War of 1812
| <font="+2"> The War of 1812 | |||||||||||||||
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| Date | 1812–1815 | ||||||||||||||
| Result | Treaty of Ghent (status quo ante bellum) | ||||||||||||||
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The War of 1812 was fought by drunken sailors for no good reason. The Untied States, still in its adolescence as a nation, felt that it wasn’t being taken seriously by other nations. Forced to be home by 10:00 p.m., never allowed to watch R-rated movies, and subject to French and British shipping embargoes, America decided that the only way to preserve national honor was to start and win a war.
Lacking a large standing army and short on revenue, they picked an opportune moment and an easy target. With the British distracted by a real war against Napoleon (short-dudes like big hats), America decided to take over Canada. Obviously, they did this without thinking about what they would do with Canada once they took it over.
War began on June 18, 1812 following the House and Senate passing legislation to declare war, President James Madison signing the legislation and President Madison’s mom telling the nation that it was okay as long as they took their little brothers along, too. Britain was slightly inconvenienced. Demonstrating the full measure of their panic, the British decided to let the Canadians fight the land portion of the battle themselves. However, the Crown did dispatch over 10,000 porcelain mugs in support of the afternoon tea effort.
Fortified with good tea, the Canadians fiercely defended the frozen tundra they call home. The American troops were ill prepared for resistance, assuming that their neighbors to the north would choose liberty over subjugation, democracy over monarchy, and baseball over hockey. Faced with opposition, the state militias stayed home entirely, leaving the federal army regulars to shoot a few rounds for good measured before deciding that Canada really wasn’t worth fighting over.
There were also many major sea battles, in which the American forces faired much better. The British navy was larger and more accomplished, but suffered from poor moral and, when the limes ran out, scurvy. The poor morale was mostly due to another factor in the start of the war; the British practice of randomly forcing people to join the Royal Navy. Americans particularly objected to the nasty habit of British war ships detaining American commercial boats and impressing British-born American crew into the navy. Impressement was a means of combating desertion, the theory being that the best way to stem the tide of AWOL sailors would be to kidnap unwilling foreign nationals and make them join. Brilliant.
Over the course of a few years, large amounts of alcohol were consumed, some battles took place and at least a few people went swimming. By 1814, the British had decided that the whole thing was getting silly. To speed a resolution, they invaded Washington, D.C. and burned the White House to the ground. A peace treaty was signed in Ghent, Belgium in December of 1914, but the delegates were still gorging themselves on chocolates and carousing with local women when the war’s largest battle was fought, completely unnecessarily, in New Orleans in January of 1915.
The futile battle of New Orleans served as a fitting end to a useless war. The Treaty of Ghent specified that borders would be re-established exactly as they had been before the war, and the only real accomplishment, the end of British impressments, was achieved not because of the War of 1812, but because the Napoleonic Wars had ended and the British no longer needed the extra sailors.
In America, the War of 1812 is celebrated for propelling the young nation into the international arena. In Britain, no one remembers it happened. It is probably important to Canadians, but, as far as anyone is aware, they have never been asked to share their feelings.
And now the "official" history, brought to you by the International Association of Tenured Professors and Nitpicking Amateur Historians (IATPNAH).
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought on land in North America and at sea around the world between the United States and United Kingdom from 1812 to 1815. In British texts, the War of 1812 is sometimes known as the British-American War, to distinguish it from concurrent British involvement in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia is also sometimes referred to as the "War of 1812."
Although the United States was officially at war with Great Britain, more than half of the British forces were made up of Canadian militia. Additionally, many American Indians (now generally called Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada) fought on both sides of the war for reasons of their own.
The war formally began on June 18, 1812 with the U.S. declaration of war. The United States launched invasions of the Canadian provinces in 1812 and 1813, but the borders were successfully defended by British and American Indian forces. The United States gained the upper hand in the American Indian part of war with victories at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813 and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, but by this time Napoleon had been defeated in Europe, and the British were finally able to divert more resources to North America. British invasions of American territory resulted in the burning of Washington, D.C. and the capture of part of the District of Maine, but the British counteroffensive was turned back at Lake Champlain, Baltimore, and New Orleans. The Treaty of Ghent (ratified in 1815) restored the status quo ante bellum between the combatants.
