The national morale boost it gave lasted for a long time afterward, and got Andrew Jackson elected President. Those things were pretty critical, treaties notwithstanding.
The protection of the natives, and the prevention of westward expansion of the US, was never a vital British war aim. More like the British made various promises to the natives (of questionable sincerity) in order to secure their help in preventing the US invasion of Canada.
Certainly the Brits would have liked, if at all possible, a western confederation of natives friendly to themselves as a makeweight against the US, but mainly to prevent the US from becomming powerful enough to usurp their position in Canada - not because of any real love for the natives. It was purely self-interested (on the native side too of course - they did not love the Brits but needed them as allies).
The goal of this self-interest was the protection of British interests on the continent. That goal was achieved, albeit without the natives, whose loss the Brits would have preferred not to suffer but could, basically, shrug off.
The natives were going to be crushed, with or without war with the Brits. I sincerely doubt that the Brits would have declared war on the US to protect them. As it was, it was the US who declared war on the brits - and this declaration was necessary because the US coveted British possessions in North America.
Thus, since the war was only necessary because of the war aim of obtaining british possessions, and that war aim was frustrated, the war was a US failure.
Absolutely. And it is this morale boost and the “Era of Good Feelings” that followed that explains why the US thought the war victorious.
Sober hindsight however reveals that, objectively, it was not; because the US failed in its motivational war aim - uniting North America.
Good points, and I would agree that the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans is a significant event in US history. But to claim that it was a critical victory impacting war aims in the War of 1812, as the OP’s friend seems to be alleging, doesn’t make sense. After all, after a peace is negotiated and signed, it would seem to me that all parties’ war aims have been settled one way or another. In other words, I’d suggest that while the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans was certainly significant in American history, that victory had no impact on the War of 1812–the outcome of which had, of course, already been decided by the time the Battle was fought.
The British arming the Creeks in Alabama had nothing to do with Canada, and everything to do with hindering US westward expansion and gaining control of the gulf coast. The British would have liked very much to control trade from the Great Lakes all the way down to New Orleans via control of the Mississippi. (You seriously think they didn’t want a warm-water port for their traders?)
(And I didn’t say the British armed the Native Americans out of any concern for the welfare of those people. They were using the Indians to further their own goals.)
I should note that the British continued to provide arms to Native Americans after the war. In Florida, for example. Were they still protecting Canada?
They would have liked it, yes. No-one disputes that.
The issue is whether this was really a vital “war aim” of the British.
The question is - if the US moved against the natives, expanding westwards (but not against Canada) would the British have gone to war to protect the natives and to prevent this westwards expansion? That is, was the War of 1812 necessary for the US westwards expansion?
I very strongly suspect that the brits were happy to supply guns to natives in the hope that they gave the US a hard time, and in their fond dreams hoped that this would stall US expansion, but they most certainly were not willing to launch a war against the US at the height of the napoleonic struggle to contain US expansion.
Moreover, supplying weapons to various allies isn’t unconnected to the US attempt on Canada. A stategic distraction of the enemy is always welcome in war, or in preparing for possible war. The more the US has troubles in Alabama, the less able it is to field armies against Upper Canada.
If the British had no designs on the Gulf Coast, why did they continue to arm Native Americans there after the war?
Canada’s on the winning side by definition, because Canada’s a winning country.
There was no intent to insult.
We eventually got a perky little song about it 
I was unaware that the Scots, Welsh and Irish enjoyed being lumped in with the English. I thought that they preferred the distinction generally.
This is the line that I was taught in class, but in the ensuing years, I have seen remarkably little evidence that the Brits were actually engaged in arming any of the indigenous nations prior to the war. (Once the war got going, they were definitely interested in employing Tecumseh as an ally, but the claims that they were still providing arms to Indians subsequent to Fallen Timbers, (1794), often appear to be greater in the imagination of the expanding settlers than documented in British journals. Tecumseh rejected an offer of alliance from Britain in 1808 and later threatened Harrison that he would establish an alliance in 1810, but I do not recall seeing any evidence that Tecumseh ever carried out his threat to Harrison.) Are there good references to support the claims?
What the Welsh, Scots and N.Irish don’t appreciate is being forgotten or disregarded, when people assume that Britain = England. Particularly important when your relatives or ancestors are dying in pointless foreign wars.
And what the English don’t appreciate is taking the collective blame for every stupid decision a politician makes, when that politician is just as likely to be Welsh, Scots or N.Irish as English. They also don’t appreciate the backlash from the other home nations when foreigners think Britain = England.
