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War of 1812: United States
built 185 days ago
The roiling soup of tensions boiled over in 1812, when Madison declared war against Britain. Unlike the Revolutionary War, this conflict seemed eminently winnable, especially with England's ongoing engagement with Europe. But so did the Iraq War to one American head of state. By 1814, Britain had invaded and razed the President's House, the Capitol and Treasury, War and State departments. Conflicts rage on in a stop-and-start manner, interspersed with peace negotiations until Andrew Jackson wins the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. One of the war's legacies, Langguth writes, is the exacerbation of sectional conflicts over slavery that would lead directly to the Civil War nearly a half-century later.
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In the first phase of the war along the border in 1812 the United States suffered a series of reverses. Fort Michilimackinac fell (6 August), Fort Dearborn was evacuated (15 August), and Fort Detroit surrendered without a fight (16 August). American attempts to invade Canada across the Niagara (October) and toward Montreal (November) failed completely. Brig. Gen. William Henry Harrison's move to recapture Detroit was repulsed (January 1813), but he checked British efforts to penetrate deeper into the region at the west end of Lake Erie, during the summer of 1813. Meanwhile, in April 1813, Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn's expedition captured Fort Toronto and partially burned York, capital of Upper Canada. On 27 May Brig. Gen. Jacob Brown repelled a British assault on Sackett's Harbor.
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The War of 1812 is often referred to as the United States's second war of independence because, like the Revolutionary War, it was fought against Great Britain. The Conflict resulted from the clash between American nationalism and the war Britain and its allies were waging against the empire of Napoleonic France. Many Americans believed that England sought to humiliate the United States, limit its growth, and perhaps even impose a quasiâ€colonial status upon its former colonies. Throughout the wars between Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Great Britain (1793–1801 and 1803–15), the belligerent powers of Europe repeatedly violated the maritime rights of neutral nations. The United States, endeavoring to market its own produce while ... asserting the right to profit as an important neutral carrier in the Atlantic commercial system, was particularly hard hit. In order to man the Royal Navy, British naval officers impressed seamen from American vessels, claiming that they were either deserters from British service or British subjects, irrespective of whether they had been naturalized by the United States.
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After the War of 1812, the United States declared firmer international policy. With the issuance of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the nation stated its policy of non-intervention in European conflicts. Furthermore, the United States declared the New World closed to further colonization, and that attempts of foreign powers to intervene in conflicts between colonial powers and their colonies would be viewed as an act of aggression. The War of 1812 solidified the political and military preeminence of the United States in the Americas, and began the great expansion westward toward the Pacific coast.
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Throughout the war, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was the Earl of Bathurst. For the first two years of the war, he could spare few troops to reinforce North America and urged the Commander-in-Chief in North America (Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost) to maintain a defensive strategy. The naturally cautious Prevost followed these instructions, concentrating on defending Quebec and Lower Canada. In the final year of the War, large numbers of British soldiers became available after the abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. Prevost launched an offensive of his own into Upper New York State, but is considered to have mishandled it, and was forced to retreat after the British lost the Battle of Plattsburg.
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The War of 1812 Maryland Light Dragoons is a living history unit just completing its early stages of development. Currently (March 2007, nearly four years into the start of unit) there are about a dozen members (all riders/drovers and most of them with horse), collectively performing historical, safety and period uniform research and portraying an 1812 cavalry unit (and civilian support/visitors) in the northern Chesapeake region since August 2003. The group has selected to represent a typical Maryland Militia cavalry unit of summer and fall, 1814...the height of the British Chesapeake Campaign of the War of 1812 which culminated in the successful defense of Baltimore in September. There were over four dozen troops of Maryland horse, each authorized to 48 mounted men but perhaps averaging 40 horsemen, for a total of close to 2000 Maryland militia cavalrymen in 1814. Maryland termed their horse militia "light dragoons". In Europe, this would typically denote more agile, smaller horses, but with heavily armed riders often capable of fighting afoot, and traditionally with a dragoon-style leather helmet. However, in the United States, light dragoons was more a generic term for light, mobile, scouting cavalry, as compared to medium or heavy cavalry optimized, equipped and trained for an opposed charge (present in Europe, but not in North America at the time in troop or squadron numbers.
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