(Host)
June 18th, 1812 is a date in American history that students don’t often
learn in school. It’s not a very memorable date. But according to
commentator and Vermont Humanities Council executive director Peter
Gilbert, it marks the beginning of a memorable story.
(Gilbert)
On June 18, two hundred years ago today, James Madison, America’s
fourth President, signed a formal declaration of war against Great
Britain. The War of 1812 was underway.
Madison had sent a
message to Congress on June 1 setting forth America’s grievances with
Great Britain, but he did not explicitly ask for a declaration of war.
The House of Representatives voted 79 to 49 for war; in the Senate the
vote was 19 to 13. The war did not have bipartisan support: not one of
the thirty-nine members of the Federalist Party in Congress voted in
favor of war. Those opposed to the war referred to it derisively as "Mr.
Madison’s war." It would last almost three years.
The reasons
for the war were several: In violation of international law, Britain had
passed a number of orders that restricted America’s right to trade with
France – because Britain was at war with France. Second, because
Britain was unable to man its enormous navy during the Napoleonic Wars
with France, it took to impressing American seamen. Not only did Britain
claim the right to take British deserters back into the navy, even if
they were American citizens, Britain did not even recognize the
naturalized American citizenship of any former Brit. Native-born
American sailors were also impressed into the British navy,
unintentionally and intentionally.
In addition, the British
supported and encouraged Native American tribes in the Northwest
Territory to impede American expansion into the area – what’s now
Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, which Britain had
ceded to the United States in 1787 as part of the Treaty of Paris, which
formally ended the American Revolution.
We remember the war
mostly for four things: "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was inspired
by the Battle of Baltimore; the British burning Washington, D.C., and
plucky First Lady Dolley Madison fleeing the White House only after
breaking the frame around Gilbert Stuart’s life-size painting of George
Washington to get the masterpiece out; General Andrew Jackson’s victory
in the Battle of New Orleans, which was fought after a peace treaty had
been signed; and the inspiring line "We have met the enemy, and they are
ours," even if few can remember who said it or when – it was the
commander of the American fleet, Oliver Hazard Perry, after defeating
the British in the Battle of Lake Erie.
Perhaps the war is
little remembered now because its consequences were subtle. In 1815
Americans were asking themselves what the country had gained from the
war. The answer, as summarized by a Vermont newspaper, was three
intangibles:
The fear of our late enemy; the respect of the world; and the confidence we have acquired in ourselves.
But
two hundred years ago today, all that was in the future as the
fledgling United States, entirely unprepared for war, declared war on
the world’s greatest military power, a nation that would soon defeat
even Napoleon.