Archive: The War of 1812

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0:35You might drink it every day, but did you know that the history of tea is steeped in skullduggery, colonialism and industrial espionage? I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me. We're the comedy show that takes history seriously. And in our latest episode, we spill the tea on tea. Join us to unpack the ancient Chinese origins of the drink and find out how it became the national drink of modern Britain. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:08This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In this episode of the summer selection of In Our Time, Melvin and his guests assess the War of 1812. After the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, the British sought to restrict trade between the United States and Britain's enemy France. Lacking enough sailors for its many naval engagements, the British also tried to press gang Americans to make up for that shortfall.

1:53Frustrated by British policy, the United States, only just over three decades old at this time, declared war in June 1812. The youthful country also saw this as an opportunity to try to absorb Canada into their federation. But the biggest losers in this war were the indigenous peoples of North America. Working with the British, who supplied them with arms, the loosely allied indigenous tribes suffered serious defeats. This enabled settlers to accelerate the bloody process of driving the indigenous people out of their traditional lands. In popular memory, the British long ago dismissed the war as an unimportant sideshow of the Napoleonic Wars, preferring instead to dwell on victories against the French Emperor like Waterloo.

2:44But for the US, Canada and the indigenous peoples, It remains a critical but highly contested subject of historical study. And there are some interesting quirks that you'll hear about in this episode. Did you know, for example, that the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner, whose lyrics were written during this war, was an old British drinking song? I know I didn't. Enjoy listening. Hello. In 1814, a 35-year-old American lawyer, Francis Scott Key, wrote a poem which he called Defence of Fort McHenry. He'd just observed the shelling of Baltimore's fort by British ships during the War of 1812, a conflict between Britain and the USA which lasted for three years.

3:26The British were keen to capture Baltimore, but despite sustained bombardment, the city didn't capitulate. Scott Key's poem was later set to music and renamed The Star-Spangled Banner and became the USA's national anthem. Although this song is now famous the world over, the War of 1812, which inspired it, is today often forgotten and overlooked. It was the first foreign war to be declared by the recently independent USA, and is widely seen among historians as having had a profound effect on how Americans and Canadians perceived themselves. It also had a devastating effect on the Native Americans.

3:59With me to discuss the War of 1812, its causes and aftermath are Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London, Lawrence Goldman, Fellow in Modern History at St. Peters College, University of Oxford, and Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh-Katlinburg. The early 19th century was a very difficult period for European, particularly West European history. What was the international situation in the years immediately before this 1812 war? Well, the international situation wasn't very complicated. It was essentially a huge, long-lasting and devastating war between the greatest land power, which of course was the French Empire, and the greatest sea power, which was Great Britain.

4:42With the United States, it got caught in between. And the two major forces, Britain and France, used America in the sense that they wanted America on their side, but more than anything, they didn't want America against them. Can you just tell me how America came into this conflict? America came in because it was the major neutral power left, and it was also a major international trading power, one might say. It was in the habit of supplying Great Britain with quite a lot of its trade. Half the imports it imported were from Britain, in fact, and it had links with West Indian colonies and so forth.

5:20France wanted to cut Britain off from this source of goods, obviously. Britain wanted to cut France off, and essentially poor United States was battered back and forth, almost like a shuttlecock, and always falling on the ground, trying to defend itself, being pretty ineffectual in it, and essentially was a victim of the larger war between the larger powers. Can you tell listeners more particularly how Britain and France hammered into America at this time, what specifically they did? Specifically, they tried to control with whom the United States could trade. Britain, actually it starts with France in 1806, decrees saying that any power that trades with Britain is going to get their ships seized.

6:08Britain the following year have what many people consider the main cause of the war, what was called orders and council, which basically said any port that won't let British ships in, Britain isn't going to let any other ships in. And therefore, any attempts by the United States to trade with powers which weren't Britain, were going to be stopped. But there was a little let out, one might say, which is that you could trade with other countries if you stopped in Britain first. We would then give a license. So what Britain did was to say, any American ships who want to trade stop in Britain. We license, so we get a fee, and also we then control.

