WAR OF 1812

The War of 1812 was the first major war fought by the United States under the Constitution. It was also the second and last time that the nation waged war against Great Britain. The contest was a direct outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). The United States went to war to force the British to give up the Orders-in-Council, which regulated American trade with the European Continent, and impressment, which was the Royal Navy's practice of removing seamen from American merchant ships on the high seas.

The United States declared war on June 18, 1812, after little preparation. The congressional vote was relatively close: 79 to 49 in the House and 19 to 13 in the Senate. Declaring war against a major power after such limited preparation and against the wishes of a large minority of the American people was decidedly risky. Jeffersonian Republicans were willing to take this risk because they were confident that if the British did not cave into their demands, the conquest of Canada would be, in the words of former president Thomas Jefferson, "a mere matter of marching" (Letter to William Duane, August 4, 1812). Once conquered, Canada would be held as ransom for concessions on the maritime issues. If the British refused to make concessions, then presumably Canada would be permanently annexed.

The British repealed the Orders-in-Council five days after the declaration of war but were unwilling to give up impressment because they considered the practice essential to maintaining their naval power and thus their war effort against Napoleon. Hence, despite the interest that both sides showed in terminating the war quickly, it dragged on for two and a half years.

battle and campaigns

In the campaign of 1812, the United States launched a three-pronged assault against Canada that ended in disaster. One army surrendered at Detroit when Major General William Hull lost his nerve; a second U.S. army under Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott surrendered on the Niagara frontier when American militia refused to cross the border to reinforce the regulars who had established a beachhead on the Canadian side; and a third army under Brigadier General Henry Dearborn conducted little more than a demonstration on the St. Lawrence front before returning to the United States.

The United States launched another three-pronged campaign in 1813, and this time it was more successful, but only in the West. Commodore Oliver H. Perry defeated a British fleet on Lake Erie, which enabled Major General William Henry Harrison to crush an Anglo-Indian army in the Battle of the Thames fifty miles east of Detroit. The great Indian leader and British ally, Tecumseh, was killed in this battle. Perry added more luster to his name by sending Harrison a message that read: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Further east, however, the United States made no headway, and after two years of campaigning, Canada remained in British hands.

In 1814 the initiative in the war shifted to the British because Napoleon's defeat in spring had ended the war in Europe, thus enabling Great Britain to concentrate on the American war. The United States launched a bloody but inconclusive offensive on the Niagara frontier, but elsewhere the British took the offensive. One British army retreated from New York when a spectacular American naval victory by Commodore Thomas Macdonough on Lake Champlain gave the United States command of this crucial waterway. A second British army successfully occupied eastern Maine.

A third British army achieved mixed results in the Chesapeake, occupying Washington and burning the public buildings there but then giving up an attack on Baltimore because the American defenses were too formidable. A British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry at Baltimore prompted Georgetown lawyer Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner," describing the artillery barrage. A final British assault on the Gulf Coast in early 1815 was rebuffed by Major General Andrew Jackson's forces at New Orleans in one of the most lopsided defeats in British military history.

Both sides in this war had trouble mounting successful offensive operations. Waging war in remote wilderness areas posed such difficult logistical problems that fate usually favored the defending side. Hence, on the battlefield the War of 1812 ended in a draw.

In the war at sea, the United States won a series of impressive frigate duels early in the war, but thereafter an ever tightening British naval blockade kept most American warships in port. American privateers did considerable damage to British trade, although getting prizes to a friendly port was always problematical. Moreover, British warships and privateers took a heavy toll on those American merchantmen that ventured to sea. In the end, British naval power triumphed in the war at sea, although the United States made a much better showing than anyone had anticipated.

men and money

The United States faced persistent problems raising men and money to fight and finance this war. Despite offering princely bounties (which by the end of the war amounted to two or three times the annual income of an unskilled civilian laborer), recruitment for the U.S. Army always lagged behind need. At the end of the war, army strength was only at around two-thirds of its authorized level.

The United States found it no easier to raise money to finance the war. When a major war loan failed in the summer of 1814, public credit collapsed. The government defaulted on the national debt and was forced to rely increasingly on treasury notes, a form of short-term, interest-bearing paper money that banks and army contractors were increasingly reluctant to accept, even at a steep discount. Had the war lasted much longer, the popular phrase from the American Revolution, "not worth a Continental," might have been replaced by "not worth a treasury note." The government's financial problems were compounded by a weak economy. Unlike most American wars, the War of 1812 did not stimulate prosperity. Although the middle Atlantic and western states profited from large war contracts and a surge in manufacturing, New England and the southern states suffered from the British naval blockade, which made it risky to send ships and commodities to sea. The nation's primitive road system made it costly to ship goods overland, and in the coastal trade only short voyages in shallow waters were likely to be safe.

federalist opposition

Compounding the U.S. government's problems in waging this war was the opposition of the Federalists, which was more determined and partisan than the nation has experienced in any other foreign war. Federalists voted unanimously against the declaration of war in Congress, and thereafter they presented a united front against most war measures. They opposed all bills to raise men and money, to authorize privateering, or to restrict trade with the enemy, although they supported proposals to increase the navy and coastal fortifications because they considered these measures defensive in character.

