The Results of the War of 1812

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Efforts to end the war 2 Negotiations 3 Indian Affairs 4 Canada 5 Britain 5.1 Bermuda 6 United States 6.1 Impact on military 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Bibliography

Results of the War of 1812 between the Great Britain and the United States involved no geographical changes, and no major policy changes. However some causes of the war had disappeared with the destruction of the power of Indian tribes. American fears of the Indians ended, as did British plans to create a buffer Indian state. After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 Britain was friends with France and there were no restrictions on neutral trade; the British stopped (in practice) their policy of impressment of American sailors. Americans proclaimed victory in what they called a "second war of independence" for the decisive defeat of the British invaders at New Orleans seemed to prove that Britain could never regain control of America,^[1] and the threat of secession by New England ended.

In Britain the importance of the conflict was totally overshadowed by the war against Napoleon, who returned to Paris in March, 1815, and was finally defeated at Waterloo.

Canada-to-be emerged from the war with a sense of national unity and pride. Canadians claimed the war as a victory for their militia as Americans attempts to invade Upper and Lower Canada were repulsed.

[edit] Efforts to end the war

Efforts to end the war began in 1812 when the chief U.S. diplomat in London proposed an armistice in return for a renunciation of impressment; the British refused. Later in 1812 when the British captured Detroit and news of the repeal of the Orders reached Washington, Sir George Prevost arranged an armistice with his counterpart Henry Dearborn. However, President Madison decided to continue the war. In 1813, Russia offered to mediate a peace, but London rejected the offer because it might compromise British interests in Europe. ^[2] Finally Great Britain and the United States agreed to commence peace negotiations in January 1814; the talks were delayed.

[edit] Negotiations

At last in August 1814, peace discussions began in the neutral city of Ghent. Both sides began negotiations with unrealistic demands. The U.S. wanted an end to all British maritime practices it deemed objectionable and also demanded cessions of Canadian territory and guaranteed fishing rights off Newfoundland. Britain sought a neutral Indian buffer state in the American Northwest, and wanted to annex parts of Maine that had been captured to provide a land corridor to Quebec from the maritime colonies.

After months of negotiations, against the background of changing military victories, defeats and stalemates, the parties finally realized that their nations wanted peace and there was no real reason to continue the war. Now each side was tired of the war. Export trade was all but paralyzed --except for smuggling--and after British victories over Napoleon, the Royal Navy no longer needed to harass American shipping or seamen. The British in turn were preoccupied in rebuilding Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. The negotiators agreed to return to the status quo ante bellum in the Treaty of Ghent signed at Ghent, on December 24, 1814. This treaty was ratified by Britain four days later and by the United States Senate unanimously on February 16, 1815 (a few days after a copy arrived in Washington). In the interim, the Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, when a large British invasion force was defeated near New Orleans by Americans under Andrew Jackson.^[3]

The Treaty of Ghent failed to secure U.S. maritime rights, but in the century of peace among the naval powers of Europe from 1815 until 1914 they were not seriously threatened. Britain had stopped impressing seamen, and never again pursued its disputes with the U.S. to the point of risking war. The U.S. failed to conquer Canada and Britain returned the U.S. lands that it had captured in Maine in accordance with the peace treaty.

The war settled some of the issues over which the United States had fought, especially the Indian menace and the psychological need to assert independence. ^[4]. The issues like impressment and neutral rights were dormant, because in the long period of peace after 1815, the British had no occasion to make use of impressment or blockades.

[edit] Indian Affairs

A key reason that American frontiersmen were so much in favor of the war in the first place was the Indian threat, which they blamed on intervention by British agents in Canada. They wanted access to lands that the British were blocking by inciting and arming the Indians. With the death of Tecumseh in battle in 1813, the Indian threat in the Northwest was much diminished. In the Southeast, Andrew Jackson's defeat of Britain's allies, the Creek Indians at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1813 ended the threat of Indian hostilities in that region, and opened vast farmlands in Georgia and Alabama for settlement. The U.S. occupied all of West Florida during the war and in 1819 purchased the rest of it from Spain, thus closing the base of weapons for hostile tribes.

