Few people on either side of the Atlantic thought that this would be the last Anglo-American war, and this meant that British officials had to find some way to safeguard Canada. Rather than invest in costly defense measures, the British concluded that the best way to achieve this end was to cultivate the United States. Hence, in the years after the war officials in London often sacrificed the interests of people living in Canada or elsewhere in the Empire to preserve good relations with the American republic. It took time for this policy to pay off, but ultimately the Anglo-American tension so common in the nineteenth century gave way to an Anglo-American accord.23 This accord had a profound impact on the history of Europe and the wider world in the twentieth century.24
The war had a greater impact on Canada. In 1812 the various provinces in Canada were populated by a jarring combination of French Canadians, native-born British subjects, Loyalists who had fled from the United States, and Americans who had migrated across the border in search of greater economic opportunities. The War of 1812 was the closest thing that Canada has had to a war of independence or a civil war, and it helped forge a common bond among these disparate groups and shaped Canada’s future, first as a loyal outpost of the British Empire and then as an independent nation. In time, too, Canadians looked to the war for those symbols that defined their nation. Isaac Brock, Laura Secord, Tecumseh, and Charles de Salaberry became national heroes, and Queenston Heights, Crysler’s Farm, and Châteauguay were celebrated as battlefield victories that saved Canada from foreign conquest and dominion. Powerful myths also took root—that the militia had saved Canada, that the British and French populations had joined hands to fend off the invader from the south—and these myths served as another glue for the nation.25
Fate of the Indians
For the United States, the legacy of 1812 was even more significant. The young republic annexed part of Spanish West Florida in 1813—the only permanent land acquisition made during the war, although it came at the expense of a neutral power rather than the enemy.26 The war also broke the power of the Indians in the Northwest and the Southwest. Tecumseh’s confederacy was the last great attempt to unite American Indians against further encroachments on their lands. Although this confederacy had the support of the British, it collapsed with Tecumseh’s death in the Battle of the Thames in 1813. In the peace negotiations at Ghent, Great Britain failed to secure a permanent reservation for the Indians, leaving them at the mercy of an expansive people determined to engross lands up to and even beyond the Mississippi River.
John Naudee, a Chippewa leader who was also known as Oshawahnah, was reportedly Tecumseh’s second in command at the Thames. He survived the battle and sat for this daguerreotype many years later. (Alexander C. Casselman, Richardson’s War of 1812)
The Indians never recovered from this blow. The western tribes, said the secretary of war in 1818, “have, in a great measure, ceased to be an object of terror, and have become that of commiseration.”27 Never again would Indians seriously threaten the United States, and never again would a foreign nation tamper with American Indians. The subjugation of the Indians, in turn, promoted manifest destiny and the westward movement. The heady nationalism and expansionism that characterized American foreign policy throughout the nineteenth century was at least partly a result of the War of 1812.
The War’s Impact on American Culture
The war had a profound impact on American culture. The contest produced several enduring sayings. “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” was bandied about by various groups until the Civil War, and “Don’t give up the ship” and “We have met the enemy and they are ours” are still heard today.28 The conflict also generated powerful symbols. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a popular patriot tune that Congress made the national anthem in 1931. The U.S. Frigate Constitution—“Old Ironsides”—became the nation’s most famous warship and a symbol of its rising naval power. The trophy ship Macedonian was kept in service until 1871, a powerful reminder of how a U.S. frigate had once bested a British frigate and brought it home as a prize of war. The Fort McHenry flag, probably America’s most treasured relic from the war, has been on display at the Smithsonian since 1907, and long before then it had ignited a broader public reverence for the national banner. Uncle Sam, who made his first appearance in the war, ultimately emerged as the universally recognized symbol for the United States and its government.
The Pennsylvania/Kentucky rifle received inflated credit for some of the western victories, most notably at New Orleans, and has long enjoyed iconic status in the rich history of American firearms. A host of army and naval traditions and legends originating in the war helped forge the identity of the services. The Battle of New Orleans became a powerful symbol for the military prowess of the citizen republic, and for a half century afterwards American cities across the nation held public celebrations on January 8 to mark the occasion. In a broad sense the War of 1812 transformed the cultural landscape, helping Americans understand who they were and where their nation was headed.
Even though the war was an important benchmark in the growth of American nationalism, it also played a significant role in the evolving history of American sectionalism. New England Federalists were determined to insulate themselves from the war. In order to retain control over their militia and obstruct war measures, they resurrected the states’ rights doctrine that Virginia Republicans had used in the late 1790s to fight the alien and sedition laws. Later on, this same doctrine would be employed by southern Democrats to block the tariff and to protect slavery. New England’s opposition to the war was thus part of a larger tradition of sectionalism, one that flourished until the northern victory in the Civil War delivered a body blow to the whole notion of states’ rights.
