Introduction

The antifederalists, later called the Jeffersonian Republicans, were deeply concerned about the corruption of leadership and the threat of tyranny, and their solution was decentralization, limiting the power afforded to any one individual or institution to lessen the chance that an individual could marshal sufficient influence to oppress the citizenry. The problem with this approach became clear as the Jeffersonian progressives faced foreign military threats, which highlighted the failings of the decentralized, state-focused system of defense. Part of the problem was that the Framers had seen fit to leave the federal government without the ability to raise funds for common needs, but the threat of a new war with Britain quickly made it clear that the US government needed the capability to rapidly raise funds and to provide for the common defense.

Topics Covered in this Chapter Include:

The United States was invaded for the first and only time during the War of 1812, a poorly named conflict that saw the United States defending an invasion from Britain while also experimenting with launching an invading army of their own as they tried, on multiple occasions, to invade parts of Canada. For US citizens, the War of 1812 marked an important transition toward militarization and lead to much higher levels of investment in the nation’s standing armies.

Great Britain and France were at war from the Middle Ages to the early modern era. From the Capetian Dynasty of France and the House of Normandy in England, stretching from back in the 1100s to the early 1800s, the competition between these two European giants shaped the world.¹ Countless cultural innovations were brought to the forefront, spreading across the globe, and transforming human life thanks to the innovation that the Anglo-French competition engendered. Likewise, millions of indigenous people throughout Africa, the Middle East, and the New World were slain or exploited by the European empires in their quest for superiority and power. The United States of America, both as a colony and later as an independent nation, was also very much a product of the centuries-old competition between France and England.

The colonization of the United States was undertaken by England in an effort to compete with France’s colonial efforts in the New World. At the time, spices and other raw materials were among the most sought after and valuable commodities in the world, and the European colonies were created to find, harvest, and collect these resources in order to bolster their power. The Revolutionary War in the United States was one of the consequences of the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which left England in need of funds, which they attempted to raise, in part, by increasing taxation on their colonial properties. This intensified competition between the English aristocracy and the Colonial aristocracy and stimulated the growth of the independence movement. The colonial victory in the Revolution, came thanks to a treaty with France, resulting in the Anglo-French War of 1778–1783. The Revolutionary War began in 1775, with France, Spain, and Holland secretly providing military aid to the independence movement in the United States. This was key to the Patriot’s success and, in 1777, a decisive Patriot victory at the Battle of Saratoga saw England offer the colonies full self-governance (while remaining part of the British empire). The more radical of the Patriots won out and pushed for full independence, formally allying with France in 1778. With France (and later Spain) joining the colonists, England had to admit defeat and grant the United States independence.

While the struggle between England and the colonies was unique, it was also just another part of the long-standing struggle for control of resources between the great kingdoms of Europe. Had England maintained control over the colonies, England would have had first and best access to the bounty of resources harvested by the colonists. With France’s assistance, these resources became part of the common European import market, denying England an advantage. The rivalry between France and England, in a direct sense, was essential to the Patriot’s victory: there would likely be no independent United States had these two great powers not continued to compete for superiority.²

It took very little time for the United States and England to develop a trading relationship after independence. In the wake of the war for independence, there were still fortunes to be made and resources to harvest and sell, so it was a very short time before goods began to flow across the oceans again. However, there were many in England who harbored a grudge against the colonists and the colonies, in addition to the continued, perpetual enmity between England and France.

The Seeds of War

While the United States was adjusting to independence, citizens in France were demanding democratic reforms. In 1789, France convened the Estates General and passed a sweeping set of reforms that included separating the Catholic Church from the government and providing the right to vote to citizens. These reforms came too late, and the citizenry toppled the monarchy in 1792, with King Louis XVI executed the following year. Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, still monarchies, tried to protect the French Monarchy, in part out of fear that a revolutionary reform in France would stimulate similar reforms in their own countries. As the revolution in France became inevitable, the European monarchies shifted tactics, attempting to protect their own trade empires while, whenever possible, profiting off of the upheaval in France.

