Various - The War of 1812: Writings from Americas Second War of Independence (Library of America #232)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943154 (print)

ISBN 9781598531954 (print)

ISBN 9781598532647 (epub)

The War of 1812:

Writings from Americas Second War of Independence

is published with support from

THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION

and

THE BODMAN FOUNDATION

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For decades it had no name. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Mexican-American War forced the issue, it was known simply as the late war, an imprecise name for a complex and confounding conflict. Even now, two centuries on, the War of 1812 remains Americas most obscure war, remembered, if at all, for The Star-Spangled Banner, the burning of Washington, and the Battle of New Orleans. Though scores of books have been written on the subject, most Americans would have difficulty identifying the underlying causes of the war, and few are aware of how bitterly it polarized the young republic, indeed that it provoked talk of disunion. Fewer still recall that it involved the invasion of Canada, though north of the border the contest is largely remembered as a war of American aggression.

The War of 1812s status as a forgotten conflict is the more to be regretted when one considers the richness of the record left by its participants, American, British, Canadian, and Indian. This volume presents the best of this extraordinary literature: 140 letters, memoirs, poems, songs, speeches, sermons, editorials, journal entries, and proclamations by nearly a hundred men and women, both famousThomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Tecumseh, James and Dolley Madison, and the Duke of Wellington, to name a fewand obscure. The more political of these writings reveal the then-novel dynamics of making war in a democratic state, showing in dramatic form the interplay of partisanship and propaganda as ideological certainties confront the uncertain experience of war. The more personal, especially the vivid and often moving accounts by soldiers and sailors like Shadrach Byfield and William Atherton, speak to the brutality of a war that tested not only courage and physical stamina but also the ability to find meaning in suffering. Told firsthand in the pages that follow, the War of 1812 is a story that still resonates today.

When, in the fall of 1811, President James Madison composed his Annual Message to Congress, his mind was preoccupied with war. Great Britain and France had been at war almost continuously since 1793, and, as the worlds leading neutral power, the United States was caught in the middle, its maritime rights violated and its commerce looted. To Madison and other Jeffersonian Republicans, Great Britain posed the greater danger to Americas sovereignty and interests. The British had issued a series of regulationscommonly referred to as the Orders-in-Councilthat sharply curtailed U.S. trade with the European continent. They also routinely stopped American merchant vessels on the high seas and impressed or removed seamen to fill out the crews of their chronically undermanned warships. Although the Royal Navy professed to target only British subjects, some 6,000 American citizens were caught in the British dragnet between 1803 and 1812.

Between 1806 and 1811, the Republicans had tried to win greater respect for American rights by cutting off U.S. trade with the European belligerents. Jeffersons notorious embargo (18079) was only the most controversial of these measures, which were collectively known as the restrictive system. The restrictive system boomeranged on the United States, destroying American prosperity and cutting into government revenue without winning any concessions from the European powers. Although Madison himself had been the systems chief architect, by the end of 1811 he had concluded that the nation needed to consider stronger measures to redress its grievances. In his opening address to Congress on November 5, the president spoke of Britains hostile inflexibility and called for putting the nation into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis.

Guided by Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and other War Hawks, Congress over the next several months enacted a war program. On March 9 the President tried to stimulate the war spirit further by publicizing a series of letters purchased from John Henry, a British spy who had visited Federalist New England in 18089. Although the letters were supposed to show that British officials were interfering in the nations domestic affairs and even fomenting disunion, they proved to be far tamer, suggesting that Henry was on little more than a routine intelligence-gathering mission. Federalists resented this attempt to impugn their patriotism, and when they discovered that the administration had paid the staggering sum of $50,000 for the documents, they were furious.

When the USS Hornet