Madison’s stated goal was to use Canada as a bargaining chip.
Jefferson was several years out of power by the time of the war, and Jefferson had always had somewhat non-mainstream revolutionary goals. For example he frequently wrote and spoke in a way that showed he felt “all” popular revolutions were “one and the same.” He identified deeply with the French revolution for example, arguing that their throwing off their monarchy and ancien regime as the same exact revolution as the American revolution.
I think Jefferson probably would believe that, of course, all thinking people would, given the chance to oppress the thumb of an elite, be inclined to do so. So I could see him thinking Canadians of all stripes chafed under colonial status. But to be honest Jefferson’s views and reality often didn’t meet. His view of the revolution in France was incredibly incorrect, and even his view of the American Revolution (in which he was front and center) was also not really correct. Jefferson wanted our revolution to be about the things Jefferson thought they were about, but it was a mixed bag. There were certainly some Jeffersonian types in the revolution, and they also became a powerful force in American politics for many years on many issues, but the reality is it was establishment interests in America that lead not so much a popular revolution but an “usurpation” of British/Parliamentary power, with political power often held by British-born political appointees, being taken by local business and commercial elites.
I think Madison had a more practical viewpoint of reality, and never have seen much evidence he really thought Canada was going to spontaneously wish to become the next American state.
America was also in a state of grave political disarray leading up to the DOW in 1812, and during the war itself.
Madison and his faction within the Democratic party largely did have serious issues with things like British impressment and harassment of trading ships but he really didn’t want war with Britain. He wasn’t interested in any kind of territorial aggression, and he also was always kind of a scatterbrained leader once the war broke out because he wasn’t a major advocate for it in the first place but he felt compelled to go along with the Congressional War Hawks. I’d say the 1812 war is probably the only war in American history, other than possibly the Spanish-American War, where political forces outside of the White House were the driving force for American participation.
The remnant Federalist party was 100% opposed to the war, and they actually wanted an American alliance with Britain against France, the last thing they wanted was war with Great Britain (and at times in the Northeast their behavior bordered on the treasonous during the war.)
The Western Democrats were the biggest advocates for war, and I think their prime goal was territorial expansion. Many of them probably did dream potentially of acquiring Canada, but I think their biggest goal was ending British support for native tribes, which was a major hindrance to western expansion. They were the ones who politicked heavily for war, lead major propaganda campaigns painting a very biased and overblown picture of British behavior and I think ultimately the ones who pushed Madison in to going to war.
I actually think that’s why the War of 1812 is so misunderstood; because even contemporary Americans lacked a coherent strategy for the war or even a coherent casus belli for fighting it in the first place.
It’s interesting the 1812 war is probably the most forgotten major American war, but in many ways it’s very important to American history.
My friend from Manchester asked me about the war, I had to tell him he needs to ask a historian. He knew of it and the invasion of Washington, but it barely registers in their history. He was surprised when I told him most Americans didn’t really know what it was about and that we that we taught in our schools that we won the war despite no reason to say so.
Good old America, we lose every battle during the War of 1812* and call it a victory, we win every battle in Vietnam and call it a loss**.
*Yeah, I said during, I know about New Orleans.
** I know, over simplifications of complex situations.
Certainly, the Democrats wanted to convince New England and their own faction that the war was ‘really’ about naval matters (important to New England) and not about territorial expansion (not important to New England). However, there is no reason to take that seriously - New England remained throughout, as you say, opposed to the War: they weren’t the driving force - they were the party who needed convincing (and that were not, in fact, convinced).
A more reasonable approach is to look at what the War Hawks who were in fact the prime motive force wanted. They wanted Westward expansion at the expense of the Natives - and they saw continued British presence on the NA continent as an impediment to that, figuring the Brits would always support the Natives.
The notion of holding onto Canada as a “bargaining chip” over naval impressment makes little sense - once America had Canada (and assuming the people living there didn’t care who the government was - a quite reasonable assumption, given the huge percentage of English Canadians in Upper Canada were, in fact, recent American immigrants) - why would they just hand it back? To save their shipping from British reprisals? Perhaps - certainly the notion that the Brits would take it out on American shipping worried the New English (who were largely against the war).
But looking at other examples of American wars in the 19th century - the tendency was clearly, where American armies marched, they tended to stay, or at least bite off huge territorial chunks: see Mexico.
