As we look forward to celebrating the bicentennial of the
“Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, I have to admit, with deep
shame and embarrassment, that until I left England and went to college
in the U.S., I assumed the words referred to the War of Independence. In
my defense, I suspect I’m not the only one to make this mistake.
For people like me, who have got their flags and wars mixed up, I
think it should be pointed out that there may have been only one War of
1812, but there are four distinct versions of it—the American, the
British, the Canadian and the Native American. Moreover, among
Americans, the chief actors in the drama, there are multiple variations
of the versions, leading to widespread disagreement about the causes,
the meaning and even the outcome of the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, American commentators
painted the battles of 1812-15 as part of a glorious “second war for
independence.” As the 19th century progressed, this view changed into a
more general story about the “birth of American freedom” and the
founding of the Union. But even this note could not be sustained, and by
the end of the century, the historian Henry Adams was depicting the war
as an aimless exercise in blunder, arrogance and human folly. During
the 20th century, historians recast the war in national terms: as a
precondition for the entrenchment of Southern slavery, the jumping-off
point for the goal of Manifest Destiny and the opening salvos in the
race for industrial-capitalist supremacy. The tragic consequences of
1812 for the native nations also began to receive proper attention.
Whatever triumphs could be parsed from the war, it was now accepted that
none reached the Indian Confederation under Tecumseh. In this
postmodern narrative about American selfhood, the “enemy” in the
war—Britain—almost disappeared entirely.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian history of the war began with a
completely different set of heroes and villains. If the U.S. has its
Paul Revere, Canada has Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who lost his life
defending Upper Canada against the Americans, and Laura Secord, who
struggled through almost 20 miles of swampland in 1813 to warn British
and Canadian troops of an imminent attack. For Canadians, the war was,
and remains, the cornerstone of nationhood, brought about by unbridled
U.S. aggression. Although they acknowledge there were two theaters of
war—at sea and on land—it is the successful repulse of the ten U.S.
incursions between 1812 and 1814 that have received the most attention.
This timber, which survived the burning of the White House
200 years ago, was donated to the Smithsonian after it was discovered
during a 1950 renovation.
(David Burnett)
By contrast, the British historiography of the War of 1812 has
generally consisted of short chapters squeezed between the grand
sweeping narratives of the Napoleonic Wars. The justification for this
begins with the numbers: Roughly 20,000 on all sides died fighting the
War of 1812 compared with over 3.5 million in the Napoleonic. But the
brevity with which the war has been treated has allowed a persistent
myth to grow about British ignorance. In the 19th century, the Canadian
historian William Kingsford was only half-joking when he commented, “The
events of the War of 1812 have not been forgotten in England for they
have never been known there.” In the 20th, another Canadian historian
remarked that the War of 1812 is “an episode in history that makes
everybody happy, because everybody interprets it differently...the
English are happiest of all, because they don’t even know it happened.”
The truth is, the British were never happy. In fact, their
feelings ranged from disbelief and betrayal at the beginning of the war
to outright fury and resentment at the end. They regarded the U.S.
protests against Royal Navy impressment of American seamen as
exaggerated whining at best, and a transparent pretext for an attempt on
Canada at worst. It was widely known that Thomas Jefferson coveted all
of North America for the United States. When the war started, he wrote
to a friend: “The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the
neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give
us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final
expulsion of England from the American continent.” Moreover, British
critics interpreted Washington’s willingness to go to war as proof that
America only paid lip service to the ideals of freedom, civil rights and
constitutional government. In short, the British dismissed the United
States as a haven for blackguards and hypocrites.
The long years of fighting Napoleon’s ambitions for a world
empire had hardened the British into an “us-against-them” mentality. All
British accounts of the war—no matter how brief—concentrate on the
perceived inequality of purpose between the conflict across the Atlantic
and the one in Europe: with the former being about wounded feelings and
inconvenience, and the latter about survival or annihilation.
