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There’s some confusion about the War of 1812, that lasted from 1812 to 1814, technically (New Orleans, supposedly the last battle, happened after the war ended). The confusion arises when someone says the Americans won it. Not…really. More like survived it, but they did that well.
It all started in 1811.
Confused yet? The battle of Tippecanoe on 7 November 1811 was a Winnebago attack on an Army/militia encampment in Indiana. The reasons for the American presence aren’t important, but what is important is that the Indians were being supplied by British traders out of Fort Michilimackinac in violation of the Treaty of Paris that ended the American War/Revolution. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the last, that Indians supplied by the British attacked the frontiers of the nascent United States in the Ohio country. It was just one more symptom of the unfinished nature of that war that ended in 1783.
The Unfinished War, finished.
The Treaty of Paris only vaguely fixed the western borders of the United States, and subsequent negotiations, complicated by the beginning of the French Wars in 1794, failed to resolve the issues. That conflict that soon engulfed all of Europe also affected the United States in ways few could have expected. The first way was the Louisiana Purchase. While it expanded American holdings greatly, it also created a diplomatic dilemma because Britain felt Napoleon didn’t have the right to sell it, that Spain was forced to sell it to him at gunpoint. This would give rise to the reasons for that last battle in 1815. Of which, more later. But there were other issues caused by the French War: the rights of neutral trade, and the impressment of sailors, both brought on by British wartime measures and desperation. The Americans, unable to restrain themselves (not!) declared war on Great Britain in June 1812, within days of the French invasion of Russia.
Almost immediately, the large American frigates went out hunting for British ships.
The best known of them, USS Constitution, found prizes almost immediately. Though the Royal Navy knew of the class, they didn’t know how formidable they were. Most British frigates carried 9- or 12-pounder guns, with white and red oak framing and sheathing but lightly built for speed. Constitution and her sisters carried 24-pounders, were of live oak—the titanium of wood—and had ribs sized for ships twice their size. In the first six months of the war, the American frigates cleaned up. But that was the best period of the salt-water naval war for the Americans.
By late 1812, the war became one of attrition.
There were three “fronts” to the conflict, and none of them were particularly active for long periods because of that demon SUPPLY. A bullet cast in Birmingham could be fired in Spain a month later. That same bullet could take a year to reach the Niagara front, if it ever got there. Most of the United States was wilderness still, and where the Americans and the British could fight was so far away from the centers of logistics that long periods of buildup followed fairly small battles by European standards. The Royal Navy decided that the big game-changing frigates the Americans built were too formidable for British frigates and forbade theirs to fight them alone. The result was a blockade of American ports that locked up the big American ships for much of the rest of the conflict.
On the Niagara front in western New York, stalemate largely obtained.
There were battles, but even victorious battles had nowhere decisive to go. The Americans invaded Canada, but ran into Canadian militia and got thrown out. The British took Detroit and Chicago with accompanying massacres by Indians, but they were little more than trading posts. Where anything truly decisive might have happened was in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, but in 1812-13, the British were busy trying to throw Napoleon out of Spain and Russia and couldn’t spare more than a few regiments and ships for major operations against major US forces. Besides, the New England states weren’t all that thrilled about the war, anyway, and Britain didn’t want to annoy them. There were even secession noises being made by the New England states as late as 1814.
By 1813…
That September, a naval battle on fresh water changed nearly everything. At Put-In Bay on Lake Erie, a small American naval force defeated an even smaller British force. It had taken nearly a year to build up those forces, and would take just as long to do so again. But, most important, American control of Lake Erie cut the British trading posts in central Canada and the lower Great Lakes off from the outside. All those spars the Royal Navy desperately needed for their ships, and all those valuable beaver pelts couldn’t get out. Half of Canada's commercial value was locked up; Detroit and Chicago became irrelevant in an afternoon.
And there were changes in Europe.