Although the War of 1812 ended as a stalemate and is often only dimly remembered, it had many effects on the futures of those involved. The war created a greater sense of nationalism in both Canada and the United States. The successful defense of the Canadian provinces against American invasion ultimately ensured the survival of Canada as a distinct nation, and the end of the war marked the decline of a longstanding desire of many Americans to see the British Empire expelled from North America. Peace between the United States and British North America also meant that American Indians could no longer use conflicts between the two powers to defend native lands against the expansion of white settlement.
Causes of the war
In the years following the American Revolutionary War, relations between Great Britain and the United States were often strained. When revolutionary France declared war upon Great Britain in 1793, the United States sought to remain neutral while pursuing overseas commerce with both empires, which created much tension. Additionally, Great Britain had not abandoned fortifications in the Great Lakes region as called for in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and was continuing to supply those Native Americans in the Northwest Territory who were at war with the United States. In 1795, the United States secured the Jay Treaty with Great Britain and the Treaty of Greenville with the Native Americans, and thus ended these conflicts for the time being.
Great Britain and France went to war again in 1803, and the Royal Navy, short of manpower, began boarding American merchant ships in order to seize some of the many British seamen serving on American vessels. Although this policy of impressment was supposed to reclaim only British subjects, between 1806 and 1812 about 6,000 American citizens were taken against their will ("pressed") into the Royal Navy.Template:Fn One reason for this was that the British did not recognise American citizenship certificates issued to naturalised Britons and considered that anyone born a British subject remained a British subject. Great Britain did not want to stop impressment because it was seen as an effective way of combating desertion from the Royal Navy. The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty (1806) between the U.S. and Great Britain was not ratified in the United States because it did not end impressment.
| Origins of The War of 1812 |
|---|
| Impressment |
| Monroe-Pinkney Treaty |
| Chesapeake-Leopard Affair |
| Orders in Council (1807) |
| Embargo Act of 1807 |
| Non-Intercourse Act |
| Macon's Bill Number 2 |
| Tecumseh's War |
| War Hawks |
This issue came to the forefront with the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of 1807, when the British ship HMS Leopard fired on and boarded the American ship USS Chesapeake, killing three and carrying off four "deserters", of whom three were Americans thereby pressed into the Royal Navy. The American public was outraged by the incident, and many called for war in order to assert American sovereignty and national honor.
Meanwhile, Napoleon's Continental System (beginning 1806) and the British Orders in Council (1807) established embargoes that made international trade precarious. From 1807 to 1812, about 900 American ships were seized as a result.Template:Fn American President Thomas Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited American ships from sailing to any foreign ports and closed American ports to British ships. Jefferson's embargo was especially unpopular in New England, where merchants preferred the indignities of impressment to the halting of overseas commerce. This discontent contributed to the calling of the Hartford Convention during the war.
The Embargo Act had no effect on Great Britain and France, and was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. As this proved to be unenforceable, the Non-Intercourse Act was replaced in 1810 by Macon's Bill Number 2. This lifted all embargoes, but offered that if either France or Great Britain were to cease their interference with American shipping, the United States would reinstate an embargo on the other nation. Napoleon, seeing an opportunity to make trouble for Great Britain, promised to leave American ships alone. He had no intention of honoring this promise, but the ruse de guerre worked, and the United States reinstated the embargo with Great Britain and moved closer to declaring war.Template:Fn
In the United States House of Representatives, a group of young Democratic-Republicans known as the "War Hawks" came to the forefront in 1811, led by Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The War Hawks advocated going to war against Great Britain for a variety of reasons, mostly related to the interference of the Royal Navy in American shipping, which the War Hawks believed hurt the American economy and injured American prestige. War Hawks from the western states also believed that the British were instigating Native Americans on the frontier to attack American settlements, and so they called for an invasion of British North America to end this threat.
On June 1, 1812 U.S. President James Madison gave a speech to the U.S. Congress, recounting American grievances against Great Britain, though not specifically calling for a declaration of war. After Madison's speech, the House of Representatives quickly voted (79 to 49) to declare war, and after much debate, the U.S. Senate also voted for war, 19 to 13. The conflict formally began on June 18, 1812 when Madison signed the measure into law. This was the first time that the United States had declared war on another nation, and the Congressional vote would prove to be the closest vote to declare war in American history. None of the 39 Federalists in Congress voted in favor of the war; critics of war would subsequently refer to it as "Mr. Madison's War."
