Results of the War of 1812

Efforts to end the war began in 1812 when the main American diplomat in London proposed an armistice, in return for a renunciation of impressments, but the British refused. Later in 1812, when the British captured Fort Detroit, and news of the repeal of the Orders reached Washington, DC, Sir George Prevost arranged an armistice with his counterpart, Henry Dearborn. The British frigate HMS Junon was sent to relay the Americans' response to the British squadrons on the North American Station. However, President James Madison decided to continue the war. In 1813, Russia offered to mediate a peace, but London rejected the offer for fear of compromising British interests in Europe.[4] Finally, Britain and the United States agreed to commence peace negotiations in January 1814.

In August 1814, peace discussions finally began in the neutral city of Ghent. Both sides began negotiations with unrealistic demands. The United States wanted an end to all British maritime practices that it deemed objectionable and demanded cessions of Canadian territory and guaranteed fishing rights off Newfoundland. The British announced< as an essential element of the peace treaty< their longstanding goal of creating a "neutral" Indian barrier state, which would cover most of the Old Northwest and be independent of the United States and under the tutelage of the British, who could use it to block American expansion and to build up British control of the fur trade.[5] London dropped the demand when the Americans adamantly refused it and indicated that they would end negotiations. The British had been weakened by the collapse of Tecumseh's Confederacy after the Battle of the Thames in 1813 and no longer controlled adequate supply lines to support a barrier state.[6] Britain also wanted to keep the far-northeastern parts of Maine that had been captured to provide a land corridor to Quebec from the Maritime Colonies.

After months of negotiations, against the background of changing military victories, defeats, and losses, the parties finally realized that their nations wanted peace and that there was no real reason to continue the war. Both sides were tired of the war. Export trade was all but paralyzed, and after Napoleon fell in 1814, France was no longer an enemy of Britain and so the Royal Navy no longer needed either to stop American shipments to France or to have more seamen. The British were preoccupied in rebuilding Europe after the apparently-final defeat of Napoleon. The negotiators agreed to return to the status quo ante bellum, with no changes in boundaries. Both sides signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814. The next and final step would be formal ratification by both governments.[7]

The British but not the Americans knew when they signed that a battle was imminent at New Orleans (it was fought on January 8, 1815).[8] The treaty finally went into effect after it had been formally ratified by both sides in February 1815.

The treaty failed to secure official British acknowledgment of American maritime rights, but in the century of peace between the world's naval powers from 1815 to World War I, those rights were not seriously violated. The Royal Navy ended the practices that angered Americans since they were no longer needed after Napoleon fell. American pride and honor were built as a result of the Indian threat being ended and by the rejoicing surrounding American victory at New Orleans.[9] In doing so, the United States had successfully created a sense of becoming fully independent from Britain.[10]

A key reason that American frontiersmen were so much in favor of the war in the first place was the threat posed to their continued settlement of territory that was inhabitated by Native Americans of various tribes. The frontiersmen blamed Native Americans' attacks on the arms and supplies that were provided by British agents in Canada. In addition, the frontiersmen wanted access to lands that the British acknowledged belonged to the United States but were blocking its expansion by inciting and arming the Native Americans. The death of Tecumseh in battle in 1813 removed a powerful obstacle to expansion although the Native Americans' involvement in the war continued, as did their resistance to American westward expansion after it ended. The Native Americans were the main losers in the war by their loss of British protection and never regained their influence.[11]

In the Southeastern United States, Andrew Jackson's destruction of Britain's allies, the Creek Indians, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, ended the threat of Native American hostilities in that region. That opened vast areas in Georgia and Alabama for settlement as plantations and farmlands. The United States occupied all of West Florida during the war and, in 1819, purchased the rest of Florida from Spain, thus preventing the Spanish from arming hostile tribes there. Creek Indians who escaped to Spanish Florida joined the Seminoles there and put up a long resistance, known as the Seminole Wars.[12]

In the Treaty of Ghent, the British promised not to arm the Native Americans in the from Canada or even to trade with them, and the border was largely pacified. However, some Americans assumed that the British had continued to conspire with their former Native American allies in an attempt to forestall American hegemony in the Great Lakes region, but Calloway argued that such perceptions were faulty. After the treaty, the Native Americans in the Great Lakes region became an undesirable burden to British policymakers.[13]

Some American politicians had mistakenly expected the population of Upper Canada, which was mostly of American origin, to throw off the "British yoke", but that did not happen since the reason that many of them were United Empire Loyalists, who has left out of loyalty to Britain. After 1815, British officials, Anglican clergy, and Loyalists tried to spot and root out American ideals like democracy and republicanism. Thus, the British and Loyalists were able to set the different colonies of what would later become Canada on a course that was different from that of their former enemy. They also discouraged further immigration from the United States.[14]

When the United States attacked British North America, most British forces were engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. Thus, British North America had minimal troops to defend against the United States, which had a much larger military force that was, however, initially poorly trained. For most of the war, British North America stood alone against a much stronger American force. Reinforcements from Britain did not arrive until 1814, the final year of the war. The repelling of the American force helped to foster Loyalism in the colonies that later became Canada.