The Military Legacy
The war also stimulated peacetime defense spending. In his message to Congress announcing the end of hostilities, President Madison echoed an old Federalist cry for preparedness. “Experience has taught us,” he said, “that a certain degree of preparation for war is not only indispensable to avert disasters in the onset, but affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.”29 Congress agreed. The peacetime army was fixed at 10,000 men in 1815, but since the Corps of Engineers was not considered part of this total, the actual strength of the army was more than 12,000 (almost four times what it had been after the Jeffersonian reduction in 1802).30 Congress also authorized the construction of nine ships-of-the-line and twelve heavy frigates and launched a far-reaching program to fortify the coast, appropriating almost $8.5 million for this purpose between 1816 and 1829.31
The war affected the American military establishment in another way. Those army officers who had outlived their usefulness—Smyth, Wilkinson, Hampton, Dearborn, and the like—were cast aside to make room for younger men, such as Brown, Scott, Gaines, Macomb, and Jackson. A number of naval officers also burned their names into the history books during the conflict. Among these were Perry, Macdonough, Hull, Bainbridge, Decatur, and Stewart. Both services had a decidedly new look after the war, and both enjoyed a significant boost in professionalism. The postwar navy was filled with officers and men who had amassed significant combat experience and profited from the guidance of the newly created Board of Navy Commissioners. The transformation of the army was even more pronounced. The newly created general staff improved the efficiency of the army, and what was once a demoralized frontier constabulary dominated by political officers was now a professional fighting force that had some real experience as well as a credible tradition to draw upon.
The Economic Consequences
The war had a dramatic impact on the American economy, too. Unlike most American wars, this one did not generate a general economic boom. According to Thomas Jefferson, whose heavy debts became unmanageable during the war, the conflict “arrested the course of the most remarkable tide of prosperity any nation ever experienced.”32 Although people in the middle and western states prospered, those in New England and the South did not. M
anufacturing thrived because of the absence of British competition, but whatever gains were made in this sector of the economy were dwarfed by heavy losses in fishing and commerce. For most Americans, the economic opportunities were greater before and after the war than during it.
This portrait, which was used in Andrew Jackson’s successful presidential campaign in 1828, traded on his great victory at New Orleans by depicting him as “PROTECTOR & DEFENDER OF BEAUTY & BOOTY.” (Engraving by C. G. Childs based on a painting by Joseph Wood. Library of Congress)
The war also sparked an interest in suppressing illegal trade. Throughout the war, trade with the enemy had been widespread, particularly on the northern frontier. “You may always buy a Yankee,” a British naval officer observed, “in almost any rank and station!”33 Congress had tried to halt this traffic with a series of trade restrictions, culminating in the enemy trade act of 1815. Although this measure had expired with the end of the war, there was every indication that smuggling, which had always existed on the Canadian frontier, would continue. Hence Congress adopted a new measure that granted customs officials the same extensive powers in peacetime that they had enjoyed under the last enemy trade act.34
The Legacy of Anglophobia
The war left an enduring legacy of anglophobia in the United States. Hatred of England, originally kindled by the American Revolution, was further inflamed by the War of 1812—particularly by the Indian atrocities in the West and British depredations in the Chesapeake. William Henry Harrison predicted that Americans would long remember the “horrible species of warfare” practiced by the Indians allied to Britain. “Ages yet to come,” he told a British officer, “will feel the effect of the deep-rooted hatred and enmity which [this warfare] must produce between the two nations.”35 People in the Chesapeake felt the same way about the ravages of Cockburn’s men.
Britain’s treatment of prisoners of war further intensified the anglophobia. At one time or another about 20,000 Americans, mostly privateersmen, were held in British prisons.36 These prisoners were often treated harshly to induce them to enlist in the Royal Navy and to discourage privateering. Even before the war was over, stories of abuse began to filter back to the United States. In March 1814 a captured sailor on board a British prison ship in the Bahamas reported that Americans “have been suffering every deprivation on board of this old prison ship. . . . We are used with as much barbarity as though we were Turks.”37
After the war ended, the trickle of stories became a torrent. “The return of our people from British prisons,” said Niles’ Register, “have filled the newspapers with tales of horror.”38 Many of the stories came from Melville Island and nearby prison hulks in Halifax Harbor, where more than 8,000 American soldiers and seamen were held.39 “All the prisoners that we have yet seen,” said the Boston Patriot, “agree that their treatment in the Halifax prisons was brutal and barbarous in the extreme.”40
Other stories came from Dartmoor, a damp and dreary prison in Devonshire, England. By the end of the war, “this accursed place,” as one prisoner called it, housed some 6,500 Americans.41 A group of former prisoners from Massachusetts (most of whom were Federalists) said that their experience at Dartmoor had extinguished “every impression we formerly entertained in favor of the British nation, as magnanimous, pious, liberable, and honorable or brave.” The “regular and systematic oppression” practiced by the British was “calculated to render our existence uncomfortable, and by breaking down our spirits and abusing our feelings, to hurry us out of this world into eternity.”42
The Dartmoor Massacre
