The Naval War of 1812 in International Perspective

Abstract

The lecture provided an overview of scholarship as it stood as bicentenary celebrations were just beginning in 2012. At that point there remained a notable difference between American, British and Canadian historical interpretations about why this war was fought, what the effects were of military and naval operations, and to what extent such operations affected the ultimate political results. The lecture pointed out that the war was caused by long-term underlying irritations on both the British and American sides and that the results of military and naval operations during the war resulted in a stalemate that was eventually resolved by public opinion during the peace negotiations.

Keywords:

• USA
• Royal Navy
• Canada
• War of 1812
• Strategy
• war aims
• Carl von Clausewitz

It has been often said that the War of 1812 is a ‘forgotten conflict’, but this can hardly be considered true now in the light of the various commemorative events surrounding its bicentenary in the United States and Canada and the range of scholarly conferences and continuing waves of new books and articles on the topic. There was even doubt about this description a decade ago,1 but surely we must cast it aside now. In the past few years new work by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic has certainly brought the subject to a much wider audience and with them a variety of interpretations has appeared. Authoritative accounts, such as that by Donald Hickey,2 have been updated and reissued, while over the past decade a whole range of key new works have appeared that make important contributions to understanding the war. These include works by Barry Gough,3 David Skaggs,4 Nicholas Rodger,5 Jon Latimer,6 Jeremy Black,7 Gordon Wood,8 Stephen Budiansky,9 George Daughan,10 Kevin McCranie,11 Brain Arthur,12 Andrew Lambert,13 J. C. A. Stagg,14 Troy Bickham15 and Nicole Eustace.16 Even the United States navy contracted for the writing of a commemorative coffee-table history of the naval war17 as well as being in the course of completing four large volumes of edited historical documents.18

With all these books – not to mention a range of scholarly articles – there is still a surprising lack of unanimity as to how and why the war began, what the effects of military and naval operations were, how the war ended and what its ultimate outcome was. These are certainly the fundamental questions that students and faculty at any war college need to ask as they try to understand a major issue in all of human history: the problem of war itself. To grapple with these fundamental issues, one needs to go beyond the details of military and naval operations and look at the larger issues.

In the case of the War of 1812, this has been extremely difficult to do. Among the contestants, fundamental patriotic passions have still survived after 200 years and even new scholarship reflects the roles that national historians have given the war. For Canadians, who fought the war as British colonials, the War of 1812 has had a pivotal place in national history. For many years, Canadians accepted the myth that militia in Upper Canada (now Ontario) had saved the province from conquest by the United States, thereby contributing to the national narratives of loyalty to the Crown as well as documenting an early nationalistic impulse. While the militia myth was exploded by the eminent Canadian military historians George Stanley and Charles Stacey, it was only to replace the militia with the regular British Army and the Royal Navy. On the maritime side, Canadian historians have studied actions on the Great Lakes19 and on privateering.20 More recent Canadian scholarship in social and military history has shown that there was a strong element of Americanization in the Canadian provinces that was influenced by economic developments south of the border. In this situation, a large number of Americans had left the United States for the economic opportunity involved to take advantage of the availability of Crown lands in Canada. British officials feared that they were not loyal at all and gave reason for the British army to make greater efforts to defend Canada than the Americans had to attack it. More broadly, modern research has shown, in contrast to the traditional story, that public attitudes outside of Upper Canada were either ambiguous or ambivalent about the war, certainly in francophone Canada where many were still doubtful about British rule and had little interest in American republican rule.21

In the United States the War of 1812 was originally and widely seen as a second war for independence that consolidated what had been started in 1775. By the late nineteenth century this had changed to a public memory of only selected events, such as Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans in 1815, the navy's frigate victories early in the war, the burning of Washington and ‘the rockets' red glare’ that showed that the flag was still there at Baltimore. In twentieth-century American historical writing the subject of the war has been somewhat confusing with a variety of narrative emphases. On one hand, it was seen attached to the rise of America as a world power, while others interpreted in the light of the dynamics of internal American regional politics and political interest groups in the expansion of the United States across the continent. A scholarly debate resulted over the priority of internal or external causes for the war. This was replaced by historical debates about the rise and preservation of republicanism, the assertion of individualism, liberalism and domestic political extremism.22

In addition to this changing debate about the general and character nature of the war among historians, there has been a more consistent discussion among naval historians. This discussion falls into several national categories and perspectives. On the American side, the longest tradition in American naval history is the large number of biographies about the heroic exploits of naval captains such as James Lawrence,23 Stephen Decatur,24 John Rodgers,25 and Isaac Hull26 as well as biographies of the American commanders in the battles on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain, Oliver Hazard Perry and Thomas Macdonough.27 This category has also included studies of the frigates, either collectively28 or individually.29

A complementary American line of naval interpretation has been called the ‘navalist school’ in which those who were arguing for the development of a strong US navy between 1882 and 1905 interpreted the naval side of the War of 1812 as a cautionary tale that demonstrated the dire straits that befell a nation with inadequate naval preparation and an inadequate naval force.30 Among a number of writers, the most prominent authors in this school were future president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt31 and the naval historian and theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan.32 This nineteenth-century navalist school of interpretation argued that the lack of naval preparation before the war had crippled the United States, but despite this serious handicap, the more extreme interpreters claimed that American sailors had heroically won glorious victories and had obtained an acceptable end to the war. The navalists concluded that the War of 1812 showed future generations the futility of land warfare and demonstrated the strategic imperative of having a strong navy for national defence. While still using the War of 1812 as an instructive example for current policy, Captain Mahan was more cautious. ‘Not by rambling operations, or naval duels, are wars decided, but by force massed, and handled in skillful combination.’ Mahan advised. ‘It matters not that the particular force be small. The art of war is the same throughout; and may be illustrated as readily, though less conspicuously, by a flotilla as by an armada.’33

