Discussion for article #226770
And the US objective in starting the war? To annex Canada while the British were busy fighting Napoleon in Europe.
Of course like most parts of the US origin fable, that explanation is not acceptable so it is pretended that the war was over impressing seamen. The school history books don’t mention that the principal concern of the Whig faction behind the Boston tea party was that Britain might end the very profitable Boston slave trade (it was the central hub).
Oh and that civil war thing? It was all about slavery from start to finish.
There is a similar effect in British school history books. The history of the 100 years war with France has victory after victory. Then you turn the page and we are suddenly down to just having Calais and nothing else.
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I expect this to be on the Fox channel soon, denouncing Obama.
Wow! He has a real talent for rewriting history! I actually live in the actual town (Newark, now called Niagara-on-the-Lake), and not York (now called Toronto) which was burned to the ground before the Yanks left in defeat. The only buildings remaining were stone structures.
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The War of 1812 is celebrating it’s Bicentennial. The River Raisin National Battlefield Park is the only battlefield dedicated to the War of 1812. Check it out!
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That wasn’t the objective in starting the war. It became a half-hearted objective later on.
The war started because of three things:
- The British refused to recognize the United States and refused to leave forts on American soil per the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
- They were impressing trade merchant ship sailors into slavery in the British Navy. The British saw us as supplying the French, but we remained neutral in the conflict and also were supplying Britain. Instead of purchasing goods they’d instead steal them. Trade was broken off with Britain. That didn’t make them happy especially when cotton was being used to make lighter weight and cooler red uniforms for the British armies fighting it out with Napoleon.
- They were supplying natives with weapons and half-arsed military tactics to have them attack American settlements. They also made false promises to these natives of allowing them to have their own country. They were eventually abandoned as was the plan all along.
Annexing Canada only became part of the plan after the invasion began and was going well. Politicians as they usually do think war is easier than it is and thought the invasion would be easier than it was. President Madison wasn’t among these and never had any intention of annexing Canada. If he was so gung ho to take advantage of the Napoleonic Wars then why did he have to have a naval battle off the coast of North Carolina to get him to declare war after YEARS of cries for war from warmongers in Congress? He was near the end of his first term as President when the war began, and the origins of the war started in the latter part of Jefferson’s presidency. He didn’t take advantage of Napoleon’s routing of Britain. Yes, there was a U.S. election in the middle of the War of 1812. Madison won his second term.
If the war was truly about the annexation of Canada then why did the war begin with a naval battle off the coast of North Carolina? What was the British ship even doing there? That caused the declaration of war (after a new Congress convened and Liverpool blew him off essentially saying he had bigger fish to fry). The war began officially in the “West” (Ohio on up to Michigan) and not Canada. It continued into Canada, of course, when fighting Tecumseh. Annexation talk didn’t begin until the official invasion later.
To be fair to the British the country was in disarray after the assassination of Spencer Percival. They didn’t have a clue as to what was going on here until after the war began. Parliament had no clue why we cut off trade with them. Communications then weren’t instantaneous like it is now. A ship had to travel across the Atlantic with messages. The war began because Parliament couldn’t keep a hold of its navy, and it ended with a massacre of the British forces long after the treaty was signed because no one told either side the war was over.
The war was stupid and pointless, but it’s the second war of independence per se because after the war we were finally recognized by Great Britain, and trade with them actually increased.
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Buffalo, NY, my home town, was burned to the ground.
To memorialize the important Battle of Black Rock along the banks of Skajacquada Creek we erected a toxic waste site on the spot.
I remember learning in school that Vietnam was the only war we “lost” and that we “won” the War of 1812.
These days we don’t even wait until the wars are over before we start lying about them. Hell… we don;t even wait until we’ve STARTED them before we lie about them.
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#thanksobama
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And that is why today children, we have Dolly Madison Cupcakes.
You’re welcome.
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What was not mentioned was the fires the British set in Washington were extinguished by a hurricane. And the British troops were attacked by a tornado that rumbled thru the middle of DC and so unnerved the British troops that they left town in tatters.
Absolutely correct! I cringe when people describe the War of 1812 as “the second War of Independence.”
The truth is that the lust for empire has been with us since the very founding of the U.S. Our attempt to conquer Canada was a harebrained scheme that ended in disaster, but after a few decades we turned our attention to our weaker neighbor to the south.
TPM: The White House burned. So did the U.S. Capital, and most of the public buildings in Washington, D.C. Invading British troops burned the city in this most humiliating episode in American history 200 years ago today.
Most humiliating? I think you’re forgetting about that time we had a President who let religious extremists fly airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, despite repeated warnings that something was brewing.
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Great read. Thanks for this, TPM.
Call it the Second war of Independence if you must, but for those on both sides of the border whose homes were burned down for nothing I think it was more of a war that started in 1812. Now, the war of 1418, that was a war!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW1aVuGHUwk
Lets unpack this a little.
The US had an arrogant belief that it should expand to rule all of North America and struck across the border into Canada. With a large chunk of the British forces fighting Napoleon, the Americans seized Lake Erie and western Ontario.
After Napoleon’s defeat In 1814 the Brits decided to take this thing seriously and occupied eastern Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin. They then marched all the way to the US capital and razed it to the ground (that’s why the WH is actually white - the paint covered the scorch marks).
At Ghent the British reluctantly agreed to restore the borders back to what they were before all this began. It was the catalyst that led to Canadian Confederation in 1867.
I have to ask. In what alternate universe do you have to be residing to interpret this as an American victory ?
Wait a sec. I carried on reading until the end of this little revisionist piece of garbage.
The American (British) casualty list for the battle of New Orleans is 55 (386) dead, 185 (1521) wounded and 93 (552) MIA. That’s definitely one sided, but in no way reflects the carnage of the entire war where total American casualties were +/- 15,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.
All for nothing.
No mention of the Choctaws? If it had not been for Pushmataha the great Choctaw war chief who organized the southern tribes to fight with Andrew Jackson against the British the US would have lost the war of 1812. And how did ol’ Andrew show his gratitude? He oversaw the Trail of Tears forced removal of the 5 tribes to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). America has always been nothing but talk talk talk, she has NEVER walked the walk. Spouting homilies about freedom, equal opportunity, loyalty. As many people here and around the world are seeing it is just talk. Action for real liberty has always been abated by the monied powerful who in great greed and avarice want nothing but MORE MORE MORE, now at the expense of all life on planet earth. We need a REAL American Revolution.