Episode 509: The War of 1812

Keg Royal Navy, and desperately short of manpower, began stopping American vessels and forcibly removing sailors, sometimes deserters from the Royal Navy, which would be fair, sometimes native born Americans, sometimes Irish immigrants who had not yet become citizens. The practice was called impressment, and it enraged every American in

every port city. The Chesapeake Leopard Affair in eighteen oh seven, when a British warship fired on American frigate, which I mentioned last time, was still burning hot in American memory. President Jefferson had tried to respond with an embargo that shut down American exports altogether. It was a gambit that Madison had supported, but the embargo backfired, crippling New England

commerce and breeding even more resentment. By the time Madison took office, the embargo was over and replaced by a matchwork of laws trying to coerce Britain or France into respecting American neutrality, but nothing worked. America was a nation at this point with a lot of pride, but not a lot of leverage. The Jeffersonian dream of peaceful coercion was an illusion. American honor, something that politicians invoked constantly,

seemed to be insulted almost daily. Now. Madison, often caricatured in history books as timid, was in reality a cautious strategist. He understood that the United States lacked the Navy, the army, and the financial muscle for a major war. His hope, maybe his illusion, was that economic tools might pressure Britain or France into some concessions. The crucial experiment was Megan's

Bill Number two, passed in eighteen ten. It reopened a Maria trade, but promised that if either Britain or France stopped attacking American ships, the United States would embargo the other. It was essentially a carrot and stick rolled into one. Napoleon, always shrewd, pretended to accept the offer. He announced that he would rescind his decrees against American shipping. In truth, he continued seizing ships whenever it suited him, but his

diplomatic sleight of hand forced Madison into embargoing Britain, worsening tensions. Now. Meanwhile, the Western frontier shimmered there. In What's going to become Indiana, a charismatic Shawnee leader named Tecumseh sought to forge a pan Indian alliance against American expansion. His brother, a spiritual prophet who in history books is normally simply referred to as the prophet, But if you dig deeper, he has a name. It's tense Kawata. He preached revival and resistance.

American officials meanwhile, blamed the British and British agents for stirring up the unrest from Canada. Former frontiersman congressmen, so called Warhawks, led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, two names you'll have to know going forward, argued that the British influence over Native nations had to be crushed

and the way to do it was to conquer Canada. Now, in a spirit typical of literally every nation that has ever gone to war in the history of time, men like these told Congress that Canada could be conquered quickly without difficulties. As we know, those assertions are almost never right.

War with Britain, once unthinkable, now seemed inevitable, and so in June of eighteen twelve, with the arrowist margin in the history of the United States for a declaration of war, Congress formally approved hostilities with Great Britain, and so the War of eighteen twelve had begun. Now, Madison's declaration of war was bold, but the army he commanded was not. America's regular army numbered fewer than seven thousand men. State

militias were unreliable, sometimes refusing to cross state lines. The Navy was small but tenacious. The financial system was shaky. Congress had refused to recharter the Bank of the United States, depriving the nation of a stable credit institution, just as war expenses loomed. The early campaigns would reflect these weaknesses. Now, the first plan was for a northern offensive. The War Department planned a triumphant March into Canada, but the reality

was humiliation. General William Hull, in command at Detroit, panicked when he heard exaggerated reports of British and Native strength. He surrendered the entire fortress without firing a shot. At Queenstown Heights, American militia refused to cross into Canada, leaving regular troops stranded. They were quickly overwhelmed by British forces and Mohawk warriors. A third attempt failed near Montreal, plagued

by poor coordination and lack of supplies. As one New England newspaper sneered, mister Madison's war had begun with a string of disasters, but not all. The news was quite so bleak to be fair. If the army faltered, the American Navy shown on the Open Atlantic. American frigates astonished the world. The USS Constitution, nicknamed Old Ironsides, defeated the HMS Guerrer in a stunning duel. The USS United States captured the HMS. Macedonian Captain Stephen Decatur and others won

victories that continued to electrify the nation. Each triumph boosted American morale and gave the new nation a renewed sense of American identity. Our navy has covered itself in glory, wrote one newspaper, and our country with honor. No naval victories, however, dramatic could decide this war. But control at this point, not of the Atlantic, but of the Great Lakes was actually the crucial decision here. And so in eighteen thirteen, a young naval commander named Oliver Hazard Perry built a

fleet from Green Timber in Lake Erie. In September, meeting the British head on, Perry won a battle. His message to General Harrison became iconic in American military lore, quote, we have met the enemy and they are ours. With Lake Erie secured, Americans now could recapture Detroit and defeated to Coumsay's forces at the Battle of the Thames, where takomes To himself was killed, an enormous blow to Native

resistance in the Northwest. Meanwhile, on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain, a war of maneuver continued, neither side gaining a definite advantage, but the momentum slowly, subtly had shifted. Now we have to bear in mind all of this is simply a side showed to the British, to the actual conflict that's going on in the Europe, and of course we'll talk about that in a lot greater detail in our next episode.