In the treaty the British promised not to arm the Indians in the U.S. from Canada (nor even trade with them), and the U.S.-Canada border was largely pacified. However, some Americans assumed that the British continued to conspire with their former Indian allies in an attempt to forestall U.S. hegemony in the Great Lakes region. Such perceptions were faulty, argues Calloway (1987). After the Treaty of Ghent, the Indians became an undesirable burden to British policymakers. They now looked to North America for markets and raw materials. British agents in the field continued to meet regularly with their former Indian partners, but they did not supply arms or encouragement for Indian campaigns to stop American expansionism.

[edit] Canada

Some in Washington had expected the largely American population of Upper Canada to throw off the "British yoke", but that did not happen. After 1815 British officials, Anglican clergy and Canadians loyal to the Empire tried to spot and root out American political ideals, such as republicanism and democracy. Thus the British and loyalist elite were able to set Canadians on a different course from that of their former enemy. The Canadian myth that they, the civilian militia, and not the Indians and British regulars, had won the war was not true but it was oft repeated and helped create a spirit of Canadian nationalism.^[5].

When the United States attacked British North America, most of the British forces were engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. Thus British North America had minimal troops to defend against the United States, who had a much larger (though poorly trained) military force. For most of the war, British North America stood alone against a much stronger American force. Reinforcements from the United Kingdom did not arrive until 1814, the final year of the war. The repelling of the stronger American force helped to build unity in British North America. This was most notable between the English and majority French-speaking colonies in Upper and Lower Canada.

The nationalistic sentiment caused a suspicion of such American ideas as republicanism, which would frustrate political reform in Upper and Lower Canada until the Rebellions of 1837. However, the War of 1812 started the process that ultimately led to Canadian Confederation in 1867. Canadian writer Pierre Berton has written that, although later events such as the rebellions and the Fenian raids of the 1860s, were more important, Canada would have become part of the United States if the War of 1812 had not taken place because more and more American settlers would have arrived and Canadian nationalism would not have developed. American historians do not agree with his speculation, noting the British kept tight control.

The War of 1812 was highly significant in Britain's North American colonies. The war was seen as a successful fight for national survival against an American army that vastly outnumbered the defenders for the majority of the war uniting the French-speaking and English-speaking colonies against a common enemy. English language Canadian historians claimed it gave Canada a sense of nationhood as well as a sense of loyalty to the United Kingdom. It is estimated that, at the war's beginning, perhaps one third of the inhabitants of Upper Canada were American-born. Some were United Empire Loyalists, but others had simply come for cheap land and had little or no loyalty to the British Crown. However, many felt the common threat of invasion. For instance, Laura Secord was an American immigrant to Upper Canada, but she did not hesitate to make her arduous trek to warn the British forces of a pending attack by her former country.

A related (and historically suspect) Canadian myth from 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 effect on Canadian military thinking, which placed more stress on a citizens' militia than on a professional standing army. The United States suffered from a similar "frontiersman myth" at the start of the war, believing falsely that individual initiative and marksmanship could be effective against a well disciplined British battle line. Granatstein argues that the militia was not particularly effective in the war and that any British military success was the work of British regular forces and the result of British dominion over the sea. Isaac Brock, for example, was reluctant to trust the militia with muskets. The U.S. Army won most of its land victories late in the war, only after it trained its troops to fight in a disciplined manner, like that of the British and other European armies.

During the war, British officers constantly worried that the Americans would block the St. Lawrence River, which forms part of the Canadian border with the United States. If the U.S. military had done so, there would have been no British supply route for Upper Canada, where most of the land battles took place, and British forces would likely have had to withdraw or surrender all western British territory within a few months. British officers' dispatches after the war exhibit astonishment that the Americans never took such a simple step, but the British were not willing to count on the enemy repeating the mistake; as a result, Britain commissioned the Rideau Canal, an expensive project connecting Kingston, on Lake Ontario, to the Ottawa River, providing an alternate supply route that bypassed the part of the St. Lawrence River along the U.S. border. The settlement at the northeastern end of the canal, where it joins the Ottawa River, later became the city of Ottawa, Canada's fourth-largest city and its capital (placed inland to protect it from U.S. invasion—known then as the 'defensible backcountry'). Because population away from the St. Lawrence shores was negligible, the British in the years following the war took great lengths to ensure that backcountry settlement was increased. They settled soldiers and initiated assisted-immigration schemes, offering free land to farmers, mostly tenants of estates in the south of Ireland. The canal project was not completed until 1832 and was never used for its intended purpose.

