Thomas Parker to Joshua Parker, a camp near the Virginia line, late June, 1813

Salty Brother, It looks as if you are taking nicely to the sea and the Navy is taking a nice bite out of the British lion. Keep biting! Even General Jackson says good things about the Navy, now that Captain Lawrence won on Lake Erie. In the past Jackson would say that spending public money on anything larger than a gunboat was just an Eastern way to justify raising taxes and establishing banks.

 

Captain Lawrence kept us from being ground between the upper and lower millstones. With our hold on Lake Erie, the best Brock and Tecumseh can do is hold what they have at either end, Niagara Falls and Detroit. We can even pry them out of Detroit if General Harrison can get a few more regulars up across Ohio.

 

We could also use those regulars here against the Muskogee Nation (that's the Creeks and Choctaws), but maybe not. If General Harrison came with them, I don't know who would be fighting who. Harrison's regular commission outranks Jackson's militia one, but waving a regular commission in Old Hickory's face is like waving a lighted torch over a barrel of turpentine. You don't want to be anywhere close to where that's happening.

 

The word about what we might have to do to the south isn't good hearing. The British have taken Pensacola in West Florida, claiming to protect their allies (the Dons) from French allies (us). They've also been sniffing around Mobile. God help us if they take that and start landing shiploads of arms for the Red Sticks' warriors.

 

I'm sure we could still stand them off if they came all the way north to try us, particularly if the Cherokees hit them from behind. But the Red Sticks in black paint are likely as not to go for Georgia, where the militia is thin as ants in an empty jug, and the Cherokees would have to defend their own land.

We also just march south and pound the Creeks into the mud, because we don't have enough men to do that and hold Tennessee and Kentucky the way the people want us to. I don't know how many men would be enough for that, but we certainly can't do it with less than four thousand, not with Jackson thinking about his career after the war. He won't get elected governor if he lets Indians run wild in places that haven't seen a scalping since the Revolution.

 

I've suggested that we muster a couple of companies of Rangers, to strike across country into Georgia, make the Red Sticks wonder what's next, and encourage the Cherokees. If this happens, I might be a captain of, or at least in, one of those companies. I might volunteer anyway, and you likely won't hear from me for some time. Still, it would beat sitting here, waiting to see if you'll wake up with your scalp still on your head and if the next load of whiskey is going to be worse than the last one…

 

This goes off tonight, toward the Ohio. I hope it reaches you before you become even saltier, by sailing across the Atlantic. Don't stay up so late working on the papers that you don't learn any of the French for charming the ladies, or wear yourself out so that you can't charm even the ones who speak English.

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