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  • CCUS 11 – War of 1812

  • Hi, I’m John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. history and today were gonna talk

  • about what America’s best at: War. (Libertage.)

  • Uh, Mr. Green, the United States has actually only declared war 5 times in the last 230

  • years. Oh, Me from the Past, you sniveling literalist.

  • Well, today were gonna talk about America’s first declared war, the War of 1812, so called

  • because historians are terrible at naming things.

  • I mean, they couldve called it the Revolutionary War Part Deux, or the Canadian Cataclysm,

  • or the War to Facilitate Future Wars. But no. They just named it after the year

  • it started. Intro

  • I know this disappoints the military historians among you, but as usual were gonna spend

  • more time talking about the causes and effects of the war than the actual, like, killing

  • parts, because ultimately it’s the ambiguity of the War of 1812 that makes it so interesting.

  • The reason most often given for the War of 1812 was the British impressment of American

  • sailors, whereby American sailors would be kidnapped and basically forced into British

  • servitude. This disrupted American shipping. It also

  • seems like a reasonably obvious violation of American sovereignty, but it’s a little

  • more complicated than that. First of all, there were many thousands of

  • British sailors working aboard American ships, so many of the sailors that the British captured

  • were in fact Britishwhich gets to the larger point that citizenship

  • at the time was a pretty slippery concept, especially on the high seas, like papers were

  • often forged and many sailors identified their supposed American-ness through tattoos of,

  • like, Eagles and Flags. And there were several reasons why a British

  • sailor might want to become or pretend to be an American, including that the Brits at

  • the time were fighting Napoleon in what historians, in their infinite creativity, called the Napoleonic

  • Wars. And on that topic, Britain’s impressment

  • policy allowed them both to disrupt American shipping to France and to get new British

  • sailors to strengthen their war effort, which was annoying to the Americans on a couple

  • levels, especially the French loving Republicans, which is a phrase that you don’t hear very

  • often anymore. Another reason often given for the war was

  • America’s crazy conspiratorial Anglophobia. There was even a widespread rumor that British

  • agents were buying up Connecticut sheep in order to sabotage the textile industry! Lest

  • you worry that America’s fascination with conspiracy theories is new.

  • So those pushing for war were known as War Hawks, and the most famous among them was

  • Kentucky’s Henry Clay. They took the impressment of sailors as an

  • affront to American national honor, but they also complained that Britain’s actions were

  • an affront to free trade, by which they meant America’s ability to trade with Europeans

  • other than Great Britain. And, to be fair, the British WERE trying to

  • regulate American trade. They even passed the Orders in Council, which required American

  • ships to dock in Britain and pay tax before trading with other European nations.

  • Britain, we were an independent nation! You can’t do that kind of stuff. We have a special

  • relationship. It’s not that special. But the problem with saying this caused the

  • war is that the Orders had been in effect for 5 years before the war started AND they

  • were rescinded in 1812 before the U.S. declared war, although admittedly we didn’t know

  • about it because it didn’t reach us until after we declared war...there was no Twitter.

  • Another reason for the war was Canada. That’s right, Canada. Americans wanted you, Canada,

  • and who can blame them, with your excellent health care and your hockey and your first-rate

  • national anthem. Stan, this is fun, but enough with the #1812problems.

  • According to Virginia Congressman John RandolphAgrarian cupidity, not maritime rights

  • urges the war. We have heard but one wordCanada!, Canada!, Canada!”

  • I’m not here to criticize you, John Randolph, but that’s actually three words.

  • Now, some historians disagree with this, but the relentless pursuit of new land certainly

  • fits in with the Jeffersonian model of an agrarian republic.

  • And there’s another factor that figured into America’s decision to go to war: expansion

  • into territory controlled by Native Americans. Oh it’s time for the Mystery Document? The

  • rules here are simple. I try to guess the author of the Mystery Document,

  • usually I’m wrong and I get shocked. Alright, let’s see what weve got here.

  • You want, by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a particular

  • tract of land, to make them to war with each other. You never see an Indian come and endeavor

  • to make the white people do so.” It’s Tecumseh. DROP THE MIC. Is something

  • that I would do except that the mic is actually attached to my shirt, so...there’s no drama

  • in this. It’s clearly a Native American criticism

  • of white people. And I happen to know that that particular one comes from Tecumseh. And

  • I don’t get shocked today! So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that

  • Americans were continuing to push westward into territory where Indians were living.