6:46So Britain essentially was using, not only stopping the United States from giving any sorts of goods to their belligerent opponent, It also was wiping out any other... It was controlling neutral trade and trying to wipe out American trade. It seems an extraordinary thing not just to say you'll do, but to be able to do. Well, that's the problem. You've got this little animal over in the United States trying hard. Britain almost had it by the neck and its legs were swinging fruitlessly. It was fundamentally... It was an unmatched situation. There was nothing the United States really could do about it to try to say, OK, if you won't let us trade, you don't get trade from us either.

7:29Lawrence Goldman, the US United States were particularly angered by the British policy of impressment. Can you tell us what that is and why they were angered by it? Well, impressment is the way you get sailors, particularly when you're at war. In peacetime, you can hope for volunteers, but in wartime, you need to get hold of manpower and the conditions are very bad, people won't volunteer. And so the press gang comes and it tries to grab hold of men in ports and put them in the ships of the line. The Royal Navy, but indeed all navies, are trying to impress sailors during wars in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

8:10How many men do the British Navy need around the 1812? Well, it's a huge enterprise. The Royal Navy has something like 130 ,000 or 140 ,000 personnel around about 1810. It's fighting a global war against the French. It's trying to bottle up the French Navy and patrol the coasts of Europe. And it's also, of course, bottling up American ports. And it's chasing down French men of war across the oceans. It's an enormous enterprise. And the problem is it's losing some of its sailors. Some are simply deserting and they're finding work on American ships and others have actually become naturalised American citizens and they are aboard American ships.

8:55And so the Royal Navy is stopping and searching American ships and taking off those it believes are deserters and those who, though they may be naturalised American citizens, the Navy still takes them. The British say once a British subject, always a British subject. It doesn't matter if you've been naturalised. We'll take you back and we'll put you to work. And the scale is large. It's estimated that perhaps as many as 8 ,000 sailors are impressed by the Royal Navy at this time. And the Americans who are suffering the insult of having their trade interfered with now have an injury to their own citizens.

9:34And the cry goes up, free trade and sailors' rights. That's what's heard across the American states. To get it straight, they're stopping ships, they're boarding them, they're taking people off. Why did 8 ,000 British sailors desert to the American ships? Well, not all of them were deserters. Some were, but some just decided. Some were well-seasoned, experienced seamen who decided to work on American ships. And they'd become naturalised citizens, and they thought they were Americans. But naturalisation papers didn't bother the British. The British wanted them back. But was there a lure, as I read in one of your papers, that the Americans paid five times more, they were in better conditions?

10:12Is all that true? That's probably true. I mean, the Americans wanted sailors for their commercial ships as well. But the British felt that they had first call. They were fighting, in their view, a war of survival against the French Empire. And their need was the greater. And they were not prepared to put up with legal niceties. And they feared that Napoleon was going to come across the Channel and crush them, and they had every reason to be afraid of that. Absolutely. I mean, of course, at Trafalgar, the British had scored a remarkable naval victory, and the chances of invasion were the less. But to defeat Napoleon, to destroy the French Empire, which spread across Europe, was a gigantic task, and the British had need of manpower.

10:54Were there any other big outstanding sources of tension between the two? Yes, there are two, and they kind of interact. They concern Canada and also Native Americans as well. Canada, of course, is a fairly obvious weak point for the British. They can't defend it very easily. They haven't got a lot of soldiers in situ there. And once there is tension with the United States, there are some Americans, particularly in the West, who begin to talk about an invasion of Canada, even annexation of parts of British territory. They thought they'd just walk in and take it over. Jefferson thought... A wonderful sentence, do you want to say?

