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The War of 1812
by Alan Brinkley
This reading is excerpted from Chapter Seven of Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (12th ed.). I
wrote the footnotes. If you use the questions below to guide your note taking (which is a good idea),
please be aware that several of the questions have multiple answers.
Study Questions
1. How did the United States try to avoid getting involved in the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France?
2. Why did the United States end up at war with Great Britain?
NOTE: There should be a lot of bullet points under the above questions in your notes.
3. Why were Tecumseh and the Prophet such important Indian leaders?
4. Why did the Federalists end up as losers of the War of 1812?
5. Most Americans felt like we won the War of 1812. Why?
6. Were the Americans who believed the War of 1812 was an American victory correct? Why or why not?
EXPANSION AND WAR
Two very different conflicts were taking shape in the later years of Thomas Jefferson’s
presidency that would, together, draw the United States into a difficult and frustrating war. One
was the continuing tension in Europe, which in 1803 escalated once again into a full-scale
conflict (the Napoleonic Wars). As the fighting escalated, both the British and the French took
steps to prevent the United States from trading with (and thus assisting) the other.
The other conflict was in North America itself, a result of the ceaseless westward expansion
of white settlement, which was now stretching to the Mississippi River and beyond, colliding
again with Native American populations committed to protecting their lands and their trade from
intruders. In both the North and the South, the threatened tribes mobilized to resist white
encroachments. They began as well to forge connections with British forces in Canada and
Spanish forces in Florida. The Indian conflict on land therefore became intertwined with the
European conflict on the seas, and ultimately helped cause the War of 1812, an unpopular
conflict with ambiguous results.
Conflict on the Seas
The early nineteenth century saw a dramatic expansion of American shipping in the Atlantic.
Britain retained significant naval superiority, but the British merchant marine1 was preoccupied
with commerce in Europe and Asia and devoted little energy to trade with America. Thus the
United States stepped effectively into the void and developed one of the most important
merchant marines in the world, which soon controlled a large proportion of the trade between
Europe and the West Indies.
In 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, a British fleet virtually destroyed what was left of the
French navy. Because France could no longer challenge the British at sea, Napoleon now chose
to pressure England through economic rather than naval means. The result was what he called
the Continental System, designed to close the European continent to British trade. Napoleon
1
Merchant marine: merchant fleet
issued a series of decrees barring British ships and neutral ships that had called at British ports
from landing their cargoes at any European port controlled by France or its allies. The British
government replied to Napoleon’s decrees by establishing—through a series of “orders in
council”—a blockade of the European coast. The blockade required that any goods being
shipped to Napoleon’s Europe be carried either in British vessels or in neutral vessels stopping at
British ports—precisely what Napoleon’s policies forbade.
American ships were caught between Napoleon’s decrees and Britain’s orders in council. If
they sailed directly for the European continent, they risked being captured by the British navy; if
they sailed by way of a British port, they risked seizure by the French. Both of the warring
powers were violating America’s rights as a neutral nation. But most Americans considered the
British, with their greater sea power, the worse offender. British ships pounced on Yankee
merchantmen all over the ocean; the French could do so only in European ports. Particularly
infuriating to Americans, British vessels stopped United States ships on the high seas and seized
sailors off the decks, making them victims of “impressment.”
Impressment
The British navy—with its floggings, low pay, and terrible shipboard conditions—was known as
a “floating hell” to its sailors. Few volunteered. Most had to be “impressed” (forced) into the
service. At every opportunity they deserted. By 1807, many of these deserters had joined the
American merchant marine or the American navy. To check this loss of vital manpower, the
British claimed the right to stop and search American merchant ships (although at first not naval
vessels) and reimpress deserters. They did not claim the right to take native-born Americans, but
they did claim the right to seize naturalized Americans born on British soil. In practice, the
British navy often made no such distinctions, impressing British deserters and native-born
Americans alike into service.
In the summer of 1807, the British went to more provocative extremes in an incident
involving a vessel of the American navy. Sailing from Norfolk, with several alleged deserters
from the British navy among the crew, the American naval frigate Chesapeake encountered the
British ship Leopard. When the American commander, James Barron, refused to allow the
British to search the Chesapeake, the Leopard opened fire. Barron had no choice but to
surrender, and a boarding party from the Leopard dragged four men off the American frigate.
When news of the Chesapeake-Leopard incident reached the United States, there was great
popular clamor for revenge. If Congress had been in session, it might have declared war. But
Jefferson and Madison2 tried to maintain the peace. Jefferson expelled all British warships from
American waters, to lessen the likelihood of future incidents. Then he sent instructions to his
minister in England, James Monroe, to demand that the British government renounce
impressment. The British government disavowed the action of the officer responsible for the
Chesapeake-Leopard affair and recalled him; it offered compensation for those killed and
wounded in the incident; and it promised to return three of the captured sailors (one of the
original four had been hanged). But the British refused to renounce impressment.
