Concept

War of 1812

Overview

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.

The United States objected to British restrictions on American trade with Napoleonic France and to the Royal Navy's impressment of seamen from American vessels, including men the United States considered American citizens. Opinion in the US was split on how to respond, and although majorities in both the House and Senate voted for war in June 1812, they were divided along strict party lines, with the Democratic-Republican Party in favour and the Federalist Party against. News of British concessions made in an attempt to avoid war did not reach the US until late July, by which time the conflict was already underway. Britain, engaged in a global war against France, defended its maritime system as necessary to the defeat of Napoleon and treated many impressed sailors as British subjects. Tensions were also intensified by British relations with Indigenous confederacies resisting American expansion in the Old Northwest.

British war aims were initially limited and defensive: to protect Canada (then British North America), maintain maritime rights, and avoid diverting major resources from the war in Europe. The United States, by contrast, launched repeated invasions of Upper and Lower Canada, all of which failed. At sea, the Royal Navy imposed an increasingly effective blockade of the American coast, while American privateers and naval victories inflicted localised but limited damage on British commerce and prestige.

After Napoleon's abdication in April 1814, Britain reinforced North America and expanded operations against the United States, including the capture and burning of Washington in August 1814. American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh in September helped end major fighting in the northern theatre. In the southeast, American forces and allied Indigenous groups defeated the Red Stick faction of the Muscogee, while Andrew Jackson’s army repulsed a British attack on New Orleans in January 1815, after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed but before news of peace reached the region.

The Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-war territorial status quo and did not settle the maritime issues that had contributed to the war. Impressment largely ceased after 1815 because the end of the Napoleonic Wars removed Britain's wartime manpower emergency, but Britain did not formally renounce its wider maritime claims in the treaty. Later Anglo-American disputes over the stopping, visiting, searching, and seizure of American vessels continued in narrower contexts, especially anti-slave-trade enforcement, and rare American allegations of post-war impressment appeared in diplomatic correspondence in the 1820s.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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It is not long since they impressed at sea two nephews of General Washington, returning from Europe, and put them, as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war. There are certainly other wrongs to be settled between England and us; but of a minor character, and such as a proper spirit of conciliation on both sides would not permit to continue them at war. The sword, however, can never again…
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Close in meaning to War of 1812; the term itself is not named.
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Congress will consider whether the existing laws enable us efficaciously to maintain this course with our citizens in all places, and with others while within the limits of our jurisdiction, and will give them the new modifications necessary for these objects.
Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8
Close in meaning to War of 1812; the term itself is not named.
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War, at this time, rages over a great part of the known world; our newspapers are weekly filled with fresh accounts of the destruction it every where occasions. Pensylvania, indeed, situate in the centre of the colonies, has hitherto enjoyed profound repose; and though our nation is engaged in a bloody war, with two great and powerful kingdoms, yet, defended, in a great…
Benjamin Franklin, The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 3 [of 3]
Close in meaning to War of 1812; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed War of 1812

Alain LeRoy Locke

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Luddite

Place in the tradition

Part of American philosophy.

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