11:33I can't remember exactly what he says. Taking over Canada will be a mere march. Yes, he thought that they'd wander in, the Canadians would lay down their arms, and the point is, I think Jefferson believed the Canadians would willingly become Americans. Why wouldn't you want to become American Republicans? It wasn't as simple as that in the event. Some clearly want to annex it, others think if we can get some territory we can use it as a bargaining chip with the British. over all these other issues. But complicating the Canadian issue is something quite different and interesting, and it is an Indian uprising, a Native American uprising at this time.

12:11From about 1808-1889, Native Americans in what's known as the Old Northwest, which is the states, really, of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, are increasingly in tension, in friction and violence with American settlers pushing west. And there's a kind of Indian Native American cultural revival led by a chieftain of the Shawnee, Tensa Katawa, and he and his brother, who's a warrior, Tecumseh, one giving a kind of spiritual lead, Tecumseh giving a strategic lead, are able to bring together an alliance of tribes to fight the Americans. Now the British are very interested in this. They supply arms and some support to the Native American tribes.

13:04And what the British would like is that there should be some sort of Indian national reserve in the Great Lakes sort of area that would act as a buffer between the United States and those populous parts of Canada. So they rather support the Indians, and that's another source of tension, particularly in the West, where the British are seen to be supporting those who are fighting the Americans. And so we have a geographical spread of this war, which is the Great Lakes in the north. We have the south and west of what we now call North America down to New Orleans. We have the eastern seaboard over the North Atlantic Ocean, and we have the western coasts of Europe.

13:42So it's on that scale, even though... Frank Culliano, one flashpoint comes in 1807 when a Royal Navy ship fired on an American warship while trying to capture deserters. Now, is that a flashpoint? And if so, what is its significance? It is a flashpoint. It's very significant because in many respects it brings together all the things we've been discussing thus far. What happened was on June 22nd, 1807, the USS Chesapeake left its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, bound for the Mediterranean. and on board the Chesapeake were several deserters from the Royal Navy. There were several Royal Navy ships on station off the coast of Virginia at that time.

14:24It's one of the curious paradoxes of this period. There's increased tension between Britain and the United States, yet there are British warships in American waters, ostensibly defined French warships and privateers and so on. It's a very bizarre situation. It's a de facto blockade in many respects. The British warships had instructions to stop the USS Chesapeake. Chesapeake. The Chesapeake had become a kind of, as far as the British were concerned, a symbol for all that was wrong with the American policy, which was accepting British sailors into their service. The problem, as far as the Americans were concerned, was the Chesapeake was not a US merchant ship.

14:58It was a US warship. And just outside of US territorial waters and international waters, the Chesapeake is confronted by HMS Leopard. And the Leopard stops the Chesapeake. That's a Royal Navy. That's a Royal Naval ship, yes. And the ships are roughly of comparable size and armament. And the captain of the Leopard says, you've got deserters on board. The commander of the Chesapeake says, I don't know what you're talking about. He affects not to hear the captain of the Leopard at one point. And the captain of the Leopard fires on the Chesapeake. Three broadsides are delivered. It's a devastating attack, not least because the Chesapeake wasn't ready for it, which was unforgivable, frankly.

15:42The captain of the, the commander of the Chesapeake, James Barron, had only visited the ship once or twice before setting out. He thought he could prepare the ship for war en route to the Mediterranean. He was unprepared, and this was a source of great embarrassment for the Americans. The Chesapeake struck its colors. Its crew was mustered. The crew was examined. Four deserters were taken off the ship. Three Americans were killed in this incident and 18 wounded, one of whom died subsequently. So we have four deaths and four sailors removed from the Chesapeake. The sailors removed from the Chesapeake are quite interesting because they illuminate a lot of the points that Lawrence was making about impressment.