Course of the war
Although the outbreak of the war had been preceded by years of angry diplomatic dispute, neither side was ready for war when it came. The United Kingdom was still hard pressed by the Napoleonic Wars, and was compelled to retain the greater part of her forces and her best crews in European waters. The total number of British troops present in Canada in July 1812 was officially stated to be 5,004 and consisted primarily of Canadians. During the war, successes against Napoleon left the United Kingdom free to send an overwhelming force of ships to American waters.
The United States was unready to prosecute a war. In 1812 the regular army consisted of fewer than 12,000 men. Congress authorized the expansion of the army to 35,000 men, but the service was voluntary and unpopular, and there was an almost total lack of trained and experienced officers. The militia, called in to aid the regulars, objected to serving outside their home states, were not amenable to discipline and, as a rule, performed poorly in the presence of the enemy.
The war was conducted in four theatres of operations:
- The Atlantic Ocean
- The Great Lakes and the Canadian frontier
- The coast of the United States
- The American South
Operations on the ocean
Since the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Britain had been the world's preeminent naval power. In 1812, the Royal Navy had ninety-seven vessels in American waters. Of these, eleven were ships of the line and thirty-four were frigates. In contrast, the United States Navy, which was not yet twenty years old, had only twenty-two commissioned vessels, the largest of which were frigates, though a number of the American ships were 44-gun frigates and very heavily built compared to the usual British 38-gun frigates.
The strategy of the British was to protect its own merchant shipping to and from Canada, and enforce a blockade of major American ports to restrict American trade. Due to their numerical inferiority, the Americans aimed to cause disruption through hit-and-run tactics, such as the capture of prizes and only engaging Royal Navy vessels under favourable circumstances.
The Americans experienced much early success. On June 21 1812, three days after the formal declaration of war, two small squadrons left New York. The ships included the frigate USS President and the sloop USS Hornet under Commodore John Rodgers (who had general command), and the frigates USS United States and USS Congress, with the brig USS Argus under Captain Stephen Decatur.
Two days later, the Hornet gave chase to the British frigate HMS Belvidera. Belvidera eventually escaped to Halifax, after discarding all unnecessary cargo overboard. The Hornet returned to Boston by August 31. Meanwhile, the USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, sailed from the Chesapeake on July 12 without orders so as to avoid being blockaded. On July 17 a British squadron gave chase. The Constitution evaded its pursuers after two days, and later retired at Boston. On August 19 the Constitution engaged the British frigate HMS Guerriere. After a thirty five-minute battle, the Guerriere had been dismasted and captured, and was later burned.
On October 25 the USS United States, commanded by Captain Decatur, captured the British frigate HMS Macedonian, which he carried back to port. At the close of the month, the Constitution sailed south under the command of Captain William Bainbridge. On December 20, off Bahia, Brazil, it met the British frigate HMS Java, which was carrying General Hislop, the governor of Bombay, to India. After a battle lasting three hours, the Java struck her colours and was burned after being judged unsalvageable.
In January 1813, the American frigate USS Essex, under the command of Captain David Porter, sailed into the Pacific in an attempt to harass British shipping. Many British whaling ships carried letters of marque allowing them to prey on American whalers, nearly destroying the industry. The Essex challenged this practice. She inflicted an estimated $3,000,000 damage on British interests before she was captured off Valparaíso, Chile, by the British frigate HMS Phoebe and the sloop HMS Cherub on March 28, 1814.
In all of these actions, except the one in which the Essex was taken, the Americans had the advantage of greater size and a heavier guns. Despite the greater experience in naval combat of the British, a large proportion of their seamen had been impressed. This contrasted with the Americans who were all volunteers, which may have given the Americans an edge in morale and seamanship.
The capture of three British frigates was a blow to the British and stimulated them to greater exertions. More vessels were deployed on the American seaboard and the blockade tightened. On June 1, 1813, the frigate USS Chesapeake was captured by the British frigate HMS Shannon as it attempted to leave Boston Harbor. This somewhat offset the blow to morale caused by previous disasters. The blockade of American ports had tightened to the extent that the United States ships found it increasingly more difficult to sail without meeting forces of superior strength. Because of this the Royal Navy was able to transport British Army troops to American shores, paving the way for the burning of Washington, D.C. in 1814.
