrants, and most were Democratic-Republicans. Not war protestors.

No, they were mad at Alexander Contee Hanson, who with his partner Jacob Wagner had dared to denounce the war in his newspaper, the Federal Republican. They began to gather at Hanson's newspaper offices on Gay Street as soon as the despised issue of his paper hit the streets, and by nightfall they were in such a passion that they tore the building down. Hanson and Wagner were not there, and so escaped a tarring and feathering.

But Hanson came back to Baltimore the following month and published a new issue of the Federal Republican, denouncing the Republicans of Baltimore as tools of Washington politicians and a rival publisher (the Baltimoreans had been rioting ever since he left). He published his street address. Two thousand rioters showed up to attack Hanson and his supporters; when they rushed the house one of the attackers was shot to death. The mayor and the police took the Federalists to jail, promising them safety, but the rioters broke into the jail and attacked them in an orgy of violence that some compared to the French Reign of Terror. One of Hanson's friends was killed and several others tortured and dreadfully maimed. Hanson himself was badly wounded.

We hope things don't come to that on Wall Street. As in Chicago in 1969, it can be tough sometimes to see who is doing the actual rioting. If past events are any guide, it's going to get worse before it gets better.