WAR of 1812

[Shabraque]

Check out this link.... http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2 ... vents.html

[Pat Holscher]

A few points abut the War of 1812 from a New England perspective...
The war was extremely unpopular in the very place that the sailors who were being pressed came from. There is reasonable evidence to suggest that "free trade and sailor's rights" was the slogan of western expansionists. It never resonated in New England.
This extended to the point that it was commonplace along the northern NE coase, especially in what is now Maine, to deal directly with the British in selling provisions for their fleet... and they paid in gold. In august of 1813 Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy spent 3 days "bombarding" the town of Stonington, Connecticut. It was such a half hearted effort that all he was able to "hit" was a cow shed. I've been there. Stonington is where my NE ancestors lived for near 200 years. It would take careful effort to miss the town with heavy artillery. They must have really been working on it.

Near the end of the war the Hartford Convention was held... a meeting of the NE governors essentially to coordinate efforts to resist the war. It was even suggested by some that NE withdraw from the Union and re-join the empire. The was was also extremely unpopular in B'ham... a large number of B'ham merchants petitioned Parliament to withdraw the Orders in Council. I'd guess that they may actually have been withdrawn more because British merchants opposed them than because the Americans protested.

Thanks Joe, I was hoping we'd hear from you on this.

Your comments are very close to those by the British naval historian. He noted the trade aspect, but with less detail than you, and he also regarded the impressed sailor issue as being mostly fictional and that this region wasn't impressed by it. It's interesting to hear about this from somebody knowledgeable about the history of hte region.

He also stated that New England grain imports were very significant to the British in the Napoleonic Wars, so an irony of the immediate pre war economic situation was that the British Army was fighting Napoleon on New England wheat. I frankly had no idea that agricultural exports from the US were significant, to any extent, in this period.

One time that I'd note is that the impressed sailor story has an aspect to it that's often missed, which is that there was far more immigration in the sailor class in that era than generally imagined. British sailors could easily relocate to Maine, for example, and not really feel that they'd left home. From a British prospective, it wasn't terribly clear who was and was not a British citizen. And desertions of British sailors, who ended up in the US and kept working in their old trade, was a problem to the British. So, in stopping US ships they were not really seeking to take American citizens so much as they were seeking to find British citizens, some of whom were deserters from the Royal Navy. That made sense from a British prospective but, correctly, seemed arrogant from an American one, particularly in an era when ill feelings about the British remained strong in some quarters (just as warm feelings remained strong in others). I only note that as the supposed causus belli was not a real black and white matter.

If it seems like it was, I'd further note that only this past week did the Irish government pardon members of the Irish Defense Force who deserted between 1939-1945 to join the British Army. It's long been felt that they left Irish service, illegally, for a noble cause but the Irish government didn't feel that way for a good 70 years. Or, by way of another example, back in the 70s a friend of my father's visited Switzerland with his sons. He was Swiss, but they'd grown up in the US. The sons were immediately sent packing off for training for the Swiss militia, and it took some effort to spring them, as in the Swiss view, they were Swiss, and they were delinquent in their military obligations. Nations, in other words, can be rather stubborn on these things.

[Pat Holscher]

Check out this link.... http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2 ... vents.html

I'm glad Canada is remembering the war.

Canada has a rich military history, but for some reason, hardly anyone remembers it. To an extent, I wonder if that's because it became the destination for Draft Evaders during the Vietnam War, and now people think that it has a history of being a Pacifist nation.

Shoot, last year one of my son's middle school teachers went off on how we should be like Canada, as it "had never been in a war". He knows better (heck, one of his great uncles was in the Canadian Army at Dieppe and Normandy), but he kept his mouth shut, showing he has more sense than I do.

Anyhow, as we've been discussing here, this war came to a fairly inconclusive end. I think a fair statement on the results would be:

1. The US won as it expanded it's real power on its Western Frontier, firmly converting it into a continental power that was looking West;

2. The UK won as it slapped us around until it grew tired of it, and cat like, determined we were no longer amusing and chose to let us go as it had other things to do.

3. The Canadians won as their militia fought alone for most of the war and beat our militia and regulars nearly every time they encountered us. That's quite a feat really.

4. The real losers were American Indians on the American Frontier, who might have done better in immediate terms had the British pressed the war to a conclusion and boxed the US in as a maritime Atlantic power. Having said that, I think the Western expansion was inevitable, and if the US hadn't firmly staked its claim during the War of 1812 we would have fought it out with the UK over that by the 1830s anyhow.

[Shabraque]

An interesting link with timeline of major battles..............

[Pat Holscher]

An interesting link with timeline of major battles..............

Regarding timelines, today is the 200th Anniversary of the American Declaration of War on the British which resulted in the War of 1812.

I'd note that it's also just shy, by three years, of the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, showing how this event is overshadowed by bigger events in Europe.

[JV Puleo]

I'm just back from 16 days driving around the UK visiting military museums and have thus had the opportunity to talk a bit about 1812 with a number of my British colleagues. (Something like 19 museums, castles and battlefields in 16 days while driving 1300 miles... quite a feat in the UK). We should also keep in mind that the war was extremely unpopular in parts of Britain, especially Birmingham which was, at the time, a major exporter of metal goods of all types. Despite the boom years that the Napoleonic wars gave the B'ham gun trade, the city suffered an economic slump throughout the war and the merchants of B'ham actively petitioned Parliament to withdraw the Orders in Council that were stirring up trouble with the Americans. They were, in fact, withdrawn before war was declared although the news didn't arrive until too late. One wonders if Madison would have wanted to know in time to stop hostilities.

As to the war limiting the US to being a continental power... I don't agree with that. The essential element that prevented America from becoming a major Atlantic power early in the 19th century was a simple lack of interest in doing so. Trade was what we wanted and there was plenty of that, especially with the Royal Navy patrolling the Atlantic sea lanes. The potential to be a major naval power was never beyond possibility... the size of the American merchant fleet, the quality of American warships and the availability of raw materials suggests that we had the materials, skills and manpower to challenge Britain. The only element that was lacking was an industrial infrastructure to support a fleet but that problem was being attacked enthusiastically ... so much so that it is arguable that by the CW we may have surpassed Britain in some areas of industrial capacity. The fact is, no one was even slightly interested in overseas adventures with the huge expanse of the west available for colonization. I think it is likely that the British fully understood this and were happy to have hostilities end when they did. We should remember that Wellington declined the American command, at least in part because he believed that it was physically impossible to invade and occupy America... no matter how many battles were won or cities burned the place was simply far to big and too far from Britain.

[Trooper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/world ... .html?_r=1

[Shabraque]

...bit of a stretch but Tom Brokaw starts with War of 1812...lest we forget.

[Shabraque]

....and today....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7JTbTJM ... re=related

[Pat Holscher]

http://regimentalrogue.com/battlehonour ... tlhnrs.htm

Previously Canadian units did not receive honors for anything prior to 1855.