The War Hawks would have simply argued that it made no sense to hand over territory to the Brits who were likely to go on supporting the natives against them. The notion of annexing large parts, or maybe all, of Canada once the British continental armies had been defeated makes perfect sense: and the Brits had few troops to spare, being involved in a life-or-death struggle with Nappy at the moment.
Had the American invasions of Upper Canada been successful in the War of 1812, would southern Ontario be a part of Canada today? I venture to doubt it - and with Southern Ontario gone, and the War Hawks leading the charge for Western expansion, what was to stop the US taking what is now Western Canada in the fullness of time?
I think a counterpoint to that theory is the fact that the President is the Commander in Chief and responsible for military strategy (one area in which even the earliest executives essentially had just as much power as the current president–although Congress didn’t give them the fancy standing armies in peacetime.) I think Madison had a much closer to realistic view of his country’s ability to hold parts of Canada in opposition to its people’s wishes, or especially in opposition to British desires. So while I don’t at all doubt many Congressional War Hawks probably wanted Canada, and assumed she’d be ripe for the plucking, I think given Madison’s position the “real threat” of Canada being conquered and becoming part of America is lower than perhaps is generally assumed.
I do guess at least part of it would come down to the British. I lean towards thinking they would not have abandoned their Canada to the colonials, and would have sent as many armies as necessary (and they certainly had them by the end of the war since the Napoleonic War was over) to get it back. But let’s posit they do essentially abandon Canada. Would Canada have stayed, or would she have fought? That I don’t know. I venture it’s at least possible they’d have just integrated into the United States. One advantage of the early federal constitution is that the Federal government was pretty damn uninvolved. I could imagine a scenario in which two states are carved out, one English one French, and given the extremely light hand of the Federal government they may have found it easy enough that a massive nationalist/freedom movement wouldn’t have arisen. Plus, I’m not sure how much “Canadian nationalism” there was. The French Canadians identified as French people and their main support for the Crown was their belief it protected them from Anglo domination. They weren’t necessarily wrapped up in any concepts of “Canada”, so they may have been less likely to rebel. But a lot of the Anglo Canadians of the time were “United Empire Loyalists”, families that had been given land grants in Canada to compensate them for lands they had lost in the lower thirteen colonies. Considering they had fled the lower thirteen to remain loyal to the crown, and many of them had fought for the crown during the Revolution I dunno that I see them going quietly, and America of 1815 was simply not capable of holding onto a state of that size and people that didn’t want to be part of the union. If any of the states had seceded back then I think the Federal government quite possibly would’ve just acquiesced to it, for example.
But, I do I guess concede the possibility would be there if America had won some of the early battles and occupied Canada. A war-weary Britain writes off the last of its colonies on continental North America, the French adjust pretty well into the strong-state Federal system, and maybe UEL crown loyalty just isn’t powerful enough for people to fight on without the support of the crown.
I think that, before the War, it was totally feasible to see two US states of Upper and Lower Canada (and maybe a third, for what is now Nova Scotia/New Brunswick/PEI).
There was some pre-War Loyalist sentiment among the settlers in Upper Canada and Nova Scotia, but not very much: some had been “United Empire Loyalists” who had fled the Revolution; but far more had been Americans no different from the Americans in America, who had gone north for economic opportunities.
In Nova Scotia, the largest proportion of the population had come from New England, to replace the expelled Acadians (on a side-note, my paternal ancestors were among them - they trace their heritage to the Cape Cod area originally).
This is what gets frequently overlooked because of hindsight - that there was really very little “nationalist” feeling to stop the Americans before the War. That was something the War more or less created. Prior to the War, it was totally feasible for the English-speaking population to have seen themselves mostly as “Americans” who just happened to be living under British rule. In the case of the French-speaking population, well they had been conquered - so a case could be made that the US turfing out the British army was a liberation.
When you look at it in that light, suddenly the US plans make a hell of a lot more sense. They were not set on subduing an enemy population, they were set on freeing future (and in many cases, past) Americans from British overlordship.
The problem was that this did not materialize in the actual conduct of the War. The Americans did not treat the areas they had taken (temporarily) as “liberated”, but rather let loose with looting and burning - leading to an escalating series of cross-border incidents of looting and burning: York, Niagara on the Lake, Washington, to name three famous examples.