[edit] Britain

In contrast to Canada, the War is seldom remembered in Britain today. Chiefly, this is because it was overshadowed by the dramatic events of the contemporary Napoleonic wars, and because Britain herself neither gained nor lost by the peace settlement.

The Royal Navy was acutely conscious that the United States Navy had won most of the single-ship duels during the War, sometimes by a humiliating margin. Also, American privateers and commerce raiders had captured large numbers of British merchant ships, sending insurance rates up and embarrassing the Admiralty. Despite all this, Britain did win quite a few sea battles, which depressed American morale. Also, Britain imposed an effective blockade of the United States and captured many U.S. merchant ships, embarrassing the U.S. Government. The Royal Navy had been able to deploy overwhelming strength to American waters, annihilating rather than merely denting American maritime trade. After the war the Royal Navy made some changes to its practices in construction and gunnery, but did not change its methods of manning the fleet.

The British Army also regarded the conflict in Canada and America as a sideshow. Only one regiment, the 41st (later the Welch Regiment, subsequently part of the Royal Regiment of Wales and now the Royal Welsh) was awarded a battle honour (Detroit) from the war. The army was more interested in the lessons of the Peninsular War in Spain. The few reverses in Canada and at New Orleans could be conveniently attributed to poor leadership or insuperable physical obstacles. If generalship had been better, it was believed, then British success would have been more frequent at sea and at New Orleans. Due to the huge, overwhelming success and pre-eminence of the Duke of Wellington in Europe, the British army was to make no change to its systems of recruitment, discipline and awards of commissions for more than half a century.

The British suffered 5,000 killed or wounded soldiers and sailors in the war.

[edit] Bermuda

Bermuda had been largely left to the defences of its own militia and privateers prior to American independence, but the Royal Navy had begun buying up land and operating from there in 1795 as its location was a useful substitute for the lost American ports. It originally was intended to be the winter headquarters of the North American Squadron, but the war shoved it into a new prominence, with the blockade of the Atlantic ports organised from Bermuda, and the attack on Washington DC having been planned and launched from there. As construction work progressed through the first half of the century, Bermuda became the permanent naval headquarters in Western waters, housing the Admiralty, and serving as a base and dockyard. The military garrison was built up to protect the naval establishment, heavily fortifying the archipelago that came to be described as the Gibraltar of the West. With the slow demise of Bermuda's shipbuilding industry and maritime economy, defence infrastructure would remain the central leg of Bermuda's economy 'til after the Second World War. By 1890, the Secretary of State for War pointed out that Bermuda was considered, by Her Majesty's government, more as a base than as a colony. [2]

The American War of 1812 was the encore of Bermudian privateering, which had died out after the 1790s, due partly to the build up of the naval base in Bermuda, which reduced the Admiralty's reliance on privateers in the western Atlantic, and partly to succesful American legal suits, and claims for damages pressed against British privateers, a large portion of which were aimed squarely at the Bermudians. During the course of the American War of 1812, Bermudian privateers, with their fast Bermuda sloops, were to capture 298 ships (the total captures by all British naval or privateering vessels between the Great Lakes and the West Indies was 1,593 vessels).

[edit] United States

The gloom in New England, which staunchly opposed the war, culminated in December 1814, as delegates from five states met secretly in the Hartford Convention. It demanded constitutional amendments to protect New England's interests against the West and the South. Secession talk was rife and the region might have threatened to secede from the Union if their demands were ignored, but the news of peace ended the movement.

The United States had faced near disaster in 1814, but the victories at the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Baltimore and what seemed to be a successful fight against the United Kingdom increased national patriotism and helped to unite the United States into one nation. The best-known patriotic legacy of the war was The Star Spangled Banner. The words are by Francis Scott Key who after the bombardment of Fort McHenry set them to the music of a British song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." In 1889 the U.S. Navy began using The Star Spangled Banner at flag-raising ceremonies, a practice copied by the army. In 1931, Congress made it the U.S. national anthem. ^[6]

The principal gain for the United States was a renewed self-confidence and faith in the ability of its military to defend the nation's freedom and honor. Although neither side came away from the war with a clear-cut victory, the American people saw the War of 1812 as evidence of the success of the democratic experiment. The war ushered in a period of American history that has frequently been called "the Era of Good Feelings," a time when, at least on the surface, most Americans felt unified behind a common purpose. The War of 1812 convinced the country that it could fend off any foreign threats and that its focus should be on expansion at home.