The operations of American privateers were extensive. They continued until the close of the war and were only partially affected by the strict enforcement of convoy by the Royal Navy. An example of the audacity of the American cruisers was the capture of the American sloop USS Argus at St David's Head in Wales by the more heavily armed British sloop HMS Pelican, on August 14, 1813.
Operations on the Great Lakes and Canadian border
Invasions of Canada, 1812
While they had expected little from their tiny navy, the American people had assumed that Canada could be easily overrun. Former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dismissively referred to the conquest of Canada as "a matter of marching." However, in the opening stages of the conflict, British military experience prevailed over inexperienced American commanders.
Geography dictated that operations would take place in the West principally around Lake Erie, near the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and near Saint Lawrence River area and Lake Champlain. This would be the focus of the three pronged attacks by the Americans in 1812.
Although cutting the St. Lawrence River through the capture of Montreal and Quebec would make Britain's hold in Canada unsustainable, operations in the West began first due to the general popularity of war with the British there. The American Brigadier General William Hull invaded Canada on July 12 1812 from Detroit, with an army mainly composed of militiamen, but turned back after his supply lines were threatened in the Battles of Brownstown and Monguagon. British Major General Isaac Brock sent false correspondence and allowed it to be captured by the Americans, saying they required only 5,000 Native warriors to capture Detroit. Hull was deathly afraid of Native Americans and some tribes' practice of scalping. Hull surrendered at Detroit on August 16.
Brock promptly transferred himself to the eastern end of Lake Erie, where the American General Henry Dearborn was attempting a second invasion. Brock fell in action on October 13 at the Battle of Queenston Heights, where the Americans were defeated largely because the militia refused to reinforce the regulars, citing Constitutional reasons. While the professionalism of the American forces would improve by the war's end, British leadership suffered after Brock's death.
In contrast to the American militia, the Canadian militia performed well. French-Canadians, who found the anti-Catholic stance of most of the United States troublesome, and United Empire Loyalists, who had fought for the Crown during the American Revolutionary War and had settled primarily in Upper Canada, strongly opposed the American invasion. However, a large segment of Upper Canada's population were recent settlers from the United States who had no such loyalties to the Crown, but American forces found, to their dismay, that most of the colony took up arms against them.
Operations in the West, 1813
After Hull's surrender, General William Henry Harrison was given command of the American Army of the Northwest. He set out to retake Detroit, which was now defended by Colonel Henry Procter in conjunction with Tecumseh. A detachment of Harrison's army was defeated at Frenchtown along the River Raisin on 22 January 1813. Procter left the prisoners in custody of a few American Indians, who then proceeded to execute perhaps as many as 60 American prisoners, an event which became known as the "River Raisin Massacre." The defeat ended Harrison's campaign against Detroit, and the phrase "Remember the River Raisin!" became a rallying cry for the Americans.
In May 1813, Procter and Tecumseh set siege to Fort Meigs in northern Ohio. American reinforcements arriving during the siege were defeated by the Indians, but the fort held out. Indians began to withdraw, forcing Procter and Tecumseh to return to Canada. A second offensive against Fort Meigs also failed in July. In an attempt to improve Indian morale, Procter and Tecumseh attempted to storm Fort Stephenson, a small American post on the Sandusky River, only to be repulsed with serious losses, marking the end of the Ohio campaign.
On Lake Erie, the American commander Captain Oliver Hazard Perry fought the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813. His decisive victory ensured American control of the lake, improved American morale after a series of defeats, and compelled the British to fall back from Detroit. This paved the way for General Harrison to launch another invasion of Canada, which culminated in the U.S. victory at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, in which Tecumseh was killed. Tecumseh's death effectively ended the American Indian alliance with the British in the Detroit region. The Americans would control Detroit and Amherstburg for the duration of the war, but were unable to expel the British and their western Indian allies from Fort Mackinac in Michigan and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin.
Operations on the Niagara Frontier, 1813
Because of the difficulties of land communications, control of the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River corridor was crucial, and so both sides spent the winter of 1812-13 building ships. The Americans, who had far greater shipbuilding facilities than the Canadians, nevertheless had not taken advantage of this before the war, and had fallen behind.
On April 27, 1813, American forces attacked and burned York (now called Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, including the Parliament Buildings. However, Kingston was strategically more valuable, and vital to British supply and communications along the St. Lawrence. Without control of Kingston, the American navy could not effectively control Lake Ontario or sever the British supply line to Quebec.