This American naval tradition of using the War of 1812 as an exemplar continues to this day. In the preface to the US Navy's coffee table, illustrated history of the war, the current Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, wrote ‘The lessons that the Navy and Marine Corps learned during the War of 1812 continue to shape our history. Our earliest heroes – Decatur, Hull, Perry, Macdonough, Porter and others – set the standard for leadership, courage, seamanship and innovation that our modern leaders strive to emulate.’34 In the June 2012 issue of Naval History magazine, the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert USN, draws ‘three key lessons from the US Navy's first sustained trail by fire: “War-fighting First. Operate Forward. Be Ready”.’35 The US navy's experience in that war showed that the shortfalls in naval preparation before the war had hurt the country. At the same time, tactical proficiency, forward operations and war-fighting readiness became naval hallmarks that endure today in public memory.36

The British interpretative tradition of naval scholarship on this war was established by William James soon after the war.37 First, he sought to correct the exaggerated claims of American writers, while at the same time, showing the effective power of a great navy in dealing with minor American naval forces at the same time that it was engaged in a life and death struggle against Napoleon's overarching ambitions for European hegemony. As N. A. M. Rodger put it, ‘For the British the American War was a tiresome irritant, which they wished to end by bringing home to Madison's government the reality of its situation, without diverting major forces from the final effort to defeat Napoleon.’38 In much greater detail, Brian Arthur's impressive new research on the growing effectiveness of the British naval blockade39 and Andrew Lambert's precise, detailed and documented demolition of the traditional American navalist interpretation raises the need – amid this wide variety of nationally orientated scholarship – to find a scholarly and balanced interpretation that views the war from all sides in terms of those basic questions that one should ask about wars: How do wars begin? What are the effects of using armed forces toward achieving the opposing participants' objectives in war? How do wars end? To that end, Jeremy Black, J. C. A. Stagg and Troy Bickham have already made impressive contributions. Certainly new scholarship and new interpretations will come in the future, so that all one can offer at the moment is a tentative summary progress report on where historians seem to be now in this endeavour.

How the War of 1812 began

The war had roots that stretched back a decade or more on both the British and American sides. For some in Britain, the new American republic had proved to be both erratic and irritating. Incessant American protests about impressment and neutral rights were irritating and seemed entirely out of place in the critical situation at hand as Britain struggled to survive, often alone, against overwhelming French military power. Not only that, Americans seemed overly ambitious, greedy and avaricious, wanting to expand their territory at the expense of Britain and Spain as well as increase American trade and profit. A vocal group of British critics still resented the terms upon which the Whig Rockingham and Shelburne governments had granted American independence in 1783, thinking the terms and boundaries assigned at that time as far too generous. Moreover, Americans appeared to the British to favour France over Britain. It was understandable that Americans had some empathy with France, given that American independence resulted from French intervention and that there were ideological connections between American and French republicanism. But, continuing American support for Bonaparte, the archdictator and destroyer of liberty was going too far.40 Indeed, Madison had complaints against France over neutral rights and Congress even debated declaring war against both France and Britain.41

From the American point of view, there was neither a single stated cause nor catalyst that moved President James Madison to suggest war to Congress in June 1812. Madison's official war message involved 12 pages of meandering complaints that even he admitted was not a full and complete list. Britain's interference with American neutral trade through its Orders in Council and its continuing policy of stopping and searching for British subjects to impress into British naval service from American vessels topped the list of Madison's complains, followed by the charge that British agents were stirring up Native American tribes against the United States. But, these were all symptoms of a deeper cause that Americans felt. The real concern was to obtain respect for America's independent sovereignty and honour as a nation. It was an ideological and practical protest against a British attitude that Americans did not like.42

On the domestic side in the United States, 1812 was also a presidential election year and Madison was manoeuvring to retain his Republican party's position in power. The declaration of war was made in June 1812, with the presidential election in November. Madison was not regarded as a strong leader and he certainly preferred peaceful methods to obtain his ends. During the first three years of his administration he had attempted to use peaceful methods and he had been the guiding light behind the restrictive trade system that had been in place between 1806 and 1811.43 By 1812, it was clear that American trade restrictions were ineffective and that force was needed to bring the results that Madison and the Republicans wanted.

While Madison's formal declaration of war stated that the central issues were maritime in nature, this does not seem to have been the case. In Nicole Eustace's research on the cultural history of the war among the general American population, she shows that the Republican's pro-war rhetoric was made within a completely different context than the way that military, naval and maritime professionals – and historians of these topics – typically think.

