Part 2 — Part II. The Struggle for Possession, 1700–1832

For the struggle between France and England Parkman’s Half Century of Conflict (2 vols.), Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols.), and Conspiracy of Pontiac (2 vols.) give the best connected account. S. Farmer’s History of Detroit and Michigan, A. Hulbert’s The Niagara River, and other local histories of Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Niagara, as well as chronicles of the war, contribute to this history. Mr. C. M. Burton has published a very interesting pamphlet on Cadillac’s Village, or Detroit under Cadillac, which is the result of his own research in the records of this time. Besides Parkman’s two-volume story of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, it is well to read Major Robert Rogers’ Journals of the Siege of Detroit, and Concise Account of North America, 1765, and also a Diary of the Siege of Detroit, edited with other documents by F. B. Hough, and The Gladwin Manuscripts, edited by Charles Moore. Alexander Henry tells his own story in Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, 1809.

For the period of the war between England and America, Henry Adams’ History of the United States, 1800–1817 (9 vols.), is the authority. T. Roosevelt in his The Winning of the West, 1777–1807 (5 vols.), gives his fifth volume to St. Clair and Wayne. There are three standard works on the naval part of the war, J. Barnes’ Naval Actions of the War of 1812, Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812, and A. T. Mahan’s Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 (2 vols.). There are many contemporary accounts of the battles and defences of the leading participants, such as The Defence of Brigadier-General Hull Written by Himself, 1814. Three leading documents of the Chicago massacre are the Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, 1844, supposed to be the Kinzie account, The Chicago Massacre in 1812, which is the Heald account, written at a much later date by Joseph Kirkland, and an anonymous document in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, viii, 648–652. The Black Hawk War is treated in all histories of the time. The material about Black Hawk himself is gathered from B. Drake’s Life and Adventures of Black Hawk (7th ed., 1846), Life of Black Hawk, Dictated by Himself, 1834, and S. G. Drake’s Book of the Indians (8th ed., 1841), which has also accounts of Pontiac and Tecumseh. R. G. Thwaites’ How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, has an essay on the Black Hawk War, as well as other interesting essays on this period. Randall Parrish’s Historic Illinois should be mentioned in this connection as the best book of its kind on this whole region, with a clear account of the events that took place in Illinois and a graphic picture of pioneer conditions.

The biographies of Cass and Wayne are valuable. The two contemporary books on Cass are W. L. G. Smith’s The Life and Times of Lewis Cass, and W. T. Young’s Life and Public Services of Lewis Cass. A. C. McLaughlin has written a good biography with the title, Lewis Cass, for the American Statesman Series. John R. Spears is the author of a biography of Anthony Wayne, 1903.