Harrison burned the prophet’s town.  The prophet lost caste with his people.  When reproached for his falsehoods, he cunningly told them that his predictions had failed of fulfilment, because, during his incantations, his wife touched the sacred vessels and broke the charm.  His followers, superstitious as they were, would not accept such a flimsy excuse and deserted him, flying to secure hiding-places where the white man could not find them.  After his town was burned, the prophet took shelter among the Wyandots.

The events in the northwest aroused a war spirit among the patriotic Americans, which could not be suppressed.  Not only did British emissaries incite the Indians to make war, but British orders in council continued to be vigorously enforced.  Insult was offered to the American flag by British cruisers, and the press of Great Britain insolently declared that the Americans “could not be kicked into a war.”

Forbearance ceased to be a virtue; it became cowardice.  President Madison found himself the standard-bearer of his party, surrounded by irrepressible young warriors eager for fight.  Like a cautious commander, he sounded a careful war note in his annual message to congress at the beginning of November, 1811.  The young and ardent members of the house of representatives, who had elected Henry Clay, then thirty-four years of age, speaker, determined that indecision should no longer mark the councils of the nation.  The committee on foreign relations, of which Peter B. Porter was chairman, intensified that feeling by an energetic report submitted on the 29th of November, in which, in glowing sentences, the British government was arraigned on charges of injustice, cruelty, and wrong.  They said: 

“To sum up, in a word, the great cause of complaint against Great Britain, your committee need only say, that the United States, as a sovereign and independent power, claims the right to use the ocean, which is the common and acknowledged highway of nations, for the purposes of transporting, in their own vessels, the products of their own soils and the acquisition of their own industry to any market in the ports of friendly nations, and to bring home, in return, such articles as their necessities or convenience may require, always regarding the rights of belligerents as defined by the established laws of nations.  Great Britain, in defiance of this incontestable right, captures every American vessel bound to or returning from a port where her commerce is not favored; enslaves our seamen, and, in spite of our remonstrances, perseveres in these aggressions.  To wrongs so daring in character and so disgraceful in their execution, it is impossible that the people of the United States should remain indifferent.  We must now tamely and quietly submit, or we must resist by those means which God has placed within our reach....  The sovereignty and independence of these States, purchased and sanctified by the blood of our fathers, from whom we received them, not for