Did the U.S. lose the War of 1812?

[Ibn_Warraq]

@PrettyVacant

Kind of like Vietnam?

No, Vietnam was pretty clearly a defeat for the US.
The War of 1812 was pretty clearly a draw.

[Gorsnak]

Draw for Britain and the US, win for Canada, horrible loss for the various indigenous tribes involved.

[Peremensoe]

The most educational and curious aspect of this thread for me is the revelation that there are people who maintain that Canada won a war fifty-two years before it was constituted as a country.

[Little_Nemo]

@spark240

The most educational and curious aspect of this thread for me is the revelation that there are people who maintain that Canada won a war fifty-two years before it was constituted as a country.

Do you feel that Canada didn’t exist in 1812? It was a British colony but it had its own identity.

[BrainGlutton]

@Bryan_Ekers

Well, it had nothing to do with with the War of 1812 the Americans were embroiled in. There was a whole other War of 1812 going on in Europe with France and Russia and stuff.

And America was on Napoleon’s side!

[Peremensoe]

@Little_Nemo

Do you feel that Canada didn’t exist in 1812? It was a British colony but it had its own identity.

Do you feel that the United States didn’t exist in 1763? It was a British colony* but it had its own identity. Should Americans today claim that our country was a victor in the French & Indian War?

• Actually, for both Canada and the United States, we should say “colonies.”

[straight_man]

@smiling_bandit

Britain wanted to reassert, at the very least, hegemony, and perhaps bring America at least as a dependent state even if it couldn’t outright reclaim it. In the end, neither party was remotely willing to go into this fight to the death, and perhaps underestimated the other’s resolve. it would sort of be as if in the Civil War both North and South had taken a long look at things in 1862 and decided they could live with some form of compromise.

A statement starting with “Britain wanted” is unlikely to adequately describe the War of 1812. The United States was the one to start the war; by definition, what Britain wanted was simply not to lose! Inasmuch as they did not end up ceding anything or even taking much away from their nearer-by war efforts, Britain clearly won the War of 1812.

@spark240

All this. I recall being taught that 1812 was the fight that “confirmed” American independence.

I think this is what we learned in school in our parts, too. But it strikes me as a (very slightly hidden) claim of moral victory; “confirming American independence” was not a war aim, and the aims that related to that ambition (if it even existed) were achieved by the change in the European situation (i.e. the first Napoleonic War ending.)

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@spark240

Do you feel that the United States didn’t exist in 1763? It was a British colony* but it had its own identity. Should Americans today claim that our country was a victor in the French & Indian War?

Americans, as a people, definitely existed in 1763. The United States didn’t exist, but the states (Virginia, Mass., Georgia, etc.) existed; they were British colonies but still “countries” in a sense. Canada in 1814 was two colonies (Upper and Lower Canada); the Atlantic provinces also existed but weren’t considered part of Canada at the time. The use of “Canada” to refer to the country actually dates to Jacques Cartier in 1535. Before that it was an Iroquoian word for “village”. Yes, laugh all you want.

And isn’t one of the causes of the American War of Independence that the colonists were expected to pay more taxes even though they had won the Seven Years’ War?

[2sense]

@Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party

The Monroe Doctrine was a British idea that was enforced by the Royal Navy for at least the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Good point. But the naval successes in the war (as well as subduing the Barbary states immediately afterward) did give the US more diplomatic recognition.

@spark240

How do you reckon that?

I can’t recall where but I do remember reading that Great Britain had earlier proposed an alliance with America to exclude other European powers from Latin America.

@Little_Nemo

I don’t see how people can claim the United States lost the War of 1812. The main American goals were to stop British encroachments against American sovereignty. The main one was impressment (British refusal to recognize American citizenship), British to control American trade, and British attempts to prevent American settlement in the Northwest territory (by supporting native resistance and refusing to withdraw from area forts).

Impressment wasn’t a major issue. (Though it was a major excuse to go to war and to gain popular support for it.) Shipping was a Northern concern, precisely the part of the nation where opposition to Mr Madison’s War was centered. Impressment was an annoyance but going to war with the major naval power was just bad business for New England businessmen. Even if that power was hindering profits in the carrying trade to the European subcontinent.

