War of 1812

Essay submitted by Skippy

War of 1812, conflict between the United States and Great Britain from 1812 to 1815.

Fought over the maritime rights of neutrals, it ended inconclusively.

Background

Over the course of the French revolutionary and the Napoleonic wars between France

and Great Britain (1793-1815), both belligerents violated the maritime rights of neutral

powers. The United States, endeavoring to market its own produce, was especially

affected. To preserve Britain's naval strength, Royal Navy officers impressed thousands

of seamen from U.S. vessels, including naturalized Americans of British origin, claiming

that they were either deserters or British subjects. The United States defended its

right to naturalize foreigners and challenged the British practice of impressment on the

high seas. Relations between the two nations reached a breaking point in 1807 when

the British frigate Leopard fired on the USS Chesapeake in American territorial waters

and removed, and later executed, four crewmen.

In addition, Britain issued executive orders in council to blockade the coastlines of the

Napoleonic empire and then seized vessels bound for Europe that did not first call at a

British port. Napoleon retaliated with a similar system of blockades under the Berlin and

Milan decrees, confiscating vessels and cargoes in European ports if they had first

stopped in Britain. Collectively, the belligerents seized nearly 1500 American vessels

between 1803 and 1812, thus posing the problem of whether the United States should

go to war to defend its neutral rights.

Americans at first prepared to respond with economic coercion rather than war. At the

urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807,

prohibiting virtually all U.S. ships from putting to sea. Subsequent enforcement

measures in 1808-1809 also banned overland trade with British and Spanish possessions

in Canada and Florida. Because the legislation seriously harmed the U.S. economy and

failed to alter belligerent policies, it was replaced in 1809 by the Non-Intercourse Act,

which forbade trade with France and Britain. In 1810 Macon's Bill No. 2 reopened

American trade with all nations, but stipulated that if one belligerent repealed its

antineutral measures, the United States would then impose an embargo against the

other.

In August Napoleon announced the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees on the

understanding that the United States would also force Britain to respect its neutral

rights. Although Napoleon continued to seize American vessels in French ports,

President James Madison accepted his statements as proof that French antineutral

decrees had been lifted. He reimposed the ban on trade with Britain in November 1810

and demanded that the British ministry repeal the orders in council as a condition for

resumption of Anglo-American trade. Britain refused to comply, and Madison summoned

Congress into session in November 1811 to prepare for war. After months of debate,

Congress declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812.

Armed Conflict

U.S. forces were ordered to invade Canada at points between Detroit and Montreal, but

poor planning, organization, and leadership undermined this strategy. British general

Isaac Brock, together with the northwestern Native Americans led by the Shawnee

chief Tecumseh, captured Detroit, while on the Niagara peninsula two American armies

were defeated. In 1813 American forces reoccupied Detroit after Oliver Hazard Perry

captured the British fleet on Lake Erie, thus enabling William Henry Harrison to defeat

the combined British and Native American forces at the battle of the Thames in

October. In the east, an American army had taken York (now Toronto) in May, but the

failure of subsequent campaigns against Kingston and Montreal prevented the United

States from further extending its power into Canada. In the fall of 1813 the war spread

to the southwestern frontier in a conflict with the Creek people, who were eventually

defeated by forces under Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend (March

1814). Furthermore, despite victories of single American warships in the Atlantic, such

as that of the Constitution over the Guerriere in 1812, the Royal Navy by 1813 had

blockaded much of the eastern coast and thus ruined U.S. trade with foreign nations.

By 1814 American forces had improved in quality and leadership. In July armies under

Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott fought British troops on even terms at Chippewa and

Lundy's Lane, near Niagara. Napoleon's defeat in Europe, however, freed Britain to send

more troops to North America. By late summer the United States had to face invasions

from combined army and naval forces at Lake Champlain and in Chesapeake Bay. A U.S.

naval victory on Lake Champlain in September 1814 compelled one invading army to

retreat to Canada, but not before other British troops had burned Washington, D.C., in

August and also occupied northeastern Maine. British forces, however, failed to take

Baltimore, Maryland. During the bombardment of the city (September 13-14), American

poet Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner;" his verses later became the

U.S. national anthem.

Conclusion

Great Britain and the United States agreed to commence peace negotiations in January

1814, but the talks were delayed until July. Both nations began negotiations with

unrealistic demands. The United States wanted an end to all objectionable British

maritime practices and also demanded cessions of Canadian territory. Britain sought a

neutral Native American buffer state in the American Northwest and wanted to revise

both the American-Canadian boundary and the 1783 Treaty of Paris that had

established U.S. independence. They finally agreed to return to the antebellum status

quo in a treaty signed at Ghent, Belgium, on December 24, 1814. This treaty was

ratified by Britain four days later and by the U.S. Senate on February 16, 1815.

Between these dates a final battle was fought on January 8, when a British army

landed at the mouth of the Mississippi River and was defeated near New Orleans by

forces under Andrew Jackson.

The Treaty of Ghent failed to secure U.S. maritime rights, but in the century of peace

in Europe from 1815 until World War I they were not seriously threatened. Britain never

again pursued its disputes with the United States to the point of risking another war.

The United States did not conquer Canada, but Native American opposition to American

expansion in the Northwest and Southwest was broken. Both the United States and

Canada emerged from the war with an increased sense of national purpose and

awareness.