To understand the British point of view, it is necessary to go
back a few years, to 1806, when Napoleon ignited a global economic war
by creating the Continental System, which closed every market in the
French Empire to British goods. He persuaded Russia, Prussia and Austria
to join in. But the British cabinet was buoyed by the fact that the
Royal Navy still ruled the seas, and as long as it could maintain a
tight blockade of France’s ports there was hope. That hope was turned
into practice when London issued the retaliatory Orders in Council,
which prohibited neutral ships from trading with Napoleonic Europe
except under license. The Foreign Secretary George Canning wrote: “We
have now, what we had once before and once only in 1800, a maritime war
in our power—unfettered by any considerations of whom we may annoy or
whom we may offend—And we have...determination to carry it through.”
Canning’s “whom” most definitely included the Americans. The
British noted that the American merchant marine, as one of the few
neutral parties left in the game, was doing rather well out of the war:
Tonnage between 1802 and 1810 almost doubled from 558,000 to 981,000.
Nor could the British understand why Jefferson and then Madison were
prepared to accept Napoleon’s false assurances that he would refrain
from using the Continental System against American shipping—but not
accept Prime Minister Lord Liverpool’s genuine promises that wrongly
impressed American sailors would be released. Writing home to England, a
captain on one of the Royal Navy ships patrolling around Halifax
complained: “I am really ashamed of the narrow, selfish light in which
[the Americans] have regarded the last struggle for liberty and morality
in Europe—but our cousin Jonathan has no romantic fits of energy and
acts only upon cool, solid calculation of a good market for rice or
tobacco!”
It was not until the beginning of 1812 that Britain belatedly
acknowledged the strength of American grievances. Royal Navy ships near
the American coastline were ordered “not to give any just cause of
offence to the Government or the subjects of the United States.”
Captains were also commanded to take extra care when they searched for
British deserters on American ships. Parliament had just revoked the
Orders in Council when the news arrived that President Madison had
signed the Declaration of War on June 18. London was convinced that the
administration would rescind the declaration once it heard that the
stated cause—the Orders in Council—had been dropped. But when Madison
then changed the cause to impressment of American sailors (which now
numbered about 10,000), it dawned on the ministry that war was
unavoidable.
News of Madison’s declaration coincided with momentous
developments in Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armée of
500,000 men—the largest pan-European force ever assembled to that
date—invaded Russia on June 24 with the aim of forcing Czar Alexander I
to recommit to the Continental System. Britain decided its only course
of action was to concentrate on Europe and treat the American conflict
as a side issue. Just two battalions and nine frigates were sent across
the Atlantic. Command of the North American naval station was given to
Adm. Sir John Borlase Warren, whose orders were to explore all
reasonable avenues for negotiation.
***
The first six months of the war produced a mixed bag of successes
and failures for both sides. The larger U.S. warships easily trounced
the inferior British frigates sent to the region, and in six single-ship
encounters emerged victorious in every one. American privateers had an
even better year, capturing over 150 British merchant ships worth $2
million. But the British took heart from the land war, which seemed to
be going their way with very little effort expended. With the help of
Shawnee war chief Tecumseh and the Indian Confederation he built up, the
Michigan Territory actually fell back into British possession. In late
November an American attempt to invade Upper Canada ended in fiasco. The
holding pattern was enough to allow Henry, 3rd Earl of Bathurst,
Secretary for War and the Colonies, to feel justified in having
concentrated on Napoleon. “After the strong representations which I had
received of the inadequacy of the force in those American settlements,”
he wrote to the Duke of Wellington in Spain, “I know not how I should
have withstood the attack against me for having sent reinforcements to
Spain instead of sending them for the defense of British possessions.”
Yet the early signs in 1813 suggested that Earl Bathurst might
still come to regret starving Canada of reinforcements. York (the future
Toronto), the provincial capital of Upper Canada, was captured and
burned by U.S. forces on April 27, 1813. Fortunately, in Europe, it was
Napoleon who was on the defensive—bled dry by his abortive Russian
campaign and proven vulnerable in Spain and Germany. What few Americans
properly grasped was that in British eyes the real war was going to take
place at sea. Although the death of Tecumseh in October 1813 was a
severe blow to its Canadian defense strategy, Britain had already felt
sufficiently confident to separate nine more ships from the
Mediterranean Fleet and send them across the Atlantic. Admiral Warren
was informed, “We do not intend this as a mere paper blockade, but as a
complete stop to all Trade & intercourse by sea with those Ports, as
far as the wind & weather, & the continual presence of a
sufficing armed Force, will permit and ensure.”
