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Origins of the War of 1812

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It has been suggested that Impressment of American Seamen be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Origins of the War of 1812 outlines the causes of the War of 1812. The war was fought between the British Empire and the United States from 1812 to 1815.

On June 4, 1812, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 79 to 49 for a declaration of war against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Two weeks later the U.S. Senate voted 19 to 13 for the declaration of war. President James Madison signed the bill on June 19, and the war officially began.

Contents

[edit] British goals

The British were engaged in a life-and-death war with Napoleon and could not allow the Americans to help the enemy, regardless of their theoretical neutral rights to do so. As Horsman explains "If possible, England wished to avoid war with America, but not to the extent of allowing her to hinder the British war effort against France. Moreover...a large section of influential British opinion, both in the government and in the country, thought that America presented a threat to British maritime supremacy." <ref> Horsman (1962) p. 264</ref> The British were hindered by weak diplomats in Washington who misrepresented British policy, and by communications that were so slow the Americans did not learn of the reversal of policy until they had declared war. When Americans proposed a truce based on British ending impressment, Britain refused, because it needed those sailors. Horsdman explains, "Impressment, which was the main point of contention between England and America from 1803 to 1807, was made necessary primarily because of England's great shortage of seamen for the war against Napoleon. In a similar manner the restrictions on American commerce imposed by England's Orders in Council, which were the supreme cause of complaint between 1807 and 1812, were one part of a vast commercial struggle being waged between England and France." <ref> Horsman (1962) p. 265</ref>

[edit] American expansionism

The idea that one cause of the war was American expansionism or desire for Canadian land was much discussed among historians in the 1920s-1940s,<ref> Hacker (1924); Pratt (1925)</ref> but is rarely cited by experts any more.<ref> Goodman (1941) refuted the idea and even Pratt gave it up. Pratt (1955)</ref> Some Canadian historians propounded the notion in the early 20th century, and it survives in Canadian mythology.<ref> W. Arthur Bowler, "Propaganda in Upper Canada in the War of 1812," American Review of Canadian Studies (1988) 28:11-32; C.P. Stacey, "The War of 1812 in Canadian History" in Morris Zaslow and Wesley B. Turner, eds. The Defended Border: Upper Canada and the War of 1812 (Toronto, 1964)</ref> Madison and his advisors believed that conquest of Canada would be easy and that economic coercion would force the British to come to terms,. The food supply for their West Indies colonies came from the U.S. but Canada might be a substitute, so Madison had to close that option. Further, possession of Canada would be a valuable bargaining chip. Frontiersmen demanded the seizure of Canada not because they wanted the land (they had plenty), but because the British were thought to be arming the Indians. <ref>Stagg (1983)</ref> As Horsman concludes, "The idea of conquering Canada had been present since at least 1807 as a means of forcing England to change her policy at sea. The conquest of Canada was primarily a means of waging war, not a reason for starting it."<ref>Horsman (1962) p. 267 </ref> Hickey flatly states, "The desire to annex Canada did not bring on the war." <ref> Hickey (1990) p. 72. Brown (1964) concludes, "The purpose of the Canadian expedition was to serve negotiation not to annex Canada." P. 128. Burt a Canadian scholar agrees completely, noting that Foster, the British minister to Washington. also rejected the argument that annexation of Canada was a war goal. Burt (1940) pp 305-10. </ref>

Numerous American exiles (United Empire Loyalists) and immigrants had settled in Upper Canada (Ontario). The Loyalists were very hostile to reunion with the U.S., while the other settlers seem to have been uninterested. The Canadian colonies were thinly populated and only lightly defended by the British Army, and some Americans believed that the many in Upper Canada would rise up and greet an American invading army as liberators. The combination implied an easy conquest, as former president Thomas Jefferson suggested in 1812, "the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent."

[edit] Violations of American sovereignty

The United States had serious grievances over repeated British violations of its sovereignty in the decades following the American Revolutionary War. When revolutionary France declared war upon Great Britain in 1793, the United States sought to remain neutral while pursuing overseas commerce with both empires, which created much tension. Additionally, Great Britain had not abandoned fortifications in the Great Lakes region as called for in the 1783 Treaty of Paris and was continuing to supply those Native Americans in the Northwest Territory who were at war with the United States. In 1795, the United States secured the Jay Treaty with Great Britain and the Treaty of Greenville with the Native Americans, thus ending those conflicts.