  • I mean, this was a big reason for the Louisiana Purchase, after all.

  • By the beginning of the war, more than 400,000 settlers had moved into territories west of

  • the original 13 colonies, and they outnumbered American Indians by a significant margin.

  • Some Native groups responded with a measure of assimilation. Cherokees like John Ross

  • wanted to become morecivilized,” that is more white and farmer-y, and some of them

  • did even adopt such civilized practices as written languages, and slavery. The most civilized

  • practice of all. People are always like, “Why aren’t you

  • more celebratory of American history?” Well, why isn’t there more to celebrate?

  • But, other Indians wanted to resist. The best known of these were the aforementioned Tecumseh

  • and his brother TenskwatawaStan, can you just put it on the screen? Yes, let’s

  • just enjoy looking at that. Right, that’s just for all you visual learners.

  • So he was also known as the Prophet because of his religious teachings (and also because

  • of the pronunciation issues). The Prophet encouraged Indians, especially

  • those living in and around the settlement of Prophetstown, to abandon the ways of the

  • whites, primarily in the form of alcohol and manufactured consumer goods.

  • So stop drinking alcohol and eating refined sugars. This guy sounds like my doctor.

  • Tecumseh was more militant, attempting to revive Neolin’s idea of pan-Indianism and

  • actively resisting white settlement. As he put it. “Sell a country, Why not sell the

  • air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for

  • the use of his children?” The Americans responded to this reasonable

  • criticism in the traditional manner: with guns.

  • William Henry Harrison destroyed the nativessettlement at Prophetstown in what would become

  • known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. And he would later ride that fame all the

  • way to the presidency in 1840 and then spoiler alert he would give the longest inauguration

  • address ever, catch a cold, and die 40 days later.

  • Let that be a lesson to you, American politicians. Long speeches: fatal.

  • So, I’ve just painted a pretty negative picture of the Americanstreatment of the

  • Indians, because it was awful, but I haven’t mentioned how this relates to the War of 1812.

  • The Americans were receiving reports that the British were encouraging Tecumseh, which

  • they probably were. And the important thing to remember here is

  • that the War of 1812, like the 7 Years War and the American Revolution, was also a war

  • against Indians, and as in those other two wars, the Indians were the biggest losers.

  • And not in the cool way of the Biggest Loser where, like, Trainer Bob helps you lose weight,

  • but in the really sad way where your entire civilization gets John C. Calhoun-ed.

  • So, the War of 1812 was the first time that the United States declared war on anybody.

  • It was also the smallest margin of a declaration of war vote, 79-49 in the House and 19-13

  • in the Senate. Northern states which relied on trade a lot

  • didn’t want to go to war while Southern and Western states, which were more agrarian

  • and wanted expansion to get land for farmingand slaverydid.

  • The closeness of the vote reflects a profound ambivalence about the war. As Henry Adams

  • wrote: “Many nations have gone to war in pure gaiety of the heart, but perhaps the

  • United States were the first to force themselves into a war they dreaded, in the hope that

  • the war itself might create the spirit they lacked.”

  • Don’t worry, Henry Adams, in the future, were gonna get pretty gaiety-of-heart-ish

  • about war. Anyway as an actual war, the War of 1812 was

  • something of a farce. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • The U.S. army numbered 10 to 12 thousand and its officers weresunk into either sloth,

  • ignorance, or habits of intemperate drinking.” The U.S. Navy had 17 ships; Great Britain

  • had 1000. Also, America had very little money; Britain collected 40 times more tax revenue

  • than the U.S But Britain was busy fighting Napoleon, which

  • is why they didn’t really start kicking America’s butt until 1814 after Napoleon

  • was defeated. Napoleon’s defeat was also the end of the practice of impressment since

  • Britain didn’t need so many sailors anymore. Initially, much of the war consisted of America’s

  • attempts to take Canada, which any map will show you went smashingly. Americans were confident

  • that the Canadians would rush to join the U.S.; when marching from Detroit, General

  • William Hull informed the Canadians thatYou will be emancipated from Tyranny and oppression

  • and restored to the dignified station of free men.” And the Canadians were like, “Yeah,

  • were okay actually,” and so the British in Canada, with their Indian allies, went

  • ahead and captured Detroit and then forced Hull’s surrender.

  • America’s lack of success in Canada was primarily attributable to terrible strategy.

  • They might have succeeded if they had taken Montreal, but they didn’t want to march

  • through Northern New York because it was full of Federalists who were opposed to the war.