The nationalistic sentiment caused suspicion of such American ideas as republicanism, which would frustrate political reform in Upper and Lower Canada until the Rebellions of 1837. However, the war started the process that ultimately led to Canadian Confederation in 1867. Canadian writer Pierre Berton wrote that although later events, such as the rebellions and the Fenian raids of the 1860s were more important, Canada would have become part of the United States if the war had not taken place since more and more American settlers would have arrived and so Canadian nationalism would not have developed.

The war was highly significant in Britain's North American colonies. After the war, Canadian supporters of Britain portrayed the war as a successful fight for national survival against an American democratic force that threatened the peace and stability that the Canadians had desired. Throughout the war, most of Canada's inhabitants assigned the war to an American desire to annex the British colonies, a perception that was reinforced by American Generals such as William Hull, who issued proclamations that stated that Canada would be annexed.[15]

Some historians have argued that one myth that emerged from the war was that Canadian militiamen played a decisive role during the war and that British officers were often ineffective. Jack Granatstein has termed that the "militia myth" and felt that to have had a deep effect on Canadian military thinking, which placed more stress on a citizens' militia than on a professional standing army. The United States suffered from a similar "frontiersman myth" at the start of the war and falsely believed that individual initiative and marksmanship could be effective against a well-disciplined British battle line. Granatstein argued that the militia was not particularly effective in the war and that any British military success was the work of British regular forces and the result of British domination over the sea. Isaac Brock, for example, was reluctant to trust the militia with muskets.[16]

Others reject that characterization and argue that the Canadian militia played important roles in several key engagements, including the Battle of Chateauguay, in which they were central to defeating the American advance on Montreal in the fall of 1813.[17][18] Historian Robert Henderson referred to this as "The myth of the Militia myth".[19]

In any case, more than 1,600 names of the dead, Canadian (both members of regular units and militia) as well as First Nations Crown allies, are in the Book of Remembrance in the Memorial Chamber in the Parliament of Canada. Many of them were members of Canadian militia units.[20] See also: Canadian Units of the War of 1812 and Books of Remembrance (Canada)

During the war, British officers constantly worried that the Americans would block the St. Lawrence River, which forms part of the Canada–US border. If that had occurred, there would have been no British supply route for Upper Canada, where most of the land battles took place, and British forces would likely have had to withdraw or to surrender all western British territory within a few months. British officers' dispatches after the war exhibited astonishment that the Americans never took such a simple step, but the British were not willing to count on the enemy repeating the mistake and so they commissioned the Rideau Canal, an expensive project that connects Kingston, on Lake Ontario, to the Ottawa River, providing an alternative supply route to bypass the part of the St. Lawrence River along the border. The settlement at the northeastern end of the canal, where it joins the Ottawa River, later became the city of Ottawa, Canada's fourth-largest city and its capital, which was placed inland to protect it from an American invasion and was then known as the "defensible back-country." Because the population far from the St. Lawrence shores was negligible, the British, in the years following the war, took great lengths to ensure that back-country settlement was increased. They settled soldiers and initiated assisted-immigration schemes, offering free land to farmers, mostly tenants of estates in the south of Ireland. The canal project was not completed until 1832 and never used for its intended purpose.[21]

In contrast to Canada, the War of 1812 is seldom remembered in Britain today, and the conflict was quickly forgotten by the British public, chiefly because it was overshadowed by the dramatic events of the contemporary Napoleonic Wars and because Britain neither gained nor lost anything by the peace settlement; all it did was to keep its control of Canada.[22]

The Royal Navy was acutely conscious that the United States Navy had won single-ship duels during the war even though they had no strategic effect. Particular attention was given those battles because American propaganda had projected them as battles of equal force; however, the only single-ship duel in which the forces were equal was the Battle of Boston Harbor, which the British won. Furthermore, the British had effectively won the war on the ocean since almost the entire American Navy was blockaded and so was unable to fight. British honor was restored when USS President was captured and taken to Britain so that all could see that the American ships that supposedly participated in battles of so-called equal force were actually much larger than the British ships that they engaged.[23]

