I was born in 1960, so was too young. My father, however, and a lot of my cousins, uncles and other relations weren’t so lucky.
Sure, but that’s hindsight talking. NOW it’s pretty obvious, but, as with India, that whole Empire thingy at the time it seemed a really good idea…and letting go didn’t seem nearly so wise a course.
-XT
I just shed a single tear and saluted the flag.
Quite so. But up to the Civil War, there was a strong urge to expand northwards in the east. Manifest Destiny and all that. The post-war urge to punish was a change from the urge to expand and conquer that I was talking about, and I consider it more of a fizzling out that led to the Treaty of Washington.
You’re talking about a place where the most gloriously-remembered battle was a resounding defeat. Compared to the Alamo, a draw in the War of 1812 was absolutely great!
Well of course there’s a bit of hindsight here, and the Empire was never sustainable in any case, being way too expensive to maintain, particularly after WWII when Britain was genuinely, totally, fucking skint. The loss of Empire was handled about as well as is possible with these things, I suppose.
Still, it’s amusing to consider what would have happened if the Peninsular Army under Wellington (or any reasonable facsimile thereof) had been allowed its head in the US, but they had more pressing matters to attend to at the time.
174 years ago yesterday (Saturday), although it’s still Saturday right now in Texas. March 6, 1836. I don’t EVEN have to look that up, it was so drilled into me.
IIRC, Wellington refused the ‘honor’ of leading troops into America. I seriously doubt that, as powerful as you guys were then (and let’s not be coy…you were one of two major superpowers in the world at the time), you could have logistically supported sending that massive of an army to US soil. That was one of the big issues, and one of the reasons you got a major army wiped out at New Orleans, and why, despite numerically superior forces you didn’t take Baltimore, or follow up after burning Washington.
Even today it would be a bitch to send a large force so far into hostile territory…back then it would be a nightmare, even staging out of Canada. It’s vastly different from sending your army to Portugal to fight the French in Spain…and even THAT was logistically difficult for you guys to support.
This isn’t to say that the UK couldn’t have done it btw…but I think the cost of attempting to do so would have been more than your public could or would have accepted, considering the level of provocation. We weren’t exactly the French, after all. 
-XT
We wouldn’t have needed to do it. Just go on enforcing the blockade that had already dried up the coasting trade. Historically Britain’s strength has been projected through its superior sea power, and when we’ve strayed from this doctrine, it’s often resulted in failure.
Heh. You think you could have blockaded the US? At the end of that supply chain? Our ships were newer, more heavily armed, and we had the same naval tradition you did. Only more so.
Yeah, the Brits think *they *perfected “rum, sodomy and the lash”.
That’s the new Cinemax series, right?
Great Britain certainly COULD have done it; it’s simply that they frankly had bigger fish to fry. The “wiped out” “army” at New Orleans wasn’t even close to wiped out, and by the standards of the conflict in Europe wasn’t that major an army. They gave North America as much attention as the necessity dictated. A devastating invasion could have been mounted, but what purpose would it have served? Burn down more cities? Re-occupy a country that would have simply re-rebelled, thereby repeating the same problems of 30 years earlier?
I’m sure the United States could have led one hell of an invasion into Norway in June 1944, but their focus lay elsewhere.
My understanding (and I’m not all that familiar with the 1812 war, admittedly) is that we has pretty much voluntarily stifled our own trade BEFORE the conflict…which had pretty much cut us off from both importing refined goods from Europe and exporting our own raw materials. I don’t see how GB could have really ramped up the pressure in this regard much more than was already the case, honestly…and this leaves aside the logistics again. Blockading continental ports was a stretch for the RN…trying for an extended blockade on THIS side of the pond would have been a logistics nightmare, even with staging ports in Canada and the British possessions in the southern Atlantic.
Granted, I’m no expert, but it seems highly unlikely to me that they could have done so.
Sure they did…except that shortly after the ‘war’ started with the US the French went tits up (until Napoleon made a brief come back). I don’t believe that even the Brits could move the size of an army they were using in Europe all the way to the US and fought in the same way they did there.
Sure, we weren’t on par with the French, but as with the Russians we had nature on our side…in our case we had thousands of miles of ocean between us and the Brits. Yeah, they could have staged out of Canada or the Bahamas, but think of what that would entail in terms of men, money, supplies and logistics. And, unlike the French, the average Brit (who would be paying for the war) wasn’t all that keen on American conquest, at least that’s my understanding.
10,000 men was a pretty big force, even by European standards. For an invasion force coming from thousands of miles away it was a HUGE force for the time. Even today moving 10,000 men to the other side of the ocean would be a complex and large undertaking…and we have all the advantages of modern equipment. Aside from the US and the Brits I’m not sure anyone else COULD move that large a force even today…not and fight a hostile force on their own ground as well.