In 1793, French troops occupied parts of Belgium, which threatened important trade routes through the Scheldt River. In response, Britain sent troops to repel the French invasion, and the two armies clashed at the Battle of Hondschoote, resulting in a victory for the French Revolutionary Forces. Several other major engagements occurred, as the British and French clashed in Egypt and elsewhere. In 1799, revolutionary leader Napoléon Bonaparte took control of France, and there was a brief peace in 1802. This quickly ended and by 1803, Britain and France were at war again, this time in a series of conflicts known as the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was a major threat to Britain, seeking to capture complete control over the English Channel and to invade Britain. Britain’s navy turned out to be the key to their successful defense. With Napoleonic forces facing too many foes on too many fronts, the key British victory at Trafalgar in 1805 put an end to France’s aims at conquering Britain, but Napoleon shifted his attention to Spain and Portugal, invading both nations in 1808. The British joined in the fight in the Mediterranean in an effort to defeat Napoleon’s advance.³

At the time, the United States was thriving in international trade and the new nation took advantage of the revolutionary wars in Europe by selling supplies to both sides. Both Britain and France endeavored to prevent their opponents from gaining an advantage by restricting oceanic trade. The British Parliament issued orders that any ship headed for France should be stopped and searched by British forces and any vessel heading for France would be seized, with sailors forced into service for the British navy. The United States was dependent on trade with France and so this British military strategy was a direct threat to the US economy. Thomas Jefferson’s administration attempted to force Britain to relinquish this strategy with a series of economic sanctions, known as the Embargo Act of 1807. This failed, plunging the United States into a depression.

The hawks in the US government were pushing for war as early as 1804. There were many issues at play, but the main arguments for war with Britain included:

Many Americans at the time, even those who fully supported US independence, nonetheless considered themselves British and still had sympathies for Britain in their war with France. Others were sympathetic to France, which was in the midst of its own revolutionary struggle that was, in spirit, perceptively similar to the US independence movement. The population was divided in their sympathies and attitudes towards the war. For the hawks, the goal was to build public support for war against Britain, so many speeches and articles made exaggerated claims about British crimes against the United States. One example of this can be found in the debate over naval impressment. While it was widely argued that British naval ships were essentially attacking the United States by capturing and impressing US sailors, the number of cases where this occurred was quite small and, what is more, nearly every navy of the era would forcibly conscript soldiers on ships that they seized, for whatever reason. James Madison, then president, supported war with Britain and his administration erroneously claimed that thousands of Americans had been hijacked and forced into British service. There is no evidence that this is true, but the claim provided the impression that Britain was actively attacking US citizens.

The war with Britain was also based on economic concerns. The United States needed oceanic trade with Europe to maintain the nation’s economy and to avoid a depression. Settlers wanted land controlled by American Indians with British assistance. Hunger for power and resources thus drove the pro-war movement in the United States. Entering the White House in 1808, Madison gave a speech to Congress asking them to prepare their states for war. Two years later, pro-war voters elected a series of pro-war representatives, and this gave Madison the power to officially declare war. Madison delivered the following speech in June of 1812:

“Proclamation of a State of War with Great Britain”

The Second War of Independence

Supporters of the war referred to the conflict as a “second war of independence,” a moniker meant to drum up patriotic associations with the American Revolution. The reality of the war was, in fact, quite different. Even as Americans prepared for war, the British Parliament was in the process of repealing the trade restrictions that Madison and allies had cited as their primary justifications for the war. The British Parliament also wanted to maintain trade with the United States and did not want to fight another war while engaged with France. In fact, by the time the US declaration of war reached Britain (by ship), about a month after it was written, the British Parliament had already eliminated its trade restrictions, the primary purpose for the war as cited by Madison and the hawks. This led to confusion on both sides. The British were waiting to see how the United States would react to the elimination of trade restrictions, and the Americans were now confused. Should they still go to war? What was left to gain?