Great Britain and France went to war again in 1803, and the Royal Navy, short of manpower, began boarding American merchant ships in order to seize some of the many British seamen serving on American vessels. Although this policy of impressment was supposed to reclaim only British subjects, Britain did not recognize naturalized American citizenship, often taking seamen who had been born British subjects but later issued American citizenship certificates. There was also a widespread Royal Navy belief that many of the certificates were either forged or issued illegally to British subjects by sympathetic American authorities. As a result, between 1806 and 1812 about 6,000 seamen claimed as American citizens were impressed and taken against their will into the Royal Navy.2 Great Britain did not want to stop impressment because it was seen as an effective way of combating desertion from the Royal Navy. The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty (1806) between the U.S. and Great Britain was not ratified in the United States because it did not end impressment.

Origins of
The War of 1812
British Impressment
American Expansionism
Monroe-Pinkney Treaty
Chesapeake-Leopard Affair
Orders in Council (1807)
Embargo Act of 1807
Non-Intercourse Act
Macon's Bill Number 2
Tecumseh's War
War Hawks

[edit] American economic motivations

The failure of Jefferson's embargo and Madison's economic coercion "made war or absolute submission to England the only alternatives, and the latter presented more terrors to the recent colonists. The war hawks came from the West and the South, regions that had supported economic warfare and were suffering the most from British restrictions at sea. The merchants of New England large profits from the wartime carrying trade, in spite of the numerous captures by both France and England, but the western and southern farmers, who looked longingly at the export market, were suffering a depression that made them demand war. <ref> Horsman (1962) p. 266</ref>

[edit] Incidents leading up to the war

This dispute came to the forefront with the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of 1807, when the British ship HMS Leopard fired on and boarded the American ship USS Chesapeake, killing three and carrying off four "deserters", of whom three were Americans thereby pressed into the Royal Navy. The American public was outraged by the incident, and many called for war in order to assert American sovereignty and national honor.

Meanwhile, Napoleon's Continental System (beginning 1806) and the British Orders in Council (1807) established embargoes that made international trade precarious. From 1807 to 1812, about 900 American ships were seized as a result.3 American President Thomas Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited American ships from sailing to any foreign ports and closed American ports to British ships. Jefferson's embargo was especially unpopular in New England, where merchants preferred the indignities of impressment to the halting of overseas commerce. This discontent contributed to the calling of the Hartford Convention during the war.

The Embargo Act had no effect on Great Britain and France and was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. As this proved to be unenforceable, the Non-Intercourse Act was replaced in 1810 by Macon's Bill Number 2. This lifted all embargoes but offered that if either France or Great Britain were to cease their interference with American shipping, the United States would reinstate an embargo on the other nation. Napoleon, seeing an opportunity to make trouble for Great Britain, promised to leave American ships alone. He had no intention of honoring this promise, but the ruse de guerre worked, and the United States reinstated the embargo with Great Britain and moved closer to declaring war.4

In the United States House of Representatives, a group of young Democratic-Republicans known as the "War Hawks" came to the forefront in 1811, led by Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The War Hawks advocated going to war against Great Britain for all of the reasons listed above, though concentrating on the grievances more than the territorial expansion.

On June 1, 1812, President James Madison gave a speech to the U.S. Congress, recounting American grievances against Great Britain, though not specifically calling for a declaration of war. After Madison's speech, the House of Representatives quickly voted (79 to 49) to declare war, and after much debate, the U.S. Senate also voted for war, 19 to 13. The conflict formally began on June 18, 1812 when Madison signed the measure into law. This was the first time that the United States had declared war on another nation, and the Congressional vote would prove to be the closest vote to declare war in American history. None of the 39 Federalists in Congress voted in favor of the war; critics of war subsequently referred to it as "Mr. Madison's War."

The actual vote in June 1812 by each Senator was:

Connecticut

Delaware

Georgia

Kentucky

Maryland

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York

North Carolina

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

Tennessee

Vermont

Virginia

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(sj005181))

[edit] Notes

<references/>

  • Note 1: American statistics from Hickey, pp. 302-3; British manpower from Elting, p. 11; British casualties from here; New York Iroquois manpower figure from Anthony Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (orig. pub. 1970, New York: Vintage books, 1972), p. 295; British-allied Native American manpower from this page.
  • Note 2: Number of American citizens pressed into the Royal Navy: Hickey, p. 11.
  • Note 3: Number of American ships seized: Hickey, p. 19.
  • Note 4: Napoleon had no intention of honoring promise: Hickey, p. 22; Horsman, p. 188.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

See also: War of 1812 bibliography

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