American privateers and commerce raiders had captured approximately 1,200 British merchant ships, sending insurance rates up and embarrassing the Admiralty. Nevertheless, 50% of all American privateers were captured by the British although the privateers captured only 5% to 7% of British commerce. Meanwhile, for every 14 American merchant ships that traded before the start of the war, only 1 ship dared to leave port during the war, despite the Americans' effort to double their maritime trade. Furthermore, of the few ships that left port, a total of 1,400 were captured. In addition, Britain actually won many sea battles. The Royal Navy had been able to deploy overwhelming strength to American waters, which had the effect to annihilate, rather than merely dent, American maritime trade, and it drove the American economy close to bankruptcy. The Royal Navy would emerge unchecked from the conflict.[24]

The British Army regarded the 1812–1815 conflict in Canada and America as a sideshow. Only one regiment, the 41st, was awarded a battle honor (Detroit) from the war. The British Army was more interested in the lessons of the Peninsular War in Spain. The Battle of New Orleans could be conveniently attributed to poor leadership or to insuperable physical obstacles, and British attention was given to the Royal Navy's successful capture of the American flagship, which the Americans conveniently overlooked.[25] It was believed that if its generalship had been better, the British would have been successful at New Orleans. The huge, overwhelming success and the pre-eminence of the Duke of Wellington in Europe, the British Army would make no change to its systems of recruitment, discipline and awards of commissions for more than half a century.

The British suffered 10,000 fatalities in the war, 1,960 of them in combat.

The gloom in New England, which staunchly opposed the war, culminated in December 1814, as delegates from five states met secretly in the Hartford Convention, which demanded constitutional amendments to protect New England's interests against the West and the South. Talk of secession was rife, and the region might have threatened to secede from the Union if its demands had been ignored, but news of peace ended the movement.

The United States had faced near-disaster in 1814, but the victories at the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Baltimore and what seemed to be a successful fight against the Britain increased to unite the Americans into one nation. Meanwhile, the loss of the American flagship USS President was conveniently overlooked by the public. The best-known patriotic legacy of the war was "The Star-Spangled Banner." The words are by Francis Scott Key, who, after the bombardment of Fort McHenry, set them to the music of a British drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." In 1889, the United States Navy began using "The Star Spangled Banner" at flag-raising ceremonies, a practice that was copied by the Army. In 1931, Congress made it the American national anthem.[26]

Although its original objectives of the war had all failed, the American people saw the War of 1812 as evidence of the success of the democratic experiment. The war ushered in a period of American history that has frequently been called "the Era of Good Feelings," and, at least on the surface, most Americans felt unified behind a common purpose. The war convinced the country that it could fend off any foreign threats and that its focus should be on expansion at home.

With the collapse of the Hartford Convention and news of the triumph at the Battle of New Orleans, Americans had cause for celebration. In February, President James Madison sent Congress the peace treaty, the Treaty of Ghent. He congratulated the nation on the close of a war "waged with the success which is the natural result of the wisdom of the legislative councils, of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the valor of the military and naval forces of the country." The spirit of nationalism and pride led to the collapse of the antiwar Federalist Party and the new Era of Good Feelings.[27]

One indirect result of the War of 1812 was the later election to the presidency of war heroes Andrew Jackson and later William Henry Harrison. Both men won military fame, which had much to do with their elections. Another indirect result was the decline of the power of the Federalist Party.

Historian Norman Risjord emphasized the central importance of honor as a cause the war.[31] Americans of every political stripe saw the need to uphold national honor and to reject the treatment of the United States by Britain as a third-class nonentity. Americans talked incessantly about the need for force in response.[32] The quest for honor was a major cause of the war in the sense that most Americans who were not involved in mercantile interests or threatened by Indian attack strongly endorsed the preservation of national honor.[33] The Chesapeake–Leopard affair in which HMS Leopard attacked USS Chesapeake in June 1807 was a decisive event.[34] Historians have documented the importance of American honor in shaping public opinion in a number of states, including Massachusetts,[35] Ohio,[36] Pennsylvania,[37][38] and Tennessee,[39] as well as the Territory of Michigan.[40] Americans widely celebrated the conclusion of the war as successful, especially the spectacular defeat of the main British invasion army at New Orleans, while they conveniently overlooked the loss of their flagship the very next week. For the next century, it was often called "the Second American War for Independence," and it propelled Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison to the White House.[41] Americans felt they had restored their sense of honor.