16:18Of the four, one was British born. The other three were American born. They were deserters from the Royal Navy. In their mind, their desertion was perfectly legitimate because they'd previously been impressed into the Royal Navy. And so they'd fled from the Royal Navy and joined the crew of the USS Chesapeake. Two of them, in fact, were African-Americans, one of whom was a former slave. These were not people who would necessarily identify themselves as British, yet as far as the British were concerned, they were able sailors. So after that incident, things begin to move towards what will be a war.

16:53President Jefferson didn't take military action. He tried to change British policy through economic coercion. Can you introduce the 1807 Embargo Act? Sure. Why he did it and why, tell us what happened. There's a great clamor for war in the United States after this incident. It goes to the heart of really what Americans have been anxious about vis-a-vis Britain since the War of Independence. Basically, the British are disregarding American sovereignty and American independence by this action. There's a clamor for war. Jefferson's aware that the United States does not have the naval forces to wage war against Britain.

17:30And he knows the United States isn't really prepared for war. So he seeks a negotiated settlement. And so negotiations are carried out through the summer and autumn of 1807. He also calls Congress into session early in October. And eventually in December, he will put an embargo bill to Congress. And the embargo bill is meant to exercise economic coercion over Britain. Some historians have said this is Jefferson at his utopian worst, seeking an alternative to war. I don't see it that way. I think in many respects he had no alternative. I think he had very little in his locker. And as a consequence, he sees this as possibly preparation for war.

18:10But he's hoping that economic coercion, Cathy alluded to the importance of American trade, withdrawing American trade will influence the British and convince them to give this up. The problem is the embargo is incredibly poorly structured. Essentially, the Americans stop trading, but they don't stop importing. So the British can continue to export to the United States, but the Americans aren't exporting themselves and their economy takes a terrible hit. Kathleen Burke, in 1812 we have President James Madison and the American government declare war on Britain. Can I just bring in one little loop because we've got the causes of it.

18:45Was it in the mind of the British still that somehow or other they were going to get America back, that this had been, they'd lost America in the Declaration of Independence and the war, but somehow or other they were going to go and have another go or they still were party to owning quite a lot of it? Well, certainly the Americans thought so. And indeed, some of the British press still referred to America as the colonies. I mean, that was one point of this war is that it convinced the British that America was going to be an independent power. I don't think that the British positively went into this war thinking they could get America back in that sense.

19:25That was done and dusted, as it were. But the Americans thought so. So when President Manson declared war, what prompted him to do that, specifically at that time? Well, specifically, it was an 1811, November 1811, order and council which says, which sounds not really important, the Americans could no longer provide the West Indies with salted fish. This had various things, A, because the British wanted British Canada to actually increase their economic problems. But the thing is, I mean, that and the continuing stopping of trade, which was it came to a close. But I think as well, the Americans realized that if they didn't jolly well go to war after threatening it for the previous decade almost, the idea of a republic as a viable form of government was going to be in real danger, that American honor was as much as important as salted fish.

20:33And Madison took that into account, did he? It wasn't just, I'll get them. It wasn't just a reaction that I'm going to show. He took the politics into account, as you've described. He took the politics into account. Indeed, you couldn't do anything else. You had to deal with a Congress. But I think he was not alone in thinking when push comes to shove, America is really at stake. And indeed, when he gives his address calling for war, that was one of the major points he wanted to make. That could unify the United States, honour everyone could care about fish. South didn't care, you know, but certainly honour because the Americans were feeling that no one was taking account of their interests.

21:17They were being battered around. They were being treated of as no account. And this was the way they had to show that they mattered. Lawrence Goldman, can you give us some idea of the line-up of forces, given that Britain was concentrating so much of its manpower and firepower on the continent? Yeah. The British are under-resourced in North America and the Americans, we might say, are unprepared. The British have about 5 ,000 troops in Canada and they have naval squadrons in North America and the Caribbean, but not much. Of course, in the course of the war, the situation changes, so the British are able to reinforce, because the Napoleonic Empire is collapsing from 1812.