The US citizenry was so divided that a group of New England anti-war representatives considered seceding from the United States to create a new nation in New England, perhaps allied with Britain. This was not uncommon, as there had been many state-led threats of secession over the previous decade. Many of the anti-Jeffersonians threatened to leave the nation after Jefferson’s election, then again after the Louisiana Purchase, and again after the Embargo Act of 1807, and then again as the War of 1812 approached. Nevertheless, the onset of war stimulated the most serious threat of secession in the nation’s history to that point, and many members of the New England states who met at the Hartford Convention of 1814 were serious about forming their own nation, though this impractical goal never got any further than political posturing.⁵

The United States ultimately pushed forward with the war effort, though this was, in hindsight, a bad idea. The US military was poorly funded, and its soldiers were poorly trained. Fighting an expeditionary war, on foreign soil and on the oceans, was a different thing than the American Revolution, in which the United States was able to use familiar terrain and other advantages to repeal British forces. The United States declared war with an army of only 6,700 soldiers and faced an enemy with more than 240,000 and the largest, most powerful navy in the world.

The initial strategy of US forces was to invade Canada, in the hopes of accomplishing two goals. First, it would cut off British support to American Indians in the border regions and, second, it would move the battle with Britain away from the sea and force negotiations. American forces first tried to invade Canada in July of 1812, landing forces at Sandwich, in Ontario, across the Delaware River. Documents and correspondence from this period indicate that many among the pro-war club felt that the United States would have little problem capturing territories in the region, but they discovered far sharper resistance than they expected.

On April 27, 1813, US forces managed to capture the capital city of upper Canada, then known as York, which later became the city of Toronto. A force of 2,700 stormed the fort at York, which was guarded by only 750 combined British and Canadian soldiers, with American Indian allies. The Americans captured the fort and burned the government buildings to the ground, sacking a foreign capital for the first time in history. Though this victory initially suggested that the hawks were correct in their belief that the United States would capture key locations in Canada, York was a strategic blunder for the United States, as there were no clear ways to maintain supplies and no path for reinforcements. Losses at the battles of Chateauguay and Crysler’s Farm prevented the Americans from moving forward and undid any gains they had made into Canadian territory. In 1814, Brigadier General Winfield Scott successfully broke through Canadian forces at the Battle of Chippawa, but a few weeks later lost a major battle at Lundy’s Lane and was again forced into retreat. Altogether, there had been three attempts to invade and capture strategic Canadian territories. In each case, the invasion had been poorly planned and executed, and resistance from Canadian settlers more vigorous than the United States had expected.

By April of 1914, attitudes in Congress had shifted, and there was little continued support for the idea that the United States had any hope of occupying even a portion of Canada. However, the United States had achieved better results fighting British ships in naval engagements, and so the goals of the war shifted to maintaining access to shipping routes and to their trading partners in Europe.⁶ Unfortunately for the United States, the British war with France was on hold and Britain dramatically increased investment in the war with the United States. On August 19, 1814, an expeditionary force commanded by General Robert Ross invaded the US mainland through Maryland. The British forces, composed almost entirely of veteran soldiers, easily defeated the Maryland militia at the Battle of Bladensburg and entered Washington, DC. The city was evacuated, and the British forces captured and burned the White House and the Capitol buildings. Even as the invasion of Washington, DC took place, back in Britain most of Parliament was prepared to engage in peace talks. The burning of the Capitol was, more than anything, revenge for the US attack on York the year before. Just as US soldiers burned Fort York and the other governmental buildings in Ontario’s capital, the British Canadian forces did likewise to the United States. Many Americans reacted with shock and anger to the invasion of Washington, DC but such reactions were misguided. The United States had tried, on three occasions, to invade Canada and though US citizens might have felt their intentions were good, the invasion of Washington, DC was not only proportional, but also less aggressive than the three US attempts to invade the Canadian territories.

The hawks who had pushed for the war played up allegedly tyrannical aims of the British in political speeches regarding what was essentially a clear loss for the United States. Madison issued a formal statement on the issue in September:

“Proclamation upon British Depredations, Burning of the Capitol”

Honor in Defeat

The United States never admitted defeat in the War of 1812, and they were not required to do so by the British. The United States entered peace negotiations with the British in December of 1814, resulting in the Treaty of Ghent. Americans celebrated the treaty in the streets, but there was little sense that the nation had gained anything.

