Happy 200th Anniversary... 1812

[BridgeTroll]

Over the next year or two we can expect to learn more about this mostly forgotten war...

The Most Important War You Probably Know Nothing About

Gather round, children, and let me tell you about the War of 1812.

BY JAMES TRAUB |JUNE 15, 2012

Can you feel the excitement in the air? June 18 is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, and I'm sure you're thinking: Why no parades down Main Street? Why no historical reenactors costumed as President James Madison, who signed the declaration of war, or Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the Hero of Lake Erie? Because Americans have a short historical memory, that's why. Or perhaps it's because we don't commemorate equivocal wars. But don't be fooled by the absence of huzzahs: The War of 1812 was one of the great liberating events of American history, and I'm here to tell you why.

One of the buried facts of our collective past is that the United States came very close to dissolving long before slavery sundered the union. America was in almost perpetual peril during the quarter century from the French Revolution to the Treaty of Ghent, which concluded the war with Britain in 1814. Throughout this period, the two great world powers of the time, France and England, sought to destroy each other; each tried to bribe, seduce, subvert, or intimidate the neutral states in order to tip the balance in their favor. In this great and cynical game, the United States, which at the time constituted what we would now call "an emerging nation," was one of the most valuable prizes.

American politics consisted of, in effect, an "English" party and a "French" party. This was scarcely unusual at the time: Both republican Holland and autocratic Russia, among others, tilted back and forth between partisans of the two. In America, however, the Founding Fathers recognized that this contest for supremacy posed a mortal threat to the nation. In his brief farewell address, George Washington ardently defended the policy of neutrality to which he had consistently hewed. The president warned his fellow citizens that "excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other."

Alexander Hamilton largely wrote Washington's farewell address; and Hamilton, an Anglophile, was using the president's immense prestige to warn of the susceptibility of Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party to France and the doctrines of the French Revolution. Federalists like Hamilton derisively referred to the Jeffersonians as "Jacobins" -- revolutionary camp-followers. France, for its part, sought to use the U.S. Republicans as an extra-territorial arm of the revolution. In 1792, France sent an ambassador to the United States with the express goal of enlisting Americans in its war with England. The minister, Edmond-Charles Genet, outfitted privateers in the pro-French South with the goal of preventing New England merchants from trading with England and encouraged the creation of "democratic-republican societies" to fight against alleged "aristocratic" tendencies in America -- until an outraged President Washington demanded that he desist.

France was the chief provocateur during this period. Like Russia after 1917, France saw itself as the standard-bearer of a global revolution; a levée en masse produced a standing army of 800,000 prepared to overwhelm the reactionary forces of Europe. A combination of diplomatic insults and attacks on American shipping drove President John Adams to the very edge of declaring war against France in 1798 (as I described here). Later, Napoleon channeled those revolutionary energies into the more traditional French goal of dominating neighbors and bringing England to its knees. Napoleon even dreamed of sending a force from Haiti up the Mississippi in order to seize the western territory of the United States. The plan came to grief when his army was decimated by yellow fever and Haitian guerillas. The emperor reacted to his failure with a magnificent gesture of disgust: He sold Louisiana to President Jefferson in 1803.

Although it was the greatest windfall in the nation's history, the Louisiana Purchase also came very close to dividing America in half. Federalists now feared -- rightly, as it turned out -- that the new citizens of the south and west would identify with the democratic Jeffersonians rather than with a party that looked back nostalgically to a pre-revolutionary European order. In late 1803 and early 1804, most of the leading Federalists plotted to secede from the union and seek an alliance with England. The conspiracy appears to have collapsed when Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel (though Hamilton had not supported the secessionists).

