William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812 by David Curtis Skaggs

William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812. By David Curtis Skaggs. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. 303. Cloth, $44.95.)Bowling Green State University Professor Emeritus David Curtis Skaggs examines the military history of Ohio Country from the Greenville Treaty through the War of 1812. Taking the military career of William Henry Harrison as his narrative lens, Skaggs presents an operational analysis of frontier fighting through which he builds an argument for the importance of Harrison's use of mounted fighters and backcountry militias in both defending the Old Northwest during the War of 1812 and establishing Harrison as the "Washington of the West."Skaggs notes that "Harrison and his western theater are given short shrift in American military annals"; and that studies of the War of 1812 tend to focus "mosdy on the combat on the Niagara frontier and eastward" (243). To remedy this shortcoming, he examines Harrison's rise to military prominence, mapping his career from mentorship under Anthony Wayne, through the invasion of Prophetstown in 1811, and his vital collaboration with Oliver Hazard Perry during the War of 1812.Skaggs uses Harrison's career to highlight a turning point in what he labels the "American military tradition," in particular a shift away from the Cincinnatus-like citizen-soldier toward a state-funded army of professional soldiers (240). He argues that Harrison's career typifies this moment, with Harrison representing a hybrid of old and new- simultaneously a backcountryman who wore hunting shirts and an elegantly uniformed military leader. In this regard, Harrison personifies the end of the backcountry fighter and the emergence of the professional military employing backcountry tactics. Effectively a bridge between the Jeffersonian ideal of a citizen-run, militia-based military and the need for a state-funded professional military force, Harrison links the emerging American mythology of settler initiative and heroics to the reality of statefunded and state-executed conquest.By highlighting an overemphasis on the performance of regulars in securing Ohio Country victories during the War of 1812, Skaggs offers "a reinterpretation of the employment of the often maligned volunteer soldiers of the early national era." And through his rendering of Harrison's military rise, he creates in the person of Harrison an individual who "exemplified the triumph of American arms [in the Old Northwest]" (xii, 242). For Skaggs, Harrison's approach to frontier fighting, particularly the use of volunteer units and mounted fighters, was the "new military ingredient" that molded the "Western way of war" into American military tradition, with Harrison simultaneously representing the past and future of that tradition (19, 243). He was the mastermind who brought together "the cavalryman with his rifle, tomahawk, and audacity and the mounted infantryman with his rifle, hunting knife, and boldness" (23-24). Skaggs credits his experience under Anthony Wayne in preparing Harrison for "frontier warfare," and planting the seeds of many of the innovations that he would develop during the war, such as relentless attention to drill and combat training, the incorporation of both regular and volunteer units, and personal management of the logistical support system (31, 42).Skaggs is at his best when describing the practical aspects of Harrison's logistical networks, and in his analysis of his successful collaboration with naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry. Yet his attempt to provide "the context of the broader development of the American military tradition" through the lens of frontier fighting and the military career of William Henry Harrison is somewhat problematic. …