Historian Robert Rivers Jones said of the war in his 1969 The Sweep of American History,

When the War of 1812 began, the United States was ill prepared. Investment in the military had been lacking. Recruitment was minimal, and training was almost nonexistent. Though the military had grown since the Barbary Wars, and investment in military development had increased, the US military was nowhere near ready for the challenges of the war. One of the most significant results of the war was a dramatic increase in military investment and a more unified push to recruit soldiers and officers and to invest in technology and equipment. But this was a slow process, and war hawks in Congress struggled against objections from those feeling that revenues were better invested elsewhere.

The War of 1812 was momentous in American history, if only because it represented the first and only time that the United States was invaded and because the nation’s capital city was evacuated and the buildings of state destroyed The US loss in the war was clear, and this is why historians have often glossed over the war in an effort to highlight US victories and successes while downplaying US failures. Depictions of the War of 1812 in standard US history also often exaggerate the justifications for the war and downplay the underlying fact that the war represented a failed effort to expand the nation’s territory and access to resources and that the nation’s ambivalence and lack of unity on military development had doomed this effort to failure. There are many other examples of military incidents in US history that receive little attention or discourse because the results were unfavorable for the United States, and students of history rapidly begin to see how historians and popular culture amplifies a nation’s triumphs and mutes the nation’s failures.

A Midnight Walk

The Patriot revolutionary Paul Revere has been one of the most celebrated figures in American history for his role in helping the Patriots prepare for the arrival of British troops at the dawn of the Revolutionary War. A similar role has been ascribed to Canadian Laura Secord during the War of 1812.

Secord was the daughter of a Patriot who fought in the American Revolution against Britain, but after her family relocated to Canada, Secord married James Secord, a British loyalist. When the War of 1812 broke out, James Secord was called into service, and records indicate that he was gravely wounded during the Battle of Queenston Heights.

After US forces took control of Queenston, the military seized control of the Secords’ home and billeted a number of US soldiers there. Historians are uncertain how, but during this time Laura Secord learned that the American forces were planning to launch an attack on a British–Canadian force stationed at Beaver Dams on the Niagara Peninsula. On the morning of June 22, 1813, Laura Secord set out from her home and walked at least 20 miles to St. David’s at the Niagara Escarpment. She was taken to Lieutenant James FitzGibbon’s headquarters and told FitzGibbon about the impending US attack. Thanks to Secord’s warning, FitzGibbon was able to prepare, and when US forces attacked on the 24th, they suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of British Canadian soldiers and their allies.

Secord received little recognition during her lifetime and died somewhat destitute, but her story was later revived and celebrated as one of Canada’s cultural heroes and icons. The grave where she was buried is marked by a statue of her, and bears the inscription:

In Canada, the War of 1812 is still celebrated each year, and Canadian treatments depict the war as an unlikely and, therefore, even more heroic victory over a much better supplied and armed foe. This is more or less accurate: the United States had more resources, soldiers, and ships, but British Canadians repelled the US invasion on multiple fronts and maintained their identity. Ultimately, this saved Canada from becoming a territory of the United States, and the nation won its independence from Britain without a war. The nation’s defeat of the United States during the War of 1812 is part of the general historical curriculum in Canada, and a number of prominent Canadian historians have provided treatments of this key moment in the nation’s history.

Some historians have argued that the people who lost the most from the War of 1812 were the indigenous inhabitants of Canada and the United States. A number of prominent native nations, including the Ojibwe and Mohawk, aided the British in defending against the US invasion but, in the end, the British government and the Canadian colonists did not protect the American Indians or follow through on their promises of support. As the British withdrew from forts along the Canadian border, American colonists displaced American Indians and forced them into reservations.

Conclusion

The War of 1812 was a spectacular military failure for the United States. Though the US naval forces grew and evolved thanks to successful skirmishes, nothing else of substance was gained. The British government had already been fully prepared to end its shipping and navigational restrictions without the need for a war to settle this issue. Further, those who hoped that the United States might expand into new territories, specifically by capturing parts of Canada, underestimated the difficulty of this task and learned a deadly lesson that cost many American lives without any significant gains for the United States. Further, the United States suffered a retaliatory attack that resulted in the destruction of the White House and many of the key governmental structures in Washington, DC. One of the primary consequences of the war was a higher degree of consensus among various political camps regarding investing in a permanent standing army and in training land and oceanic forces for future conflicts.

Discussion Questions

Works Used