With the collapse of the Hartford Convention and news of the triumph at the Battle of New Orleans, Americans had cause for celebration. In February President James Madison sent Congress the treaty of peace. He congratulated the nation on the close of a war "waged with the success which is the natural result of the wisdom of the legislative councils, of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the valour of the military and naval forces of the country." The spirit of nationalism and pride led to the collapse of the nay-sayer Federalist Party and the new Era of Good Feelings.

One indirect result of the War of 1812 was the later election to the presidency of war heroes Andrew Jackson and of William Henry Harrison. Both of these men won military fame which had much to do with their elections. Another indirect result was the decline of Federalist power.

[edit] Impact on military

During the war a total of 2,260 American soldiers and sailors were killed. The war cost the United States about $200 million. Neither the United States nor Great Britain gained any military advantage. Indirectly the United States made some gains^[7].

A significant military development was the increased emphasis by General Winfield Scott on 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). After the Texas Annexation by the U.S., the term Manifest Destiny became a widely used political term for those who propagated American expansionism and military pride and despite not having taken any territory during the war, this fact kept political debate alive in the decades to follow about expansion into British North America. ^[8]

In a related development, the Unites States officially abandoned its reliance on the militia for its defense. Moreover, 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 remains the authority over Mississippi (and other) river works.

Later, scholars have questioned the strategy and tactics of the United States in the War of 1812, the war's tangible results and even the wisdom of commencing it in the first place. To contemporary Americans, however, the striking naval victories and Andrew Jackson's victory over the British at New Orleans created a reservoir of "good feeling" on which Monroe was able to draw.

The Monroe Doctrine 1823, actually a few phrases inserted in a long presidential message, declared that the United States would not become involved in European affairs and would not accept European interference in the Americas; its immediate effect on other nations was slight, and that on its own citizenry was impossible to gauge, yet its self-assured tone in warning off the Old World from the New reflected well the nationalist mood that swept the nation.

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 war also spurred on construction of the Erie Canal project, which was built to promote commercial links yet was also perceived as having military uses should the need ever arise.

Creek Indians who escaped to Spanish Florida joined the Seminoles there. The long Seminole Wars followed the American purchase of East Florida in 1819.

The Congressional decision to charter the Second Bank of the United States was explained in part by the nation's financial weaknesses, exposed by the War of 1812. The readiness of Southern leaders especially John C. Calhoun to support such a measure also indicates a high degree of national feeling.^[9] Perhaps the clearest sign of a new sense of national unity was the victorious Republican Party, its long-time foes the Federalists vanished from national politics. The result was an Era of Good Feelings with the lowest level of partisanship ever seen.

[edit] See also

• Chronology of the War of 1812
• Origins of the War of 1812
• War of 1812

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Benn, Carl. The War of 1812 [www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=107722609 online version]; Oxford, UK 2002 (ISBN 1-84176-466-3)] short British summary
• Calloway, Colin G. Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-1815. U. of Oklahoma Press, 1987. 345 pp.
• Errington, Jane. The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (1988)
• Heidler, Donald & Jeanne T. Heidler (eds) Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (2nd ed 2004) 636pp
• Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (1989) (ISBN 0-252-01613-0)
• Mason, Philip P. ed. After Tippecanoe (1963)
• Pratt, Julius W. A History of United States Foreign Policy (1955)
• Risjord, Norman K. "1812: Conservatives, War Hawks, and the Nation's Honor," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 18 (April, 1961), 196-210. in JSTOR
• Marshall Smelser. The Democratic Republic 1801-1815 (1968).
• Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991) (ISBN 0-393-31088-4)
• Rutland, Robert A. The Presidency of James Madison (1990)
• Stagg, John C. A. Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American republic, 1783-1830. (1983).
• J.C.A. Stagg, "James Madison and the Coercion of Great Britain: Canada, the West Indies, and the War of 1812," in The William and Mary Quarterly(Jan., 1981) in JSTOR
• Watts, Steven. The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820 (1989)
• Russell F. Weigley. The American Way of War; a History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (1973)
• Charles Maurice Wiltse. John C. Calhoun, nationalist, 1782-1828 (1944)

see also War of 1812 bibliography