Ray wrote:As far as my recollection goes, in the War of 1812, 'Manifest Destiny' beliefs are common in the congress. Of course this is not the sole reason for the war, both sides angered each other basically.
The term "Manifest Destiny" usually is associated with a later period in American history. It helps to keep in mind that the English had not immediately evacuated what became the Northwest Ordinance Territories (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin) until well after the conclusion of the Revolution, and in 1812, they were still a howling wilderness as far as the white man was concerned. There had been settlement, at no small cost, in the Ohio country, but largely the British had supplied arms to the Indians, and discouraged American settlement covertly--acting through people like Simon Girty, a name to conjure images of the Devil in the minds of late 18th, early 19th century Americans.
The English were holding these territories hostage to American payment of war claims by English subjects. Alexander Hamilton's financial settlement, which disenchanted so many of the "common men," eventually leading to the break-up of both Jefferson's Republicans and Adams' Federalists, had nevertheless provided a means of paying those claims--but it was not going to happen overnight.
So, when General Hull took a largely "militia on holiday" force, with a handful of raw regulars to Detroit, he was many, many miles beyond any other base, and was treading territory which though technically American, had until very recently been under the actual control of the English. In Upper Canada (today's Ontario), there were precious few English regulars, but they were under the command of General Isaac Brock (the subject of some controversy earlier in this thread when i referred to him as a fool for his behavior at Queenston, on the day he was killed), an energetic, intelligent and aggressive commander. Brock was faced with the prospect of facing the Americans at at least three points: Michilimackinack (at the top of the present day Michigan lower penninsula), at Detroit, and in the Niagara penninsula. He was not paralyzed by the possibilities, but neither was he going to move until he was certain how best to deal with the situation.
Hull moved on Detroit like some ponderous, ancient beast, crashing through the forest. Brock correctly estimated the time of his arrival, and knew he had a week or so to temporize. The incompetent American Secretary of War, Johnson, hewed to the Jeffersonian party line which deplored standing armies, and claimed that the militia could meet all of the nation's military needs. The problem with that was that militia are home defense forces, and Johnson felt compelled to demonstate his bellicosity. He sought an obvious answer in New York, and the politicians there, who were largely indifferent to the war, or even opposed to it, saw an opportunity to rid themselves of a troublesome "man of the people," although descendant of the original Dutch settlers and a millionaire, who would likely become the next governor--Stephen Van Rensselaer. His political opponents figured that he could not use his position as a member of congress and former Lieutenant Governor to campaign, if he was off in the wilds around Lewiston (north of Niagara Falls on the river of the same name). His cousin Solomon was militarily competent, but his officers were packed by hostile state appointsment, and they crippled his leadership. The militia were not interested, and the only regular forces were some artillery companies, one of which, however, was commanded by Winfield Scott, who was then embarking upon his 50 year plus military career.
Apprised of these developments, because there was absolutely no sense of security in the militia camps, and many recent immigrants to Upper Canada were Americans who could move across the border and return with ease, Brock correctly assessed the threat in New York as being as yet undeveloped. He then recieved news which must have seemed to him to be a blessing from heaven. A young officer with a handful of regulars and several dozen Indian allies had seized Michillimacinack in a dawn raid. Brock knew now what he wanted to do, and he moved quickly. He sent word to his Indian allies, chiefly the Shawnee under Tecumseh, and arranged a rendezvous. Leaving behind all new recruits and any sick, he then pressed forced marches on his little band of regulars and crossed what is now southern Ontario with remarkable speed. He joined his Shawnee allies, and they immediately advanced upon Detroit. Hull seems to have already been haunted by the thought of what might lurk beneath the dark eaves of the forest, at least according to the correspondence of his officers, who were thoroughly disgusted with him before Brock even arrived. When Brock's little pop guns (three pounders) began to shell the fort, the rotting old timbers caved in pretty quickly--Hull had been unable or unwilling to make the militia work, and they simply occupied the abandoned English stockade. (South of Detroit, at the juncture of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers in what is now Ohio, William Henry Harrison had convinced the Kentucky volunteers to stay on with him, and they built a new stockade. As it was made of green timber, when the English later tried to shell his position, the round shot simply bounced off.)
A young staff officer once began a report to Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson by saying: "General, i fear that . . . " and Jackson interrupted him to say: "You must never take counsel of your fears." Hull not only took counsel of his fears, worse still, he took counsel of his militia officers. He forthwith surrendered his force and his fort to a body of troops and Indians less than a third the size of his command. A few prisoners were killed and scalped, but Tecumseh intervened to stop that--but atrocity stories immediately sprang to life, and grew in the telling. Brock now hurried back across Upper Canada, to meet his doom at Queenston, an armed brawl i've described elsewhere.
With few resources, and placing no trust in the Loyalist Ascendancy of Upper Canada to supply and support him, Brock had accomplished everything he had envisioned as the best outcome, and with the exception of a part of the Ohio territory protected by Harrison at Fort Defiance, the northwest territory remained a no man's land. Eventually, Harrison and Anthony Wayne redressed this imbalance, and Tecumseh's new ally, General Proctor was as faithless as Tecumseh had been faithful to Brock. After abandoning a seige of Fort Defiance, the English were obliged to retreat to, through and past Detroit. They continued to fall back, and at the Thames River, Tecumseh told Proctor that very much more retreating would cause the Indians to melt away. So Proctor stopped, promised to give battle, and the snuck away with his regulars before dawn. A handful of Canadians and the Shawnee were quickly overrun, and Techumseh was killed.