This helps to explain why this war has been so baffling and difficult to interpret. The three main issues – impressment, trade and Native Americans – were cast in terms of internal and domestic development. Impressment was cast in popular American ideology as British attempts to rupture American families by taking away American men, putting them in a kind of slavery on board British warships and destroying the rights of American citizens.44 A major issue of the day in America was a critique of Thomas Malthus's work on population. The supporters of the Madison administration funded an American edition of the work by printers who were major figures in the pro-war effort. A significant part of the pro-war rhetoric was tied to a rebuttal of the conclusion that Malthus drew, while at the same time celebrating and encouraging further American domestic population growth.45 Pro-war polemicists linked all this to Republican ideas about personal freedom that were implicit in American citizenship, trying to show that British policies on impressment, neutral trade and dealings with Native Americans contravened rights to happy families with numerous children, population growth and the expansion of American settlement into Native American lands.46

The opposing political party, the Federalists, made it clear that they did not think that any of these issues were worth fighting a war about, everyone of whom voted against the war in Congress.47 But, despite political opposition, Republicans passed the declaration of war that Madison requested. When the British government learned of the American war declaration, it was surprised and thought it a mistake thinking it had answered the American complaints by withdrawing the Orders in Council.48 But American persistence underscored the fact that the president's list of complaints was a list of symptoms, not causes of the war.

The conduct of war to achieve national objectives

In comparison to other wars in history, American political objectives for fighting the War of 1812 were very limited objects. It was not intended to be a war for survival and the larger proportion of the population was not involved. With a total population of about 7.2 million people in 1810, more than 500,000 served in some fighting capacity during the War of 1812, but of these only 57,000 were regular soldiers and casualties were only 2,260 or half of one per cent.49 While Madison's objectives in opening the conflict were not intended to involve any issue of American national survival, he and his administration seemed to be unaware that war raises issues of chance that can have unintended consequences in terms of a war's results.

In comparison to other nations that have started wars, the United States was curiously unprepared to undertake such a venture. The US army since 1808 had an authorized strength of 10,000 officers and men, but in 1811 had just above half that number in service. In Canada, the British army numbered 5,600 regulars with more than 250,000 in other parts of the world. There was no senior leader in the tiny American military establishment, uniformed or civilian, who could be described as having a ‘genius for war’,50 the intuitive ability to size up a comprehensive view of a military situation, maintain courage and determination in the face of danger and maintain presence of mind in the face of the unexpected.51 Few had extensive military experience and little, if any, professional military education. The US Military Academy at West Point was only ten years old in 1812 and had graduated only 89 officers, all of whom were still quite junior. The senior officers who had served effectively 30 years before in the American Revolution, such as generals Henry Dearborn, Thomas Pinckney and William Hull, soon demonstrated that they were no longer effective combat commanders.52

At the end of 1811 the US Navy had only 15 vessels in active service, with five others laid up in reserve requiring six months for mobilization.53 Although a tiny force with which to challenge the world's largest navy, its officers and men had relatively more recent combat experience than their American army counterparts, having fought in the Quasi-War with the French Republic, 1798–1800 and the First Barbary War against Tripoli and Algiers, 1800–5. Since then it had kept a small force on active service at sea. This was an important factor for American naval readiness, but the purposes for which the Navy had been built had been a continuing political debate over the previous two decades before the War of 1812. There were two opposing views, one that has been called the ‘navalists’, whose vision was to use American naval force as an arbiter in world politics. Their concept for a navy would allow it to serve as a continual deterrent to aggression as well as show America's power abroad while her ships protected American commerce and overseas interests. Another group, now called the ‘anti-navalists’ was not against having a navy, but saw different uses for it. They argued that the navalists' vision was impractical and far too costly. Their navy would be a sea-going militia force, smaller in size, with vessels whose capabilities were limited to a very few vessels operating singly on distant stations with the emphasis in home waters on coastal protection and the suppression of piracy.54 For much of the first century of the United States' existence, the antinavalists held sway over American naval policy, but there remained a constant tension between the two viewpoints. By and large over the country's first hundred years – with the notable exception of the War of 1812 – American leaders were satisfied to accept the benefits that came indirectly to the United States from the Royal Navy's exercise of global naval power, while American's focused on westward expansion across the North American continent. As Andrew Jackson told the American people in his inaugural address as president in 1829, the United States had ‘need of no more ships of war than are requisite to the protection of commerce’.55

It was this type of thinking that had led to building the large frigates in the early 1790s that eventually made their mark in the opening six months of the AngloAmerican War of 1812. Starting from the concept of the typical French and British frigates of the 1790s, American shipbuilders sought to design six frigates for a small navy that would be an overmatch for possible opponents. Thus, in the case of the 44-gun American frigates, they applied the scantlings of a 74-gun ship to a frigate that, in the words of USS Constitution's builder, ‘in blowing weather would be an overmatch for double-deck ships, and in light winds to evade coming to action’.56

Professional military and naval officers commonly remark that when a war occurs, one must come as you are. So it was with the United States in 1812, but was an oddly unprepared position to be in for a country that had leaders who wanted to start a fight. President Madison had tried to make some military preparations in early November 1811, only seven months before he declared war. He asked Congress to double the authorized size of the Army to 20,000 men. When Congress responded by increasing it to 35,000, Madison thought it impossible to reach that number in a short time. It also created a permanent establishment that he did not want, given his ideological opposition to having a standing army. Some months later in April 1812 and more in line with Madison's political predilections, Congress authorized the President to call up 100,000 militia men for six months of Federal service. By June, however, the army had succeeded only in recruiting 5,000 more men and the War Department was unable to report to Congress exact figures on the country's military strength.57