So it pisses us ALL off. Cut it out.
Probably because Pakenham had orders to ignore any talk or rumor of treaty negotiations. A victory at New Orleans would have stopped any and all trade along the Mississippi, and split off the recent Louisiana Purchase.
It all ended up as a moot point because Pakenham overslept and his men were soundly defeated.
Doesn’t follow. An expeditionary force is sent out to prosecute an ongoing war. It is instructed to ignore rumours of treaties. But once there is a treaty, the expedition will be sent new orders to cease prosecuting the now-resolved war. Obviously you don’t want your general to do things half-assed just because the enemy is spreading rumours. You want to negotiate from strength, and being able to call off your dangerous attack dog is a nice bargaining point. Offering to call off your adorable sleeping attack puppy isn’t such a nice bargaining point.
What evidence is there that the British would have unilaterally abrogated the treaty? Was there a recent history of such behaviour? Had they reneged on items in other treaties with the French, Dutch, etc over the past couple of centuries? I’m sure it wasn’t the only instance of post-treaty hostilities in the 17th-19th centuries, communications being what they were. How many other times did the British use such circumstances to unilaterally modify treaties?
“New Orleans was a valuable strategic location” is not evidence that the British would have abrogated a treaty. It provides a motive, but that is all, and there were a great many motives for living up to treaties in the 19th century, given the nature of relations between European powers at the time.
This shows a confusion about how the United States existed as a country in the early 19th century (and for many, many years afterward.) The concept of some sort of central “organ” of the United States that would have to focus attention on Alabama and then lose focus on Canada is more in line with a European leader in this era who did have genuine control of his country.
In the United States the power of the President at this time had unclear boundaries. For example even many years after the War of 1812 the President of the United States would have been powerless to stop the activity of Americans that were moving into Texas and eventually causing an “independence” movement there. While Andrew Jackson certainly didn’t have any serious problems with Mexico losing land, if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Andrew Jackson was President in Washington but out to the west, where there was no serious U.S. military presence on a permanent basis and where any communication was more than 30 days away, he was irrelevant and powerless.
At least until the American Civil War I think it is much more accurate to look at the United States as a place that was often little more than a loose confederation of semi-autonomous entities, and once you got into the actual territories and out of state boundaries you essentially had regions of true and practical lawlessness.
This wasn’t the U.K. or France, where individual initiative at the citizen level leading to a military conflict would be unthinkable.
The only reason the central government ever really got involved in westward expansion is when the Americans actually doing the settling ran into a situation in which they wanted more muscle than they could muster on their own. Then their cause would be taken up by congressional representatives whose constituents had a vested interest in the whole thing and the rest of the country’s representatives would argue back and forth about whether or not there was a desire to expend effort and funds on something that was happening 1,000+ miles away and that people living in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire didn’t know very much about or care about.
To get back to the War of 1812, the concept of “American war aims” should be looked at in this context. There’s no real evidence that James Madison (President at the time) really wanted a war at all.
You can sort of look at the United States in 1812 as it was embodied by its most prominent leaders:
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“The West” – at this time that meant the areas of the old Northwest Territories (Michigan, Ohio, et cetera) and the regions directly to the west that American settlers were expanding into at this time. The West is represented by Henry Clay (one of the leading advocates of the War of 1812 and one of the most influential men in congress in this era–he is probably more responsible for the War of 1812 actually happening than any other one person.)
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“New England” – Represented by Daniel Webster. New England had serious beefs with the British due to the fact that New England was particularly reliant on shipping at this time and the British were often interfering with American shipping and violating the rights of American ships. However, New England as a whole didn’t seem to feel this was a justification for war, and additionally New England felt that if war did break out they would suffer the most from it. Since this region was so reliant on shipping, open war with the British would mean New England shipping firms would see their ships being openly taken in large numbers on the high seas by the Royal Navy. New Englanders also felt that the major benefits of any possible war with the British would be primarily realized by western states and western expansionists, not New England. Daniel Webster opposed the war, however he was a level headed guy and he strongly denounced New England extremists who openly spoke of secession during the war itself.