Yep. They moved what they could and attacked as they could…and when Napoleon surrendered the first time they moved as big an army as they could, given their resources, to attack us directly and attempt to cut the country in two and force either a surrender or a peace on their terms (which would have entailed the US coming once more into their sphere of influence). Instead, their large invasion army was forced to land in unfavorable terrain (logistics), and fight under unfavorable conditions, and was essentially militarily defeated (they lost over 2000 dead and wounded in a force of 10,000…that’s a hell of a lot of casualties, even by European standards).
The reconquest of North America? Bringing the American colonies back into the fold? At a minimum gaining control of the Mississippi river and all the trade that would entail? None of these were small things from the Brits perspective. They didn’t commit 10,000 men (plus the 5000+ they had committed in the north) for no reason at all…this was a resource expensive undertaking that truly stretched their abilities at the time.
Perhaps…though this isn’t necessarily how it would have worked out. The New England states were already leaning toward some kind of reconciliation with the Brits, there were plenty of folks who were still loyalists, and even if the US remained sovereign we almost surely would have been penned in and probably put into a subservient position wrt British rule and British trade. And even if none of this WOULD have happened, this assumes that those in power in the UK agreed with the assessment that retaking the colonies would have just had them putting down another rebellion in 30 years…which I’ve never seen any evidence that they believed to be the case.
I’m not sure we could have invaded continental Europe without having a staging base in the UK (in Norway or Normandy or anywhere else), actually, but I’m not sure what this has to do with the question, except to underscore the logistics problem. In fact, I’m pretty sure we COULDN’T have invaded continental Europe without a friendly UK to stage out of…just as I’m sure that Germany couldn’t have invaded the US during WWII either.
-XT
BTW, I apologize if my tone is coming across rough (I can’t tell, honestly)…it’s not my intention. I’m sort of drinking heavily and so I’m not tracking all that great. No roughness intended in the last post, and not trying to say I know all that much about the war of 1812. I’ve been in discussion with friends who are military historians, and so, filtered through the alcohol, this is pretty much what I’ve gotten from those discussions.
-XT
We HAD blockaded it. Your coastal trade had dwindled away to nothing - not just an inconvenience, the economy was grinding to a halt and when the RN was relieved of the distraction of Napoleon and put forth its full power the blockade would be complete. (although the Yankee merchants continued to trade with Britain regardless of the prohibitions issuing from Washington). You had very few warships - even the best ones couldn’t be everywhere at once - and the fate of the Chesapeake showed what would happen to inexperienced crews without any seatime.
And even before the war we had already essentially blockaded ourselves…which nearly caused the Northern states to secede from the union. But what effect do you suppose a blockade had on the US? Who did it hurt more…the US, who imported mainly refiled goods from Europe, or you Brits, who imported large quantities of raw materials from the US? I’d say it was a wash, and blockading us wasn’t going to threaten us as a nation nearly as much as you taking, say, New Orleans would have. After all, as you say, you were blockading us already…yet chose to mount military expeditions into our territory anyway. Why? If the blockade was all that was needed (and assuming you could have supported it indefinitely), why go to the expense of mounting active operations? The answer, of course, is that the blockade of a country as unsophisticated as the US was at the time only hurt us so much.
-XT
Continental armies during the Napoleonic Wars were routinely an order of magnitude larger than this. 10k was not a large army by European standards. Even by British standards (the Brits fielding the smallest army of any of the Great Powers against Napoleon). And sustaining it logistically? Most armies lived off the land during this period. Provisions were obtained locally.
It’s not like southern France was significantly logistically simpler than the US would have been, and Wellington seemed to do fine there. I don’t think there would have been any insurmountable logistical obstacles to moving the entire Peninsular Army to the Americas.
But there wouldn’t have been any point, either. The War of 1812 was never particularly popular in the States, and there was never any great dedication to the cause by the troops. But if the British suddenly posed an existential threat to the country, I expect the States would have gotten serious about fielding an army. And while the Peninsular Army could have whupped any army the US actually did field in the war, it would have been badly outnumbered by the force that would have been raised to face it and incapable of subduing a hostile populace.
Portugal was a hell of a lot closer to the British Isles than Canada was. 
I don’t think the obstacles were insurmountable, but I think that attempting to move a continental sized army to the US would have been…very, very difficult and a hell of a lot more expensive in terms of expense.
True…but all of those armies had land based logistical centers, by and large, or relied on well established local towns and cities, and their local supply. Think for a minute about the difference between moving a large army through western Europe and moving that same sized army down from Canada (though hundreds of miles of howling wilderness) and then trying to live off the land in New England. It’s not close to the same thing, at least not at the time we are talking about.
-XT
I’d say New Orleans was unnecessary (and, of course, irrelevant to the outcome of the war, the treaty had already been signed but nobody knew about it yet). If it had succeeded (and it might well have done against a less capable opponent than Jackson) it might have ratcheted up the pressure a bit but hat’s all. Meanwhile President Madison’s administration was now anxious to end the war while they still had the option to do so on tolerable terms. Things could only get worse.