In History this week, I learned about the war of 1812. I found it pretty interesting, so I’m writing an essay about it. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. Let’s first start with what happened leading up to the war.
Before 1793, Britain saw the American colonies as their territory. Britain thought that they could do whatever they wanted with the colonies. In 1783, the US won the war for independence, but the British still treated them like a little brother. Some examples of how they did this include: impressing the Americans to join the British Royal Navy, pairing with the Native Americans to try to keep the United States from expanding their settlement, and trade restrictions. For the trade restrictions, the British stopped American ships from trading with France. Several embargo acts were put into place by the president of America at the time, Thomas Jefferson, but they didn’t work, and just ended up hurting America even more.
In America, there was a group of Democratic-Republican politicians that wanted to go to war. They were called the war hawks. The war hawks wanted to go to war for a few reasons. One reason was because of the possibility that the US could conquer Canada which, at the time, was controlled by the British. If they got control over Canada, America would double in size! They pushed Thomas Jefferson to declare war against the British.
The war hawks eventually got what they wanted, because America officially Declared war on Britain in 1812. In order to control Canada, one side needed to hold control of the Great Lakes. This is why the first battles to be fought in this war were the battles of the Great Lakes. Many naval skirmishes were held. Territories were switched back and forth, but no one held onto any advantage. They finally decided to stop these fights, and let Britain keep control of Canada.
The first two years of this war were not very eventful at all. This was because the British were fighting a different war with the French, called the Napoleonic wars. Once this war had ended in 1814, the British turned their focus onto this war, the war of 1812.
The battle of Plattsburgh was held In 1814. This was the first eventful battle in this war. The USA had a big success in this fight. They won control of Lake Champlain, and kept control of it all throughout the war.
After their war with France was over, the British gathered the best troops in the world, and the largest navy to try to defeat America. Because of this, Britain was very successful in 1814. They even burnt down The USA’s new capitol buildings in Washington DC during one of the battles.
After they did that, the British moved over to Baltimore, which was an important ship building and repair port of the Americans. The harbor was protected by Fort McHenry so the British had to destroy that before they could get to Baltimore. They initiated a 25 hour artillery barrage to conquer Fort McHenry. Even after this, the fort was still intact, operational, and flying the American flag. A man named Francis Scott Key, who was on the US’s side, wrote a poem about the battle of Baltimore. The first stanza of this poem is where The Star Spangled Banner comes from.
War continued until late 1814 when the treaty of Ghent was signed. This treaty resulted in everything going back to the state it was before the war started (“status quo antebellum”). The treaty didn’t get ratified until February 1815, so America and Britain “snuck in” one more war. This was the Battle of New Orleans. It resulted in a major victory for the US, and was an awesome way to end the war.
Because the treaty resulted in everything going back to the state it was before the war started, the war didn’t change many things. All territories that were won had to go back to the original owner, so even if the United States did win Canada, they wouldn’t have been able to keep it for very long. Eventually, the relationship between America and Britain got better over time, and things weren’t quite as bad between them.
Thank you for reading, and have a fantastic day!
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