2
James Madison was Jefferson’s Secretary of State.
“Peaceable Coercion”
In an effort to prevent future incidents that might bring the nation again to the brink of war,
Jefferson presented—and Republican legislators promptly enacted—a drastic measure known as
the Embargo, and it became one of the most controversial political issues of its time. The
Embargo prohibited American ships from leaving the United States for any foreign port
anywhere in the world. (If it had specified only British and French ports, Jefferson reasoned, it
could have been evaded by means of false clearance papers.)...
The law was widely evaded, but it was effective enough to create a serious depression
through most of the nation. Hardest hit were the merchants and shipowners of the Northeast,
most of them Federalists. Their once lucrative shipping business was at a virtual standstill, and
they were losing money every day.
They became convinced that Jefferson had acted
unconstitutionally.
The election of 1808 came in the midst of the Embargo-induced depression. James
Madison... won the presidency. But the Federalists ran much more strongly than they had in
1804. The embargo was clearly a growing political liability, and Jefferson decided to back down.
A few days before leaving office, he approved a bill ending his experiment with what he called
“peaceable coercion.”
To replace the Embargo, Congress passed the Non-Intercourse Act.... The new law
reopened trade with all nations [except] Great Britain and France. A year later, in 1810,
Congress allowed the Non-Intercourse Act to expire and replaced it with Macon’s Bill No. 2,
which reopened free commercial relations with Britain and France, but authorized the president
to prohibit commerce with either belligerent 3 if one should continue violating neutral shipping
after the other had stopped. Napoleon thus announced that France would no longer interfere with
American shipping, and Madison announced that an embargo against Great Britain alone would
automatically go into effect early in 1811 unless Britain renounced its restrictions on American
shipping....
The “Indian Problem” and the British
Given the ruthlessness with which white settlers in North America had dislodged Indian tribes to
make room for expanding settlement, it was hardly surprising that ever since the Revolution
many Native Americans had continued to look to England—which had historically attempted to
limit western expansion4—for protection. The British in Canada, for their part, had relied on the
tribes as partners in the lucrative fur trade and as potential military allies....
Jefferson offered the Native Americans a choice: they could convert themselves into settled
farmers and assimilate—become a part of white society; or they could migrate to the west of the
Mississippi. In either case, they would have to give up their claims to their tribal lands in the
Northwest.5
Jefferson considered the assimilation policy a benign alternative to continuing conflict
between Indians and white settlers, conflict he assumed the tribes were destined to lose. But to
3
Belligerent: engaged in war
You might remember the Proclamation Line of 1763.
5 Remember that this is the Old Northwest, not Oregon and Idaho.
4
the tribes, the new policy seemed far from benign, especially given the bludgeon-like efficiency
with which [Governor of the Indiana Territory William Henry] Harrison set out to implement
it.... By 1807, the United States had extracted from reluctant tribal leaders treaty rights to eastern
Michigan, southern Indiana, and most of Illinois.6 Meanwhile, in the Southwest, white
Americans were taking millions of acres from other tribes in Georgia, Tennessee, and
Mississippi. The Indians wanted desperately to resist, but the separate tribes were helpless by
themselves against the power of the United States. They might have accepted their fate passively
but for the emergence of two new factors.
One factor was the policy of the British authorities in Canada. After the Chesapeake incident
and the surge of anti-British feeling throughout the United States, the British colonial authorities
began to expect an American invasion of Canada and took desperate measures for their own
defense. Among those measures were efforts to renew friendship with the Indians and provide
them with increased supplies.
Tecumseh and the Prophet
The second, and more important, factor intensifying the border conflict was the rise of two
remarkable Native American leaders. One was Tenskwatawa, a charismatic religious leader and
orator known as the Prophet.... Having freed himself from what he considered the evil effects of
white culture, he began to speak to his people of the superior virtues of Indian civilization and
the sinfulness and corruption of the white world. In the process, he inspired a religious revival
that spread through numerous tribes and helped unite them....
The Prophet’s brother Tecumseh—“the Shooting Star,” chief of the Shawnees—emerged as
the leader of... secular efforts. Tecumseh understood, as few other Indian leaders had, that only
through united action could the tribes hope to resist the advance of white civilization. Beginning
in 1809... he set out to unite all the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, north and south....
In 1811, Tecumseh... traveled down the Mississippi to visit the tribes of the South and
persuade them to join the alliance. During his absence, Governor Harrison saw a chance to
destroy the growing influence of the two Native American leaders.... The Battle of Tippecanoe
(named for the creek near the fighting) disillusioned many of the Prophet’s followers, who had
believed that his magic would protect them. Tecumseh returned to find the confederacy in
disarray. But there were still many warriors eager for combat, and by the spring of 1812 they
were active along the frontier, from Michigan to Mississippi, raiding white settlements and
terrifying white settlers.