National honor, the reputation of republican government, and the continuing supremacy of the Republican party had seemed to be at stake... National honor had [now] been satisfied," wrote historian Lance Banning. "Americans celebrated the end of the struggle with a brilliant burst of national pride. They felt that they had fought a second war for independence, and had won."[42]

According to historians such as Andrew Lambert and William James, British honor was challenged because deserters from the Royal Navy were granted American citizenship, which led to the impressment of American citizens into the Royal Navy. In 1811, the Little Belt affair would anger the Admiralty and embarrass the United States and lead to the British having a particular interest in capturing the American flagship USS President. Although the British would effectively disable the vast majority of the US Navy during the war by having the ships blockaded, the single-ship actions won by the Americans won embarrassed the British Admiralty. Specific attention was given to those battles since the Americans claimed that they were between ships of equal force.[43]

The British effectively restored their honor by capturing the sloop of war USS Frolic and, more importantly, the flagship USS President. Both ships were taken to Britain for all to see that the American ships of the so-called engagements of equal force were much larger than the British ships that they had fought in single-ship duels. Furthermore, the United States failed at abolishing impressment when the treaty was signed, but the British did not continue the practice; the Napoleonic Wars had ended and so the British no longer needed as many sailors. In doing so, British honor was restored, only for the entire conflict to be overshadowed by the defeat of Napoleon.[44]

Although the War of 1812 severely damaged the American economy because of the British blockade, the aftermath gave a dramatic boost to American manufacturing capabilities . The British blockade of the American coast created a shortage of cotton cloth, leading the Americans to create a cotton-manufacturing industry, beginning at Waltham, Massachusetts, by Francis Cabot Lowell. The war also spurred on the construction of the Erie Canal, a project that was built to promote commercial links but also was perceived to have military uses if the need ever arose.[45]

As the charter of the First Bank of the United States had been allowed to expire in 1811, the federal government was ill-prepared to finance the war and so resorted to such expediencies as the suspension of specie payment and the issuance of Treasury Notes. Those actions set a precedent for future federal responses to financial crises. Also, the exposure of the nation's financial weaknesses partly explained the decision for Congress to charter the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. The readiness of Southern leaders, especially John C. Calhoun, to support such a measure also indicates a high degree of national feeling.[46] Perhaps the clearest sign of a new sense of national unity was the victorious Democratic-Republican Party, with its longtime foes, the Federalists, vanishing from national politics. The result was an Era of Good Feelings, with the lowest level of partisanship ever seen.[47]

Canadians, however, contrasted their postwar economic stagnation to the booming American economy, which Desmond Morton believed to have led to the Rebellions of 1837.[48] During the war, Bermuda privateers, with their fast Bermuda sloops, were to capture 298 ships (the total captures by all British naval or privateering vessels between the Great Lakes and the West Indies was 1,593 vessels).[49]

• Chronology of the War of 1812
• Origins of the War of 1812
• War of 1812
• Treaty of Ghent
• Anglo-American Convention of 1818

• Berton, Pierre; The Invasion of Canada: 1812–1813 (1980). ISBN 0-7710-1244-6; Flames Across the Border: 1813–1814 (1981); reissued as Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2011); popular Canadian narrative; 928pp
• Bickham, Troy, The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, The British Empire, and the War of 1812 (Oxford University Press, 2012) ISBN 978-0195391787
• Black, Jeremy. The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon (2009) by English military historian
• Borneman, Walter R. 1812: The War That Forged a Nation (2004), the popular American version
• Burt, A. L. The United States, Great Britain, and British North America from the Revolution to the Establishment of Peace after the War of 1812. (1940) online edition
• Heidler, Donald & Jeanne T. Heidler (eds) Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (2nd ed 2004) 636pp; most comprehensive guide; 500 entries by 70 scholars from several countries
• Hickey, Donald R. Don't Give Up the Ship! Myths of the War of 1812. (2006) ISBN 0-252-03179-2
• Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. ISBN 0-252-06059-8 (1990), standard scholarly history.
• Hickey, Donald R. 187 Things You Should Know about the War of 1812 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2012), 170 pp.
• Hitsman, J. M. The Incredible War of 1812 (1965), survey by Canadian scholar
• Jensen, Richard. "Military History on the Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812," The Journal of Military History 76#4 (October 2012): 523–556; online version; the debate here on Wikipedia
• Langguth, A. J. Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence (2006) 495pp, popular history
• Latimer, Jon, 1812: War with America (Harvard, 2007). A British naval perspective.
• Perkins, Bradford. Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823. (1964), the standard scholarly diplomatic history
• Remini, Robert Vincent, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991), pp. 94–122.
• Stagg, J.C.A. The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent (Cambridge Essential Histories, 2012) brief overview by New Zealand scholar
• Taylor, Alan. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (2010) by Pulitzer Prize winner
• Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (3 vol: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 1034pp.
• Zuehlke, Mark. For Honour's Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace. (2007) by Canadian military historian.

• A Question of Identity: War of 1812, a 1966 National Film Board of Canada documentary on the war's role in fostering a sense of Canadian identity