War of 1812

"'Used to be almost a city.

"'Quite a port before the War of 1812.

"'The rail line used to go there, but hasn't been a train on it in fifty years.

"'More empty houses than there are people, I guess.

The name derives from Tenasi, a Cherokee town in present-day Monroe County.

They call it the Volunteer State, which was a nickname earned during the War of 1812.

It's also known as the Big Bend State, the Hogan Harmony State, and the Mother of Southwestern Statesmen.

Geographically speaking, it's part of the Appalachian region, with the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Smoky Mountains, and the Cumberland Plateau.

It is believed that the whereabouts of the gold is contained in the missing lyrics, but there's still important information in the song that provides us with some clues to the mystery.

The General Smith was a privateer vessel operating out of St. John during the War of 1812.

Also, the lyrics, come a ruckus band, is very telling of who we're dealing with.

the Royal Kennebecases Adventurers Society, better known by its acronym RKAS or Ruckus.

I live in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is probably, they say, one of the most haunted places in all of Canada, for sure.

Even North America, which would rival Gettysburg and Williamsburg because of Confederate wars and also War of 1812 and that stuff.

And the interesting part, the Brits did a really good job of bringing us a lot of ghosts because of the War of 1812.

So we got that, and it's kind of really interesting because a lot of the ghosts that do wind up getting picked up by the team... that's the legacy.

And it's the soldiers that were killed in battle.

For you, where you live, is it surprising how little is known about Niagara's haunted history? Because I'm often surprised, because I wouldn't say I know a lot, Peter, but I know it is, for me, quite, as you said earlier on, it's a very...

And rich location in regards to that.

And I think, as you touched on there, there is a weird thing, especially in England, that if you talk about the War of 1812, most people here these days aren't really sure what you're talking about, because Everybody here seemed to be more worried about Napoleon in France than they were about the Second American Revolution.

A nation kind of develops organically, whether because of shared religion, shared ethnicity, shared history and heritage, things like that.

It's an interesting topic because I remember when we were talking about the War of 1812, how Americans referred to themselves before that war compared to how they referred to themselves after it, before they were from a certain state or colony or area.

After the War of 1812, the large majority of people called themselves Americans.

Yes.

So that took a unifying event.

And then I think back in ancient history, when we're thinking about the Greeks, how they were split up, I don't want to say same culture, but kind of.

Yeah.

And to your point, was the state in ancient Greece imposed upon them? Did it fall into that category? Did the groups reject other groups, or is it a combination of things? And how would you compare that to the more modern example I gave of the War of 1812?

A good example of the kind of research and problem-solving that the Virginia Honor Room can provide is from a little bit earlier this year when I got a call from a customer who was several states away.

This customer was trying to identify an ancestor who had served in the War of 1812 who had enlisted in Fredericksburg.

This customer spent a few years contacting the National Park Service offices between Virginia and Maryland.

But you know the people he spoke to there kept giving him the same answer that there were two soldiers with the same name that he was looking for but they were in two different regiments and had distinct service records and there wasn't really any way to determine which one was which.

Yeah.

But he had also one other clue that they weren't really able to do much with and that was that He knew of that ancestor's uncle who he had heard in his family also enlisted at the same time as his ancestor.

They had gone in together to enlist for the War of 1812.

And so he came to me with this problem and this puzzle that he had been trying to solve for years.

So state banks who held considerable influence over their representatives and senators were in favor of a central bank.

Now, when we had the War of 1812, which was conveniently right in the middle of the time where we did not have a central bank, Treasury notes were issued to finance the war.

Congress and President Madison, they couldn't turn to a national bank for loans because there was no central bank.

They had to rely on public subscriptions of the treasury bonds in order to attract financing to finance the war.

So state banks proliferated during this time period where there was no central bank.

This was in between the years of the first central bank of the United States and the second central bank of the United States.

Many argued after the War of 1812 that it was a matter of national security that we should have a central bank.

And how much should a bank be able to lend? Well, that's a question that many people asked back then and still today.

I want to remind you that we didn't vote ourselves a country We went out and against all odds won a war against the greatest military on the planet at the time.

And since then we had to fight them again, what, 36 years later in the War of 1812.

Then we had to fight through our own internal struggles so that freedom would stay in this country instead of having a whole swath of people relegated to chattel slavery indefinitely.

Then we fought off the Germans in World War I and World War II and the Japanese as well.