But in eighteen fourteen, Napoleon will be briefly defeated, and with Europe at peace, Britain could now finally concentrate on the American War. Fresh troops, veterans of Wellington's campaigns against Napoleon arrived in Canada and the Chesapeake that summer. A British forts marched practically unopposed toward Washington. At Bladensburg, American

militia broke under fire. President Madison himself was actually on the field that day trying to rally the troops, but to little effect, and the British entered Washington, DC that very night. They set fire to the Capitol, to the Treasury, and to the White House. From a nearby hill, Dolly Madison's portrait of George Washington, rescued at the very last moment, was safe, but the city itself glowed with orange flame.

Never had America suffered such a humiliation. What was interesting, though, is even in this moment of despair, the Republic did not break. Madison called Congress to meet in temporary quarters. He insisted that the government was intact, America's sovereignty endured, and across the nation, citizens rallied. As we'll get to more in a moment. New England federalists were grumbling and forming their own convention at Harford, but most Americans saw the war not as a partisan blunder, but is a

test of national survival. The War of eighteen twelve is oftentimes called the Second War of American Independence, and for good reason, a lot of parallels with the first. Now, while Washington smoldered, British forces targeted the city of Baltimore next. The attack culminated at Fort McHenry, where American defenders held firm against a night long bombardment. And there a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched from a British ship,

seeing the sky lit explosions. At dawn, the flag still flew. His poem, written on the back of a letter, would later become the Star Spangled Banner. But as I mentioned before, not all was well. North in New England, Federalist anger smoldered. The winter of eighteen fourteen had come early to New England. Along the Atlantic coast, The cold wind blew in from the sea and carried with a quiet dread the sense that the war that had started two years earlier had

turned against the United States. And from the New England perspective, setting aside all the naval victories in the Great Lakes, which could have been as far away as England itself, it's easy to see why British ships prowled the shoreline. Ports which were the lifeblood of New England were blockaded. Commerce lay strangled, and in Boston and New Haven, in Providence, in Portsmouth, a dangerous thought drifted through coffeehouses and the taverns.

Had the federal government simply betrayed New England. Now, this is the story of the Hartford Convention, the most serious political crisis the Young Republic had faced since the Constitution was ratified. Though it's rarely talked about in the history books, it was a gathering so controversial that its name later on would become synonymous with treason in the American memory. Now, to understand the Hartford Convention, we really have to make

sure we understand our context. Now, Obviously, when the United States found itself entangled in the Napoleonic Wars, it was clear that an embargo policy was going to come into place. But New England's economy was a maritime economy. It was built on shipping trade and a thriving commercial network that stretched from the Caribbean to Britain. When war severed all these arteries, entire towns in New England simply withered and disappeared.

Federalist politicians who still dominated New England despite the fact that they hadn't won a major election since John Adams warned loudly that the war was unnecessary, it was destructive, and it was the product of the quote unquote Virginia ideology. In their eyes, Jeffersonians and Madisonians had plunged the nation into a conflict for abstract notions of honor that maybe made sense in the frontier, but not in coastal mercantile cities. And so they called it mister Madison's War, and slowly

resentment hearted into something else. Fear that the Federal Compact was becoming misused, even abused, And so by eighteen fourteen the situation had grown particularly dire. As we know, the British had burned DC and the Royal Navy. To those in New England, this is worse than the DC issue had tightened its blockade on the New England coast, the region's militia simply refused to leave state borders to fight

for the national army, and trade had collapsed. The rumors flew everywhere that Britain might try to seize and occupy New England outright, and so Federalist government claimed that the Madison administration was neglecting their defense while siphoning money and manpower for pointless invasions of Canada. Many New Englanders felt abandoned.

Some even believed that the war was unconstitutional in the first place, and so in October of eighteen fourteen, the Massachusetts legislature issued a call delegates from New England states should meet to consider quote the grievances under which they labor.

The location chosen was Hartford, Connecticut, a quiet river city far from major British positions, and so, through the December snows, twenty six delegates made their way toward Hartford, carrying with them the weight of a region's frustration and growing anger, and the hopes of those who whispered that maybe the Union itself was no longer serving them. On December fifteenth,

eighteen fourteen, the Hartford Convention began. No reporters were present, no minutes were ever published, and the secrecy around the event only deepened suspicion outside. But the men who gathered were no wild ratticles. They were, for the most part, pretty centrist minded federalists, merchants, lawyers, and governors, men who believed that the Constitution could and must be preserved if certain reforms could be made. Still, the stakes were enormous,

at least for these men. Outside the walls. The newspaper accused them of plotting secession. Inside the conversation walked on a razor's edge. Did some delegates think about leaving the Union? Almost certainly, yes, But the majority understood that the moment was too fragile, the consequences too grave. Instead, they pursued a strategy of proposing constitutional amendments that they believed would protect New England from what they saw as the tyranny

