Origins of the War of 1812

 

Origins of the War of 1812 outline the causes of the War of 1812. The war was fought between the British Empire and the United States from 1812 to 1815.
On June 4, 1812, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 79 to 49 for a declaration of war against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Two weeks later the U.S. Senate voted 19 to 13 for the declaration of war. President James Madison signed the bill on June 19, and the war officially began.

 

Contents 1 American expansionism 2 Violations of American sovereignty 3 Incidents leading up to the war 4 Notes

American expansionism

During the American Revolutionary War, the Americans repeatedly appealed to the British colony of Quebec to join the American Revolution. The Second Continental Congress preapproved Quebec for statehood under Article 11 of the Articles of Confederation (ratified March 1, 1781). Each time the Americans were welcomed by many French Canadian habitants, but defeated by the British army. The Continental Army invaded Canada in three separate expeditions during 1775 and 1776 but were ultimately unsuccessful, and Canada remained under British control.
After the revolution, however, the demographic situation in Canada changed significantly. Numerous English-speaking colonists — many of them American by birth (some United Empire Loyalists) — settled to the west in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario). The Canadian colonies were only lightly defended by the British, and some Americans believed that the majority in the English-speaking area, at least, would rise up and greet an American invading army as liberators: as Thomas Jefferson suggested in 1812, "the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent." The growing belief that the United States was destined to control all of the North American continent would later gain the name Manifest Destiny, but that term was not yet in use during the war.

Violations of American sovereignty

While there was some popular support in the United States for annexing the British colonies, the United States also had serious grievances over repeated British violations of its sovereignty in the decades following the American Revolutionary War. When revolutionary France declared war upon Great Britain in 1793, the United States sought to remain neutral while pursuing overseas commerce with both empires, which created much tension. Additionally, Great Britain had not abandoned fortifications in the Great Lakes region as called for in the 1783 Treaty of Paris and was continuing to supply those Native Americans in the Northwest Territory who were at war with the United States. In 1795, the United States secured the Jay Treaty with Great Britain and the Treaty of Greenville with the Native Americans, thus ending those conflicts.
Great Britain and France went to war again in 1803, and the Royal Navy, short of manpower, began boarding American merchant ships in order to seize some of the many British seamen serving on American vessels. Although this policy of impressment was supposed to reclaim only British subjects, Britain did not recognize naturalized American citizenship, often taking seamen who had been born British subjects but later issued American citizenship certificates. There was also a widespread Royal Navy belief that many of the certificates were either forged or issued illegally to British subjects by sympathetic American authorities. As a result, between 1806 and 1812 about 6,000 seamen claimed as American citizens were taken against their will into the Royal Navy. Great Britain did not want to stop impressment because it was seen as an effective way of combating desertion from the Royal Navy. The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty (1806) between the U.S. and Great Britain was not ratified in the United States because it did not end impressment.

Origins of The War of 1812

British Impressment

American Expansionism

Monroe-Pinkney Treaty

Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

Orders in Council (1807)

Embargo Act of 1807

Non-Intercourse Act

Macon's Bill Number 2

Tecumseh's War

War Hawks

Incidents leading up to the war

This dispute came to the forefront with the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of 1807, when the British ship HMS Leopard fired on and boarded the American ship USS Chesapeake, killing three and carrying off four "deserters", of whom three were Americans thereby pressed into the Royal Navy. The American public was outraged by the incident, and many called for war in order to assert American sovereignty and national honor.
Meanwhile, Napoleon's Continental System (beginning 1806) and the British Orders in Council (1807) established embargoes that made international trade precarious. From 1807 to 1812, about 900 American ships were seized as a result. American President Thomas Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited American ships from sailing to any foreign ports and closed American ports to British ships. Jefferson's embargo was especially unpopular in New England, where merchants preferred the indignities of impressment to the halting of overseas commerce. This discontent contributed to the calling of the Hartford Convention during the war.
The Embargo Act had no effect on Great Britain and France and was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. As this proved to be unenforceable, the Non-Intercourse Act was replaced in 1810 by Macon's Bill Number 2. This lifted all embargoes but offered that if either France or Great Britain were to cease their interference with American shipping, the United States would reinstate an embargo on the other nation. Napoleon, seeing an opportunity to make trouble for Great Britain, promised to leave American ships alone. He had no intention of honoring this promise, but the ruse de guerre worked, and the United States reinstated the embargo with Great Britain and moved closer to declaring war.
In the United States House of Representatives, a group of young Democratic-Republicans known as the "War Hawks" came to the forefront in 1811, led by Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The War Hawks advocated going to war against Great Britain for all of the reasons listed above, though concentrating on the grievances more than the territorial expansion.
On June 1, 1812, President James Madison gave a speech to the U.S. Congress, recounting American grievances against Great Britain, though not specifically calling for a declaration of war. After Madison's speech, the House of Representatives quickly voted (79 to 49) to declare war, and after much debate, the U.S. Senate also voted for war, 19 to 13. The conflict formally began on June 18, 1812 when Madison signed the measure into law. This was the first time that the United States had declared war on another nation, and the Congressional vote would prove to be the closest vote to declare war in American history. None of the 39 Federalists in Congress voted in favor of the war; critics of war subsequently referred to it as "Mr. Madison's War."

 

The actual vote in June 1812 by each Senator was:

Connecticut Chauncey Goodrich (Fed.) NAY Samuel W. Dana (Fed.) NAY Delaware James A. Bayard (Fed.) … NAY Outerbridge Horsey (Fed.) NAY Georgia William H. Crawford (Dem.-Rep) YEA Charles Tait (Dem.-Rep) YEA Kentucky John Pope (Dem.-Rep) NAY George M. Bibb (Dem.-Rep) YEA Maryland Samuel Smith (Dem.-Rep) YEA Philip Reed (Dem.-Rep) NAY Massachusetts James Lloyd (Fed.) NAY Joseph B. Varnum (Dem.-Rep) YEA New Hampshire Nicholas Gilman (Dem.-Rep) NAY Charles Cutts (Dem.-Rep) YEA New Jersey John Lambert (Dem.-Rep) NAY John Condit (Dem.-Rep) YEA New York John Smith (Dem.-Rep) YEA Obadiah German (Dem.-Rep) Nay

North Carolina James Turner (Dem.-Rep) YEA Jesse Franklin (Dem.-Rep) YEA Ohio Alexander Campbell (Dem.-Rep) Abstained Thomas Worthington (Dem.-Rep) NAY Pennsylvania Andrew Gregg (Dem.-Rep) YEA Michael Leib (Dem.-Rep) YEA Rhode Island William Hunter (Fed.) NAY Jeremiah B. Howell (Dem.-Rep) NAY South Carolina John Gaillard (Dem.-Rep) YEA John Taylor (Dem.-Rep) YEA Tennessee Joseph Anderson (Dem.-Rep) YEA George W. Campbell (Dem.-Rep) YEA Vermont Stephen R. Bradley (Dem.-Rep) Abstained Jonathan Robinson (Dem.-Rep) YEA Virginia William B. Giles (Dem.-Rep) YEA Richard Brent (Dem.-Rep) YEA

 

 

 

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Created by:	Salauddine Mohammed Faruque on July 25,2007, last updated on 25.03.2008