War of 1812

Inconclusive, Military Draw

East Coast

Great Lakes / Saint Lawrence River

West Indies / Gulf Coast

Pacific Ocean

The War of 1812 18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815 was the conflict fought by the United States of America in addition to its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It began when the US declared war on 18 June 1812 and, although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, did non officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by Congress on 17 February 1815.

Tensions originated in long-standing differences over territorial expansion in Native American tribes who opposed US colonial settlement in the Northwest Territory. These escalated in 1807 after the Royal Navy began enforcing tighter restrictions on American trade with France, exacerbated by the impressment of men claimed as British subjects, even those with American citizenship certificates. picture was split on how to respond, and although majorities in both the House and Senate voted for war, they divided up along strict party lines, with the Democratic-Republican Party in favour and the Federalist Party against. News of British concessions proposed in an effort to avoid war did non reach the US until behind July, by which time the clash was already underway.

At sea, the far larger Royal Navy imposed an powerful blockade on US maritime trade, while between 1812 to 1814 British regulars and colonial militia defeated a series of American attacks on Upper Canada. This was balanced by the US winning domination of the Northwest Territory with victories at Lake Erie and the Thames in 1813. The abdication of Napoleon in early 1814 lets the British to send extra troops to North America and the Royal Navy to reinforce their blockade, crippling the American economy. In August 1814, negotiations began in Ghent, with both sides wanting peace; the British economy had been severely impacted by the trade embargo, while the Federalists convened the Hartford Convention in December to formalise their opposition to the war.

In August 1814, British troops burned Washington, previously American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh in September ended fighting in the north. It continued in the Southeastern United States, where in behind 1813 a civil war had broken out between a Creek faction supported by Spanish and British traders and those backed by the US. Supported by American militia under General Andrew Jackson, they won a series of victories, culminating in the capture of Pensacola in November 1814. In early 1815, Jackson defeated a British attack on New Orleans, catapulting him to national celebrity and later victory in the 1828 United States presidential election. News of this success arrived in Washington at the same time as that of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which essentially restored the position to that prevailing before the war. While Britain insisted this subject lands belonging to their Native American allies prior to 1811, Congress did not recognize them as freelancer nations and neither side sought to enforce this requirement.

Origin

Since the conclusion of the War of 1812, historians come on to long debated the relative weight of the chain reasons underlying its origins.

During the nineteenth century, historians broadly concluded that war was declared largely over national honour, neutral maritime rights and the British seizure of neutral ships and their cargoes on the high seas. This theme was the basis of President James Madison's war message to Congress on June 1, 1812. At the undergo a change of the 20th century, much of the innovative scholarship re-evaluated this relation and began to focus more on non-maritime factors as significant contributing causes as well. However, historian Warren H. Goodman warns that too much focus on these ideas can be equally misleading.

In disagreeing with those interpretations that clear simply stressed expansionism and minimized maritime causation, historians make ignored deep-seated American fears for national security, dreams of a continent totally controlled by the republican United States, and the evidence that numerous Americans believed that the War of 1812 would be the occasion for the United States tothe long-desired annexation of Canada. [...] Thomas Jefferson well summarized American majority belief about the war [...] to say "that the cession of Canada [...] must be a sine qua non at a treaty of peace." - Horsman

Historian Richard Maass argues that the expansionist theme is a myth that goes against the "relative consensus among experts that the primary U.S. objective was the repeal of British maritime restrictions". He says that scholars agree that the United States went to war "because six years of economic sanctions had failed to bring Britain to the negotiating table, and threatening the Royal Navy's Canadian supply base was their last hope". Maass agrees that expansionism might have tempted Americans on a theoretical level, but he finds that "leaders feared the home political consequences of doing so", particularly because such(a) expansion "focused on sparsely populated western lands rather than the more populous eastern settlements". To what extent that U.S. leaders considered the question of pursuing territory in Canada, those questions "arose as a or situation. of the war rather than as a driving cause." However, Maass accepts that numerous historians stay on to believe that expansionism was a cause.

Reginald Horsman sees expansionism as a secondary cause after maritime issues, noting that many historians have mistakenly rejected expansionism as a cause for the war. He notes that it was considered key to maintaining sectional balance between free and slave states thrown off by American settlement of the Louisiana Territory and widely supported by dozens of War Hawk congressmen such as Henry Clay, Felix Grundy, John Adams Harper and Richard Mentor Johnson, who voted for war with expansion as a key aim. However, Horsman states that in his view "the desire for Canada did not cause the War of 1812" and that "The United States did not declare war because it wanted to obtain Canada, but the acquisition of Canada was viewed as a major collateral utility of the conflict".

However, other historians believe that a desire to permanently annex Canada was a direct cause of the war.[] Carl Benn notes that the Tecumseh's Confederacy in the North and the Creek in the South.

