I just counted the tickmarks under “Changes” in your OP:
Changes:
-----Stephen van Rensselaer III elected Governor of NY instead of being offered command of the Army
----------Battle of Queenston Heights not bungled
-----Isaac Brock dies of fever as a boy
----------Upper Canada not defended properly
----------General Sheaffe more cautious in defense, does not rally Canadians
Right, and the three that are indented are consequences of the two major changes, not author variations in their own right, though now I see where you got it.
Ah, understood.
Come to think of it, having Major General Sheaffe would probably be a big enough change in itself for Canada’s prosecution of the war without Rensselaer staying in the Governor’s race with no justification for the command not being offered to him.
What happens when the conquered Quebec (after English-speaking Empire Loyalists are forced into exile) wants to establish Catholicism as its official religion? Could there be crackdowns fostered by anti-Catholic sentiment that inflame citizens of Louisiana (or the Orleans Territory, as part of it was called pre-statehood)? If the U.S. manages to keep it all together for a few decades, I suggest having Quebec say “piss off, tabernac!” when efforts to establish conscription to fight the Civil War are suggested (in reference to similar resistance to conscription during WW2) and making noise about being the only state North of Washington to consider seceding.
I guess the government would say ‘freedom of religion, bitches’ and imply that either they take that or face a loss of status.
I’m having a hard time seeing how that could be avoided, I must admit. Even if the government is sympathetic to Catholic religious and civil rights, that won’t make Americans behave the same way.
Bingo! Totally plausible, an unpleasant development from the U.S. point of view, but not completely unsalvageable. However, I think that one factor tempering the desire for secession would be that the Southern states seceded for slavery, and Canada didn’t support that. Also, the absorption of some amount of Canada would likely change the slavery dynamic in the U.S., so the Civil War might be totally different.
I’m not so much interested about Lower Canada trying to establish Catholicism as a state religion (I guess this would have been something the clergy would have attempted; it doesn’t strike me as the doing of the Parti canadien/patriote) but as to the following question: would the United States citizenry have accepted a state with a mostly French-speaking and Catholic population? At the time, the population of Lower Canada exceeded that of Upper Canada, so even by merging both colonies, or by hacking the territory in several parts as you suggest in your OP, you couldn’t have avoided this. If Lower Canada was to be denied statehood, I guess this could have created unrest. How do you envision the actions of the US and Lower Canada politicians and populations regarding this question?
I’m not even certain the US government was sympathetic to Catholic religious and civil rights at the time.
Yes, and what would be the reaction of the Southern states to this change of dynamic? Would they even allow the new Canadian possessions to become states? If so, would they require the simultaneous admission of new slave states?
Come to think of it, what happens with the British possessions in what is today Northern and Western Canada, but wasn’t part of Canada at the time? Do they remain British? Economically speaking, what does all this mean? (I can’t help you there, I’m not even sure of what the industries of those territories were, although I would expect that the fur trade had an importance.)
Try it a different way, let us start of how it was:
The English that went to America were not totally convinced that their lives would be as pleasant at home - and similarly the French that emigrated to the South and Canada were not that happy with their prospects in France.
The French were tromping around the USA in the early 1770s, Britain sent out troops to kick them out, which they did, but then rather foolishly the British tried to get the American colonies to pay for the upkeep of the troops.
The British then had problems with ‘The Boston Massacre’ - basically a snow ball fight that went wrong, and later the Boston Tea Party which was little more than a prank.
Finding it difficult to distinguish friends from foes, the British were inept at following up ‘set battles’ - and they made the major mistake of bringing in Hessian troops (mercenaries are not reliable) and exposing a major bunch of them to a ‘walk through the woods’.
The British could have just walked away in about 1770, in which case ‘America’ would have been dominated by the French - note not ‘American’ French.
My take is that Canada stayed out of the USA because they disliked mainland France more than they did the British - France was involved with the US - and that the British lost America because it was a Civil War and they did not have the stomach to stamp on it.
@Captain Carrot, your book should be written in French, if Britain had not bothered then the French would have replaced them.
Also your 1860 Civil War was your second Civil War, after one the second is disgusting, which might be why the British (who faced a second Civil War) were hesitant about total war with the US.
It is nearly impossible stamping on your friends and relatives.
:dubious: Do you mean the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War or the Conquest)? If so, that was from 1754 to 1763, and it was basically the result of years of conflict over the territory between French and British.
How do you figure? In 1770 France didn’t have any influence in North America anymore, and in any case you had more than a million of American colonists who wouldn’t have been very happy to learn that France had ambitions over their homeland.
No, Canada stayed out of the US Independence War because there was no incentive for the Canadiens to join the rebelling colonists, especially given the Quebec Act of 1774. France wasn’t even involved in the conflict yet. The Americans did try to invade Canada though, but ultimately failed.
And anyway, what Captain Carrot is trying to modify is the course of the War of 1812-1814, not the Revolutionary War.