Similarly, the English supplied and abetted the Indians of the southeast from their base in Florida, and ran off the Americans who had drifted into the Alabama territory from Tennessee and Georgia. In 1813, the Creek War began, and it was in this war that Andrew Jackson got his reputation and began his rise through military command to political control of Tennessee, and eventually to the White House. Then he commanded Tennessee volunteers, but with the Creek War ended, and the English fleet headed for Louisiana, Madison's government screwed up and did something right--they appointed Jackson to command the regulars, the militia and the volunteers who would defend New Orleans. The rest is, as one says, history.
Manifest destiny was an idea then, but it was not on everyone's minds and lips in 1812 the way it would be in 1830. It was not until the northwest territory, and the Alabama and Mississippi territories were considered safe for settlement that the idea began to take root in the popular mind. Manifest destiny as a popular public idea was a product of this war, nor a contributing factor.
Quote:The war was intertwined with the Napoleonic war in Europe and if I remember correctly Britain had a conscription policy(?) and they sometimes mistaken American seafarers for British citizens and so they accused them of being desserters???
American merchants traded with anyone who had the cash to put down on the barrelhead. The English claimed the right to seize as contraband any cargo destined for the continent which might have a military use. The Americans, not surprisingly, contended that free ships make free goods. Napoleon rather unwisely issued the Milan Decree, which basically said anyone trading with the English was subject to seizure. After Trafalgar in 1805, he had no business shooting his mouth off like that, but it angered Americans nevertheless. The English responded with orders in council to the same effect. Napoleon, however, was a first class judge of and manager of people, he quickly saw his error, and he just as quickly revoked the Milan Decree. John Bull, being a stubborn old bulldog, hemmed and hawed and screwed around until the ship bearing the American declaration of war passed the ship bearing the news of the revocation of the orders in council in mid-Atlantic--too little, too late.
Life was harsh in the Royal Navy in this era. It was also badly paid, and subject to the tension of a boredom which comes from doing nothing, but always being on the lookout for a fight, which is what a decade long blockade comes down to. There had been mutinies at the Nore and at Spithead in 1797, and relations between officers and men were tense. Increasingly, sailors were obtained by press gangs, which simply went out and seized men on the streets. People in English villages and cities began to interfere with the press gangs, and some Justices of the Peace prosecuted officers leading press gangs which became involved in riots.
The English had casually and occassionally taken men from American ships, and claimed that they were English deserters. Consider if you will how likely it was that any English sailor would jump ship the first chance he got, and then consider how hard it would be in 1812 to prove you were born in America. This continued galling sore now began to fester. In 1807,
H.M.S. Leopard stopped
U.U.S. Chesapeake by claiming they had mail they wished delivered to Europe. The captain then demanded to search for four British deserters.
Chesapeake refused and hauled to run or fight as the occassion required;
Leopard opened fire, and three American sailors were killed, and eighteen wounded. It was the naval equivalent of a sucker punch. Three U.S. citizens were impressed into the Royal Navy--something the Royal Navy has not admitted to this day, although those men were repatriated after an American protest. A fourth was hung as a British deserter. The then President Jefferson called for a voluntary embargo against Britain. This angered the English, and the Royal Navy began to stop more American ships.
The English have always maintained that deserting sailors used American ships as an excuse to escape capture and punishment, and that no Americans had ever actually been impressed (taken into service against their will). However, as Roosevelt points out in his
Naval War of 1812 more than 2000 sailors in the Royal Navy who had no previous records of disciplinary problems refused to serve when the war began, stating that they were Americans who had been impressed and that they would not fight their own nation. These men were imprisoned at Dartmoor and in prison hulks in the Thames, and Roosevelt claims that thousands more were imprisoned or hanged for the same reason, but on other charges. He cites records in England, and especially those of the Royal Navy itself.
The Milan Decree and the orders in council were the proverbial straw atop the camel's back, and Federalists, who actually opposed war, taunted James Madison with his spinelessness. This proved too much for a certified hero of the Revolution, and he declared war in the summer of 1812. The New England states and New York and New Jersey, for whose citizens the war was largely fought, were indifferent or hostile. But merchants in those states, and especially in New England, got busy and made themselves rich trading with the enemy at St. Johns, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Quote:Anyways, Britain supplied the indians with weapons around this period, and the Americans were fighting the natives at the time (Lousiana Purchase), so this further angers the US. I've been lead to believe that the Americans had in mind the belief of "manifest destiny" that they should take all of the continent(?).
Most of this has already been answered, but i will take this opportunity to point out that Louisiana and Arkansas were still a wilderness, but one in which the Spanish (from whom France stole the territory, after giving it up earlier in a peace settlement, and then selling it to Thomas Jefferson) had maintained relatively good relations with the natives. There was not yet a large influx of Americans, because Alabama and Mississippi were not yet safe, and only about half of Tennessee had yet been settled. As i've already noted, it was the "release of pressure" which occurred after the Enlgish were definitively driven out of Michigan and Florida which lead to the popularization of the idea of Manifest Destiny. The idea was already around, but was largely unknown to or ignored by the "common man" who would exploit the concept as Americans moved west. It was not until long after, in the 1820's, when Jackson as Governor of Tennessee organized elements of the shattered Republican party of Jefferson into what would become the modern Democratic party that the "Era of the Common Man" was ushered in, and the notion of manifest destiny began to be taken for granted in the United States.
Quote:This is all from memory so please correct me if I'm wrong (which I probably am on many points).
Your memory has served you better, i'd warrant, than would those of any hundred people i randomly buttonholed on the street.
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