Mostly I suspect this was originally down to lack of strict discipline - at York for example many senior officers were killed in the explosion of the fort’s magazine, so it is small wonder the troops ran wild. But cross-border looting and burning created the very nationalist antagonism that made it impossible to see the War as a liberation.
Yeah, the looting/burning of Canadian cities is something I only know about in the abstract, but given the extremely poor state of the U.S. military prior to the war it’s not at all surprising to me they were undisciplined.
Young men torn away from their homes with minimal training, given guns and put in combat, is a historical “bad situation” for civilian populations.
I don’t know how much it factored into 1812, but the Revolutionary attempt to take Québec was ruined (in part) by Britain’s wise realization from the beginning that the Québecois would have to be jollied along. (The Acadians were a separate French colony with different origins.) Roman Catholics in Québec were given far more civil rights than Roman Catholics had in Britain, and the French legal system was preserved as far as possible. So, when New Englanders, with a much more extreme history of Protestantism than Britain itself, arrived saying, “We’re going to liberate you!”, the Québecois didn’t care to hear it.
Especially since the enactment of the Quebec Act, which protected the rights of Québécois, was one of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence. Hard to persuade the Québécois that switching to the revolutionary side would be a good thing.
The Quebec Act was clearly intended to win “hearts and minds” of the French population for the Crown, but allegedly it was not a great success in doing that:
The Americans could reasonably have anticipated that people in Quebec would be basically indifferent to whether the Brits or the Yanks ruled (that at least is what the British feared, in the earlier Revolutionary war). As in Upper Canada, though the turnaround was maybe not as severe, the actual experience of being invaded tended to harden attitudes against the invaders.
…
On a completely random side-note, my parents have a cottage in Oro-Medonte township, just north of Barrie, Ontario. To get there, we drive past a building called the “African Episcopal Church”. Apparently, the whole area was originally settled by Blacks who had fought for the British - deliberately placed there by the Crown, to act as a buffer against American invasion after the War of 1812! (The theory was that, being Black, they would have extra incentive to fight against invading Americans who could be expected to enslave them).
Though what military use such a tiny number had, I’m not sure.
The whole community eventually faded away - the land wasn’t the best, and originally it was far from anywhere; and with the end of the US Civil War, the threat of enslavement had passed.
This war always brings out erroneous opinions from descendants of all the combatants.
It is not true that the U.S. lost every battle.
The Brits (or their Indian allies) had a number of strong victories holding the Yanks who had crossed the Niagara River, (at least until the Yanks got past them to burn York before being forced back, again), and then taking Detroit, Fort Dearborn, (Chicago), Mackinac Island, and a few other places. However, after the Yanks took control of Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron with their connecting rivers, the Yanks were able to beat the British/Indian alliance back in the following years, retaking land and forts that were lost in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan, and advancing into Upper Canada (Ontario), culminating in a crushing defeat of the alliance at the Battle of the Thames. On the other hand, the expiring enlistments of many of the militia that made up that force caused the Yanks to retire to Detroit where they hung around to the end of the war. Victories included the Tippecanoe battles, the battle at Fallen Timbers, the two sieges of Fort Miegs, the retaking of Mackinac Island, the two defenses of Sackett’s Harbor, the Battle of the Thames, various battles at Plattsburgh, etc.
Fort Dearborn/Chicago and the lands to the North and West of it were held by the British/Indian Alliance until the Treaty of Ghent.
The “Canadians” did not burn Washington.
While there may have been a few men from what is now Canada who were among the British troops, the regiments selected to make the raid were drawn from troops who had been fighting in Spain against Napoleon, not militia selected from Upper or Lower Canada. As to being “Canadian,” the Yank assaults probably did a lot to persuade the British living North of the St. Lawrence to regard themselves as Canadians, but they probably still regarded themselves as British at that time.
The Indians, the only overall losers of the war, lost British support and were eventually driven from their lands by encroaching Yank settlers.
The Americans indeed won their share of battles, at land and at sea. As far as the native Americans go, these proved decisive.
However, winning a plurality of battles wasn’t sufficient, when they were the aggressors and their war aim was to take Canada (whether as a “bargaining chip” or permanently). The see-saw pattern of wins and losses merely served to harden nationalist attitudes on both sides of the border. To win, the Americans had to drive the Redcoats out, and that didn’t happen.
