In 1814, we took a little trip … er… there was a bit of a bruhaha down around NOLA. In school, I was taught that since the battle took place after the Treaty of Ghent, it didn’t count except to make Americans feel better about a war they otherwise didn’t do very well in. Furthermore, the Treaty required territory captured in the war to be returned to the prewar boundaries, so even if the Americans had lost, the British would have given it back.
Well, that last part may not have been quite true. I recently read a book about the battle, well, the parts available on Google Books, which wasn’t much, that said the British probably would not have given New Orleans and any of the rest of the Louisiana Purchase back. The reasoning was that the British did not recognize the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France that Napoleon had pushed through and that therefore he had no right to sell it.
Now the British did prepare the expedition to take NO knowing that the Treaty was under negotiation but also with that reasoning in mind. So they would have been prepared to go back to the original US boundaries but not Louisiana.
OK, I’m not wanting an argument about the above (although I suspect one will happen anyway) but rather to ask the hypothetical: Assuming the British had won the battle, could they actually have held the city indefinitely? Could they have expanded their holdings to the rest of Louisiana (the whole Purchase, not the state)? How long before the Americans would have kicked them out, assuming they could have?
Given the distance of NO and Britain, I think it would have been a challenge to hold it for a long period of time. It would have been surrounded by enemy troops and the local population would make it impossible for Britain to keep order. It would have been doomed to be taken back by the US. It would only be a matter of time.
One of the causes for the War of 1812 was that Britain had not turned over all of the territory that was specified by the treaty that ended the American Revolution. I can see the same thing happening after the War of 1812 if the British had won the Battle of New Orleans.
I’m sure in both cases, Britain offered some legal justification for holding on to the territory and claiming they were following the terms of the treaty. But this just demonstrates that being the stronger military power in a region allows you to enforce your interpretation of a treaty.
True, but they lost the big war with the US already. They would eventually get kicked out, unlike in other countries where they are still there in name only.
I feel that if the British had won the Battle of New Orleans it would have been seen as evidence that the United States had enough military power to defend its own country but didn’t have enough military power to project it into Louisiana.
Keep in mind this was 1815. The local population wasn’t really American at that point. New Orleans was still mostly filled with Europeans and African slaves and the rest of the Louisiana territory was still occupied by the local natives. None of these people probably had a strong preference over whether Britain or the United States claimed ownership.
The British burned and looted Washington in August 1814. The country was horrified by that. The British immediately turned toward Baltimore, a far bigger and more important urban center. People started evacuating because they were sure the same fate would be theirs. Think California after Pearl Harbor.
The Americans had the great luck that a sniper picked off the British commander on a land battle outside Baltimore creating chaos. Fort McHenry survived a day-long bombardment. The British withdrew but it wasn’t a stunning military victory. Again, luck favored Americans. Francis Scott Key wrote an anthem describing the battle. There had been dozens of others before him but The Star-Spangled Banner stuck as a great piece of propaganda, and rallied the nation.
A British takeover of New Orleans after that would have been intolerable. It would have been too great a blow to American prestige. It also would have stood in the way of American westward expansion. New England had contested the war because its business was all about the Atlantic trade, which the war disrupted. Everybody else in the country wanted to move west off the coasts. The British were blocking them in the west. Peace negotiations started with a British proposal to create an Indian buffer state in the Northwest Territories. That vanished quickly. People wanted the status quo.
Others grumbled at the time that the war accomplished nothing but dead bodies. In hindsight it’s obvious that eliminating barriers to sweeping across the country set the stage for the next hundred years of America. It’s hard to believe that the British continuing to occupy New Orleans and effectively drawing a line down the entire Mississippi could have gone unfought, especially since they would have abolished slavery there. The hotheads would be on fire. I can’t see anything less than a war, sooner rather than later. Look how close the Compromise of 1820 came to splitting the country and that was all in American soil.