On May 27, 1813 an American amphibious force from Lake Ontario assaulted Fort George on the northern end of the River Niagara and captured it without serious losses. The retreating British forces were not pursued, however, until they had largely escaped and organized a counter-offensive against the advancing Americans at the Battle of Stony Creek on June 5. On June 24, with the help of advance warning by Loyalist Laura Secord, another American force was bluffed into surrender by a much smaller British and Indian force at the Battle of Beaver Dams, marking the end of the American offensive into Central Canada.
On Lake Ontario, Sir James Lucas Yeo took command on 15 May 1813 and created a more mobile though less powerful force than the Americans under Isaac Chauncey. Three engagements in August and September led to no decisive result. By 1814 Yeo had constructed the HMS St. Lawrence, a first-rate ship of the line of 102 guns which gave him superiority, and the British became masters of Lake Ontario. The burning by the American General McClure, on December 10, 1813, of Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), led to British retaliation and similar destruction at Buffalo, on December 30, 1813.
Operations along the Saint Lawrence and Lower Canada
The Americans made little attempt to bar the Saint Lawrence to British traffic. British supplies and reinforcements were able to move to Upper Canada with little difficulty.
Early in 1813, there was a series of raids and counter-raids between Prescott in Canada and Ogdensburg on the American side. On February 21, Sir George Prevost passed through Prescott with reinforcements. When he left the next day, the reinforcements attacked and looted Ogdensburg. For the rest of the year, Ogdensburg had no American garrison and the British freely obtained goods there.
Late in 1813, after much argument, the Americans made two thrusts against Montreal. The plan eventually agreed upon was for Major-General Wade Hampton to march north from Lake Champlain and join with a force under General James Wilkinson which would sail from Sacket's Harbour on Lake Ontario and descend the Saint Lawrence.
Hampton was delayed by bad roads and supply problems. On October 25, his 4,000-strong force was defeated at the Chateauguay River by Charles de Salaberry's force of less than 500 French-Canadian Voltigeurs and Mohawks.
Wilkinson's force of 8,000 sailed on October 17 but was also held up by bad weather. After learning that Hampton had been checked, Wilkinson heard that a British force under Captain William Mulcaster was pursuing him, and by November 10 he was forced to land near Morrisburg, Ontario, about 150 kilometers from Montreal. On November 11, Wilkinson's rearguard attacked a British force of 800 under Colonel Joseph Morrison at Crysler's Farm, and was repulsed with heavy losses. Wilkinson subsequently retreated back to the US after learning that Hampton was unable to renew his advance.
Niagara Campaign and the Battle of Lake Champlain, 1814
By 1814, American generals, including Major Generals Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, had drastically improved the fighting abilities and discipline of the army. Their attack on the Niagara peninsula led to hot fighting at the Battle of Chippewa on July 5 and Lundy's Lane on July 25. The first was a success for the Americans, but in the second battle the Americans suffered high casualties and were forced to withdraw across the Niagara. They later resisted British and Canadian forces at the Siege of Fort Erie, and briefly held the fort. They were compelled to cross the border due to low provisions.
Meanwhile, veteran British troops no longer needed in Europe began arriving in North America. Governor-General Sir George Prevost now had enough men to launch an offensive into the United States. He hoped to gain a significant victory in order to give Britain bargaining power in the ongoing peace negotiations. However, his invasion was repulsed by the naval Battle of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh Bay on September 11 1814 which gave the Americans control of Lake Champlain. Theodore Roosevelt termed it the greatest naval battle of the war.
Operations on the American coast
When the war began, the British naval forces had some difficulty in blockading the whole coast, and they were also preoccupied in their pursuit of American privateers. The British government, having need of American foodstuffs for its army in Spain, was willing to benefit from the willingness of the New Englanders to trade with them, and so no blockade of New England was at first attempted. The Delaware and Chesapeake were declared in a state of blockade on December 26, 1812. This was extended to the whole coast south of Narragansett by November 1813, and to the whole American coast on May 31, 1814. In the meantime much illicit trade was carried on by collusive captures arranged between American traders and British officers. American ships were fraudulently transferred to neutral flags. Eventually the United States government was driven to issue orders for the purpose of stopping illicit trading. This only helped to further ruin the commerce of the country. The overpowering strength of the British fleet enabled it to occupy the Chesapeake, and to attack and destroy numerous docks and harbours.