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“The South” – Represented by John Calhoun. At the time of the war Calhoun seems to have mostly been a strong nationalist who was incensed by impressment and other beefs with the British [Which is interesting because in later years Calhoun would become extremely sectionalist. To the point that many blame him for the ideological backdrop in the South that lead to secession being a major political movement that ultimately culminated in the ACW.] The South had some things to gain by an American victory, however there is a genuine question of how much they really had to gain. Southerners were moving west into areas that would later become Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. So by and large I don’t see much material gain from a war with the British, Southerners weren’t expanding in areas that conflicted with the British. It’s also worth noting that the concept of Americans expanding into areas controlled by Mexico due to a desire to avoid clashing with the British also suggests a sort of central planning that was wholly nonexistent when it came to American westward expansion.
Individual Americans expanded wherever they wanted, and generally people from the North tended to expand to the Northwest and people from the South tended to expand to the Southwest. Those that went the northerly route did end up clashing with the British a good deal and there were war scares in the 19th century because of this. Most conflicts that these Americans got themselves involved in, be it with the Mexican government, British settlers, or native tribes were not conflicts that the central government had any driving force in instigating and the central government’s involvement happened after the fact when they would go in to try to win the fight for the settlers. In some cases the Federal government would think better of that and negotiate instead of going out with guns a blazing (this was what happened in the Oregon territory, and that was almost certainly because the people running the Federal government didn’t want a war with the British Empire.)
I shouldn’t give the impression that Clay, Webster, and Calhoun encompassed all Americans of the time. None of them really represented the Mid-Atlantic region; and other prominent politicians of the time like James Madison and James Monroe wouldn’t really fit under the same umbrella as Clay/Webster/Calhoun even if they did share the same region as one of the three (in the case of Madison/Monroe they were both Southerners.)
So while Henry Clay may have had very specific goals, and people like Henry Clay may have had very specific goals, American probably didn’t. Some Americans were like John Calhoun–just pissed about things like the British boarding of American ships at sea. Some Americans were like Daniel Webster and staunchly opposed to the war, some even more so–to the point of advocating their state’s leaving the union.
Finally, to get back to it–while Henry Clay favored war because he felt it would aid American expansion, he didn’t want expansion through conquest of Canada. In fact by and large I don’t think many American leaders wanted that. Thomas Jefferson, quipping from retirement did express some desire to see the British pushed off the American continent. However he also felt that the areas of the Louisiana Purchase and further West should form as totally new countries with friendly relations and similar government to that of the United States; so his opinion probably isn’t one that was in line with that of most other people of the time.
Henry Clay like many other Americans of his time felt that the British were a source of the troubles with native leaders like Tecumseh, later historical study has shown that while this was a widespread belief, the truth of the matter was the British involvement with the natives was minimal. The real reason the American settlers were running in to trouble is they were colonizing other people’s land and people tend to fight for that because once you take a people’s land you are essentially depriving them of the ability to sustain themselves.
Madison was of the opinion that conquest of Canada would be a way to get what was wanted out of the British, nothing more. Essentially the game plan was to conquer Canada, then tell the British they could have it back in exchange for agreements to stop interfering with American shipping, American fishing interests, and to stop riling up the natives out West.
Keep in mind the nature of Canada’s population at the time: United Empire Loyalists (at least 42,000 left en masse after the Treaty of Paris, many loyalists left years later and many left years before, so it is hard to say what proportion of the Canadian population were transplanted persons from the 13 Colonies–we do know it is an extremely significant portion of Canada’s population), French speaking people in Quebec, pre-Revolution European immigrants, and post-Revolution European immigrants.
UELs would obviously be against American governorship since many of them had lost significant land and property to illegal seizures by Americans. The French were fairly happy under the British since the British were good about letting them maintain their legal and cultural norms, and there would have been a fear that maybe American governance would have changed all of that. Pre-Revolution immigrants (most English-speaking) probably had some number who supported a break with the crown during the American Revolution and those individuals may have still wanted a break with the crown. However during the Revolution their number was so small that Canada never did break away so we can surmise most pre-Revolution non-French immigrants were opposed to being part of the U.S. and opposed to severing ties with the crown. Post-Revolution immigrants seem to have been largely indifferent to the political question but were obviously opposed to American soldiers ransacking border towns.
All of this combines to say that Canada would not have been governable under the United States system of government at this time. The U.S. had no real mechanism by which they would hold a hostile population under their thumb. The United States was government with most decisions being made by State and Local governments. If the citizens who made up those governments all essentially weren’t loyal to the concept of America and instead wanted ties with the British Empire, then it’d be extremely difficult for the Federal government to do very much. The Federal government was not then (and really still isn’t) in the business of managing local affairs and if local political leadership was incapable of staying loyal it would mean you’d have to look at military rule. [Note that pretty much all of this is proven out years after the War of 1812 in the ACW. State governments decided they didn’t want to be part of the United States and they left, only by violent military conflict could the Federal government stop this and only by running these states as occupied military territories was the Federal government able to exercise control. Only because Southerners wanted to be able to get back to normalcy with their lives was local government able to come back in a form that was loyal to the United States.]