Trouble at Dartmoor reached a climax on April 6, 1815—almost two months after the war ended—when a dispute over responsibility for transporting the men home delayed repatriation. Anxious to regain their freedom, the prisoners became unruly, and the inexperienced guards, who were drawn from the local militia, fired on them, killing six and wounding sixty others. British and American officials were eager to defuse this explosive story. The British government offered to compensate the families of those who were killed, and an Anglo-American commission tried to whitewash the affair.43 But the prisoners were unmollified and insisted on telling their side of the story. A committee of prisoners issued several reports on the “Dartmoor massacre” that were widely circulated in the United States.44 “The blood of every man, in whose bosom beats a sound American heart,” said the Richmond Enquirer, “will run cold at the narrative of the base and premeditated murder which was perpetrated within the walls of Dartmoor Prison.” The Enquirer urged parents to share the prisoners’ story with their children to show the depravity of British leaders.45
This daguerreotype taken years after the war shows a group of the survivors from Dartmoor Prison. The banner they hold appears to proclaim “Sailors Rights” and perhaps “No Impressment.” It is not clear why a woman is in the group portrait. She may have been a prisoner or the wife of one of the survivors. (John H. Spears, The History of Our Navy)
Americans did not soon forget the brutality of the war. As early as 1813, the House of Representatives published a study—with extensive documentation—that criticized Great Britain for the Indian atrocities, the Chesapeake depredations, and the mistreatment of prisoners.46 Other stories kept the embers of hatred alive for decades. Long after the conflict, Niles’ Register published war-related anecdotes and documents that showed the British in a bad light.47 Nineteenth-century histories—culminating in Henry Adams’s magisterial study of the Age of Jefferson—continued this tradition by focusing on Britain’s misdeeds.48
The Political Legacy
The war also left an enduring political legacy. Four statesmen—James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William Henry Harrison—were able to parlay their public service during the war into the presidency, and three others—Daniel D. Tompkins, John C. Calhoun, and Richard M. Johnson—were elevated to the vice-presidency. Jackson was the biggest winner. In the wake of his victories in the Southwest and at New Orleans, he emerged as such an outsized figure that he became a symbol for the entire postwar period.49 A host of lesser lights also made political capital out of the war. The Battle of the Thames, which became a kind of Bunker Hill in western legend, helped create one president, one vice president, three governors, three lieutenant governors, four senators, and twenty congressmen. In addition, countless other participants in the battle were elected to lesser offices.50 In fact, anyone who had seen combat during the war had an advantage in any bid for public office.
The war confirmed Republican hegemony and ushered in an era of one-party rule. “Never was there a more glorious opportunity,” crowed Joseph Story, “for the Republican party to place themselves permanently in power.”51 The Republicans laid claim to all the victories in the war and blamed the defeats on the Federalists. The Republicans also charged the Federalists with prolonging the war, although the available evidence suggests that opposition in both countries shortened the conflict by making each government more amenable to a compromise peace.52
What did the Federalists reap from their opposition to the war? According to a Republican paper, it was “Disappointment!—Disgrace!—Detection!—Despair!”53 Opposition to the war was popular during the conflict but not afterwards, and Federalists found it particularly difficult to live down the notoriety of the Hartford Convention. Almost twenty years after the war, the convention’s secretary complained that “from the time of its coming together to the present hour, [it] has been the general topic of reproach and calumny.” Even after the convention journal was published in 1823, “the weak, the designing, and the wicked, still made use of the Hartford Convention as a countersign of party, and as a watchword to rally the ignorant and vicious around the standard of the ambitious.”54 Like “blue lights” and “Henryism,” the phrase “Hartford Convention” entered the political vocabulary as a synonym for treason.
Federalists protested that they had become the scapegoats for the failure of Republican policies. “The charge that opposition enco
urages the enemy and injures the cause,” said Rufus King, “has at all times been made as an excuse for the failure and defeat of a weak administration.”55 Federalists also pointed out that Republicans never achieved their war aims and never admitted the war’s true costs. “What we have suffered and what we have lost are carefully concealed,” said a Federalist address. “A Treaty, which gives us peace, is represented as glorious, when it has given us nothing else. And it is attempted to make us believe that all the objects of the war have been obtained, when every thing, for which it was declared has been abandoned.”56
Few people thought that the War of 1812 would be the last Anglo-American conflict, but British-born artist John Rubens Smith, who emigrated from London to New York City in 1807, was evidently more optimistic. This painting, which depicts symbolic representatives of the two nations joining hands at the conclusion of peace, provided a prophetic vision of the future. (Ink and watercolor by John Rubens Smith. Library of Congress).
These protests fell on deaf ears. The decline of the Federalist party—begun in 1800 but arrested by the restrictive system and the war—continued apace after the war was over. It mattered not that the war had vindicated so many Federalist policies—particularly the importance of military and naval preparedness and the need for internal taxes and a national bank—and that Republicans themselves admitted as much by adopting these policies during or after the war. It mattered not that Federalists had predicted the futility of the conflict and that the Treaty of Ghent had proven them right. What mattered was that the nation had emerged from the war without surrendering any rights or territory and with just enough triumphs—both on land and at sea—to give the appearance of victory.
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