Even though Federalists everywhere opposed the war, the opposition was stiffest in New England, where the unpopularity of the war enabled the party to win control of all five states. Federalists in this section wrote, spoke, and preached against the war; they refused to enlist in the army and discouraged subscriptions to the war loans; and on occasion their governors withheld their militia from federal service.

The climax of New England's opposition was the Hartford Convention, a regional conference held in the winter of 1814 to 1815 to protest the war and other Republican policies, provide for the defense of the region, and propose amendments to the Constitution to protect New England's position in the Union. The war ended

before any action could be taken on these proposals, and their effect was to further discredit the Federalist party in other parts of the Union.

the treaty of ghent

Peace feelers sent out by the United States in 1812 produced no agreement, and the British refused a Russian mediation offer the following year. The two sides met for direct negotiations in summer of 1814 in Ghent in modern-day Belgium. The United States was represented by a strong delegation that was headed by John Quincy Adams and included rising congressional star Henry Clay and former secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin.

By the time the negotiations got under way in August, the United States had dropped its impressment demands, but the British, now in the driver's seat in the war, laid out their own terms. They demanded the establishment of an Indian barrier state in the Old Northwest, the surrender of territory in northern Minnesota and Maine, the unilateral demilitarization of the Great Lakes, and an end to American fishing privileges in Canadian waters. The American delegation adamantly refused to make any concessions, and gradually the British dropped their demands.

On December 24, 1814, the two nations signed the Treaty of Ghent (also known as the Peace of Christmas Eve). This agreement provided for ending the war and returning to the status quo ante bellum (the state that existed before the war) as soon as both governments had ratified. The British ratified the treaty on December 27; the United States on February 16, 1815. Both sides immediately proclaimed an end to hostilities, although desultory fighting continued in remote parts of the world for several months. The last engagement took place in the Indian Ocean on June 30, 1815, when the USS Peacock (carrying 22 guns) compelled the surrender of the East Indian cruiser Nautilus (14 guns).

consequences

The War of 1812 ended in a draw, and the maritime issues that United States had fought for were not mentioned in the peace treaty. Although the American people might have blamed the Republicans for a failed war policy, they chose instead to focus on the great victory at New Orleans and to view the war as a success. As a result, a number of Americans leaders (such as Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James Monroe, Henry Clay, and John Quincy Adams) were able to capitalize on their service during the war to advance their public careers. The Federalists, on the other hand, saw their wartime popularity vanish. Opposition to the war, so popular while the conflict raged, suddenly seemed unpatriotic. The Federalist party quickly collapsed as a national organization and survived as a viable party only in New England.

The war affected other people as well. Some four thousand runaway slaves, mainly from the Chesapeake, found sanctuary and freedom with the British. Other black Americans capitalized on manpower shortages to make a mark for themselves in the army, navy, and privateers. American Indians, on the other hand, were the heaviest losers in the war. The relentless drive to dispossess them of their lands gained momentum as a result of Harrison's victories in the Northwest and Jackson's in the Southwest. Never again would Native Americans pose a serious threat to the United States, and never again would they be able to secure foreign assistance in their campaign to hold on to their lands and their way of life.

The war had other lasting effects. It promoted nationalism and patriotism and produced several enduring national symbols: Uncle Sam (who was probably named after a Troy, New York, army contractor named Samuel Wilson); the Fort McHenry flag, which is now in the Smithsonian and is the nation's most revered and tangible link to the war; and "The Star-Spangled Banner," which gradually surpassed other patriotic songs and was designated the national anthem by Congress in 1931. Defense spending received a boost as a result of the war. The navy's wartime victories against the acknowledged Mistress of the Seas gave notice to the world of a rising naval power, and this service won a special claim on the nation's resources that even penny-pinching, land-locked congressmen acknowledged. The United States acquired part of West Florida during the war, although this acquisition came at the expense of the hapless Spanish rather than the enemy. In Europe, Americans enjoyed a new-found respect. Even the British were careful not to alienate the young republic in the postwar era, frequently subordinating other interests to promote Anglo-American accord.

At the time, Republicans claimed that the War of 1812 was a second war of independence. Although the nation's independence was never really at stake, there is no denying the this inconclusive war shaped the future of the young republic in a host of ways that reverberated across the Atlantic and through history.

bibliography

Altoff, Gerard T. Amongst My Best Men: African Americans and the War of 1812. Put-in-Bay, OH: Perry Group, 1996.

Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

Engelman, Fred L. The Peace of Christmas Eve. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962.

Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Hitsman, J. Mackay. The Incredible War of 1812: A Military History [1965]. Revised edition by Donald E. Graves. Toronto: Robin Brass Studio, 1999.

Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962.

Perkins, Bradford. Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.

Quimby, Robert S. The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study, 2 vols. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997.

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812. New York: Putnam's Sons, 1882.

Skeen, C. Edward. Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

Stagg, J.C.A. Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Donald R. Hickey

See also:Federalist Party; Flags; Jackson, Andrew; Monroe, James.