New York City and Philadelphia were blockaded. The Royal Navy
also bottled up the Chesapeake and the Delaware. To the British, these
successes were considered payback for America’s unfair behavior.
“However, we seem to be leading the Yankees a sad life upon their
coasts,” wrote the British philanthropist William Ward, 1st Earl of
Dudley, in July 1813. “I am glad of it with all my heart. When they
declared war they thought it was pretty near over with us, and that
their weight cast into the scale would decide our ruin. Luckily they
were mistaken, and are likely to pay dear for their error.”
Dudley’s prediction came true. Despite the best efforts of
American privateers to harass British shipping, it was the U.S. merchant
marine that suffered most. In 1813 only a third of American merchant
ships got out to sea. The following year the figure would drop to
one-twelfth. Nantucket became so desperate that it offered itself up to
the Royal Navy as a neutral trading post. America’s oceanic trade went
from $40 million in 1811 to $2.6 million in 1814. Custom revenues—which
made up 90 percent of federal income—fell by 80 percent, leaving the
administration virtually bankrupt. By 1814 it could neither raise money
at home nor borrow from abroad.
When Napoleon abdicated in April 1814, Britain expected that
America would soon lose heart and surrender too. From then on, London’s
chief aims were to bring a swift conclusion to the war, and capture as
much territory as possible in order to gain the best advantage in the
inevitable peace talks.
On July 25, 1814, the two foes fought their bloodiest-ever land
engagement at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, a mile west of Niagara Falls
near the New York-Canada border. There were over 1,700 casualties, among
them America’s dream of annexing Canada. A month later, on August 24,
the British burned down the White House and several other government
buildings. To Prime Minister Liverpool, the war had been won, bar the
skirmishing to be done by the diplomatic negotiators taking place in
Ghent, Belgium.
London was quite put out to discover that the administration in
Washington failed to share its view. President Madison did not regard
America as having been defeated. Only two weeks later, on September 11,
1814, U.S. troops soundly beat back a British attack on Lake Champlain
near the New York-Canada border. The poet Francis Scott Key didn’t
believe his country was defeated, either, after he saw “by the dawn’s
early light” the American flag still flying above Fort McHenry outside
Baltimore Harbor on September 14. Nor did Gen. Andrew Jackson,
particularly after his resounding victory against British forces outside
New Orleans on January 8, 1815—two weeks after the peace negotiations
between the two countries had been concluded.
The late flurry of U.S. successes dashed British hopes of
squeezing concessions at the Ghent talks. This led the negotiators to
abandon the plan to insist on a buffer state for the defeated Native
American tribes that had helped British troops. Prime Minister Liverpool
gave up trying to teach the Americans a lesson: “We might certainly
land in different parts of their coast, and destroy some of their towns,
or put them under contribution; but in the present state of the public
mind in America it would be in vain to expect any permanent good effects
from operations of this nature.”
The British realized that simply getting the Americans to the
negotiating table in Ghent was the best they were going to achieve. They
also knew that Canada was too large and too sparsely populated to be
properly defended. There was also the matter of general war-weariness.
British families wanted their menfolk home. Lord Liverpool feared that
time was going against them. After the negotiations were concluded on
Christmas Eve 1814, he wrote: “I do not believe it would have been
possible to have continued [wartime taxes] for the purpose of carrying
on an American war....The question there was whether, under all these
circumstances, it was not better to conclude the peace at the present
moment, before the impatience of the country on the subject had been
manifested at public meetings, or by motions in Parliament.”
Although nobody gained from the Treaty of Ghent, it is important
to note that (with the exception of the later betrayals suffered by the
Native American tribes) nothing was lost either. Moreover, both
countries had new victories to savor. The U.S. found glory at the Battle
of New Orleans, while six months later the British found theirs when
the Duke of Wellington inflicted a crushing defeat over Napoleon at the
Battle of Waterloo. Both victories overshadowed everything that had
taken place during the previous two years. For America, 1812 became the
war in which it had finally gained its independence. For Britain, 1812
became the skirmish it had contained, while winning the real war against
its greatest nemesis, Napoleon.
Read
more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/british-view-war-1812-quite-differently-americans-do-180951852/#RvU2tIH9ZFg1iimJ.99
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