France continued to intrigue against the United States, but even the most ardent American Jacobins lost faith in the revolutionary project once Napoleon placed the imperial crown on his own head. Washington's warning now applied far more to the partisans of England than of France. British ships patrolled the waters of the Atlantic hunting for U.S. merchant vessels carrying goods from the French West Indies and regularly boarded American ships searching for English sailors who had fled the abysmal pay and dreadful conditions of His Majesty's Navy. And while most Americans were outraged by these incursions on national sovereignty, leading Federalists sided with Britain and publicly excused their offenses. The party split between, in effect, a pro-British and pro-American faction, and the extremists, known as the Essex Junto, degenerated into precisely the kind of fifth column they had earlier accused the Republicans of being. At the Hartford Convention of 1810, the Junto once again sought to turn New England into a separate nation.

Both Jefferson and Madison went to great lengths to overlook British provocations, especially the impressment of American sailors into the British navy. Both understood, as Washington had also observed in his farewell address, that owing to America's "detached and distant situation," "the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance"-- so long as the country could steer clear of European broils. They recoiled in horror from the pointless bloodshed of the Napoleonic wars, and worried that the United States would become a Europe of its own, divided into eternally warring states. Both men hoped that diplomacy would make war unnecessary; indeed, the U.S. had cause enough to go to war in 1807, when English depredations against American shipping began in earnest, though it would have been even more woefully unprepared than it proved to be in 1812.

The war itself was basically a draw: American land forces were humiliated in Canada, but sailors like Commodore Perry achieved stunning victories over the greatest navy the world had ever seen. The Treaty of Ghent merely restored the status quo ante. But the war had put a decisive end to the Federalists, who had barely been able to celebrate American victories. Even more important, the world war between France and England had ended with the ruin of the former. England no longer needed to block American shipping or to shanghai U.S. sailors to fill out a wartime navy. For the next century, Europe would basically leave America alone.

For the previous decades, American politics had consisted essentially of foreign policy. Only with the war's end could rival political parties form around differing visions of the country's own future: a strong versus a weak central government; a manufacturing versus an agrarian economy; and, ultimately, a nation of freemen versus one of owners and slaves. America was now free to fulfill its territorial, economic, demographic, and -- for better and worse -- political destiny.

So now you know. You still have two years left to organize the parade for the bicentennial of the Treaty of Ghent.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/15/war_of_1812?page=0,0

[civil42806]

Strongly recommend   "The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies"  Good read and you can learn a lot about a forgotten period of american history

[fsujax]

Thanks for sharing this.

[BridgeTroll]

I certainly plan on reading more about this period... 

[BridgeTroll]

A classic... though largely fiction... Enjoy!

The war was actually over when this battle was fought...

http://www.youtube.com/v/LsRK3DNoa_Q

[Adam W]

Probably the last war the US fought that could really be considered defensive and fought to repel an existential threat.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.jaxhistory.com/journal6.html

The Patriot War


The often overlooked war in which the United States invaded Spanish East Florida


The first permanent settlement in what is now Jacksonville was founded at "The Cowford" in 1791, at a narrow point in the St. Johns River where cattlemen could ford their livestock across. This was some 3000 feet west of the Spanish Fort San Nicolas.

Spain controlled Florida peninsula. This was a major concern for leaders of the youthful United States as the War of 1812 loomed. Many Americans had been moving into Florida since the 1790s. They were known as "Patriots", and they were eager to help Florida become American territory. Since anarchy reigned over most of Florida except a few places controlled by the Spanish, the U.S. government used the excuse to invade Florida in order to control anarchy and protect American citizens in the area. The U.S. also wanted the territory in order to prevent Britain from getting a foothold in the area.

The nation’s fourth president, James Madison, and his Secretary of State, James Monroe, plotted to secure the Spanish Floridas as a territory of the United States. On January 15, 1811, Congress passed a secret act for acquisition of the area. Madison appointed former Georgia governor, General George Mathews, to lead a contingent into Florida with justification that U.S. forces must support local revolts against Spanish oppression. But Madison’s opponents condemned the invasion, saying the claims for invasion were trumped-up.