In 1812 the United States Army was not organized in the manner of an Army that could conduct a prolonged occupation. It was extremely small by design, most Americans strongly opposed a large standing Army. Militias provided for the vast majority of the personnel, and militia enlistment was usually extremely finite and for only a few months or a single year at the most. Meaning that any prolonged conflict would require a large number of citizens interested in fighting it for years and years–if they weren’t, they’d simply leave when their term of service ended which was usually a very very short term.
While conscription was used in small amounts during the Revolutionary War and occasionally by State governments wanting to fill militia rolls, it never was a major source of military manpower until the American Civil War. Also, because the United States Federal Government was so weak relative to the States at this time it really didn’t have the power to push the issue of conscription. While the Federal government was Herculean in strength compared to the Confederation days, it was still not powerful enough to enforce conscription if a bunch of people got antsy about it. By the 1860s, it was a different story, but in 1812 large scale conscription by the Federal government would have been impossible. [Madison did in fact try to start conscription for the war, unsuccessfully.]
Madison an his advisers were aware of everything about occupying Canada that I just stated, and that is why their intention was to use Canada as a bargaining chip to get what they wanted out of the British, which was essentially “lay off our shipping and don’t get in our way with westward expansion.” There is strong historical evidence the British really weren’t doing much to stop American westward expansion, at least not much that had material effect. However again, there was a very strong belief that the major source of troubles with the natives was because of British support of the natives and British instigation.
A few things are extremely ironic about the War of 1812, when you take all of this into consideration:
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By far the most important thing, in terms of the long term history of the United States, to come from the war was the Battle of New Orleans. A battle that was fought after a peace treaty had been signed. I argue it was the most important thing to come out of the War of 1812 because it directly catapulted Andrew Jackson to fame and lead to his Presidency, probably the single most important Presidency pre-Lincoln and post-Washington, in terms of how it shaped the country and its history.
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While America and the U.K. had been butting heads off and on since the Treaty of Paris, the real reason for the pre-War of 1812 troubles all stemmed from the Orders in Council. After Napoleon’s loss at Trafalgar he attempted to defeat the British with economic warfare, and essentially prohibited any country, neutral or otherwise, from trading with the U.K. The U.K. responded in kind, and this meant the Royal Navy was going to actively stop American traders from sailing into ports that were part of the Napoleonic continental system. [Napoleon’s lack of any real naval presence after Trafalgar meant he had great difficulty with stopping people from smuggling to the U.K.; the dominance of the Royal Navy meant that trade to the continent was significantly impacted.]
The Orders in Council were repealed prior to the declaration of war, most likely if this had been digested by the American public before the DoW, Clay would have lost much of the support he had in advocating for war and the War Hawks in Congress would have lost the vote.
Since this was 1812, Madison didn’t learn of the British repeal for over a month, and by the time he did he was some 30+ days into the war itself and couldn’t look back.
When all is said and done I’ll say that I can’t really agree with the concept of the United States losing the War of 1812, since conquest of Canada was only part of a larger strategy whose ultimate aim was to end British interference with American shipping and westward expansion. Not a goal in and of itself (not even of Henry Clay and other expansionists–they wanted to expand, but not north.)
I don’t think the British lost, since they lost nothing from the war and essentially returned to the status quo ante.
I can’t say the United States won, either. They got what they wanted, but it wasn’t because of the War of 1812. I think both the British Empire and the United States probably would have been better off had the war never been fought, but I don’t think it had much of a negative impact overall for either side.
On some levels it probably had a positive and unifying effect on the United States (though not enough to even come close to ending sectional problems that would ultimately lead to the ACW.) The fact that it was a hard fought war with many defeats also probably was a factor in keeping the Federal government out of “managing” westward expansion. [Out of a desire to avoid direct conflict with powerful entities like the British Empire.] By and large the fact that western expansion was primarily an individual-driven affair was probably a net positive for the United States. Essentially it was gaining territory without having to invest in expensive infrastructure and in major resettlement operations.
