The Men Who Built America episode 3 – Live Free or Die

The Men Who Built America episode 3 – Live Free or Die: With the British and Tecumseh’s Pan-Indian alliance broken in the north, the south is threatened by the Red Sticks of the Creek tribe when they massacre 500 settlers at Fort Mims. General Andrew Jackson joins the fight to defend the frontier, and becomes a national hero at the Battle of New Orleans. However, his methods at Tallushatchee starts a fierce rivalry with woodsman Davy Crockett who is against Jackson’s Indian Removal Act when he is president. Crockett starts a new life in Texas, unbeknownst that a war is brewing with Mexico.

A look at the lives of iconic pioneers such as Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Tecumseh, Davy Crocket and Andrew Jackson as they traveled across America, starting in The Men Who Built America episode 3 with Daniel Boone.

The Men Who Built America episode 3 – Live Free or Die

Tecumseh

Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief, warrior, diplomat, and orator who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. He traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting tribal unity. Although his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in the War of 1812, he became an iconic folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian history.

Tecumseh was born in what is now Ohio at a time when the far-flung Shawnees were reuniting in their Ohio Country homeland. During his childhood, the Shawnees lost territory to the expanding American colonies in a series of border conflicts. Tecumseh’s father was killed in battle against American colonists in 1774. Tecumseh was thereafter mentored by his older brother Cheeseekau, a noted war chief who died fighting Americans in 1792. As a young war leader, Tecumseh joined Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket’s war to defend against further American encroachment, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the loss of most of Ohio in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Red Sticks – The Men Who Built America episode 3

Red Sticks (The Men Who Built America episode 3), the name deriving from the red-painted war clubs of some Native American Creeks—refers to an early 19th-century traditionalist faction of these people in the American Southeast. Made up mostly of Creek of the Upper Towns that supported traditional leadership and culture, as well as the preservation of communal land for cultivation and hunting, the Red Sticks arose at a time of increasing pressure on Creek territory by European-American settlers.

Creek of the Lower Towns were closer to the settlers, had more mixed-race families, and had already been forced to make land cessions to the Americans. In this context, the Red Sticks led a resistance movement against European-American encroachment and assimilation, tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813. Initially a civil war among the Creek, the conflict drew in United States state forces while the nation was already engaged in the War of 1812 against the British.

Muscogee

The Muscogee, also known as the Muskogee, Muscogee Creek, Mvskoke Creek, Mvskokvlke, or the Muscogee Creek Confederacy (pronounced [məskóɡəlɡi]) in the Muscogee language, are a group of related indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their original homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, all of Alabama, western Georgia and part of northern Florida.

Like the Cherokee in northeastern Alabama, most of the Muscogee people were forcibly removed by the federal government from their original lands in the 1830s during the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Some Muscogee fled European encroachment in 1797 and 1804 to establish two small tribal territories in Louisiana and Texas, continued today by their descendants. Another small branch of the Muscogee Creek Confederacy remained in Alabama, and their descendants formed the federally recognized Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

Battle of New Orleans – The Men Who Built America episode 3

The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815 between the British Army under Major General Sir Edward Pakenham and the United States Army under Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson, roughly 5 miles (8 km) southeast of the French Quarter of New Orleans, in the current suburb of Chalmette, Louisiana.

The battle took place 18 days after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended the War of 1812, on December 24, 1814, though it would not be ratified by the United States until February 16, 1815, as news of the agreement had not yet reached the United States from Europe. Despite a large British advantage in numbers, training, and experience, the American forces defeated a poorly executed assault in slightly more than 30 minutes. The Americans suffered roughly 60 casualties, while the British suffered roughly 2,000.

Davy Crockett – The Men Who Built America episode 3

David Crockett (The Men Who Built America episode 3) was an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet “King of the Wild Frontier”. He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the Texas Revolution.

Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling. He was made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee and was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821. In 1827, he was elected to the U.S. Congress where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, especially the Indian Removal Act. Crockett’s opposition to Jackson’s policies led to his defeat in the 1831 elections. He was re-elected in 1833, then narrowly lost in 1835, prompting his angry departure to Texas (then the Mexican state of Tejas) shortly thereafter. In early 1836, he took part in the Texas Revolution and was likely executed at the Battle of the Alamo after being captured by the Mexican Army.