of the southern and western states. Now, for those of you who know your American history, you know this is all terribly ironic, because it's exactly what the South is going to accuse New England and the North and West of in about fifty years and that's going to be the cause for Southern secession. Many people don't realize it, but New England actually tried to reverse the script in eighteen fourteen. Now, the proposed amendments would have totally altered

the course of American history. The first was to repeal the three fifths clause. New England resented how enslaved populations in the South inflated Southern political power in Congress and in the electoral College. They also wanted to change the rules for some votes that would require then a two thirds vote in Congress for declaring war, admitting new states,

an imposing embargoes that lasted more than sixty days. This aimed to prevent the quote unquote Virginia presidents and Western warhawks from dragging New England into conflicts that they felt the majority of the country didn't want. They also wanted a constitutional amendment that would limit the presidency to one single term and prohibit successive presidents from serving from the same states. You couldn't have two Virginia presidents in a row. And that was a direct site by the way, at

the Virginia dynasty that went Washington, Jefferson Madison. They wanted to restrict the naturalization of immigrants as well, because federalists feared the growing power of political influence of these newcomers, who tended overwhelmingly to support the Democratic Republicans. These weren't the proposals of radical rebels. They were the demands of a region trying to secure power within a union that

they just didn't trust anymore. Still, the delegates adopted a final resolution that hinted at least at the edges of rebellion. They said, if the federal government failed to adopt these measures, then New England must quote seek its safety in arrangements not inconsistent with the Constitution. That phrase was vague, but it was ominous enough that could imply coordinated resistance, nullification,

or maybe even secession. The Convention adjourned on January the fifth, eighteen fifteen, and dispatched three envoys to Washington to present their demands, but they would ride too late. In one of those moments where history seems to enjoy irony, two stunning pieces of news reached America at almost the exact

same time. The Treaty of Ghent had actually been signed on Christmas Eve, eighteen fourteen, ending the War of eighteen twelve, and as we'll get to in a moment, General Andrew Jackson had won a spectacular victory at New Orleans in early January, and almost overnight the tide of national sentiment swung dramatically. Where Americans had lately known only fear and exhaustion,

suddenly they felt triumph and pride. Into this atmosphere marched the Hartford envoys, ready to present amendments that assumed the war was still a disaster. But instead of finding themselves as saviors with solutions, they were outcasts, pariahs. President Madison simply ignored their proposals. Congress rejected them outright. Newspapers mocked the men as defeatists, schemers, some even traders. One critic wrote, quote, they arrived to bury the Constitution and found it reborn.

Another quote, they came to save the nation and instead buried their own party, and indeed they had. The Federalist Party never recovered from the suspicion that it had flirted with disunion. The Hartford Convention became a political millstone and was dragged up whenever the Federalists tried to claim patriotic legitimacy. By the election of eighteen sixteen, the party was officially

and forever broken. Now, of course, we need to turn our attention to the end of the war and talk about that in a little bit more detail, because the Treaty of Ghent is interesting. Even as the fighting rages, sides were talking in Ghent, which is in modern day Belgium. Both sides, America and British, were exhausted and frustrated, and eventually agreed to essentially just restore the status quo. Impressment ironically simply disappeared on its own as Europe would slowly

but surely stabilize. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve eighteen fourteen, but news traveled slowly, and before the treaty reached America, one more battle would etch itself into legend, a battle that was actually fought after the war was over. In early January eighteen fifteen, outside New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson led a motley army of frontier riflemen, free Black volunteers, Choctaw warriors. That part's going to be ironic.

Later on, sailors, and even a group of pirates under Jean Lafitte behind the earthworks along the Mississippi they repelled a massive British assault, inflicting staggering casualties. Now the victory came after peace had been negotiated, but it transformed American morale. Jackson became a national hero and will go on to become president, and the war, once divisive and disastrous, suddenly seemed overwhelmingly triumphant. Now James Madison left office in eighteen seventeen,

quietly returning to Montpeilerer. His presidency had been marked by crisis, uncertainty and the closest that the public had come until the American Civil War to collapse. But by the time he stepped down, something extraordinary had started to happen in America. Despite military blunders, despite the burning of the Capitol, despite political division, the United States had stood up to the

strongest empire in the world, and it had survived. But more importantly, it emerged with the strength and sense of national identity. No longer were the Americans speaking of these United States. The talk was now of the United States. Grammatical, though the change may be, it's important. People started to speak of themselves for the first time, not as Virginians or New Yorkers, but as Americans, and that change will be decisive going forward, and into this new spirit, what

historians would call the era of good feelings began. But back in Europe there was to be no era of good feelings, at least not yet, because now we need to turn back the clock slightly, return to Europe and finish the Napoleonic Wars