  • Instead they concentrated on the west, that is, the area around Detroit, where fighting

  • went back and forth. The British found much more success, even

  • seizing Washington DC and burning the White House. In the course of the battle, British

  • Admiral George Cockburn, overseeing the destruction of a newspaper printing house, told the forces

  • that took the city: “Be sure that all the Cs are destroyed, so that the rascals cannot

  • any longer abuse my name.” It ’s hard out there for a Cockburn.

  • Thanks Thought Bubble. Given these problems, it’s amazing there were any American successes,

  • but there were. The battleship U.S.S. Constitution broke the

  • myth of British naval invincibility when cannonballs bounced off it and earned it the nickname

  • Old Ironsides.” Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a British fleet in, of all places, Lake Erie.

  • At the Battle of the Thames, William Henry Harrison defeated Tecumseh. And the battle

  • of Horseshoe Bend showed one of the reasons why Indians were defeated when Andrew Jackson

  • played one group of Creeks against another group of Creeks and Cherokees. 800 Indians

  • were killed in that battle. And speaking of Jackson, the most notable

  • American victory of the war was the Battle of New Orleans, which catapulted him to prominence.

  • He lost only 71 men while inflicting 2036 British casualties. Of course, the most memorable

  • thing about the battle was that it took place two weeks after the peace treaty ending the

  • war had been signed, but hey, that’s not Jackson’s fault.

  • Again, no twitter. #1815problems The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war proved

  • just how necessary the war had been. (Not at all.)

  • No territory changed handswhen negotiations started in August 1814 the British asked for

  • northern Maine, demilitarization of the Great Lakes, and some territory to create an independent

  • nation for the Indians in the Northwest. But none of that happened, not because the U.S.

  • was in a particularly good negotiating position, but because it wouldve been awkward for

  • Great Britain to carve out pieces of the U.S. and then tell Russia and Prussia that they

  • couldn’t take pieces of Europe for themselves to celebrate their victory in the Napoleonic

  • Wars. There were no provisions in the treaty about

  • impressment or free trade, and basically the treaty returned everything to the status quo.

  • So neither the U.S. nor Britain actually won, but the Indians, who suffered significant

  • casualties and gave up even more territory, definitely lost.

  • So with a treaty like that, the war must have had negligible impact on American history,

  • right? Except no. The War of 1812 confirmed that the U.S. would exist.

  • Britain would never invade America again. Until 1961.

  • I mean, the U.S. were good customers and Great Britain was happy to let them trade as long

  • as that trade wasn’t helping a French dictator. The war launched Andrew Jackson’s career,

  • and solidified the settlement and conquest of land east of the Mississippi River, and

  • our lack of success in Canada reinforced Canadian nationalism while also ensuring that instead

  • of becoming one great nation, we would forever be Canada’s pants.

  • The war also spelled the end of the Federalist Party, which tried in 1815 with the Hartford

  • Convention to change the Constitution. In retrospect the Hartford Convention proposals

  • actually look pretty reasonable: They wanted to eliminate the clause wherein black people

  • were counted as three fifths of a human, and require a 2/3rds congressional majority to

  • declare war. But because they had their convention right before Jackson’s victory at New Orleans,

  • they only came off looking unpatriotic and out-of-touch, as the elite so often do.

  • It’s hard to argue that Americans really won the War of 1812, but we FELT like we won,

  • and nothing unleashes national pride like war-winning.

  • The nationalistic fervor that emerged in the early 19th century was, like most things,

  • good news for some and bad news for others, but what’s important to remember, regardless

  • of whether youre an American, is that after 1812, the United States saw itself not just

  • as an independent nation, but as a big player on the world stage.

  • For better and for worse, that’s a gig weve held onto. And no matter how you feel about

  • America’s international intervention, you need to remember, it didn’t begin in Afghanistan

  • or even Europe; it started with freaking Canada. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.

  • Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. The script supervisor is Meredith

  • Danko. Our show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself.

  • Our associate producer is Danica Johnson. And our graphics team is Thought Cafe.

  • If you have questions about today’s video, you can ask them in comments where they will

  • be answered by our team of historians. We also accept suggestions for the libertage

  • captions. Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we

  • say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome. Goodbye. Don’t forget to subscribe.

  • CCUS11 War of 1812 -

CCUS 11 – War of 1812

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1812年戦争 - クラッシュコース アメリカ史 #11 (The War of 1812 - Crash Course US History #11)

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    Yaya Maysier に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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