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Posted by Chris Lewis on December 7, 2005, 12:36 am
> Chris Lewis wrote:
> > > Chris Lewis wrote:
> > > > If you had kicked the Brits, Indians, and Canadians, we would be a state.
> > > > You lost that war, remember? Oh, I forgot, the Americans claim that they
> > > > won that one.
> > > Let's see, we got England to stop boarding ships and impressing the
> > > crew into their navy, plus England finally recognized the USA.
> > That happened two days _before_ the Americans declared war.
> > Read the history: http://gatewayno.com/history/War1812.html
> Not a word in there about England recognizing the USA. England did not
> treat US as a sovereign nation until after the War of 1812. It
> recognized the individual states as sovereign *states*.
But so did those states! Texas still does! ;-)
[That's not as sarcastic as it sounds. The US states considered themselves
far more autonomous then than they do now. The US couldn't raise an army -
legally they could, but, in reality, it was by the states.]
> The page you reference does not say England stopped boarding ships, nor
> did it issue orders to stop doing so, it says they (Britain) had
> announced that it *would* revoke its orders. No telling when they'd
> get around to doing that. Probably sometime after they would get
> around abiding by the terms of the Treaty of Paris and withdraw their
> troops from the agreed upon land.
Well, it was only 2 days - that was hardly enough time for anyone
to do anything about it. Nobody on this side of the pond knew
anything about that for a few weeks.
> > > > Militarily, we had the edge at the end (we held parts of the US).
> > > > Politically, it was a draw (the Brits gave those parts back [+]).
> > > If you read the treaties that ended the two wars with England, you'll
> > > know that 1812 wasn't a draw.
> > Back to http://gatewayno.com/history/War1812.html:
> > - U.S. forces were not ready for war, and American hopes of conquering
Canada collapsed
> > in the campaigns of 1812 and 1813.
> > H'm. "Hopes to conquer Canada collapsed". So, what you started the war over
> > was obsolete by the time war was declared, you didn't conquer Canada, and
> > the land possession hardly changed if at all.
> > A draw.
> So you agree the US didn't lose it.
They didn't lose any territory out of it - a draw on that basis.
But, let's step back and look at it strictly and simply from the perspective
of goals:
- The US started the war to redress certain wrongs, and invade/conquer Canada.
- Canada "reacted" to that threat, with the goal being to repell the invasion.
Then achievements:
- The "wrongs" were mostly moot, and the invasion failed.
- Canada repelled the invasion.
Depending on how you define things, that's either a win for us (we achieved
our goals), or a draw (we didn't make you lose territory).
In reality, it was a remarkably dumb war. If the timing had been better,
there'd have been no war. The war was a remarkable series of blunders,
sheer luck (freakish occurances during the naval battles), and several strokes
of absolute brilliance - ie: the taking of Detroit[*], the defence of Niagara,
and the most important one of all: the US capturing a draw at the treaty
of Ghent[+]. Without that, you'd have been screwed.
> > > American invaders? The "invasion" was the other way, the Brits taking
> > > Mackinac Island first.
> > We were supposed to sit around twiddling our thumbs after you declared war
on us?
> Apply the same standards the other way. By this point, the English
> Navy has been commiting acts of war for years. Was the United States
> supposed to "sit around twiddling our thumbs"?
So you invade _us_. Makes sense, maybe.
[+]Ghent happened simply because Britain had just finished the war
with France, and were faced with the unpopularity of more years of heavy
taxation sending large numbers of just-released battle hardened troops to
North America.
Throughout the war, there were at most 3,000 British regulars
in Canada[=]. If Ghent hadn't happened, there would have
been 30,000 more on the way within months. But Britain was only
interested in finishing it - and didn't even know that we were
winning ground (again, that dang trans-atlantic communications lag).
Heck, nobody knew til weeks later that the war was over - the
Battle of New Orleans took place 2 weeks after the war was over.
[Which is just as well, because we screwed the pooch on that one.]
[*] An early implementation of psychological warfare. Ridiculously
small force gets their even smaller number of indians irregulars to
march back and forth making lots of noise just out of sight. The
American commander, remembering full well how pissed off the Indians
were about getting massacred during the American push west, figured
their only salvation was to surrender to the Brits and plead that
they be protected from the Indians. So he surrendered. Boy was he
embarrassed to find out that he had been surrendered to a mere handful
of troops/irregulars who were laughing themselves silly.
[=] During the first two years, the fighting on our side was
carried out almost exclusively by the British regulars and the Indians
they had helping them. It wasn't until the burning of towns in Niagara
that fighting the war became popular, and the British, French, and UEL
colonists pitched in too.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.
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