By March 1812, the Patriots, aided by the U.S. Navy, and with leadership from John McIntosh (of Ortega fame) took possession of Fernandina and Amelia Island. But within weeks, Madison, unhappy with the tactics used by the Patriots, rescinded the Mathews’ appointment and publicly “repudiated the seizure of East Florida.” Yet, he secretly appointed Georgia Governor David Byrdie Mitchell to oversee activity in Florida. By June, the U.S. declared war on Great Britain (the War of 1812). With the fear that friendship with the Spanish would allow the English to establish a dangerous staging-ground in Florida, the matter of seizing the area resurfaced as a national issue. Then, as long feared by the Patriots and many American leaders, the Seminoles joined the Spanish, raiding homes and attacking Patriots and Patriot sympathizers.

Georgian Daniel Newnan gained celebrity for leading volunteers on a march into the Alachua area to wage battle against the Seminoles and their leader, King Payne. His unit’s efforts and escape were considered miraculous.

Nearly a decade later, as the original streets of Jacksonville were laid out, Newnan would still be remembered as a hero, and a major street would be named in his honor.

With the death of General Buckner Harris, May 1814, the Patriot movement collapsed. The Patriot War managed to eventually accomplish the one thing that the country’s War of 1812 failed to do:  it brought new territory into the United States, and it ultimately led to the founding of Jacksonville. The Florida Territory was sold to the United States in 1821, and by 1822, "Jacksonville" was the name of the new town at the bend of the St. Johns River.

[BridgeTroll]

http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/w/war1812.htm

War of 1812
A History of Florida
1904

Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts. During some years of the Spanish occupation of Florida, France and England were at war with each other. Though the United States did not take either side in the dispute, it caused her a great deal of trouble. Each of the nations at war forbade out young government trading with the other. Not only this, but the English would stop and search our ships, and seize seamen who they maintained were British subjects, to serve in their navy. All this was very insulting to the United States, and Congress, with a view to improving matters, passed the Embargo Act, a law forbidding all American vessels to leave port. This was worse than ever, for the loss of trade was very great, and thousands of men were thrown out of employment. Then the Embargo Act was repealed, and Congress passed the NonIntercourse Act. This gave Americans the right to trade with all nations except France and England, and bettered matters a little.

How was the Mobile district secured to the United States? What acts of Congress were intended to punish England and France for their offensive attitude toward American shipping? What was their result?

Plans to secure Florida from England. When it became certain that there would be war between England and the United States, it was feared that England would seize Florida, and so gain a great advantage. President Madison tried to persuade the Spanish government to cede Florida to the United States, at any rate for a certain time, and Congress secretly gave the President power to take possession if there were any danger of a foreign power doing so.

Republic of Florida. Pains were taken to keep all these plans quiet, but they became known, and some Georgia frontiersmen joined with some of the Floridians to form the "Republic of Florida," on the banks of the St. Marys. The president of this new and hastily formed government was General John McIntosh, and Colonel Ashley was placed at the bead of its military affairs. The time was at band for the military forces of this little republic to be called into action.

Why was America desirous of having possession of Florida in case of war? What provisions were made to secure it? Tell of the "Republic of Florida."

Fernandina Captured. Amelia Island lies off the eastern coast of Florida just below the mouth of the St. Marys River. Fernandina on this island bad become a very important port of entry for foreign vessels. In order, to protect American interests General Matthews determined to take Fernandina and the island. He sent nine war ships into the harbor and Colonel Ashley's forces came in boats to join in the attack. Fernandina was held by a small Spanish garrison commanded by Don Jose Lopez. Lopez had no choice but to surrender. On March 17, 1812, the agreement was signed. Fernandina was to remain a free port of entry to all nations, but if there should be war between the United States and England, English ships should not be allowed to enter after May 1, 1813.

Expedition against St. Augustine. Next day three hundred Americans marched against St. Augustine, making their camp two miles from the town. Here they were joined by another force of one hundred men. Governor Estrada of East Florida had some cannon placed on a schooner, and fired at the Americans. This forced them to retire to Pass Navarro, a mile away, and later to a place beyond the St. Johns River. Sickness broke out, and some of the men were sent back to the "Republic of Florida " under charge of a United States officer. At the twelvemile swamp this little party of invalids was fired upon by a band of negroes from St. Augustine, and though the soldiers charged upon the negroes and routed them, several officers were killed or wounded.

