The War of 1812

[godofthunder9010]

Actually, my next comment was going to be that redcoat had made a convincing argument where nobody else had yet. I don't complete agree with it all, but he made a decent case for himself.

Very sorry for anything inflamitory that I might have said. Mostly want to know reasons for either side claiming victory.

 

[redcoat]

Let us keep from refereing to an entire country's opinion in this discussion. As an American, I am going to get mad when someone says "Americans don't like..." just as a Canadian will get mad at the term "Canadians are the only ones..."

If this continues, we are going to have a flame war. No one wins when that happens.

You have a point. I will try and phase my wording better from now on


godofthunder9010

actually, my next comment was going to be that redcoat had made a convincing argument where nobody else had yet. I don't complete agree with it all, but he made a decent case for himself.

Thank you for those kind words
I've enjoyed our discussion, its been fun

 

[godofthunder9010]

If nobody has any objections, I'm like to contine the discussion. So are there any objections??

 

[Trevor]

Same with the War of 1812, the British may have gained nothing, but they didn't lose anything either.
In a war when a nation is attacked it is not always required for that nation to gain anything for it to 'win' the war, sometimes just holding on to, or regaining what is attacked is enough.
In the War of 1812 the US was the aggressor nation, and it failed to gain anything. Its war aims were not met.
The British didn't have any real war aims at the start, they didn't want the war. The only ones they had, were to retain British North America, and to end the war as quickly as possible with as few concessions as they could manage. While the war was not ended quickly the other two aims were met

THat's what I was trying to say before. I couldn't have put it better myself. The U.S. was trying to invade Canadian territory. Canadian and British soldiers held them off. The U.S. retreated. Plain and simple.

 

[godofthunder9010]

Of course Argentina stated goal of that war was to take control of the Falkland Islands. Once again, the assumption is being made that the conquest of Canada was the underlying goal of the United States. It wasn't.

I might believe you, if It wasn't for the fact that I know all about the War Hawks faction within the US congress ( Henry Clay and his "walk in the woods"), I know Americans don't like to admit this but the opportunity to take British North America was a major reason for the US declaring war on Britain ( even if it was unstated).

Good points, but the underlying thing is -- the goals of certain politicians did not translate into it being the goal of the American people, nor was the War of 1812 sold to them on the premise of conquest. So when they were told, "Hey, go invade Canada." a great many of them said, "Screw you." THose that they did manage to send were, of the opinion "Why the hell are we doing this again??" Now if you simplify the War of 1812 down to a failed attempt by the USA to conquer Canada, nobody managed to tell the American public that the war had anything to do with Canada. What you are doing is speculating. Speculation proves nothing and leaves only more questions.

As to why they did not declare war on France, consider that the Louisiana Purchase had just been obtained, so declaring war may not have been too great of a plan. Why risk losing that enormous chunk of land? Also, there was no obvious means to retaliate against the French. Perhaps, there would have been a war against France had circumstances been different, its hard to say. Truthfully, the United States was awfully new and was still figuring out their place as a nation.

In the War of 1812 the US was the aggressor nation, and it failed to gain anything. Its war aims were not met.

That's arguable. Great Britain was the one doing the kidnapping of the United States sailors. The United States declaring war may have been ludicrous, but one thing that we did gain from that war -- Britain stopped doing that to American sailors.

At the same time, because the reason was the same. The war with France had ended, there was no longer any need to impress anybody. The war of 1812 didn't achieve this , the end of the war against France did.

The underlying thing is that THIS is what the American people were sold on. They were going to war to defend their rights against "tyranny on the high seas", and the kidnapping of US citizens.

you make it sound like it was Britain who invaded the USA first, it wasn't was it.

Didn't say that, but on that subject ... exactly why did Great Britain invade? If they had absolutely no aspirations conquest and were not hoping to gain anything from the USA, what on earth were they doing? Nothing even close to a simple counteroffensive to secure Canada -- no they showed up all over the USA. Using the same logic, isn't this an attempt at conquest, or at least the UK trying to gain some territory? You can tell me they weren't but how can you be sure of that?

Britain despite American folk-lore, had no forts or any military presence at all within the US borders( as agreed by the Treaty of Paris) before the start of the war.

I never claimed they did. There was a degree of British disregard for borders via trappers and traders, but that was not a military presensce. Britain was just one of several nations that didn't really respect the United States fully yet. Little matters of kidnapping its citizens and venturing into US borders without permission. Seems to me that both France and Great Britain weren't really taking the existence of the United States all that seriously, or they just saw a weakling they could easily bully.

 

[Duty Honor Country]

If nobody has any objections, I'm like to contine the discussion. So are there any objections??

You have a point. I will try and phase my wording better from now on

Oh the discussion is still on godofthunder9010 and redcoat . I just wanted to address a problem before it got bigger. Thanks for keeping things civil 8)

SGT Doody

 

[redcoat]

Good points, but the underlying thing is -- the goals of certain politicians did not translate into it being the goal of the American people, nor was the War of 1812 sold to them on the premise of conquest.

Very true. However these certain politicians were the ones who had a vote on whether the US went to war with Britain or not

Now if you simplify the War of 1812 down to a failed attempt by the USA to conquer Canada, nobody managed to tell the American public that the war had anything to do with Canada. What you are doing is speculating. Speculation proves nothing and leaves only more questions.