And by the same token, a win for the Brits would have meant that they would be free to impress US sailors at will, would contain the US to a small sea board nation that they could dominate, and they could guide who and how we traded.
I think those saying this was a draw are the closest to the mark. The US achieved most of it’s core war aims, which were to allow US expansion south and west without British interference and a halt to British impressment of our sailors, and Canada remained Canada and wasn’t either a bargaining chip OR an annexed new region broken up into US states (though I honestly don’t see how that was ever a viable aim, regardless). The true losers were the native peoples.
I agree that the true losers were the native peoples, but I disagree on the British war aims.
The British, simply put, did not want war; they had enough on their plate with Nappy. Their “war aims” were simply to avoid having Canada stripped from them. Having achieved this, their victory was secure.
Naval impressment simply became a non-issue with the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It wasn’t even mentioned in the peace treaty. In fact, the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent refused to include any acknowledgement of US maritime rights - but then, the British had already ceased their practice of impressing Americans, while the war of 1812 was on. The War, in short, did not win that point - the coming to an end of the Napoleonic Wars won it.
While it is a bit of a historical “what if”, I can’t see Britain as declaring war in support of its native allies, had the US expanded to the South and West in the absence of the War of 1812. That expansion was, like the naval impressment issue, probably going to be settled in the US favour anyway, war or no war. The natives were simply not a match for the US, even with British support in the form of trade and guns.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
The British, simply put, did not want war; they had enough on their plate with Nappy. Their “war aims” were simply to avoid having Canada stripped from them. Having achieved this, their victory was secure.
Naval impressment simply became a non-issue with the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It wasn’t even mentioned in the peace treaty. In fact, the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent refused to include any acknowledgement of US maritime rights - but then, the British had already ceased their practice of impressing Americans, while the war of 1812 was on. The War, in short, did not win that point - the coming to an end of the Napoleonic Wars won it.
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Sorry, but if they had negotiated in good faith before the conflict wrt things like impression of sailors then the war wouldn’t have happened. And it WAS a big deal…and they knew we thought it was, since we sent enough notes to them about it, even sending a delegation. Your assertion that it was the end of the Napoleonic Wars that stopped it is both hindsight and speculative, since we don’t know what the situation would have been had the Brits been overwhelmingly victorious in the war of 1812, or had the war never happened and the US just taken things like impression of their sailors and civilians without protest. Would the Brits have felt that any time they needed sailors for their fleet that they could just impress them from US ships? Would they have felt that the US needed to take a back seat on trade to the Brits as well?
It’s also speculative of you to say that the Brits wouldn’t have gone to war over US westward expansion. Personally, I think that the Brits would have felt free to pressure the US to stifle their trade and in their further westward expansion as they felt they could do what they wanted wrt our sailors and civilians, and this would have become even more entrenched without the war of 1812.
It isn’t “speculative”, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars meant the end of the necessity to impress anyone (Yank or Brit) as sailors. At the end of each major war in this time period, the Brits would “pay off” large portions of the fleet - many of the ships would go out of commission, their officers would go on “half pay”, and their crews would simply be let go.
That would not be any different if the Brits had won in 1812, or not fought at all. No Napoleonic wars = no need for impressment to man the fleet, because most of the fleet was ‘laid up’. This only makes sense, as paying for an enormous fleet at full strength when there was no war to fight would be foolish.
Not sure why this point is apparently controversial.
More controversially - the notion that it was impressment alone that sparked the war is to uncritically accept Madison’s propaganda at face value. Certainly, if that was the case it is odd to say the least that the New England states (the ones most involved in matters of shipping and trade) were dead set against the war, while the “War Hawks” came from the Western states, who lacked sailors; or to fail to notice that, as I said earlier, the ostensible cause of the war doesn’t even rate a mention in the peace treaty!
Unlike the previous point, sure, this is speculative: I said as much in my post (“While it is a bit of a historical “what if” …”). However, it is speculation based on some sound facts: namely, that the Brits were exhausted and drained by the 20 years of war they had gone through, and had small appetite for more of the same, just to support some native allies.
This assumes the Brits were, for some reason, incapable of making decisions based on factors like relative power, without being shown the way with war.
I realize it is part of the American mythology that the war was a sort of moral victory, even if it wasn’t a physical one.