In November 1811 Madison had also asked Congress to increase the strength of the navy, taking action that he hoped British leaders would notice in building 12 74gun ships of the line and 20 more frigates. In response Congress sent the opposite message to Britain than Madison intended. Congress defeated the bill, agreeing only to gather shipbuilding timber for ten frigates over the next three years.58

On the British side, there were 5,600 troops in Upper and Lower Canada – although the Americans had over-estimated British strength at 12,000 – backed by a nation already fully mobilized for war albeit otherwise occupied in Europe.59 For Britain, it was a question of diverting already active forces and military equipment, while for the United States it was a matter of creating and training forces and obtaining equipment. Choosing to be an aggressor, the United States had few geostrategic options. It could not directly strike the British Isles, so any attack on Britain was limited to a land attack on Canada, the nearest British territory. Even nearby Bermuda, the Bahamas and the West Indian colonies were too difficult for Americans to attack without an amphibious force. At sea, America's tiny navy could hardly put forward an effective challenge to Britain's command of the world's oceans. Britain could supply more than £20 million for its navy; muster 138,204 seamen in actual service60 in a 1,000-ship navy with some 120 to 150 ships of the line.61

As a minor and insignificant naval and military power in the global perspective of that time, the United States could not even hope to win a power struggle with Britain through armed force. It could only do what minor powers can always attempt to do with their small military forces in a disagreement with a major power: irritate and embarrass the major power by the occasional local victory, use unconventional weapons, challenge local control in distant areas, engage in a propaganda campaign, attack enemy trade and logistics as a means to increase enemy costs, and to hope for political opposition to the expense of a protracted war as a means to pressure the enemy government to come to acceptable terms.

As the instigator of the war the United States put itself on the strategic offensive to achieve its goals in trying to force Britain to act against its policy interests, and thereby was in the weaker position not only in terms of its armed forces, but also in terms of its strategic position. Carl von Clausewitz reminds us that there is an inherent tendency of an attacker to falter due to the logistical need to launch an attack in stages, diminishing the attacker's strength as he advances and requiring an attacker to assume weaker defensive positions in the course of an attack.62 An offence can be successful if its first effect completely shatters the will of the defender, but it can equally ‘steel the enemy's resolve and stiffen his resistance’.63 The psychological issues involved in effectively carrying out successful attacks are so complex and varied that commanders often fail in undertaking them, either stopping short of the objective or overshooting it.64 On the strategic defensive, Britain held the stronger position. In this strategic position, the defender allows the attacker to wear itself down through its attacks to bring about general exhaustion, at which point a defensive counter-attack can be used effectively.65

The 1812 campaign

The narrative story of the War of 1812 can be better understood by keeping these thoughts from classical military theory in mind, but, as in many cases of war in history, there are a few twists and turns that lead to the ending. Looking at the naval war within the broad perspective of the overall war, an historian can observe several patterns. First, the campaigns in 1812 and 1813 were characterized by an American offensive, undertaken within the limited geo-strategic and practical options that were available to the United States. In these years, the shared border region between Canada and the United States became the focus of one theatre of war, while the open ocean was the focus of the other. There has been a tendency among historians to look at these theatres separately, seeing only military issues on the border and naval issues at sea. It is misleading to divide them in this fashion, as they are strategically connected. The border area also involved critical naval issues on the lakes that determined military actions, while the military campaigns strategically complemented the naval campaigns.

The theatre of war that comprised the border between Canada and the United States was subdivided into three fronts: The Detroit Front, the Niagara Front and the Lake Champlain Front. On the Detroit Front in July 1812, General William Hull commanded the largely volunteer American northwest army that crossed the Detroit River and invaded Canada at Sandwich (present-day Windsor, Ontario). British forces under General Isaac Brock received critical intelligence by capturing Hull's military papers in a Lake schooner and put the information to good use. Brock seized the initiative and counterattacked by taking distant Fort Mackinac at the northern end of Lake Huron, while defending Fort Amherstburg in the south. Gaining the additional support of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, Britain's Native American allies attacked Hull's long and vulnerable supply line. Thinking that an overpowering Native American force was about to attack, Hull retreated, ordered the evacuation of Fort Dearborn (present-day Chicago IL), and surrendered his army along with the entire Michigan Territory.66

British victories in Michigan led to the American attack on the Niagara Front. Here in October 1812, with somewhat better logistic support, the American general Stephen Van Rensselaer had to delay his planned attack by three days for lack of oars in the boats needed to cross the swiftly moving Niagara River below the Falls. Eventually they crossed and surprised a British position, but were quickly defeated and forced back by the defending British forces. At the other end of the Niagara River, above the Falls, the Americans were unable to implement their planned crossing to take Fort Erie.67

On the Lake Champlain Front, lack of political and logistical support for the War in New England created severe difficulties. Recruiting was difficult. State governments were hesitant to authorize use of their militias alongside Federal troops, and even purchasing goods for the army proved difficult. The underlying political issue was the Madison administration's failure to persuade Congress to expand the country's naval defences to protect commercial shipping, the heart of the New England economy. It also meant that American military supplies needed to use overland transportation rather than maritime.