I think the only clear-cut “winners” would be Canadians (note I consider them a distinct entity from the British Empire); the War of 1812 gave Canada more of a national consciousness and helped lay the foundations of Canada as a state. I think this is probably why the War is elevated in the minds of some Canadians as a war fought to avoid annexation by America. I think history is not on the side of people who think the United States had any intentions of annexation, given the realities of what the United States was in 1812 there was honestly no mechanism by which it could really handle annexing Canada.
That conclusion doesn’t follow at all. The fact that the US had no ‘mechanism to handle annexation’ has about zero bearing on the motivation for war-making. War-makers make war all the time without having any clue as to how to handle the end-game, should they defeat the enemy in the field and win.
Think of Afganistan and Iraq. The US (and in the case of Afganistan Canada and the other allies) have, as far as I can see, no real end game plan for these two countries. While it is true they have no wish to annex them, they also have (seemingly) no idea what to do with them.
Leaders were often no wiser in 1812 then they are now, and they were just as likely to believe their own propaganda. Many in the US were of the opinion in 1812 that the population in Canada would willingly join the US if the Brits were defeated in the field, just as many in the US were of the opinion that the Iraqis would be greatful for getting rid of Saddam and willingly embrace the goals the US laid out for them. Note that both positions had some reality - there were indeed many in Canada who would have been glad of a US victory. This fact tends to get forgotten in the reality of US defeat, as those impulses were buried deep by the patriotic revival following winning the war.
Moreover, the fact that the US was riven by different interests - the united states rather than the post-civil war united states - does not wholly prevent the operation of military realities: however decentralized they may be, posing a number of strategic destractions still makes sense.
In addition, the United States by 1812 had experience in absorbing a hostile population, in Louisiana. We forget about it now, but the large French Catholic community in New Orleans wasn’t the least bit happy about being shunted from Spain to France to the mostly Protestant English-speaking United States in 1803.
But, they quickly became reconciled. Peace and prosperity will do that. Under federalism, Louisiana maintained dual-language courts and government for many decades, and Louisiana to this day maintains its unique system of Napoleonic-based state law.
I certainly agree that the annexation of Canada wasn’t a primary aim of the War Hawks in 1812. The conflict was about maritime rights and trade. But if the invasion had gone better, annexation (partial or whole) would certainly have been on the table, and the initial hostility of the rather sparse population wouldn’t have been an insuperable barrier.
You seem to have disregarded the key point in my assertion that annexation wasn’t a war goal–namely that Madison and his advisers only wanted to hold Canada as a bargaining chip and not as a permanent conquest. [The lengthy explanation as to how impossible any large scale annexation would have been from a position of political/legal reality in the United States in 1812 was just intended to illustrate why Madison didn’t really want Canada.]
From my readings the historical consensus is definitely that at least as far as the men who were actually running the war went, there was no intention of permanent Canadian annexation. In fact historians generally regard the idea that the War of 1812 was fought over an attempt to annex Canada as a persistent yet false belief perpetuated by Canadian patriotism.
There are a few good resources out there that highlight Madison’s thinking leading in to the War of 1812. Probably the most accessible today is Gary Willis’ “James Madison” published in 2002. You can get a relevant excerpt from this here. Since almost the entirety of Madison’s war planning revolved around a “quick conquest” of Canada and then using Canada as a bargaining chip to address all American grievances with the British, permanent annexation as a goal simply goes against the historical record.
If Madison was planning to conquer Canada to use it as a bargaining chip (and history shows he most certainly was), then he couldn’t also have intended to permanently annex Canada; you can’t bargain with Canada if you don’t intend to give it back in exchange for getting what you want.
Of course, history played out far differently than Madison planned; the initial invasion of Canada was disastrous and resulted in temporary loss of the Michigan territory. The entirety of Madison’s strategy was also probably flawed, in his mind the British would have to capitulate to his demands if he had taken Canada. He felt that the British were reliant on Canadian natural resources (especially timber) to successfully prosecute their war against Napoleon. The truth of the matter is, if Madison’s armies had successfully taken Canada in 1812 it almost certainly would not have spelled doom for Britain’s war efforts. In fact it would not have materially changed the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars and it probably would have lead to the War of 1812 lasting longer and still probably ending with a return to the status quo ante.
While the idea of the War of 1812 as a war fought for the “freedom of Canada” is a pleasant fiction for Canadians, there is no basis whatsoever for such a view of the war in the actual historical record. Remember, James Madison was President of the United States, and while a much weaker office than it was today that meant he was still commander in chief in 1812–if he didn’t want to annex Canada then whatever else anyone said in regards to a desire to annex Canada really didn’t mean very much.