Chesapeake campaign and the Star-Spangled Banner
The best known of these destructive raids was the burning of public buildings, including the White House, in Washington by Admiral Sir George Cockburn and General Robert Ross. The expedition was carried out between August 19 and August 29, 1814. On the 24th, the inexperienced American militia who had collected at Bladensburg, Maryland to protect the capital were soundly defeated, opening the route to Washington. President James Madison was forced to flee to Virginia, and American morale was reduced to an all-time low. The British viewed their actions as fair retaliation for the Americans' burning of York (later renamed Toronto) in 1813.
Having destroyed Washington's public buildings, the British army next moved to capture Baltimore, a busy port and a key base for American privateers. The subsequent Battle of Baltimore began with a British landing at North Point, but the attack was repulsed. The British also attempted to attack Baltimore by sea on September 13, but were unable to reduce Fort McHenry at the entrance to Baltimore Harbor. The defense of the fort inspired the American lawyer Francis Scott Key to write a poem that became "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the United States.
Operations in the South
In March of 1814, General Andrew Jackson led a force of Tennessee militia, Cherokee warriors, and U.S. regulars southward to attack the Creek tribes, led by Chief Menawa. The Creeks had for many years been British allies. On March 26, Jackson and General John Coffee fought the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, killing 800 of 1,000 Creeks at a cost of 49 killed and 154 wounded of approximately 2,000 American and Cherokee forces. Jackson pursued the surviving Creeks to Wetumpka, near present-day Montgomery, Alabama, where they surrendered.
According to one historian:
- We speak of the War of 1812, but in truth there were two wars. The war between the Americans and the British ended with the treaty of Ghent. The war between the Big Knives [American frontiersmen] and the Indians began at Tippecanoe, and arguably did not run its course until the last Red Sticks were defeated in the Florida swamps in 1818.Template:Fn
The Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans
Jackson's forces moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in November 1814. Between December 1814 and January 1815, he defended the city against a force led by Major-General Sir Edward Pakenham, who was killed in an assault on January 8 1815. The Battle of New Orleans was hailed as a great victory in the United States, making Andrew Jackson a national hero, eventually propelling him to the presidency.
Meanwhile, diplomats in Ghent, Belgium signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, paving the way for the official end of the war. News of the treaty had not reached New Orleans, because of the slow nature of international communications. On February 17, 1815, President Madison signed the American ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, and the treaty was proclaimed the following day.
By the terms of the treaty, all land captured by either side was returned to the previous owner, the Americans received fishing rights in the gulf of the St. Lawrence River, and all outstanding debts and property taken was to be returned or paid for in full. Later that year, John Quincy Adams complained that British naval commanders had violated the terms of the treaty by not returning American slaves captured during the war. [1]
Consequences of the war
The Treaty of Ghent established the status quo ante bellum; there were no territorial concessions made by either side. Relations between the United States and Britain would remain peaceful, if not entirely tranquil, throughout the 19th century. Border adjustments between the United States and British Canada would be made in the Treaty of 1818. (A border dispute between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick was settled in the Aroostook War in the 1830s.) The issue of impressing American seamen was made moot when the Royal Navy subsequently stopped impressment after the defeat of Napoleon.
This war was also the first and only time since its independence that the US Capital was invaded and occupied.
Effects of the war on the United States
The United States did gain a measure of international respect for managing to withstand the British Empire. The morale of the citizens was high because they had fought one of the great military powers of the world and managed to survive, which increased feelings of nationalism; the war has often been called the "Second War of Independence." The war also contributed to the demise of the Federalist Party, which had opposed the war.
A significant military development was the increased emphasis by General Winfield Scott on improved professionalism in the U.S. Army officer corps, and in particular, the training of officers at the United States Military Academy ("West Point"). This new professionalism would become apparent during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).
In a related development, the Army Corps of Engineers (which at that time controlled West Point), began building fortifications around New Orleans, as a response to the British attack on the city during the war. This effort then grew into numerous civil river works, especially in the 1840s and 1850s under General Pierre Beauregard. The Corps continues to be the authority over Mississippi (and other) river works to this day.
The War of 1812 had a dramatic effect on the manufacturing capabilities of the United States. The British blockade of the American coast created a shortage of cotton cloth in the United States, leading to the creation of a cotton-manufacturing industry, beginning at Waltham, Massachusetts by Francis Cabot Lowell.