However, facts are facts: when a country wages aggressive war to take a certain territory, and that territory is not taken, the aggressor has lost. It is not “a draw”, because the defender had no particular interest in taking the territory of the aggressor.
I see you go back to that–but the point remains, there is no clear evidence it was an “aggressive war to take territory.” The U.S. started the war, but wars aren’t always fought over territory. We fought a war against the Barbary pirates, and did seize territory during the war–but never with an intention of “taking” territory.
We actually seized territory in the War of 1812 as well (as did the British.) I go back to thinking that while a strong contingent of the Western War Hawks did legitimately want Canada, I really don’t know how we can ignore the Commander-in-Chiefs words on the matter. In our system of government it’s the President who decides on war strategy.
Madison made a “recommendation” (albeit he concludes it by hemming and hawing around politically exposing himself with a formal recommendation) you can read here, and it exclusively talks about naval issues. Additionally Madison actually asserts that Great Britain is already waging war against the United States, that the U.S. is at peace but Britain is waging war against it. In the later declaration of war itself, the document even uses that phrasing, saying that it is declared “to exist” between the two countries. (The DOW is short and found here.)
I agree Canada “may” have been in peril of conquest, but I think the risk of that was very small. I think while you can certainly argue that the U.S. may have attempted to keep Canada had it conquered it, that is highly speculative. The weight of evidence suggests Madison (the one who actually set U.S. war policy) didn’t have any real territorial designs on Canada. The U.S. isn’t a Westminster style system, we have serious divisions between legislative/executive, so the opinion of a wing of the Democratic-Republican party aren’t the same as the actual war strategy or goals as promulgated in the executive branch.
This is one part of the War of 1812 I have studied extensively–and I’ve never found a single official document or record of a speech in which a member of the administration advocated for or indicated a plan to conquer Canada. I’m aware of several Congressional speeches to that effect–and statements of Madison indicating a desire to seize Canadian territory temporarily, but only for leverage.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
It isn’t “speculative”, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars meant the end of the necessity to impress anyone (Yank or Brit) as sailors. At the end of each major war in this time period, the Brits would “pay off” large portions of the fleet - many of the ships would go out of commission, their officers would go on “half pay”, and their crews would simply be let go.
That would not be any different if the Brits had won in 1812, or not fought at all. No Napoleonic wars = no need for impressment to man the fleet, because most of the fleet was ‘laid up’. This only makes sense, as paying for an enormous fleet at full strength when there was no war to fight would be foolish.
Not sure why this point is apparently controversial.
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It’s speculative because, as you say they would pay off the fleet and downsize when they weren’t at war, but would be right back impressing again when and if they did need more sailors. Yes, the end of the NW meant a downsize…that’s not speculative. But it IS speculative to say that this meant the RN would never do so again against US sailors or citizens down the line. Basically, the war of 1812 stopped that practice for all time.
It’s also hindsight…since the then preyed upon US sailors and citizens and US government didn’t know that the NW were going to end, or that the RN would be paying off and downsizing their force, and that, assuming they survived the inhuman conditions in the RN fleet and the various actions presumably those impressed sailors and citizens of the US would then be free to go home. In theory.
It was one of several reasons the US went to war with the British. I never said it was the only one.
Again, this is hindsight, and maybe it would have factored in, and maybe not. Certainly a defeated US or a US that bowed to the British and did what they ordered would have been in a far weaker position wrt that expansion.
I think they were arrogant enough to feel that the US should do what we were told. And I think that this isn’t something they substantially changed until after their empire started to unravel after WWI.
It was both a moral and physical victory for the US, IMHO. It consolidated the country. It opened the way for southern and western expansion. It solidified the fact that we WERE our own nation, and that we were free to trade as we liked and our citizens were not open to impressment by foreign powers. Likewise Canada won. The British, for who this was a side show won as well, since they defeated Bony, solidified their place at that time as THE per-eminent super power on the planet, and set the stage for a much expanded and more powerful US who was not continental in size to normalize relationships and even come to the aid of the old mother country in it’s time of need. Like I said, the only losers were the native peoples, who got fucked (well, and Spain, who we swiped a bunch of land from, first in Florida and later in the south west).
Horseshit. And when one of the parties was playing passive aggressive dominance games, getting them to back the fuck off and stop playing them and treating you like a real nation IS a win.