What was the importance of Fernandina? How taken? Conditions of surrender? Tell of the St. Augustine expedition from the "Republic of Florida." What caused the Americans to retreat?

Expedition against Seminoles. The Americans now carried the war into the Alachua district, where it was said the Seminole Indians were making ready for a raid into Georgia. Colonel Newman, a Georgian, offered to lead a party of scarcely more than three hundred against King Payne's town. King Payne and Bowlegs were the principal chiefs of the Seminoles. They were the sons of Secoffee, the Creek who led the band of runaway Creeks, afterwards called Seminoles, into Florida.

The Indians Defeated. When the Americans reached a lake a few miles from King Payne's town, the brother chieftains with their warriors began the attack from a thick hammock. At first the Indians could not be seen, but Newman ordered his men to pretend flight, and this pretense drew them out. There was a fierce fight. King Payne, mounted on a beautiful white horse, fought gallantly until wounded. The Indians then retired and the Americans hastily made breastworks. It was well they did, for at sunset the Indians returned under Bowlegs and made several furious charges, but finally withdrew. After eight days Newman began his return march. Before going far he was attacked by Billy Bowlegs with fifty warriors, but again won the victory and after that went on his way unmolested. This put an end to any preparations for a Seminole raid into Georgia. Still, small bands gave much trouble to the Americans, and the Americans retaliated by attacking small Spanish settlements.

What was the result of the attack made upon the returning invalids? Where did the American forces march? What was the Occasion of this attack? Who were the Indian chiefs? Tell of the battles. How did they result?

Suppression of Hostilities by the President. It was not to be expected that Spain would be pleased with all these events, and the Spanish minister at Washington complained of the invasion of Florida. The governor of East Florida demanded the withdrawal of the American troops, and as it seemed unwise to provoke a dispute with Spain while war was threatening with England, the President ordered that all American forces should be withdrawn from Florida.

Source:
Excerpt from Part One, Chapter 13, "Florida's part in the War of 1812" A History of Florida, 1904.

[Tacachale]

See also the Creek Civil War. This conflict became another peripheral theater of the War of 1812 along with the Patriot War in Florida and Tecumseh's pre-existing war in the Great Lakes.

The Creek Civil War pitted the Red Sticks, a traditionalist faction consisting mostly of Upper Creeks, against more neutral Lower Creeks. The Red Sticks were British leaning and heavily influenced by Tecumseh, while the Lower Creeks allied with the United States when they entered the war in 1813. Andrew Jackson easily crushed the Red Sticks.

In the end Jackson forced all Creeks, including his own allies, to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, where they ceded millions of acres in land, comprising southern Georgia and most of Alabama, to the U.S.

Incidentally many Red Stick Creeks fled into Florida, where they joined the existing Seminole and introduced a more traditional traditionalist Creek culture. This led Jackson to invade Florida again in 1818 in the First Seminole War.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.pbs.org/wned/war-of-1812/essays/canadian-perspective/

A Canadian Perspective on the War of 1812


by Victor Suthren

When the American declaration of war fell upon the disparate colonies of British North America, it produced reactions as different as the character of each colony.  But the people of the Canadian colonies were united in the belief that this was an unwanted war, governed more by the distant preoccupations of London or Washington than the needs and wishes of the King’s subjects in North America.

The Perspective in Lower and Upper Canada
In Lower Canada, what is now the Province of Quebec, the French-speaking majority had little love for the British colonial overlords, who had governed them since the conquest of New France, fifty years earlier.  As with the American War of Independence, they viewed this new war as another fratricidal struggle between Anglo-Saxons, in which the people of Quebec had little interest. The British government, however, had guaranteed their freedom of language and religion, and it was not clear that the Americans would do the same if they were to control Canada. Picking the lesser of two evils, French Canadians served willingly in regular British regiments and militia formations, and fought well in the successful repulse of American forces.