In the presidential election in November 1812 every coastal state in the north voted against Madison. Pennsylvania's swing vote proved the crucial one that kept Madison and his aggressive war policies in place. Meanwhile, later in November, the Northern Army under the command of General Henry Dearborn withdrew from Canada, lacking both the logistical support and the troops to make a concerted assault on Montréal in winter. Moreover, they had no indication that French Canadians would rise in revolt against British control as some Americans predicted.68

Despite this series of military failures, the American government remained optimistic about the war, entirely because of its naval victories at sea. Even with the lack of funding for naval expansion, the US Navy and American privateers had captured three British frigates and several small vessels in 1812. The losses on the American side were similar in number, but were a proportionately heavier loss for such a small navy. On both sides, the losses were mainly single-ship actions when a more heavily gunned warship won the day. From the American point of view they were effective. Their point was underscored by then parliamentary backbencher George Canning, who told the House of Commons in February 1813: ‘the sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was broken by those unfortunate captures’.69 Nevertheless, the Royal Navy had not been inactive, capturing 150 American privateers during the first eight months of the war – about half of those at sea. In November 1812, the mutual trade war resulted in the Americans taking 187 merchant vessels and the British, 185.70

In Britain, despite the political clamour, the Admiralty moved effectively to control the situation. The Order in Council of 13 October 1812 provided a legal basis for economic sanctions against the United States through a blockade against the American coast and authorized British privateer actions against American merchant shipping. On 21 November 1812, the Admiralty was instructed to ‘institute a strict and rigorous Blockade of the Ports and Harbors of the Bays of the Chesapeake and of the River Delaware’ in accordance with international law.71 The purpose of the blockade was two-fold: to protect British West Indian commerce and to put economic pressure on the United States. The choice of where to put economic pressure was carefully chosen to distress the Mid-Atlantic of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia where British leaders thought the decision-makers and supporters for the war were located. Under this plan, the New England states would not be affected in the hope that they might secede from the Union.72

The 1813 campaign

On the North American station Vice-Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren reported that the blockade was in place on 23 February 1813. By spring Warren extended the economic blockade to New York harbour, although leaving it open to neutral trade, and established a blockade against the US navy's ports at New London CT, in Narragansett Bay and at Boston. A month later in March 1813 the Admiralty sent orders to extend the blockade even further – from Rhode Island to Louisiana – and revoked the licences of British merchant ships to sail without convoy escort. The government's revocation of licences for independent sailing was a key move designed to thwart privateers, whose main targets were single ships sailing alone.

From March to September 1813 Warren's tightened blockade captured 138 American ships, including USS Chesapeake, (38), while USS Argus, (18), was captured in British waters. At the same time the Royal Navy effectively blockaded seven important US navy ships – Adams (24); Constellation (38); Constitution (44); Congress (38); Hornet (18); Macedonian (38) and United States (44) – keeping them in port and preventing them from getting to sea.73 With few ships left, the US Navy had only a very limited ability to resist.

Admiral Warren calculated that in 20 months on the North American station up to 1 April 1814, his ships had captured, burned, or sunk 971 American ships.74 Despite that remarkable success, the blockade was not impervious and several of the blockaded warships were able to get to sea in 1814. Some of the openness of the blockade was intended, in order to allow a limited trade to continue that was advantageous to Britain, but some of it was due to weather conditions and the lack of warships on station along a very long coast line. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 1814, the Royal Navy had effective control of the sea on the North American coast. Official American figures for exports fell by nearly 85 per cent by 1814 from the 1807 high, while for the same period imports fell by about 90 per cent. The American government's revenues dropped by 54 per cent from $13 million to $6 million between 1811 and 1814 at a time when the war was costing more than $20 million a year, creating a huge problem in war debt and serious doubts in confidence about the fiscal stability of the United States.75

The naval balance was different on the Lakes, where ocean-going warships had no direct access and warships had to be purpose-built locally on both sides. This situation was also deeply integrated into the broader conflict along the border between the United States and Canada. Despite the continuing war in Europe in 1813, Britain was able to shift forces from the West Indies to Canada, where troop strength reached 20,000 men, and to build naval forces on the Lakes. Nevertheless, American forces renewed their attacks on the Detroit and Niagara Fronts, while British forces remained largely on the strategic defensive, making efforts to cut American logistical support and create a diversion with Native American attacks.

This resulted in number of strategically indecisive actions with increasing violence and destruction. Among these was the American amphibious raid in Lake Ontario on York, the capital of Upper Canada. British options in shifting forces between the Detroit and Niagara areas were severely limited by Oliver Hazard Perry's naval victory on Lake Erie in September 1813, hindering the ability of British forces to use water transport, but also by the fact that some 25 per cent of General Proctor's British troops had been sent to serve as gunners and marines with the defeated British flotilla. In addition, the American naval victory affected Britain's ability to supply her Native American allies, contributing to the British defeat at the Battle of the Thames, near London, Ontario, and the temporary military evacuation of Upper Canada eastward toward Kingston on Lake Ontario.76 Despite this, American forces were unable to exploit their victories and British forces soon pushed them back across the Niagara River, even taking Fort Niagara on the American side of the river. On the Lake Champlain Front in 1813, the American attempt to attack Montreal failed.