Oh, and I should point this out: no, there actually were no Quebec(k)ers yet. First, because Quebec didn’t exist at the time (well, the city existed of course, but the colonial-era Province of Quebec had been split in 1791 between Upper and Lower Canada, and the modern Province of Quebec would be formed out of the territory of Lower Canada only in 1867), but especially because the French-speaking Canadiens saw their identity as mostly French-Canadian and Catholic, as opposed to linked to Lower Canada. In fact, after the Canadian Confederation in 1867, French-Canadians wanted to be a part of the Western expansion of Canada too, which explains how the execution of Louis Riel was received in Quebec. Modern Quebec national identity only started around 1950.
So you could say that in 1812, there actually were Canadians, but it didn’t mean what it means today. You had (French-)Canadians, Indians, and British colonials.
I know your version is meant to be the happy clappy Yanko-centric victory (
:D) but there’s something you need to factor in which relates to something Gorsnak said:
As the Peninsular War drew to a close, Wellington was actually approached about taking command in the US. Ultimately the proposal fell through as he wanted total command - including the right to oversea/control any negotiations - which the government refused to concede.
As a result historically only about 4000 or so Peninsular Vets ended up being sent as part of the reinforcements to the Colonies in 1814. In your alternate history however, the more successful you make the American forces (and therefore the greater the crisis from the British perspective) the more you increase the chances that not only would that figure become higher, but that the Iron Duke himself makes the crossing.
In fact, i’d argue that if events played out how you described above, i think you can pretty much guarantee that the bulk of Wellington’s Peninsular force including its commander would have been shipped over en-masse.
That leaves the Americans facing arguably the finest single fighting force this Country has ever produced commanded by a man who is arguably the best general it has produced during the period when he’s at the top of his game.
Sorry - but i know who my money would be riding on if that happened. 
Of course the interesting side-effect of that series of events is that Britain (and her allies) almost certainly lose the Waterloo Campaign. There’s no way that would have been won without Wellington at the head of the Anglo-Dutch forces and one of the reasons it was so closely run in the first place was because his best and brightest had been shipped off to America.
So thinking about it, i can actually see your scenario ending up with America (in the short term at least) worse off than it actually did historically - because you’d be provoking the British into a bigger reaction. Ultimately however, it would end up being a Pyrrhic victory for us poor Brits, who’d be helpless to stop the Napoleonic wars from once again erupting back in Europe.
Oh the tyranny of being asked to contribute to your own defence! The Horror! 
To selectively quote Rudyard Kipling
Sure. Louisiana was admitted in 1812, after all.
Did Louisiana have a majority of French speakers in 1812? And if so, how was its admission to the Union received?
Hell, I dunno. It ain’t my alternate history. 
With what little information I could find on Wikipedia, I doubt it; on the Great Upheaval page, it said that about 3000 Acadians were deported from Nova Scotia from 1755 to 1763, with about 10% going to LA. This page says that French and Spanish speakers outnumbered American settlers 7 to 1 in 1807, and since the 1810 population of LA was ~75,000, I’d wager that your guess is as good as mine as to whether French speakers were a majority in Louisiana. Certainly they were a large demographic.
I think the major concern for admitting Louisiana was the large population of blacks, many of whom were free, not speakers of non-English languages.
Some thoughts:
Maybe you could think about the development of a professional American Army a few years before the War rather than the near total reliance on Militias … that might have made a difference.
Maybe something like the “River Raisin Massacre” and the “Fort Mims Massacre”, maybe lurid and exaggeratedly told, could turn the British populace against the War – Indians murdering and massacring whites not being cricket.
I too would place Tecumseh dying really early as key – virtually all the British land success in the then “Northwest” was in conjunction with the Indians. Once the Indians were gone so was the British offensive punch.
I don’t think New Orleans not happening would make Jackson a nobody – he was a Congressman, Judge, Military commander of the likes of wild (and capable) men like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett and who was seen to have “saved” large pieces of the South from rampaging Indians… regardless of New Orleans.
Just some thoughts – FTR I do not believe it was a good decision to invade Canada and the think the war would have been even shorter and ended in a an even greater and more clear British defeat had the U.S. fought an entirely defensive war [excepting from this defense of course a War of Privateers that is key to American victory]. Nor do I think the U.S. would have been a richer, more free Country after the process of politically absorbing Canada took place.
How do you fight entirely defensively when you’re the aggressor? 
Are you whoosing me? Having a little Second City fun with a an uptight American eh?
If not, I jsut would point out the U.S. ultimately “won” the Battles on its soil and that strategy would have won the War more quickly (and I say the British started it and were in the wrong!! I am trying to be funny but not joking entirely – but I am not 100% positive that a War was necessary - even then - to fix things).
I was going to ask the same question.
Never played Terran in the game Starcraft? Offensive bunkering is key. Basically you rush in and set up a base. You now have a base in enemy territory. If they want it back, they have to attack you. Do this as deep into their territory as you have to. Only works if both armies are too small to defend all of the large territory in question at once.
At least, that’s how it works in my head.