Essentially the American motivations for war were expansion and slavery. Westerners wanted to halt the alliance between Great Britain and Native Americans. (There was little difference between maintaining trade relations with an Indian tribe and supplying it for war since supplies in both peace and war were essentially the same: guns, powder, and household goods.) Southerners wanted to take the Gulf coast so their slaves wouldn’t have a close haven to run to.

Granted, the elimination of impressment and trade restrictions was more a result of Napoleon’s defeat than American fighting.

The end of impressment was entirely the result of the end of the Anglo-French conflict. The Madison government quietly dropped the requirement in peace negotiations and it wasn’t part of the settlement. Whether America was willing to fight Great Britain over it or not, she couldn’t end impressment since she couldn’t maintain her fleets on a war footing without those sailors.

@smiling_bandit

America wanted to take Canada as its far-fetched goal.

Whether taking Canada was an important goal for the Americans is debateable. Certainly we invaded but where else were we going to attack the British Empire? If we had taken it it might have been used as a bargaining chip for more important issues.

Britain wanted to reassert, at the very least, hegemony, and perhaps bring America at least as a dependent state even if it couldn’t outright reclaim it.

Britain wanted to NOT be at war with the US since she had bigger fish to fry. They had already repealed the Orders in Council the Madison Administration had complained so bitterly about and only reluctantly went to war with a strategy of forcing America to agree to status quo ante. Had they wanted to impose their will on the US they could have set up their blockade more quickly and comprehensively. Later after being humiliated by the US Navy a major goal became hunting down the offending American heavy frigates. (Also at the expense of their blockade.)

[Der_Trihs]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

It was a defeat but the best case scenario for the US, we could have had a worse defeat with us losing huge swaths of territory and New England seceding and becoming a British puppet (see Hartford Convention).

No, the “best case scenario” was for the US to not start a war it wasn’t in a position to win in the first place.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

@spark240

I know. I was questioning the notion that it was a British idea to start with, rather than an assertion by the confirmed-independent-real-country U.S. which Britain was then happy to go along with, in the new context following the wars of 1812 and Napoleon.

The idea was that of George Canning, the British Foreign Minister at the time. Canning suggested a joint declaration of a policy against European intervention into the Western Hemisphere would serve both interests, given the background in Europe at the time. Due to the War of 1812 being recent the Americans refused to issue a joint declaration and went ahead and made a unilateral declaration without Britain. Britain still actually enforced the Monroe Doctrine for decades.

See here:

When France crossed the Pyrenees to help put down a rebellion against the Spanish monarch, Britain worried that this might lead to a joint French-Spanish expedition to retake the Latin American colonies for Spain. The British foreign minister George Canning communicated with the American minister in London, Richard Rush, and suggested that a joint declaration opposing such a development would serve both their interests. Rush passed the word back to John Quincy Adams.

The British put their ideas into a formal proposal which Canning presented to Rush in August, 1823. Rush sent it to President Monroe, who sought the advice of Jefferson and Madison. Jefferson responded that while America should avoid involving itself in strictly European matters, European non-intervention in this hemisphere was of sufficient importance that the United States would be well advised to accept the British offer.

In fact, just search Google for “George Canning Monroe Doctrine”.

[Peremensoe]

Well, it appears I’ve learned a little something here on Canning’s role. Thanks.

It seems that the portion of the idea that was British in origin was essentially: Spain should not regain its former colonies, as this would hurt British trade interests.

The actual Monroe Doctrine was somewhat more than that,

The Western Hemisphere was no longer open for colonization
The political system of the Americas was different from Europe
The United States would regard any interference in Western hemispheric affairs as a threat to its security
The United States would refrain from participation in European wars and would not disturb existing colonies in the Western Hemisphere 

Presumably the War of 1812 played some role in convincing Britain itself to accept such a theme.

[SecretaryofEvil]

I don’t think people should overlook the success that America had against British supported and supplied Amerindians. To the British, this wasn’t a huge issue. As another poster pointed out, they had bigger fish to fry. This was, however, a huge deal to the Americans. American failures during the War of 1812 prevented America from expanding northward. American successes during the war enabled it to expand westward.