In response to these continuing American military attacks, Britain made a series of minor distracting counter-attacks along the coasts of Chesapeake Bay in 1813, a foretaste of the larger British counterattack in 1814 and 1815. The inability of one side or the other to reach any decisive strategic gains through armed force resulted in increasing violence and destruction as well as resentment on both sides.77

The 1814 campaign

Across the Atlantic Napoleon's abdication in April 1814 marked a turning point for events in Europe as well as in the Anglo-American war. Yet this did not mean that Britain could turn the same military resources against the United States. Britain was faced with war debt and high wartime taxes after 21 years of warfare, yet was still obliged to maintain an Army of 75,000 troops on the continent and financially support European allied troops until peace could be negotiated at Vienna. In addition, there was the unresolved military situation with French forces still in control of Belgium and the Netherlands, a historically vital geo-strategic danger area for Britain with the potential invasion threat it posed.78

Napoleon's unexpected return from exile a year later on 11 March 1815 created a new crisis in Europe until his defeat at Waterloo just four months later on 1 June 1815. Nevertheless even in 1814, Britain no longer had the need to stop neutral trade with France, impress seamen, or blockade French warships in port. With hostilities in Spain ended, there was no longer the need to ship additional troops to Spain, more be spared for North America, despite demands elsewhere and the need to begin demobilization. With 16,300 additional troops, British forces in North America could undertake a more aggressive counter-offensive to defend Canada.

On the British side, the operational focus in 1814 was to maintain the blockade of the American coast and to invade the United States. A more aggressive raiding campaign inside Chesapeake Bay was designed to divert American attention from the Canadian border area and make American politicians aware of what could happen if they persisted.79

The Americans opened the 1814 campaign with several attacks. Their attempt to retake Fort Mackinac in northern Lake Huron and to take British positions further west in the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys both failed. British forces repulsed all these attacks as well as maintained control of Lake Huron. On the Niagara Front, the Americans crossed the Niagara River above the Falls and took Fort Erie and later repulsed a British advance, but could not exploit their success further while Britain maintained naval control on Lake Ontario to support defences in Canada.80

Successful with their defence, Britain now moved to counterattack from its strategic defensive position. As the Americans had found difficulties in sustaining an offensive attack, so too did the British. Choosing where to launch their counterattack, the British army in Canada chose Lake Champlain rather than Detroit or Niagara. With the additional troops available, this front offered them better logistical support. On 1 September 1814, 10,000 British soldiers crossed the border, the largest force ever to invade the United States and defeated an American delaying force. When they reached the shore of Lake Champlain, they faced the decision as to whether the British force could move south with their supplies by water. The decision was made in the naval battle off Plattsburg, where Thomas Macdonough's US naval squadron sank or captured all the British ships, thereby establishing local American naval control. In the face of this, Sir George Prevost was unwilling to move his troops further south without a maritime avenue of support on lakes Champlain and George, aborting the British counter-attack on the United States.81

On the Atlantic coast British amphibious forces had greater effect. In Maine Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy landed 1,000 men just over the border near Eastport in July 1814, captured the nearby fort and claimed the entire region for Britain. In September, a force of 2,500 men landed at Castine, then marched up the Penobscot River and captured 20 guns from USS Adams (28), which had run aground in the river and had been burned to prevent her capture. Soon, all of Maine, east of the Penobscot was under British control for the remainder of the war.82

In Chesapeake Bay, as on the coast of Maine, the intention of British operations was to provide a diversion in favour of the British Army in Canada and to put pressure on the American government to end the war. Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane was able to use British naval and amphibious forces flexibly in the various inlets and rivers entering the bay. The main effort, with Major-General Robert Ross's 4,700 troops, landed on the Patuxent River and advanced on the American capital at Washington, defeating en route some 6,500 Americans at Bladensburg in August 1814. Entering the city with little resistance, the British burned the public buildings and destroyed arms. The American government had retreated into the countryside and the British, having accomplished their very limited objectives, withdrew to their ships in the Bay.83 The American government, as so often happens with attempts to make a subtle point with military force, failed to get the point intended. Instead of seeing this raid as the inducement intended to help end the war, they interpreted it as uncivilized and barbaric conduct, thereby stiffening resistance.

Moving on to a larger target, Cochrane attacked Baltimore in mid-September, a centre of popular support for the war. Again landing the 4,700 troops under Major General Ross, the British squadron attacked nearby Fort McHenry with naval artillery and Congreve rockets. Unable to subdue the fort, the British withdrew. This time, not only did the Americans fail to understand the point of the British attack, it stiffened American resistance to an even greater degree than at Washington, continuing to live today as the event described in the American national anthem.84 With the naval blockade of the coast continuing to strangle the American economy and to render harmless the few remaining ships of the US navy that were still caught in port, Admiral Cochrane withdrew to Halifax to plan the next operation.

