Among the fourteen thousand Indians that Tecumseh had marshaled at Fort Malden, the effect was closer to a bolt of destructive lightning. The Indian leader had assured his followers that the British ‘big canoes’ would unquestionably defeat the American big canoes and retain royal supremacy on Lake Erie and its tributary rivers. When the bad news of the defeat of their ‘One-Armed Father Barclay’ reached Malden, thousands of warriors and their wives and children fled. Within little more than a month, Harrison’s army, backed by Perry’s ships, had driven the British out of Forts Malden and Detroit and routed an outnumbered British and Indian army that made a desperate stand on the Thames River in Upper Canada. Among the dead in that ferocious battle was Tecumseh. With him died the hope of an Indian state in the Midwest. Michigan Territory, as well as parts of Indiana, Ohio, and northwestern Pennsylvania, returned permanently to American control.

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Along with a renewed faith in America’s westward destiny came a less attractive byproduct of the Battle of Lake Erie: a public quarrel between the treacherous Jesse Duncan Elliott and Oliver Hazard Perry. Deciding that a condemnation of Elliott’s conduct would blemish the victory, Perry had actually commended his second-in-command’s ‘characteristic bravery and judgment’ in his official report. Though he tried, Perry could not silence the seething anger of the officers and men in his fleet, and the story of Elliott’s cowardly conduct soon became widespread. Deciding bravado was the best defense, Elliott obnoxiously declared himself dissatisfied with Perry’s description of his services in the official report.

The quarrel dragged on for another five years. It ended in an exchange of letters that revealed the hidden part of the Perry-Elliott conversation aboard Niagara. ‘I was once induced to write a letter in your favor,’ Perry wrote. Now he was forced to remind Elliott of the

abject condition in which I had previously found you … sick, or pretending to be sick in bed, in consequence of distress of mind, declaring that you had missed the fairest opportunity of distinguishing yourself that ever man had, and lamenting so piteously of the loss of your reputation, that I was prompted to make almost any effort to relieve you from the shame which seemed to overwhelm you.

Elliott called Perry’s letter ‘Epistolary blackguardism’ and challenged him to a duel. Perry declined, saying duels could only take place between gentlemen and he no longer considered Elliott one of that honorable fraternity. Instead, Perry requested a court-martial to settle the dispute and submitted a long list of charges against Elliott.

President James Monroe chose to do nothing about Perry’s request. Instead, a year later, he asked Perry to take command of the frigate John Adams and the schooner Nonesuch for a diplomatic mission to Venezuela. During Venezuela’s recent war for independence from Spain, the new nation’s privateers had seized a number of American ships. They were ready to make amends in friendly fashion. Perry executed this responsibility in his usual able style, but he contracted yellow fever and died on his thirty-fourth birthday during the return voyage down the Orinoco River.

President Monroe called Perry’s death ‘a national calamity’ — and decided to let his demand for a court-martial molder in the federal files. Jesse Elliott achieved the rank of captain and served until 1835, dying in command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He spent much of his time telling anyone who would listen that he was the real winner of the Battle of Lake Erie. To his chagrin, Perry’s fame grew with every passing year. By the late 1830s, no less than thirty towns, mostly in the Midwest, had been named after him.

On September 10, 1860, the city of Cleveland erected a handsome statue to Perry and in the course of the celebration reenacted the battle on the waters of Lake Erie. Perry’s son, Oliver Hazard Perry Jr., and some of the survivors of the victory were among the onlookers. On the statue’s base was Perry’s historic victory message. There was no mention of Jesse Duncan Elliott.

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