Napoleon abandoned a doomed army in Russia in December 1812, but it took until 1813 before his enemies were strong enough to contest his dominance on the Continent. In part, this was because…yes, the Americans were tying up enough of British munitions production to slow their mobilization. And, while “Spanish ulcer” was a French lament, it was also a British, requiring nearly 2/3rds of Britain’s regiments and batteries, powder and shot just to keep the Portuguese and Spanish forces in the fight while tying down but 15% of the French Army.
But by 1814, France was on the ropes.
The French occupation in Spain came to a crashing end. Russia, Prussia, and Austria all invaded France, ending Napoleon’s reign in April 1814, freeing the British for other things, like finishing the Americans. But by now New England was joining the fight, and attrition had weakened both Britain and the United States to a point where many were wondering what this war was about. The biggest bones of contention, free trade and the impressment of sailors, ended at Fontainebleau with Napoleon’s abdication. The Indian situation was…yeah, well, it turned out that while the Americans weren’t fighting the British, they were dispatching Britain’s allies, the Indians. Tippecanoe had crippled them; the Thames and the Red Stick War ended the threats. So while Britain invaded the US with Peninsular (Spain) veterans and burned Washington in August, they came a-cropper at Baltimore. By then, peace emissaries had already exchanged notes. The Treaty of Ghent on 24 December 1814 ended the war. It went into effect in February 1815. The British agreed to pull out of the Great Lakes.
Then there was New Orleans.
The New Orleans campaign was another act of desperation, but one born of Lake Erie. While peace rumors were still floating, the British expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi, to contest the Louisiana Purchase in part, but also to bargain for what is now Minnesota, to provide central Canada with access to markets via the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. The first major engagement of that campaign happened as the Treaty of Ghent was signed. The last, at Chalmette Plantation three weeks later, was a disaster for the British, and doomed central Canada to economic marginality.
So, what did everyone get for this ambiguous conflict?
The Americans got a handful of legends, but also a certain self-assurance. They cast every musket and cannon in the US, and every shot burned US-made powder. All her warships were American made. The biggest threats to American safety—the Indians—were neutralized east of the Mississippi while the Americans were at war with the mightiest empire on Earth.
As for Great Britain, they had much to think about.
Including the fact that the Americans could fight them to a standstill even when distracted by domestic threats. And Canada was as much a strategic liability as it was an economic asset. While India was secure, the Royal Navy—and everyone else—had reached the technological limits of 19th Century empires. This lesson may seem obscure, but it was an important consideration thirty years later when the US went to war with Mexico, and forty-five years later during the American Civil War.
That, and…
Those deuced American frigates changed naval architecture forever. Wood had reached its limit of strength and adaptability. Larger cannon and, soon, shell-firing guns would make a mockery of them. That meant iron would have to float, and that meant steam would have to drive them. Altogether, not bad for a war with such an ambiguous ending.
Sergeant’s Business and Other Stories
Sergeant’s Business has one story in it that has anything to do with the War of 1812, and that only peripherally because it’s in the same time period. “The Charge” is an attempt at blank verse, depicting a Napoleonic-style cavalry charge. Some like it; some don’t. American horse cavalry lacked the organization to execute a charge like that.
Other stories take place in prehistory, and during the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Korea. One, “To Rest With Long Ears” spans several conflicts. Get it at your favorite booksellers or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Six Ways to Change History II
Deadly Emigres
And Finally...
On 15 June:
1215: John I seals Magna Carta at Runnymede, England. Said by some to be the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon legal system, the third Plantagenet/Angevin king didn’t feel himself obliged to obey it, as he saw it as a block of his prerogatives, which was the point. He finally consented to pay attention to it in 1221, after losing two more civil wars with his nobles.
1944: Operation MATTERHORN strikes its first targets in Japan, the Imperial Iron and Steel Works, at Yawata, on the island of Kyushu, Japan. Flying out of bases in China, of the 68 B-29s launched, 47 reached the target, but only one bomb hit any part of the target from bombing altitude, presumably 30,000 feet. Seven aircraft and fifty-five crewmen, including two journalists, were lost.
And today is NATIONAL SMILE POWER DAY. This one day…smile like you mean it. You’ll make everyone around you feel better.