The bloodshed along the western borders was largely a result of the Indians’ own initiative,
but Britain’s agents in Canada had encouraged and helped supply the uprising. To harrison and
most white residents of the regions, there seemed only one way to make the West safe for
Americans. That was to drive the British out of Canada and annex that province to the United
States—a goal that many westerners had long cherished for other reasons as well.
6
The last of these was soon to become the nation’s greatest state.
Florida and War Fever
While white “frontiersmen” in the North demanded the conquest of Canada, those in the South
wanted the United States to acquire Spanish Florida, a territory that included the present state of
Florida and the southern areas of what are now Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The
territory was a continuing threat to whites in the southern United States. Slaves escaped across
the Florida border; Indians launched frequent raids north into white settlements from Florida....
By 1812, war fever was growing on both the northern and southern borders of the United
States. In the congressional elections of 1810, voters from these regions elected a large number
of representatives of both parties eager for war with Britain. They became known as the “war
hawks.” Some of them were ardent nationalists fired by passion for territorial expansion—
among them two men who would play a great role in national politics for much of the next four
decades: Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina....
[B]oth men began agitating for the conquest of Canada. Madison still hoped for peace. But
he shared the concerns of other Republicans about the dangers to American trade, and he was
losing control of Congress. On June 18, 1812, he gave in to the pressure and approved a
declaration of war against Britain....
The Revolt of New England
With a few notable exceptions, such as the Battles of Put-In-Bay and New Orleans,7 the military
operations of the United States between 1812 and 1815 consisted of a series of humiliating
failures. As a result, the American government faced increasing popular opposition as the
contest dragged on. In New England, opposition both to the war and to the Republican
government that was waging it was so extreme that some Federalists celebrated British victories.
In Congress, in the meantime, the Republicans had continual trouble with the Federalist
opposition, led by a young congressman from New Hampshire, Daniel Webster, who missed no
opportunity to embarrass the administration.
By now the Federalists were a minority in the country as a whole, but they were still the
majority party in New England. Some of them began to dream again of creating a separate
nation in that region, which they could dominate and in which they could escape what they saw
as the tyranny of slaveholders and backwoodsmen. Talk of secession revived and reached a
climax in the winter of 1814-1815.
On December 15, 1814, delegates from the New England states met in Hartford, Connecticut,
to discuss their grievances. Those who favored secession at the Hartford Convention were
outnumbered by a comparatively moderate majority. But while the convention’s report only
hinted at secession, it reasserted the right of nullification and proposed seven amendments to the
Constitution... designed to protect New England from the growing influence of the South and the
West.
7
The former was a naval battle on Lake Erie. The latter was a substantial American victory that was actually fought
several weeks after the peace treaty ending the war had been signed; news of the treaty had not yet crossed the
Atlantic to the United States. This victory vaulted the American commander at New Orleans to national
prominence. His name was Andrew Jackson.
Because the war was going badly and the government was becoming desperate, the New
Englanders assumed that the Republicans would have to agree to their demands. Soon after the
convention adjourned, however, the news of Jackson’s smashing victory at New Orleans reached
the cities of the Northeast. A day or two later, reports arrived form abroad of a negotiated peace.
In the euphoria of this apparent triumph, the Hartford Convention and the Federalist party came
to seem futile, irrelevant, even treasonable. The failure of the secession effort was a virtual death
blow to the Federalist Party.
The Peace Settlement
Peace talks between the United States and Britain had begun even before fighting in the War of
1812 began. John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin led the American delegation.
Realizing that, with the defeat of Napoleon in Europe, the British would no longer have
much incentive to interfere with Americans commerce, the Americans gave up their demand for
a British renunciation of impressment and for the cession of Canada to the United States.
Exhausted and in debt from their prolonged conflict with Napoleon and eager to settle the lesser
dispute in North America, the British abandoned their call for the creation of an Indian buffer
state in the Northwest and made other, minor territorial concessions. The negotiators referred
other disputes to arbitration. Hastily drawn up, the treaty was signed [at Ghent in the
Netherlands] on Christmas Eve 1814.
Other settlements followed the Treaty of Ghent and contributed to a long-term improvement
in Anglo-American relations. A commercial treaty in 1815 gave Americans the right to trade
freely with England and much of the British Empire. The Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817
provided for mutual disarmament on the Great Lakes....
For the other parties to the War of 1812, the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi, the Treaty
of Ghent was of no lasting value. It required the United States to restore to the tribes lands
seized by white Americans in the fighting, but those provisions were never enforced. Ultimately,
the war was another disastrous blow to the capacity of Native Americans to resist white
expansion. Tecumseh, their most important leader, was dead. The British, their most important
allies, were gone from the Northwest. The alliance that Tecumseh and the Prophet had forged
was in disarray. And the end of the war spurred a great new drive by white settlers deeper into
the West, into land the Indians were less than ever able to defend.