21:58By 1814, the spring, it's ended. Napoleon has abdicated. And at that point, of course, the British can send over more men of war and more seasoned troops. And they have something like 100 vessels in North American waters by the summer of 1814. And similarly, they've got something approaching 50 ,000 troops there by the end of the war. Now, this can be compared to the American situation. they have maybe 7 ,000 regular soldiers at the start in 1812 to cover a vast area. Their real problem is not just men to line up, it's also officers. West Point has been founded as the American Military Academy.

22:45There are very few officers who can lead and one of the problems the Americans have is the quality really of their strategic leadership, which is not very good at all. But what they can rely on are the militia, or at least they have lots of those. And these are citizens who take up arms, who train, and all the states have militia for purposes of defence, and farmers and urban labourers drill and can be called up. And in theory, we're talking very large numbers here, four to five hundred thousand state militia across America. However, the states are often unwilling to vote the taxes required to put these men into the line, and some states, particularly in New England, are not very happy that their militia should fight outside the state's concern.

23:36They're not interested in offence, only defence. So neither side really has the fighting capacity at the beginning to make this war tell. It's in many theatres war, as I alluded to that earlier, Frank Cogliano. Can you tell us about what happened up in the Great Lakes on the Canadian border? Sure. I mean, I think we need to return to one of Lawrence's comments earlier about Canada and consider why Canada. On one hand, it's the only place to fight the British. It's that simple. On the other... Because they're there. Because they're there. That's right. On the other, there's a longstanding assumption that Canada, you know, as Jefferson said, is there for the marching.

24:15It's not as crazy as we now think, in the sense that there were about 80 ,000 settlers in Upper Canada, what's today modern Ontario at this point. Many of them were either American-born or descended from Americans. So they were either descendants of the Loyalists who fled after the American Revolution, or they were the so-called late Loyalists who were really opportunistic migrants who were attracted by generous land grants. And there was a belief that just for the marching, Canada could become, or Upper Canada at least, could become part of the United States. In 1810, the Americans acquired West Florida the same way.

24:46So it's not that there is a precedent at this very point. As a result, attacking Canada or liberating Canada is an interest of the United States early on. And what we see is largely ineffectual fighting in the Canadian borderlands. The Americans attempt to invade Canada in 1812 and 13 and are generally repulsed and their troops don't perform very well. The Canadians, much to the shock of the Americans, actually defend themselves and the Canadian militia defend themselves quite well. However, when the British attempt to invade the United States across the Great Lakes in 1813 and 14, they too don't do very well and are repulsed.

25:28So it turns out militia, as Lawrence alluded to a moment ago, are very good at defense and they're not very good at offense. And so we get this back and forth that's largely inconclusive except in one area, which is the Native American, the link between the British and Native Americans is severed in about 1813 when two things happened. The Americans win a naval battle on Lake Erie, which prevents the British from supplying the Indians in the old Northwest. And Tecumseh is killed at the Battle of the Thames in Ontario. And so those two things sever the link between the British and the Native Americans in the Northwest.

26:03And the Americans essentially wage two wars, one against the British and one against Native Americans. And that's a crucial turning point. You might drink it every day. But did you know that the history of tea is steeped in skullduggery, colonialism and industrial espionage? I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me. We're the comedy show that takes history seriously. and in our latest episode we spill the tea on tea. Join us to unpack the ancient Chinese origins of the drink and find out how it became the national drink of modern Britain. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

26:45Kathleen Burke, in 1840 the British forced their way into Washington. Can you tell us what happened then and what significance it had? It was done as a diversionary tactic to take pressure off the British in Canada, in fact, because there's no way they were going to be able to invade the United States. And so their strength, the Royal Navy, was to go along the coast and try to make difficulties. The point of Washington, of course, was, well, several. First of all, of course, it was the capital. But also the idea was that it was going to destroy arms, harbors, caches of weapons and so forth. The British, 2 ,500 of them, were landed.