In Upper Canada, which would later form the basis of the Province of Ontario, the British administration was far less sure the population would fight in defense of the colony. There was a hardy, well-settled core of American Loyalists who had trekked north to Canada after the Revolution.  They nurtured a bitter enmity toward their former countrymen who had dispossessed them of all they had and driven them out. But they were lost in the ranks of other American settlers who had come north seeking land after the Revolution, and who now outnumbered the Loyalists.  The small and overworked British administration, and its inadequate garrison of regular troops, governed an essentially American colony of uncertain loyalty.

It was this reality, as well as the weakness of the British defenses -- the militia of Kentucky alone could outmatch the total armed force available for the defense of “the Canadas”-- that led Thomas Jefferson to suggest that the conquest of Canada would be a “mere matter of marching.” The American settlers in Canada wanted to protect their homes and farms, more particularly so after the first American troops incursions demonstrated that an American origin would be no protection against burning and pillaging. But these transplanted Americans would not commit to a fight unless the British administration demonstrated it would defend the Canadas. When the British did show they meant to fight, the largely American “Canadian” militia turned out in defense of their new communities against the armies of their former countrymen. 

The sufferings of Canadian civilians at the hands of American troops, and the legacy of burnt and looted communities along the frontier gave the people of Upper Canada a strong sense, not so much of who they were, but certainly who they were not. And it had been American bayonets and torches that had brought that realization. Nonetheless, when the passions of the war faded, Upper Canadians soon returned to a more natural relationship with the American communities across the border, and re-knit ties of kinship, trade and friendship that the war had, in most eyes, needlessly sundered.

The Canadian Maritime Perspective
In the colonies of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, opposition to the war was immediate.  In this, they shared the feelings of the New Englanders, to whom they were intimately tied by marriage, trade, friendship and natural inclination. During the war, citizens on both sides sought to minimize the war’s impact.

For Nova Scotians, there was an economic benefit, the principal British naval and military base at Halifax bustled with activity during the war, injecting energy into the colonial economy.  Privateer vessels from all three colonies preyed successfully on American shipping during the war, establishing some lasting fortunes, including that of Samuel Cunard.  Nonetheless, the war’s end brought a sigh of relief, and a quick return to friendly relations and business as usual between New England and the maritime provinces.

First Nations of Canada
For the North American Indian First Nation warriors, their courageous and desperate struggle against the Americans ultimately failed.  The Shawnee war chief Tecumseh died in battle near Moraviatown, and the disparate tribes that had fought with the British lost not only their leader, but also their political position in the resolution of the war.  The refusal of the British government to press redress of First Nations grievances with the Americans, who were in no mood to discuss it, ended all hopes of First Nation security.  Having been instrumental in the successful defense of Canada, the warriors and their families lost their dream of an Indian homeland, and continued their decline into marginalization and poverty. Theirs is the most tragic story of all in the War of 1812.

The end of the war brought a return to normalcy in terms of trade, and the renewing of ties of friendship and family.  The end also brought out, in often poignant terms, the tragedy that such a conflict could have arisen between peoples so closely bound. But some things were different. Great Britain, preoccupied with its European and world concerns after the defeat of Napoleon, had learned a new respect for the United States. For its part, there would be no more talk of a “mere matter of marching” to conquer Canada in Washington’s corridors; the tough and dogged defense that had blunted American invasion efforts ensured that. And for the British North American colonies, the blurred lines that had marked the border with the United States had now become clear. The war ensured that there would be a different society to the north, following its own lights, and having fought for its existence -- as had its neighbour thirty years earlier. Out of that would grow mutual respect and an enduring friendship.

Victor Suthren is a Canadian naval expert and the author of the 1999 history, The War of 1812.

[BridgeTroll]

The Canadian Perspective...

http://www.youtube.com/v/tqmUpVtmu5Q

[BridgeTroll]

The British Perspective...

http://www.youtube.com/v/q_4b7mjSJFU

[BridgeTroll]

The American Perspective...

http://www.youtube.com/v/OCBKTnTR02s