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Posted by Tony Wesley on December 7, 2005, 7:48 am
Chris Lewis wrote:
[snippage, to try to reduce the size of the post. My last post on this
very off-topic subject]
> > 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.]
I agree with you. The War of 1812 changed that.
> 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).
I disagree that the wrongs were moot. The USA took on a superpower
that still had thoughts of re-capturing it and backed it down. Sure,
Britian could have spent more money and sent more troops. They could
have done that back in 1783, too.
> 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.
Well, who is "us"? At that point.. now, I've been saying England
because Mother England ruled everything, but it would be proper to say
Great Britain and that includes her colonies. It would have difficult
for the US troops to invade the English homeland. (Although I believe
American pirate ships did raid the British Isles and one was captured
in Wales)
So, Canada was the convenient place to strike at Britain.
So, if you include yourself as part of Britain, sure, it does make
sense. And British troops from Canada did invade the USA.
But anyway, the first aggression was Britain attacking on US soil.
> [+]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.
And the USA could have continued the war in Vietnam but we were faced
with the unpopularity...
> [*] An early implementation of psychological warfare.
Or one of those remarkable blunders.
> [=] 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.
The atrocities at the River Raisin started motivating the US side as
well.
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