War of 1812: Britain and the United States at War Again

The War of 1812 was a conflict fought from June 1812 to February 1815 between the United States and the United Kingdom, together with their allies, including many Native nations who fought alongside the British. Sparked by disputes over trade, the impressment of sailors and Native resistance on the American frontier, it saw failed American invasions of Canada, naval duels on the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, the burning of Washington and a peace treaty that changed no borders. It nonetheless shaped national identity in both the United States and Canada and was a disaster for Native nations east of the Mississippi.

Causes

The war grew out of the long struggle between Britain and Napoleonic France. Both powers tried to strangle the other’s trade. British Orders in Council from 1807 restricted neutral ships trading with French-controlled Europe, and the Royal Navy seized hundreds of American merchant vessels. American attempts at economic pressure, such as the Embargo Act of 1807, hurt the United States more than Britain.

Impressment was a second grievance. Desperate for sailors, the Royal Navy stopped American ships and took men it claimed were British subjects or deserters; several thousand Americans were forced into British service. In June 1807 HMS Leopard fired on the American frigate USS Chesapeake off Virginia and removed four alleged deserters, provoking outrage.

On the frontier, Americans blamed Britain for supporting the confederacy of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, which resisted the loss of Native lands. The Battle of Tippecanoe in November 1811 deepened this conviction. A group of young congressmen from the South and West, known as the War Hawks and led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, pressed for war, and many hoped to conquer or at least occupy Canada.

President James Madison asked Congress for war, and he signed the declaration on 18 June 1812 after close votes in both houses. Ironically, the British government had announced on 16 June that it would suspend the Orders in Council, formally revoking them on 23 June, but the news crossed the Atlantic too slowly to stop the war.

1812: the invasion of Canada fails

American leaders expected the conquest of Canada, defended by only a few thousand British regulars, to be easy. Instead, the first campaigns were humiliating. In July 1812 a British and Native force captured Fort Mackinac. On 16 August General William Hull surrendered Detroit and his army to Major General Isaac Brock and Tecumseh without a serious fight, and Fort Dearborn, on the site of present-day Chicago, fell the day before.

In October an American army crossed the Niagara River but was defeated at the Battle of Queenston Heights, where Brock was killed. A further advance towards Montreal in November ended when militia refused to cross the border.

The failures had several causes. The US Army was small and poorly led, many state militias were unreliable, and New England, whose merchants depended on trade with Britain, gave little support to the war. On the British side, Brock acted boldly, and alliances with Native nations, whose warriors knew the forests and terrain, multiplied the strength of the small British garrisons.

The war at sea

At sea, the small United States Navy won surprising early victories. On 19 August 1812 the heavy frigate USS Constitution destroyed HMS Guerriere, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides”. USS United States captured HMS Macedonian in October, and Constitution defeated HMS Java in December. American privateers captured hundreds of British merchant ships.

These victories boosted American morale but did not change the balance of sea power. On 1 June 1813 HMS Shannon captured USS Chesapeake off Boston in a brief, bloody fight in which the dying American captain, James Lawrence, urged his men not to give up the ship. By 1814 a tightening British blockade had confined most American warships to port and badly damaged the American economy.

1813: the Great Lakes and the West

Control of the Great Lakes was essential because armies depended on water transport. Both sides raced to build fleets. In April 1813 an American force raided York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and burned its parliament buildings. In the West, American troops were defeated at Frenchtown on the River Raisin in January 1813, where wounded prisoners were later killed.

The turning point in the West came on 10 September 1813, when Oliver Hazard Perry’s squadron won the Battle of Lake Erie. Cut off from supplies, the British abandoned Detroit. William Henry Harrison pursued them into Upper Canada and won the Battle of the Thames on 5 October 1813, where Tecumseh was killed. American attempts to take Montreal, however, failed at Châteauguay in October and Crysler’s Farm in November.

In the South the war merged with a civil war within the Creek Nation. Andrew Jackson’s forces defeated the Red Stick Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, and the Treaty of Fort Jackson that August forced the Creeks to cede about 23 million acres, including land belonging to Creeks who had fought alongside the Americans.

1814: Britain on the offensive

Napoleon’s abdication in April 1814 allowed Britain to send veteran troops to North America. On the Niagara frontier, a better-trained American army fought hard battles at Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane in July 1814, but neither side gained a decisive advantage.

In the Chesapeake Bay, a British force defeated American militia at Bladensburg on 24 August and entered the capital. In the burning of Washington, British troops set fire to the President’s House, the Capitol and other public buildings. Their next target, Baltimore, held out; the bombardment of Fort McHenry on 13–14 September inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Meanwhile, the American naval victory on Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh on 11 September turned back a large British invasion from Canada.

The Treaty of Ghent and New Orleans

Peace talks had opened in the Belgian city of Ghent in August 1814. With the war in Europe ending and both sides weary, the negotiators agreed on 24 December 1814 to restore the pre-war situation, known as status quo ante bellum. The treaty said nothing about impressment or neutral rights, which had faded as issues once the war with France ended.

News travelled slowly. On 8 January 1815, before the treaty reached America, Andrew Jackson’s mixed force of regulars, militia, free men of colour, Choctaw warriors and pirates under Jean Lafitte decisively defeated a British assault at the Battle of New Orleans. British casualties numbered about 2,000 killed, wounded or captured, against fewer than 100 for the Americans. The US Senate ratified the treaty on 16 February 1815, and the war officially ended when ratifications were exchanged the next day.

Consequences and legacy

For the United States, the war ended in a draw on paper but felt like a victory, thanks to New Orleans and the naval successes. It boosted nationalism, made Jackson a hero and future president, and ruined the Federalist Party, whose leaders had met in protest at the Hartford Convention of 1814–1815. The Rush–Bagot Agreement of 1817 limited warships on the Great Lakes, and the Convention of 1818 set much of the US–Canada border along the 49th parallel.

For British North America, the defeat of repeated invasions became a founding story of Canadian identity and helped ensure that the colonies remained separate from the United States. For Britain, the war was a sideshow to the struggle against Napoleon, and it is little remembered there today.

The war also left a lasting cultural mark. In the United States, the defence of Fort McHenry gave the country its national anthem, and USS Constitution, still a commissioned ship of the US Navy, is preserved in Boston. In Canada, the stories of Brock, Tecumseh and Laura Secord, who walked through the woods in 1813 to warn British troops of an American attack, became part of school history. Each country has tended to remember the episodes that flattered it, which is one reason the war is often described as one that everyone believes they won.

For Native nations, the war was a catastrophe. Tecumseh’s death ended hopes of a united resistance, Britain abandoned the idea of a Native buffer state, and the way was cleared for American settlement of the Old Northwest and the Southeast and, later, for forced removals.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1807, 22 June: HMS Leopard attacks USS Chesapeake.
• 1812, 18 June: The United States declares war on Britain.
• 1812, 16 August: Hull surrenders Detroit to Brock and Tecumseh.
• 1812, 19 August: USS Constitution defeats HMS Guerriere.
• 1813, 10 September: Perry wins the Battle of Lake Erie.
• 1813, 5 October: Tecumseh is killed at the Battle of the Thames.
• 1814, 24 August: British troops burn Washington.
• 1814, 24 December: The Treaty of Ghent is signed.
• 1815, 8 January: Jackson wins the Battle of New Orleans.
• 1815, 17 February: Ratifications are exchanged and the war formally ends.

Why it matters

The War of 1812 settled that Canada would not become part of the United States and that the young republic would survive as an independent power. It gave Americans a national anthem and new heroes, gave Canadians a story of shared defence, and marked the end of effective Native military resistance east of the Mississippi.