page_title: Richard Mentor Johnson
section_title: Battle of the Thames
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Mentor Johnson / Political career / War of 1812 / Battle of the Thames
caption_attribution_description: English: "The death of Tecumseh" lithography shows Richard Mentor Johnson shooting Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames.
context_page_description: Richard Mentor Johnson was a politician and the ninth vice president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. He is the only vice president elected by the United States Senate under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Johnson also represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He began and ended his political career in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
  Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1806 in the early Federal period. He became allied with fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay as a member of the War Hawks faction that favored war with Britain in 1812. At the outset of the War of 1812, Johnson was commissioned a colonel in the Kentucky Militia and commanded a regiment of mounted volunteers from 1812 to 1813. He and his brother James served under William Henry Harrison in Upper Canada. Johnson participated in the Battle of the Thames. Some reported that he personally killed the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, a claim that he later used to his political advantage.
  After the war, Johnson returned to the House of Representatives. The state legislature appointed him to the Senate in 1819 to fill the seat vacated by John J. Crittenden.
context_section_description: In September, Oliver Hazard Perry destroyed most of the British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie, taking control of the lake. This made the British army, then at Fort Malden (now Amherstburg, Ontario) vulnerable to having its supply lines cut. The British, under General Henry Procter, withdrew to the northeast, pursued by Harrison, who had advanced through Michigan while Johnson kept the Indians engaged. The Indian chief Tecumseh and his allies covered the British retreat, but were countered by Johnson, who had been called back from a raid on Kaskaskia that had taken the post where the British had distributed arms and money to the Indians. Johnson's cavalry defeated Tecumseh's main force on September 29, took British supply trains on October 3, and was one of the factors inducing Procter to stand and fight at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, as Tecumseh had been demanding he do. One of Johnson's slaves, Daniel Chinn, accompanied Johnson to the battle.
  At the battle itself, Johnson's forces were the first to attack. One battalion of five hundred men, under Johnson's elder brother, James Johnson, engaged the British force of eight hundred regulars; simultaneously, Richard Johnson, with the other, now somewhat smaller battalion, attacked the fifteen hundred Indians led by Tecumseh. There was too much tree cover for the British volleys to be effective against James Johnson; three-quarters of the regulars were killed or captured.
  The Indians were a harder fight; they were out of the main field of battle, skirmishing on the edge of an adjacent swamp. Richard Johnson ordered a suicide squad of twenty men to charge with him and draw the Indians' fire, with the rest to attack as the Indians reloaded. But he was unable to push his troops through the enemy position due to the swampy ground. Johnson had to order his men to dismount and hold until Shelby's infantry came up. By then, under the pressure of Johnson's attack, the Native American force broke and fled into the swamp, during which time Tecumseh was slain.
  The question of who shot and killed Tecumseh was highly controversial in Johnson's lifetime, as he was most often named as the shooter. Johnson himself did not publicly say that he had killed Tecumseh, stating that he had killed "a tall, good-looking Indian", but initial published accounts named him, and it was not until 1816 that another claimant, a man named David King, appeared. John Sugden, in his book on the Battle of the Thames, found that Johnson's "claim is surely the stronger". Jones suggested that the issue did not truly catch the public's attention until Johnson became a potential candidate for national office in the 1830s, and was promoted through such means as a campaign biography, stage play and song. In any event, he found, "Colonel Johnson truly was a war hero at the Battle of the Thames. By ... leading the suicide mission on horseback, more lives were saved than lost. Johnson was lucky to have been only wounded, since fifteen men died instantly during the charge."
  There are reports from Indians that support Johnson's account, but most were made decades after the battle, by which time the question of whether Johnson shot Tecumseh had become politically charged. Tecumseh was said to have been shot from a firearm pointed at a downward angle, as if from a horse, with a ball and three buckshot, which Johnson's pistol was said to be loaded with. Evidence that it was so loaded is lacking, and the angle of the wound did not exclude the possibly that he had been stooping when shot. Some accounts have muskets loaded with cartridges containing a ball and three buckshot being commonly carried by American soldiers, and whether the Americans identified the proper body as Tecumseh (whose death was attested to by British officers who had been at the battle) is another source of contention.
  On April 4, 1818, an act of Congress requested that the President of the United States present to Johnson a sword in honor of his "daring and distinguished valor" at the Battle of the Thames. The sword was presented to Johnson by 
caption: Nathaniel Currier's lithograph (c. 1841) is one of many images that portrayed Johnson as Tecumseh's killer.
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