With the British attempt to invade the United States had been blocked in the events on Lake Champlain, Admiral Cochrane carried out plans to invade the United States from an entirely different direction, the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. British blockading vessels had been active on the Gulf coast off the coast of Louisiana, the mouth off the Mississippi River and off Mobile Bay in the Mississippi Territory. Still balancing military threats in Europe with the North American theatre, officials in London approved an attack on New Orleans. Cochrane undertook this with the idea of a three-pronged offensive to distract American forces. His plan was to have Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn make amphibious attacks on the Atlantic coasts of Georgia and South Carolina to divert Americans away from fighting the Native American Creek Confederacy that was allied with the British, allowing them to support the main British strike under Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to capture New Orleans and control the mouth of the Mississippi River. In December and January, the New Orleans operation failed, again producing the effect of stiffening American resolve and promoting American nationalistic sentiment.85

The US navy's strength had been reduced to minimum capability through capture or blockade. At the same time, it was unable to complete ships under construction or even to man all its ships. In this situation, the US navy shifted in 1814 to what few small ships it had left. Despite the blockade, two of the large frigates did escape in early 1815. Of these, HMS Endymion engaged and spectacularly captured the 44-gun frigate USS President under the command of Stephen Decatur, while USS Constitution and USS Hornet separately managed to capture three small British warships in 1815.86 These American naval captures, despite the loss of one of the US navy's key ships, the capture of one of its most famous naval officers, and the powerful grip of the British blockade choking the American economy, had the effect of encouraging further resistance and stalemate, rather than ending the conflict.

Ending of the war

Meanwhile in 1814 representatives of the United States and Great Britain had begun formal peace negotiations at Ghent, where they continued discussions into December. The military and naval events of the latter part of 1814 remained unknown to the negotiators, but it was clear that the United States was now on the defensive, having failed in all of its attacks, and that the issues of free trade, neutral rights and impressment had disappeared as active issues with the defeat of Napoleon's regime in Europe. Yet, for the United States, the fundamental purpose for the war that lay behind all these issues remained: persuading Britain to treat the United States as an equal among nations.

In the peace negotiations, Britain was clearly in control. In their opening position, the British delegates made it clear that the United States had been soundly defeated on both land and sea. Additionally, they believed that the United States should be punished for its aggrandizing attacks on Canada by relinquishing the southern shore of the Great Lakes to protect Canadian security, cede parts of Maine, relinquish much of the north-western territories to create an independent state for Native Americans, and release national control of the Mississippi River. The effect of these proposals would contain the United States along the eastern seaboard of North America and confine its expansion westward.

The first reaction of the American delegates was to show offense at every expression of British superiority, starting with such matters of protocol as the British delegation's summoning them to their residence rather than to a neutral location. After several weeks of negotiations, the United States formally rejected the British proposals. Despite being in economic distress and having its armed forces under great pressure, the United States saw the British stance as an attempt to grasp territory that had not been won by any military action. In response, the Americans declared that the basis for peace between the United States and Britain should be ‘a mutual respect for the rights of each other, and in the cultivation of friendly understanding between them’.87

With these quite opposite viewpoints, the negotiations made little progress for months and it seemed that the war would drag on. The negotiators saw no decisive military or naval action that swayed a mutual decision one way or the other to break the stalemate, with the burning of Washington and the repulses at Plattsburg and Baltimore balancing one another. Even though Britain had defeated American military and naval offensives, it had been unable to use its armed forces to change American national sentiments. In the end, Lord Liverpool's government backed away from its harsh peace terms and accepted American intransigence by agreeing to settle the war on the basis of the status quo ante, not because of any American military or naval victory, but rather because of issues far beyond American control: internal British politics and the context of broader international politics. The British electorate opposed the high cost and taxes involved in continuing the war, while there was also significant public opinion in Britain that continuation of the war only increased taxes and benefitted the war contractors, not the wider British economy. On the international scene continuation of the war in America indirectly threatened the establishment of a balance of power for Europe in the delicate negotiations at the Congress of Vienna.

The ministry in London persisted in its views until well into December 1814. At that point the opposition in parliament threatened to force a documented revelation that the continuing high cost of the war in America was the only basis for high taxes, a point that could not be denied. As a result Liverpool's government agreed not to prolong the war. Along with it, they also agreed to drop their support for their Native American allies – condemning them to eventual dispossession – and to withdraw the punitive territorial reductions.88

On the treaty's arrival in the Unites States in late February 1815, Madison approved and Congress quickly ratified it as the country was celebrating the repulse of the British amphibious assault at New Orleans, an event just becoming known across the ocean. The conjunction of this celebration at the same time as the ratification of the treaty gave rise to much subsequent patriotic myth that has obscured the underlying fact that the ultimate outcome of the War of 1812 was determined by factors beyond military and naval events of the war.

Although Britain had effectively thwarted all American offensive operations, both on land and at sea, pushing the United States to the brink of economic collapse through its naval blockade, the Americans achieved their fundamental war goal. On both sides, offensive attacks and defensive counter-attacks created a stalemate by raising resistance on both sides, rather than shattering it. The resulting impasse was resolved only by the domestic political forces inside Britain.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John B. Hattendorf

John B. Hattendorf is Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, since 1984. Additionally he is chairman of the Maritime History Department and director of the Naval War College Museum. He is the author or editor of over 40 books, including being the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (Oxford, 2007) and is a member of the Editorial Board of Mariner's Mirror.

Notes

1 Hickey, ‘The War of 1812’. See also Stagg, The War of 1812, ‘An essay on Sources’, 171–86. Note: This paper is a formal written version of the lecture given by the author at St Edmunds Hall, University of Oxford, on 26 September 2012. The views expressed in this article are the academic judgements of the author alone and do not reflect any current official policy of the Naval War College, Newport RI, US Navy, US Department of Defense or any other entity.