I read a book that the NE states were restive and had been talking about leaving the Union, because of how bad the USA did in the land war . The huge victory in NOLA changed that. It also ended the Federalist party,
The Democratic-Republican Party used the victory to ridicule the Federalist Party as cowards, defeatists, and secessionists. In fact, the Federalist Party ceased to exist after the Battle of New Orleans.
And to squelch a rumor- the battle wasn’t really fought “after the war was over”. It was fought after the Treaty of Ghent was agreed to yes, but communication was so slow back then, there was a clause in the treaty about that.
However, the Treaty did specify that the territories would be re-set pre-war. As said here, however, there was some possible wriggle room, due to GB not recognizing deal with Napoleon.
The Battle of New Orleans occurred after the Treaty of Ghent was agreed to by British and American diplomats and therefore could not have influenced the negotiations, however United States resounding victory did motivate Great Britain to abide by the treaty, which required both sides return all territorial gains made at the other’s expense during the war. Accordingly, even though the United States fully occupied West Florida in 1813, the Treaty of Ghent did not force them to leave after the war since prior to the Battle of New Orleans, Louisiana and West Florida were, according to the pre-Napoleonic era, Spanish territory in the eyes of Britain and Spain. If the British had won the battle and captured New Orleans it is unknown whether or not they would’ve returned the city to the United States even after the Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Ghent on February 16, 1815. The prevailing view is had the British taken New Orleans they likely would have remained as neither they nor the Spanish then recognized the validity of the Louisiana Purchase, as it had been brokered by Napoleon. Following the French Emperor’s final defeat in 1815, the United States were left as the only country in the world who formally recognized the Louisiana Purchase. The Battle of New Orleans forced Britain and Spain to accept that the Louisiana territory belonged to the United States. [101][102][dubious – discuss]
Um, no the British did not lose the War of 1812. History generally considers it a draw, but I believe the British won more battles than they lost.
There were some Americans in NO at the time, so they weren’t totally missing. The Europeans were split between French and Spanish, so that wasn’t a single faction. There was also significant populations of freed Blacks and people of mixed race. Generally, NO had lots of factions and it was hard to get them all moving in the same direction. However, as the British threat grew, they all seemed to move towards defending.
If you’d have asked anyone at the time, “big war” would have been the one against Napoleon. I’m not sure the British would have considered either of the wars with the US as “big”, at least not compared with that.
From a strategic viewpoint, there are four levels of international military strength.
The first level is when a country is too weak to defend itself. This is a country that has to rely on the good will of other countries to maintain its independence.
The second level is a country that can defend itself. It can’t project its military forces but it’s strong enough that it can defend itself if another country attacks it. This country doesn’t need to rely on other countries to maintain its existence. But countries at this level can’t attack.
The third level is a country that has a limited ability to project its military power. This country is able to attack what are essentially first level countries.
The fourth level is a country that is able to project its military power and fight against another top level power.
Note that these levels don’t imply success will follow. The ability to fight a war doesn’t guarantee that a country will win that war.
A lot of wars result from one country misreading what level another country is at. Russia, for example, thought Ukraine was a first level country but found out it was actually a second level country. But Ukraine is still a second level country; regardless of how well it does defending against Russian forces in Ukraine, it’s not going to be able to launch an invasion of Russia.
What happened in the War of 1812 was Britain misreading the United States twice. At first, they thought the United States was a first level country. They found out this wasn’t true when the United States was able to defend itself against British attacks. But the British still thought the United States was only a second or third level country and would not be able to project enough military strength outside the United States (and Louisiana was effectively outside the United States in 1815) to defeat the British military. The British didn’t expect that the United States could send an army to New Orleans. But the United States showed it could.
That was the real victory for the Americans. They showed they could fight and win a war outside the United States against a major power. Which meant that other countries now had to take the United States into account in international affairs. The Monroe Doctrine, for example, was based on the assumption that the United States could send troops to Latin America and fight a war against a European power there.