The Southwestern campaign led to increasing contact and conflict with the Seminole tribes in Florida. The subsequent Seminole Wars eventually lead to American annexation of Florida in 1819.
Effects of the war on Canada
The War of 1812 had little impact in Great Britain and was generally forgotten, since it was considered to be insignificant when compared to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. However, this was not the case in Canada, where the war had been a matter of national survival. The war united the French-speaking and English-speaking colonies against a common enemy and some pride of being largely successful in repulsing the invaders, giving many inhabitants a sense of nationhood as well as a sense of loyalty to Britain. At the beginning of the War of 1812 it is estimated that perhaps one third of the inhabitants of Upper Canada were American born. Some were United Empire Loyalists but others had simply come for low-cost land and had little loyalty to the British Crown. For instance, Laura Secord was originally an American immigrant to Upper Canada, but did not hesitate to make her arduous trek to warn the British forces of a pending attack by her former country. In fact, a primary reason Canadians remember the war is because they managed to repulse the American invaders and maintain their borders against poor odds; a conclusion many Canadians consider a victory in its own way.
This nationalistic sentiment also caused a great deal of suspicion of American ideas like democracy and republicanism which would frustrate political reform in Upper and Lower Canada until the Rebellions of 1837. However, the War of 1812 also started the process that ultimately led to Canadian Confederation in 1867. Although later events such as the rebellions and the Fenian raids of the 1860s were more directly pivotal, Canadian historian Pierre Berton has written that if the War of 1812 had never happened Canada would be part of the United States today, as more and more American settlers would have arrived, and Canadian nationalism would never have developed.
A related idea that developed out of the war was that Canadian militiamen had performed admirably while the British officers were largely ineffective. Jack Granatstein has termed this the "Militia Myth", and he feels it has had a deep impact on Canadian military thinking, which placed more stress on a citizen's militia than a professional standing army. Granatstein feels that the militia was not particularly effective in the war and that any military success the British Empire had was by British regular forces and through British dominion over the sea.
See also
- Tecumseh's War
- Creek War
- Military history of Canada
- Military history of the United Kingdom
- Military history of the United States
- Indian Wars in the United States
- Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes
Notes
- Template:Fnb American statistics from Hickey, pp. 302-3; British manpower from Elting, p. 11; British casualties from here; New York Iroquois manpower figure from Anthony Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (orig. pub. 1970, New York: Vintage books, 1972), p. 295; British-allied Native American manpower from this page.
- Template:Fnb Number of American citizens pressed into the Royal Navy: Hickey, p. 11.
- Template:Fnb Number of American ships seized: Hickey, p. 19.
- Template:Fnb Napoleon had no intention of honoring promise: Hickey, p. 22; Horsman, p. 188.
- Template:Fnb Sugden, p. 401.
References
- Allen, Robert S. "His Majesty's Indian Allies: Native Peoples, the British Crown, and the War of 1812" in The Michigan Historical Review, 14:2 (Fall 1988), pp 1-24.
- Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ISBN 0802043216 (hardcover); ISBN 0802081452 (paperback).
- Berton, Pierre. The Invasion of Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980. ISBN 0316092169.
- ———. Flames Across the Border. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981. ISBN 0316092177
- Carter-Edwards, Dennis. "The War of 1812 Along the Detroit Frontier: A Canadian Perspective," in The Michigan Historical Review, 13:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 25-50.
- Elting, John R. Amateurs, To Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1991. ISBN 0945575084 (hardcover); ISBN 0306806533 (1995 Da Capo Press paperback).
- Hickey, Donald. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ISBN 0252016130 (hardcover); ISBN 0252060598 (1990 paperback).
- Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1962. ISBN 0374939608 (1972 printing); ISBN 0498040879 (2000 printing).
- ———. "On to Canada: Manifest Destiny and United States Strategy in the War of 1812" in The Michigan Historical Review, 13:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 1-24.
- Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812. Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 0306809109 (paperback), eText at Project Gutenberg.
- Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Holt, 1997. ISBN 0805041389 (hardcover); ISBN 0805061215 (1999 paperback).
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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External links
- Treaty of Ghent and related resources on the War of 1812 at the Library of Congress
- Galafilm's War of 1812 website
- Key Events of the War of 1812
- Journal of the Senate, June 1, 1812, with President Madison's war message to Congress
- War of 1812 from the James Madison Center of the James Madison University