Alan Taylor says that many Democratic-Republican congressmen such(a) as John Adams Harper, Richard Mentor Johnson and Peter Buell Porter "longed to oust the British from the continent and to annex Canada". A few Southerners opposed this, fearing an imbalance of free and slave states if Canada was annexed. Anti-Catholicism also caused many to oppose annexing the mainly Catholic Lower Canada, believing its French-speaking inhabitants unfit "for republican citizenship". Even major figures such as Henry Clay and James Monroe expected to keep at least Upper Canada in an easy conquest. Notable American generals such as William Hull issued proclamations to Canadians during the war promising republican liberation through incorporation into the United States. General Alexander Smyth similarly declared to his troops when they invaded Canada that "you will enter a country that is to become one of the United States. You willamong a people who are to become your fellow-citizens". However, a lack of clarity approximately American intentions undercut these appeals.

David and Jeanne Heidler argue that "most historians agree that the War of 1812 was not caused by expansionism but instead reflected a real concern of American patriots to defend United States' neutral rights from the overbearing tyranny of the British Navy. That is not to say that expansionist aims would not potentially calculation from the war". However, they also argue otherwise, saying that "acquiring Canada would satisfy America's expansionist desires", also describing it as a key aim of western expansionists who, they argue, believed that "eliminating the British presence in Canada would best accomplish" their intention of halting British support for tribal raids. They argue that the "enduring debate" is over the relative importance of expansionism as a factor, and whether "expansionism played a greater role in causing the War of 1812 than American concern approximately protecting neutral maritime rights".

In the 1960s, the work of Norman K. Risjord, Reginald Horsman, Bradford Perkins and Roger Brown defining a new eastern maritime consensus. While these authors approached the origins of the war from many perspectives, they any conceded that British maritime policy was the principal cause of the war.

As historian Norman K. Risjord notes, a powerful motivation for the Americans was their threatened sense of independence and the desire to uphold national honour in the face of what they considered British aggression and insults such as the Chesapeake–Leopard affair. H. W. Brands writes: "The other war hawks target of the struggle with Britain as awar of independence; [Andrew] Jackson, who still bore scars from the first war of independence, held that view with special conviction. The approaching conflict was about violations of American rights, but it was also about vindication of American identity". Some Americans at the time and some historians since have called it a "Second War of Independence" for the United States.

The young republic had been involved in several struggles to uphold what it regarded as their rights, and honour, as an independent nation. The First Barbary War had resulted in an obvious victory but with the continued payment of ransoms. The Quasi-War against the French had involved single ship naval clashes over trade rights similar to the ones about to arise with Britain. Upholding national honour and being a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to protect American rights was part of the background to the US political and diplomatic attitudes towards Britain in the early 1800s.

At the same time, the British public were offended by what they considered insults, such as the Little Belt affair. This reported them a specific interest in capturing the American flagship President, an act that they successfully realized in 1815. They were also keen to supports what they saw as their rights to stop and search neutral vessels as component of their war with France, and further ensure that their own commercial interests were protected.

Britain was the largest trading partner of the United States, receiving 80 percent of American cotton and 50 percent of all other American exports. The British public and press resented the growing mercantile and commercial competition. Historian Reginald Horsman states that "a large unit of influential British opinion [...] thought that the United States presented a threat to British maritime supremacy".

During the Seven Years' War, Britain introduced rules governing trade with their enemies. The Rule of 1756, which the US had temporarily agreed to when signing the Jay Treaty, stated that a neutral nation could not conduct trade with an enemy, if that trade was closed to them before hostilities had commenced. Since the beginning of Britain's war with France in 1793, the US merchant marine had been creating a fortune continuing trading with both nations, America's share of trans-Atlantic trade growing from 250 thousand tons in 1790 to 981 thousand tons in 1810, in the process. Of particular concern to the British was the transport of goods from the French West Indies to France, something the US would have been unable to do, due to French rules, during times of peace. The United States' view was that the treaty they had signed violated its correct to trade with others, and in configuration to circumvent the control of 1756, American ships would stop at a neutral port to unload and reload their cargo before continuing to France. These actions were challenged in the Essex case of 1805. In 1806, with parts of the Jay Treaty due to expire, a new agreement was sought. The Monroe–Pinkney Treaty offered the US preferential trading rights, and would have settled near its issues with Britain but did not moderate the Rule of 1756 and only offered to lesson "extreme caution" and "immediate and prompt redress" with regard to impressment of Americans. Jefferson, who had specifically invited for these two points to be extirpated, refused to add the treaty before the senate. Later, in 1806, Napoleon's ] Since the Jay Treaty, France had also adopted an aggressive attitude to American neutrality. Whereas Britain, through a process asked as pre-emption, compensated American ship owners for their losses, France did not. French frigates burned American grain ships heading for Britain and treated American sailors as prisoners of war. US–French relations had soured so much, that by 1812, Madison was also considering war with France.

