War of 1812

War of 1812. The War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, also known as the Second Anglo‐American War, was caused primarily by the United States' desire to defend its presumed right as a neutral state to trade freely with other nations even in wartime.Great Britain's determination to prevent America from trading with France during the wars of the French Revolution (1792–1815) eventually resulted in open warfare.

The road to war began in 1794 when the British navy seized more than 250 American merchant vessels trading with the French West Indies. Although the French had also attacked U.S. shipping, American anger focused on the British because of the number of ships they had seized and their policy of capturing sailors suspected of desertion (known as impressment) from the decks of American ships on the high seas. Amid fears of resubjugation by their former colonial masters, many Americans (among them Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) called for strong action, including war if necessary, to halt the British attacks.

To head off this sentiment, President George Washington sent John Jay to London to negotiate a settlement. Jay's Treaty (1794), while it prevented war, did little to protect American maritime rights and proved politically divisive. The Jeffersonian faction, attacking the treaty as pro‐British, urged closer friendship with France; the Federalist party, fearing an alliance with revolutionary France, defended the treaty.

In early 1807, responding to Napoleon's blockade of the British Isles, the British government issued two Admiralty decrees, or orders in council, that effectively forbade neutral vessels (including those of the United States) from entering any French‐controlled port. Later that year, the seizure by the HMS Leopard of five alleged deserters from the USS Chesapeake in international waters near the Cheaspeake Bay provoked calls for war, especially from the western states. President Jefferson, seeking to “peaceably coerce” Great Britain and France into respecting neutral rights, imposed a nationwide embargo on all foreign trade. The Embargo Act and two subsequent modifications of it not only failed to budge either Britain or France, but precipitated an economic depression, as farmers found themselves barred from world markets by their own government.

In 1808–1811, the British navy, desperate for able‐bodied seamen, impressed more than six thousand Americans. Angry over this state of affairs, Americans elected to Congress in 1810 a fiery group of expansionists, mostly from the western states. These “War Hawks,” as they were known, including Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, pushed for the conquest of British Canada as a means of compelling London to alter its policy.

Responding to this pressure, President James Madison on 1 June 1812, citing impressment, ship seizures, and Britain's alleged incitement of Native Americans on the western frontier, called for a declaration of war against Great Britain. After heated debate, Congress passed the measure on votes of 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate. A clear partisan division emerged: Republicans voted for war 98–23 and Federalists opposed it 39–0.

The nation, like the Congress, divided sharply over the conflict. New York and New England shipping interests that might have been expected to support retaliation against Great Britain recognized that while the harassment of American trade hurt their business, war would stop it entirely. As a result, the war began with powerful economic interests firmly opposed to it. Throughout the war, trading with the enemy flourished, particularly along the Canadian frontier.

Militarily the war did not go well. Invasions of Canada in 1812 and 1813 (whose conquest Jefferson predicted would be “a mere matter of marching”) resulted in humiliating defeats. In August 1814, British forces captured and briefly occupied Washington, D.C., burning the Capitol, the White House, and other government buildings. These setbacks were somewhat offset by victories at sea, including the destruction of the British frigate Guerrière by the U.S. frigate Constitution (“Old Ironsides,” now preserved in Boston Harbor) off Nova Scotia in August 1812 and Oliver Hazard Perry's triumph at the Battle of Lake Erie (September 1813). In September 1814, British expeditions were repulsed at Lake Champlain and at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, whose survival amid an all‐night bombardment prompted Francis Scott Key to write The Star‐Spangled Banner.

The war's cost resulted in the most extensive system of internal taxation prior to the Civil War. By 1814, however, the nation verged on financial collapse. War loans were undersubscribed and the closing of the First Bank of the United States in 1811 meant that no central bank could stabilize the currency. In November 1814 the federal government defaulted on its bond payments and was effectively bankrupt.

Only Great Britain's precarious situation in Europe in late 1814, combined with the defeat of its invasion forces in the United States, prompted the government of Lord Liverpool to compromise. On 24 December 1814, American and British negotiators meeting at Ghent, Belgium, signed a treaty reestablishing the prewar status quo. Although the pact left unsettled the maritime issues that had caused the conflict, the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 rendered them moot. The war enhanced American power vis‐à‐vis Indian tribes in the West and South and thus set the stage for westward expansion after 1815.

The war also boosted American nationalism, especially Andrew Jackson's smashing victory at the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815. Even though better political leadership and more astute diplomacy could probably have avoided it, the War of 1812 was long seen by Americans as a vindication of their courage and patriotism.

The war resulted in 2,500 American combat‐related deaths and as many as 20,000 U.S. deaths from all causes. Its direct costs totaled $158 million including benefits that continued until the last pensioner (the dependent of a veteran) died in 1946.
See also Bank of the United States, First and Second; Early Republic, Era of the Expansionism; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Ghent, Treaty of; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Perry, Oliver Hazard and Matthew; Quasi‐War with France.

Bibliography

Julius Pratt , Expansionists of 1812, 1925.
Roger H. Brown , The Republic in Peril: 1812, 1964.
Reginald Horsman , The War of 1812, 1964.
J.C.A. Stagg , Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830, 1983.
Steven Watts , The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820, 1987.
Donald R. Hickey , The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, 1989.

William Earl Weeks