2 Hickey, The War of 1812: A forgotten conflict.

3 Gough, Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

4 Skaggs, Thomas Macdonough and Oliver Hazard Perry.

5 Rodger, The Command of the Ocean.

6 Latimer, 1812: War with America.

7 Black, The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon.

8 Wood, Empire of Liberty.

9 Budiansky, Perilous Fight.

10 Daughan, 1812: The navy's war.

11 McCranie, Utmost Gallantry.

12 Arthur, How Britain Won the War of 1812.

13 Lambert, The Challenge.

14 Stagg, The War of 1812.

15 Bickham, The Weight of Vengeance.

16 Eustace, 1812: War and the passions of patriotism.

17 The navy's official publication is Jenkins and Taylor, Yardarm to Yardarm. It is also published commercially by National Geographic with an identical text under the title The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy (Washington, 2012). Jenkins wrote the text and Taylor the sidebars with advice from the US Navy's History and Heritage Command.

18 Dudley and Crawford, The Naval War of 1812.

19 For example, Gough, Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay; Malcolmson, Lords of the Lake and Capital in Flames.

20 Kert, Pride and Prejudice and Trimming Yankee Sails.

21 Stagg, War of 1812, 8–12.

22 Ibid., 1–8.

23 For a traditional rendering see Gleaves, James Lawrence, Captain.

24 For recent examples see Allison, Stephen Decatur and De Kay, A Rage for Glory.

25 Schroeder, Commodore John Rodgers.

26 Maloney, The Captain from Connecticut.

27 The most recent are Skaggs, Thomas Macdonough (2003) and Oliver Hazard Perry (2006).

28 For example, see Budiansky, Perilous Fight, and McCranie, Utmost Gallantry, the latter correcting many previous detailed factual errors in earlier American renditions through the use of British archival sources.

29 Martin, A Most Fortunate Ship and Brodine, Crawford and Hughes, Ironsides!

30 On this see Shulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power, 2–3, 9, 13–25.

31 Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812.

32 Mahan, Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812.

33 Ibid., vol. 1, v.

34 R. Mabus in Jenkins and Taylor, Yardarm to Yardarm, vii.

35 Greenert, ‘Building on a 200-Year Legacy’, 17.

36 Ibid., 16.

37 James, A Full and Correct Account and The Naval History of Great Britain.

38 Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 562–72, quotation at 571.

39 Arthur, How Britain Won the War of 1812.

40 Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, 49–75.

41 Hill, Napoleon's Troublesome Americans, 173–87.

42 Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, 20–48.

43 Hickey, The War of 1812, 18–22, 34.

44 Eustace, 1812: War and the passions of patriotism. On comparing impressment to slavery, see 81, 84, 170, 173–7; on family separations, see 78, 81–5, 114; on violations of citizenship rights, see 88–92.

45 Ibid., 14–15.

46 Ibid. On American Indians as British allies, see 3, 23, 46, 128, 143–4, 149, 157, 207, 226–7; on taking Indian lands, see 20–1, 23, 31, 70, 78, 113, 137, 139, 154, 161, 193, 209; as a war aim, see 146, 212, 225, 234.

47 Stagg, War of 1812, 46.

48 Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 566.

49 Eustace, 1812: War and the passions of patriotism, x.

50 Clausewitz, On War, book I, ch. 3, 103–4.

51 Sumida, Decoding Clausewitz, 131.

52 Stagg, War of 1812, 54.

53 Dudley and Crawford, The Naval War of 1812, vol. 1, 56–7: Secretary of the Navy to the Chairman of the Naval Committee, 3 Dec. 1811.

54 C. L. Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists, 11–25.

55 Ibid., quoted at 235.

56 Joshua Humphries in about 1794, quoted in Martin, A Most Fortunate Ship, 4.

57 Daughan, 1812: The navy's war, 27–8.

58 Ibid., 29.

59 Stagg, War of 1812, 49, 118.

60 Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 639, 645.

61 Ibid., 308; Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, xiv.

62 Clausewitz, On War, book VII, ch. 2, 524; ch. 3, 526; ch. 4, 527; ch. 22, 572.

63 Ibid., book VII, ch. 22, 573.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., book I, ch. 2, 90–1, 93.

66 Black, War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, 61–6.

67 Ibid., 66–70; Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, 103–4.

68 Black, War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, 70–5.

69 Ibid., 129, partial quote from Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vol. 24, 18 Feb. 1813, 643.

70 Bickman, Weight of Vengeance, 129, based on the National Archives of England and Wales, Kew, CO 42/160.

71 Arthur, How Britain Won the War of 1812, 73, 76, 80.

72 Lambert, The Challenge, 109–10.

73 Ibid., 131; Arthur, How Britain Won the War of 1812, 221.

74 Ibid., 106.

75 Wood, Empire of Liberty, 689; for more detailed statistics on this see Arthur, How Britain Won the War of 1812, Appendix B, 227–50.

76 Black, War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, 91, 96–101.

77 Bickham, The Weight of Vengeance, 134–43.

78 Lambert, The Challenge, 312.

79 Black, War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, 150.

80 Ibid., 154–60.

81 Lambert, The Challenge, 310–12.

82 Ibid., 314–20.

83 Ibid., 320–26.

84 Black, War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon, 167–82; Lambert, The Challenge, 326–9.

85 Lambert, The Challenge, 341–5, Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, 266.

86 McCranie, Utmost Gallantry, 241, 260; Lambert, The Challenge, 345–79.

87 American delegation to the British delegation, 9 Sep. 1814, quoted in Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, 247.

88 Bickham, The Weight of Vengeance, 251–61.