I never reduced it to this one cause, I merely pointed out it was one of the causes
But is it still speculation, when the US Department of State admits that the seizing of Canada and Spanish Florida did play a part in the decision of the US Congress to vote for war ????
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/jd/16314.htm

There was a degree of British disregard for borders via trappers and traders, but that was not a military presensce.

Since when have trappers and traders from any nation had any regard for borders if it got in the way of profits. The point is, that the British government didn't show any disregard for the border.

Britain was just one of several nations that didn't really respect the United States fully yet. Little matters of kidnapping its citizens and venturing into US borders without permission. Seems to me that both France and Great Britain weren't really taking the existence of the United States all that seriously, or they just saw a weakling they could easily bully.

Very true and I can understand fully why the American public would wish to put a stop to such practices, but the point is, the war came to an end without any British agreement on altering its treatment of neutral shipping if the need ever arose again

 

[godofthunder9010]

Many who supported the call to arms saw British and Spanish territory in North America as potential prizes to be won by battle or negotiations after a successful war.

That's pretty nondefinite, don't you think? We've addressed the fact that there were some supporters of declaring war that wanted new territory. It didn't make Canada into a goal espoused by the American People.

 

[Duty Honor Country]

I will ask this to the people who say Canada won the war.

How many Canadians were supporting the British units through out the war? Exact figures at different battles would be nice.

Well, no one answered my request, so I poked around online for the answer. I looked for a good 15 minutes trying to find all info on Canada's involvement in the War of 1812. Canada did have militia that was commanded by a British General and they repelled the Americans in 1812. The only figures on Canada's troop numbers I could find was 4,000. The site also said Canada could have raised 7,000 more militia. None of the web sites I saw said anything about Canadian troops invading American soil. Most site commended the Canadian on a good defence of their home soil. I cannot post the site addresses since I went to so many of them in my search.

My conclusion is that Canada did not win the war. Defending a position hardly constitutes winning a war.

Canada won. Plain and simple. We drove the US out of Canada, and burned down the white house. The reason why it's not publicized very well at all, is because the U.S> does a good job of covering up it's defeats.

Canadians did not burn the white house. The British did.

 

[redcoat]

Many who supported the call to arms saw British and Spanish territory in North America as potential prizes to be won by battle or negotiations after a successful war.

That's pretty nondefinite, don't you think? We've addressed the fact that there were some supporters of declaring war that wanted new territory. It didn't make Canada into a goal espoused by the American People.

It wasn't the American people as such who decided to declared war on Britain, it was their elected government the US Congress, and one of the reasons they did so was the chance to take either Canada or Spanish Florida while Britain was weakened by the war with France.
Even the modern-day goverment of the US admits this, so why don't you :?
US Department of State

As the Ghent negotiations suggested, the real causes of the war of 1812, were not merely commerce and neutral rights, but also western expansion, relations with American Indians, and territorial control of North America.

 

[godofthunder9010]

US Department of State

As the Ghent negotiations suggested, the real causes of the war of 1812, were not merely commerce and neutral rights, but also western expansion, relations with American Indians, and territorial control of North America.

I didn't bother with that part of the link because it cuts both ways. It says the aim of the war was to gain greater territory in North America. Great Britain failed to achieve this goal and so did the United States. Neither side came out of it with any greater control of North America than they started with. As stated, the United States and Great Britain both were pretty obvious about this. You don't invade Maryland and the coast of Louisiana if all they were trying to do is maintain contol of Canada without a care for the rest. Since neither side made any gains, neither side achieved a victory.

I'm happy to admit that the United States was in over their head. They had no chance of returning the favor against Britain and burning London. The USA was lucky to come out of it without having lost any territory.

As to the American People, the leaders of the nation learned that they had less control than they thought. They needed to have the American public opinion already in favor of their unstated goals. The American People were with them in believing their rights were being violated. The American People were unaware that conquest of Canada was to be an important goal for the war. It lead to the attempts being only half-hearted at best. The US also learned that war with a European power was a lot harder than they thought it would be.

The UK learned that the USA was willing to stick up for itself and Europe at large took the USA a bit more seriously thereafter. That is a victory of sorts.

 

[redcoat]

The UK learned that the USA was willing to stick up for itself and Europe at large took the USA a bit more seriously thereafter. That is a victory of sorts.

Nearly 20,000 dead (12-15,000 American and 5,000 British) is an expensive way to prove a point

 

[Duty Honor Country]

I am going to have to disagree with you on those numbers. I went to 3 websites and the numbers were all the same for the Americans. It was a bit harded for to find british numbers.

American

4,505 wounded
2,260 dead

British

3,679 wounded
1,600 dead

 

[redcoat]

Those are just battle casualties. It appears that the US army suffered a large number of deaths through disease during the war as well,
Http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warsusa.htm

 

[Duty Honor Country]

I went around that site a bit. He did not specifically say how he got those figures for the war of 1812. I believe that the accuracy of those figures can be argued.

A few of the sites I went to said that many of the doctors at the time did not keep records on the people that died from disease. Other sites said that the Casualty numbers were estimates because "non-battle deaths not known for these wars"

I wish the creator of that website cited his references like good authors. Good authors cite each figure with a source. The sources on that site are all massed together with no links to each figure. There is no way to verify his figures without extensive research.

 

[USAFAUX2004]

there was nothing to win, but id say the US because they were 2 to 0 with britain

 

[cullion]

If anyone has ever heard the song "The War of 1812" by Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie (www.deadtroll.com) then you'll know it's apparent what Canadian's think.And not having learned much about the war itself, I voted that no one won. As, I've always been under the distinct impresion no one ever did win.