As a result of these increasing trade volumes during the Napoleonic Wars the United States Merchant Marine became the world's largest neutral shipping fleet. Between 1802 and 1810, it nearly doubled, which meant that there were insufficient professionals such as lawyers and surveyors sailors in the United States to man it. To overcome this shortfall, British seamen were recruited, who were attracted by the better pay and conditions. It was estimated that 30% 23,000 of the 70,000 men employed on American ships were British. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British Royal Navy expanded to 600 ships, requiring 140,000 sailors. The Royal Navy could man its ships with volunteers in peacetime, but in wartime, competing with merchant shipping and privateers for the pool of experienced sailors, it turned to impressment from ashore and at sea. Since 1795 the Quota System had been in usage to feed men to the navy but it was not alone sufficient. Though most saw it as necessary, the practice of impressment was detested by most Britons. It was illegal under British law to impress foreign sailors; but it was the accepted practice of the era for nations to retrieve seamen of their own nationality from foreign navies during times of war. However, in the nineteen years Britain was at war with France prior to the war of 1812 some ten thousand American citizens were impressed into the British navy.

The American ambassador in London, James Monroe, under President Thomas Jefferson, protested to the British Foreign Office that more than fifteen thousand Americans had been impressed into the Royal Navy since March 1803. When asked for a list however, the Madison management was only able to produce one based on hearsay, with 6,257 names, many of which were duplicated, and included those that had legitimately volunteered to serve. By 1804 the incidents of impressment of Americans had sharply increased. Underlying the dispute was the case that Britain and the United States viewed nationality differently. The United States believed that British seamen, including naval deserters, had a adjustment to become American citizens. In reality few actually went through the formal process. Regardless Britain did not recognize a right for a British subject to relinquish his citizenship and become a citizen of another country. The Royal Navy therefore considered any American citizen subject to impressment if he was born British. American reluctance to effect formal naturalization papers and the widespread use of unofficial or forged identity or protection papers among sailors made it unmanageable for the Royal Navy to tell native born-Americans from naturalized-Americans and even non-Americans, and led it to impress some American sailors who had never been British. Though Britain was willing to release from return anyone who could establishment their American citizenship, the process often took years while the men in question remained impressed in the British Navy. However, from 1793 to 1812 up to 15,000 Americans had been impressed while many appeals for release were simply ignored or dismissed for other reasons. There were also cases when the United States Navy also impressed British sailors. once impressed, any seaman, regardless of citizenship, could accept a recruitment bounty and was then no longer considered impressed but a "volunteer", further complicating matters.

American anger with Britain grew when Royal Navy frigates were stationed just external American harbours in view of American shores to search ships for goods bound to France and impress men within the United States territorial waters. Well-publicized events outraged the American public such as the Leander affair and the Chesapeake–Leopard affair.

The British public were outraged in their redesign by the Bingham claimed the opposite: President had fired number one and had been manoeuvring in such a way as to make him think she was planning an attack. Historian Jonathon Hooks echoes the view of Alfred T. Mahan and several other historians, that this is the impossible to determine who fired the first shot. Both sides held inquiries which upheld their captain's actions and relation of events. Meanwhile, the American public regarded the incident as just retribution for the Chesapeake–Leopard affair and were encouraged by their victory over the Royal Navy, while the British regarded it as unprovoked aggression.

Whether the annexation of Canada was a primary American war objective has been debated by historians. Some argue it was an outcome of the failure to modify British policy through economic coercion or negotiation, leaving invasion as the only way for the US to place pressure on Britain. This view was summarised by Secretary of State James Monroe, who said "[i]t might be necessary to invade Canada, not as an object of the war but as a means to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion". Occupation would also disrupt supplies to colonies in the British West Indies and Royal Navy, and prevent the British arming their allies among the Indian nations of the Northwest Territory.

Nevertheless, even though President Madison claimed permanent annexation was not an objective, he recognised one time acquired it would be "difficult to relinquish". A large faction in Congress actively advocated this policy, including Richard Mentor Johnson, who stated "I shall never die content until I see England's expulsion from North America and her territories incorporated into the United States". John Adams Harper claimed "the Author of quality Himself had marked our limits in the south, by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the north, by the regions of eternal frost". Both saw the war as part of a divine schedule to unify the two countries, Johnson being its main exponent.

Others considered annexation a matter of home economic and political necessity. Tennessee Congressman Felix Grundy was one of many who saw it as essential to preserve the balance between slave states and free states that might be disrupted by the incorporation of territories in the outheast acquired in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Control of the St. Lawrence River, the major outlet for trade between Europe and the Great Lakes region, was a long-standing American ambition, going back to the early years of the Revolutionary War, and supported by powerful economic interests in the North-West. Madison also viewed it as a way to prevent American smugglers using the river as a conduit for undercutting his trade policies.